Silicon Valley Redneck

Mysterious malfunction

Several times this morning, my monitor has gone blank for about a second.

Monitor?  Computer?  KVM switch?  One of the cables?

Anyway, something ain't right.

Chores

Driveway urgently needs scraping.  Well, it urgently needs re-grading and re-graveling, but scraping will just have to do for now.

This means taking the tiller off the tractor and putting the box blade on.

There's been a dribble of oil on the floor under the tiller's chaincase.  Investigate.  Yes, it needs oil added.  Also, it needs a bunch of bolts tightened.  Adding oil is no big deal, once I get the bottle open; darn thing has near as many seals as Ingmar Bergman, and there's no lamb handy.  Tightening the bolts is more Fun; the nuts are on the other side of the frame, some of them quite inaccessible, and they're not of the captive persuasion.  I manage to get most of the bolts tightened, including all the ones near the bottom that seem to need it.

Then out to the side of the barn to remove the tiller; that goes almost smoothly.  Then to pick up the box blade; that gets more complicated than it should, on account of the implement having sunk into the soft dirt.  Eventually I manage to get it hitched up and out of there.

Then much driveway-scrapery, plus some shovel work to get gravel off a low spot on the grass and back onto the driveway (it wasn't practical to use either the box blade or the loader for that part).  And much driving back and forth in an effort to compact the gravel-dirt mix.

Then it's time to put the tractor away, mow yet another patch of lawn, and head back indoors to deal with indoors stuff.

Continuity

Today's Frank and Ernest reminds me of an old one that I dimly remember (and probably have saved, somewhere, cut out of a daily paper).

That old one was... er... back when I was in college?  Just how long has that strip been around, anyway?

Oh.  Since 1972.  And Bob Thaves died in 2006; his son has taken over the strip.

Unlike so many other comic strips (or movie franchises, etc.) that change hands, it's still very much the same strip... without getting overly repetitive.

You cook with light. Surely this is forbidden.

You've heard of Samurai Delicatessen, right?

Well, meet Jedi Chef!

Yeah, yeah, light sabers ain't lasers.  Even if Baby Darth called them "laser swords" in the first prequel.

(Classic Sci-Fi reference in title.)

Meta-distractions

So there I was, distracting myself with some sci-fi reading (Larry Correia's Gun Runner, if you must know), and there was a description of how interstellar gates are kept and (in general terms) used....

... And, naturally, my mind wandered off to another universe, refining aspects of gate technology in a story framework I have vaguely sketched out.

I actually have two interstellar-civilization frameworks vaguely sketched out, and little likelihood of actually writing any stories in either of them.  One (the newer one) uses gates, the tech gimmick involving quantum entanglement, and gates having to have paired magic quantum boxes in order to connect to each other.  This, of course, is whither my mind wandered, fiddling with the concept of various classes of quantum boxes, according to the required long-term stability for the application - this affecting the size and the price of the gadget.

The other framework... you know how all the gravitic tech in the Honorverse was contrived to allow Age of Sail naval battles in outer space?  Well, I had to come up with tech constraints to justify a silly throwaway scene in a story that never quite took shape.  Basically, interstellar communication needed to be cheap, if not exactly fast, but interstellar travel needed to be expensive and interstellar battle fleets utterly impractical.  The answer?  Well... it looks a little like a Niven hyperdrive, with a couple of twists.  For one thing, the energy required to establish a drive field is proportional to the enclosed hypervolume, so the fourth power of the radius (drive fields are always spherical), and for handwaving reasons the point of diminishing returns is such that it takes about a dozen of the largest practical ships to carry the people (mostly sedated or in gene banks) and equipment to start a colony on a reasonably hospitable world.  The other thing is the nature of the Nothing outside the window when in hyperspace; in my version, there is no outside for light (or anything else) to radiate to, so the inside of a drive field is a perfect mirror; this limits the time a ship can remain in hyper before needing to drop back into normal space and radiate waste heat, and also strongly favors tiny ships.

Anyway, this morning I was wandering off and pondering other cool things one could do with the lower classes of quantum boxes - the cheap ones that might have a decent chance of lasting for a year after they leave the factory, not the ones that go into big expensive infrastructure that needs to last for centuries.  Large amounts of handwavium are required, but that's the case with the gates anyway.

Ah, well.  Time to escape the distractions and make a couple of important phone calls.

Afterthought:  In my conception of gates, there's an important unresolved question: what happens if you try to carry a quantum dingus through a gate?  Like, you're trying to pair a gate at a far-distant location with the local one, and it makes a lot more sense to use the existing gates to get close to the target location than to spend many decades carrying the dingus through normal space.  I see a range of possibilities:

• Everything is fine.
• The quantum box comes disentangled from its mate, thus becoming useless.  (A sub-question in this case is what happens if both pass through a gate together, for whatever reason.)
• You softly and suddenly vanish away and never are heard from again.
• The gate (including the one at the other end) softly and suddenly vanishes away, taking you with it.
• The gate (including the one at the other end) very energetically vanishes away, taking two entire solar systems with it.
• The universe promptly disappears and is replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable.

I'm sure there are still stranger options.  For example, the quantum box becomes disentangled until the entanglement catches back up with it at the speed of light.  This would make gate transportation of quantum boxes less convenient than one might wish, but still effectively much faster than using STL transportation.

More:  Correia gives a detailed (and very movie-oriented) description of the gate's appearance as it opens, and of the lengthy passage to the distant destination.  Both of my universes are lacking in the visuals department.  The one with the hyperdrive, well, all hyper-capable ships are as close as possible to featureless spheres.  And the gates?  Inactive, you look through and see the stars beyond.  Active, you look through and see the stars beyond the gate at the other side.  The transition is as near instantaneous as makes no difference, as is the transit.  The only fun part is the alignment tracking - a gate needs to be fairly well parallel to its counterpart, so they rotate about two of their axes to maintain alignment.

Another things about both these universes is that, whether you travel by hyperdrive or by gate, you still need to match intrinsics (as Doc Smith called it) with your destination.  Much use of gravity wells is generally involved; this has implications for gate placement and orientation (and flight scheduling, for that matter).

We get seasons here.

It's getting decidedly autumnal.  Temperature just before sunrise this morning is 43°F (with 99% humidity... actually, more than that; it's foggy out there).

Though in fact harvest season, as such, has been and gone; we may yet get a few more tomatoes, but around here the harvest mainly seems to happen in July and August.  Grain crops might be a different matter, but the local terrain is not exactly conducive to wheat farming.

Meanwhile, indoors

I used the rainy day to assemble the next three big shelving units down in the basement.

Also needed: something for organizing vast quantities of mass-market paperback books.  Basically, mini-bookshelves that can be tucked into the shelving units to put two layers of books on one layer of shelving.  I guess I'll need to build those.  Also something for organizing DVDs, and something for organizing CDs.  And vinyl records.

Finding such storage organizers may be problematic nowadays, so it probably all gets to be DIY stuff unless I buy a purpose-built, standalone DVD/CD cabinet or something.

Stormin' pretty good out there.

Gusty wind, heavy rain...

... and, sometime in the last couple of days, the rain gauge got clogged up again.  Guess I'll clean it out sometime in the next few days (after this storm passes, and before the next arrives), and contemplate covering it with a screen dome, or putting anti-bird prickles around the rim, or something.

OK, the mower is back in action.

Has been, theoretically, since Saturday-ish, but the weather has been uncooperative.

The machine being shod anew with tires of solid polyurethane, and with blades resharpen'd, I set forth and dealt with some of the more urgent front-yard-ish areas, remaining more or less in view of the driveway lest UPS show up.  (Turns out the package that was supposed to arrive tomorrow is currently expected tomorrow, contrary to yesterday's update that had it coming today.)

It's working properly, and my attempt at resharpening the original blades was indeed successful.  Having a couple of new spare sets on hand, I don't know as I'll attempt to salvage the one with the bent tip, though I suppose I could have a go at reforging it...?

Seems a bit of a production for something that's mass-produced and not exactly a family heirloom.

Anyway, tomorrow's supposed to be maybe-rainy all day, so that's likely a day for doing indoors stuff, whereof there's a great plenty awaiting my attention.

You can't grep a dead tree.

Been unpacking more books-on-paper, and unearthed - well, unboxed - the Doc Smith yarns.

I've been meaning to look up Kinnison's first encounter with the Overlords of Delgon, because I vaguely remember it having some currently-quoteworthy aspects.  Or maybe it was someone else's later encounter with them?

Anyway, gotta break out (I think) Galactic Patrol for some quick skimming, 'cause grep doesn't work on it.

Monday morning cuteness

A Librarian playing with kittens:

Ook!

Clownception

Finally got around to watching Joker.

It's... bizarre.  It becomes apparent somewhere around the middle of the movie that some of what's happening is entirely within the protagonist's head.  (Most of the subplot with the cute neighbor, for example, is obviously fantasy.)  By the end, well, it's not clear whether any of the story happened as depicted, nor indeed at all.

So, kinda like Inception.  Or like my interpretation of the comic strip Cul De Sac (when people ask whether Ernesto and Viola are figments of Petey's imagination, I speculate that everyone in the strip is a figment of Petey's imagination, except for Petey himself, who's a figment of Little Neuro's imagination).

Anyway: a dark and disturbing movie that could be yet another origin story for the Joker or that could just be the dystopian dream of a lunatic who once read a Batman comic and now defines his identity around it.  Also, way overrated.

Afterthought:  In the department of plot twists that didn't happen, I'd suspected at one point that Cute Neighbor would turn out to be Catwoman.

It be the Nineteenth o' September!

The day some folks talk like pirates... and the day Joy and I observe our anniversarrrrry.

She's been working on redecorating the dining room as a pirate den.  It's taking longer than planned, because everything does nowadays.

And, no, we're not having a night out on the town, because Pestilence.  Maybe next year.  (This evening wouldn't be good for being out and about anyway; it's getting all stormy, though not yet dark.  Anyway, it's almost time to start roasting some rock Cornish game hens*.)

No yard work done today, because things were kinda soggy.  Looks like probably not much yard work the next couple-three days either.  Oh, well: the shelving units arrived today, so I can lug the parts down to the basement and assemble them, in preparation for bringing many more boxes of Stuff over from the barn.

Update:  Despite having been moved to the refrigerator a couple of days back, the li'l chickies weren't thawed.  So they're for another evening, and tonight we dine on salmon!

Also, I didn't include a song, did I?  I've already used the official anthem of the day in past years, so here's something different.

 

* Not to be confused with a niche musical genre, gay men's Cornish rock.

What if they had a Reichstag fire and nobody came?

Sounds like today's big rally/trap at the Capitol was a bit of a bust.

Like, attendance was pretty much limited to press and obvious Feds, plus a scattering of the sort of random freaks who'll turn up anywhere the press is present.  Oh, and the Capitol Police apparently apprehended someone who was carrying a handgun... and maybe a badge... and they kinda escorted him out of what passed for the crowd without bothering to cuff nor even disarm him.  Such a threat he must have been!

And somebody, somewhere, was arrested while in possession of a knife of some sort, and reportedly charged under a penal code section covering "doing illegal things, and we'll worry about what they are later."  Was it a proper knife, or something totally mundane that a normal person might carry as a matter of course?  'Cause back in California, there were places where my dinky Swiss Army knife was considered a forbidden weapon*.

People listened to Admiral Ackbar!  Well... that, and apparently the invitations looked like they were prepared by a committee of Communists.  I dunno; I didn't get one.  (I never get invited to these things, maybe for the same reason I've never been offered illicit drugs.)  When the invitation looks like a Communist's conception of what right-wingers ought to go for, well, that's not exactly the right sort of bait.  Kind of like baiting a mousetrap with a big shiny bass lure: it doesn't look right, it doesn't smell right, and the mouse will, if anything, find it alarming.

* And don't even contemplate the big brown table down at the police station.

Meanwhile, back in everyday life

New front wheels are installed on the mower, and the bearings well and truly greased.  I'm not enthusiastic about the spacer kit supplied for adjusting the hub width, but I guess it'll do - if not, I'll have to dig out the mini-lathe and make some custom spacers.

Re-installing the deck was a little more involved than last time; I guess the new wheels are just a little taller than the old ones, so the deck needed a little lifting to reach the linkages.  Connecting the front linkage, I was reminded that I'm not a Gaulish blacksmith, and that if I need to hammer on something I should use an actual hammer and not my hand.  (I'll recover.)

Prior to mowing, it's time to pack up the great long garden hose for the season.  Hm: one connection won't uncouple, and not just because it's covered in mud.  I think it got run over by an excavator one time too many.  Oh, well: leave it alone for now.  Inspect hose racks prior to putting up the hoses: oops!  There's a dirty big wasp nest under one of them, acrawl with wasps.  Postpone storage of hoses; grab a can of Wasp-B-Gon, apply liberally from a distance, and run away.  Some days, I really want a Flammenwerfer mit Krummlauf... for those hard-to-reach, underneath-things spots*.

It's 8080 weather out there again, so not really good for doing manual labor.  Mowing, just now, might not be the best idea either, because FedEx shows some packages (including three big heavy shelving units) on the way and supposed to be arriving today, though they weren't on the morning truck.  When that does show up, I want to be on hand to roll up the garage door and point to a good spot to set the heavy stuff down.

Oop!  Weather map shows a big patch of rain on the way (and possibly stopping just short of here, but maybe not).  Guess I'd better go close up the barn.

Update:  It appears that the post office is no longer bringing us anything from Amazon, even if it would fit in the mailbox.  And, of course, Amazon has no provision for selecting a different shipping method.  Guess I can only order things that have lithium batteries in them, 'cause those come UPS.

Oh, and the little bit of rain we got today happened in a short time, resulting in severe driveway erosion.  Gotta get out there soon with the box blade.

Update 2:  As of just-about bedtime, (1) FedEx is now acknowledging that they're not delivering the stuff today, and (2) we've had about a third of an inch of rain, with a bit more on the way tonight.

* An apparatus for flaming around corners... how very Internet!