Silicon Valley Redneck

Where are the corporate graybeards?

One might think that corporations, especially those that deal with a disproportionately elderly customer base, might have a graybeard or two on hand to challenge the assumptions of the younger generation.

One particularly irksome assumption: a phone number makes a good unique identifier.

Yeah... among the younger generation, at least one cellphone per person might be the norm.  But 'twasn't that long ago that one land-line number per household was the rule, and personal phones very much the exception.

I had two automated calls from CVS in as many days, informing me of status updates.  Except that I think the second one was probably for my father, who doesn't have his own phone (he used to, but wasn't answering it), so when he needs to give a phone number, he uses mine.

At least they let us both have the same phone number in our respective customer records; it'd be really annoying to get "that number is already in our system" when trying to set up an account.  And you just know that's coming, and that databeese will become cluttered with old numbers that have been re-issued to new phone owners but haven't been purged from other systems.  Oh, and also cluttered with fake numbers given out by people who need to put a phone number on some form or other and don't want to use their own; I think at least two people have been doing that with the number that happens to be mine.

I guess there are only so many TLAs.

Spotted in an e-mail from the Eye of Tripoli:

Three Chips in One: The History of the BCD Integrated Circuit

That's some fairly old history.  Early 74xx TTL, amirite?

Subhed:

STMicroelectronics’ super-integrated silicon-gate process—used to combine bipolar, CMOS, and DMOS technologies—is now an IEEE Milestone

Oh.  Not Binary-Coded Decimal.  No decade counters, 1-of-10 decoders (with nor without NIXIE-driver outputs), and so on.

Regarding meta-beliefs

Twitchy captured some commentary based on the premise that no one actually believes woke ideology.

Quite some time ago, I realized that a lot of the stuff I fervently believed back in my college days, I didn't actually believe.  I merely believed that I believed it.  Meta-belief, if you will.

Sir Pterry kinda-sorta captured this in Small Gods, in which nobody of any consequence believed in the Great God Om, but a heck of a lot of people believed in the Omnian Church.  But meta-belief is actually on another level from that; the Omnian Church, its Quisition in particular, was an omnipresent threat, while the things I used to believe that I believed were just kind of floating around there, unchallenged, as things that everybody believed (or at least professed belief in), because (in the absence of contrary knowledge) they were just obvious.  Besides, those beliefs were shared by all smart people, so those who believed otherwise must be Untermenschen.

Maybe the world needs more, I dunno, call 'em secular Jesuits... people who challenge unthinking belief with logic and observation, provoking crises of faith.  Beliefs that stand up to logic might be reinforced, while those with no rational basis might be weakened.

Wait, wasn't that supposed to be the role of the Press, back before the Press became part of the Quisition?

Hmmm, maybe another correlation here

Interesting article here about the Pestilence and the gut microbiome at the Irritable Bowel Times, er, International Business Times.

Seems a healthy microbiome has protective effects, or maybe a faulty microbiome increases vulnerability.

I'll just hazard a guess here that old people in nursing homes may well have damaged gut microbiomes, from antibiotic use if nothing else.

Landscape malfunction owie

So I stepped off the back deck onto the inviting back lawn....

Oops.  Apparently the last mowing resulted in something very prickly being chewed up and scattered into the immediate vicinity of the deck, where it dried out and became hard and crunchy.  Might have been blackberry vines, or a thistle, or something else.

Several thorns in my paw.  I removed most of 'em, but I think there's at least one still lurking.

Website breakage

So I try to create an on-line account at CVS....

It has Criteria for what constitutes an acceptable password.  The third of these is that the password must not be one's username nor an easily-recognizable word.

No matter what gibberish I try to use, it insists that I'm not meeting that third criterion.

... Oh, great.  So I try from Firefox instead of Chrome.  The first password I'd tried earlier now works.  I make it through the second page of signup stuff (which doesn't deal gracefully with autofill, nor with Firefox's idea of phone number formats), and get:

We can't process your request right now. Please try again later.

Real helpful, guys.  Also, the "Create an account" button is now inactive, so, what, do I have to start over from the beginning? (Ah.  Revisiting one or more of the green-checked fields causes it to re-evaluate status and bring back the button.  But it still won't process the request.)

Oh, and Google?  It'd sometimes be real helpful if Chrome's password manager allowed adding a password without having to log into the site in question.  Mozilla Foundation?  Same goes for Firefox.

Update:  I tried again, using Firefox on my laptop, and managed to get signed up.  That done, I can sign on from Chrome on the workstation.

Weather's a-comin'.

When there's a big enough gust of wind to be clearly audible in my office at 0930, something's likely up.

Half an hour later, wind is 10 MPH or so, plus gusts, coming from the Southwest.

Still no rain showing on the radar, but I'm starting to believe it's on the way.

Update:  Various rain had been passing to the West.  Then, around 1830ish, we started getting rain here.  Around 1930ish, it's quite heavy.

And, the rain gauge ain't registering.  Gotta take a ladder out there, after the storm passes, and unclog the thing again.  And maybe I should add some sort of anti-perching features.

Mixed Monday morning

Air conditioning for the end of the house that includes the master bedroom and my office didn't seem to be working last night.  Air was circulating, but not getting cool.  I turned the AC off (leaving circulation on, as the AC for the other end of the house is working).  Turning it back on this morning, I find that the fan on the outside unit runs as expected, which rules out the four failure modes previously encountered, and probably all the ones I might be able to fix.  Probably have to get an HVAC guy out here to check the refrigerant, etc.

When I emerged from the bedroom and headed for the kitchen, I found Sumatra atop the most inaccessible kitchen cabinet, up above the double oven.  He must be feeling a fair bit better.  He'a since returned to the bedroom closet.

And, tying in with the air-conditioning thing, my metabolism is still wonky, and running hot.  Ugh.

Update:  Got a non-emergency HVAC tech coming out Thursday, by which time the rain should have come and gone.

Sunday winds down

Sumatra is doing better.  Still not at all well, but he's eating, and sometimes will walk around the house, peer intently out one window or another, and generally act like a live cat.  We're continuing to administer subcutaneous hydration.

I've mostly recovered from yesterday's crud, though my metabolism still seems to be running hot, or at least not set for summer.  Or maybe my hair is too long.  Anyway, I got some more yard work done today, and OD'ed on transdermal vitamin D.

Today's rain never materialized; it's now promised for tomorrow evening through Tuesday afternoon.  I'm not sure I trust that, though.  Probably a good thing I watered the garden this morning, in among planting some late corn, squash, and peas.

As the garden grows, I note that I still have small-yard habits, and I really need to adjust to the large garden area.  There's plenty of room for spacing plants properly and including walkways, and yet I have them all bunched up in a few areas.  Well, that goes in the lessons-for-next-year file.  Also, for next year I should have the weed situation better under control, and the entire area available for planting - this year, I tilled a large area, but actual planting areas needed supplemental weeding, raking, re-tilling, and so on, which I did a little at a time.

Newspeak slogan spotting

Slogan: "Protect trans kids!"

Meaning, protect them from quacks who might pressure them into having irreversible, life-changing surgery without regard for the consequences?

I rather suspect it means the opposite: "protect" them from those who advise caution and might suggest that drastic medical intervention ought not to be undertaken lightly.

Meanwhile on the home front

Sumatra is not doing well at all.  It's like he gave up on life a few days ago.

He does seem to be severely dehydrated, so we're giving him subcutaneous fluids about as fast as he can absorb them.  The vet said there's a tradeoff between keeping him hydrated enough that his kidneys will continue working and keeping him a little on the dry side to take a load off his heart.  Right now, though, it seems that he's gotten way too far into "low on fluids" territory.

Huckleberry and Southmoon are very worried, and don't know what to do.

We're still hoping that, if we get him sufficiently rehydrated, he'll resume taking an interest in life.

Update:  Sumatra seems to be doing a bit better, late-afternoon.  Seems we gave him enough fluids to wake his kidneys up, and while he was up to use the litter box he also took a look around to see what other cats were around (just Huckleberry at the time), and then ate a little.  Encouraging signs!

I, meanwhile, am not doing all that well.  Joy woke me up around midnight to help her try hydrating Sumatra, and I don't recover quickly from being woken up (there's a reason I don't use an alarm clock if I can reasonably avoid it).  My metabolism is messed up (seems to be running hot today; usually after an abrupt awakening it runs cool), I have a headache, and I'm disoriented.  A good night's sleep should help, assuming I can get one.

Haven't noticed this'n among the memes yet

Coming soon to an Army near you:

Close-order swanning about.

Yes, life continues to imitate Monty Python, and not in a good way.

That didn't go as planned.

Mower blade sharpening kit arrived today.

Plan: dismount deck, flip over, remove blades, sharpen blades, reinstall blades, remount deck, resume mowing with a cleaner cut.

Well.

Yeah, definitely needs sharpening; those leading edges are badly notched.  But I don't think I'll be sharpening them.  I know the trailing edge is supposed to have a rising bit, but that wavy part on the leading edge (both ends of both blades) doesn't look right at all, and would seem to interfere with sharpening as well as with cutting.

I have a spare pair of blades on order, from a cheap-but-slow source.  Maybe I should keep them on order as spares, and order a near-term replacement pair from a faster-but-pricier source.

And at some point I'll need to tip the tractor's mower deck up and inspect the blades.  The shop crane would seem to be involved.  (Also, there's some touch-up welding called for, as I recall.  That would seem to require having the deck tipped up somewhere close to an electrical outlet.)

Update:  Wait a minute... maybe they are supposed to be bendy like that?  I just took a close look at the pictures of the replacement blades on offer at Home Despot, and they do have that weird contour.  Guess I should attempt to sharpen them...?

Update 2:  Seems that Toro decided to standardize on mulching blades even on non-mulching mowers, sometime around 2017.  I wonder if the older-model, non-mulching blades of the same nominal size would work in this model.  Anyway, replacement blades (of the same type) should be arriving in the next couple of days, and then I can attempt to re-sharpen these.  I can't seem to find instructions for sharpening blades of this shape, so I guess I'll just have to wing it.

Life continues to be disrupted

Sumatra still isn't doing well today.  Not much for eating nor drinking, and mostly wants to find a quiet corner and hide in it.  He can walk, but is unsteady and gets tired very quickly.

So, mainly worrying about the cat.  Got a little bit of weeding done down in the garden, but for the most part we're stuck in or near the house, with at least one person where the cat is.

Riddle me this:

Which of the following statements sounds more racist?

1. The novel coronavirus escaped from a Chinese government laboratory where virus research is performed.
2. The novel coronavirus jumped species to humans because Chinese people like to eat raw bats for lunch.

Yeah, yeah... "racist" doesn't mean what it sounds like, and you can totally be racist against, e.g., the Communist Party or the Department of the Interior.