Chivalry, decimated

It used to be that people did nice things for women, just because it was the right thing to do. 
Feminists and liberals hate this, assuming emotionally with no math to support it, that it makes the woman look weak.
In spite of this, I've tried to be a gentleman and show (rightfully) deference and respect to women. But, some real idiots have gotten control of the language and the political apparatus and have made gender and sex completely meaningless.

So while I was on the bus stop waiting for the bus I thought to say, "ladies first" and wave the person that I somewhat assumed to be female on in front of me, ...but then I thought there's no value in this because gender and sex are meaningless and therefore I don't have any reason to show any deference to anybody. So I didn't. I was the closest to the bus. So when the bus pulled up and opened the doors I stepped on first. If anybody thinks that this is wrong, they may be right, but you know what, this was all driven by feminism and political correctness, so screw everybody.

If I have to play by their rules, then screw them when their rules end up destroying the things of value.

So many idiots really love the concept of equality. Wish granted. I will treat everybody equally. Everybody has a value of zero.

Date Schemes

I keep seeing dates, especially on TV (which may be all that is needed to be known), in the form [9/8/16]. I then have to wonder what idiot created the ad, and what idiot directed creation of the ad such that it uses such a date scheme. 

First off, we're only 16 years since (the dreaded) Y2K. Why are we not all using 4 digit years? Did some really stupid people just not learn anything?  Yes, our species has a history of refusing to learn from mistakes... but I refuse to accept that. (So, maybe I'm refusing to learn that others are just too stupid to learn...)  Using only a 2 digit year, regardless of order is inexcusable.  Without 4 digits, there's no way of knowing 2016 from 1916 or 1816 or 0016. 
Then, there's the day/month order.  If your date is going to be meaningful AT ALL, then there should be some order of magnitude.  Europeans (and a fair bit of the rest of the planet, I'd wager) write dates in the form [8 September 2016] (long form) or [8/9/2016] (short form).  Many that use computers, or other devices that tend to automagically sort most things alphabetically, tend to use the [2016/09/08] notation (year/month/day) or [2016-09-08] (because the "/" is a "special character" that functions poorly in filenames), and this is for the obvious reason of having things (quite logically) kept in a chronological order, instead of having all the September items for several years or decades together, then all the October items... etc., or worse, everything that happened on a 8th of some month of some year, then 9th of some month of some year... etc.

Maybe it's just a problem with American broadcasters and/or advertisers. 
1.) It could be that the broadcasters/advertisers are idiots.  No fix for that except to stop watching.
2.) It could be that the broadcasters/advertisers are targeting idiots.  But, in that case, don't you think they'd try to improve their audience instead of dumbing things down?
3.) It could be that American broadcasters/advertisers are just stuck in the same stupid mud that has kept the US on the imperial system which (hint, hint) the British (Empire) has abandoned in favor of the metric system, so continuing to use an out-dated, crappy date scheme just seems natural to them.  In which case, the broadcaster/advertiser is an idiot and refer back to point 1.

Maybe I just don't get it.  Hopefully I never will.  I'm OK with that.  At some point I don't want to see a date in the form [9/8/16] and understand it without having to translate it into something useful.  I want to sneer at whoever forced me to translate it and know that my thought process hasn't been catastrophically damaged by the retards (literal meaning, "delayed in growth") that continue to use it.

Predictions

For all that follows, the precondition is that Ted Cruz was eliminated in either the primary or general election process.

I predict:
The internet, within the US either becomes very cost prohibitive or quits entirely.
Health care providers, already gut-punched by Barry decide it isn't worth it anymore and give up... with members possibly joining militias that actually feed and support them and their families.
Workers that are fired, with or without cause (most, without), decide that working just isn't productive, and they give up on looking for employment since their work (or their employer) feeds government... which destroyed their last job.

Distilled:  When evil takes over things, and it has been for some time, people that are capable of doing things surrender and stop doing things.  There's no point, and when a thing is done, government wants its pound of flesh for it having been done. There is an exception for friends and maybe friends of friends.  Those rare exceptions tend to be done with zeal.

democrat/miserable-person

Have I ever mentioned that the song "My Friend of Misery"  (circa 1991) by Metallica really does seem to describe the democrat condition?  (yes, it is an illness and a condition)
Followers of the Clintons... followers of Barry... All some special form of stupid.
Followers of Sanders seem to be some special form of special (which is to say stupid).  They're gleeful.  They're happy.  They seem to have no idea what kind of creeping doom they've invited into their bed.

What's really sad is that even though I'm not even 40 years old, I'm really getting to a point where I no longer care.  As Forest Gump said (and rightfully so), "Stupid is as stupid does."

If you think I'm talking about you... I probably am.  You have two choices: Realize it and grab a clue, or just keep being an idiot.  I no longer care.

Crushing cans

In general, people don't bother to crush cans.  Meh. I understand it.  They're (generally) either too lazy, don't care, or aren't sure how or why to crush a can.

As to the "why", a crushed can takes up less space than a non-crushed can.  This means that more crushed cans can be stored in a space than non-crushed cans.

As to "how", there are several methods.  One of the easiest and least thought-required is to equip oneself with a boot or very sturdy shoe and squash the can.  In an apartment building, this can be problematic.  It can annoy neighbors, especially if done at "odd hours".

There is a work-around for this.  If a can is taken in hand and pinched, not hard, but just enough in the center, and then rotated 90 degrees and pinched again halfway between the first pinch and the top and bottom, those creases make it easy to take the can in-hand and press the top and bottom so that the can folds in on itself.  This type of crushing is not hard, in the least bit.  It also tends to not be noticed by neighbors, which is a positive thing in an apartment block.

Freedom!

Let me go right out on the limb and remain there by saying I love freedom.

There are a very small number of things that I would put forth as valid reasons to limit freedom.

• You may not murder.  (self defense or defense of others is justifiable).

• You may not rape.  (Being seduced by a child that does arguably know what they're doing does not count.  It may be stupid on the adult's part, but it should not be criminal.)

• You may not use coercion on other people.  (Employees should not be exploited, but employees should be free to leave at any point, with or without reason.  Conversely, employers should be free to dismiss employees at their discretion.)

That's pretty much it.   Any law that is above or beyond the above list is probably misguided at best and evil/liberal more likely.

So, I like freedom.  I love freedom.  I'm out on that limb, and I'll remain there, using claws to attack those that think freedom is an old or useless fad.
Yes!  Some stupid people will do some very stupid things with the freedom they've been granted.




If you're a democrat, I probably hate you, not because of who you are, but because of what you represent.  You're a very small dictator, and probably not a loved one.
If you're a "progressive", see "democrat" above.  I don't have time to elaborate.  If any of the above seems "less controlled" than you like, you're likely a dictator that just didn't realize it.  Fix your head, and you may be salvageable.  Elsewise, expect me to hate your anti-freedom-ness.
Republicans [hangs head] start to weary me.  Freedom used to be the rule.  Some still follow this, but too many have turned dictatorial.

There I am.  There I'll stay.  I love freedom.  If you think otherwise, I probably want to smack you until you finally get it.  (but that would probably constitute assault under current laws, so I restrain myself)

EU (ew?) cookie policy

If you have the misfortune to live in a place controlled by a european legislature, this is my official notice that I don't care any tiny bit about the stupid legislation that declares that people must disclose a site's cookie policy.

What's worse I feel sorry for EVERYBODY that has to deal with the the results of this in the form of fairly intrusive boxes, dialogs, and other crap that demand that a person read and accept that a site is using cookies to continue using said site.  If a user is too uninformed to know what a cookie is or that sites may be doing bad things with them, too friggin' bad.  No action by any moronic legislature is going to stop bad people from using people's ignorance against them.

To clarify my position, I am not personally using cookies on this blog to do anything.  Since it's hosted on blogger (Google essentially), they may be using cookies to disambiguate visitors from each other, or whatever.  I don't care, and you probably don't either.  Further, I think that you and your other continent-men should start putting in power some legislators that will reverse idiotic laws like this.  If you do care, and you think the legislation was a good idea, I welcome and invite you to go wander off and read something else, because you're some horrible, stinking form of unsalvageable.

That's my cookie policy.  I'm not tracking you.  Google may be.  Meh.  I don't care.  If you care, you have the option to leave.  Use it.  Take your governments with you.

Fixing the FreeBSD ashift (4k) problem

Originally sourced and reformatted from Fixing the ZFS ashift problem on FreeBSD

The blog appears long-time unmaintained and looks like crap where it was previously very readable, I doubt the author will mind that another usable copy with better formatting floating around.

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As you’re probably aware (since you’re reading this), some of the new hard drives with “Advanced Format” lie about their sector size and thus the partitioning and/or file systems end up unaligned with the disk and performance suffers. Boo, Western Digital. You guys are worse than Hitler. But, since the WD20EARS was cheap and I didn’t think anyone would design something so stupid, I bought it.
Of course, ZFS is smart enough to use the larger sector size through the “ashift” setting, but only if it actually knows the sector size of the drive. This option is set at pool (or rather VDEV) creation and can’t be changed.
The easy way around this is to use gnop to prevent the drive from lying.

# zpool create tank raidz ada0 ada1 ada2
# zdb | grep ashift
       ashift: 9

Oe noes! 2^9 is 512, the wrong sector size. Let’s try that again.

# zpool destroy tank
# gnop create -S 4096 ada0
# zpool create tank raidz ada0.nop ada1 ada2
# zdb | grep ashift
       ashift: 12

2^12 is 4096, as it should be. Note that you should only need to tag one of the drives.  zpool is clever enough to use the largest size of them all. Also note that you need to do this every time you add a new VDEV, otherwise you’ll have varying ashift values within your pool. Only problem now is that the drive list is a bit ugly, but that’s easily fixed.

# zpool status
pool: tank
 state: ONLINE
 scan: none requested
config:
        NAME           STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        tank           ONLINE       0     0     0
          raidz1-0     ONLINE       0     0     0
            ada0.nop   ONLINE       0     0     0
            ada1       ONLINE       0     0     0
            ada2       ONLINE       0     0     0
# zpool export tank
# gnop destroy ada0.nop
# zpool import tank
# zpool status
  pool: tank
 state: ONLINE
 scan: none requested
config:
        NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        tank        ONLINE       0     0     0
          raidz1-0  ONLINE       0     0     0
             ada0   ONLINE       0     0     0
             ada1   ONLINE       0     0     0
             ada2   ONLINE       0     0     0

There we go. Destroying the gnop node just removes the sector size override, the data is safe and sound. You’ve now got ashift set right without fiddling with patches and such.

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Creation Example

  tanker: ~ # bash
  [root@tanker ~]# gnop create -S 4096 ada0
  [root@tanker ~]# gnop create -S 4096 ada1
  [root@tanker ~]# zpool create gozer mirror ada0.nop ada1.nop
  [root@tanker ~]# zpool status -v
    pool: gozer
   state: ONLINE
    scan: none requested
  config:
  
   NAME          STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
   gozer         ONLINE       0     0     0
     mirror-0    ONLINE       0     0     0
       ada0.nop  ONLINE       0     0     0
       ada1.nop  ONLINE       0     0     0
  
  errors: No known data errors
  [root@tanker ~]# zpool export gozer
  [root@tanker ~]# gnop destroy ada0.nop
  [root@tanker ~]# gnop destroy ada1.nop
  [root@tanker ~]# zpool import gozer
  [root@tanker ~]# zpool status -v
    pool: gozer
   state: ONLINE
    scan: none requested
  config:
  
   NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
   gozer       ONLINE       0     0     0
     mirror-0  ONLINE       0     0     0
       ada0    ONLINE       0     0     0
       ada1    ONLINE       0     0     0
  
  errors: No known data errors
  

IMEI Check Code

This is mostly a reminder to myself:

(for most phones) To check a phone for its IMEI number(s), from the phone's dialer, type *#06#.

Leadership...

When the Russian leadership makes the american (uncapitalized intentionally) leadership look like fools, there's really something to be said.  I'm not sure what that thing is that should be said, but it cannot be good.