Silicon Valley Redneck

Well-meaning, but misguided

Opinion piece, via Insty:

To stop ‘cancel culture,’ protect people’s viewpoints under civil rights law

Well, maybe, but the devil is in... you know the rest.

Title VII should be amended to add to the list of prohibited discriminations — race, color, religion, sex or national origin — a new category: “viewpoints or ­beliefs.”

Um.  Would "viewpoints or beliefs" make flat-Earthers a protected category?  Marxist revolutionaries?  NAMBLA activists?  Sometimes, viewpoints and beliefs are very relevant to employers, landlords, and such.

And don't expect such laws to be applied uniformly.  They haven't been, and they won't be.

No, I don't have an answer.  I'm just pointing out that this isn't an answer, or at least not a good one.

Problem? I see no problem.

Headline:

Dead Cat Gets Voter Registration Form in the Mail

So?  If a dead cat can run for President (on the Meadow Party ticket; anyone remember them?), why can't a dead cat vote?

Whew!

Well, I staggered through the available records, feeding the numbers into TurboTax, and not being able (something about two moves in the last year-and-a-bit) to lay my hands on all the relevant expense information.

Looks like my guesstimates last April (after selling the Sunnyvale house) were a tad generous, so (after a few, er, clenchworthy moments) it seems there'll be refunds, both federal and California.  Not a mad scramble to come up with tax due, as I thought I was seeing at one stage of the proceedings.

The as-of-early-January plan for the year had called for finding a good tax accountant and having him wade through all the papers, but what with the Pestilence that kind of didn't happen (and a bunch of the expense- and cost-basis-related papers seem to be still in boxes somewhere, even now).  Had things gone as planned, I think the refunds would have been bigger, but oh well.

And, me being me, I'll probably blow the refunds on capital equipment or something.

Now it'd be time to go out in the back yard and de-stress, but 88°F, 65% humidity, and a UV Index of 9 say otherwise.

The Prius is not a Skoda

The "Czech Engine" light should not be on.

Yeah, came on during the Friday morning grocery pickup run.  I haven't hooked up the OBD scanner yet to see what the complaint is.

And then upon our return, one of the dagnab wasps stung me in the finger.  Ow.  Time to spray the bushes again (but not right now; the wind is picking up).

Just another day in another week in 2020, innit?

"You can't tell the players without..."

What in the wide world of sports is up with soccer?

Apparently there's some new gimmick whereby players' jerseys are color-coded, not by team, but by race.  So you can tell at a glance what race they are, which is the most important thing in the game.  White players wear white; black players wear black.  And, I suppose, Jewish players wear yellow stars, right?

Yeah, the Progressive Apartheid program proceeds apace.

Totally not me. At all. Really.

 

That's "Power Tools" by Ray Stevens, just in case the U-Toob embed disappears.

Update:  Did you know you can get bolt-on toothbars for loader buckets?  They're a thing!  (Drilling is required, to provide places for the bolts to go.)  That'd make my back-yard Tonka project(s) ever so much easier!  There's even one available from stock on Amazon, but it's about an inch and a half too wide for my bucket.

Ugh.

Got some kind of metabolic crud.  Drowsy, headachey, not much appetite.

No, I'm not having respiratory symptoms, other than minor allergy-type stuff, about like a really good day back in Silicon Valley.

Probably something to do with having shifted into weight-loss mode a while ago; that always triggers some side weirdness.

Oh, well.  I did get one important thing done so far today: out long before the day-o with a bunch of empty cans, returning with 10 gallons of Diesel and about 19 gallons of Baptist gas, so the Tonka toy and mowers can be kept fed. And I managed not to spill any, nor start any fires.

Time to stop trying to type and go back to bed, I think.  Not awake enough to use the strimmer, let alone do paperwork.

Wait, when was this written?

Current reading for my useless time: From Barsoom to Malacandra: Musings on Things Past and Things to Come.

Now most of the way through Chapter 3, wherein the author speculates on invasion by various sorts of skiffy aliens and the ease of defending against most of the usual suspects.  Then I get to the ones he dreads: the Psychohistorians of the Foundation!

They will not fire a shot.  They will land an agent or two, maybe publish a book, … and then depart.  Math does the rest.  We will stare in bewilderment as riots and changes in demographics, unexpected movements of immigration or sudden shifts in the economy …

Look up publication date:  January of this year.  Not yesterday.

But suddenly everything is making sense.

 

Addendum:  When I try to recall the title of the book, Malacandra keeps coming back as Pachysandra, and then I try to remember who, exactly, Pachy Sandra is, and whether she might be Elly Elephant's sister.

Update:  Oh, this just gets better.  Chapter 4 (I'm partway through it) turns out to be a detailed review of Star Wars Episode 7. Only... it's not a review of A Farcical Awookening, oh no.  It's a review of the other Episode 7, from the universe where DisneyCorp is into truly epic storytelling, respecting the audience, and, apparently, slipping in out-of-mythos Kalonians.  I wanna see that one!  The one we got in this universe sucked!  (Now, how do I change my DVD player from Region 1 to Region √-1?)

Update 2:  I'm not sure, though, that Episode 7 needs the out-of-mythos man from U.N.C.L.E.; anyway, does DisneyCorp have the rights to that show nowadays?

Showing how PPE is used

Pic from the front page of the Morning Fishwrap:

So we have here an amusement-park greeter offering squirts of hand sanitizer while wearing, let's see now, a sneeze guard over a chin mask.

Well, I sometimes use a face shield of that sort... when I'm using the strimmer and don't want fragments of blackberry vines hitting me in the face.  Back when I had a lathe, the face shield got a fair amount of use.

And I guess a chin mask is useful if you want to keep soup out of your beard, or your beard out of the lathe.

But neither of these has much to do with preventing the propagation of respiratory aerosols.  (Nor, for that matter, does a token one-time dose of hand sanitizer, but I guess the hand sanitizer makes more sense than daily disinfection of parking lots.)

You'd think a planet settled by telephone sanitizers would be better at this sort of thing.

And even more fun!

We had that HVAC malfunction, a few weeks ago, that turned out to be easily fixed?

Well, now the system for the other end of the house has its own new problem.  When it tries to operate, the outside unit emits an angry buzz but the fan doesn't turn.  So, presumably, some problem in the motor start circuit, maybe a failed capacitor.

Giving the fan a push-start while the buzz is happening gets rotary motion.  So, yeah, start problem; the motor itself seems to be OK.

Have to call up the HVAC company again, come morning.  Hope it can be fixed without anyone having to come into the house.  (I have neither wiring diagrams nor a supply of motor start capacitors.)

Update:  Looking up the model number of the outside unit, I found a parts list, and thence found the start cap listed on Amazon for a price that's not wildly unreasonable, though even with expedited shipping it's a week or so out.  Oh, well: I ordered two, so when the one at this end of the house eventually fails I'll have the replacement on hand.  Meanwhile, we can leave that end of the house on fan-only, and have this end cooled by the working unit, which will (especially with the ceiling fans going) result in some of the cool air ending up in the un-cooled end of the house.  And I guess once or twice a day I can turn on the misbehaving unit and hit the fan with a stick to git 'er goin' fer a while.  That, and opening the windows during the early-morning cool time, and I guess we can get by for a while.

Just to make life more fun

The power went out for about an hour this morning, starting about 0835.

KUB showed 430 customers affected, which, around here, is a fairly large area.

But, Tennessee not being California and KUB not being PG&E, power was back on after about an hour.  Hardly time to get bored.

Whew!

Just went looking for some important family files (digital type).  One of them was Not Where I Expected To Find It.

There were upstream files that had gone into its creation.  There were downstream files created from it.  But the one key file I was looking for was not there.  ("There was the case, but the horn itself was missing.")

Panic.  Run around like a headless chicken.  Wait.  Is is just possible that the work was done on my father's PC, and all the files copied over into my documents except for the One File?

His PC is still packed.  There's a backup disk.  Where's the backup disk?  Not in my desk drawer.  Not in the pile on the bookcase.  Aha!  It's plugged into the new workstation, behind my desk!  And, yes, it contains the backup of everything from the old PC, including the file I needed.

I still need to dig out a bunch of other stuff, though.  But probably not this afternoon.  This afternoon, I need to make some phone calls (eek).  Which probably means spending a few hours on hold.  Maybe I'd better bring a book.

Update:  The two urgent phone calls are made.

The first involved hardly any time on hold, and it turns out that the late-payment notice dated mid-June was the result of a transaction-processing error way back in April, and which I'd corrected (updating card info) within a day or two.  So all's well.

The second did involve several minutes on hold, but then I got half of the issue resolved promptly.  The other half apparently requires getting my father to make a call, but that one is less urgent anyway, being added to the must-do-by-October list.

There are a couple more not-urgent calls to be made based on that pile of papers, but I think I need to study the situation a bit more first.

And!  Just to make life more confusing, another item in the stack is a new credit card to be activated.  It replaces the one I've been using for various recurring payments.  Expiration date is three years out... wait a minute.  This has the same number, expiration date, and CVV code as the old one.  So, why did they send me a new one?  'Tis a mystery!

A suggestion for purveyors of storage shelving

When you're selling, e.g., 5-shelf wire shelving units?

Howzabout offering extra shelves, eh?  Some of us have lots of relatively low-profile stuff that needs organizing, so 7 shelves on a 6-foot-tall unit would make a lot of sense.

Update:  An increasingly common application for variably-spaced extra shelves?  Canned food!  We have some large plastic shelving units in the basement, with fixed spacing.  Filling up the available space on the shelves with bales of paper towels is fine, but stacking cans of food to occupy the available space results in seriously saggy shelves before they're nearly half laden.

With all the neo-preppers out there nowadays, there might be enhanced demand for stable shelves for storing shelf-stable foods.  (There might also be interesting consequences if apartment dwellers start stockpiling heavy stuff.)

And Sunday night noise?

'Twas early bedtime for me, being as how I was dozing off anyway.  Windows open, since outdoors was cooling down nicely.

Long about 2230, I found myself awakeish, and heard a couple of strings of gunfire.  Target shooting, like.

I suppose one of the neighbors was trying out his night-vision scope or something.  (Well, I guess the Mob tends to favor the night, so equipping the defensive armament with nocturnal aiming capability probably makes sense.)

A not at all quiet night, and a useless morning

Well, we did have a nice view of the fireworks, having made the arduous trek to out front porch.  Looked like at least a dozen families were putting on displays in the general "front of the house" direction, where we could see at least part of them; around half of those were fairly well in view, while the rest were largely obscured by trees, hills, and the like.

Things got going around 2115, as it was getting properly dark, and didn't wind down until more'n an hour later.  Then, I think, other families started setting off their fireworks, and, well, the boomage continued well past midnight.

There were also distressed sounds, for a while in the wee hours, from the cattle next door.  They'd ignored all the early fireworks, so I don't know what had them bothered later on.  Maybe one of them tripped over a skunk.  (Oh, yes: either someone upset a skunk during the evening, or one of the firework megapacks included a SuperSkunkBomb™.)

No, we didn't have our own fireworks; I'd been inclined to go check out the locally-available products (this stuff is legal here!), but what with the current Pestilence stats for Knox and Sevier Counties, we're still hunkering in place as much as practical.  Joy says next year for sure.  (I wonder what the supply will look like next year; doesn't all this stuff come from China*?)

Anyway, I didn't exactly get a proper night's sleep.  Brain not functioning this morning.  There's plenty of stuff that needs doing around here, but I don't think I want to operate the lawnmower, let alone the big miter saw, and doing paperwork is Right Out.  Maybe I'll assemble that shelving unit in the garage.

... Oh, and speaking of shelving.  When I was looking for that one, I rejected many of the types on offer as lacking the required depth, as I needed something 18~24" deep, not 12~14".  Now I realize that I need something bigger but shallower for one corner of the barn, but when I look, everything in that category comes up 18~24".  Foo.  Well... I think a wire shelving unit of the sort I have in my office closet might suffice (OK, so maybe two of them side by side); those tend to run 14" deep, and are moderately available, just not necessarily in the configuration I want.

Sure is quiet out there this morning.  Only activity visible from my office window is a neighbor catching some rays.  Oh, and the occasional passing car, and cattle grazing.  Dominant sounds are of birds, with a faint suggestion of some sort of power equipment off in the far distance.

* Update:  I remarked on Chinese fireworks in a comment elsewhere, and another commenter came along and explained that, with current restrictions on importation of such things, there's been a Great Onshoring, so our fireworks supply is now domestic.  Yay!