I don't mind donating to worthwhile charities and causes. But - I don't like it when they state a minimum of $25 or $50. Assuming thousands of people nationwide are donating, even a dollar would help. I can imagine people hesitating if the minimum donation is $25. The charity gets nothing instead of $10.

I'm posting this because I just received a link from a friend to donate to a hospital. The minimum is $25, but the suggested amount is $50. I realize that $25 isn't a lot of money, but I think it would hold some people back.

My son recently brought a jar of coins to the coin machine at the bank. It contained $285, and that was just from "loose change." It all adds up.

As I was using the computer, I heard click-click, click-click. It was the APC UPS telling me that it was working. It's amazing how a small 12v battery can run a computer and a monitor. We got power back after about an hour, but my computer took several attempts to start, even though I had shut it down properly. My son's started right up.

If you don't have a backup power supply, it would be a good idea to get one.

Several vehicles with sirens went rushing up the highway, so either a tree came down on the wires, or a car hit a pole.

We don’t know what concoction of drugs and/or adrenaline Joe Biden’s handlers gave him before he shuffled to the podium for his State of the Union address after bedtime last night, but it was a stout one. Unfortunately for all of us, it wore off. As the speech progressed, Biden increasingly struggled severely to speak coherently, bumbling and slurring his words as he slurred half of the union.

Beyond that, our overall impression is that Biden is a mean old man. He’s always been mean and rude and dishonest, but his worsening dementia only fuels his nastiness and loud cantankerousness. That anyone thinks he’s a more decent human being than his past and current opponent, Donald Trump, is beyond us.

We’ll spare you a play-by-play rebuttal and instead focus on three big things — border security, inflation, and “democracy.” The first two matter a lot to v**ers. The third one is largely a contrived phantom of the Left meant to scare people into v****g for Democrats, who pose the real threat to Liberty and our Republic.

Border security

Joe Biden’s deliberate border crisis is arguably foremost on v**ers’ minds. Heck, even Biden spent a fair chunk of his speech yelling about how bad it is and promising to fix it — if only those darned Republicans would quit obstructing him.

That’s right. Almost from day one, Biden opened the border for an intentional invasion and is now playing cynical games and gaslighting about the problem being the fault of Republicans.

Biden began talking about the border by touting his “bipartisan deal” that Republicans ended up torpedoing. “This bill would save lives and bring order to the border,” he insisted. He has cost American lives with his dereliction.

Here, we’ll illustrate Biden’s problem with the teleprompter. First, his prepared line: “I’m told my predecessor called Republicans in Congress and demanded they block the bill. He feels it would be a political win for me and a political loser for him. It’s not about him or me. It’d be a winner for America!”

Second, his line as delivered, to the best we can t***scribe: “I’m told my predecessor called members of Congress and the Senate to demand they block the bill. He feels political wind — hewsizbjimb itwoulbe political win for me and a political loser for him. It’s not about him. It’s not about me. I’d be a winner — not really.”

He trailed off as Marjorie Taylor Greene, decked out in a MAGA hat, a red vest, and a white T-shirt emblazoned with “Say Her Name,” yelled for Biden to say her name. That is, Laken Riley.

Eyebrows raised with indignity, and while Kamala Harris suppressed a smirk behind him, Biden launched into his most disgraceful and unscripted moment of the night. Just as we predicted, Biden’s prepared remarks did not contain the name Laken Riley, the young nursing student in Georgia who was recently murdered by an i*****l a***n who crossed the border on Biden’s sleepy watch. It turns out that his impromptu remarks about her didn’t contain her name either. He instead referred to “Lincoln” Riley while holding up a button with her name on it — a button he was given just before the speech.

We suppose he gets half a point for trying. The Washington Post’s “fact-checker” didn’t even bother to try to name Riley while deceitfully “rebutting” assertions about i*****l a***ns and crime.

Biden wasn’t done blundering, though. He called Riley “an innocent young woman who was k**led by an illegal.” Radical l*****t Democrats let him have it last night for saying that word.

He continued, “But how many of the thousands of people being k**led by i******s?” Um, what? He does have border blood on his hands, but his rebuttal was incoherent. He offered condolences to Riley’s parents, “having lost children myself.” And here we thought “it’s not about me.”

After a minute of off-script stumbling over words, he returned to the script for his main point about the border: blaming Republicans and demanding they give him a bill — as if that’s the only thing stopping him from securing the border.

Inflation

Biden hit the economy more than once, claiming it was “on the brink” when he came into office. No, it was in a solid recovery from his party’s p******c shutdowns. He boasted, “Fifteen million new jobs in just three years — a record!” No, people going back to work after losing a job to C***D lockdowns doesn’t count as job creation.

“Wages keep going up, and inflation keeps coming down,” he added. “Inflation has dropped from 9% to 3% — the lowest in the world!” He caused inflation with massive government spending right after coming into office. The federal government had already spent heavily to compensate businesses for shutdowns, but Biden had to keep spending more so he could claim credit for the aid.

The result was that he sent far too much money chasing far too few goods and services, sparking a 40-year-high inflation rate of 9.1%. He wants to claim credit for the annual rate slowing to 3% without taking the blame for lighting the fire in the first place. And oh, by the way, cumulative inflation since he took office is 18% — and 20%, 30%, or 40% on many key items.

We won’t let his BIG Lie slip by, but, unfortunately, millions of Americans won’t hear why his numbers are wrong because the media covers for him.

Later in the speech, he came back to inflation, repeating his ridiculous shrinkflation routine. “Too many corporations raise their prices to pad their profits, charging you more and more for less and less,” he griped. “That’s why we’re cracking down on corporations that engage in price gouging or deceptive pricing.”

Central planning and price fixing should do wonders for the economy. Ask the Soviets.

“Snack companies think you won’t notice when they charge you just as much for the same size bag but with fewer chips in it,” he complained. It’s not that businesses aren’t, in fact, shrinking product sizes, but they are also compensating for inflation. The real point of his comments is shifting blame from himself to greedy corporations.

His economic lies also covered the federal spending that caused inflation. “I’ve been delivering real results in a fiscally responsible way,” he asserted. “I’ve already cut the federal deficit by over $1 trillion.” Laughter broke out on the right side of the aisle, and rightly so. As with his jobs claim, Biden exploded the deficit before reducing it slightly. Now, projections are for record deficits as far as the eye can see, which will only add to our staggering $34 trillion in national debt.

“Democracy”

The United States is a Constitutional Republic that far too many Americans lazily call a “democracy.” Our Founders rightly steered clear of democracy because a majority mob can be every bit as tyrannical as a monarch. Democrats use the word “democracy” because it just happens to be the same root word as their party name. Democracy equals freedom, and Democrats defend democracy.

Don’t fall for it. Don’t use their language.

Which brings us to another major theme of Biden’s address: democracy, a word Biden used 11 times. Early on, he brought up J****** 6, 2021. “History watched three years ago on J****** 6th,” he said. “I**********nists stormed this very Capitol and placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy. … We all saw with our own eyes these i**********nists were not patriots.”

He repeated the canard that it represented “the gravest threat to our democracy since the Civil War.”

There’s no question that the r**t was disgraceful. Violently clashing with C*****l P****e should never happen.

Yet it’s also true that Democrats have done nothing but lie about the events that day (think Brian Sicknick), and then deploy a system of two-tiered justice to harshly punish even peaceful participants in that day’s events.

To say that a couple of hundred yahoos were i**********nists who nearly toppled the U.S. government is offensively laughable when we’re facing an invasion of nine million i*****l a***ns across Biden’s open border.

“We must be honest — the threat to democracy must be defended,” he misread. “This is the moment to speak the t***h and to bury the lies.” The primary liars are Joe “81 Million* V**es” Biden and his cadre of e******n-rigging usurpers.

Toward the end of his speech, after mentioning his “Unity Agenda,” Biden returned to the theme of “democracy,” saying, “My lifetime has taught me to embrace freedom and democracy.” He listed “core values that have defined America” — “Honesty. Decency. Dignity. E******y.”

He possesses none of those traits.

Biden began his presidency with an inaugural address full of promises to bring unity, yet he has brought nothing but division. Remember that angry speech in front of the N**i-esque background?

He then had the gall to say, “I will always be a president for all Americans!” Just not those filthy MAGA types.

It’s no wonder that one of the few times he received applause from Republicans was when he said, “Let me close with this.” Clearly, we were all ready for him to just stop talking.

Your surge protection will not protect you from a lightning strike, a fire, theft or a flood, and no matter how competent your son is in IT, it’ll take magic to recover data from all your drives if any of those things happen, and the fact that the Dell is new means nothing. In fact, new machines and very old machines are the most likely to fail. Not trying to be argumentative, but having spent >25 years specializing in professional data storage for the biggest storage companies in existence, I’ve seen way too much pain caused by lost data due to all those things I mentioned. An off site copy of your data is a big hedge against loss of data.

Cheers.

I watched a video last night about a new product. It's offered by Synology, and it's called BeeStation. Isn't that a perfect name for a computer device?

For $200, you get a 4TB HDD in a black case with several connection points. You can back up your data to it, let friends have their own private space, and access it from anywhere via the Internet. Although this sounds like a drive in a box, it can do what regular drives can't do. There's no indication what kind of drive is inside, and the drive isn't replaceable if it fails (although I'm sure it's possible to open the case).

More details at the link below. I see they also have a BeeDrive. I suspect someone in their organization is a beekeeper.

https://bee.synology.com/en-us/BeeStation