Running Bear's May 2025 Coffee Shop

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Terry: MSN is pure clickbait. Headlines that would make the Editor's at the Daily News and Post Blush with embarrassment, and articles that say nothing. I do not use MSN as a home page, but get it as a sudden popup page...Microsoft is not happy when you don't use their featured products.

Following up with the latest DMV Text scams, my wife just got one that threatened her with "Execution" if she didn't immediately pay her "fine and fees"
 


Sometimes I think the world would be better off without Microsoft.
Welp, we needed M$ ... at first. If they would have upped their game after they realized that DOS was not a good file system type, things would have been much better. Where would we be without all those precursors to the software we now use: Multiplan, Write, ( aka notepad ), SQL Server ( OS/2 ) and others?

I am sure Bill is still smiling!

L8r
 
bnsf wrote:
"I really need to find a "real" home page"

I have no "home page", at all.
Not in any of my browsers.

Whenever I open a browser (on my Mac, generally using Safari, but I have numerous different browsers), all I see is "a blank page":
Screenshot 2025-05-31 at 12.38.51 PM.png

I WANT it to look like this.

From here, I have a completely "blank canvas" as a starting point.
Nothing in front of me that I have to "over-ride".
I'll take it from there, either with a bookmark, a webloc file, or by manually entering something in the URL/search bar.

Think of it this way:
When you want to write something on paper, what do you reach for?
A paper that already has writing on it...
or
A blank sheet, ready for anything you want?
 
I don't have a home page, My start Page is a 1935 Mack Ladder Truck. My background page is a photo of the USS Minneapolis CA 36.
My Firefox Browser does not have a home page. That's the way I want it.

Microsoft's MSN Home page is just off screen, and will occasionally pop up to entice me, even though I shut it off, every upgrade it reappears.
 
I have not one, but several tabs that open on my browser when I start it up. But, since I leave it open all the time, it has about 14 tabs going now.

Here are the tabs I start with:
1. Facebook
2. News site (the guardian US)
3. Gmail Inbox via browser for address #1
4. Gmail Inbox via browser for address #2
5. Youtube
6. Weatherbug
7. This MRR forum's front pages
8. the reporting software that tracks how many book I sell across the platforms. (I'm not anywhere close to Stephen King level, but it's fun to watch)
 


First a daytime skyline shot from right before we checked out.

View attachment 220788

Thursday morning, after another Hilton breakfast of champions (no pic as it was not much different than the other one) we checked out and went to this interactive art “museum” called teamLab: Planets. (This teamLab group has a coupe exhibits in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan but also has things in other places throughout the world). They have various sections you go to and can interact with it. The biggest one is called water and several of the rooms have water you wade in though not all do. We did it last time we were in Tokyo but did it again as it was fun and they’d also expanded it.

They use a lot of mirrors as well to give depth illusions or infinity illusions etc.

This is a room full of hanging led light strips programmed to change color or ho on and off in patterns. They hang an inch or two apart so it’s a forest of them. And the ceiling and floor is mirrored. I think this is a shot of the ceiling, which reflects the floor, which reflects the ceilibg, etc.

View attachment 220789

View attachment 220790

T by is room had water about a foot deep and they shone light down that made it looks like colorful koi fish (carp) and various aquatic plants were swimming or floating around your feet. You walked around it and the fish would swim by you. It’s all light projection into a milky white water. It was really cool.

View attachment 220791View attachment 220792

The next room had these 5 ft diameter big air balls (big round balloons). One hanging and some loose and they had lights that were constantly changing.

View attachment 220793

This next room was round and dome shaped and had mirrored floor and had all these lights that looked like various shapes and flowers etc moving and it gave the illusion that the room was moving. It was way cool.

View attachment 220794View attachment 220795

That was the end of yeh “water” part. We then went to the “forest” part where they had built a lot of new stuff since last time.

They had various things you had to walk or jump from one half bubble to the next staying on your color, and a lot other interesting things like sloped floors at various angles in color and lights, wood slabs hanging from cables you had to jump from one to the other with, etc Bunch of other things. I only have one pic of this area.

View attachment 220796

Then they had this other first thing outside. Kind of Ghibli-esque. You could touch but couldn’t rough house with these silver things.

View attachment 220797

More in the next post.
Seems I remember seeing similar images during the 60s.....in my mind that is.
 
Good afternoon to all...............

Last night I spent about an hour and a half setting the chuff rate on the ESU decoder I installed in my 2-8-0 a while back. I finally got as close to good as I could. Saved all the settings a re-wrote settings to the decoder. As a check, I went back into the ESU programmer to run my loco and see how it operated. The changes apparently did not take and all the CVs I changed were back to default. And I still have not been able to get the forward/reverse light to come on. This is getting very frustrating. I have spent about another hour earlier today viewing some ESU videos on saving changes and setting up lighting. I'll give this another try later this afternoon. If no success this time, the loco with decoder will be on the receiving end of some target practice. Or I will rip out all the wiring and install a TCS steam decoder but that in itself will be a pain in the a$$. I have neither the time or patience to deal with this bs that should be so simple. Oddly, I programmed some ESU decoders about 5 years ago and had no issues. Seems like everything that is "new and improved" is much more difficult to use than making it easier for the consumer. I site Windows 11 as a fine example........what a piece of $hit.

Hot in west Texas today. Gotta get around to mowing soon but I'm not rushing into anything.

John
 
I think every browser can have you set your home page or at least start up page. I have mine set to the duckduckgo search engine. I use opera since it blocks ads, which must be working since some sites I click on tell me about letting them in. I use the duckduckgo player for utube as it blocks those as well.
 
Good morning. There's something bright up in the sky. Not sure what that is. Shed battery is already fully charged. Sensor shows 21 degrees C and 77% humidity. Hope the weather holds as I have steaks I'd like to grill this afternoon.

So my wife told me the potatos she's growing is called satsuma imo. I just looked it up and it is a sweet potato. Her book says she can plant them 30 cm apart so there's only 8 plants in one box. The rain really did good for them as they looked dead and dying earlier. They are all standing at attention now, so we're going to have to figure out the dirt issue of not holding enough water.
 
Good evening everyone,

It's currently 82f high of 87f and I guess a little rain again tonight but I don't think it will be much. Mowed the yard today but other than that, didn't really do a lot today and now just sitting here with the mrs. just taking in the evening sunset.

Have a great night and the rest of your weekend.
 
Good morning. There's something bright up in the sky. Not sure what that is. Shed battery is already fully charged. Sensor shows 21 degrees C and 77% humidity. Hope the weather holds as I have steaks I'd like to grill this afternoon.

So my wife told me the potatos she's growing is called satsuma imo. I just looked it up and it is a sweet potato. Her book says she can plant them 30 cm apart so there's only 8 plants in one box. The rain really did good for them as they looked dead and dying earlier. They are all standing at attention now, so we're going to have to figure out the dirt issue of not holding enough water.
Depending on sizes and weights, you can probably rig something like the clay water base for a clay flower pot. Put a pan, or shallow tub down, put the box in it with a few small-ish holes in the bottom of it, and put some water in the tub to keep the dirt in the box moist.
 


Oh sorry, the box I am refering to is my raised garden. But you may be on to something with the clay pots. I heard about plugging the hole in the bottom and filling them up with water. They leach out slowly... hmm.

Thanks!
 
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