I have Foxit installed and can usually use that, but am forced to have Adobe Reader installed for other reasons.

Adobe Reader will now never be updated on my machine. It’s a small price to pay. And Foxit is great for most pdf tasks.

There was a point not so long ago where Adobe Collaboration Sync got so bad on my Windows 10 box it wouldn’t let me close any pdfs that were open. “File in use” error, even if all Adobe programs were closed except for that pdf. I’d have to go into Task Manager and manually kill it. Between that and Adobe Updater I couldn’t get rid of it by any known means, and it was choking the shit out of my machine.

I’m transitioning to Linux but not there yet, still need the Windows box for now, so I had to do something. But I’m old school, so it was a DOS batch file to the rescue. I call it “kiladobe.bat”:

taskkill /f /im armsvc.exe       
del "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\ARM\1.0\armsvc.exe"      
taskkill /f /im AdobeCollabSync.exe     
del "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat DC\Acrobat\AdobeCollabSync.exe"      

It’s now a scheduled task in taskschd.msc. I put kiladobe.bat in the main Adobe program folder (heh) and run that task as administrator at startup and every four hours or so, give or take an hour.

No more problems.

Now, all that remains is that every so often I see the command window flash up for a split second because this batch file is killing Adobe shit, and it just makes me smile. (I could probably make it stop flashing up the CLI, but I genuinely enjoy the reminder of how I’m fucking Adobe’s virus-like install and lock endeavors up the ass.)

EDITED TO ADD a simple “@echo off” by itself as the first line would probably turn off any appearance of the CLI, if anyone wants to use this text for their own batch file. If that didn’t work I’d probably throw a space and a “>nul” at the end of each line to grab the output and throw it into neverneverland.

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Put like at least 5 of them in a bag that is appropriately sized and appropriately priced and I’m all over this shit.

There are TWO of us now!

But yeah, I do love some good jerky. I used to make it, it’s fun to do as long as you carefully adhere to food safety rules. Anymore it’s a very limited thing for me for health reasons but a well-made bit of jerky is an awesome thing.

I haven’t tried this bacon yet, but if it’s a bacon/brown sugar thing I likely will, the sum being greater than the parts. But the bacon premise is iffy, depending on whether they are cooking this and/or how much fat they’re leaving on it, because you’re eating it room temp. Room temp bacon grease, while still delicious in flavor, is still just a lump of grainy lukewarm grease in the mouth if there’s too much of it.

Could be great, could be ass. I guess we’ll see.

To all who are offended by this new addition to the world of jerky offerings:

If you are repulsed by the packaging: Needless waste, totally agree, I’m right there with you.

If you are repulsed by the contents: More for me.

It was mandatory but essentially had to be done on your own time.

In the US, if you are an hourly non-exempt employee, that is overt wage theft in all 50 states. If a task is made mandatory by an employer, they must pay you for the time you spent on it.

I know this doesn’t help you now, of course, but it’s good to know in case you run into it again and feel like pushing back with a report to the Dept of Labor.

Just saw another great article in the same series, here’s a gift link (article unlocked):

Force of Ship Impact Was on the Scale of a Rocket Launch - NYTimes

This one deals with the sheer amount of force involved in the Dali pylon strike, estimates ranging between 12 million and 100 million newtons. It’s absolutely fascinating for geeks like myself, not that there’s anyone else like that in this community, no, of course not:

Our lowest estimate of how much force it would take to slow the Dali, if it were fully loaded, is around 12 million newtons, about a third of the force it took to launch the Saturn V rocket for the Apollo moon missions.

And our higher-end estimates, reviewed by several civil engineering experts, suggest it is realistic to put the force of the impact with the pier at upward of 100 million newtons.

The article then goes through a number of equations, tables and illustrations, then concludes:

Our own calculations are also an oversimplification. We don’t try to account for the ship’s rotation, the angle of the collision, and exactly how and where it collided with the pier (a smaller force applied in the wrong place can be more damaging than a large force applied elsewhere). The container ship would have also dragged a sizable amount of water with it, which would add its own momentum.

But the point is: Even the widest reasonable range is on the order of tens to hundreds of millions of newtons — a mind-bogglingly large force, by any estimate.

Well worth the read, for anyone interested.

For anyone who is as interested in this as I am, the NY Times has done a really good set of illustrative examples of both the size of the Dali (a Neopanamax) and also of various bridge “bumpers” and other deflective measures, for those of us who cannot easily visualize them.

How Fenders Might Have Protected Against Bridge Collapse - NYTimes
archive link

The Dali Is a Big Ship. But Not the Biggest - NYTimes
archive link

I have to add that honestly, given the size of the Dali, all the efforts to stop it that were attempted, including the dropped anchor that did not even slow it, IMO the only barrier sample shown in the first article that might have kept the ship from hitting the bridge support would be the rock islands and numerous concrete bollards surrounding the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa – and that bridge only got them after it got hit. The one shown in the picture is the rebuild of the one that got hit and collapsed, killing 35 in 1980. Hence the massive protective features.

How far the bow of the Dali was vertically above the waterline when it hit, and how far the bow was horizontally from the hull at the waterline when it hit, are questions I have not yet seen answered. So it is entirely possible that the the angle on the bow of the Dali between the deck and the waterline would have presented a protrusion that might have simply sailed over any water-based protections, and that plus the sheer size of the ship would have resulted in the same outcome even with such measures in place.

I honestly don’t know, and don’t pretend to. And certainly the protection that is never installed is going to fail 100% of the time, which is where govt (city, state, and fed) screwed up no matter which way you slice the rest. But I do not think it’s nearly as simple a question as it’s made out to be, nor that just any old bridge fender or bumper currently in use would have been able to keep the bow of the Dali, or any equally supersized ship with a protruding bow, from completely destroying the Francis Scott Key bridge support as it did.

Eventually it started slipping

If you still have the printer (you may not but I’m going to put this out there for others too) that sounds like a simple roller replacement, and rollers/pickup pads are usually considered “consumables” instead of “parts” because they all wear out over time. This is true for most if not all consumer printers, ink and laser alike.

Replacements should be pretty easy to find for even old printers, and the installation is usually pretty straightforward. Last year I was still able to buy a roller replacement set for a 19 year old HP, and it took me ten minutes and one Phillips head screwdriver to replace them all.

You can also just take out and clean the hell out of anything rubber with isopropyl alcohol, letting it dry thoroughly and then putting it back in, or if possible rotate the rubber on it to present an unused side, I’ve done all that a few times too.

For pretty much any model printer, search on the printer model number and “maintenance kit” to find available roller/pickup pad replacements for sale, and printer model number plus “service manual” to get replacement instructions if you need them.

Meanwhile, as the aliens slowly and painfully saw themselves in half vertically from the crotch up, Q looks on from the softness of knit.

For anyone else here nerd enough to want to personally look this shit up and see it for yourself – and in this community I KNOW YOU DO:

#16161D “Eigengrau”: https://www.color-hex.com/color/16161d

#CF3810 “Tia Maria”: https://www.color-hex.com/color/cf3810

#204120 “Mallard”: https://www.color-hex.com/color/204120

But honestly, I would expect any creature with blood oxygenated via hemocyanin to see a red purple, or maybe a blue-violet if they were feeling a bit gaspy, not the green of copper(II) salts or verdigris. But what do I know, lol.

This is an excellent explanation. Thank you for taking the time to write it.

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Never saw this before, laughed my ass off.

A fact: I don’t go searching for fact, logic, or nuggets of truth in bathroom stalls. (As a rule, I don’t search for nuggets of anything in bathroom stalls.) So all the ways this could not possibly be valid in the Trek universe whooshed right over my head like Kirk over the Iowa cornfields, and I enjoyed it immensely.

I’ll probably still be chuckling later, lol. Thank you, OP.

Threshold

Isn’t that the Voyager one where they all turn into newts? “But we got better!”

For me it’s Spock’s Brain, tells you how old I am. But yeah. I don’t think I’d have words for someone who thinks it’s the best of the best, just more of a quizzical pity as I slide past without comment, lol.

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You should consider crossposting this to [email protected] community; it would fit right in. Good pic, OP.

TOS, third season, episode 8: For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky

I also love The Cloud Minders from the same season (episode 21), but that first one gets me every time, I have no idea why.

EDITED TO ADD: I also really like most of the SNW episodes, but haven’t seen them enough times to have a clear favorite. Possibly Ad Astra Per Aspera, or Charades, lol.