Silicon Valley Redneck

Not really doing the Halloween thing this year

Well, apart from putting on my Accounts Receivable hat and doing some end-of-the-month trick-or-treating, anyway.

I did have the notion of looking for a black trenchcoat, so that if I had occasion to visit a defense contractor, I could rummage through my hat collection and become either Soviet Cultural Attache or Boris Badenov.

...Wait, isn't Badenov a little guy?

Badenov is shorter than moose, taller than squirrel.  I am shorter than moose, taller than squirrel.  Badenov is shorter than Natasha.  If I borrow Natasha from National Instrument, I am shorter.

...Anyway, what with having already done more running around than I could really handle, on a weekend that I ought to have spent sleeping, this just didn't happen.  Besides which, my metabolism seems to be getting back in gear this evening, so any extra layers of clothing are Right Out.

I'd also had the notion that, with a haircut (much overdue anyway), a dose of whisker bleach, and a top hat (and some other clothing to match, of course) I could be The One Percent.

Or, randomly, put on a zombie costume and go around singing "If I Only Had a Brain."  (The other way around might work well, too: scarecrow seeking braaaaains.)

Ah, well.  If the weather turns unexpectedly cool and I feel inspired (and have somewhere to go), I could always dig out the Harcourt Fenton Mudd outfit.  Or the powdered metals, and go around with silver skin and bronze hair (very impressive, that one).

(One o' these years, I need to come up with a proper Stalin costume (and persona) - or at least Stalingrad.  Mudd's fine for Mara's Bar, but the League of Evil Geniuses party calls for something more, well, evil.)

Update: costume of sorts.  Standard weekday attire, only with a different shirt (khaki) and hat (old-timey pith helmet), and river shoes and dark socks, 'cause the Vibram foot gloves Just Don't Go.  Gets some comments, e.g., "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" and "Gee, you look exactly... like... yourself."

 

Crud, crud, glorious crud

This pesky virus is acting up again; maybe I shoulda skipped morning walkies today.  Latest symptom: a sinus headache, of "an alien parasite crawled up my nose and ate my brain" character.

Seems to be developing into a two-week thing with a sort of feeling-better-now break in the middle, with vaguely not-really-a-cold, not-really-the-flu symptoms.  Rather like, oh, a lesser version of what I had this time last year, which in turn seemed a lesser version of what I had this time two years ago.  Sort of an attenuated third harmonic of swine flu?

Not awake enough to be much use (fortunately, my apprentice and one of his colleagues just sorted out an analog problem with one of the toaster controllers; apparently a several-month-old ECO had failed to propagate across stuffing variants*).  Too uncomfortable to sleep, and no narcotics to hand (except alcohol, which I find not very helpful in such situations).

Time to sit around sipping apple cider with a bit of lemon juice, and watch some cartoons.  Later, maybe, chicken soup or chili.

Update: shortly after the original post, I developed a new symptom.  My sinuses smell of B-complex vitamins.  WTF???  I haven't been snorting vitamin powder!  Nor have I been ingesting B supplements, unless yesterday's granola was extra-fortified or something.

*Also update: turns out it wasn't covered by the old ECO; it seems to have been a different-but-related thing.  Still remains to be seen whether we want to turn their fix from yesterday into a real ECO.

 

And also because of Quantum

David H. Freedman offers one obvious-once-pointed-out explanation as to why economic models are always wrong: such a model necessarily has a large number of parameters, and for any given dataset there will be many possible solutions for a set of parameters to make the model match the data so far... only one of which is right.

I offer another, non-mathematical one: economic models, in particular, are used to make predictions which are then used as a basis for action.  The observer thus becomes part of the system, along with all the other observers-within-the-system who are using their own models (and we all use economic models, even if the model is just "if hemlines are up, sell blue chips").  The whole thing becomes highly interactive.

Also, I had an insight a few days ago: over the past couple of decades, the stock market has essentially acquired the behavior of a school of anchovies, which is why it spends so much time chasing its own tail and not actually going anywhere.  A model of the modern stock market, or any other system dominated by swarms of largely-similar automated trading algorithms, needs to be based on chaos theory, which isn't exactly noted for its robust predictive value.

(I just re-read Making Money, so of course I'm thinking of the Glooper, and what happens when you change a parameter in the model.  Though, in our world, it's only when you try to apply the output of the model that you end up changing the parameters of the real world.  Note also that Ankh-Morpork has a very simple economy compared to ours!)

 

Well, duh.

"It’s amazing to see that the ‘occupiers’ of Wall Street are basically white kids, and they’re dressed fairly well." - C.L. Bryant

Well, what do you expect?  Note their grievances and demands.  It's a Sons of Mary parade!

...And they expect Jubal to solve all the world's problems for them.

 

Handy workshop tip

Having done a lot of tapping (i.e.: threading the insides of holes) the past couple of weeks, and still not having gotten around to acquiring a tapping head so's I could mechanize the process, I was developing a case of sore wrist muscles.

Inspiration struck!  I grabbed my handy VSR drill-driver, set the overload clutch sort of low-ish, stuck the tap in the chuck (with vigorous tightening), and hey presto!  Forward, bzzint, reverse, bzzout, done!  Sometimes takes a couple of reversals and restarts when working with thick material.

Seems to work fine for #4-40 through #10-32.  Probably good for a size or two larger or smaller, though for #0-80 I think I'd stick with the manual tap wrench unless I had a lot of holes to deal with.  I'm guessing ¼ NPT would probably overwhelm the typical home-workshop drill, besides not fitting in the chuck (minor detail, that).

 

War crime WTF?

Heard on the talking-type wireless this morning, en route to morning walkies: some international commission is promising to investigate K'Daffy's demise.

Because, y'know, if he was summarily executed after being taken prisoner it's a serious matter for the International Community.

Riiiight.

Look, if he was killed by foreign troops, it was before he was captured.  The allegation is that he was killed after capture.  By Libyans.  This is an international matter, or a war crime, how?

And what is the International Community going to do about it?

"Look, we're very sorry, but we just can't accept your new government.  You got rid of your old dictator the wrong way, you see.  It simply isn't done.  Now go back, get yourselves a new dictator, and overthrow him again, only this time do it right."

Or maybe they need to put Zombie Qaddafi back on the throne and start over.  Only this time he's a zombie!  With a zombie army!

Update: D'OH!  International law is based on the Treaty of Westphalia.  The Treaty of Westphalia is based on the Divine Right of Kings.  Ergo, any regicide is a violation of international law.  Unless, of course, it's done by the Rightful Claimant to the Throne, i.e., someone who promptly declares himself king and can make it stick.

 

Stupid excuse

Sometime tomorrow...

Boss: Eric, why are these L-brackets machined out of bar stock?

Me: I got lazy.

Honestly, that is the reason.  I didn't feel like driving to the hardware store while still partially zombified, the brackets I'd find there wouldn't be all that suitable anyway, and my efforts at bending metal seldom turn out well.

So, the lazy approach was to carve 'em out of solid aluminum.

Alas, a trip to the hardware store is in order anyway.  Turns out the mounting screws aren't #6-32 at all, but M4, and the ones provided aren't long enough.  I don't feel like trying to counterbore the holes, so longer screws are called for.

(The spelling checker thinks "counterbore" should be "Canterbury" or possibly "Wonderbra", neither of which is even a verb.)

Incidentally, I just happened to check the safety section of the Bridgeport manual today, and it lacks the all-important "Not to be operated by children, drunkards, the mentally incompetent, chimpanzees, or zombies."

 

Crud update

No craving for chicken soup, no chills (just kind of alternating between feeling overheated and feeling like clothes might be a good idea, all at around 65°F).

Sometimes having that feeling I get when my brain is trying to be fully awake, alert, and twitchy, while my body is trying to be asleep.  Zombie mode, as it were.  Hey, put that Z-Max away!

Cruddy little headache, randomly sore muscles, and a complete inability to get my brain in gear (though I did, with prompting, manage to answer some questions from my apprentice this afternoon; whether I gave him the right answers is another question entirely).

Funny thing: when I set out on morning walkies, a bit earlier than usual, with pleasantly cool weather and the Sun just peeking over the hills, I figured on a nice slow, easy walk.  My legs thought otherwise, and set out at a fast pace, apparently intending to do the 7-mile loop.  I overruled them on the route, not being quite early enough for that when I also needed to get to the office; this turned out to be a good thing, as, after 5 miles without much in the way of hills, I was getting pretty darn tired.

A little bit of real work time this morning.  The client's electric mice got a preliminary ride on the whoopsiedoodle!  Alas, they got dizzy and horked up all their data while still on the ride.  Turns out they need to be blindfolded, besides which there's some sort of software issue that needs fixing.  Also, I got the go-ahead for adding the proper closed-loop speed controller, to facilitate testing at several preset levels of G force.  Another thing to get done in the next week....

Tomorrow, I have the feeling I'll skip walkies in favor of getting work done: some analog breadboarding (for the Extreme Toaster project), and, if I'm feeling sufficiently coherent, a bit of further metal-carving.  (I'm sure that, if the Bridgeport manual were written today, it would include a warning against operating the machine whilst zombified.)

 

Awake (?)

Mnfxt.  First blog post this morning, 0400.  What I'm doing up and posting already?

Well... being up at 0400 is not all that unusual for me, but generally I'd be reading, not posting.

This morning, I crawled out of bed at 0215.

Three factors, aside from early bedtime last night:

1. Ferschlugginer mosquitoes.  Many big, lumpy, itchy bites, occasional buzzing in ear, inspiring swatting and anxiety.

2. Heat.  Too hot to hide under sheet and still sleep.  Need ventilation.  Without sheet, mosquitoes bite every-flippin'-where.

3. Some kind low-grade creeping crud.  Had it since Sunday morning.  Assumed it was just work-related stress ("Oh, crap, I need to get three different big projects done before Monday!") plus hot weather and being overdue for a haircut, but now have the suspicion that some manner of virus may be involved.  Symptoms: basically those of a moderate fever, minus the actual fever.  Hot'n'sweaty beyond what the weather would explain, sore muscles beyond what last week's physical work would explain, headache, inability to focus.

At least the crud doesn't seem to be what Tam has, which sounds like the virus I've heard has been making the rounds of Silicon Valley the past few weeks (and which, now as I think of it, might explain why the trails have been so empty on recent fine sunny mornings.  I mean, apart from the mountain lions).

Oh, well.  Time to get properly started on the day.  Early walkies this morning, after which it's down to the company lab to give a client's electric mice their rides on the new whoopsiedoodle, assuming the client can get the mice's firmware to do the data collection properly.

 

What's a Matador?

All the cool kids are doing it...

1. What was your first car? Model, year, color, condition?
2. What adventures did you have in it, good or bad?
3. What happened to it, what’s the end of the story?

1. AMC Matador, 1973, brown, well-used and requiring constant maintenance.  It was a hand-me-down from my father; at the time, I seldom needed a car, what with work being within convenient walking distance of home.

2. Not much in the way of adventures.  It got me to places that were a bit beyond walking or bicycle distance, plus the occasional drive to a backpacking outing, and a couple of trips up to scenic Gazelle, California, home of Starpoint Software (for a new business venture that kinda fizzled out).

3. After I moved to Sunnyvale and started needing to use the car for the daly commute, the Matador's condition deteriorated rather quickly, with wheel bearings looking urgent and a head gasket not far behind, and many other problems impending.  In the spring of '89, I got the Jeep to replace it, and the old beast sat by the curb until the guy who delivered the morning paper offered me several times scrap value (i.e., not much) for something he could drive slowly around surface streets.

A few years later, I heard that AMC products had become collectible.  Aw, darn!  And the body had been in fine shape; it was just the working bits that were troublesome.