If nothing is on fire and nobody is bleeding or dying, it’s not urgent.
Just saw this in Apple News.
Apple Family Sucks for Large Families
We have 6 kids, we are a family of 8. The Apple Family plan is limited to 6 members. This means that we have to leave 2 family members out. Or share a single login across 3 devices, which wasn’t so bad early on, but as more features become user centric has become a nightmare. I want to add my youngest son to our Apple Card so he can start building credit, but he isn’t part of our family according to Apple so he can’t have a credit card of his own.
This is a recurring issue on Apple Discussions.
What if your family is larger than 6?
Why can’t they let larger families validate additions beyond 6 in some fashion? I already pay them monthly for various services, and would most likely pay more if all of us could be included. We have 10 iPhones in our house, multiple Watches, multiple Macs, but left with 2 family members who aren’t considered part of the family and have to jump through hoops to use iMessage and Facetime on their phones.
Diabetes and Looping
I was diagnosed with Diabetes on my 8th birthday. Luckily I got to have my Birthday Party, unfortunately no cake for me. I spent the next week in the hospital finding out about Diabetes, I remember the shots, having blood taken multiple times a day, learning to read urine test strips so I knew how I was doing. They taught my mother how to give me shots, how to control my blood sugar with Insulin. At the time we had Regular and NPH, Regular was a quick acting Insulin for food being eating now and NPH was a long acting insulin for controlling things during the day or at night. This was OK, only 2 shots a day; one at Breakfast and one at Dinner. If I wasn’t feeling right, I could pee and see how I was doing. Was I on target, between 80 and 120, or was I low or high. At the time it was considered best to be a little high in the 120 to 160 area.
Eventually BD released the Glucometer which allowed diabetics to do their own blood sugar via finger sticks. This was a game changer, now we knew what our blood sugar actually was. peeing on a test strip and matching up colors wasn’t exactly perfect, if anyone has an aquarium and tests the water by comparing the sample with drops to the color on a piece of paper you know the feeling, is it this green or this green or this green they all look so close to each other.
Then long acting insulin’s came along which lasted 24 plus hours. Now a single shot of long acting insulin in the morning. But needed more shots of fast acting insulin at meal time. This is where the pen needle came into play. Now I could give a shot at breakfast with a long acting and a fast acting insulin, use the pen at all other meals. No more having to go to the bathroom to prepare my shot when dining out for dinner, I could just do it at the table quickly and easily.
At this time blood sugar machines had become tinier and tinier. That Glucometer was a big piece of electronics to carry around. But this new insulin had made it so much easier to control diabetes, that target of 80 to 120 was accomplishable with less concern. New faster acting insulins were developed which allowed the shot before a meal to be given closer to when you were ready to eat with less of a bump after eating as the food and insulin started to take hold at the same time. Regular insulin was supposed to be taken 30 minutes before eating, good luck with dining out. We were now able to give insulin when the food arrived at the table, instead of when we were seated and worrying about the food being delayed and causing a low.
While longer lasting insulin’s were here and faster acting insulin in a pen was much easier to deliver while out and about. My body still wanted insulin delivered over a constant. The insulin pump was developed for this specific case. No more shots, or at least a single pump change every 3 days.
While blood sugars with finger pricks were bearable doing 2 to 4 a day, it didn’t give a full picture. Was I going up or coming down? The Continuous Glucose Meter (CGM) took a reading every 5 minutes. I now knew if my blood sugar was going up or down at this moment, should I give less or more insulin before this meal. I also got alarms should things be changing radically, or had passed a certain mark, I was no longer dependent on noticing something wasn’t right. Noticing that something isn’t right is not a good method, since diabetics stop noticing that things are wrong since they’ve worked through them so many times before.
Insulin Pumps and Continuous Glucose Meters to save the day. What about bringing the capabilities of the Insulin Pump to give a continuous Basal Rate of Insulin and a Bolus of Insulin when eating, the CGM’s reading of blood sugar, and the computing power of your smartphone to utilize this data to control the Basal rate with pluses or minuses based on current glucose readings. This has become Looping. With Looping your smartphone becomes the brains of an artificial pancreas.
I’ve been Looping now for 2+ years using my OmniPod EROS Pump, Dexcom G6 CGM, RileyLink, iPhone 7, and Loop. It has significantly changed how I interact with my diabetes. I no longer have to carry around a bag filled with Diabetes stuff, everything is my Phone and everyone has one of those, so I just look like everyone else at a restaurant not paying attention to anyone else at the table on my phone when I’m checking my blood sugar or telling my Insulin Pump how many Carbs I’m about to eat. But, this hasn’t changed me from being loud that I have Diabetes, I tend to stay away from certain foods since they don’t agree with me, but so do a lot of other people and this makes it easier on everyone to pick a lunch outing that fits well with everyone.
Paypal Sucks
I will never utilize PayPal for any purchase type. I disputed a purchase because the seller sent me a tracking number and it showed delivery prior to me making the purchase. They sent another tracking number, but I still didn’t receive anything. The sellers website disappeared, so I started researching and all kinds of scam notices. The dispute center closed the dispute because the seller provided tracking information. Once you submit information in a dispute, they provide no method to provide additional information. If you submit information via the process they provide after opening, it sends you an email on how to provide it via the website which tells you to email an address sort of a going in a circle aren’t we. So I closed my paypal account. I recommend to everyone to close your account and never utilize them again. Stores utilizing Paypal will not get my business unfortunately, though I don’t see this as an issue anyway. My credit card company immediately refunds my money, when I dispute anything.
Furr Gatling Guns
I’ve always been interested in Gatling guns. I remember reading about them in a book on the history of Colt Firearms as a kid. When I first learned about the scale Furr Gatling Guns I started looking for one. FJ Vollmer had an offer price listed for them, and that put me out of the market at the time. Articles would appear in Machine Gun News or Small Arms Review about them. I was loaned a 1/3 scale 1874 Carriage Gun at one point. I’ve since acquired both a 1/3 scale 1874 Camel Gun and a 1/3 scale 1874 Carriage Gun. I’ve bookmarked every one that I’ve seen for sale, and hope to get those links both posted and archived here shortly.
In cleaning my desk, I just stumbled upon the manual for my 1874. So I scanned it for posterity. INSTRUCTIONS FOR 1874 MODEL
IPv6
So I’ve had IPv6 connectivity since September 2007 from my house, initially thanks to SixXS.
I last reached out to one of my Service Providers just weeks before SixXS ended service. They continue to not support IPv6, nor have a schedule for supporting IPv6. My other provider has started supporting IPv6 for their home users, but on the business side it would appear to be a bit more difficult to gain connectivity with IPv6. Which reminds me I need to call them again, since their online support tools don’t support business customers. I finally got IPv6 address space on my business connection, unfortunately they hand off a /56 via DHCP-PD but don’t route it. I can toss IPv6 packets at them, but see neighbor solicitations coming back instead of them routing the traffic back to me.
Hopefully you can see that I continue to have IPv6 connectivity. This connectivity was published from AS16881 via the LISP-Beta Network. The LISP-Beta Network officially stopped existence in early 2020, but continued to run until October. Finally was able to find Internet Transport service when someone nearby had fiber run to their business, and was able to get the same provider to deliver fiber to me at a reasonable cost, moving from their Business service to Enterprise service.
Serbu Super Shorty
It has been almost 20 years, or at least, according to this article by Jeff Zimba. The Serbu Super Shorty
As a close friend of Mark Serbu I asked him at a Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot to make me the shortest possible AOW, Any Other Weapon in BATF Jargon. The oldest emails I have about this are from August 1997, so it must have been the April shoot that year. The original prototype was built on a Maverick 88, had the spring loaded folding grip, but the action bars would bind, per Mark it required a little English. Mark promised to get me another with improvements, number 300 was a Mossberg 500 that functioned flawlessly. I mention the number 300, because he promised number 100 would be mine if he ever reached that many. As well I have a Remington 870 based one, and a Holster.
Now we have a myriad of copies out there. Mossberg has even started to sell the Compact Cruiser AOW. Then we have the Typhoon 12 with a 5-round box magazine.