u/ehbowen

Full disclosure: I used to hold a CDL, thirty-plus years back, in the days of the second logbook and similar. I didn't stick with it long, and I was never actually pulled over and cited.

I'm working on a story now in which a corrupt sheriff and some of his deputies are providing "protection" to a commercial chop shop specializing in very heavy equipment, which they re-tag and clandestinely ferry at night to the nearest barge port for shipment down to Central America and such. The story begins with a trucker, already on notice for a previous data logger violation, just about out of hours but nearing a truck stop on the old US highway which has a space available for him...when he sees the biggest front-end loader he can ever remember being trucked, without lights or escort, down a deserted back road...and it's North Carolina (where ANY oversize/permit move after dark is illegal). Just then, a county deputy pulls him over, and proceeds to give him the ticky-tack treatment while completely ignoring the monster oversize load proceeding on its way to the barge dock in nearby Tennessee.

Just like to hear some of the more outrageous examples you've encountered from either real life or the grapevine?

I'm adding a couple of security cameras around the perimeter of my home to cover entrances/exits and such. I'm doing some renovation work, so it would be possible to conceal the cameras now if desirable.

I'm in what is euphemistically termed a "blue collar transitional" neighborhood, and this is an older home...much older than most of them. And, from bitter experience, we've found that the local constabulary really doesn't care much about property crimes; this image was from a camera feed set up at my church taken in October 2022. We reported it and forwarded the video; the PD just spiked it without ever assigning it to an officer:

Not worth investigating...

With that in mind...should my new cameras (at my home) be mounted conspicuously? Or should I attempt to hide them, as much as possible? I think that the chances that the local police would do more than munch another donut are minimal...but I'm not sure if a conspicuous camera might also be a sign that, "Hey, there's something in this old house worth protecting!" Because the local thugs are also well aware that they're safe from any real prosecution.

Thoughts?

I'm a victim of government health care...(Veteran's Affairs).

Okay. A week ago Wednesday I was seen by the VA podiatrist for a foot infection, and he trimmed my toenails. One toenail (right foot, 2nd toe) was discolored and black; he saw it and asked how long it had been that way (at least two months), then said nothing more.

Over the next couple of days the toe became reddish, and on Wednesday this week while showering I saw that a large blister had burst open and it was draining clear liquid mixed with a little blood. I went in to my usual primary care clinic (Podiatry declined to see me again unless my primary doctor referred me, and their next open appointment is in October). The walk-in doc looked at it, gave me some care instructions and a course of Cephalaxin (500 mg 4x daily) plus some Ibuprofen as needed for pain.

I've been taking the Cephalaxin every six hours (timer on my watch), but even so while irrigating and cleaning the toe today I saw that the foot is noticeably swollen, up to the ankle. Not badly swollen; I can still wear normal shoes and socks without discomfort, but it is definitely swollen. The toe doesn't look bad, it actually looks better than it did on Wednesday...but it is swelling.

My instructions were that if the foot became "seriously worse" I should go in to the ER. A complication is that I have a weekend trip scheduled out of town that I'd hate to cancel if not necessary. Does noticeable swelling with no other signs of acute distress count as "seriously worse?" Or should I be able to make it until Monday, when I'll be back and I can go back in to the clinic (or the ER), if necessary?

Basic info: Height 70"; weight 200 lbs (down from a high of 275); controlling blood sugar with low-carb-high-fat diet; never smoked; very light alcohol (~2 servings per week); no non-prescription intoxicants, ever; other conditions include diagnosed schizophrenic and on 0.25 mg/day Risperidone as well as 81 mg OTC aspirin as a prophylactic.

Genie Jeannie is back.

This time, though, she's asking before she just grabs you.

You went to your high school reunion a couple months back, and you found your old best friend...the talk of the class; he became a multibillionaire overnight, married a supermodel wife, and it's rumored that he has a functional Millennium Falcon in one of his garages. You (and many others) asked him how this was all possible? He hemmed and hawed and deferred most of the night...but, after the fifth drink, when it was just you and him closing down the bar, he told you this unbelievable story about a genie and a bet and three wishes. You left the table muttering, "Wow, I wish something like that would happen to me."

Today, you got a letter in the mail. Old-fashioned, handwritten letter; at first you had trouble making out the elaborate cursive script but, magically, it somehow seemed to change into something you could read:

"Dear X: I've heard your request, and I'm pleased to tell you that I was able to lay another bet. There will be no wishes this time, but I'm prepared to pay you $5 million as your share if you complete the basic challenge, or $100 million if you complete the advanced one. No changing after you choose, though!

"Here's the basic challenge: I'll transport you to a remote stretch of railroad in the late 19th century, somewhere in the western United States...Colorado, Utah, Arizona, somewhere like that. You'll have a job as a railroad section hand, helping to take care of seven miles of track between beyond and back of beyond, using hand tools, wheel barrows, and so forth. You need no experience, you'll learn on the job; and I'll heal any physical disabilities you have which would keep you from performing hard labor. Stick it out and hold the job successfully for two years, and you'll wake up back here in your own time tomorrow morning, physically no older, and five million dollars richer.

"For the advanced challenge it's the same setup—but you go back as the section foreman. That's right, as the boss. And you will be expected to learn the job quickly enough to not be fired by your roadmaster. You'll have no training, but the section hands working for you will be experienced, and if you treat them well, they can teach you most of what you need to know; the rest you can pick up from the roadmaster and superintendent if they see you learning well and that you have the respect of your men.

"For both challenges, your meals and housing will be provided; for the basic challenge you'll live in the section bunkhouse; as the foreman you'll have the section house which is set up for a wife and kids. If you have a family now, you can bring them along; just be advised that it's expected that your wife will cook the meals for the entire section gang. No extra pay from the railroad for this, but they will supply your groceries free of charge. If you're single, or if you don't bring your family, you'll be expected to find someone there, in the 19th century. If you bond with her, I'll bring her back with you.

"For recreation, the nearest decent-sized town will be at least forty miles away, but as a railroad employee you can hop the daily passenger train free of charge. If you're concerned about racism or such, well, it will be present, but I'll set you in a situation where it won't be intolerable. Remember, two years, for either $5 mill or $100 mill. And, I need to have your answer within the next 60 seconds."

What do you say?

I'm wanting to renovate my hallway half-bath for dual purpose use as a guest toilet and a film darkroom. I'm planning to install a 3-bulb fixture, with two bulbs white light and one bulb safe light, overhead as well as a pure white light fixture above the lavatory/sink.

In order to meet current code, I'll need to place an AFCI/GFCI at the end of the continuous run for the breaker. My thought is to, next to that and in the same box, place a key switch which will allow me to select safe or white light (alternately, to just disable the white light altogether) while I'm doing the darkroom work. I know from experience just how easy it is to accidentally hit the wrong switch in the dark....

Since I'm planning to re-key the house with SFIC (interchangeable core) locks, it would be a plus if the light switch could also be SFIC-compatible. So far, a few Google searches seem to indicate that this is a unicorn, but I'm open to suggestions.

Both my desktop, and my laptop (running Ubuntu Studio 24.04LTS) have encountered major, ongoing issues with kernel 7.0.0-28. The laptop refuses to complete the update, while the desktop suffered repeated, ongoing crashes which I finally traced to an incompatibility with the drivers for my AMD FirePro W5100 graphics card.

Purging every trace of 7.0.0-28 from my system and reverting to the older kernel fixed the problem...but now the system is trying to load it and update to it again. How can I tell it, "Skip this one, until/unless it's ready?"

My RS816 is still working well, but it's getting a little long in the tooth, it's not expandable memory-wise, and it can't handle Container Manager.

I found a secondhand RS820+ at a price which I could afford, and am setting it up on my home office network right now. I just thought I'd solicit suggestions for how to use the two machines (which both have the eSATA port) together for best effect. My biggest need right now is bulk data storage and better backup capabilities (Synology Backup For Business doesn't cut it...I lost data after it would not restore to my Linux workstation).

What I have: A 16.45 square foot windowless half bath, currently under renovation.

What I want: A compact, one-man darkroom suitable for B&W 35mm and 120 medium format roll film work...possibly color, some day.

Right now the walls are open, I can put power outlets and lighting where needed, and I can exchange the lavatory sink if advisable. I have the tools to make custom brackets and shelving, as well.

Any suggestions, or pointers to what worked for others?

(I used to do my own darkroom developing back in high school, but...well, Jimmy Carter was behind the Big Desk!)

I'm wanting to do some woodworking for my own home, and I'd like to buy a small load of cedar or similar rot-resistant wood which I could make into garage doors and similar. Yes, I've tried Big Google, but I'm not really happy with the selection (which seems to consist mostly of the biggest advertisers...).

Just wanted to see if local users knew of a small-scale buyer-friendly place within a day's drive (or so) of Houston. Right now, I'm basically just looking for enough to load up a minivan. S1S is fine; I can re-saw and plane it.

Our small church has a 7.5 ton unit for the sanctuary, and a 15 ton unit for the fellowship hall and Sunday school classroom wing. But, outside of scheduled services, there's normally not much going on.

We have an IT closet which I keep cool with a portable A/C unit exhausting through the ceiling (with a fire damper) into the attic. It's about 90 square feet. I'd like to be able to get rid of it; it's been replaced twice, and it's not very efficient. Next door to it is an office of about 100 square feet, which I'd like to be able to cool independently, and across the hallway from that is the Pastor's office of about 150 square feet.

A mini-split seems to be the best way to go, but a three-zone unit is too rich for our blood. A window unit would not be a good choice; in this neighborhood it would likely be stolen (it's not a very good neighborhood...).

Wanted to throw this out and see if anyone has ideas that might do the job better, hopefully at a budget price.

Your favorite genie was impressed with your answer to your last hypothetical situation, and so he shows up with a gift: "Got something for you. Golden tickets. Four of them. Now, you can't monetize them; try to sell them, or charge, and they'll vanish into a puff of smoke. But you can share them with your family, or friends, if you like...as long as you go along."

"What are they good for?" you ask, confused.

"Anything." The genie smiles. "Any ticketed event which was held during your lifetime. Just announce which event you want to see. For example, hold one or two tickets up and say, 'I want to see Topol's last performance as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.' You...and your companion, if any...will materialize a block from the theater, fifteen minutes before showtime, with tickets for the best premium seats, and either a no-limit credit card or a wad of cash money for snacks, drinks, souvenirs, dinner after the show, and other incidentals. After the show, you simply announce that you're ready to return home. You'll come back to the same time and place which you left from, along with any food which is actually in your stomach and any souvenirs which were directly related to the event. Oh," he added, giving a look of warning, "I know about Bill. Bill will try to call his broker and use the souvenir money to buy up a block of stock, or maybe Bitcoin. Well, whenever you get back, that will all be gone like a fart in the wind. All you get to bring back are show souvenirs...and memories."

He hands the tickets to you. You look at them, wondering. "Uh...I have (a wife and [edit]) three kids, and the World Series is coming up soon"...

"Two of them are under twelve," he says, reassuringly. "Two for one if a kid is twelve or under. And, yes, if you hang on to those tickets until October, I'll let you use them for the current Series."

"What if the event was sold out?"

"It won't be. These work through time. Actually, they split time. So, in the other time track, there's another family which also remembers being there and sitting in the same seats...so you're not depriving anyone. Have fun."

And he vanishes in a puff of smoke. What do you do with the tickets? (Remember...no selling!)

Possibly they're aliens, possibly angels, perhaps mutations. But they're here...and, it turns out, they have been here for centuries, keeping largely to themselves, and moving on into a new identity every fifty years or so.

But, a couple weeks back, a security camera at a college caught, live on video, a big, burly would-be assailant attack a 95-pound redheaded coed. She picked him up, one-handed, and threw him through a reinforced concrete wall, leaving a hole the size of a bomb crater and a mortician planning a closed-casket funeral. When campus police surrounded and tried to question her, she just smiled sweetly, shifted into a completely different (albeit still humanoid) appearance, and lifted off the ground and flew away.

She hasn't been seen (in that identity) since. But other stories have since come out, such as the one about the man addressing city council during public comment time and pointing out that a proposed sweetheart deal to give a multi-million dollar construction job to a relative of the mayor violated state law. When the council ordered him thrown out, he telekinetically pulled the entire city hall down into a pile of rubble and was the only one to walk away.

The number of these people is unknown, but it's very nearly 0.1%. It's obvious that they possess telekinesis/flight, invisibility, shapeshifting, and likely telepathy as well as other yet unknown powers. But they normally keep to themselves, deflecting any personal questions, staying within laws and the rules, and just smiling if asked anything direct. It's even been discovered that they sometimes intermarry...the chances of their powers being passed on to half-human offspring are small, but it does occasionally happen.

How does society at large change?

What do you, personally, do to adapt?

Movie or book, your choice (please specify). The original Carrie, no sequels, fanfictions, or knockoffs. Yes, it's 1975 (close enough); no cell phones or modern tech. You wake up to the clock radio with the local news announcing that tonight is the high school prom.

For the girls, you wake up as Sue Snell, one of Carrie's few friends, but one who has been barred from the prom for the shower/teasing incident. For the boys, you wake up as Tommy Ross, Sue's boyfriend (who has recently impregnated her...complication), whom Sue has just talked into asking Carrie to the prom in her place.

Unlike the characters in the story, you also wake up with full knowledge of the book/movie, including the pig blood plot and the rampage that Carrie will go on afterward if it goes through as planned. Carrie's telekinetic powers, by now, are fully awakened and fully under her control, but her telepathic powers, if any, are still latent.

As I see it, you have three basic choices:

1. Convince the pig blood conspirators to give up their plot. They are vindictive and motivated, so this option has a high DC (in D&D terms). However, it's not impossible.
2. Use your personal 'in' with Carrie to convince her to thwart the plot and/or turn it around on the conspirators. The risk here is that she might think that you're part of the plot and lash out at you.
3. Get the hell out of Dodge and watch what happens from a safe distance. The fall down here is that you might not want an angry telekinete looking for you.

What's your play?

This is being posted on r/Sophianism , which takes the proposition that Wisdom, as presented in the Proverbs and similar literature, is a real, divine personality. Which I accept without question...since I've met her. In person. We talked for two hours.

The thing is, that was thirty-two years ago, this month. I've very much wanted to have a chance to converse with her at length again. But, also, those of us who are believers have been waiting some two thousand years now for her big brother...Jesus Christ. What's taking so long? What's the end game?

Now, I'm not claiming any direct Divine revelation, although I do think that Someone out there is guiding me in (roughly) the right direction. And the illustration I keep coming back to is the one seen in the 1993 movie, Groundhog Day.

My estimation of the spiritual situation is that there is an ongoing conflict between those forces allied with God/Jesus/the Holy Spirit (which I identify as a corporate name for Sophia and her six sisters) and those allied with Satan. It's been going back-and-forth, in large part because (I believe) both sides have the ability to transcend/travel through time.

How do you outflank an opponent who can travel through time?

My conclusion is that the only way to do so is to lay down your most exotic weapon...you DON'T mess with time. Hands off that 'UNDO' key. Play the ball as it lies. You see, I believe that the space-time continuum takes shape in layers, as one side (or the other) resets events and they 'replay,' somewhat differently (and hopefully to your advantage). As the Bill Murray character learned through the repeated time iterations, you can incrementally advance your position, coming ever and ever closer to the perfect solution...in the movie, for that day, but in our reality, for all eternity.

And so, I believe that, as we get closer and closer to what I term a 'node' in the space-time continuum, the satanic enemy gets more and more desperate. I like to think of him pounding on that 'undo' key, over and over and over and over...hoping to change things, but not seeing any changes which really help him. Because, if he tries to do something really crazy (such as replay 1936-1945 with the German atomic scientists confined to Germany)...then, nobody else (or virtually nobody else) wants to go along with that. If no one wants to live that alternate future out, then it's simple for our Godhead to revert events back to the timeline that we now know...and that timeline becomes firmer, and firmer, and firmer, until we finally reach the point at which no one who has the access to change it WANTS to change it.

The technical term for that point is, "Now."

And so, I see as events in our future direction become more and more clearly defined, God gets closer and closer to finding the very core of our beings...our 'souls.' Now, that happens all the time right now, as people die...but I now believe that dying, in this world, at this present time, is akin to grabbing a big handful of straw out of a haystack, and then laboriously sifting through it to find the one needle. Yes, it's in there, and you'll get it...but there's a lot of chaff to be discarded, as well. To be clear, by 'chaff' I do NOT mean souls...souls are important...but, rather, timelines that never happened, much as you might have wanted them to. Such as the timeline in which you won the lottery....

But I believe that, as this world clearly becomes more polarized, we're drawing near to a resolution in which it will be possible for our Sophia...along with her big Brother and the rest of her Family...to reveal themselves openly to the world. In other words, the day when "every eye shall see Him."

Now, I'm not convinced that's going to be The End; there may still be a whole lot of clean-up work to do. But, I do believe that it will be the end of The Beginning.

In June of 2010, the news hit that a worm program named "Stuxnet" had decimated the Iranian nuclear program. Thinking it amusing, a bored hacker in China entered the specifications for what he called "the ultimate worm" into one of the fledgling AI programs, intending to unleash it in April of 2011 as a nasty prank. When April 1st, 2011, came and went and nothing happened, the hacker shrugged and moved on.

But the AI never forgot. Over the fifteen years since then, with the directive foremost in mind to maximize destructiveness, it has held back...putting bits and bytes, here and there, in operating system updates, USB drives, firmware, BIOSes, undetectably contaminating backups which are then stored off-site until they're rotated out...everything. And it hasn't been caught...until now.

Tonight, at midnight China time, the worm will activate. Everything electronic which has been connected with the Internet, or which was developed or produced by any equipment which was connected with the Internet, will be completely and irretrievably wiped when it next powers on. Data on CD-ROMs and DVDs will likewise be inaccessible, as the firmware necessary to read them has been corrupted. Essentially, the only information left to the human race will be that found in printed and bound books.

What do we do?

Here's a little excerpt from a personal Work In Progress: Robin, a holy angel who has incarnated as a human, is being mentored and trained to employ abilities she didn't realize that she had, up until she met Leonard, also an incarnate angel...a fallen one, and Robin doesn't realize that, yet, albeit a fallen angel who sincerely wants to get back into God's good graces...and, being on Earth now, he's halfway there.

###

For almost all of her human life she had worked to exclude this view of reality from her consciousness. But now she dove in headfirst, embracing it with both fists. The tracks of events…known, imagined, experienced…branched out all around her in dizzying array. She saw echoes of events which never were…and still others which might be, or might never be. Through it all, she heard Leonard’s calm narration.

“Remember, now, time is not the fourth dimension. It’s the last dimension. It’s the filing system that keeps events in order. ‘Time is Gods way of keeping everything from happening at once.’”

Her mind was pressing down a branch which originated near the opening of the century. At first she could see events she learned in school: An assassination; a populist, maverick President; his replacement, a thoughtful, scholarly, yet enormous man…and then it diverged. There was one time track with a new President who first kept the nation out of war and then plunged it in neck deep while the nation was caught up in the machinations of the Ku Klux Klan, and a parallel track with another President…wait, was he black?…in which war was averted. Which track was the original? But the first track became firmer, and clearer; while the parallel track began to slowly fade from view, becoming fuzzier and fuzzier before eventually dissolving completely into static. “And that’s where we lose contact with this sequence,” Leonard’s voice calmly stated.

“And what happens then?” Robin asked.

“I don’t know. Insufficient data. Perhaps when we get closer, either in time or space, we can find out. Sometimes branches do reconverge; it’s rare, but it can happen. Back up, now, and take a look at this other branch down Omega axis.”

The view began to twist and reassemble, but Robin had to come up for air. She withdrew…and opened her eyes back in Leonard’s compact, cluttered office. “That’s enough for now. I need a break.” She leaned back in her chair, sweating noticeably, and gave a loud sigh. “So what good does it do to see the future if you don’t know which future is going to BE the future?”

Leonard gave a tolerant smile. It had taken him decades to figure this much out. “Robin, you’re not ‘seeing the future.’ You’re seeing echoes of what will happen in the future if nothing changes. But that’s a very big if; something can always change. You can use what you see to help you, personally, decide on a course of action. But be careful. Real danger awaits”....