Texas to East Coast pipeline shut down

 This just hit Fox TV news a few minutes ago.  It is being said that a cyber attack has caused the pipeline shutdown.  They are talking about horrible price spikes for gasoline.  As of this writing, no forecast of repair time.  Could be anything.

Some questions for the pipeline owner.  

1. Are you using Windows to control or monitor anything?

2.  Are you using the public internet or the public telephone system to control or monitor anything?  

A yes answer to either question means they are guilty of gross negligence and should be sued down to their socks.

Fox News sound is noisy

The TV was making a high pitched little chirp.  It got to the point I got up from my chair and walked around the house checking for leaky faucets dripping or a water leak somewhere.  Didn't find anything and careful listening made me decide the noise was indeed coming from the Fox sound track on TV.  Fox needs to move their studio to a quieter part of town to cut down on the emergency vehicle sirens and heavy crashing noises from the street and odd things like that chirp.  

Warren Buffet Breaks NASDAQ

 According to the Wall St Journal, the NASDAQ computer systems can only handle stock prices less than $429,496.7295 per share.  Warren Buffet's share price has climbed to $421,000, close to the limit.  With a little more good luck on Warren's part, NASDAQ will no longer be able to trade his stock.  The magic number of NASDAQ's limit is otherwise known as 2 raised to the 32nd power.  Which says the software guys chose to store stock prices as 4 byte integers back when they wrote NASDAQ's software.  Far as I am concerned a couple of hundred dollars a share is a perfectly reasonable share price.  All of my stocks are $50-100-200 a share.  So going with a 32 bit integer and a max share price of a little less than half a mil per share was, and still is, a perfectly reasonable design decision.  

The WSJ article goes on to say that NASDAQ is considering rewriting all their software to support Warren's fantastic share price.  That's Wall St weenies for you.  Me, I would tell Warren to do a stock split if he wants to continue trading on NASDAQ.

Biden on Taxes.

 

Watched Biden on TV the other day.  A lot of happy talk about taxes.  The Democrats want to pass some $4-5 TRILLION dollars of welfare spending and get away with calling it Corona virus relief.  Even the Democrats fear that just printing that much new money might crash the US currency.  Right now the US greenback is respected all over the world.  If you have greenbacks you can spend ‘em and buy stuff anywhere.  The US has never reneged on its debts.  The greenback is accepted worldwide because the Americans have plenty of stuff to sell, at reasonable prices.  But if we print too many new greenbacks, people might get the idea that since there are so many greenbacks floating around that each one is worth less.  Once that idea gets around people will stop accepting greenbacks and the US currency is crashed.  Nobody, not even Democrats, wants to risk that. So Biden was talking about this little tax hike here and that little tax hike there would be enough to raise $4-5 TRILLION.  Somehow I had trouble believing these stories.  I am thinking that raising $4-5 TRILLION of new tax revenue is going to crash the economy and raise my taxes a lot.  And I don’t make anything near the $400K tax hike floor that the Biden people keep talking about. 

Forbidding Office Political Talk caused half the employees to quit.

 Small startup Basecamp decided to curb political conversations at work.  It is not clear whether “conversations” were verbal, around the lunch table or postings on Basecamp social media.  Prior to the no political talk blowup,  Basecamp was trying to present a worker friendly workplace, shorter work weeks in the summer and paying everyone doing the same job the same money. 

   A couple of small companies, Redfin and Harmon Brothers LLC, came out supporting Black Lives Matter which has caused them some internal turbulence. 

   I don’t remember this sort of issue back when I was working.  I retired before Facebook or Twitter was invented. 

Sticking it to Rudi.

Rudi Giuliani is a distinguished American citizen.  Federal prosecutor for New York, Mayor of New York during 9-11, lawyer to the President of the United States.  I was offended to hear that the FBI had raided Giuliani’s home at 6 AM the other day.  Discourteous to say the least.  If the Feds needed information from Rudi, they should have made an appointment and asked him.  Rudi is a straight up guy; he would assist the Feds in anything legal they were trying to do.   The Feds told the papers that they had a warrant.  I wonder where they got it.  That secret FISA court that approves every request to snoop presented to it?  A real court, the kind that meets five days a week and tries cases? 

Kitchen Timer Design

Upgrading from an el cheapo $3 all plastic kitchen timer, I received, as a Christmas gift a ThermoWorks (Extra Big & Loud) kitchen timer.  Big feature of the ThermoWorks is good strong magnets that hold it to the refrigerator door.  And a good big LCD display.   Downside, it programs in seconds.  To set a ten minute time, you have to punch in One, Zero, Zero, and Zero.  It would be a lot easier to work if it programmed in minutes, so a ten minute time would punch in as One, Zero.  I never wanter to set a time in seconds in my kitchen. The other down check comes from “Loud”.  It is only loud on a good fresh battery.  With a battery strong enough to work the timer, the ring when time is up can be so faint as I cannot hear it.  I just gave it a fresh new 9 volt battery to bring the ring sound up loud enough to hear.