I’ve been killing an easy 50 a day (maybe more) for at least a month and not really gaining any ground at all on them. I live next door to a conservation area in the Pittsburgh, PA subarbs. Killing them on Grapes, Virginia Creeper and some ash looking weed.

Just to share it, I’ve noticed at this point that if disturbed, the bug will try to leap away. If it is successful, it seems to return to that very same point in space.

Its a real shame too. I’m a pro bug guy. I really wish I didn’t have to kill them, and honestly, they are kinda dapper looking.

Ahh, I was mistaken. Libre is open source.

Having used autocad for nearly 40 years, I will say they stick it to their customers pretty fiercely. I still use 2010 with 3rd party software to get it to run on win10 at home. I do a lot of solid models and assemblies as well as technical 2D drawings and renderings.

FreeCAD is impressive, but it lacks an easy to use interface. NanoCAD and LibreCAD are not open source but are free and are both better 2D alternatives.

Edit: LibreCAD is open source.

They trip all over themselves just to seemingly not use the phrase “open source” huh?

Professional geologist Shawn Willsey posted a graphic of the approximate location of the newest fissure on his livestream. This fissure and flow is not likely to be a threat to the town of Grindavik, but it is a threat to both the blue lagoon and the powerplant.

I am from Pittsburgh and it’s a huge party at Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania. Shut down the town kind of party. An absolute sea of people. It’s been like that long before the movie, but then there’s not much to do in February.

This years Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring but do note that marmots are not exactly qualified to make to make meterological forecasts. It’s a mostly cute tradition with a hint of madness, kinda like sticking a tree in your living room and hanging up socks to celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas. Makes total sense when you’re drinking.

For the record, Groundhogs (or woodchucks) are pretty docile and cute. They are also excellent climbers. This little fellow was quite curious about me, and why I was hiding in his field (taking pictures of birds).

Since no one posted an ID, it would appear to be a Wood Frog. The black mottle through the eye with the white line below it is typical of wood frogs.

Likely a male that is ‘mookin fer nub’.

I built a PC for my little sister in 2007. She was starting college and didn’t have a computer. It totaled 2805 and some change, custom built through Antares Digital (When you know, you Lili). These were all top of the line components (Asus M2N32-WS PRO, Amd athlon64 X2 AM2 5200, Corsair Memory). Not a cheapy system in its day.

Three nights before I was to deliver it to her, I completed all of the setup, had all the software ready to go, even setting up a custom theme for her (We were both metalheads). My folks said that she would need a printer/fax/copy/scanner as well, so last minute, I ended up buying an HP 5610 at target for 192 dollars.

The HP instructions didn’t say that if you connected the cable between the printer and the PC before you had installed the drivers, the printer would not mount as a device. In fact, it would never connect to that PC ever again. Apparently, it ruined the registry until you reformatted and reinstalled the OS.

To be fair, the manual did say to install the drivers first, then the cable, but this was not the norm back then and they didn’t really emphasize it in any way, nor did it mention that you were about to be FITA big time. Had to scramble to completely reformat the drive, reinstall all the software… Essentially, starting over from a blank slate and getting done in 2 days for delivery to her dorm on move in day. It did connect second time around.

I wrote them an angry letter regarding the poor deployment, but of course I never heard back from them. Never bought another HP for myself or anyone else ever again. I go out of my way to encourage people to not buy anything from HP. If I happen to be somewhere and see someone looking at an HP printer, I’ll just approach them, introduce myself, and tell them my story to discourage them from buying it.

The aftermath of the January 14 2024 volcanic eruption which has now officially been declared to be over.

The Map

This is a combination of Agust Gudmundsson’s Satellite Map and the 2D quake map. I used Autocad to import each image and then known features to match the scales and orientations, but it’s still an approximation. Additionally, the satellite image is greyscale and low resolution so the perimeter of the lava field gets hard to discern in some areas with little to no color contrast.

The Fissures and Lava Fields

The two eruptive fissures (north[900m] and south[150m]) are shown in red. It ejected quite a bit of lava, but the experts say they were lucky that the eruption was as weak as it was. The new lava fields from each are in orange. The initial fissure to the north grew in its size as the eruption continued and extended itself underneath the original berm. This extension and the area where the berm crossed the highway allowed lava behind the ber.

The southern fissure was completely unexpected and it was heartbreaking to witness. While it released a smaller amount of lava at a lower pressure than the north, but due to its proximity to the village, it was enough to destroy at least (2) homes.

The Berms

The berms are shown in blue, both the original (lite blue) and the two new additional ones (medium blue).

The original 10-15 meter high [32-48 foot] berm held up strong and most likely saved the village from much more damage. However, it was not completely effective. A small portion of the berm at the highway had been left open for travel until the day of the eruption when emergency crews plugged it last minute.

During and since the eruption, the emergency crews have built (2) new berms on the west side of Grindavik to further deflect lava and protect the village.

The Infrastructure

The town is still under evacuation order due to the uncertainty of future eruptions and the dangers inside the village due to subsidence and instability.

Electricity seems to be back on in town.

The geothermal pipeline that runs tandem (a few meters west) to the north-to-south highway and was destroyed by lava. This is significant in that this supplies Grindavik it’s most abundant heat source, hot water. Homes that were not in harms way are still going to have moderate damage due to frozen pipes. [Edit Jan 21 2024] It was reported that just yesterday emergency crews bypassed the destroyed section of pipe restoring water both hot and cold.

Two of the reported three homes that were destroyed by lava are shown in white. The north home does not appear on many maps. It was reported to be a new home that was yet unoccupied. The south home was occupied and appeared to be a complete loss. I am still unsure about the third home.

The greenhouse, shown in green, survived seemingly undamaged thanks the the original berm. It was reported to have had all of its equipment removed prior to the eruption.

I heard a report that the local government is probably going to be able to offer Grindavik residents a buyout for their homes and property but all I can find is a report that it may be possible.

250 abandoned sheep were reported to have been rescued and removed on Tuesday Jan 16.

The Next Chapter

The future of Grindavik is not looking so good. The data seems to point towards yet another eruption, and likely within the next few weeks.

The Svartsengi GPS Station is near the power plant (north of Grindavik). This is the region where the experts suspect the ultimate source of the magma. It is feeding the magma chamber under Grindavik which is where the eruptive fissures from both December and January formed. It will take months or years of inactivity for this to cool and plug itself. While the system is fed, the pressure will increase. As the pressure builds, the chances of the magma moving or erupting increase. There is no real way known to man as to what exactly is going on down there.

Earthquakes have been very quiet in the area which is to be expected after the balance of pressure. They have ramped back up through the week but are still low in frequency, size and depth. During the eruption, there were numerous mini-clusters of earthquakes near Grindavik (Locations with a high concentration of earthquakes). One of these locations ultimately became where the southern fissure erupted. There were (2) other mini-clusters south of that fissure well inside of Grindavik. Both of these areas of mini-clusters are above the magma chamber and could be places of a future eruption. With the damage to the area, it could just be stress related fractures.

Send hope and prayers to the great and brave people of Grindavik.

I look at the most recent activity and suspect that either a new fissure has opened in the town proper or the southern fissure has lengthened. There exists a mini cluster of larger earthquakes in this area. The best case scenario is that this is a new structure on fire. All three scenarios are rotten-a-f. It is getting hard to tell due to gasses, smoke and darkness.

That is most likely a RUV news helicopter in the foreground. It’s footage may be available shorty. You can also read their english blog here. Drones are once again banned 4km from town.

CDs are still king with me. 1,957 and still counting. I feel cheated if I don’t get to enjoy that romance of flipping through the liner notes while listening to the CD that first time. I rip the songs I like after a few days of listening to it. I suspect the day will come when MP3’s will not be free.

DVD’s too. Almost 1,400 of them as well.

I did have to let the cassette tapes go. I kept some of the rarer ones, but they weren’t meant to last 40 years and would not likely survive another rewind.

I use Brave Browser (with Ublock Origin and AdBlock) and rarely have any issues. I do have Freetube downloaded, installed and ready to go for when they escalate their game (and they will). For certain other applications, a youtube downloader can be quite handy.

Ads truly are the most annoying, counterproductive and least creative way of putting yourself out there. Even worse, they can never seem to match an ad with the content it gets forced upon, and this serves only to train people to associate their brand with uselessness and irrelevance. Even if you have a product that is good, you’ve just presented yourself as an obstructing pair of clown shoes and that becomes your first and long-lasting impression. When the time comes that they may need it, most people will not remember your product from that ad, only that your brand is a pair of clown shoes.

The simple truth is, if you have a good product, you do not need advertising. You only need advertising if you have a bad product and you are worried that negative word of mouth will spread faster than you can dupe your share of people into buying it.

Edit: Replaced a word that may be taken as a slur.

The conservatives need the babies alive so they can be sent overseas to be killed. It’s the new american way.

Disgusting pigs. All of em.

We knew what was going to happen verbatim, and yet we laughed hysterically anyways.

Ohh, balls. Thanks. Wish they had called it ‘tabletop gaming’.

wtf is this horseshit supposed to be?

No, but on the brightside you got a much better chance of it having a 10 Forward.

I like it, but it can make the players whine when it fails to save them.

If I’m DM’ing I try to keep notion that its my responsibility to get them to the goal regardless of the choices or events that happen. Its my job to figure out how to interpret random numbers. I use those bad rolls for my enjoyment as well as getting the characters to the goal.

As an example.

Player: I attack.

Me: The orc or the bugbear?

Player: The bugbear

Me: Roll to hit.

Player: <Rolls a natural 1> Me: When you stopped to poop in the bushes an hour ago, you knew you were going to have explosive diarrhea from eating that cajun eel porridge. What you didn’t know was that you had accidentally sprayed poo all over your swords hilt. As you pull it from the scabbard to attack, the weight of your shitty sword causes it to launch right out of your grip. It arcs elegantly across the scrubland for several yards, slightly rifling and glinting in the sunlight. It strikes the orc in the front right quadrant. The sword penetrates his vital cavity blade first and it doesn’t stop until the hilt of the weapon slams into his ribcage, the blade protruding just behind and below its left armpit. It’s mouth agape with confusion, shock and repulsion from the scent of your human filth still all over the hilt, the orc collapses slowly under the growing weight of gravity. Sadly, you’ll never know how extremely impressed he was with your advanced combat technique.

Now the player lives but at the cost of kinda becoming the butt of a joke that’s worth remembering for years to come. And honestly, as an adult, when I’m hanging out with old dnd friends and the topic comes up, it’s those moments that we always remember and laugh about.

No thanks. To me, the entire point of tabletop gaming is to use your own creativity. Both DM’s and players alike.

The chemical reaction that binds concrete in a matrix takes place after you add the water and continues until you dry it out. Anything you put in the crack will be a temporary fix only. The material will work itself out over time, and you will additionally be trapping a certain amount of moisture in the crack with it. You will now have a concrete pad with a ‘pocket’ and a ‘plug’ made from different materials. Materials that are likely to expand and contract at different rates exposing an opening for moisture and debris at least once through the year.

You only get (1) chance to successfully pour concrete i’m afraid. Your pad is damaged for all time. The crack will certainly grow from thermal conditions alone. It’s incapable of healing itself. What you need to stave that off is good chemistry for binding and something that expands and contracts at approx. the same rate as the concrete. I’d call the company that poured it. They’ll know what repair product best matches their chemistry. If you put the wrong products in it, it’s going to accelerate the degradation.

I am a refractory designer, and the company I work for makes several ‘patch’ type products of different chemistries. They all have a use. Temperature, application, chemistry, elevation even. While these do work, they are again only temporary.

They come in different consistencies. One of those is what we call a plastic. It is very much like a putty until it dries. It does contain some moisture so it will shrink as it dries out. It does not contain as much moisture as a self flowing castable would.