What is currently on your mind?

[The happy Objectivist]

I do not know a lot about the situation.. but yeah I do not understand why we couldn't evacuate our equipment first. Personally I agree with leaving.. but it shouldn't be done in the spur of the moment.

It was handled exactly as if they wanted to create a crisis. Last I checked, giving aid and comfort, i.e., weapons and ammunition, to the enemy was an act of treason.

 

[ripple the car]

I am thinking about buying my mom a 33-bead chotki for her birthday. She’s expressed an internet in Eastern Orthodoxy, though I’m not sure if she will ever fully convert. But I think she finds wisdom, meaning, and healing in Orthodox theology, and that’s neat. So, I was thinking of getting her a wooden, beaded chotki. I know they’re usually made of black wool, but I like the look of wood beads better.

 

[Paidiske]

I didn't know chotki had 33 beads. So do Anglican rosaries. I have several, but I like the stone beads best, I think partly because of the colour. (I'm currently using one with pale green jade beads).

 

[ripple the car]

I didn't know chotki had 33 beads. So do Anglican rosaries. I have several, but I like the stone beads best, I think partly because of the colour. (I'm currently using one with pale green jade beads).

Some do. They come in a bunch of different configurations. This is the one I’m thinking of;

Bayong 33-bead Prayer Rope

 

[Paidiske]

In lockdown, while we can't hold services in person, I'm livestreaming morning prayer on FB each day. And I'm trying to include a hymn each day, (just as a link to YouTube; the technical issues in livestreaming music can be an issue). Trying to decide between versions of "It is well with my soul" for tomorrow.

Edit: This one is stunning:

 

[RDKirk]

Feel happy about receiving a lot of compliments about my face since I've stopped wearing a mask at work last week. Started my job a few months ago so no one has seen me before (besides a few co-workers who I had a get together with). While not as pronounced in men, I do somewhat dread getting older. A lot of change can happen during the 30s decade. Although I do think my baby fat/roundish face will help in the aging process. At least it did for my Mom.

Regarding masks.. I do sometimes feel sad.. because by the time this whole Covid thing is over.. a lot of people are going to miss years of their life going mask less. When they finally can, they'll just look older. We've already been doing this for a year and a half.. while I hope the second wave isn't as long as the first I guess I do not know what to believe anymore.

I spent the entire period of my life when I could have had a black beard in the military, where I was not allowed to wear a beard.

When I retired from the military and could finally grow a beard...it was gray.

 

[ripple the car]

I spent the entire period of my life when I could have had a black beard in the military, where I was not allowed to wear a beard.

When I retired from the military and could finally grow a beard...it was gray.

Nothing wrong with a grey beard.

 

[Paidiske]

I knew a dear man who, when his wife died (about six months before he did) found one small consolation in finally being "allowed" to grow a beard (his wife had hated him with a beard). Personally I didn't think it suited him at all, but his enthusiasm about it was cute!

 

[Sunshinee777]

You mean you can play ps 2 and 3 games in ps1 ? Whaaaaat

Yeah, it's backwards compatible with the PS4. With PS Now you can even stream PS3 and PS2 games.

 

[MehGuy]

I spent the entire period of my life when I could have had a black beard in the military, where I was not allowed to wear a beard.

When I retired from the military and could finally grow a beard...it was gray.

Aww.. that's too bad.. I've noticed my beard hair becoming more and more blond.. I think that's a stepping stone to turning gray.

 

[MehGuy]

You mean you can play ps 2 and 3 games in ps1 ? Whaaaaat

Technically I can play PlayStation games on my laptop via my PS Now subscription.

PS now is just a cloud gaming and (downloading of select PS4 and oddly PS2 games) service. Think of it like Netflix but for gaming.

 

[MehGuy]

Cool.. I just found out I have an unexpected four day weekend.

 

[timothyu]

Happiness.
Go away evil world and take your selfishness with you. Abba releases new album after 40 yrs to brighten our days

 

[Paidiske]

In lockdown I'm spending my mornings on the phone; just ringing my way through the parish roll, checking on people. I find it exhausting but I know it's so important to do those things to connect with people.

 

[look4hope]

I spent the entire period of my life when I could have had a black beard in the military, where I was not allowed to wear a beard.

When I retired from the military and could finally grow a beard...it was gray.

Grey beards are awesome!


What’s on my mind? So much that makes me want to punch a hole in the wall. And I’m not the violent type.

 

[Sunshinee777]

Grey beards are awesome!


What’s on my mind? So much that makes me want to punch a hole in the wall. And I’m not the violent type.

Yes grey beards are nice and grey hair too.

 

[The Liturgist]

You mean you can play ps 2 and 3 games in ps1 ? Whaaaaat

No, but ps3s can play ps2 games and presumably this backwards compatibility continues. But the PS3, just as an example, has an IBM Power Cell CPU that when it was released in 2006 was used ro build supercompute clusters, because it was the most multithreaded CPU on the planet, beating the rival Sun SPARC Niagara T series, which came out around the same time, by a huge margin. Several companies bought large numbers of PS3s to use as clusters because an IBM System P Blade with a Cell CPU, the enteprise equivalent, cost ten times more. Of course it was IBM and theoretically more power efficient, and compatible with existing IBM blade chassis running existingsystem X and system P (Intel/AMD and POWER, related to but more powerful than, and partially incompatible with, the PowerPC chips that were in Macs until 2006) blades. And there were Linux several distros available, because the PS3 Cell was a Power CPU. But then Sony decided to be mean and disable Other OS, so geeks who were using their PS3S for both were out of luck.

The PS2 and PS1 never had a niche as supercomputers, and I would assume the PS4 won’t either. But meh, I dislike consoles.

 

[Sunshinee777]

But then Sony decided to be mean and disable Other OS, so geeks who were using their PS3S for both were out of luck.

What do you mean how did they disabled?

 

[The Liturgist]

What do you mean how did they disabled?

So the PS3 when ir shipped has an option to install Linux or other OSes (practically just Linux, as there were a handful of Linux distributions that supported the PS3 hardware including, IIRC, Yellow Dog Linux, which was originally a fork of old Red Hat Linux, ported to run on PowerPC CPUs that Macs had, which the IBM POWER Cell CPU in the PS3 was similar to. Then for some stupid reason, I think two or three years after launch, they published a firmware patch which disabled the Other OS feature by modifying the bootloader* so it would only run signed code, which you had to install if you wanted to continue to use Multiplayer or play any titles released after the update. Also all new PS3s sold after the firmware patch was released had it installed. So at that point, people with a PS3 made before the patched firmware could either choose between installing the patch and getting the full gaming functionality, or continuing to run Linux and loosing the ability to play new games, upgrades to old games, or multiplayer.

*On all computers there is firmware that initially loads the operating system. On older PCs, this was the BIOS, which would load the Master Boot Record, which was 512 bytes, which for some OSes was enough to put the bootstrap code in, like DOS, whereas with others, the code in the MBR loads a “stage 2 bootloader” which loads the OS. Old versions of Windows, like 3.0, 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98 and the much despised Windows ME, kept DOS around as a second stage bootloader. Windows NT, the advanced multiuser OS initially released in the early 90s, upgraded soon after its release, then as NT 4.0 with the Win95 GUI in 1996, and as Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) with the Windows 98 GUI in 2000, and as Windows XP (NT 5.1) in 2001 with the Luna desktop theme, and Windows Vista (unpopular) and 7 (very popular) with the much loved Aero Glass theme in 2006, then the hated Windows 8 and 8.5 or whatever it was called in 2011/2012 I think, with the unpleasant Metro GUI, and now Windows 10, which is tolerated, which has continual uploads, have their own bootloader, which was pretty much the same limited bootloader until Windows Vista, which added the ability to boot other OSes, and Windows 8, which added encryption.

Most other hardware, including Intel Macs and various servers, and consoles like the PSe, and modern PCs, support firmware that directly loads the entire OS without the use of a 512 byte Master Boot Record on the hard disk and first and second stage bootloaders separate from the initial firmware (BIOS on older PCs); the firmware does everything. Most non-Intel CPUs made recently, such as SPARC and POWER servers, use OpenBoot firmware, which is quite powerful, whereas Intel and AMD CPUs use a popular firmware called UEFI, which is extensible. There is also a fully open source firmware compatible with a limited range of systems, GNU CoreBoot, which is awesome when it is available. But needless to say gaming consoles never want you to have that kind of power, as a rule, and the PS3 was a rare exception in that its firmware allowed it to load another OS, until Sony released a patch disabling this.

 

[Sunshinee777]

Just trying to cope with horrible migraenes