Dakota Today

*** Rain in Tripp County

Good heavens.  KELO weather said it was going to rain around here and this time it actually rained a bit like they predicted.  Now Reliance, SD weather radio is warning of flood danger in S Central SD including Tripp, Todd, Mellette, etc. I just checked local weather at    Winner three-day weather      Looks like this flurry of rain has so far drizzled, rained, and misted in about 1.5 inches of precipitation. Update of Apr 18, 2016--- Total now up to around 2 inches and still misting and raining.

I saw pheasants sitting up in trees as Robins or Blackbirds would and deer hunkered down under bushes.  Of course I did not have my camera with me then.

We need the moisture, but after a couple days of this, a bit of blue sky and sunshine would feel good.

What I still don't understand about the Reliance, SD weather radio is why that station never broadcasts weather conditions in Winner, SD.  Some days the roughly 60 miles north and south between Reliance and Winner means the weather is remarkably different in the two areas.  Strangely, other SD weather radio stations do broadcast information about Winner, SD weather.  KZZZ60 (Channel 7) is usually the only weather station available here on our car radio.

****Stay tuned even if it is raining on your parade.----- Doug Wiken.

 

*** Tiny, tinny tea cups dug up

In a previous post I posted an image of something related to Goldilocks and the three bears.  Nobody has yet suggested what that might be.  Below is an image of some tiny tin? tea cups we found in the same dirt.  Again, if you have any idea what these were sold as or if originally painted or whatever, please let me know.  They are only about an inch in diameter and an inch high.  Saucers or plates are about 3 inches in diameter.

Two of the cups hold water, one has corroded and leaks,  In the rear is apparently a creamer or something similar.  We may scratch around in the area again soon.  It took a bit of scrubbing with an old toothbrush to get them cleaned up even as much as the photo indicates.

***Stay tuned even if you only use 16 oz mugs for your tea and coffee--- Doug Wiken

***Some computing news from CPU Magazine

CPU is an acronym for "Computer Power User" in the case of the Sandhills Press Magazine.  It appeals to computer modders and cutting edge gamers.   I am neither, but even so the magazine almost always has something useful or interesting or both.

In the August 2014 is a kind of curiosity.  It is a computer case that is also a desk.  The idea is good, but the price seems a bit rich.  Despite the $989 or $1189 prices, the combination might be very useful in some tight situations or need for portability of full desktop systems.  Computer mainboards and components go into a "drawer" which is several inches deep.  On the front of the drawer is a shelf for the keyboard.  The glass top of the case is the desk top.  The "desks" are 35 inches or 47 inches wide depending on the previous prices.  Made by chassis make Lian Li this is a major diversion from the traditional idea of "desktop" PCs.  

I suspect a woodworker or metal craftsman could make a desk which did essentially the same thing however and stuff a computer or two into the homemade drawer.

The computer world vandals and thieves have now made ransomware that hits Android Tablets.  AVAST has produced an anti-ransomware product for Android-based tablets.  It Is available from the Google Play Store.

And if you want to get an idea of the activity of the computing pokers/snoopers, vandals and thieves extent, you can look at a visual representation map of such activity at Norse.  Check the Norse Map at map.ipviking.com.  You may have to right click on options in window and then open link in new tab etc.  Kind of scary to watch real time attack sources and targets on a glowing map of the world.

Apache OpenOffice 4.1 includes new features for communicating with assistive technologies which apparently will help blind users utilize text to speech systems.  www.openoffice.org.

And if you buy the magazine, digital or paper, you can read a very interesting detailed article on the development and current status of 3-D printing in plastics, ceramics, and metal...as well as meat and who knows what.  The article is titled, "The Revolution will be Printed."  You can also find an article with links to research using the wi-fi signals in your home and office to determine how many people etc are in a space.  Kind of scary.  Also of course, are ads and articles on a whole raft of other products and beta software coming soon to a website near you.

***Stay tuned even if like me, you probably won't be buying or assembling the latest and greatest expensive gaming platform-- Doug Wiken

 

Related articles

Lian-Li announces awesome computer cases that are also desks

AVAST kills Android ransomware with new app

Avast's new Android app removes ransomware from infected phones and tablets

He's a Quarterback and He's OK...why the football leagues worry

In the not-news celebrity trash morning blather, is a report on the pro football player canned he claims because he supports gay marriage.  Oh well, others claim he isn't the greatest of all great football players.  Who cares?

Well, the League will care if Monty Python team gets on football like this:

ARTIST: Monty Python
TITLE: I'm a Lumberjack Quarterback
Lyrics and Chords


I'm a Quarterback and I'm okay
I play all night and I work all day
     He's a quarterback and he's okay
     He plays all night and he works all day

/ G - CE7 Am7 / D D7 GC G / :

I run down field, I earn my lunch
I go to the lavat'ry
On Wednesdays I go shopping
And have buttered scones for tea
     He runs down field...
     He's a Quarterback...

/ G - C Am7 / D D7 G -  / G - C A7 / D7 - GC G / 

I run down field, I skip and jump
I like to press wild flow'rs
I put on women's clothing
And hang around in bars
     He runs down field...
     He's a quarterback...

I run down field, I wear high heels
Suspendies and a bra
I wish I'd been a girlie
Just like my dear papa
     He runs downfield...
     He's a fullback...WAHH! And I thought you were so RUGGED!

Source of the unedited version 

Ok, I just don't think  the hundred or more people working on CBS Morning blather with Charlie Rose as garnish for the celebrity trash presented as news really have enough to do if all they can find is crap about a football player and breathless twits standing in the cold so they can tell us they are freezing their asses off.

Hope you at least enjoy the old Monty Python group. They are a reminder of what TV really could do if marketing plastic junk, booze, and irrelevant fiction books weren't the primary drivers of commercial TV.

** Stay tuned and check into the brain damage to football players--- Doug Wiken

*** Too much ado about not much

Watching TV network news and reading news magazines and daily papers, one might conclude that having substitute officials for corporate football was a major catastrophe at least equivalent to global warming or sexually-transmitted diseases.

Football by corporations is to be ignored.  It is a gigantic irrelevant waste of time. Cheering and supporting corporate sports teams akes about as much sense as cheering Ford, Chrysler, or General Motors..or General Mills for that matter.  Football in general should be eliminated in schools and colleges because of the damage it does to human bodies and the contribution it makes to obesity in sitting crowds and beer-drinking players.

As for the flawed officiating, all sports is partly a matter of blind luck.  The officiating might as well be done by a random process.  It would just increase the element of chance in the giant waste of time and make the gross irrelevance and human waste bvious in print and pixels.

Newspapers seem to be following the lead of the Gannett rags such as USA Today and are devoting whole sections to sports stats and photos.  Coverage of corporate bread and circus contributes to our national decline more even than does retrograde obstructionist partisanship...which is also now about like cheering for corporations with the floodgates to corporatecash opened up by the SCOTUS idelogic Citizens United decision oblivious to reality.

*** Stay tuned or walk your dog or your dogs during the next year of football-- Doug Wiken

 

*** Abramoff, Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, Hannity, gambling, gamboling, and God

Bill Moyers and Co. must just drive the lunatic right crazy with the stuff that Moyer's crew and show digs up and ties together for the mindless masters of mythology.

If you did not see it on SDPB-TV today, take a look at the website.  You can watch it there or download the transcript..which would be a good idea even if you watched the show.

Bill Moyers and Co. linked Grover Norquist, Koch Brothers, Ralph Reed, Jack Abramoff  and Native American gaming with ffcoalition.org. The cynical exploitation of religion is obvious. They referred to fundamentalists as "whacko" and  are playing them like a cheap fiddle.

Moyers follows up all those interesting videos with an interview of Mike Lofgren who worked 20 years as a Republican and got completely fed up with the retrograde obstructionists pandering to the very, very rich.  His book is titled something like, "The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted."

Take a look Bill Moyers and Co-- Ralph Reed, etal.

You will probably be furious no matter what your party affiliation or your political, ideological perspective...even if perhaps for very differing reasons.

*** Stay tuned even if you just love the stink of partisan hypocrisy smoke  in the morning mirrors-- Doug Wiken

*** The Powerball suspense ends in Winner, SD

Local Winner breathless boosters of suspense and speculation kept the PowerBall bouncing in the media for a few days.  I got an e-mail indicating that an Arlen Wanless of Mission, SD had won.  But neither the writer nor I knew for sure, so readers here got only the initials A.W. in a previous post. I guess we were about half right.  Turns out the winner was Neil Wanless of Mission, SD. apparently the son of Arlan Wanless.  AP story and KeloLand stories are in links below.

AP says Neil Wanless of Mission is Powerball Winner

Keloland says Ampride gets $50,000

The local Winner officials' hopes for the swimming pool payoff and the school problem payoff solution aren't likely to be fulfilled if my guess is correct.

My only contact with Arlan Wanless was (if my memory is correct) his buying from me  some old batteries for scrap a year or two ago..maybe his son Neil was with him then...I don't really know for sure.

 Whatever, congratulations to the Wanless family and I hope their  good luck continues and the winnings bring happiness and success to you and future generations.

***Stay tuned, but not for more news on the PowerBall Winner in Winner, SD (NOT) -- Doug Wiken

**Don't toss a Powerball ticket if you bought it in Winner, SD

Big news for Winner, SD today has been the announcement that somebody bought a winning Powerball ticket here at either Ampride or Lil Feller.  So, if you have a ticket in your pocket, you better compare it with the winning numbers below.  The lottery machines at Ampride and Lil Feller were loaded up this morning with all paper supplies as well and hauled off somewhere by the State of South Dakota.

The PowerBall link below should always work for finding current winning numbers.  Image above was captured there.
Powerball Winning Numbers

Of course, if Dakota Today happens to prevent you from tossing the winning ticket, I would sure appreciate a few thousand out of that $100 or $200 Million.  The few people I talked to about this were really wondering if it was somebody from Winner, SD or South Dakota who bought the ticket because a lot of the tickets were purchased by Memorial Day visitors and prairie dog hunters, truckers, etc.  Most were hoping it was bought by a Winnerite.  I suspect anybody with that kind of money would likely quickly find a better place to live however.

The other news in Winner today was the presence of KELO TV and KSFY TV media satellite trucks looking for the PowerBall Winner..in vain apparently.

 

By this afternoon, the KELO truck was camped alongside Ampride alternately known as old Farmers Coop, Country Pride, Ampride, etc. The KSFY truck was setting across a highway and south of Lil Feller. Will be interesting to see

which bet wins. Well, as of 5:30PM,

KELO TV news is reporting that the person holding the winning lotto ticket has still not turned up with it.

All the above, because it is here mostly because it is kind of local Winner, SD news, does not mean I favor states or other governments raising money via lotteries. It is another indication of politician's political cowardice in honest taxing and honest spending.

A tiny bit of irony on the news paper shelf right inside the door at Lil' Feller, the Mitchell Daily Republic cover story was titled something like, "Lottery Sales (or Revenue) Down".

CBS News has a story mentioning Craig Schaeffer Of Lil' Feller and also the Ampride store manager Ulmer:

CBS NEWS notes WINNER IN WINNER, SD

**Stay tuned even if you never care what the expected value of a bet is really worth or whether or not promoted by cowardly politicians-- Doug Wiken