Silicon Valley Redneck

XKCD nearly exaggerates.

A couple of episodes back:

But!  You don't even need to collect and lug around all the EDC products on the Internet.  Just collect a few people's recommendations, merge them as sensibly as you can, and then examine the situation.

You'll find yourself with a backpack-sized first-aid kit as a bare minimum, two pistols plus at least two spare mags for each, at least two knives and one flashlight, bear spray, a sewing kit, a shoe-repair kit, your cellphone, a burner phone, sunglasses, NARCAN, a ham radio, a lock-picking kit, a set of wrenches, a change of clothes, and probably a 2-day supply of food and water.  All this just for basic daily existence.  Additional minimum requirements for investigating a bump in the night: level IV body armor, a specially-configured rifle and at least 300 rounds of ammunition, night vision goggles, and a few flashbang grenades.

I limit my EDC to stuff I'm somewhat likely to need, that'll fit in pocketses.  Keys, flashlight, dinky Swiss Army knife (featuring scissors and nail file), actual pocketknife, personalized mini first-aid kit (basic cuts & scrapes stuff plus Benadryl and epinephrine), and cellphone (in a case which also holds a spare house key, a couple of credit cards, and a grocery-store loyalty card)*.  If I'm going somewhere, add a wallet and a car key.  Might be carrying various other items, depending on the location and circumstances.

If I'm not out in the actual wilderness, I don't need to be carrying a wilderness first-aid kit.  I'm not in the habit of visiting war zones, nor even crowded places.  Excessive encumbrances make daily life unnecessarily awkward.  I don't need to be a walking ambulance (and I don't have the training to use those advanced first-aid goodies, nor the spare time to get trained and keep current), and I find that maintaining some reasonable degree of situational awareness and not going stupid places with stupid people to do stupid things at stupid times will generally keep me clear of mini-wars.

* This is somewhat redundant, but if I'm in my pajamas I only have one pocket, so the phone rides around in that and thus I have an emergency house key, just in case.  Yes, I'm paranoid about doors ending up locked behind me - ever since the second time I locked myself out of my apartment back in college.

Out of phase

Well!

In a normal year, or even 2020 or 2021, my metabolism would have shifted into Spring weight-loss mode sometime around, well, Spring.  I would have been at Summer weight for the hot season, instead of carrying around excess polar-bear insulation.

That metabolic crud I've been having this week?  I've suddenly lost a couple of pounds, and my pants are decidedly loose this morning.

... Just after I bought three new pairs of cargo shorts in my current size, because I clearly wasn't about to get back to the one-size-smaller (whereof I believe I still have a goodly stash).

Yes, this does feel like the shift to weight-loss mode.  I may need to break out some long pants this Winter - fancy that!

Gee, I wonder what they want.

Daily e-mail about inbound postal mail shows something from "Land Insider USA".

(Imagines holding envelope to forehead.)

No.  The answer is no.

(Imagines opening envelope.)

Would you like to sell your recently-acquired land for an insultingly low price?

Funny thing: the return address is in Nashville, but it's postmarked Sacramento.

I suppose I'll open it when it gets here, and see what they really want.  Mind you, I can't, on my own, sell any of our real-estate holdings, but I think these people don't bother looking at the actual ownership records.  Heck, somebody wanted to buy our home from my father, and his name isn't on the title to this parcel at all!

Update:  Yup, insultingly low offer for one of the Northern Territories.  Guys?  Firstly, you need all three of us to agree to sell it, and secondly, we've owned it for just over a year and thus aren't likely to be clueless about what it's worth.  Both of these facts are public record... as well as what we paid for it, not so long ago.

Unpredictable schedules....

So I ordered parts from Digi-Key for the Toastercomm Turbo gadget (plus other stuff), thinking they'd arrive Monday.

FedEx shipping notification said Tuesday.  So, no particular hurry about getting that RasPi Pico SDK set up and rudimentary firmware written, then.

Now comes a FedEx update, saying tomorrow.  Which... well, I could possibly have a working gadget by Monday, if I focus on that.  But, this being nice Fall weather and there being a lot of chores to do around the yard before the ground gets squishy, I gotta juggle priorities.  Besides which, it's not clear that the full-speed comm test is all that urgent.

So Fall is here...

... and global financial markets are turning various shades of yellow, orange, and red, and falling.

Update:  Centipede is dramatically down.  Two hypotheses are on offer in the headlines:

FTSE 100 drops sharply after UK unveils biggest tax cuts in 50 years

or:

FTSE 100 closes 1% lower as BoE hikes interest rates

Hmmmm.  I suppose if I looked around, I could find it blamed on a plague of voles in Uzbekistan.

Ah, the layers of stupid.

I don't much care for the new YouTube shorts format in general, and now I have yet another reason.

Now, the YouTube comment section has an annoying characteristic: despite Google being supposedly a search company, there's no provision for searching the comments on a vid to see if someone else already said what you have in mind.  Best I've managed to do is to hit Page Down until I run out of comments, then use the browser's search-within-page function.  This doesn't work all that well, for reasons which are not clear.

In the shorts format?  The browser's search function (Chrome's, at least) completely fails to search the comments popup.

I have a feeling the whole thing is meant to be used on a phone, with the comments section used by the sort of people who watch 37-second vids on their phones, i.e., not the sort to bother checking whether someone else has already said the same thing.

Ah, the things that don't get tested!

Trying to install the RP2040 / RasPi Pico software development kit.

There's a script.  Easy, right?

Well... it makes sure various distro-supplied tools are installed.  OK so far.

Then it brings in source code from the Git repositories, guaranteeing the very freshest.

Then it compiles everything... and, oops.

It gets partway through, and on one source file for one subsystem, it issues a warning about misleading indentation (which wouldn't be needed if programmers would use braces consistently), because this file has (paraphrasing, since the actual stuff is on my other computer):

    if (foo == WONKY)
        return status;
        LOG_MESSAGE("Status is %02X", status);

instead of a decently-formatted:

    if (foo == WONKY) {
        return status;
    }
    LOG_MESSAGE("Status is %02X", status);

or:

    if (foo == WONKY) return status;
    LOG_MESSAGE("Status is %02X", status);

or even the presumably-intended (but in violation of the One True Brace doctrine):

    if (foo == WONKY)
        return status;
    LOG_MESSAGE("Status is %02X", status);

So, a warning.  Big deal.  Except that, in addition to enabling this rather arcane warning (and presumably many others), whatever level of build script / Makefile is invoking the compiler is also including the option to treat all warnings as errors.  Ergo, this little formatting quirk means the whole thing won't build.

Maybe I need to see if there's a newer version of the install script that does something differently.  Elsewise, I gotta explore the source tree and figure out how to do the build, after fixing the formatting, without having a fresh copy of the erroneously-indented source pulled in.  This is already getting more Educational than I'd planned on.

Update:  There is indeed a newer, restructured version of the script.  It looks like that part of the source builds just fine.  But... then it's trying to install something, possibly VS Code, which is not available via apt but is available via snap... except that snap gives a security warning about the available version of the package, suggests trying again with --classic if one isn't concerned about sandbox integrity... and, if invoked with --classic, segfaults out.

Gngngngn....

Now downloading the latest official Microsoft VS Code for Linux as a .deb for AMD64; I'll see if that plays nice.

Update 2:  VS Code installed just fine.  The script still tries to do strange things, and can't be relaunched after a failure without deleting the target directory and starting over from the beginning.  Now, the script is intended for installing the SDK on a RasPi, specifically, so... guess I need to RTFM and follow the approved generic-host installation process.  (It appears that I'll also need to drag in the tinyusb package, though there may be some magic for somewhat automating that.)

And, of course, I've never used VS Code before.  Or... I guess I made some use of a VS-based IDE, some years ago, back when it was Windows-only.  I don't remember much about how to use it.  Well, the command line is still a thing, right?

And yet more Stuff is needed....

Just ordered a couple of smallish UPSes, because yesterday's brief power flickers took out a couple of computers that were really meant to be kept running.

I'm guessing that, even here, electricity will be getting less reliable, what with the supply of skilled workers drying up.  And, no matter how well the system is run, falling trees and lightning strikes will happen.  Best to have the computers operate through glitches, and shut themselves down neatly if the power is out for more'n a few minutes.

Being at least slightly productive this morning

Got organized enough to put in a Digi-Key order for low-power Cortex-M4 MCUs (ATmega substitutes, though a little more battery-hungry and considerably more featureful), a few more Pi Pico boards, some high-speed RS-485 transceiver chips, and breakout boards for the fiddly little TSSOP/MSOP parts.

Not yet: undervoltage reset chips, more RP2020s, more configuration flash chips, crystals, connectors, various passives, and maybe getting in a backorder for some budget(-ish) FPGAs that are supposed to reappear this winter.

Now I need to get the RP2040 / RasPi Pico development tools installed and set up, and see if there's a usable example of a USB CDC application that I can adapt for a very specific project (ICTYBTIHTKY; toasters are involved).

Missing the point, somewhat?

Did some Republican politician recently refer to the mainstream media as enemies of the State?

That would be wrong.  Exactly and perfectly wrong.

The MSM are allies of the State.  Reporting in lockstep, as the interests of the State demand.

I think the correct term is "enemies of the People" - which, given the rhetoric from both the State and the Corporate Press, would seem a quite plausible label.

Gotta ask:

Recently attended by POTATUS: the Global Fund’s Seventh Replenishment Conference.

Replenishment.  Replenishment.

Is that the new term for Renewal?

Ugh.

Started out the day with a headache.

Caffeine didn't help much.  More caffeine was too much caffeine.

On top of which, this being a largely unscheduled day, I thought maybe it'd be a good time for another go at wearing contact lenses.

Then, off to mow the meadow between pond and pasture.  To keep dust & grass fragments out of my eyes, put on retro-stylish little goggles - which perform as advertised, but also restrict my field of view.

Make lots of sharp turns at corners and whatnot, going 'round and 'round.

End up queasy.  Remain queasy (and headachey) for the remainder of the day.

Seems to be some sort of metabolic crud going on.  No fever.  SpO₂ is OK when I'm moving around, and disconcertingly low if I sit still.

Also today: electricity blinked off, twice, long enough to register on the kitchen appliances.  Joy says it's flickered briefly a few other times.  And, there was the Fed announcement, and the stock market going negative, then bouncing back for a while, then going way negative again....

Oh, yes: the sudden increase in interest rates, delayed so many years, seems likely to increase inflation - or at least inflation as measured in the prices of everyday things.  It'll result in money being sucked out of Industry, and diverted to Government, leading to, yes, more shortages hence higher prices for scarce goods.  And, as money is diverted to Government?  Increasing the interest on the national debt as it's refinanced will, as any fool could have told you back in 2008, result in the interest on all that "nearly free because interest rates are so low" money suddenly becoming a major expense... which will require printing money to cover it, raising taxes on productive endeavors to cover it, and/or borrowing more to cover it.  Ain't the hamster wheel fun?

Update:  Thursday morning, still ugh.  Moderate headache, some queasiness.  I skipped dinner last night, and had a kinda minimal breakfast today.  SpO₂ is fine when I'm standing up, but a minute or so sitting down and it drops into the worrisome range.  There's some stuff I really ought to do before the noon teleconference....

Further signs & portents

Made a Walmart run yesterday afternoon.

Prices on many things were significantly higher than I remember paying last time I bought them.

And, an awful lot of shelves were sparsely stocked.  Some of this might have been the change of seasons; summer stuff hasn't been restocked, and the shelves haven't yet been repurposed to fall items.  But... dish detergent?  Not exactly a seasonal category.  Very little inventory, and prices were decidedly high.

Worrisome times, indeed.

Applied Murphology strikes again!

As I may have mentioned before, in the few years before the move I'd drifted into wearing Five Fingers foot gloves in place of the more customary strappy sandals or hiking boots.

Circumstances having changed early in 2020, I'd switched to slide-type sandals: not optimal in terms of walking around a lot, but very convenient for frequent short excursions outside the house; I can just step in and out of the sandals, no hands required.  (In case of needing actual foot protection, I also have semi-serious boots.)

Well... on and off, the past few weeks, I'd been looking for that last pair of Five Fingies, being as how too much walking around in the slide sandals leads to abraded spots on my feet.  They were just nowhere that I could find: garage, closet, anywhere reasonable or otherwise: nope.

So, I ordered a new pair, just like the last ones.  Supposed to arrive this afternoon.

This morning, while getting dressed, I happened to look at the shoe rack in the closet.  A perfectly obvious place to look, and one where I had most assuredly looked before.  Yup: the last pair of Five Fingies, just waiting to be worn again.  Also, a pair of lightweight walking shoes that I'd entirely forgotten I had.

Oh, well.  Now I'll have a spare pair, for when I use up the old ones.

Wildlife encounter

Just wandered out to the living room, and Southmoon was staring out the back door at something on the lawn.

I looked out: 'twas a two-tone kitty, just by the deck, presumably munching on seeds that Joy had put out for birds and squirrels.

It scampered off when I showed up and commented on it.  Just as well; they reportedly don't make good playmates for housecats.