I walked on fire Saturday. It was amazing.

This weekend I went on a men only spiritual retreat with a friend. There were 32 of us there, the youngest, Emerus, was six, the oldest was probably in his 60s. We did sweat lodge, we Om’d, we sang, we beat drums and danced, we prayed, we meditated, and we walked on fire. Yes, even Emerus.

It was an amazing experience of empowerment, of losing myself in the focus of my Creator and walking across a path of burning coals, coming out on the other side changed, but not burned. In the moments before I took that walk, I watched six-year-old Emerus raise his hands high and set his feet on that path and come out victorious. It was inspiring. I wept. I sang a hymn & said a prayer and followed him across those burning coals. Victorious.

Since walking on fire I want to talk about a principle of health that can help us in our everyday lives, one that helped at Thanksgiving, and will help at Christmas. One that helped me walk on that path of fire and come out unscathed.

Stop, Challenge, Choose.

This principle can be used in two ways.

1. As a whole – When faced with a temptation, be it pastry, smoking, or what to do with your time, use it. 
• It’s Christmas, presents are unwrapped, family is visiting, turkey, pie, ham, mashed potatoes, pie, stuffing, pie, rolls, pie, cranberry sauce, pie… Before you take the second piece, Stop. Pay attention to how you feel. Pay attention to your body. Are you content with what you’ve had? Is your body satisfied? Yes, you may want another piece. But does that meet your goals?
• Challenge yourself. What if I put off having that cigarette for 30 more minutes? And when I get to the end of that 30 minutes, what if I put it off for another 30?
• Choose what is best for you. Choose what will make you feel better, not the quick path to the dark side that is six hours of video games when the leaves need to be raked up, the gutter needs to be rehung, and the trash needs taken out.  
2. Individually.  
1. Stop and take a moment for yourself. Find a quiet area, relax and get comfortable, and sit in a comfortable chair or position.
   Close your eyes, just breathe. Breathe in through your nose, hold it for a few seconds. Feel your body lift as it fills with life. Notice your chest expanding to take it all in. Notice the oxygen flooding into your body, your lungs. Notice it as you exhale, as your chest settles, as the air leaves through your mouth. Focus on your breathing. If your mind wanders, that’s fine. Just recognize the stray thought, dismiss it, and return to your breathing.
   Once you are connected in the moment, let your awareness open up to your surroundings. Notice the air conditioning, the thrum of local machinery, footsteps in the hall or on the stairs. Slowly open your eyes and take another breath, ending the exercise.
   Take a moment to consider how you are feeling. Hopefully better than what you did before, with that moment of break from stress.
2. Challenge yourself. While the fire burned that cord of wood, it was so intense we stood about 20 feet back and were still warmed by it. The coals from that fire were raked into a pathway that I was being challenged to walk across. Not to gain status, not to win an award, or prove to my friend that I could do it. It was a personal challenge that I had to undertake. It was for me, crossing that path of fire, that I can do the things that I set out to do, be it complete a project, get my degree, or maintain a healthy weight.
   One of the brothers in this group spoke of a time when his son was preparing to go away to college. He was fretting over the idea of leaving home, of facing the unknown. His father said to him, “Didn’t you walk on fire?” And that was it. The boy dropped all anxiety, because he knew he could do it. He was stronger than fire, he was stronger than life. Challenge yourself, and come out victorious.
3. Choose life. Choose health and the things that will get you there. Choose to make your health a priority. These things don’t come all at once, but by our daily choices. “By small and simple things are great things brought to pass,”(Alma 37:6). We choose daily. Hundreds, if not thousands, of choices. Each of those small choices builds up to who we are in the end. Choices of food, of how we react to our spouse and children, of how we handle the stresses of life, of what we’re going to do with our time. 

Stop and find your path. Challenge yourself to take the one that will enable you to grow and become who you have the potential of being. Choose that path and walk it daily. And if you slip up, if you fall off, challenge yourself to get up, to get back on the path, and choose to continue. Walk your fire and be victorious.

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Cartoons have changed a lot since i was a kid

When I was a kid, I watched a lot of cartoons. Transformers, GI Joe, He-Man & She-Ra, Thundercats. Those were my favorties.

They were adventure stories, full of cringe-worthy campy comedy, lots of explosions, powers, fast moving action, and no death. None. And if there was a death, it was impactful. Like, we all felt it. In fact, the only one I can actually think of is Optimus, during the Transformers: The Movie, and that was heart wrenching. 

Death never happened to the NPCs, like cobra soldiers in GI Joe. In fact, the Joes were decidedly terrible shots until the invention of B.A.T. soldiers, but they were robots, so it was okay. Like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, when the Foot soldiers were robots, so it was okay for the turtles to destroy them. 

Today cartoons are much different. On advice from a friend, I began to watch Disney's Star Wars: Rebels. It is very different. People die all the time. Well, let me correct: Storm Troopers die all the time. All. The. Time.

I was very surprised. Cobra and Joe soldiers were amazingly adept at ejecting or leaping from their vehicles at the last possible second before their vehicle exploded, and that put them out of the fight. They apparently didn't carry side arms. The war was attrition of motorcade.

So far I've seen 3 episodes of Rebels, and there's probably 20+ Storm Troopers that die in each one.

Just an observation.

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MVC - Practicing Futility in Application Development

Ugh. So i'ts been 2 weeks that I've been reading like crazy all these tutorials that don't tell me what I really want to know, don't make it easy to understand, and aren't helpful. I've read through three different tutorials, and maybe it's just because I do it different and am resistant to change that I can't find what I want to do, and am stuck trying to figure out how to do it all the new way because that's the way they designed it.

What the hell are you talking about? You may be asking.

Web programming.

HTML was easy. C# with ASP was easy. Make a web form. Great, totally got that down.
But now, to do it better, I have to learn MVC. Model/View/Controller. Really, it's a lot of what I was doing in ASP, view on one page, codebehind on another. CodeBehind pulls data from a database and feeds it to the View.

But now there's another step, and another whole concept on how to do stuff, and very poor documentation on how to update your brain.

I have a simple way of doing things. My brother-in-law wrote a small function that pulls data from a database and saves it to a dataset. It works in windows apps, it works in CodeBehind on web pages. Works. Works great. And I want to continue to use it, because I can use SQL queries and stored procedures to pull the data I need.

But to my understanding (albeit only 2 weeks worth) of MVC, they want me to have a mapped database that I pull data from to my model. But when I try, it breaks all my stored procedures. Great. Then let me pull the data to a dataset. I can. Now map it to the model. No. Why? Don't know, no one can tell me.

Ugh.

Just had to get that out. Back to it. Due in 5 hours.

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Corruption in Politics

This started as a response to a post on facebook, but grew too long. I'm moving the post here where it will probably not get read lol.

Some French guy 150 years ago said, "If at 25 you are not a liberal you have no heart, and if at 35 you are not conservative you have no brain."

The issue today is that truth isn't just fact. Leftists (as opposed to normal liberals) that have aggressively taken over the Liberal side of the conversation see "My truth" instead of "the truth", because it is based on emotional reaction instead of facts.

Epstein's death is a clear case of corruption, powerful elites silencing the man who can air their dirty secrets, from Bill Clinton to Prince Andrew, and over 1000 others in his little black book, and Epstein's money and power are a clear case of corruption. The fact that his lolita island and lolita express airplane even exist is a testament to corruption. That powerful leaders in multiple countries have taken regular rides on his plane and to his island is further proof of corruption and the downfall of our society.

Political elites on both sides have lost the country. This is not just a right or left issue. Democrat leaders have spent the last three years trying to undo an elected president because they didn't win. 5 of the last 6 Republican presidents have been under threat of impeachment because of Democrats not liking the results of the election.

This is not to say that Republicans are free from corruption. The same issue that infects Democrats infect Republicans. Power corrupts. When Bill Clinton was under impeachment threat, Republicans said some very hard things as well to justify an impeachment over adultery.

Main conservatives see Liberals as uninformed. Leftists (again, as opposed to Liberals) see the Right as evil, and use authoritarian fascist tactics to beat all who oppose them into submission.

Power corrupts. Right now conservatives are being called out for their hypocrisy as they forego true conservative values and accept progressive policy, foreign influence, and larger government, just as much as Leftists are being called out for embracing socialism, over-taxation, and political violence.

The parties are trying to destroy each other, and those of us in the middle are exactly that, caught in the middle.

Movements like Blexit and Turning Point USA go to colleges and civic centers to speak to centrists and show them the crazy of the left, encouraging them to recognize the truth.

Yet TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk is under attack by America First true conservatives because of his liberal policies regarding immigration and shutting down free speech and debate.

On the left? Antifa, I think? and the Social Justice movement that do their best to infect everything around them and twist it for the sake of "Diversity" which really means no straight white people. They pretend to stand up for the rights of the minorities, but attack minorities who want to be free thinkers instead of joining the herd. Blexit founders Candice Owens and Brandon Tatum are perfect examples. Because they don't want to vote Democrat, they are smeared as white supremacists, and they're black. Youtuber Contrapoints (Natalie something), a conservative voice in the #WalkAway campaign, is also smeared for being homophobic and transphobic, but she's a transwoman. No logic, only "Follow me or be destroyed."

Hillary Clinton said it best: "You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for."

And that is going to be the way of it. Peaceful separation or war.

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Crypto Gambling

Ted was a guy I knew in the Marines that would go to Vegas every payday weekend (we were in 29 Palms, just a short couple hour drive away) and more often than not come home with thousands of dollars. He had the awesome crotch rocket motorcycle, a great truck, and his house was furnished with a lot better stuff than the old hand-me-downs I had. I asked him one day how he did it and he told me his system. I'm going to share it with you now.

Ted would take 200$ from his paycheck and play roulette. He would wait for the spinner to hit the same color four times, and put 100$ on the opposite color. Playing the colors is 2:1 odds, and he would double it. If he lost, he would put the other 100$ on the next one and double that, and then start over. Once he had an extra 200$ in his pocket, he would double the just-won 200$ until he was comfortable with a couple thousand, and come home. That wasn't bad at all, when we made about 1000$/month as PFCs.

Well, I have been waiting 25 years to try that system out. I haven't spent a lot of time in places that were comfortably close to casinos, so never until this summer when I went with some friends to Jackpot for Edgefest and got to play.

Well, I was not as comfortable throwing 100$ down on a single bet, but I would start around 25$, and after an evening of playing on the roulette table, I came home up 300$.

Since then I've figured out a more consistent way to play roulette. This system requires a higher start, because you need to be able to cover your loses. But I can show consistent upward growth with this system that does not require waiting for four blacks or reds. Just do every other. Do it low. Play it slow.

You walk to the table, ball last hit Red. Put 10 on Black, 1 each on Green. if you win, put 10 on Red, one each on Green. if you lose, put 20 on Black, 2 each on Green, etc.

Like I said, it takes a higher start, because in a couple losses 100 or 200$ will be gone. But with sufficient to cover your bets, like 1000$.

Remember: Always 10% on the greens.

No, your winnings won't go up as fast, but the number of times we got screwed by green 0 or 00 was maddening. Towards the end we figured out that if you put $10 on black and $1 on each green, your profit on black is 8$, but your profit on green is $24 (35 win -1 for the other green and -10 for the black).

Since dabbling in crypto I wanted to find a way to use some of it for some light gambling. First I tried the little games on the faucets, cointiply and FreeBitCoin, but while similar, they weren't what I was looking for. I tried to find an online casino, and stumbled on to BitStarz, but they gamble with BitCoin micro-satoshi, which is like a dollar a play. I didn't want to play at 1$ per play, because I'm not that rich (yet). I much prefer playing all day and not quite spending a penny.

Then I found LuckyFish. LuckyFish allows gambling of about 20 different crypto coins, and on many of the games a minimum bet of 1 satoshi (not the poker games). And if you have been collecting from some of the faucets I've mentioned in other posts, you have plenty of starting seed money. Not only that, but often times there are some more wealthy players or the game's bot, that will "Make it rain:"

I left it open on my desktop while I worked, playing during lunch, and came back to find generous players (mostly this person called BlueBalls) had padded my account with satoshi, or in some cases, multiple coins (Doge and HOT).

Note, also, that you can use BAT, which you can get by surfing and veiwing ads with the Brave browser, which doesn't track your surfing or collect your private information to sell to advertisers. (Built on Chromium, but better than Chrome)

The games use a system called provably fair, so they are not bent that you will never win.

Here's 20 rolls with Doge coin on roulette, showing a steady uptick in profit to total 75,000sat. Yes, there were losses, but as I said, doubling and repeating your bet will restore it... eventually. 

Watch out for zingers like this: 

8 reds... ugh.

The table is European style, so only one Green 0, and has a good track of your bets, as seen above. There can be up to 6 players per table, and there are a lot of tables (it shows four, but scroll and it'll keep going). I've never had to wait. 

There are other games at LuckyFish, but my experience is that roulette is my baby.

So if you enjoy a trip to the casino but don't want to throw your money to the mob, come play at LuckyFish. I haven't made a deposit yet and i have plenty of sat to throw around. All in fun.

Happy gaming!

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Free pocket change and more cloud miners

I've done alright with the little crypto faucets. The GoMiner has completely broke even and is still paying regularly. All income from that faucet is now profit.

So here's a couple more.

Cash Mining

Cash Mining runs in a tab on your computer. You open it and let it run. It plays ads, for about a minute, which you don't even need to pay attention to, and you get €0.00005 every minute. That may not sound like much, but if you have a computer that is on all the time anyway and you just open a browser that continues to mine without using your CPU/GPU and gives you that tiny bit per minute, what does it hurt?
Easy math: .00005*60*24*365= 26.28€ per year for doing nothing. Run it at work.
Note: it does check, so you can't be logged in from more than one place at a time, and you can't open more than one tab on the ads at a time. if you do, neither gets paid.
https://cashmining.forumforyou.it/?ref=5139


NUVMining

NuvMining is a speculative venture. It's cloud mining, which can be risky because we don't know how long they're going to stick around, and are they going to give our money back. I used my profits from GoMiner to fund this one, so if it doesnt pay, i'm not out any coin.
The mining pool interface isn't as flashy as GoMiner. You don't see spinners or anything. You have a very basic interface with a clear pic of what is going on:

You can see how much my total balance is, what the conversion to Satoshi is, my mining power, what i'm expected to make at the current pool rate, my deposit, and the earnings history.
Very basic, and very nice. 660sat per hour right now, but it's been as low as 200. 660 is actually the highest, so they got on a good block. I'll update later when I know if it pays (take three to four months to hit the .005BTC cashout minimum).

Buy in is .004BTC.
https://nuvmining.com/client/?ref=WiycwxRo9GkU

HODL Token Wallet

This one is a bit different. This is a wallet that pays profit sharing. Open the wallet for a 10$ sign bonus, fund 500$ in the account, and allow the bot to margin trade for an expected average of 12%/month passive income from profit sharing.
System is just getting started, launches in a few days. Profits are paid in HODL token, which is liquid each day you get them and can be converted into BTC. You can get more through the Telegram app at @HODLTOKENWALLET.
https://hodltokenwallet.com/?refer=1853299

As with all investments, I am not a financial adviser, don't invest more than you can afford to lose. Be smart about it. Happy earning.

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free bitcoin (and other cryptos)

I've been interested in crypto for awhile, but I'm always late to the bus.

"Come buy our currency that is totally digital. Really, it's going to be awesome."

I was a naysayer. I was stupid. I could have bought bitcoin when it was less than 200$/coin. I had the money, but I poo-poo'd it, as most people did. I was more concerned when the price of video cards jumped because Bitcoin miners were buying them up for the calculations. That's when I started to look, but it was already too late. They were almost 20k/coin.

So I'm late. I'm always late. I could should have built a YouTube channel. I could should have worked harder on my blog. I'm trying to work on it now, but who reads anymore?

Anyway, I'm late, but I'm still here.

I've made some mistakes. I've played with the casinos (because for a few days I was head over for roulette games) and got excited for faucets. I've figured out which ones are real and which ones are fake. Will they make you rich? no. not at all. Will they make you money? enough for lunch now and then, sure. But it's a fun little hobby that actually shows a return, unlike every other hobby I've done.

And a huge kudos to the guys over at beermoneyforum.com for doing the research to weed out the scams. All faucets make their money on ads, and the supporters of them, like the guys on BeerMoney, encourage you to turn off your ad blocker so the site continues to get the money to support our habit. Please do so.

Be aware that some sites will take you to ads that are not legit, because ad companies only care about the profits, not about the legitimacy. If it seems too good to be true, check beermoneyforum.

One of the ones I see a lot that is totally not legit is the one to make money by exchanging bitcoin. It suggests you convert .005 BTC to ETH in one exchange, and then convert that ETH back to BTC in another exchange, except the first exchange is their wallet, and you just sent them your BTC.

Here's what I have found that actually works:



Cointiply is very cool, and probably one of the faucet games that tries hardest to be fun and interesting by giving it a sci-fi theme. In some respects it has the basic features, such as an hourly faucet and ad/survey offers, but the theme is where Cointiply shines.

I average 23 coins per faucet roll (most often 22, but on occasion you get an extra 51 for hitting a prime number, which is a cool mod). Coins are worth about 1/100th of a penny. So far I have: 32361 Coins / $3.2361 / 0.00038981 BTC 

I didn't get those from rolling the faucet, I did a crap ton of surveys. Also, I played the multiplier game. At one point i was up to 72k coins (about 7.20$), but I hit a string of bad picks in the game and lost about 5$.

The game is pretty cool, too. 11 stones, choose one. If it's red, 1.4x your bet. If it's black, loose your bet. You can keep pushing it to multiply your coins, but I found it's best to just go for the 1.4x multiplier.

They also have loot crates, and you can use your cointiply coins or you can use these other coins they give you when you ... honestly i'm not sure how i got them, but i used them to buy a loot crate and got three uncommon consumable items that i can use to boost my sat production, or turn in for a coin tradein value.

There's consumables and some inventory items. Here's mine:

There's some cool collection stuff, of which one of my items, the KernelNova, is part, and if i collect them all I get a bonus of 3% for 90 hours on offers. That's pretty cool.

Minimum withdrawl of 100,000 coins, or 10$. So I haven't been paid by this one yet, but BeerMoneyForums says LEGIT, and if you work it with the bonuses, it can be a fun side hussle.




Bonus BitCoin is a basic faucet, except you get to roll every 15 minutes, if you can remember. BBC also does surveys, but their multiplier is broken, so no good there.

The RNG faucet says you can claim up to 5000 satoshi every 15 minutes, but i've never rolled anything better than an 8. There is an option to always take the average, which they say is 16, so i just did that after a week of only rolling an 8. and they grant a bonus at the end of a 72 hour period, depending on how many you collect from the faucet or get in referrals.

The BTC goes to your coinpot.co wallet, which is an aggregate wallet for many of these faucets. Coinpot has a waiting period on surveys to make sure they all get credited, because some have requirements. Currently in my coinpot I have .00038811 BTC, of which .00024115 has been confirmed, which is good. The other day it was 6400 sat, which was sadface. At least this is 2 bucks (1.99 as of this writing).




Free BitCo.In is another, with a much more fun multiplier that has hurt me so many times. This is the first one I found after stumbling on a YouTube vid that shows a script to help you multiply your coins. Basically the multiplier will kill you for anything less than about 10 bucks, but it's totally doable. I got crazy with it. I threw 8$ into my pot, ran the script, got it up to 12, ran five windows, got it up to 22$, then ignored it and in about 45 seconds was broke lol.

Since then i'm much more cautious, because every time i think, "oh, i'll just tweak it a bit" it eats me and I'm broke. It's like a really mean slot machine, especially since I'm a bit aggressive with the script.

Instead of the script, which I can't control very well, (written in JavaScript) I use the autoroller.

Here's my method that usually nets me a few thousand sat (use at your own risk, and not with coins under 10000 sat)

On the Multiply BTC tab, go to autobet.
leave base bet at 1 sat (0.00000001)
Number of rolls to 100 (sometimes i do up to 10,000, but that's usually where a string of bad ones hits and
Bet on HI
Loss >= 0.00000100 (this is your risk. Once your losses are 100 sat greater than your wins, it will stop to keep you from destroying your bank. feel free to make it less, like 10 or whatever you are concerned with.)
On win return to base bet
ON lose increase bet by 125%
Check: return to base bet, randomize client seed, do not refresh
click Start Auto-Bet and watch your satoshi grow! (Hopefully)

if you increase your base bet amount to 10 sat, be sure to reduce the number of rolls to 5 or 9, no greater than that. that will keep it from wiping you out on a string of 8 bad rolls, which does happen.(my net loss on this roll was 564 sat after 165 rolls, because the 188 dropped me to 94 sat loss, and then the 470 threw me to the 564.)

BitFaucet - I only just found this one this morning. It's very similar to the other two. A low paying basic faucet, and offers to gain more. Again, BeerMoneyForum says LEGIT. Faucet is 60 minutes, offer refresh is 30. Payout is mondays if your sat is over 35000.


Free-*.* 
**NOTE** Some of the ads from these sites are NSFW
There's a lot here, so i'll just drop my links instead of the banners. They're all basic, but very ad and pop-up heavy, so keep an eye on that.

https://free-ethereum.io/?referer=234637 Ethereum, the other most popular crypto coin
https://free-bcash.com/?referer=462546 BitCoinCash, 222$/coin
https://free-litecoin.com/?referer=537946 LiteCoin, don't know a lot, has an ok value, around 54$ each.
https://free-dogecoin.com/?referer=293732 Dogecoin, again, don't know a lot, value is around .0025/coin
https://free-monero.com/?referer=54127 Monero, hardly know about it. Its short name is XMR, and it's worth 52$/coin right now.

Moon*.* 
Moon coins all go to your coinpot.co wallet. They can be claimed after 5 minutes, but continue to grow, quickly at first, but then slow. Like I think the moonbitcoin caps at about 31 sat, because i let it grow for a week and that's where we're at. nice, though, that it uses coinpot, and you don't need anything more than your email address.
There may be others, but i don't know right now, these are the only two i have.
http://moonliteco.in/?ref=5e9b97ac9a1a
http://moonbit.co.in/?ref=e0d6a301fc19

Hashvision.io
https://www.hashvision.io/?ref=LXxpL3dk
A free miner that just dumps satoshi into a tank for you to withdraw. costs you nothing.



NOTE: Upon further examination, GoMiner appears to be a ponzi scheme. See this link to get out at just the right time: https://www.beermoneyforum.com/threads/gominer-co-reviews-scam-or-legit.53505/page-8

Yet further research shows this to be a scam. I, however, was able to recover my funds, though payout had to be done a little at a time at .003btc per day.

https://www.cryptoinfowatch.com/gominer-when-scammers-work-hard-to-impress/

Got lucky. Might even make a little extra, if I can pull one or two more days out of it.

UPDATE: Confirmed, I have cleared an extra 58$ from the GoMiner platform. I reinvested before the end of this run. I'm doing it again, another 2-3 weeks, get out as I go, and collect whatever additional I can.

The last one I want to discuss is not a free faucet. It's a miner. I looked at several miners, and thanks again to BeerMoneyForum for finding the truth. Several of them suggest free mining of a small amount and then want you to pay to cash out, but then never pay out.

But this one, GoMiner, is very promising and active. For one, BeerMoney vouches for them, they have made investments and received verified payouts, and even spoken to the devs.

I haven't tried any payouts yet, but I have invested a little bit starting yesterday.

The idea here is to build a team. There are mentors and apprentices, and you can just watch the cash spin up, especially during the Overclock period, where you boost your production by 1/3 for 4 hours.

They have a 14 day period where you will not have to pay any electricity fees, and the mining contract is for a whole year for your small investment of at least 10$.

You can buy extra days without the power cost in advance at a 50% discount. The power costs are normally significant, so a 50% discount is pretty serious.

And there's something about Staking, which I don't understand yet, but one of the BMF guys that was talking to the devs said Staking was a very good thing.

So skip one vente double mocha frappa latte and throw 10$ at this. You can reinvest your earnings per day or cash it out. If you cash out at the end of your 2 weeks you should be about 30% ahead, or you can let it grow.

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Hey, Microsoft! When did you move to Texas?

I don't know about you, but it annoys me that when Microsoft replaces a piece of software with a different piece of software, they make it BIGGER.

The two most recent examples I have are the snipping tool, and the switch from Skype to Teams.

That is each block minimized to their smallest window size. The New Snip & Sketch is twice as large. Then we look at Skype v. Teams.

that is the smallest the teams window will go. i don't know about skype, because it's no longer on my pc, but that skype window above is about right. pretty sure i can make it smaller. Anyway, there it is. almost twice as large. 

Hey, Microsoft. I love your stuff, but not everything has to be sized for a tablet.

Thanks,

Soulie

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Gun Control

It happens every time. Some loser with an agenda and a desire for fame that didn't take his pills in a few days walks into a department store and caps some randos in the name of his terrible ideology, and the left screams for gun control.

Here's the facts:

• The crazies that do this crap that are underage couldn't have purchased a gun legally, and got it from their uncle, or their parents, or a friend's parents. The laws wouldn't have mattered.
• The crazies that do this crap that are legal adults don't have any crime problems because they haven't done anything violently illegal, so they can pass the background check. The laws wouldn't have mattered.
• The crazies that have background issues don't buy their guns legally. The laws wouldn't have mattered.

There you go. Your gun laws don't work. You wouldn't have stopped any of the shooters. Laws don't stop people from doing terrible things, they give a framework to punish them for having already done it.

So the left wants to add stupid unnecessary laws for weapons they don't understand because they don't use them and don't want to learn anything about them, and infringe upon our Constitutional 2nd Amendment right to keep and  bear arms, a right which specifies shall not be infringed:

Amendment II
RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS
Passed by Congress September 25, 1789. Ratified December 15, 1791. The first 10 amendments form the Bill of Rights:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. (emphasis added)

That means every state gun law that restricts a resident of the United States from keeping and bearing firearms is unconstitutional and should be challenged and struck down.

Regardless, let's look at what the 2nd Amendment says: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State.... let's stop there. Why is a well regulated militia necessary to the security of a free State? Because if we don't have weapons, a tyrannical government can walk all over the populace with no fear of any real response. This is China, Venezuela, North Korea, and every other country that holds to tyrannical ideals of power and control at the expense of their people. In a word: Communists.

America fought a war against a foreign power (England) for it's right to sovereignty, and our founders recognized that in order to avoid tyranny, our people must have the ability to fight back, hence our 2nd Amendment.

Ok, keep going... the right of the PEOPLE... stop there. An argument on the left is that we don't have militias, yet the second part of this sentence says the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms... that isn't the right of the militia, that's the right of the people.

Continue... the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

There. There you go. Shall not be infringed. All gun laws are unconstitutional.

I was watching Matt Christiansen this morning discuss the liberal media's claim that there has been more mass shootings this year than there are days, and they fear monger with this crap.

The problem is they skew data to make their point, including defensive shootings in their claim of mass shooting because four people breaking into a man's house, he grabs a gun and shoots them, killing three. That's apparently a mass shooting. 500 of the datapoints since April 23rd have been defensive shootings. Defensive. Protection. Defending ones self and family. Defense.

I live in Idaho. In Idaho you can get a concealed weapon permit, but you don't need it. You can legally conceal your weapon and carry it. Shoulder holster free for all. The limits on guns here are on people who have committed a violent crime, and the standard federal background check. Your automatic and suppressed weapons require special permits because of old democrat laws that frightened their delicate snowflake sensibilities at the time.

We also have one of the lowest gun crime rates in the country.

What cities and states have the most gun crime? Those that have the most strict gun laws.

What does this tell us? Gun laws don't work. They restrict law abiding citizens from being able to protect themselves. When you think the person you're about to rob is packing, you think again and look for an easier mark.

Ok, so we have a problem with not knowing how to deal with mass shooters, and gun laws aren't going to fix it. What should we do?

Fix the actual problem.

In the last 70 years the liberal movement has turned to one of complete degeneracy and is eating away at every fundamental principle this country was founded upon. America was a place where someone with nothing could come here, work hard, and rise above.

Instead, Left America is inviting people to come here for free health care, free college, free welfare, and more.

That isn't working hard. That isn't rising above. That is a slave caste that is tied to the party that gives them free stuff, so they keep voting for them to keep getting free stuff while their cities burn and their neighbors kill each other while they ignore laws. They are taxed like crazy to pay for all that free stuff. Liberal policies do not support the people, they chain them.

In the last 70 years the liberal movement has disrupted the family, including the complete devastation of the families of black communities, with Johnson's housing projects like Pruitt-Igoe, that told women if they want to live in the housing unit their husbands have to leave the state.

(Pruitt-Igoe is a 2 hour documentary about the housing projects. It is totally worth the watch, and completely heartbreaking. This is liberal policy at it's finest)

In the last 70 years the liberal movement has disrupted the religious by attacking Christians, literally becoming the great and spacious building, mocking and trying to lead away with their "freedom" while really leading them with flaxen cords carefully down to hell. Less people go to church. Less people believe in God.

Do you want to stop mass shootings? Marry that girl. Take her and the kids to church. Raise your children to be good citizens that respect others. Teach them how to handle firearms. Teach them the history of our country. Don't live off the government welfare system. Rise above. Lift others up with you. Take responsibility. Don't be a victim. Get off Twitter. Don't vote for liberal policies that destroy the communities they tried to "save". Vote the issues. Do research. Be informed. Don't be a liberal.

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Almost had to stab someone this weekend

It's a frightening thing when at 345am your tent trailer handle is being rattled because someone is trying to see if it's unlocked.

I love camping. I have a fun time hanging out in nature, taking walks on the trails, seeing water falls, playing in the river. I love taking the opportunity to hang out with friends and family, bonding with the kids, maybe a little fishing now and then.

So when Venka called and said, "Let's go camping," I was all in. We called another buddy, spent way too much money on gear and snacks, and loaded up the minivan, borrowing a tent trailer from my wife's father (because she hates camping as much as I love it, and a tent trailer is closer to a house, which makes it bearable for her), and drove out to Niagra Springs.

The first night was fine. We got there late, got set up, and went to sleep, woke up the next day and spent all day playing with my friends and kids. That afternoon the babies were cranky and refusing a nap, so the wife and I loaded them in the van and took a little drive. At the ranger station box a black Nissan Altima was stopped. No one was in it. The station was closed, so i thought it a little weird, but figured they were either dropping an envelope in the self pay box or reading some posted notifications on the bill board. They came around the corner, got in, and drove up the hill to the waterfall. We also stopped to look at the waterfall.

View this post on Instagram

Camping scenery group 2. I just really really really loved those cliffs. So beautiful. #campingsucks #cliffsofinsanity #naturerocks #idahome

A post shared by Stephanie Martin Dougal (@lady_dougal) on Jul 9, 2019 at 10:19am PDT

Afterward we drove out of the canyon and took a little trip to get the girls to fall asleep.

View this post on Instagram

People of Camping photos group 3. Matthias drove for his first time. Twins are cute. Chocolate faces. @321bananas is beautiful. Matthias is bored.

A post shared by Stephanie Martin Dougal (@lady_dougal) on Jul 9, 2019 at 11:45am PDT

When we came back, that same car was back at the ranger box, the three people sitting in the car. Weird.
We drove down the hill and the woman driver got out and went to the box. it wasn't easy to see, but it occurred to me that she was probably trying to jimmy the lock on the self pay box. Stephanie took a very far away photo. All it really showed was she had a black shirt, but it was something.

We went on about our evening, grilling bratwurst and hamburgers, swimming in the river, and generally having a great time.

View this post on Instagram

Camping People photos group 1 I love campfires. I love s'mores. @brien00 made me a huge huge roasting stick, lol. I still hate camping.

A post shared by Stephanie Martin Dougal (@lady_dougal) on Jul 9, 2019 at 11:27am PDT

View this post on Instagram

Hubby and I played in the river over the weekend. #soinlove #worththewait #besthusbandever #hesetsmyloinsablaze #sexymanbeast #campingsucks #riversrock #niagrasprings #idahome

A post shared by Stephanie Martin Dougal (@lady_dougal) on Jul 8, 2019 at 11:21am PDT

That night, however, wasn't as calm and relaxed.

Stephanie woke me about 345am.
"Why is someone trying to open our door?" she pushed me a little to rouse me.
"What?" Then I heard it too. She had locked the door, but someone was indeed testing it to see if they could get it to open.
I leaped from bed, reaching in the dark for my knife and van keys. The keys hit the floor, and Stephanie heard the person run off. Not wanting to go out in my underwear, i pulled on my pants and grabbed a flashlight, stepping outside.

I woke Venka and Tony, but Tony had locked his truck so wasn't interested in getting up. Venka and I walked patrol, checked on the kids in the tents, and looked around. The camp on the north side was on high alert, one guy sweeping his flashlight across the grounds, and another flipping the alarm on their car to get the headlights on. We turned on our flashlights to be noticed and walked that way to check on them. They had heard someone creeping and were checking.

It took me about 2 hours to get back to sleep, and for the rest of the night i remained dressed with my knife on my hip. Next time i'll bring a gun.

The ranger did confirm the next morning when we reported it that the lock box had indeed been broken into.

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Migrating a crap ton of data

At work we have an old server. Like, 5 years old, not a name brand, some custom thing by a place called @XI. Nice server, don't get me wrong, but way more than we are making use of. The thing has four six-core procs and 64GB of ram, of which our one virtual Windows 2012 server is using 2 cores and 16GB. Total waste. There is one system partition and one 3TB data partition, which is full.

So I bought a new server with 10TB of data space. The trick is how to migrate the data over.

I've heard of XCopy, and that seemed like a good place to start, but when I first tried it on the smaller Corporate files, it didn't take the permissions over, and i had to keep restarting it. Probably my fault for not understanding the switches, but it didn't go well, and it was a lot of cleanup on Monday.

But it was only about 100GB, not 3TB. 3TB is a ton of data.

So with a bit more research, I discovered ROBOCOPY. I love just the sound of that name. I'm planning on moving this data during the maintenance on Saturday night, and I know that it's going to take awhile. Do I have to stay for the entire thing?

Well, while researching exactly what flags I need to use, I discover that Robocopy can do some amazing things. Like, it can move data, and if the files are open, it goes to the shadowcopy and pulls it from there so it's not interrupted. It runs at a default of 8 threads (max 128), and can move data really fast. I'm liking this program more and more. And I can get it to move just the stuff that has changed since a specified date and time.

Now I'm excited. Instead of waiting for the maintenance, I start a copy. Thankfully I'm not deleting the data off the old server for a little while to ensure that the new stuff works. I have a plan. Move the data tonight, do the maintenance, and copy just the stuff that changed tomorrow. Nice and easy, super fast.

I am curious, how fast can you move 3TB of data on a LAN connection?

I open up a data transfer calculator, click a couple of the buttons, and see what it says.

1TB @ 100Mb = 2583 hours.

What the ever living nightmarish hell did I just do?

I check the connection on my servers, praying to the machine gods that I didn't just sign up for a copy session that is going to last... three and a half months.

They're both running at 1Gb. Time: 2.5 hrs /TB. Oh, thank you thank you thank you. So it should be done when I wake up.

Robocopy... It's Xcopy on steroids.

Update: This morning it was still running. must have been only moving small files (of which there are apparently a bigger crap ton). I restarted it, telling it to ignore existing files (don't overwrite) and it's moved a TB in the last couple hours, so good. Should be done by tonite.

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The Charlie Landeros Shooting

A couple days ago I saw a post from Tim Pool about Eugene, OR resident Charlie Landeros, 31, being shot at Cascade Middle School by two police officers when he pulled a gun on them. (Incident occured January 11th)

You can watch Tim's original vid here: https://youtu.be/ulCy8rC6jI8. WARNING: according to Tim if you watch the original video (not his) to the end you see Landeros shot in the head. He does not show it in his video.

Anyway, today I saw a news clip from Ammo Land about this story. The first portion of the story says pretty much what Tim had to say in his video, which is that Landeros pulled a gun in a no-firearm area (a school) and fired two shots. The officer's body cam video confirms this. But then I get to the bottom and see this:

"Supporters of Landeros do not believe the shooting was justified. Lauren Regan of the far-left Civil Liberties Defense Center said that their organization would hire outside experts to review the shooting footage. Landeros was of Mexican and Filipino descent. She believes his ethnicity played a role in police deciding to use deadly force."

Read more: https://www.ammoland.com/2019/01/antifa-member-killed-by-police-after-opening-fire-on-officers-video/#ixzz5eFiw3UXN 
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution 
Follow us: @Ammoland on Twitter | Ammoland on Facebook

o.O I just don't understand this.

1. Landeros went to a no-firearms location, a school, with a gun.
2. When he was being arrested, he:
1. resisted
2. pulled a gun and tried to shoot the police officers

This had nothing to do with his being Mexican or Filipino. This had to do with him being stupid and pulling a gun on police officers. Body cam video confirms this.

Where.. How.. I don't even know what to say about this. How deluded is the left? How insane is the left that they ignore what is going on to blame racism?

They call this a homicide. No, it was an attempted homicide - by Landeros - and self defense by the officers.

I was surprised, at first. But then I thought about all the ridiculous people still attacking the Covington kids after the video footage confirmed that Nathan Phillips is a liar and the Black Hebrew Israelites at the Lincoln courtyard were saying terrible things to everyone present.

A large portion of the Left truly has gone insane. I worry for the fate of my country.

The article also suggests Landeros was a member of Antifa, and while Tim Pool didn't mention this, I did find a video from Justin Trouble that talks about it. If you are interested in seeing his research into the subject, you can read it here.

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