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No wonder so many Americans are overweight: at Disney World, I was drinking all you can drink Powerade because they didn't have club soda available.
We've been drinking water in the car driving, but when you stop, it's huge amounts of food, washed down with cuke.

I rediscovered catfish at the Cracker barrel, though. Haven't had it in about 40 years: sooooo good! We used to catch perch for breakfast as kids, but the catfish was nice.

Americans love their fireworks, snacks and GUNS, if you go by their roadside advertisements.
It's been fun, but our timeline took us off the perfect eclipse viewing track. We'll still be in the US, though, so we'll see something anyways, lol. I'm going to try to video it for shits and giggles.

Almost home: going to go through Niagara Falls. Love that place.

Race Bias #1 - "Blissful Ignorance"

I began the "Race Bias" series in 1995 in response to a post on the alt.politics.nationalism.white newsgroup to the effect that there was no discrimination in employment, university admissions, or otherwise, against European-Americans.

I was stunned that the regular posters to the group had no instant supply of material to post in reply.

Most regular posters and "lurkers" on the newsgroup, have some first-hand experience with anti-White race preferences. But very few of them are aware of just how pervasive these anti-White preferences have become. Unfortunately, the primary weakness of our defensive political movement is that a commanding plurality of _Whites_ are utterly unaware of it. They have no clue that the nice sounding phrase "Affirmative Action" means the systematic disfavor of Whites and race based preferences for non- whites.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine how a White can grow up in this society and not be aware of the legal and social impediments imposed on him, but a recent survey from the Washington Post found that 41% of Whites think "affirmative action" included benefits for white men. (Affirmative Action for White Guys? Washington Post, Oct. 22, 1995, p. C5.)

A Harte-Hanks Texas Poll conducted for media outlets by UT's Office of Survey Research and reported in the June 29, 1996 Austin American-Statesman (p A1) is consistent with the Washington Post results:

"A vastly lopsided percentage of Texans, eight of 10, oppose giving any consideration to race when admitting students to college. But when asked about affirmative action in general, respondents were more positive than not."

However, when asked "whether affirmative action for minorities and women "has had a positive effect on Texas," the response indicated that most had no clue what the words "affirmative action" really mean:

"Forty-seven percent of the 1,000 respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that affirmative action for minorities has had a positive effect, while 33 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed."

"When asked about affirmative action for women, 59 percent agreed it has had a positive effect on Texas and 23 percent disagreed. The higher percentage favoring affirmative action for women is not surprising, experts said, because women make up half of the population."

Of course, the issue is not whether "affirmative action has had a positive effect on _Texas_" - a proposition that asks the interviewees to speculate on the impact of race preferences on an inanimate parcel of real estate, but whether affirmative action hurts or harms the interviewee.

But the survey itself highlights one of the means by which large institutions hide the truth from Whites. By selecting the term "affirmative action," conjuring images of a little extra recruiting effort to overcome any "information deficit" that non- whites might have in the marketplace, most Whites are kept in the dark.

Only the minority of Whites who read newspapers will know the truth. Those who get their information from TV will be blissfully ignorant.

The problem is that nearly half of this nation's Whites lack the basic vocabulary and the rudimentary facts needed to defend themselves in the political process.

With this in mind, I produced the "Race Bias" series.

I am a firm believer that the people of the Euro-American nation need facts more than they need ideologies. With that in mind, the series has been reorganized and lengthened from the original 30 to a revised 42 posts.

Copy them and circulate them to others!

Yggdrasil-

(As a P.S., I am indebted to "American Renaissance" magazine for reporting the Washington Post survey [Volume 7, Number 4, April, 1996] Subscriptions to American Renaissance are $20.00 per year. Make checks payable to: American Renaissance, P. O. Box 1674 Louisville, KY 40201.)

http://www.whitenationalism.com/rb/rb-01.htm

So, I know you all have read the moderator guidelines and remember the very important "Concentrate more on promoting than on demoting." bit, yes? Well, I went looking for who the worst offenders were against that out of curiousity. I'm not sure it's really proper to shame them here though. You lot can leave your opinions on that here and us staff types will discuss it later.

What I absolutely can and will post are the badasses who have most excellent ratios of upmods to downmods. Without further ado, here's everyone with over a thousand upmods to their credit and a downmod percentage of less than 10%.

+--------------+-----------------+
| percent_down | nickname        |
+--------------+-----------------+
|       0.0865 | VLM             |
|       0.1188 | anubi           |
|       0.1209 | AnonTechie      |
|       0.2067 | tonyPick        |
|       0.4737 | redneckmother   |
|       0.5438 | Reziac          |
|       0.6222 | CoolHand        |
|       0.6494 | Bobs            |
|       0.7171 | WillAdams       |
|       0.8937 | McGruber        |
|       1.1099 | GlennC          |
|       1.1341 | fritsd          |
|       1.2910 | maxwell demon   |
|       1.3060 | pinchy          |
|       1.3723 | HiThere         |
|       1.4609 | monster         |
|       1.8067 | DannyB          |
|       1.8447 | J053            |
|       1.8601 | quacking duck   |
|       2.2772 | deimtee         |
|       2.4750 | mhajicek        |
|       2.5053 | Unixnut         |
|       2.6012 | dak664          |
|       2.6693 | zocalo          |
|       2.8353 | Yog-Yogguth     |
|       2.8932 | rts008          |
|       3.1125 | khchung         |
|       3.2325 | The Archon V2.0 |
|       3.5069 | GungnirSniper   |
|       3.5307 | canopic jug     |
|       3.7419 | Freeman         |
|       3.7582 | jelizondo       |
|       4.3070 | turgid          |
|       4.3096 | hubie           |
|       4.5095 | bradley13       |
|       4.8469 | Scruffy Beard 2 |
|       4.9924 | Nerdfest        |
|       5.1967 | Kymation        |
|       6.1929 | Bloopie         |
|       6.2708 | linkdude64      |
|       7.2055 | SpockLogic      |
|       7.2575 | acid andy       |
|       7.3139 | NotSanguine     |
|       7.4517 | Ethanol-fueled  |
|       8.5932 | KiloByte        |
|       9.5238 | Hawkwind        |
|       9.6141 | bart9h          |
+--------------+-----------------+

Congrats to VLM. He is currently Da Man.

Typed on my crappy tablet: took fracking forever.

Welp, as the title says, Disney can fuck my telemetry up the ass for all I care (I'll care in a few days), my son (which means me, lol) just had a Game of Thrones quality day (or a Tom Baker-Doctor Who day?)

First of all, stay at a resort: when we booked (aug. 15-18), it was hurricane/thunder storm season so we got a free meal plan which my wife upgraded to a dinner plan with sit down meals: smart woman. (Plan ahead and book ahead, of the restaurants fill up quickly). We have had mostly cloudy days, so less sun to burn, but high temps with high humidity (93, feels like 109).

When you register, tell them about any food allergies and it will follow you around!
Our first dinner was at the Rainforest cafe at 9pm (first time we could get for the first day): steak dinner that would have cost us $34 each was free. A 'chef' came out to explain what we could order to avoid gluten and dairy, and it was an excellent meal.
Second dinner was a buffet at Boma restaurant: buffet that would have been $43 each: waiter took us to table and then sat down with us, took allergy info, talked with us (thought he was going to eat with us, lol) then brought out a chef to walk us through the buffet to tell us what we could eat and not.
Xcellent service and food.
Third dinner was Best. Dinner. Ever. at Chef Mickey's: personalized service again, but had a MOB of characters at the tables and doing dances. Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, Pluto all came to our table for pictures, hugs and high fives (although I should have punched Goofy for missing my wife, lol).
Our son loves it all, and the buffet took second place (they have gluten free waffles that were amazing, though).

We got free snacks with our plan and a free cup with, I guess a chip, for free drinks (except, there's no club soda, so the calories aren't great: I drank the Powerade). Cup sits on platform/scanner and won't dispense drink unless it senses a valid cup. I tried to fill my son's water bottle with Powerade, but it cuts you off after a fill and a bit of the cup and makes you wait 3 minutes before you can dispense another cup. Free, but semi-limited. Dang!
The snacks: we were really too full to use them, and only started using them just to use them (cinnamon glazed almonds...yesssssss!)

Stay at a resort if you can:
We stayed at all star music: you can go to the park (if you don't bring a bag, you don't have to go through the bag check, but do have to do the metal detector thing).
We put drinks, etc, in a backpack and put the backpack on the wheelchair!
Go to the park in the morning and hit what you want with little wait and use pre-booked fast pass too.
When the heat and rain is coming, go back to the resort for a rest/swim, then back to park in afternoon.
If you stay outside the park (like we did years ago), if you get tired, you trek back to your car, drive back tired, then probably too tired to go back at night.....
Much better this vacation.

You can skip the meet and greet character things if you go to chef Mickey's.

Rides for kids and kids at heart:
Go to The trouble with bugs' thing: bad smells wafted down at you, my wife got a poke in the back, but I wasn't sitting with my back against the chair back so I missed it. You also get this funny/creepy 'bugs running under your butt' thing which is really kind of just cool.
Our son liked the Buzz light-year spin ride thing, but he likes Buzz so he's biased, lol.
Small world ride is aging and looking it, but it's a long ride to relax on.

Carousel of progress has been my wife and my favourite since we went as not quite newlyweds.
Fun ride, until you get to the modern/future time: then I get lost a bit. I like the simple format of the guy sitting in his chair with the dog on the floor, and he narrates with things happening behind screens on either side. The modern/future one is the whole family at once, and seems chaotic and not as interesting for me. But would watch over again...... because!

Skip the animal kingdom: not that interesting for us, but we did not see Pandora, so....

Haunted house is a skip: it seems darker (to keep paint from fading?) and ghosts dimmer. Or I'm getting old. Anyways, not worth the wait, we decided.

So, if we ever go again, note to self: (especially if grand kids ever come along)
Stay at resort and upgrade meal to dinners.
Book chef Mickey restaurant, absolutely! Book restaurants ahead of time (2weeks or more ahead, if possible).
Skip animal kingdom.
Go to Trouble with bugs.
Ride monorail, but only the air conditioned ones.

I am not affiliated with Disney at all, this is just some things I wish I had known years ago.

Next, off to Mammoth Caves: we went there years ago: it is so deep underground, they turn the lights off, light a match, then blow it out and drop it. You can hear the match hit the ground like your ear is right beside it.

Better than my stay at home vacation last summer!

I'm working on a macOS - it's not Mac OS X anymore - USB Video driver. This is by far the most complex driver that I've ever developed.

It works now, but only for a hardwired resolution and pixel depths. There are lots of other problems, the worst one being that it doesn't play nice with power management. There are vast quantities of "// TODO:" comments.

When I get it to beta - hopefully Real Soon Now - I'll be getting a huge paycheck. When it's completely finished, I'll get another one.

My client is a fabless semiconductor firm. They sell chips to manufacturers who sell finished products to end-users. Hopefully my whizzy new driver will enable them to sell lots more chips.

We're big in China.

I told my client about my mental illness. They were totally cool with it. But I haven't mentioned my experience with homelessness.

In other news, I have a mad crush on a barista, but as yet she doesn't seem to return my interest.

So, yesterday I moved my car into The Roomie's parking space, moved my boat out of the yard and into mine, and mowed the yard. All was good and celebratory beer was drank.

Enter today. I go outside for a smoke and while enjoying it I think to myself, "Self, TR's going to be back from his customer service road trip today. You should jockey things back around before he gets home." This sounded like a fine and courteous idea, so I got up and proceeded towards said goal.

Unfortunately when I went to lift up the tongue of my boat trailer (Well balanced. Boat and trailer together weigh maybe 500lbs. Load on my arms maybe 50lbs.) that I'd moved easily the day before and wag it back over into the grass beside TR's boat. For some unknown reason, my back takes that specific moment to remind me that I started having birthdays beyond my 40th within the past few years; or, to put it more succinctly, it just shit right out on me.

Damned traitorous body parts. If it weren't for all the skills and wisdom you tend to pick up along the way, I'd say getting older sucked.

This has put me entirely not in the mood to bandy words with my peers and adversaries. My apologies to those who will likely never know how utterly wrong some comment of theirs is. To those in need of mocking, leave a note here and I'll get to you as soon as the pain's lessened enough to think through. See you lot in a week or so, I expect.

Walt Disney World, I've found with this vacation, tracks you everywhere and now has my finger prints: they use chipped cards and 'watch-band' type things. AND, you also use a finger to pass through the park gates.

The system for passing through the park gates is glitchy, and you either have to use a fingerprint or get your picture taken because of the glitch not making your chipped device work.
When the devices don't work, the person letting you through raises their hand, and a supervisor type comes over to solve the issue. The issue happens constantly. He supervisor comes over and tried to solve the issue with a pad device running Windows, which you can see because when they tap the device, there is a brief flash of the windows logo.

The issue happens CONSTANTLY.

My son won't wear the watch thing, so I wear his and mine, and use (because I was surprised by the request for a fingerprint) my index finger on my left hand for him, and my middle finger of my right hand for me.
Now I have to remember which finger for which hand, AND they have my fingerprints.

Will the prints be wiped when I leave? I'm going to have to ask, but I'm doubting it.
At least they don't have my son's prints, but they did take his picture for the 'disabled fast pass' thing.

Sigh: go to enjoy yourself, and end up wondering who has your details.

Note to self: don't go for the Disney hookers.

BUT, my son is enjoying himself, so......worth it.

An external SSD has become Samsung's first drive to hit the market with 64-layer V-NAND. It includes a 10 Gbps USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C connection and capacities ranging from 250GB to 2TB:

Moving on to the pricing aspect, it must be remembered that the Portable SSD T5 is a pilot vehicle for Samsung's 64-layer V-NAND as its production ramps up. Samsung naturally expects this to be a low-volume, high-margin part. Therefore, despite the higher density, consumers should not expect much difference in the cost per GB compared to other external SSDs in the market. The 2TB variant will have a MSRP of $800 and the 500GB will retail at $200. At 40 cents/GB, it is priced close to other such products currently in the market.

Also at Samsung, PCWorld, The Verge, PCMag, and YouTube.

Not a submission because: Intel First to Market With 64-Layer 3D NAND SSDs

You’ll Never Be as Radical as This 18th-Century Quaker Dwarf