This year, that’s dragging on. The forecast still includes frost every few days.
This weekend, I bought some sunflower, zucchini and radish seeds. I was going to buy some cantaloupe, but the package suggested they should be started a few weeks before the last frost which is probably gone.
I’m climbing up the learning curve for gardening.
My big jump this year is to put down some bricks around the garden. Tomorrow, I need to measure things out. I also might make paths through the middle of the garden so that everything is within arm’s reach of a path.
I’m also looking toward buying peas. I’ve never tried growing them before.
At Home Depot it didn’t seem that there was any run on garden seeds. The racks were completely full. However, the store was really busy Saturday afternoon! It was a bright sunny day and people were coming out of their isolation.
I tried to call 811 but my phone said the service wasn’t available to me. I made my mark-up request on the Indiana web site instead.
I was looking around recently and found some really despicable ads on websites.
They offer to provide updates to Flash. Since Flash isn’t supported any more, I can only surmise that these are actually trojans trying to attack peoples’ PCs.
People get error messages that their Flash isn’t working and these ads prey on people who don’t know that the purported update is a trick.
There’s so much information to transmit about changes in computer infrastructure. Getting it out to the people who need it is a big job!
It’s relatively easy to sign up to drive for Uber Eats and DoorDash. The car insurance situation is more fraught. To an insurance company, there are three coverage windows: when you’re logged in and waiting, when you’ve agreed to a job and are on the way to a pickup, and when you’re transporting the food.
I contacted my insurance company, Liberty Mutual. They offer an amendment that removes some exclusions from my original policy. That amendment extends my coverage to the logged in and waiting window.
Uber has done the work needed to provide insurance coverage for its drivers. Uber maintains commercial auto coverage policies for drivers in every state. I’ll always be covered while I’m working for Uber because their insurance is compatible with mine. Uber also offers insurance for damage to my vehicle when I’m earning fares but it’s at a high deductible. I need the amendment to have damage covered while I’m waiting for a call and to have the Indiana mandated under/uninsured motorist coverage for that window.
I believe DoorDash has not thought about it as thoroughly nor with the drivers in mind. They have “excess auto insurance” for the time you’re transporting the food. You can only file with them for liabilities that exceeds your normal insurance company’s limits. This is a problem: my normal insurance company’s limits are zero while I’m underway because of policy exclusions. Also, this isn’t compatible with my amended insurance because it leaves a gap of no coverage between when I’ve agreed to a job and I pick up the food to deliver. Beyond those problems, they don’t cover damage to my auto at any time. Their website doesn’t say that they include the required under/uninsured motorist liability. Reading the text carefully, they don’t even cover my own injuries either!
In addition to the coverage gap, DoorDash’s coverage pays the excess once my regular insurance company settles. Health insurance has rules to handle a first and second payer, but a second payer don’t seem like a “thing” with auto insurance. Normally, when I get coverage by one policy, the old policy ends. With DoorDash, if either insurance company is recalcitrant, I will have (a lot of) trouble getting things settled. Also, I have experience with being sued after an accident. Liberty Mutual took care of everything at the time. Since a lawsuit can come a couple of years after the accident, I’m not confident about DoorDash’s anonymous underwriter.
If there’s an accident, Indiana requires me to provide proof of insurance. I don’t see how to fulfill that with DoorDash if the accident happens in the large window where Liberty Mutual doesn’t cover me. Uber provides a certificate of insurance that I can keep in my car. I don’t have any information about what company DoorDash uses; not even verification that it’s licensed in Indiana.
In conclusion, I can’t drive for DoorDash because I have a gap in coverage between when I accept an order and pick up the food. I won’t have coverage for myself nor my property. In addition, the process of making a claim to them is inherently intimidating. For Uber, I need to weigh out the money earned vs. the exposure of a higher comprehensive deductible.
I’ve got a couple common applications on my Window 10 system… Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office.
Photoshop is obviously graphic intensive. It benefits from a good GPU. I had assumed that Microsoft Word and Excel wouldn’t care about GPU settings at all.
My system has an on-board Intel HD Graphics 4600 driver. It’s powerful enough for someone who doesn’t play video games. It also has ports for 3 displays. I made a neophyte mistake and didn’t realize that two of the connectors on the motherboard are Display Ports. I hoped to do CUDA development as well as have 3 monitors, so I bought an nVidia card that had two outputs so that neophyte me knew that the PC could handle 3 more monitors. I upgraded it this year with an GeForce GT 1030 nVidia compatible… Not powerful enough for serious game play, but within my budget.
The problem:
Sometimes Photoshop would get in a state that it couldn’t open anything nor create new images. I hoped that an upgrade of the video card and an upgrade of the version of Photoshop would fix the problem but I was left right where I started.
I contacted Adobe support and after some work, found that the solution: Disable the motherboard video drivers and only open photoshop on a monitor tied to the nVidia card. I believe this works because Photoshop now knows which GPU to use and there’s no inter-GPU data transfer.
Then, I had a new problem, Microsoft Word and Excel became horribly sluggish. Really bad! Long story short, the solution to that appears to be only run Word on the monitor connected to the Intel graphics card.
My video cards are not playing nice. I would say they’re getting ready to have a divorce. The nVidia card is going to take custody of Photoshop while the Intel is running away with Microsoft Office.
CUDA is a software technology for accessing the parallel resources on nVidia cards in C++. I’ve never actually used it, so my use of CUDA is still only aspirational.
W. Smith 