Category Archives: Sunday’s Rant

LMDE Upgrades

Let’s back up a moment… Like way far… Before Flush Twice… Even before Windows 95… The internet had only just reached Ohio, and BBS’s (aka Bulletin Board Systems) were still the coolest thing you could do with your home computer on a Saturday night. (Hey, it actually got me laid many times, which is more than I can say for reddit.)

It was the early 90’s and a friend of mine had introduced me to a new operating system. He was so excited about it! “What can you do with it?” I asked while feigning interest. Denny typed a few cryptic commands into what looked like a broken DOS prompt. It spit back equally cryptic nonsense as he explained with great excitement what the system was doing. At the time it didn’t make that much sense, and I wasn’t really all that impressed.

A few years later I would be very impressed during a computer show at Hara Arena when I witnessed an entire operating system installed with a graphical desktop environment in a mere 20 minutes. In both cases, that OS was Linux, and after the latter, I became a Linux user. Fun fact: Flush Twice was originally hosted on a Linux server in my basement.

Of course some of you may recall my foray into the military back in 2005. After I joined the Army, my propensity for Linux was not well tolerated, and I had to switch over to Windows again, but in 2012, I was a free man, and I immediately steered back towards Linux. Of course my old distro had withered and died, so I had to find a new one.

Linux Mint was particularly appealing, owing to the fact that the system could be installed with full multimedia codecs in a mere 20 minutes. Everything just worked, and the Mate Desktop Environment was so clean, simple, and intuitive that I really didn’t have to Google info on how to use it.

Now while Linux Mint offers a variety of desktop choices, their flagship is called Cinnamon. It’s a home grown desktop very similar to Mate, but slightly more hackerish. It also seemed glitchier to me, and it looked very dark. I prefered Mate. It was lighter, seemed to work better, and it was easier to find everything.

A small failing of Linux Mint at the time was that it was based off of Ubuntu. While this made rebranding and packaging a snap, the whole OS had to be reinstalled about once a year when the latest version was released. An alternative was Linux Mint Debian Edition. It was a little grittier, but I wouldn’t have to keep reinstalling it so often.

So LMDE (the Debian branch) became my OS of choice, and with it, I could just get things done. Of course 3 years ago, LMDE became LMDE 2, and just recently it became LMDE 3, and wouldn’t you know it… They discontinued the version that included the Mate Desktop Environment, so you can’t just upgrade in place… Nope. I had to do a fresh install with the Cinnamon desktop.

OK, so all is not lost. This is Linux after all. After installing LMDE 3 with Cinnamon, I just installed the Mate desktop packages (of which there are many) and switched to using it instead of Cinnamon. With three desktop installations, that was a lot of downloading and installing, and it went a little over the usual 20 minutes.

But still, the computers have all been updated, and everything seems pretty much like it was. Given how the interfaces changed from Windows 7 to 8 to 10, keeping things the same is a relief. I take comfort that the Linux community is dedicated to keeping desktop computers alive and well for many years to come.

So special thanks to Clem and company for all their hard work on creating and maintaining Linux Mint.

Also thanks to this week’s joke contributors: Glenn and George. I wouldn’t be able to keep doing this if it weren’t for their contributions, because I ran out of jokes a long time ago. If you would like to contribute a joke, you can submit one here or email me at flush2x@gmail.com. If your joke is used, you’ll get a thank you from me and a warm fuzzy feeling inside!

Pax,

-f2x

Burger Time

After telling my guest to help herself to the ice in my freezer, she opened the door and held her mouth slightly agape for a moment before getting her ice. “You sure must like hamburgers,” she said with an uncomfortable tone.

It just so happened that my local grocery had a sale on 80/20 ground beef recently. The price was low enough that I made the decision to stock up. Once I got the meat home, I portioned it into quarter pound patties sandwiched between wax papers. There were over 50 patties stacked neatly on the right side of my freezer, so I can see where a casual observer might think I was a tad bit obsessive.

Of course if she’d looked at the shelf on the freezer door, she might have also made a similar comment about the pork loin chops and chicken breasts. Somehow the stacks of frozen vegetables next to the burgers completely escaped her perception as well. It’s a carefully organized ice box, and there’s enough food inside to last for months. It’s not a vain attempt to survive the apocalypse. It’s actually economics.

Meat prices tend to be volatile, and they spend more time being too expensive rather than reasonably priced. For this reason, I buy a lot of it whenever it goes on sale and freeze it. After all, food stored in the freezer will basically last forever. and this gives me the ability to enjoy the foods I like, even when the prices are much higher than I could justify spending.

So yes, Michelle, I do like hamburgers. In fact, I like a wide variety of foods. What I don’t like is spending more money than I have to, and that’s why I stock up on volatilely priced goods when the prices are low.

But this wasn’t over. Next came the comment about how “GFS has really good frozen hamburgers”.

Now I’m not a fan of store bought premade frozen hamburgers. I’ve tried about a dozen different brands from the budget to the gourmet over the years. They always say “100% Beef” on them, and I’ve never seen any other ingredients listed. While they do taste like a meat patty, and some are almost enjoyable, they don’t taste like a normal burger. No matter how you cook them, there is always a slightly rubbery texture, the smell is gamey, and the fat seems to have a much lower viscosity when it melts.

And here’s the kicker with store bought frozen hamburgers: If you thaw them, things get really weird.

“Thaw them?” she remarked with palpable disgust.

Yeah, like if you want to make chili, tacos, sloppy joe, meatloaf, or anything that uses ground beef that isn’t in the shape of a disk.

OK, at this point her brain was about to break. She understood the idea of buying ground beef to make these things. She even understood the concept of freezing ground beef and thawing it out later to make these things. The problem came with the idea of using frozen hamburger patties to make a meatloaf, and couldn’t grasp why anyone would even think to do that.

Because it’s ground beef?

Her head couldn’t wrap around the concept. If I need a pound of ground beef for a recipe, I take out four of my home pressed ground beef patties and let it thaw. I can then break it apart to make brown ground beef, or mix it with ingredients to make meatballs or some other dish.

“If you’re going to make something else out of it, then why make it into a hamburger [patty] to start with?” she pointed out.

Because when I buy the ground beef, I don’t exactly know every meal I’m going to make with it. It’s easier to just turn them all into 1/4 pound patties, freeze them, and go from there.

She shook her head in bewilderment. This was just too much for her brain to wrap around. Apparently in her version of reality, you’re supposed to know exactly what you’re going to make with the ground beef before you buy it, and not buy more than you need over the next week. Changing those plans after that point somehow violated the sanctity of the food. And using a raw hamburger patty for anything other than making a hamburger was definitely a bizarre notion only a madman could conceive.

But when it comes time to make a meal, it’s easier to turn four frozen home pressed hamburger patties into a meatloaf than it is to turn a frozen pound of ground beef into four hamburger patties. When I buy the meat, I just portion it and press them all, so later on I have easy options available to me, and I buy in bulk so that whenever prices go up, I’ll still have great food choices available to me for many weeks to come.

It’s not a hard concept, Michelle.

Pax,

-f2x

P.S. Another special thanks to Glenn and George for this week’s jokes. People who contribute the jokes to this site are truly the best people in the world. You can contribute jokes by going here or by emailing them to flush2x@gmail.com.

Yes, It’s a Shameless Plug

So it’s basically the only ad I ever run on this site. Once again I am promoting mBlip. If you haven’t tried it lately, well, why the heck not?

Drawing from over 100 YouTube channels and growing, mBlip provides up to the minute videos from YouTube content creators. With the addition of more generalized categories, you can focus on subjects such as News, STEM, and Food. There’s a lot going on every day, and it’s amazing how it just keeps getting better and better.

So if you’ve never tried mBlip, you really ought to check it out, and if you haven’t tried it recently, then give it another go already! It might just surprise you!

I’ve really put a lot of work into mBlip, and I really hope that people from all walks of life can get something out of it. If you have any suggestions about how the site could be made better, I’m very interested in hearing/reading what you have to say.

So for those of you who are regular mBlippers, I thank you! It’s really been a fun site for me to build and grow. Again I just want to give a special thanks to Glenn and George for the jokes. Flush Twice would not be possible if not for the dedicated people who contribute the jokes to this site. You can contribute jokes here or by emailing them to flush2x@gmail.com.

Pax,

-f2x

A Comment on Comment Spam

In the old days, bots flew over the internet in giant flocks so dense, they could block out all meaningful discourse. It was infuriating for everyone who had a website. The creative spellings of Cialis were endless, and their broken links were mildly curious until you realized that they weren’t really trying to sell your visitors something; they were trying to ruin your site.

Many anti-spam plugins were born. Some involve captchas, some utilized alien brain waves, but for the most part, spam was something that you really didn’t see very much of anymore. Instead, as a webmaster, you saw messages from your anti-spam solution telling you just how wonderful a job it was doing by protecting you from spam.

So I got to thinking… Just how much spam am I really getting these days? It turns out, it’s not a whole lot. I deleted my anti-spam plugin, and apparently even the spambots hate my site. There have been only five (5) spam comments in the past month. Basically it’s about one spam per week, which is more than twice the rate of legitimate comments.

Wait… I have legitimate comments? Huh… Apparently there are 53 of them since 2016, so yes, yes there are actual people making occasional comments. Of course about half those comments are from me replying to the nice folks who bothered to make the comments, so that would make the spam rate about four times the rate of people making comments which basically doesn’t mean shit, because Zombo.com is still getting more daily visitors than Flush Twice.

Oh, I shouldn’t really complain though… Oh wait. That’s why I’m here in the first place. It’s a Sunday rant, and today I’m ranting that I don’t get very much comment spam for some reason. Damn. I sure do rant about some really stupid shit.

So what do you think? Leave a spam-like comment in the comments below, and I’ll be sure to personally delete it.

Before I sign off, I just want to give a special thanks to Glenn A. and George L. for this week’s jokes. Flush Twice would not be possible if not for the dedicated people who contribute the jokes to this site. You can contribute jokes here or by emailing them to flush2x@gmail.com.

Pax,

-f2x

Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be.

It’s rough being an internet celebrity. I can hardly walk out to my car without hordes of fans clamoring for my autograph. Just the other day, PewDiePie was trying to follow me around for a taste of my fame, and I keep having to change my phone number because Fox and Friends won’t stop calling to get me to come on their show. You just don’t know how it feels.

Of course the truth is that I’m so anonymous that the only people who ever seem to notice me are the police cruisers looking to fill their quotas. Here lately they’ve been riding my bumper down the street when I’m on my way to work. I’m telling you, self-driving cars can’t get here fast enough. The sooner those pricks get put out of a job, the better.

In other news, I’m still breathing. That’s a plus. I think I really do enjoy that aspect of life. The other thing I like is the tomato on toast sandwiches I’ve been chowing down lately. For some reason my tomatoes keep getting smaller every week, but they still taste amazing.

For those who don’t know, Ohioans are required by law to grow tomato plants every summer. I’ve also taken to growing banana peppers as well. I love to pickle them and put them on my pizzas. I’ve always loved those jars of pickled banana peppers at the store, but these home gown ones really take it to the next level.

OK, so I just thought I toss out a few of these random thoughts for this week’s rant. I’ve got a ton of things to do, so until next time.

Pax,

-f2x

As Seen on TV Audiences

Have you ever watched an infomercial and thought, “Wow, that looks pretty cool!”

You didn’t buy it though did you? Of course not. Why? Because you’re not stupid.

Most people learn from an early age that long format TV ads are peddling hype. Though not always, the product itself is usually of inferior quality. Once you get it, you quickly find that it’s not quite as amazing as the commercial made it seem. So when you hear that “Announcer Voice” telling you to “act now!” you disengage any primitive thoughts to call that toll free number. Good for you.

To be honest, I don’t watch a lot of TV these days. Mostly I watch whatever comes up on mBlip. But still, I catch the occasional broadcast channel, and when the commercials come on, I immediately and instinctively know the audience they’re targeting. When I start to see ads for ambulance chasers, term life insurance, Medicare supplements, and “As Seen on TV” gimmickry, then I know that the primary audience they expect to find watching that channel at that moment is feeble minded fools.

Of course I was watching that old “Gun Smoke” episode to feel retro nostalgic, but I suspect that many people watching it would find it plausible that the government faked the moon landings to cover up the alien invaders who kidnapped Elvis in order to make the baby Jebus cry. How that much cognitive dissonance doesn’t result in a cranial paroxysm is beyond me.

My point is, if your non-ironic regular TV viewing habits frequently subject you to this kind of advertising, perhaps you shouldn’t be voting in the next election.

Pax,

-f2x

Pick a Topic. Any Topic. OK, any topic but that one.

“Isn’t it strange that we talk least about the things we think about most?” -Charles Lindbergh

Some people never shut up. It seems like they just keep on talking and talking. I have a friend who will start talking to you, and she’ll keep on talking to you even as you are walking out the door. Even when you close the door behind you, she’s still having that conversation as if you were standing right there in front of her. This is an extreme example, but I imagine like most of us, she frequently has thoughts that she’d never say out loud.

Generally speaking, our brains are wired to protect us from ourselves. Of course it doesn’t always work, but it usually keeps you from falling off a cliff, or rolling around in lava, or saying shit that might get you killed. The latter may not seem to apply to celebrities on Twitter, but they’re all pretty much still breathing.

While those thoughts we never say lay the foundations of our mental house of cards, no amount of waterboarding, drunkenness, or pentothal could ever force us to utter those thoughts aloud. It’s a hard coded priority that takes precedence over self-preservation. Even the most cowardly would die before they would speak.

So if you’ve ever worried about those thoughts in your head, take comfort in knowing that you’re not the only one who has them. Everyone has them. On the other hand, the thoughts you never tell are unique unto you, and no matter how many friends you have, you are still very much alone.

Pax,

-f2x

The Past, Present, and Future

Many philosophies try to steer you into being mindful of the present, not to live in the past, or worry about the future. While it’s generally OK to honor the past and plan for the future, you’re supposed to spend only a necessary amount of time to the task… then stop thinking about it, and get back to work.

But it’s never that easy. The past, present, and future are deeply intertwined, and these days the past can haunt. I can only imagine how a future #metoo campaign will attack me over my role in curating a daily joke website that brazenly featured taboo jokes. Fortunately, this ain’t Twitter. No one reads this or even knows who I am, so for now I think I’m pretty safe.

The present is constantly dropping hints that you need to make future plans. That strange hum in your car’s engine is telling you that you will be spending a lot of money soon. The aunt who’s health just took a turn for the worse, is notice that you’re gonna need to have your suit cleaned and pressed for when you’re asked to serve as a pallbearer. Come to think of it, every close person older than you is a funeral you’ll likely be attending.

And what of this thing called future? It’s the one thing that people worry about more than anything else. It’s the only thing we can have any hope of changing but seldom do. It’s going to get here whether you worry about it or not, but if you don’t give it proper consideration, it’s likely to deliver you the “unpleasant” version of itself.

Ultimately it’s up to you to decide how and where to focus your mind. I tend to look at it like driving down a busy road with lots of intersections and stop and go traffic. If you don’t keep moving, everyone will leave you behind. It is dangerous to focus only on the road right in front of you. Keep a broad outlook of what lies ahead and be mindful of your environment. It also helps to know where you’re going, but be prepared to take a few detours.

I admit that it’s not a perfect philosophy, but it’s a starting point for you to find your own path.

Pax,

-f2x

Going Right Around the Bend

Recently there was a news item than came up in my feed about a Puerto Rican t-shirt. Perhaps you heard about it, or maybe not. In case you didn’t know, Puerto Rico is a U.S. Territory. The people who live there are natural born U.S. citizens. It has been considered for statehood on numerous occasions. They have their own flag like any other state or commonwealth, and it looks just about as patriotically American as 4th of July bunting.

With all that going for it, apparently some idiot thought that a woman wearing a t-shirt with the Puerto Rican flag on it was somehow offensively un-American. The video footage was cringe inducing. It was so outrageous that I almost thought it had to be some kind of setup. I mean, no one could be that stupid, could they? But it turns out this really did happen. I’m still wondering what precipitated this altercation. Was this just some rando looking for brown people to harass? Who does that shit?

I was sitting in the break room at work across from “Steve” (obviously not his real name) when I first saw this article on my phone. Now don’t get me wrong: I like Steve, and we get along fairly well. Like most of the people where I work, Steve is a redneck, and boastfully proud of it. He’s pretty much a bad caricature of “Duck Dynasty”, and would probably happily agree with that assessment. Steve’s a nice guy, but…

Anyway, a regrettable human characteristic I possess is to make conversation with people. I mentioned the article I was reading to Steve. The video had just gone viral, and the “national discussion” hadn’t yet taken hold. I don’t know what kind of response I was expecting, but he immediately started muttering about those “damn liberals”.

I thought maybe he misunderstood the premise, so I said, “It’s not about liberals, it’s about a woman wearing a t-shirt with the Puerto Rican flag on it.”

This sent him careening on a rant about people not respecting the history of the Confederate flag, and, “If people did any research at all, they’d know that…” then he trailed into some incomprehensible mutterings about black people designing the confederate flag. I can’t make this shit up.

Of course at that point I glanced at the clock and said, “Looks like my break time’s over.”

So what’s my point? Apparently my whole life has become one long gas lit non sequitur. The world has gone mad, and I’m trapped inside this insane asylum with people who can no longer pass a Turing test. I might as well start drinking again and have conversations with my Magic 8-Ball.

Pax,

-f2x

Getting by on Two 10Gb/month SIM Cards

Mobile carriers hate people who tether. If they know in advance that you’re planning on tethering, they will put heavy restrictions on your ability to use that feature. Of course if you’re paying them a shit-ton of money through a four line family plan with a 2 year contract and all the latest phones, they’ll give you all the internet you can eat… But if you’re on a budget, you ain’t gonna like what they do to you.

Now I’m not shilling for my mobile provider, but Mint Mobile has this deal where you pay $300 and you get unlimited calls and text, plus 10Gb of tetherable 4g/LTE data per month for 12 months. That comes to $25/month, and I bought two of them. I also bought the $240 5Gb/month for my actual cell phone, so that’s actually 25Gb/month on 3 SIM cards, and yeah, that was a lot of money up front, but I don’t have to worry about anymore internet or cell phone charges for the rest of the year.

Twice a month, I unplug my modem and swap out the SIM. The removed SIM goes into a $50 Android phone. If I budget the data plan over the next 15 days, it comes to about 680Mb per day. The modem is actually quite good at keeping track of my usage, so I can easily check it from a bookmarked webpage. I turn on the WiFi hotspot on the cheap Android phone with the spent SIM card and connect it to my Windows 10 computer. Even when the 10Gb is used up, it can still get unlimited 2g internet speeds until the monthly reset.

Of course most people would feel utterly suffocated by such a paltry constraint. I have to admit, it’s not always easy to keep within those parameters. If I find that I’m going over budget at the house: I tether my phone (which gets 5Gb/month) to my desktop for a few evenings. It gets me back on track, and the performance isn’t any different than using the main system. I just have to remember to plug my ethernet cable back in when I’m done.

Of course if I use up all my SIM cards, then I’m only almost fucked. The SIM cards are staggered so I’m only at most about two weeks away from getting another 10Gb, but more importantly all three SIMs get unlimited 2g data. Thats about twice the speed of a 56K dial-up modem and can limp me to my next refill date, so it’s not like I’m ever disconnected.

In the end I’m paying about the same amount that Spectrum wanted to charge me, but my internet is being metered and of course a little slower. On the other hand, my connection is no longer randomly cutting out 5 times an hour, and I don’t have to worry about sudden rate increases or bullshit charges on my bill.

In a perfect world, some benevolent soul would guide me to a SIM card that would provide me with unlimited internet that is capable of streaming decent video for less than $50/month. Hint, hint, nudge, nudge! I’m still waiting!

Oh well… At least I can watch YouTube videos at 240p for about 5 hours every day. No really… It’s about 2.16Mb per minute which is 130Mb per hour which means I’ll only use 650Mb after 5 hours! But while the video quality isn’t terrible, it is a little rough looking at times.

In contrast, Netflix will eat 600Mb every 2 hours on it’s low bandwidth setting. This is not ideal. I really wish they would have an even lower setting, so I could use it at home. Right now I only watch Netflix when I visit my dad and we watch a movie together at his house. You know what’s strange? Even though I have his system set up so he can watch NetFlix and Amazon videos, he still ends up using Kodi most of the time. But I digress.

I have to be wary of any background services that could suck down my data plan without my realizing it. It’s why my Windows 10 machine is only allowed to connect to the “spent” SIM card.

So before I go, a big “fuck you” to all the autoplay videos on news sites. You guys suck. I also want to wish a pox on all the advertisers who autoplay video ads in hi def. I hope you all rot in hell. Special thanks to uBlock Origin, Chrome, and Linux for making it possible to bring my data usage down to within my pathetic monthly allotment. And I’d also like to thank you, my internet viewers for whom I have never seen or met. It’s like you’re not even there.

Pax,

-f2x

Oh, thank you random internet ghost!

Within only a couple of hours of posting this, I have gotten word from one of my “non-existent” viewers that I can watch Netflix with even lower bandwidth usage on Linux by installing “wondershaper”.

sudo apt-get install wondershaper

You then enter the magic phrase,

sudo wondershaper [interface] 200 200

This will give you extra slow internet. Now Netflix almost looks like shit, but only uses about 90Mb/hour, which is even less than 240P YouTube.

Of course this really slows all of your internet down, so it’s important to know how to reverse the spell:

sudo wondershaper clear [interface]

Keep in mind that [interface] is something like eth0 or wan0 or even usb0, whichever the case may be.

Thanks for that tip, my friend. Now I can watch awesome stuff every day after work.