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I got a really bad case of the shits last night as well as excruciating abdominal pain.

Once I convinced myself that I would not piss out my asshole until after a hearty meal, I walked to the Emergency Room. Of all the toetullie kewal things I was the _only_ ER patient between 2:00 and 5:00 AM so I got the Red Carpet treatment.

They were concerned about my abdominal pain so they gave me a CT scan.

This is point at which the Roffle Copters start up their engines, their blades turning slow at first then whirling faster and faster:

The scan and some blood tests turned up that I have a garden variety case of the shits that the doc said would "resolve itself" with the aid of such over-the-counter remedies as Imodium. Too bad that I'm busted so flat that I can't buy any yet.

LOLCATS:

That same CT scan turned up a "mass" on my right kidney. The diagnostic radiologist and my ER doc both said it's most likely cancer.

But the ER doc said "It's not going to kill you as it's quite treatable. They'll just surgically remove your kidney then prescribe a course of chemotherapy."

I'm down with that as I've always hoped that the day would come that I might be completely overcome with vomiting while at the same time receiving an IV drip of Fenergin, Arnold Schwarzenegger-like anti-nausea medication.

I'll book an appointment with my Primary Care Physician just after I post this. Their scheduling people always ask _why_ I want to see her. The worse my complaint is the sooner I get seen.

I'll need a referral most likely to a Nephrologist, then that same kidney doc will give me a biopsy. I'll know from my Pathologist's report how likely I am to fulfill you sorry lot's heart's desires by perishing in indescribable agony, as well as what the best course of treatment would be.

Wish Me A Long And Happy Life!

Dying,

Mischa

Normally when I want to make yogurt, I use a thermophilic process:

1. Heat/boil a gallon of milk to kill (reduce) whatever is in it.
2. Let it cool down to about 115-120°F (45-50°C).
3. Stir in a few tablespoons of store-bought yogurt, or "back-slopped" yogurt from the previous batch.
4. Hold it at 115°F/45°C for 8 - 16 hours.
5. Store in fridge.

You can use a yogurt maker, but some Instant Pots come with a yogurt function and if your oven can keep the temperature at 115°F/45°C, then you can just put a covered pot of it in there.

I got a couple of these on clearance with the intention of using one as a starter culture. It supposedly contains these active cultures:

L. lactis subsp. lactis, L. lactis subsp. cremoris, L. lactis subsp. lactis biovar diacetylactis, Leuconostoc subsp. cremoris, S. thermophilus, L. bulgaricus, L. rhamnosus, L. casei, L. acidophilus, Bifidobacterium sp.

My bottle is almost identical (some of the names are reformatted):

L. lactis subsp. lactis, L. lactis subsp. cremoris, L. lactis subsp. lactis biovar diacetylactis, Leuconostoc spp., S. thermophilus, L. delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, L. rhamnosus, L. paracasei, L. acidophilus, Bifidobacterium spp.

Filmjölk is described as a mesophilic yogurt - with the strains added to cold milk, not boiled, and fermented at room temperature, i.e. 70-78°F (21-26°C). However, some of the strains listed above, such as thermophilus and bulgaricus, are clearly found in thermophilic process yogurts.

So should I just make it the thermophilic way like usual, do it at room temperature, or try to do each version? Is there a middle ground (such as keeping it warm for 4 hours, and then letting it drop to room temperature)?

Blood Moon 2018 prophecy: What is the Blood Moon prophecy and will the world end?

Nibiru is just so passé.

Welp...just got back from a doctor's appointment for some routine bloodwork. Good news is I'm down to 159 lb--this in all clothes less shoes and with a big meal in me. Bad news is, somehow, I've *shrunk* about 2 inches, and can no longer use the phrase "six-foot dyke in steel-toed work boots." I mean, "five-foot-ten dyke in steel-toed work boots" doesn't have quite the same punch to it, you know? But the measure doesn't lie: 178cm, 5'10" on the dot.

And no one can tell me WTF happened there. If my mother's any indication there's almost 20 years still to go to menopause, and I haven't lost any bone or muscle mass. A co-worker about my age says she lost an inch a couple of years ago and the doctor told her it was bad posture, but I don't slouch, so...who knows?

Odd. This bugs me more than it ought to to be honest.

Alison Angel of all people. I was quite dumbfounded.

This particular photo is completely appropriate for your workplace - but no others you have been warned!

Just now a ravishingly lovely young nanny responded to my acceptance of her Friendship request by asking about my family then but minutes later letting me know that she loved me than one or two minutes more asked me to marry her.

I sincerely pointed out that I would be honored were she to accept my sincere offer of friendship.

Not long at all after that she informed me she needed me to buy her an iTunes card Right Now so I instantly blocked her.

That's the third time that I've been approached with quite likely the single most-popular romance scam.

I assert it's vitally important you learn to be a judge of character lest you fall victim to scammers.

This Means you: among my very worst experience as a consulting software engineer was getting stiffed for seven solid weeks of sixteen-hour days.

Happily my tormentor bailed and so sold her site when she was one of the very first to get the bad news that the Dot-Com Crash hit one month before.

I still have my source for a truly fascinating graphics application and have consulted experts who assert that I own its copyright because that particular client never paid me for it.

Real Soon Now you'll find it as an iPad App in the App Store. I'll drop you a dime once it's there.

XXXTentacion: Controversy rages after rapper's shooting death

The killing of US rapper XXXTentacion has set social media ablaze: vicious arguments have broken out about how to memorialise such a problematic figure, as fans pore over conspiracy theories about the perpetrator and even question if the rapper was killed at all.

Florida police have confirmed the 20-year-old, born Jahseh Dwayne Onfroy, was shot dead on Monday.

Despite this, fans are probing videos purporting to show him after the shooting. Posts online point out potential discrepancies in his facial tattoos and question the lack of visible blood, bullets and shattered glass in the footage. Some suggest his death was faked as part of an elaborate prank for a future video release.

A video from several months ago of XXXTentacion denying his own death (after an apparent suicide prank on his own channel) has also re-circulated widely, leading to further confusion.

[...] He spent much of last two years in and out of jail or on house arrest.

At the time of his death he was awaiting trial for beating and falsely imprisoning his former partner, Geneva Ayala, having already pled no contest to charges of home invasion robbery and aggravated battery with a firearm in a separate case.

I made this unaccepted submission about him a few weeks ago:

Related: Spotify Removes Two Artists From Playlists Due to "Hate Content and Hateful Conduct"

This journal entry started out as an angry reply to someone on another site, but it occurs to me that it would be better if I calm down a bit and write it in a slightly more general manner. I am not naming the project or any individuals here because it doesn't matter. The problem I address here is not limited to one project. In fact, it's out of control.

--------------------

Background:

As is my normal practice, I filed an issue for a bug I ran into in a piece of software I use. Maybe it's just a common oversight, but this same issue affects another project that does the same job, as a matter of fact. Some discussion ensues, then it hits a wall when I finally request after a few weeks that it be addressed before the next major release of the project. Nope - it's decided that my issue is a new-feature request, even though it's clearly a bug.

Let's suppose that I'm looking for a short, money-agnostic term when referring to a group of people who have a monetary and/or business connection with a major corporation, and who as part of their commercial efforts, maintain a popular open source package.

So in my reply to that decision, I chose the word "contributors", simply for lack of a better term. My comment was misread, despite context that should have made it clear to the person I was talking to, that I was talking about the above paid crowd, not the unpaid contributors like him and I.

In any case, the result was a comment indicating that my bug report had been, shall we say, "de-prioritized".

That goes along with a "take it or leave it" comment I noticed in another exchange (different issue in the project, not involving me).

So my rant:

Hey, coders, all those kinds of responses say to an outsider is one of the following:

* "It's our product and we'll do what we want. Go get bent."
* "We don't care about that, because the company can make more money elsewhere."
* "Someone is paying me to do something else."
* "My time is worth X amount per hour, even time which I would otherwise spend away from my day job."

Yes, I have in fact run into all of these attitudes (clearly stated as such) in different projects, and in general chat not associated with any one product. I have had long discussions with people about that last one. One day that these attitudes need to get ground back down into the mud they're coming from.

Look, you have no time to work on something? Fine, just politely say so and walk away. Don't invoke priorities, business concerns, the underlying bug's longevity, or anything having to do with income or earning money.

Most importantly, don't get nasty about it. It does no one any good, and just makes you look like an asshole. People don't like to work with assholes. In a business context, assholes cost a company money by driving customers or partners away; a competent employer will fire such people and replace them with decent, equally-skilled people, even if it's only to reduce such losses (they should fire on principle, too, but money's an easier tool to wield in this case).

So long as it hasn't been, or doesn't turn into some long, protracted lack of time (to me, that would be 6 months or more, or two major releases), the worst you'll probably get from me will be something like "Bummer. Well it'll get fixed sooner or later". At least, at first.

But that's not how it went, and I see this happen to other people WAY too often.

How can I not be upset? In the past, I've filed issues, opened pull requests when I still could, discussed, and waited. In some cases, I'm still waiting, years later.

Granted, I've only been using the project in question for a matter of a few weeks, but this bug is old as dirt (probably dating back to the start of the project)... at what point do I have the right to run out of patience?

You know, they may be overkill much of the time, but now I realize just why these "code of conduct" things have been seeing increasing use lately. The software world really *does* need them.

As someone who's been on both sides of the fence, users just do not care about such things, and they shouldn't be expected to. They just want the program to work right, and in some fields, a program not working right can directly cost the end user money (in wasted electricity, restocking wasted materials, and replacing worn-out parts more often, at least).

I thought FOSS wasn't supposed to be about getting paid to code? That a project working really nicely for everyone was all the reward there needed to be? Write it yourself, but make it possible for others to reports problems, and for people to come along with solutions? "Scratch your own itch", maybe with the help of a back scratcher someone else contributed?

When I last checked, bug reports, testing, discussion, theories, etc. were considered important contributions, even if they're not necessarily as valuable as the code itself. Of course, a project without code can't exist, but a project with aspirations of wide usage, but without bug reports and feature requests, is a project that stagnates.

I may not have the hardware skills or coding prowess of the big names out there, and maybe I'm "not that bright" as someone here said once, but I've been doing what I can for open source software for about 30 years (i.e. since before it became known as such). I'm no superstar by any stretch; not as many people know me as I'd like, but it takes little more than a web search to find out that I'm not some unknown, either.

If I could do more for the open source world, including fixing bugs myself and offering pull requests for such fixes, I would.

But... between most modern languages being gibberish to me (even after having learned C in college in the early 90's), and having lost most of my skills to a stroke in late 2017, I just can't do much anymore, and I hate that fact. It pisses me off.

Basically, I have all but given up on the idea of trying to learn modern languages and techniques so that I can offer some actual code.

I've watched enough contributors leave from various projects because their code or issues are either ignored, deemed uninteresting to the project maintainers, or just considered unimportant enough that they've been left to lie fallow so long that the contribution is eventually rendered unusable (requiring a complete rewrite). Happens with bug reports, too. I doubt there's a single major open source project out there that doesn't have at least one legitimate bug report or unmerged pull request that's over a year old. I have a few out there like that. Don't blow smoke up my skirt, that's not "we don't have time". That's "no one cares".

I've been encouraged in the past to move beyond just bug reports and feature requests, and have even been invited-on as a core developer of one project, but I declined, for some of the above reasons (plus at the time, I had my own projects to take care of).

I mean, what the hell is the point of contributing to someone else's project, when my code would most likely stop working and have to be ripped out of my local copy anyway, as the underlying project carries on? I'm not saying I expect someone else to maintain that code, but code that gets merged is code that's orders of magnitude less likely to break as the project moves along.

If that's what I have to look forward to, why bother doing anything beyond bug reports and related?

Elder Scrolls VI Officially Announced

The revelation of The Elder Scrolls VI at this year's E3 came as a complete surprise for most gamers, since no one was really expecting news about the open-world adventure. The teaser trailer is only 36 seconds long, and it opens up with a foggy flyby of a large mountainous area.

[...] Unfortunately, there is no gameplay, no details on the characters, no information on the story, and nothing about the mechanics, physics, or technology other than that game director Todd Howard revealed that the current generation of home consoles are not not powerful enough to run the game, including the Xbox One and PS4.

I take this to mean that Xbox One X and PS4 Pro are also not powerful enough.

Recently it was leaked that Microsoft was working on various products, including the next Xbox "Scarlett" for around 2020. There were no technical details. However, there have been reports about the AMD CPU and graphics architecture that will be used in PS5 (and maybe Xbox):

PS5 Possibly uses AMD Ryzen CPU as Sony Appears to be Actively Working with the Tech – Rumor

Sony working with AMD on PS5 gear

What we might see is the same 8 core count in these consoles, except using more powerful Ryzen cores, possibly on the 7nm GlobalFoundries/TSMC node. Maybe they will have 2 threads per core instead of 1.

Here's a bit of Navi news:

AMD’s Navi will be a traditional monolithic GPU, not a multi-chip module

Coyote and apple in rural New Mexico

• Powerhouse

tl;dr: So as to make The "Global" Computer Industry Index truly Global, I listed all of ARM's and Synopsis' shops and many but not yet all of Oracles but decided to totally bail on Oracle when I met an SAP coder at Starbucks this afternoon. He said to me that "Oracle are amateurs."

I devoted a few paragraphs to my very-most beloved fan:

As I write this, SAP has over 2,800 open reqs world-wide.

One of my online friends as well as one of my online - I Am Absolutely Serious - enemies are completely convinced there are no jobs to be had, and that advertisements of job openings are purely for the consumption of potential investors so as to drive up stock prices.

And friends, that really does happen! I Am Absolutely Serious. Among my Real Life friends is a serial entrepreneur whose startup dwindled down to just one employee - my RL friend himself - whose Venture Capitalist gave him a free office at the Venture Firm's headquarters in hopes of somehow salvaging his investment.

Rhat Real Life friend advertised two positions throughout the Dot-Com Crash. And Why?

"So our creditors don't try to collect."

Had his company's creditors demanded payment, they could have forced my Real Life friend's startup into Chapter 13, thereby leading all of his startup's assets to be sold at auction with the proceeds being divided among those his company's creditors who lifted a finger to turn up at his corporate bankrupcy hearing.

It happens that I think of him whenever I shampoo William Jefferson Clinton.

In other news, NedSpace's alleged "24-hour showers" close each weekday at six as well as throughout the weekends.

This after I purchased a brand-new Gillette Mach 3 Turbo handle and enough generic yet excellent quality "Mach 3[*] Compatible" refill blades to give close, comfortable shaves to a herd of bison.

[*]"Mach3" is a Registered Trademark of Gillette. Our generic yet excellent refill blades are in no way endorsed or sponsored by Gillette. Despite that, our refill blades' price puts those of Gillette's Completely To Shame.

I have designs on a certain stone-deaf and so quite shy young lady so I managed to tidy up in the Men's Room but eventually concluded I had not the wherewithal to purchase an admission ticket for the South-East Portland "Entertainment" Venue where she and I are both regulars.

But I'll be Rolling In Samoleons Real Soon Now.