Notices by Stevan (withaveeay@mastodon.scot)

@elizabethtasker Everyone's applauding. Either someone got a high score in Chucky Egg or the flyby has worked.

Unwelcome guests in the garden this evening.
Not videoed is the the flailing, clapping, yelling eejit who chased them away. But they jumped over the fence, indeed, between the fence and my anti-deer cable, as though it wasn't there.
We /really/ don't want them in the garden, as they drop ticks, which then make their way to us
#RuralLife

@Infoseepage @tartanroots @HarriettMB Ah, we're in Scotland, so it's doubtful we follow US medical guidelines.

@Infoseepage @tartanroots @HarriettMB Not sure where that info comes from. I was unfortunate to contract Lyme disease last year, as mentioned earlier. I was told symptoms would clear within 48 hours on the antibiotics, and they did.
However, I believe it becomes problematic if the disease is left, and medical intervention is delayed by weeks or months.
Antibiotics are not given as prophylactics here. There's too much risk of resistance. Anyway, tickbite is not unusual in these parts.

@HarriettMB Will have to wait for winter and hope it's a cold one.
Our local medical practice is good at spotting Lyme disease but yes, we'll be on the lookout

A few days ago, herself found a tick on her wrist. We wondered where it might have come from, so early in the season, and as we hadn't been anywhere ticky.
This morning, I went to the kitchen to find we had an unwelcome visitor.
We have some anti-deer rope high up around the garden fence, except for near the solar panels. Guess where he got in.

@Infoseepage Well, I hate to say I'm that old, but as a kid in the 70s, flying to school and home 4 times a year, the planes in those times had china.
And more recently, in the 2000s, I was on one flight and offered a steak cooked there and then, admittedly in business class. AND coffee from a proper espresso machine. The airline went bust soon after, you'll be surprised to hear.

RE: https://mastodon.online/@Aviation_Librarian/116459338133431863

Look at the face of the bloke with the specs. He's endured too many of Arnold Rimmer's Hammond Organ nights, and knows there's no escape in a plane.

Just realised I'd forgotten to post pics from this #MorningWalk
Must have been traumatised by the crowded beach
#Assynt

Can we say the S-word yet? Spring?
Our apple trees bud early with plenty of promise, but then inevitably get burnt by the next series of gales.

Email from VPS provider: "...the global memory shortage has been driving up hardware costs across the entire hosting industry. RAM and SSDs are more expensive than ever, as AI corporations are consuming a large portion of production capacity... we must pass on parts of these increased costs."
That's bad enough, but they've paid for literally the world's supply of memory and disk with money that does not actually exist, while we have to pay for what we already have with money that does exist.

@gemlog @Jkp Ask not if everyone from Assynt is in the Fediverse. Ask rather why everyone from the Fediverse isn't in Assynt.

#TechiePost
That's the second VPS updated to Debian trixie, the second such dist-upgrade on one of them. I'm not sure many other distros would give quite the confidence that such remote upgrades provide.

At the weird half underground Rheged Centre near Penrith, where there are EV chargers. We're only heading to Gretna for today's run, so not far to go until we're over the border. The weather has been lovely today, a far cry from the constant poor visibility from the motorway spray on the way south last week.

Let me tell you a story.
We've got the telly on, and there's just been a staggeringly unlikely ad for Microsoft copilot slop generator.
But my story is about the 1990s and the 2000s. Do you remember how MS Access was punted as an easy database application (it was), but it had so many come-ons that encouraged users to over-extend themselves. Rather than depend on reliable corporate systems, just bung the data into this application to solve all known problems.
2/...

4. And now we have adverts for systems infinitely more opaque than was possibly with Access which, according to the adverts, one need only trust. The copilot slop will surely always be accurate and show correct data.
I wonder how many companies are going to go to the wall blinking in the light of reality before this nonsense goes full circle.

3. Some years later, I worked at a different company. An accounting wunderkind was brought in who promptly wanted to work around the accounting systems by building his own Access database. I warned the CFO about the dangers of this, and was told I should control ,y obvious jealousy of the wunderkind.
Then the auditors came in.
And once again, we came within days of closing down, being declared insolvent, saved only by the accountants working round the clock.
4/...

2. Well, someone wrote an Access application that soon was so "useful", it became indispensable. And when it inevitably started spitting out nonsense, it started impacting on a company in a regulated industry for whom I worked. We came within 24 hours of being closed down, and only because several people worked pretty much round the clock to resolve the problems of this poorly understood and undocumented application.
3/...

Caught in a traffic jam two cars away from the lorry that's been putting diesel into the A9 at Killikrankie. Coppers not letting southbound pass at all. And yes, my bladder says this is sub optimal

@gemlog I tend really to enjoy their photo essays. Some superb photography, and reminds me of various African magazines from way back when.