Silicon Valley Redneck

Netless Thursday afternoon

So, sometime between 1230 and 1300 yesterday, the Internet service went out to lunch.

I was fixing to post a watermelon-related comment elsewhere, my father finished his lunch, I went off to start his after-lunch exercise video (I don't recall the exact time, but 'twas somewhere within the aforementioned video), returned to my desk, hit POST, and... long delay, then NO INTERNET CONNECTION.

Check my phone: it shows WiFi, but no Internet via the WiFi.  Well, this happens sometimes.  Wait a while, then power-cycle the cable modem.  Repeat.  Check the cable outside for evidence of an overhead backhoe attenuator (which seems unlikely, as the construction equipment has been coming and going via the side driveway, through the Annex).  Power cycle both the modem and the WiFi access point.

Put my phone in hotspot mode, and try to communicate using my laptop.  There's sort of connectivity, but it's unusable (ping reporting 94% packet loss in one test).  Trying to use the 'Net directly from then phone is also extremely draggy.

Hypothesis: a lot of the neighbors are also on Spectrum, with Verizon cellphones as backup, and now they're all trying to use the backup at the same time, clobbering the bandwidth.

Eventually, by searching for internet outage on my phone and waiting for a very long time, I reach a story of a TDOT contractor in Maryville applying a literal backhoe attenuator to two fiber bundles, each containing hundreds of individual fibers, each fiber carrying I-don't-know-how-many gigabits per second of network traffic.  This apparently happened around 0900, long before our service went out, so I suppose further excavation and preparations for repair must subsequently have severed such connectivity as hadn't been clobbered by the original accident.

Looks like it came back sometime around midnight.

No, I didn't have a gloriously productive afternoon.  There was some work I should have been doing, but it mostly required at least a little bit of 'Net connectivity.  We did search through some boxes and unearth some important family documents that hadn't been seen since the move, so that was progress.  And I did some napping, 'cause it was hot and humid and I hadn't been feeling altogether well since sometime in the morning.

Local news reports here and here.

Update:  Aaaand, it's gone.  Went out again right around 0500 Friday.  Posting this update hastily, before enough people wake up to clobber Verizon's bandwidth again.

Update 2:  Came back around 1415 Friday.  In the meantime, cellphone status had ranged from "many bars, LTE, go for it" to "many bars, LTE, but good luck getting any packets through" to "many bars, LTE, no Internet connectivity" to "no bars, emergency calls only, and who knows if even those will go through."  Posting this update before it goes down again.

Oh, and it seems there have been multiple disruptions of the Internet, in various places, the past week or so.  Normal?  Special incompetence as experienced workers burn out or walk out and are replaced by whoever's handy and checks enough identity boxes?  Anti-government sabotage?  Pro-government sabotage?  Something else?

And now a word from the produce department

It's cantaloupe season!  Found two of 'em ready to harvest yesterday, just falling off the vine.  None of this "pick it under-ripe so it'll survive transportation, put it on a truck, send it off to a distant store, and the customer can try to find one that's gotten ripe-ish since being picked" business.

Vine-ripened and fresh from the garden, yum.

And, more notes for next year.  Looks like we'll be having a brief surfeit of melons, then they'll be done for the year.  Next time, plant multiple waves, spaced out so they ripen throughout the season.

A glimpse of the future

Latest rumor is that our dedicated government scientists are working hard to develop vaccines for the next several pandemics, even before their esteemed colleagues unleash them.

Meanwhile, contrary to cinematic convention, the angry mob with pitchforks and torches will march on the hut of any peasant who doesn't accept Dr. Frankenstein as his personal savior.

Efficiency: unclear on the concept

Seems some super-zippy latest-generation PCs are banned in California (and some other states) under "energy efficiency" regulations.

They use too much power, for some arbitrary value of too much.

Here's the thing: energy efficiency isn't a matter of using less energy per unit time (i.e., power).  Efficiency is a matter of how much work is accomplished per unit of energy consumed.  So if a new computer uses 50% more power than the old one, but can complete some epic task (rendering animation, crunching the numbers for a finite element analysis problem, whatever) in half the time, it's more energy-efficient, at least when kept busy crunching on big calculations.

... Flashback to EU regulations forbidding electric tea kettles that use "too much power" without regard to the increase in efficiency of spending less time heating the water and thereby reducing losses.

To no set gauge they make us— For no laid course prepare

So there's this grand dispute over Simone Biles, her departure from the Olympics, and what it all means.

Everybody's gotta have a take, so here's mine: no mortal can be awesome all the time and forever.

There's an unfortunate tendency nowadays to deify politicians, actors, bureaucrats, athletes, any any other sort of public figure.  But all these people are human, and humans are not gods and never will be («Du bist am Ende – was du bist» as Mephistopheles put it).  Bad enough to do it one emperor at a time, waiting until they're decently dead; so much worse to do it wholesale.

Yes, some humans achieve great things, and we can celebrate their presence in our species, tribe, or whatever.  But fallible mortals they remain, and we must keep that in mind.  Celebrate their accomplishments, benefit from them, seek to emulate or improve on them: fine.  But to expect eternal perfection from these people is not good for one's mental health, nor for society's.

... Except Mel Brooks.  Mel Brooks is infallible.

(Literary reference in headline: straight or Fishy.)

Of flag allergies and bizarre wrongheadedness

Apparently some intrepid reporter covering the Olympics got bent out of shape over the U.S. of A. flags on display.

The explanation was something along the lines of "the flag is a symbol of nationalism, and that means white nationalism."

Behold the faces of our white nationalism!

Seriously, nationalism is a darn sight better than tribalism, which is where Our Betters are trying to lead us.  And, as national identities go, 'Murrican is one of those least tied to race.

Latest reading for odd bits of time

Just finished Draw One In The Dark, by Sarah Hoyt.  Yet another urchin-fantasy mythos....

Yeah, OK if you like that sort of thing.  Kinda interesting premise.  But....

The heroine tastes dragon blood, and yet there's no indication that she thereby gains understanding of the speech of birds.  How can this be?

"One of the cups was embossed with a dragon" - gotta watch out for that.  Does the flagon with the dragon hold the pellet with the poison, or is it the vessel with the pestle?

"No unified dental hygiene guidelines for dragons?" - they could maybe use Bandersnatch rules:

I’ll use your sword to pick my teeth
As my dentist has taught me to.
I’ll use the string from off your bow
To floss them through and through.

Those insect eggs... sounds like a parasitic wasp.  I was hoping it would be a Mesopotamian species, as celebrated in song ("Sumer is ichneumon in" and all that).  Instead, it turns out to be a wildly unlikely (even by insect standards) cryptid of a family better known for being overly literal.

Next up, I guess, is Aries' Red Sky, by James Young.  But not until bedtime.  Got other stuff I need to be doing now.

Got some Monday-afternoon weather.

The long-overdue rain had all but disappeared from the forecast, and from the radar map.

Then, just a little while ago, there was thunder.  Then more thunder.  Then rain.  Then a torrential downpour, accompanied by fierce wind, shifting direction as the storm changed course.

At the height of the storm, the weather app was showing "nearest lightning strike 0.13 mile" and "50% chance of light rain."

it seems to be tapering off now, though there might be more mini-storms on the way.  Seems to have driven off the pond guys; one of 'em was just using the newly-arrived giant loader to shift huge amounts of dirt around, but I guess the combination of lightning and slickery mud made working conditions suboptimal.

Gotta work on pest management

It would appear that Gaston has discovered our corn patch.

Oh, well.  Most of each ear remains salvageable.  Some ears are entirely unmunched.

Also, I definitely need to leave more space between varieties to avoid cross-pollination.

Update:  I'd planted two kinds of sweet corn (plus some not-sweet varieties).  First and most, because I found the packet of seeds first, was something that was supposed to be purple sweet corn; I'd bought that because I just can't resist interesting varieties.  The second, slightly later and rather smaller patch, is basic yellow sweet corn.  I harvested a few of each today, and boiled them up come dinnertime.

The yellow stuff is indeed basic yellow sweet corn, only fresh.  Yum.  The purple... I think I'll relegate that to the "meal corn" category.  It's kind of tough, and doesn't really have that (modern) corn-on-the-cob taste.  Another note for next spring.

(Last year, the corn harvest was zero; some varmint managed to eat all the kernels off the ears just before they got ripe.  Haven't had that particular problem this year.  Maybe the varmints can't cross my symbolic fence.)

Cultural difference

So, the middle-back yard is all tore up, there are guys operating serious heavy machinery (not at this time on a Saturday morning, but when work is progressing), and in general it looks like a big construction site....

... Yeah, there'll be pics eventually, all concentrated into one big report, with followups as things evolve....

There's no construction-zone rent-a-fence.  Also, nary a hard hat in sight.  And, yes, these guys are licensed contractors.

(Hard hats wouldn't make much sense; there's nothing overhead to fall on people.  A fence would add expense and inconvenience.  It seems that, outside of the urban zones, people are assumed not to be idiots, and kids are taught from an early age to mind where they're going and not to get in the way of cars, trucks, trains, combine harvesters, and the like.)

Argh. Wrong length pin.

So I decided I might as well fix the mini-tiller....

The drag bar* had fallen off near the end of my last use of the thing.  Supposed to be held on by, if I was reading the manual correctly, a 6x25mm clevis pin.  So I ordered some of those from Amazon, and they came, and I put them in the barn, and today I picked up the pieces and, oops.

A 25mm long pin fits the frame nicely.  With the drag bar in place, it's decidedly too short.  Maybe it's supposed to be 6x35mm?

I have some longer pins in ¼" diameter, which is more than 6mm, but let's have a look... well, it actually does fit the hole in the frame, but not the hole in the drag bar.  If I needed it today, I suppose I could drill out the drag bar to ¼​", but I don't, so I guess it's time to order a more suitable length.

 

* Not a watering hole for transvestites, sorry.  Not even a law firm specializing in cases related to car racing.

Another old project may get revived!

Back in 2008, JCM had its little venture into the world of agri-tech.  The slaughterhouse project went nowhere, but I did get a tour.  There was another one...

... Well, no details here, but it was one of those things where we looked at the problem, had some brainstorming sessions, wrote up an initial proposal, and it went nowhere.  Was talking to someone today, and he's been having the same problems we were aiming to solve back then.  I wrote up some notes, and think I've found my notes from back in the day.  Maybe it's something I can dust off and do something about.

That's a mighty thin veneer, there.

So!  We've all heard that Hunter Biden is launching a new career as a world-famous artist, selling his paintings for fabulous sums.

And we've heard that there'll totally be no conflict of interest, because all sales will be made through his agent, so he and his father won't have the slightest clue who the buyers are.  I mean, not even if one of them just happens to post a photo of his new acquisition to Instagram or anything.  Or have a party, and invite someone Important.  It'll all be perfectly anonymous, yup.

Well, seems that Hunter will be personally meeting with prospective buyers.  But the actual transaction will be handled by a middleman, so there's no possible opportunity for any influence-peddling, nope.  All perfectly ethical.

It's not at all like that scandal we had when Ivanka was selling sensible clothes at sensible prices to the general public through ordinary retail channels.  There was just no way of telling how much influence random shoppers were buying along with their attire.

Another little project (partly) done

There's more to be done, as always, but I did accomplish the goal of clearing all the wooden trellis supports out of the former raspberry patch.

(There had been black raspberry plants, but they and their patch hadn't been maintained in some years; also, they seemed to need watering in early summer, and there's no water available in that corner of the yard.  We'd already cut them down, along with various weeds - including smallish trees - that had been trying to take over, and removed the wires from the trellises.)

The trellis supports, consisting of two-each 2x4 crossbars on pressure-treated 4x4 uprights, made that corner of the yard look like some sort of plant graveyard*, besides which they got in the way of mowing, so tall weeds were growing up around them.  It was definitely time for them to go, even if there was no easy way to get the site deconsecrated.  I don't think there's even a Fruititarian congregation in the area.

Turned out that they didn't require huge amounts of force to uproot - not more'n a few hundred pounds - so I could just use the tractor's front loader with pallet forks to lift 'em right out by the lower crossbar.  Then a few trips back to behind-the-barn with the supports piled up on the forks**.

They don't stack neatly.  I suppose I should strip off the crossbars (most of which are rather badly rotted), and salvage the pressure-treated 4x4s, which ought to be useful for one thing or another.

There are still two T-posts to be removed from that area.  I removed the other two today... but 'twas a struggle; they're well and truly stuck under dense roots, and the surface vegetation provides poor footing for the farm jack.  By the time I got them out, they were badly bent.  The force required to lift them is greater than what the loader can provide, so just lifting them straight up with the loader turns out to be Not An Option.  Guess I should apply the farm jack again, but first do something about cutting roots.  Or maybe I could make a special baseplate for the jack... but I think I'd need to cut the roots regardless.

Then I need to shave a little more off the top of a stump left behind by small-tree removal, and give the whole area a short haircut.  At some point, I'll probably want to go over it with the tiller and re-seed with some approximation of grass, but maybe I should let the stumps'n'roots rot for a while first.

Update:  Disassembly progresses, not as fast as I'd like.  The crossbars are attached with four nails each.  Prying them loose is a pain, especially in the heat & humidity.  Some of the crossbars are so badly rotted that the nails stay behind in the upright.  I'm thinking I'll end up burning the crossbars and then cleaning up the various pointy steel residue with an ACME™ Giant Magnet.  The nails that remain in the uprights, well, maybe I'll try out the new cordless angle grinder on those.

Update 2:  Bees!  Big fat bumble... wait... carpenter bees.  Those posts are riddled with neat round ½" holes, some old and some with fresh sawdust around them.  I guess since the bees don't eat the wood, they don't care if it's pressure-treated.

I hosed down the heaps with permethrin, which was handy.  Want to protect the wood against further damage, and also keep the bees from spreading to the barn.

 

* These had a longer crossbar near the top, and a shorter one lower down - the opposite of the Patriarchal Cross.  Does this make them Matriarchal Crosses?

** Using machinery to carry crosses?  Sounds like some sort of military malapropism.  Mechanized Calvary, anyone?

Well, look who's still around!

The Scarfolk Council!  Posting news items and public-service announcements from the 1970s*!

Some of those seem remarkably relevant to the present day, somehow.  Kinda eerie.

* May not be the 1970s you experienced.  This appears to be from some alternative, dystopian 1970s.