Avengers:Endgame 2019

I took it in at the Jax Jr in Littleton this afternoon.  The theater was chilly, even for me wearing a fleece vest over my shirt, and a ski parka.  It's looong.  Three hours.  A lot of scenes when far longer than need be.  I recognized some characters from previous Marvel flicks,  Captain America (Steve Rogers) Tony Stark (Ironman but we don't see him wearing the Ironman suit), Rocket Racoon, Groot, Thor, Hulk.   Bunch of new faces that meant nothing to me.  Some of them vaguely familiar looking, must have turned up somewhere sometime in a Marvel movie.  The bow and arrow guy from I forget which flick turned up.   
    There was a hint of plot.  The Avengers must develop time travel to got back and acquire/steal/rescue five magic gemstones needed to save the world.  Some awful catastrophe has overtaken poor old Earth and with the five magic stones the avengers can fix it.  Needless to say the stones are recovered and then a lot of hand to hand combat with a large armored nasty happens. 
   Despite glowing rating in the print press and Rotten Tomatoes, I was not all that impressed. 

New tariffs on Chinese goods will make life interesting for WalMart.

Nearly all the goods on Walmart's shelves are made in China.  The 25% tariff going into effect is going to put a squeeze on Walmart.  Unless there is more juice in the business (like 25% juice, which is unlikely) which I doubt, something has got to give.  Most likely Walmart will have to raise their prices. 
   As for me, I don't shop Walmarts all that much.  At my stage of life I am pretty well fixed for housewares and clothing and appliances.  I do buy my prescriptions there, but I think those are all made in USA. 

May you live in interesting times.

Words of the Weasel Part 57

From Aviation Week.
    The Dragon capsule had successfully completed a series of 2-sec. firings of its small Draco thrusters, used for in-space maneuvering and was about 0.5 sec. from igniting eight Super-Draco  launch abort motors when the anomaly occurred, destroying the vehicle, Koenigsmann said.

In plain English.  The launch abort rocket engines exploded during ground testing, destroying the Dragon crew capsule. 

Mechanical failure doesn't get much worse than this.

Question for the Space-X folks.  Why are not the launch about engines solid fuel?  The ones that blew were liquid fuel engines burning hypergolic (ignites upon contact, no ignition required) hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide.  Solid fuel is stable, does not leak, and is very reliable.  Launch abort means rocket the capsule off the top of, and away from, an exploding booster rocket.  Never been done to my knowledge.  Requires VERY rapid response.

NH Senate activity 7 May 2019

Things are slowing down.  For the usual Ed Committee meeting this Tuesday 7 May, we had no new bills to hear.  We went into executive session to rehash some bills previously heard.  We took up HB 131, a bill to create yet another study commission on prevention of suicide among school children.  We decided it needed more study, and postponed action until the next meeting.  Next was HB 149 concerning co operative school districts, and how to handle matters should the level of cooperation drop off, and one party want out.  We decided that existing law was just fine, and we voted HB 149 Inexpedient To Legislate.  We discussed HB 226 which wanted to decrease new teacher apprentice time from 5 years to 3 years.   Cannot remember what we decide to do with this one, my notes are silent on the matter.  We probably decided to kick the can down the road and deal with it later.  We did vote HB 258, a bill requiring study of teacher training, Ought To Pass, 4-0. Frankly, this is a no account bill.  The best teacher training is training in subject matter, English, US history, science, foreign language, art, etc.  A teacher that knows his or her subject matter can do a fine job teaching our children.  We voted HB 437 a quibble over paperwork, changing “ethics” into “conduct”. Ought To Pass, 4-0.  And we voted HB 447, which would have allowed school to start before Labor Day rerefer to committee, giving us more time to argue about it.  And we closed out the morning by voting HB 489, a bill concerning transfer of students from one school district to another, Inexpedient To Legislate. 

   We took a brief recess and then heard John Tobin’s presentation on state aid to education.  We need to do something.  Poorer towns like Berlin are running out of school money, despite outrageous property tax rates.  We need to do something to help out the towns with little assessed value in their tax base. 

    Then I met with 80 fourth graders from Berlin, down for State House visit.   Bunch of cute young kids, most wearing red school T-shirts.  I welcomed them, I said a few good words, and I shook hands with all of them.  It’s a worth while educational exercise.  For kids to understand anything about democracy in New Hampshire, they need to visit the State House.   

After a quick lunch, I got to the Senate hearings on the state budget.  Every one speaking, spoke up for more money to their pet cause.   The only gave each speaker three minutes.  After an hour of this I left for the hearing on HB 557, a bill to curb robocallers.  I spoke, urging some cruel and unusual punishment for robocallers, boiling in oil for the first offence and burning at the stake for the second offense.  I mentioned the robocallers who call me, pushing drugs, about once a week.  I suggested that we require the phone company[s] to fix caller ID so it cannot be spoofed.  That would give the PUC something useful to do.   

Good vibes yesterday, Tiger Woods Medal of Freedom.

Fox broadcast it live and at length.  President Trump awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Tiger Woods.  Trump spoke of Tiger Woods at length and with warmth.  I think a white president awarding honors to a black golfer is a nice touch. It might not heal all the racial divisions of the country, but it helps. Tiger Woods is a fantastically good golfer, perhaps the best there ever was.  The president plays golf himself, and knew the ins and outs of Tiger's career, along with some ups and downs, and he spoke from a good knowledge of golf, and a good memory of watching some of Tiger Woods best moments.  Well done to both men. 

Disk Hogs in the wild.

I just discovered that Firefox allows web sites to store megbytes of stuff on your hard drive.  This is not those little old cookies, which were in the 100 byte class.  This Cached Web Content is megabytes.  I found I had a whole gigabyte of  "stuff" stored on disk courtesy of Firefox.  You can free up a gigabyte of disk.  From within Firefox click on the nameless button with three horizontal stripes, far right on the task bar.  Click on Options.  Click on Privacy & Security.  Click on Cookies and Site Data.  Click on Clear Data.  Clear the check mark for Cookies and Site Data unless you want to have to log into all your favorite websites (can you find your passwords).  Leave the checkmark in Cached Web Content and click on clear.  It's worth doing this before running anti virus to speed up the scanning.  If anyone knows how to shut down Cached Web Content I would love to hear about it.
   I figured it was time to run antivirus on new desktop, SmallBox by name.  I downloaded the free Malwarebytes V 3.7.1.  The default scan option is quick, a minute or two but doesn't check your disk files.  The  "Custom Scan"  option does do disk files.  That took an hour.  A lotta time spent scanning the gigabyte of Cashed Web Content, courtesy of Firefox. and even more time scanning a gigantic new Windows folder at C:Window\Services\LCU.  The LCU folder is so huge that I googled on the name just to see what it was.  What little info turned up indicates that people know about it.  None of posts explained what it was, and whether I could delete it or not.  It's huge.  Any info would be welcome.
   Malwarebytes tagged a  profile folder to Firefox as malware.  I didn't agree with that call, and told Malwarebytes to leave that file alone.  It did find some seven registry keys and three other files as malware.  I let Malwarebytes quarantine them all. 

More doings in the NH Senate

Ed Committee hearing, 30 April.  Light day.  We heard just one bill, HB 631, establishing a deaf child’s bill of rights.  It had a lot of supporters. The language is vague and wimpy.   Twelve clauses begin with “Deaf or hard of hearing children have a right to” this that and the other, all vague nice sounding ideas.  No sentences with words like “The school committee shall” of “The dept of Education shall”.  I asked about this, and was told that the language was copied from a bill in some other state and the “no state mandates on cities and towns” law prevented stronger language.  Far as I can see all this bill does is give parents the right to sue, at their own expense, should they come to believe that their deaf child is not getting a fair shake.   We had a lot of witnesses testify in sign language.   In executive session we did a lightweight amendment and voted it Ought To Pass.  This bill, with or without amendments is reasonably harmless to my way of thinking. 

   Then I attended the hearing in the Transportation Committee on HB 591, the anti off road vehicle (ATV) bill.  If passed it would close most roads to ATV’s even crossing them, let alone going into town to buy dinner, and make it difficult to establish more ATV trails.  I testified that ATV users are bringing real money to the North Country and should be encouraged. We need their money.  And that I would vote against this bill when it gets to the Senate floor.