This video about the competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin is…interesting. The music is a nice touch.
Category Archives: Weird
Windows Question
So I reinstalled Windows 10 as a virtual machine, and I did it without a product key. It seems to be working for why I have it, to run a trading platform. But I see a message saying “Activate Windows: Go to setting to activate Windows.” Since it seems to be working without being “activated,” what does this even mean?
Dark Skies
Jeff Greason reviews Deudney’s anti-space screed. He is the opposite of impressed.
Top Fifty In Space Tech
This is kind of cool, but that and five bucks will get me a double quarter pounder with cheese.
And if that’s really Marcia Smith, it’s definitely a new look for her. They have Elon, but I think that leaving out Gwynne was a miss.
[Update a while later]
Per the discussion about Mickey D’s prices, I never order a meal, just the sandwich.
Crazy Business Practice
So I need to replace the front passenger door for the BMW. I look online, and find this site. They have several for sale, in Adelanto, available for local pickup (it’s about an hour and a half drive), and the price is great.
The only problem: I don’t know what color any of them are (the car is silver). So I call the phone number, and after being on hold for almost an hour, finally get someone. I ask if I can drive up there to check them out, to make sure the one that I’m getting will match. She says, no, I can’t look at them until I buy one, and they don’t accept returns for the wrong color. She had no explanation for why this was the policy, but it makes no sense to me. So not sure what to do now, other than buy one, hope for the best, and be prepared to paint it.
A New Commune In Colorado
Hard to imagine anything going wrong with this.
The Aztec Gods
Thoughts on California’s deranged revival of them.
UFOs
Some thoughts from Bryan Preston.
Another Weird Car Problem
My adventures in diagnosing the BMW made me decide to get another bluetooth OBD plug for the Toyota, and use an Android tablet as an extended dashboard. But I can’t get it to pair. My phone can’t even see it. It can see the one in the BMW next to the car in the driveway, but it can’t see the one that’s two feet away in the 2013 RAV4. The light is on, so it has power, and I turned the ignition on to make sure that it was transmitting, but no dice.
Another weirdness of the car (which may or may not be related) is that one of the keys doesn’t unlock the car electronically, and I’ve never been able to get it to go into programming mode to reset the key, despite following all the incantations of opening and closing doors and turning the ignition on and off that they say to do online.
[Update a few minutes later after a quick search]
Looks like it’s not just me.
[Update a few more minutes later]
Mystery partially solved. I plugged in a stand-alone OBD reader, and there’s no output. Maybe I need to look for a blown fuse?
[Monday-afternoon update]
OK, I pulled the fuse, clearly marked “OBD,” and it’s good. Now what?
[Bumped]
[Update]
I put the fuse back in, and now it works. Go figure.
Bill Gates
At what point do we realize that he is dangerously insane?
He does seem to have too much money. I think it was stupid of Buffett to farm out his philanthropy to him.