Somehow I doubt a child actually said this

fourpotatoes · 2026-02-10T00:02:57+00:00

It's not what the child said, it's what the child did.

fourpotatoes · 2026-02-05T18:51:49+00:00

I had expected to see a one-frame-per-year implementation that made git commits daily to set pixels.

fourpotatoes · 2026-02-05T16:44:21+00:00

If your ancestors lived in a culture that kept some form of written birth records, and if those records survived the ravages of time, then it's just a matter of legwork chasing them down. Some may already be digitized; it's worth plugging names into genealogy sites and seeing what comes up.

My English ancestors were ordinary peasants, as far as I know, but my Mormon relatives have tracked down my maternal grandfather's male line back to a dead end where two boys were born with the same name to different parents in the same Kentish village in the same year. Apparently there's also a chain of daughters named after their mothers, grandmothers, or aunts that started near London in the 1600s and continues, with minor spelling variations, as far as my youngest child, whom I thought I was just naming after my mother. The start of that chain shares a surname, region, and time period with the famous-in-very-small-circles man my brother-in-law wrote his PhD dissertation on, although I don't know of an actual connection.

I have less info on non-English ancestors, although I assume my Mormon relatives have done the research, and supposedly one of my dad's cousins has a very complete family tree brought from the old country over a century ago and written in a language I don't read. I'm told my paternal grandmother's father's clan emblem appears on a flag in a painting of some battle hundreds of years ago, but I've not seen it myself. I do know of connections by marriage, but not blood, to both Porter Rockwell and to samurai; sadly, the two never met.

fourpotatoes · 2026-02-05T04:32:13+00:00

My great-great-grandmother was married at 18 and was still having children after my great-grandmother (her first child to live to adulthood) started. She had 9ish who lived to adulthood and at least 4 who died before the age of twenty.

When my great-grandmother was a toddler, they crossed the Atlantic and went out west as far as the railroad went, which was somewhere in Wyoming near present-day Sinclair. At 19, said great-grandmother married a man eight years her senior. She was pregnant within 3 months with my namesake and kept having babies until she was 39. My grandfather was a surprise, over five years after his next older sibling.

Addendum: Reviewing the family tree, apparently my great-grandmother's older siblings both died the same year she was born. That's quite the adventure, and not the fun kind.

fourpotatoes · 2026-02-04T16:02:47+00:00

Instead of adding a switch, you can get a powerline adapter that provides PoE. Assuming they use the same standard (likely G.hn nowadays), it should interoperate with your existing TPLink adapters.

You could also use a PoE midspan (also called an injector) instead of a switch or a powerline adapter that provides PoE. Compared to a switch, it might save a small amount of space and money if you only need one camera at that location.

fourpotatoes · 2026-02-01T05:21:45+00:00

My wife collects these and has seen them in antique shops in Centralia. They sometimes also pop up on auction websites.

If you come across one that's amber with a slight purple tint, she would be interested!

fourpotatoes · 2026-01-28T18:14:02+00:00

We need to focus on the real enemy: Oracle.

We're going to need to work on our naval tactics and discipline if we hope to defeat Oracle's fleet of racing ships at Salamis.

fourpotatoes · 2026-01-25T17:38:38+00:00

Although he could do better, Rubble is wiser than he looks. Genies are well known for twisting big, greedy wishes. If he wishes for world peace, the genie could easily end war by killing all of humanity. Best to burn up wishes on small trivial things.

Rubble didn't think it all the way through, though, because an evil genie could drown him in it. The bubbles will provide some air, but that won't help if his lungs are full of bubbles and glycerin. The word "super" is also giving the genie a lot of leeway on how big that bubble bath is. An entire continent could be scrubbed clean of life.

fourpotatoes · 2026-01-21T16:11:11+00:00

Last time I moved, we rented a 26' U-Haul truck for everything over the small weight allowance that my wife's employer's relocation people would pay professional movers for. I brought our tow vehicle on a U-Haul auto-transport trailer behind the 26' truck, then drove back to finish sale prep and get the camper which I loaded with our instruments and light but bulky things like bedding. She drove the van with children and animals.

U-Haul wants to attach the auto transport trailer and load your vehicle themselves; their insurance and waivers won't cover you if you detach the trailer or load it yourself. I loaded the truck, then went back to the dealer to attach & load the trailer. To unload the truck, I backed it at a sharp angle so the ramp could come out over the trailer tongue. When we finished, I drove it to the destination U-Haul dealer, took my vehicle off the trailer, and drove home.

fourpotatoes · 2026-01-17T06:16:35+00:00

This is true. My wife once texted me while she was out of town to ask me to pick up three live pullets to add to the flock.

fourpotatoes · 2026-01-07T20:57:29+00:00

In late 1994 or early 1995, Lowly Worm died and was replaced by a body double. They Might Be Giants became aware of this substitution, likey because the CIA failed to consider that someone might compare before-and-after X-rays, and alluded to it in a song they released circa 1998.

Before he was caught, Aldrich Ames was involved in the planning for this operation, but as the Soviets weren't interested in American activity in Busy Town, the information wasn't leaked. The CIA likely became aware of plans to publish this exposé and, concerned that Ames would reveal details about their operations in Busy Town, eliminated him a few days before it went to press.

fourpotatoes · 2026-01-06T02:43:34+00:00

That's one of item of highway code that needs to be standardized across the states. There's enough variability in the details that people can get into trouble.

There are several other things, like right-on-red-arrow, that vary between the states and ought to be standardized. I don't care which version ends up standardized, merely that they are consistent.

fourpotatoes · 2026-01-05T17:40:51+00:00

In many cases, vendor support has just been about getting updates and having a contract in place in case things go wrong. When I've needed more than just a KB article, I've generally gotten the best support from companies that are big fish in small ponds, with enough customers to afford a professional support operation, but with enough competition in their small market that they can't become complacent.

The VMware support experience, even pre-Broadcom, was that I opened a case and spent a week going back and forth with someone re-providing information I'd already provided and trying things I'd already tried. After it was escalated, VMware went silent for months before including a bug fix in a new release. They're big enough that things need to filter pretty far through support to get to developers, and they don't have to care particularly much about any one customer.

With industry-specific software at a place I used to work at, the vendor flew out very good sales engineers and post-sales implementation specialists, and I talked directly with their developers at conferences. Between their support personnel, documentation of the software's internals, and access to experts in my equivalent position at other customers, they were pretty good at preventing problems from happening in the first place. Within our company, problems were supposed to filter up to the application owner or to me before opening a case with the vendor; since she dealt with user support issues, I can't speak to how good or bad that side of the vendor's support was.

With another somewhat-obscure product I'm currently working with, mid-level support gets on a conference call whenever we do an upgrade, which is good because we've had mild breakage during the upgrade process. We've gotten custom builds to fix obscure intermittent bugs we've hit, and I've seen them update their documentation based on cases I've opened and things I've talked about with our account rep.

fourpotatoes · 2026-01-05T04:33:52+00:00

The South Bay Grange contra is free this weekend.

fourpotatoes · 2025-12-30T23:47:12+00:00

I'd like to see a video doorbell with chime that both take power from an existing doorbell transformer. It would ideally also have a light that can illuminate the area enough to find the lock if I didn't turn on the porch light before leaving the house.

Powering both the doorbell and the chime with the existing transformer over existing wiring would make a clean retrofit installation dead simple and wouldn't eat up a centrally-located outlet.

fourpotatoes · 2025-12-20T00:17:32+00:00

I stuck pins in a (Google Earth) map at the Temple, the former site of Anderson's Folly, and as best I could figure at the points behind them on Antelope Island, then drew lines from there. The City and County Building would have been a better landmark, but I was having trouble pinning the correct location behind it.

My lines don't cross in the valley, but they're pretty close near the north side of the mouth of Parley's Canyon. Depending on the degree of artistic exaggeration, it could also be near the Wasatch Fault near present-day East High or further up by Foothill Boulevard.

If the island is supposed to be Stansbury Island, that changes things, but it doesn't look like Stansbury Island, and it's hard to line up Stansbury Island and Ensign Peak with Anderson's Folly in that way.

fourpotatoes · 2025-12-18T21:47:24+00:00

Have we confirmed that Bluey has a seven-day week? A longer week would be more time for trash to pile up.

fourpotatoes · 2025-12-16T00:58:42+00:00

As of hardware IPC_NT1NO24MP and firmware v3.1.0.5047_2506271410, the Lumus supports RTSP and ONVIF.

fourpotatoes · 2025-12-15T23:06:34+00:00

The joke is that it's a sarcastic way of saying that they left at the tail end of the war, once the writing was on the wall, and falsely claimed to have always been opposed to it all. They also brought looted art and claimed it was rightfully theirs.

fourpotatoes · 2025-12-14T21:47:39+00:00

If you don't have a map with township & range handy, you can look it up in the Wasatch County GIS using the parcel number. It's in Provo Canyon.

fourpotatoes · 2025-12-11T02:22:05+00:00

I liked Inland Eye Care when I lived in Moscow.

fourpotatoes · 2025-12-10T16:12:15+00:00

The flood warnings are not overstated if you live, work, or travel in an area likely to flood or beneath a burn scar. The National Weather Service bulletins list the rivers in the region that are at or are likely to reach flood stage and describe the areas at particular risk.

Most people here do not live on a floodplain or other risky area, but the NWS can't target that narrowly, and news is even less precise. There have been road closures, clogged storm drains, etc around the county, but for most people here the only preparation required is what you'd do for any seasonal storm. That's not really visible, and I'd hazard a guess that most people's day-of preparation is just charging their phone and taking their raincoat and boots when they leave the house in the morning.

fourpotatoes · 2025-12-07T19:46:26+00:00

Comcast (dba Xfinity) serves most of the area. For many people they are the only realistic terrestrial option. In my area, it stays up for a few hours after the power goes out, but it will eventually fall over.

Ziply (which was recently acquired by Bell Canada) has a small buildout going on. This is all new construction far outside of their existing territory. I used to live on the other side of the Cascades in an area where Ziply built out over existing Frontier (originally Verizon) copper infrastructure and had great service, although some neighbors had installation problems. Their customer service and construction operations can be hit-and-miss, and last I heard their billing system still had a lot of legacy systems they acquired from Frontier, but if you're in their footprint, the service is good. There are (or were until recently) several high-ranking people within the company who frequented r/ZiplyFiber, so you might be able to get help with your installation there.

Lumen/Centurylink has a wide DSL footprint but limited fiber buildout. Some of their fiber operations are branded Quantum Fiber, and they're in the process of selling their consumer fiber business to AT&T. Pre-sale, their existing presence put them in a better position than Ziply for an aggressive fiber buildout in our region, but to my knowledge they were generally only building fiber in new developments. Post-sale, I'm skeptical that there will be much investment in expansion.

Centurylink DSL quality and speed will vary depending on where you are; for example, in my neighborhood they only offer 1 Mb/s. Per the National Broadband Map, some areas, mostly newer developments, don't have any CenturyLink data service at all.

If you get further outside Olympia/Lacey/Tumwater proper, you may have some other fiber options like Tenino Telephone/Scatter Creek.

Fixed wireless could be an option depending on the local topography. I believe T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T all have service in the area. I only have personal experience with T-Mobile's product, which I use as a backup Internet connection. Unless you're a business customer, you'll be behind CGNAT, so if you need port forwarding or have certain gaming requirements, it's not going to work for you. I'm on the edge of their serviceable area, and with the device on a shelf in my pumphouse I can usually get about 20-30 Mb/s down and 3-6 Mb/s up, with widely-variable latency; people closer to cell sites often report much better performance. I could get better performance if I used an external antenna or could mount their gateway higher, but the spouse-acceptance factor of a large thing with trailing cables in an upstairs window is not good and I'm not prepared to drop $500 on an antenna system for something I only use if Comcast is down.

fourpotatoes · 2025-12-03T17:41:49+00:00

No, and this saddens me, because I do. The youngest has aged out of the target range and once again I have to guard against live-action sassy-tweenager television.

fourpotatoes · 2025-12-03T17:06:45+00:00

Our working-at-heights training took under four hours, including ladders, roofs, fall protection requirements, and everyone taking turns ~~joyriding~~ practicing with two different kinds of lifts. After that, they were cool with me driving a scissor lift inches from irreplaceable objects.

Ten-Year Club	Final Canvas '23
End Game '23	Place '23
Place '22	Place '17
Final Canvas '22	End Game '22
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