Silicon Valley Redneck

Another low-productivity day.

Various stuff I'd planned to accomplish, come a rainy day?

The rainy day is here, but productivity isn't.  Another night of not enough sleep, and there's an exciting new reason!

Main thing waking me up last night was a nerve problem in, mainly, the right wrist.  Been developing the past week or thereabouts.  Strikes at night, or in the early morning within about half an hour of my getting out of bed.  Maybe related to the hand remaining in one position for too long.

I'm suspecting that this may be related to the brush-clearing activities of the past couple of weeks, and an hour or so per (weather permitting) day of wielding the reciprocating saw.  Well, we're getting into rainy time now, so the main activity is gonna be gathering up the cut stuff, initially from the low-lying areas before they flood, and hauling it off to a brush pile to be dealt with later.

There's still some stuff that needs cutting down to size and that's too thick for the lopper.  I guess if I have to use the saw at all, I can break out the cumbersome, padded, anti-vibration gloves.  Most of the over-length, over-brushy stuff is within lopper capability.

Considering the number of typos I made in this short post (and that's just counting the ones I spotted already!), I think I'd better not try to do anything important.

Gonna be one of those days, innit?

(Restarted, for reasons which will shortly become apparent.)

Sitting at my desk, 0812.  Get an e-mail from FedEx: my package has been delivered.  Bit early, and I hadn't seen any delivery vehicle come nor go, but whatever.  Huh.  Also, there's a fresh e-mail from Wal-Mart telling me my package has been delivered; the package I was expecting today via FedEx wasn't from Wal-Mart.  Anyway, go fetch the package.

Not by the garage door.  Not on the front porch.  I wonder just whither the package was delivered...?

Back to my office.  The overhead light is off, and the fan is just coming to a stop.  Hmmm...?  The UPS isn't beeping.  Lights elsewhere are all working.  Fetch a voltage probe and commence poking around.  It seems to think there's power to the wall switches.

Look at the breaker panel.  There's one AFCI breaker tripped: for the master bedroom.  Reset it.  While I'm there, also jiggle the AFCIs for bedrooms 2~4.  Office light remains off.

Begin composing this.  Take another look at the e-mail from FedEx.  The delivery time was yesterday, not today, and it refers to one of the three packages indeed delivered yesterday.

Take a closer look at the outlet situation.  Observe that the shelf of tablets and old cellphones doesn't seem to be charging.  Fetch a better grade of outlet tester than the probe.  Yup: no power to the outlet.  Also, the computers have now shut down.  Apparently I'd silenced the UPS's beeper some time ago, and it had remained silenced.

So!  Seems the overhead fixture and the outlets, in each bedroom, are on the same circuit, with an AFCI because of the overhead fixture.  Go take another look at the breakers.  Bedrooms 2 and 3 (2 being, I think, my office), the breakers are not in the tripped position, but fall to the tripped position if touched.  Flip them firmly to off, then firmly to on.  Check office: light and fan are on, and the computers are booting up.

So!  When I went out to check on the spurious FedEx delivery, some weird electrical event set off the AFCIs for maybe three of the bedroom circuits?  Southmoon is lying peacefully atop my office bookcase, looking entirely unlike a critter that's just shot mighty bolts of lightning from her ears.  It's bright and sunny outdoors, with no sign of a thunderstorm.

Maybe the ESD when I stood up from my chair set things off.  That commonly (during heating season, anyway) blanks my monitor for a moment.  Did it somehow fool multiple AFCIs?

... And I'd just this morning been watching a vid on humidifiers.  Maybe we do need a much bigger humidifier.

Update:  Got a call about 1158, from the FedEx office in Knoxville.  Apparently a 40-pound package that was supposed to have been delivered here wasn't properly accounted for.  Well, I was expecting two such packages yesterday, and they both showed up.  Maybe the driver only scanned one of them.

Clarification:  The voltage probe gives a pretty good indication of a circuit being safe.  Being powered, now... well, the probe will often trigger on being moved in the vicinity of a random piece of metal, energized or not.  Kind of a hypersensitive danger indicator; it doesn't give false negatives, but false positives are common.  So, it'll give the impression that a circuit is energized when it isn't, but won't give the impression that a circuit is safe when it's dangerous.

Update 2:  Come evening, my father noted that the power was off in his bedroom (#4).  Apparently I hadn't successfully reset that breaker, nor was it obvious that it had tripped.

Industrial band-aid

I mentioned that my current eyeglass frames had snapped in half several days back?

Well, with these wire frames, the traditional nerdboy fix with an actual band-aid is simply not an option.

For the band-aid, substitute a short piece of stainless-steel tubing of suitable diameter.  For the adhesive, substitute silver solder (using appropriate flux).

No, it's not a great job.  I don't have a proper jeweler's torch, the available silver solder was an appallingly huge 1/16" in diameter, and I never claimed to be particularly good at this stuff.  Also, while my original repair plan called for flowing the solder inside the tube, it turns out that the metal of the broken bit doesn't like silver solder, despite my having carefully removed all the surface finish.  Fortunately, the end bits are eminently silver-solderable.

(I didn't really have a fallback plan, but might have resorted to a larger piece of metal tubing packed with glass-filled epoxy.  The proper long-term solution is new glasses, for which I'm well overdue anyway.  Once we're safe enough from the Pestilence to return to the optometrist, I gotta get my prescription updated and new glasses (and spares) made, and also ponder a return to contact lenses.)

... I don't want to get into a discussion of silver solder vs. silver braze, never mind the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.

I seem to have misplaced my checklist.

That board I sent out to fab?

I included the Arduino-style programming header... but omitted the AVR programming header for installing the bootloader.  That used to be on my MCU-based-board checklist!  I must be getting rusty, and also the checklist is around-here-somewhere instead of in front of me.

Oh, well... only half a dozen of this iteration; I can use one of the existing headers plus a tacked-on pin on the RESET- line, and a kludge cable.  Assuming the system works as intended, I'll be making another run of the boards, with refinements.

Or, I could see about procuring a half-dozen chips with the bootloader pre-programmed.  Might be easier.  (Hm.  Adafruit has them, but only in DIP format.  Here's somebody with the TQFP; maybe... oh, ships from Turkey.  Probably takes quite a while to get here.  Kludge-O-Matic, here I come!)

Ignorance and hate just go together, don't they?

Some commenter on the Internet made a remark about how we oughtta cut off the Trumpists' food supply and just starve 'em into submission.

Yeah... where's he think the food comes from?

Food supply is a little detail Wells missed in "The Land Ironclads".

Afterthought:  Yeah, Stalin managed to starve millions of farmers to death.  Do you want Stalin?

First new board design in a while

Got the sensor-birdhouse controller board all designed and out to fab.  Ought to have been a 2-hour project, but with distractions and tinkering, it ended up taking all day.

Ordered a half-dozen copies from OSH Park.  Now I need to order parts.  And more copies of the things that connect to it.  And I need to 3D print a few more birdhouses, and write the firmware (mainly based on existing libraries, I think).  Some testing can happen while boards are being fabbed; after all, I have a couple of cobbled-together units sitting on the bench.

I need to take a closer look at the radio protocol and the available libraries and figure out what, if anything, I can practically do with the back channel.  The design includes some outputs, just in case there turns out to be a use for them.

Mundane things can still be important

Back to dealing with things somewhat under my control....

I think the dealership-installed replacement 12V battery in the Venerable Prius may have been new-old-stock or otherwise stale; it doesn't really hold a charge for a whole week.  (Mind you, until this year the car didn't generally sit anywhere near a week un-driven; 'twas my daily driver, meaning really almost daily.)

So, I've ordered another one from an on-line source.  Not all that much money, even with shipping.  Were we going into stores, I'd look in person and check the date codes, assuming I could actually find such a specialty battery in a store, which seems a bit questionable.

And, we'll be trying to line up contractors for spring/summer work: driveway repair and extension, exterior work on house and barn, transforming the seasonal swamp into a year-round pond for aquaculture, and so on.

In the slightly less mundane category, I need to design a custom Aard-Wino type of board: usual ATmega328, plus management for a solar-charged LiFePO4 cell, a header for a COTS nRF24L01+ module, and a few other features.  Might actually get that done today, and sent out to fab.  It's for a sensor birdhouse, and, since I figure on building several of them, I'd just as soon avoid a bunch of tiresome and error-prone hand-wiring.

Incitement, much?

Headline from Pravda-by-the-Potomac, the Washington Post (motto: "Democracy Dies at Midnight!"):

Rallies ahead of Capitol riot were planned by established Washington insiders

Story commences:

The fiery rallies that preceded the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 were organized and promoted by an array of established conservative insiders and activists, documents and videos show.

The Republican Attorneys General Association was involved, as were the activist groups Turning Point Action and Tea Party Patriots. At least six current or former members of the Council for National Policy (CNP), an influential group that for decades has served as a hub for conservative and Christian activists, also played roles in promoting the rallies.

The two days of rallies were staged not by white nationalists and other extremists, but by well-funded nonprofit groups and individuals that figure prominently in the machinery of conservative activism in Washington.

"Fiery"?  Like... those "mostly peaceful protests" during the summer?  Oh, wait.  Completely unlike events involving actual fires, weren't they?

This ain't news coverage.  This is propaganda.  Specifically, it's propaganda aimed at stirring up hate and fear, to motivate action against mainstream conservative and Republican organizations.

And I saw another headline recently, along the lines of "GOP Increasingly Talking of Civil War!"  Which... yeah, like warning against it?  Like saying that the Progressives / Democrats are frickin' starting one?  As with the Scary Boogaloo Bois, those who warn that a war is in the works are tarred as the instigators, while those who are actively attempting to start the war get a free pass.

And this headline is very much war-starting propaganda.

Clarification:  It seems there are (at least) two sets of Boogaloo Bois.  The ones with which I'm slightly familiar, from some years back, lean Conservative / Libertarian and have been warning of the Boog as a thing to be avoided, pointing out that Progressives seem to be trying to start it.  Apparently there's another set that's Anarchist (and not particularly aligned with Progressives and their allies), and that bunch is busily stirring up trouble, not trying to prevent it.

Ah, another change of materials

So, for reasons not yet public, I'm thinking we need another 400 feet of heavy-duty, large-bore garden hose.  Maybe four hoses of 100 feet each.

Home Despot has such things.  But... seems they all (at least the ones with decent reviews) have aluminum fittings, instead of brass.  Great.  All the faucets are of the brass persuasion (is that supposed to be changing?), so galvanic corrosion is a concern.

Maybe I need to add galvanic isolation doohickies on the faucets where I expect to leave hoses connected?

Snow, again

There were a few flakes drifting down around 0600 when I went to fetch the morning paper.

Now (0815-ish) there's a fair bit more falling, and even a little accumulation on lawns and rooves*.  Weather map shows patchy snow over a large area.  I don't think we'll be driving anywhere today.

* Newspeak Dictionary does not like archaic forms.

Ah, what a way to start a Saturday

Stumble out to the kitchen to commence the daily routine: dump and rinse the dishpan, then dispense caffeiniferous beverage to consume while checking the morning Internets.

Note that the recessed light over the sink is off, and flipping the switch doesn't make it light up.

Grab the stepstool, remove the bulb, note that it's one of the LED ones.  Been there since May of 2018, I guess?  Aren't they supposed to last longer than that?  Anyway, fetch and install a replacement.  Still no light.

Check the breaker.  Doesn't seem to be tripped, and flipping it off and back on makes no difference.

Uh-oh.  The counter outlets are on the same circuit as the overhead light, meaning... yeah... the refrigerator is also off.  Well, the ice hasn't gotten melty, so it's probably OK.  Joy says she'd noticed about an hour earlier that the coffee maker wasn't powered.

Poke at the breaker panel some more.

Wait... the GFCI for that circuit isn't in the panel.  It's in one of the counter outlets.  Actually, two of the counter outlets have GFCIs, for inadequately explained reasons.  Check the one that's most accessible.  Nothing.  Find the other.  Give the reset button a good poke.  The light comes on, and the refrigerator runs!  Huzzah!

And that, wrapped up by 0403, was the second minor fiasco of the morning.  Of the first, don't ask.

A meal even untidier to cook than it was to eat

Well, mostly the main course was untidy.  Ribs.

I thawed out a couple of slabs of beef back ribs, then, considering the afternoon's schedule and logistics, decided to follow the directions on the package for a change.  Put 'em in a pan, cover with aluminum foil, and pop in the oven at 350°F for a couple of hours or so, then finish on the grill if you're so inclined.

Only, figuring to give them an hour or so in the smoker, I gave then a couple of hours in the oven at a mere 325°F whilst I continued with the brush-clearing operations out in the back yard.

The smoker having been lit, I extracted the pan from the oven and found the meaty bits much reduced in dimension, most of the fat evidently having cooked out.  Well, fine.  Out to the smoker with them.

Later, 'twas time to cook some sweet potato fries.  Heat the oven up to 425°F.  Notice, during pre-heating check, that the oven floor is awfully greasy.  The hot oven produces copious quantities of smoke, or grease fumes, or some such.  And grease has even escaped from the oven.

Apparently the aluminum foil over the pan failed to contain the grease.

The ribs came out tasty, though.  I guess next time I'll use the really deep roasting pan, and be extra careful about covering it.

Update:  I cleaned up the grease that had escaped from the oven, but... after having spent a bunch of time this afternoon squatting to wield a saw at ground level, I think (creak, groan) that I won't be attempting to clean the oven itself this evening.

Division

A photo of a mall ninja / LARPer with a bundle of zip ties gives a glimpse of a "two types of people" division.

Some look at zip ties (or some other mundane object) and ask, "How is it that anyone can have a use for these?"

Others hear that question and ask, "How is it that anyone can not routinely use these?"

It seems that the Cloud Minders are proud to be absolutely ignorant of how the Troglytes perform their tasks that keep the machinery of Civilization running.  Mustn't sully their advanced minds with mundane knowledge of the world, when their role lies with contemplation of the Divine.

This maybe explains why so many edicts from On High are unsullied by any connection to practical realities.

A note to phonebots

Of all the possible answers to the question, "Who are you calling for?", responding, "No, I'm a disability adviser..." is one of the least convincing.

Especially when the intro message says you're a human-type person returning my call, and asking whether I can hear you OK.  Double-especially when you give the bogus answer in a different voice than you were using before I spoke.

(I'm not in the habit of answering "Can you hear me OK?" with a "yes", given that "yes" is basically something one should never say to a strange caller.)

The Deep Ones are on the beach.

Cthulhu has long tentacles.  I repeat, Cthulhu has long tentacles.

The question is... just how long are Cthulhu's tentacles?

We know Cthulhu has near-monopoly power in the on-line looky-findy area... and has considerable power to adjust what известия the public sees.  Then there are the political fundraising operations, etc.

What about monopsony powers?  (Aha!  The Newspeak dictionary doesn't think "monopsony" is a word.  It bloody well is.)  Aside from such Internet infrastructure as Cthulhu (Great Old Ones Meta-Corp, whatever) controls directly, it's certainly a dominant customer for connectivity and bandwidth.  Maybe enough to tell a major bandwidth provider that if the provider doesn't drop some relatively smaller customer, Cthulhu will drop the provider?

How much of the "we're dropping ____.com as a customer, effective yesterday, and they're free to seek Internet services elsewhere" is the result of corporate blackmail by Cthulhu et al?