TGO David

I think I may have to break out the KME sharpening system later today and put a mirror edge on this thing, though. It's already wickedly sharp but I can make it better and prettier.

I already had a Spyderco Manix in S30V steel and black G10 scales, but I'm a sucker for special editions and especially when they are made with CruWear steel. I ordered a pair of these from DLT Trading when they went available this past Tuesday. I received mine in the mail yesterday (Thursday), so talk about some lightning fast shipping. The blade is DLC coated CruWear. CruWear rates very highly on all four axes of Edge Retention, Ease of Sharpening, Strength and Corrosion Resistance - which makes it a hell of a good steel for a daily carry tool that will see use. The action on the Manix is a lot of fun to fidget with. I've probably absent-mindedly flipped this open and closed a hundred times while sitting on conference calls yesterday and today if I've done it once. My wife and oldest daughter are both fond of purple, so I figure I will gift one of the knives to whichever of them tries the hardest to take mine away from me. I suppose I might list my previous Manix 2 for sale at some point.

Yep. The only thing the government is good at is hoodooing people into furthering its expansion. The best and brightest minds that our country has to offer generally don't go into politics, and yet our society seems to trust their chosen political team implicitly.

I threw that one in there for giggles. Fauci's biggest downfall was allowing himself to become political instead of holding his ground as a scientist. The whole debacle of him switching direction on masks and initially downplaying their effectiveness as a ploy to keep PPE supplies from being sucked up by hoarders was a big, big mistake. Agreed. They're making the argument I need for my own mountaintop or remote island. I just need a few more stimulus checks so that I can afford one of them.

For the sake of accuracy, the virus isn't alive. What allows it to exist in a potent state is moisture. Ideally for its sake the moisture generally comes from a human host. Outside of a human host, the virus remains potent for as long as its lipid shell remains intact. As that breaks down from UV light and lack of moisture, the virus degrades and loses its potency. Cleaning sprays also dissolve or accelerate the destruction of the the shell that protects the viral RNA payload. This is why antibiotics don't kill viruses. They aren't alive. There's nothing to kill.

Eh, open-air space and I suspect the people immediately around him are people he's around all the time without a mask anyway. Family? Friends? Co-conspirators? This week has been a really good reminder, for me at least, of a very fundamental truth. Having COVID reminded me of it. Watching Joe Biden be inaugurated reminded me of it. Not everything is political, but everything can be politicized. Each of us have the power to allow ourselves to be focused, or not, on the political aspects of anything. Nothing good comes from listening to politicians or pundits for medical advice.

Tolerate me, please, while I wax poetically about masks. I'll preface my words by saying that I am a COVID-19 "survivor" and fairly recently at that. I am pretty sure I know where I contracted it because I hadn't been anywhere else. I am sure I caught it at church recently on a day when we had record attendance and I could count the number of people wearing masks on one hand. Out of a few thousand. The fact that I was wearing a fleece face covering while volunteering (outside in 20-degree weather, mind you) didn't help me. I was exposed and then followed it with an abusive and exhausting pace at work for the next three days that sapped my body's ability to resist the virus. It was the perfect storm, so to speak. So here's the deal: You all know the science and statistics regarding N95 masks, fabric face coverings, and why none of them are going to stop you from inhaling something as small as a virus. But hopefully you all possess the common sense to understand that those same things will stop you from spraying a cough or a sneeze 10+ feet away from you, and keep you from coughing into a hand that you then use to touch or handle something that other people are going to touch or handle. And that's the whole point of them. This particular virus is pretty communicable. It both "survives" on surfaces and remains airborne long enough, if coughed or sneezed into the atmosphere, to be a problem for people in confined spaces. A mask isn't going go keep you from catching it but it has a good chance of stopping you from spreading it to other people. I made it nearly a year without contracting it and credit that to working from home 100% of the time since last February, avoiding prolonged contact with large groups of people in confined spaces, using hand sanitizer before I get into any of my vehicles after handling or touching things that other people might have handled or touched, and staying reasonably fit by exercising almost daily and getting plenty of sleep. I wore a mask or face covering whenever I was in close proximity to others in public, but that was never for my sake. Now that I've had it, I will keep wearing a mask until enough people are vaccinated that we can stand-down. Having the antibodies for it helps me. It doesn't help anyone else. It doesn't stop me from having the crap lurking in my sinuses where I can spread it to other people, but a mask will mitigate it. TLDR: Masking is effective for everyone's sake except the wearer. The weak link in this protocol is anyone who chooses not to wear one when around other people. If the reason you don't want to wear a mask, is because it doesn't help you directly, you might need to consider whether you're being a selfish asshole or not because I am pretty sure that anyone who does wear a mask is helping you. These statements are based on personal experience, common sense, and 40+ years of understanding the scientific method and believing that medical professionals aren't out to get me.

I never got the action figure. It wasn’t even offered to me. WTF!? They’re actually telling folks now that exposure might not yield a lasting antibody response to it anyway but they suspect that subsequent infection (there’s a real happy thought) will be less severe. I’ll probably take the vaccine once it’s available to me. My experience with it is pretty similar to yours. It slowed me down but it didn’t knock me out of commission. It was like the flu. The worst parts were the crazy body temperature fluctuations and the loss of ability to smell anything or taste most things. Losing the ability to taste or smell coffee really sucked. You and I are lucky. We were just inconvenienced by it.

That sounds like a Trump sound bite. Trump prior to being a COVID patient. Prior to being treated with an RNA vaccine. Hydroxychloroquine is actually used in some therapy protocols. Not sure why you think it’s not.

I’m curious: There are a lot of really passionate opinions in this thread. How many of you who are weighing in on the effectiveness of masks, the vaccine or treatments for those actually infected with COVID-19 have actually been infected and have firsthand experience with the virus and, ostensibly, have actually met with a real physician about it?

Much appreciated!

I'm just glad that we're all dealing with COVID-19 and not Ebola. I don't think our society would survive something like Ebola given how many people still seem willing to ignore the recommendations of medical scientists despite 11-months worth of consequences being on display for everyone to see with their own two eyes.

Very sorry to hear that he's having these problems! Will absolutely keep him in my thoughts.

Believe it or not, this should be cheaper for us in the long run. I won't have to pay AWS each month.

For the past few years, we have used Amazon's AWS S3 storage for file attachments, profile photos, etc. I am in the process of pulling that data back onto TGO's own web server for a variety of reasons. While these tasks run in the background, you may notice that some photos and file attachments don't work for a few moments. They will resume working properly as each file moves over. This does several things for us: 1.) It removes a dependency on a hosting platform that has proven it will cut you off at a moment's notice if they do not approve of your content. 2.) It strengthens our SSL encryption a little by keeping all content served up from one server. 3.) It gives me some options if I want to move us to a different software package. Before you freak out about that third bullet, I am not actively pursuing that but I am always watching to see what advancements other platforms are making.

It's amazing that they held out this long without inventory. We're going to see more of this, unfortunately.

There's a problem with the photo Gallery feature that I cannot isolate without support from the vendor. I'm disabling the Gallery for the moment. I'll bring it back online as soon as I can.

We are going to eliminate somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 posts by doing this but I am in the process of purging any non-pinned posts in the Trading Post forums where the content hadn't been replied to since 01/01/2020. In other words, I am retaining anything a year old or newer. I will be looking for ways to make it easier for you to all to delete your own Trading Post threads once an item has been sold.

Bumping this back to the top as it may be of interest to some folks. Just bear in mind that the Internet is quick to index things, so deleting photos here probably doesn't help you much in the grand scheme of privacy.

Regardless of how you feel about Reuters or the media in general. this article is a good example of why some of our terms and conditions exist - especially as relates to participating on the forum and what sort of content you may or may-not post. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-inauguration-threats-insight/as-inauguration-nears-law-enforcement-scrutiny-drives-u-s-extremists-into-internets-dark-corners-idUSKBN29K20U I am also attaching the article as a PDF since links to external content tend to change or get archived over time. 2021-01-15 (Reuters) Inauguration Law Enforcement Extremists Internet.pdf

I think I changed it to a set of defined "ranks" based on level of participation, but I can't remember what I was after when I set it up like that. Maybe it was part of the now defunct politics area and the ability to post there. I'll get it set back to the way it was.

You just described a lot of C-level executives.

It's registered with a registrar in Switzerland who has a very good privacy rating.