Silicon Valley Redneck

Not grokking the demographic

We need a bedside lamp for my father, to replace the floor lamp that's been next to his bed for a while.

Specifically: we need something he can turn on and off without standing up.

Hey, how about a reading-light type of thing that clamps to the headboard?

Consult the banana-vector site.  Lots of headboard reading lights.  But...

The ones that look, at first glance, suitable either have (a) losable remote controls, with a confusing array of functions, or (b) wired controls, with a confusing array of functions.

Whatever became of "on" and "off"?  It's a freakin' light fixture; it should have a light switch.  Specifically, it's a light fixture for the sedentary... like old people who have limited manual dexterity and don't take well to retraining when it comes to turning lights on and off.  There should be a bloody great rocker switch either as part of the base or somewhere near the lamp end of the cable with provisions for mounting to a headboard or similar.

Somewhat productive day.

Got the compost pile turned and relocated to a better spot for further fermentation.

It still has a lot of long, tough, tangled, un-composted stems in it;  I presume by next Spring it'll be properly tenderized.  I should probably get one of those brush chipper/shredder dealies for turning stuff like corn stalks into little easily-digested pieces.

Had a ToasterCo meeting today, getting resynchronized on one of the current projects.  Fallout: seems there is a market for a dingus that's been on my should-develop-this list for a few years now.  Updating to currently-available tech... yet another reason to get up to speed on the RP2040.  Needs USB on one side, for talking to the host computer, and an FPGA on the other.  I have an existing FPGA interface scheme using boring old SPI, but programming one of the RP2040's PIO units to do an 8-bit, multiplexed address/data bus like we used to use in the old days seems more appropriate.  8 data lines plus read, write, and address strobes?  Seems like PIO stuff.

Days are getting longer.  Mornings are still dark, but it's about time to start fixing dinner now and it's still broad daylight.  (Bedtimes have accordingly been slipping later and later, while wake-up time remains early.  Ugh.)

Oh, and spark plugs arrived.  Maybe there'll be time to gap and install them after dinner.  Manual says the gap should be 0.76mm, which... I'm pretty sure the original plugs were much gappier than that when I looked at them.  I'll have to check those, just for the record.

Update:  After dinner turns out to be on the late side, so not installing the plugs now.  Factory gap is right around where the mower manual says it should be.  The old port-side plug (the one that doesn't look so good) has a slightly excessive gap.

Other things... plumber is supposed to be turning up bright & early tomorrow.  And, on an errand today, I discovered that the Venerable Prius is overdue for a new set of wiper blades; when I went to use the windshield washer, I got a mess.

Ah, well.  Time to be winding down now.

A cool, gray day.

Mite chilly indoors; more so out.

Supposed to get up to 60 today, but I'm not sure I believe that.

Weather map shows rain in the vicinity.

Maybe this would be a good afternoon for a seed-company run.

Update: no seed-company run today; maybe Thursday, or Friday afternoon if the weather seems favorable.

Ain't ambiguity fun?

Changed the oil in the mower this morning.  Let it have plenty of time to drain the old oil.

Added nice new oil, up to the ADD line and then a bit.

Ran the engine for a minute.

Oil on the dipstick is still very clean indeed, and there's still oil on the walls of the dipstick/fill tube, making the dipstick remarkably hard to read.

There's definitely oil up to the ADD line.  And there's some oil well above the FULL line... I think.  But maybe that was deposited from the wall of the tube?

Anyway, that was the status before lunch.  It's had some time to settle now.  I'll go back out there in a little while and see where things stand.

Other spring maintenance... gotta grease all the joints on the loader; that's been getting a fair amount of use, and there's still a bunch of dirt to be moved.  And I should still get organized about ordering a nasty sharp brush-clearing-type toothbar for the loader bucket.

Update:  Mower runs a bit rough, and seems to be seriously lacking power.  Hmmm... ah, I put it away with a dribble of late-summer gas and a bunch of air in the tank.  First thing to try is filling it up with reasonably fresh gas.  Not much change.

Clean air filter (cough, cough).  Replace fuel filter (yuck).  Note that a jumbo hemostat is not very effective on the fuel line, but vise grips work.  Power is back... mostly.  Still seems to run a bit rough.  I guess after it cools off I should check the plugs.  Meanwhile... two changes of plugs (plus a couple more oil/fuel filter sets) ordered, for Wednesday delivery.

Update 2:  Yeah, one plug looks kinda-sort OK-ish, while the other looketh not well.  Replacing them might just help.  Probably Wednesday afternoon.

Also, the amount of crud that was trapped in the old fuel filter... definite bleah.  That should be an annual item, at least.

Seems hardly worth the stamps.

Looking through yesterday's mail....

Two large envelopes of very similar appearance.

Each contains a notification & associated form with return envelope regarding some stock (two accounts, same company) that he's had since forever, with the shares in his own name, not through a brokerage.

Something about a reverse split, one new share for 45 old shares.  Nominal share price is $0.001 both before and after, hmmm.

How many shares does he have, anyway?

Says at the bottom: 3 shares in each account, so 6 total.  Doesn't say whether old shares or new, so I don't know whether he has $0.006 or only $0.000133.  Either way, less than the skin of a fully-grown male mosquito (which can fetch anything up to 0.8p).

Looking up the company in question... it appears that the actual share price at the moment is a whopping $0.19, so (depending whether that's old or new shares) my father would seem to have either $1.14 or $0.02533.

Looking at the envelopes, it would seem that they spent $3 in metered postage to send the two forms.  But I guess this stuff is required.

A weathery day.

Weather radio warbled around 0345ish.  Severe thunderstorm warning!  Make sure all windows are closed.  Rain starts almost immediately, accompanied by much wind.

Within the hour the storm had passed, leaving behind 0.8" of rain.  Now things are muddy; not a good day for tractorin'.

Around 0810, the workers showed up to finish the two screen rooms.  Finished around noon.  Joy decided to celebrate by opening all applicable doors, to let the cats into the newly-permitted areas and to let the fresh air through.

Various things fell over.

I went out to attend to the chickens.  While I was out, the wind somehow managed to set off one or more of the (all wired together) smoke alarms.  Much noise.  Very nuisance.  Absence of actual fire confirmed.

Still very gusty out there; rather too much so for me to be out in the barn, with the door rolled up, doing Spring maintenance on the mower.  There's stuff I could be doing in the barn with the door closed, but that takes too much attention and I'm still running on too much caffeine and not enough sleep.

Oop!  While I wasn't looking, FedEx sneakily delivered the last item from the latest Walmart order: a whole bunch of Masonic jars, which I guess are like canopic jars but made for the Freemasons' embalming ritual.  Oh, wait: mason jars, for home canning.  Laying in a goodly supply before it gets to be crop season.

That was quick.

Yesterday afternoon: order a used business PC from somebody on eBay.

This afternoon: receive same via UPS.

Seems to be as advertised, including "no OS".  It seems that the rescue memory stick I made from the other, related machine is just for rescue, not for re-installation.  I may have to put the original HDD back in that machine, create a rescue/restore/whatever memory stick, and use that to install Windows on this one.  Or I could run Linux on it, but this is a relatively high-spec box and I kinda had it earmarked for a dedicated Windows box for the office.

Hm.  Maybe the least-trouble approach is to download the Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft.  I'm assuming that this machine has the Win10 install key in the BIOS, like the other one does.  Otherwise, I may end up using this'n for a Linux box and looking for one of comparable specs (Core i5, 8 GB RAM) that comes pre-Windowsed.

(I don't really care what kind of HDD it comes with, as I figure on replacing all second-hand HDDs with shiny new SSDs; at $26 for a 480 GB SSD, plus $5 for a mounting bracket, replacing old hard drives before putting precious data on them is kind of a no-brainer.)

Update:  Apparently copying the downloaded Windows 10 ISO onto a USB stick with dd doesn't result in a stick recognized by this machine as bootable.  No problem; I'll just burn the ISO to a DVD.

Wait.  It's a 5.7 GB image.  DVD+R or DVD-R discs have 4.7 GB capacity. Foo.

Well, I know the machine can in fact boot from a USB stick, 'cause it booted from the rescue stick.  Let's try a recent Kubuntu image, written using dd.

Hm.  The Kubuntu ISO actually has some partition structure to it, recognized by gparted, unlike the fresh Win10 ISO.  But... when I try to boot it, it looks for /dev/sr0, so apparently it's not configured for booting off a USB stick.  Either that, or there's something wonky with this machine or maybe its BIOS configuration.

Meanwhile, though, I note that I have a couple of previously-downloaded Win10 ISOs, one of which is small enough to fit on an actual DVD.  Not exactly sure why I have those... probably one of them was for setting up a VM, using an activation code from some box that came with a Win10 sticker but that I'm actually using for Linux.  Guess I can try one of those.

Which... doesn't work.  Looks unformatted on gparted; BIOS says no boot device.

Guess I'll try the smaller (older) Win10 ISO on DVD, but not until tomorrow.  It's getting late now.

Update 2:  Win10 ISO of 2015 vintage fits on a DVD, which boots... but it doesn't find the activation key in the BIOS (assuming this machine came with one).  Linux Mint of 2020 vintage, which I happen to have on DVD, boots, installs, and seems to work fine.

So, the machine is satisfactory.  I can use it as yet another Linux box.  If I want to use it for Windows, I need to conjure up a bootable USB stick with an installation image.  This is not a priority right now, but I should probably get it sorted out on a week-ish timescale to get a better handle on what to look for in an eBay listing when shopping for the next unit.

Hm.  Apparently one is supposed to use the Windows Media Creation Tool.  Which... if one asks it to create a bootable USB stick (8 GB capacity required), insists on downloading its own copy of the 22H2 release.  Grinding away now, on my laptop (which is currently running Windows in support of some external hardware).

Update 2a:  Boots, offers the "install" option... but can't actually install because it thinks it's missing a driver.  Doesn't tell what sort of driver it might be missing.  Looks like it's back to putting the original HDD back in the other Dell and generating a boot stick.

Or maybe this machine was sold cheap, sans OS, because it's somehow Windowsproof?  Did Dell make a bunch of non-Windows small-form-factor machines?

Whatever.  It's a nice day, if kinda breezy.  The screened porch & partial back deck are done (on the to-have-done list for nearly four years).  I shouldn't be sitting at my desk.

Update 3:  Back indoors.  It's windy out there!  Looks like the rescue stick I had lying around was in fact a rescue stick, and what I need is a recovery stick (not accessible via the obvious menu).  Currently got the other recent-ish Dell machine generating a recovery drive.

Update 4:  That, somehow, didn't work either... with strange errors.  It's almost like the thumb drive works for booting, but when the loaded OS then tries to find it, it isn't there anymore...?

Awright, try plugging it into one of the rear ports.  Hm.  Drive has a blue insulator.  Try one of the USB 3.0 ports?

It works.  (Maybe that was the problem with the Linux stick, and with the generic Win10 installer thinking it was missing a driver?)

Installs, finds the built-in license, seems OK.  Reports hardware being exactly as advertised.  Could be some incompatibility between these particular USB 3.0 drives and the USB 2.0 hub?  "U"SB "compatibility" is very strange and iffy indeed.

Mind you, this is still using the supplied HDD.  The SSD (and its bracket) should be arriving Wednesday; I didn't ask for the earlier option because I wasn't expecting to have the PC in hand until Monday or Tuesday or some such.

Anyway, I'm happy.  Probably ought to go leave a good review on eBay.

Such a morning.

Up way too late last night, and multiply-interrupted sleep owing to Joy's migraine.

Wake up kinda late, get a sluggish start, have to juggle cats during feeding time.

Eventually finish breakfast 0800ish.  See vehicles coming up driveway.  Well, the home-improvement crew is here bright and early!

They're busy screening in one end of the back deck.  After that, they'll do the front porch.  Joy has insisted since before we bought the place that the front porch needed screening in.

Temperature out there is almost 71°F already, with wind gusting upwards of 15 MPH.  It'd be a good day for going out and playing Tonka toys, despite the wind, but it looks like I need to remain indoors pretty much all day.  Gotta arrange things to permit a quick shopping run at some point, but mostly stuck in here.

A not-so-productive day.

Should have been productive, but... well, Joy has a bad migraine, so I have to look after her and my father and the critters.

So, kinda hard to focus, and I can't spend a block of time out in the yard, nor the barn, nor even the garage.

There's supposed to be a home-improvement project commencing tomorrow and possibly slopping over into Monday.  I thought the materials for it were supposed to be dropped off today, but that hasn't happened so far.

During one of my little bits of necessary outdoors time, I discovered that the sillcock nearest the chicken coop - that'd be the one that feeds the hose that I ordinarily use for rinsing and refilling their waterer - has developed an exciting new problem: if I connect the hose and open the valve, water starts poring out from behind the siding.  So... a leak somewhere between the actual working bis of the valve, hidden back inside the wall, and the visible part.

I can just leave it turned off for the moment.  I think this calls for getting a plumber out here: someone who (a) knows about sillcocks and (b) has a van full of repair parts.  That can happen next week, on a non-urgent basis.  While he's here, we can have him install the new kitchen faucet, which is something I keep not getting around to (requires the right block of time and my not having a backache).

It's very warm here, and windy.  Definitely not Winter anymore.

Trying out Le Potato

Burn current image to microSD card; plug into board; connect HDMI and USB cables; connect power.

Seems to work.  Sets itself up, asking a few questions along the way.

But.

When booting, it gets as far as "Welcome to GRUB!" and then sits there.  And sits, and sits....

Hitting ENTER makes it go again... with another ENTER maybe required a moment later.  Possibly waiting long enough would work, but my patience is finite.

There's a suggestion that this has something to do with recordfail, so I make the recommended change to the grub configuration.  No change.

Look around some more.  Apparently this can happen with some KVM switches, for some reason.  Maybe I need to try with a directly-connected keyboard and see what happens.  (Here, on the KVM, I can hit ENTER as needed.  If it ends up in the hands of a client, presumably a directly-connected keyboard will be the thing.)

Update:  Yup, eliminating the KVM switch works; it boots up decently fast, with no manual intervention.  Now I need to review the header pinout to see if it's sufficiently compatible with the particular piggyback board at issue.

Oh, yes: Spring.

Must be.  We're having a warm drizzle today.

And yesterday, after what was supposed (I think) to be the last freezin' of the season, I saw the first mosquito of Spring!

Soon, presumably, the baby bunnies will appear, devouring anything they can get their little teeth into.

Oh, that other low-cost Linux SBC!

Turns out the Beaglebone Black is still a thing, still relatively cheap, and, in a big change from when I bought mine, actually plentiful now.

Like, DigiKey has lots in stock and no indication of "only one to a customer, not for resale" like in the old days.

Only got a half-gig of RAM, not compatible with the RasPi expansion header, and not the latest most hottest desktop-replacement CPU... but for industrial purposes?  Might be worth a look.

There's also the BeaglePlay, which runs about $100, is moderately plentiful, has its own not-compatible-with-anything expansion provisions, and has a fast CPU, a decent amount of RAM, and lots of connectivity.

Meanwhile, I need to check out the Le Potato RasPi-not-quite-clone for something that needs that compatible expansion header... hoping its expansion header is compatible enough.

Well, that's good to know.

Apparently PCIe parallel-port cards are a thing.

Which is useful as I ponder maybe-this-year setting up some CNC stuff.  Assuming all plays nice, I don't need to keep a vintage PC-with-parallel-port working; I should be able to plug one of those cards into any old used business PC with an expansion slot.

Hm.  LinuxCNC now has a version for the RasPi... if only the supply of RasPi boards were to return to normal.  Maybe it will, by the time I have the workshop set up and can ponder cool new machinery.

Social events in CA are not so social.

Seems that many of those fun events I'm missing out on by no longer being in the Bay Area... well, even if I were still local, I'd still be missing out on them.

Apparently just about everything there requires a not-a-vaxx passport, and in many cases also masking.

Here's the kicker: this generally isn't even mentioned in promotional materials anymore.  You have to ask.  Because, apparently, the new normal is now considered so normal that it's taken for granted.

I don't know how much of this comes from event organizers, how much from venue operators, and how much from government... but while some parts of the country are essentially back to normal-normal, California just descends ever further into cultish madness.

(And I get the impression that I might no longer be able to go for morning walkies at Rancho San Antonio; the parking there has been rearranged, and the policies changed, so the idea of showing up at dawn in a personal vehicle may no longer be viable.)

Update:  Apparently in California taking a daily Raccoon Dog Flu test and posting the result to Facebook is a thing.  I haven't been visited by the Plague!  Look how virtuous I must be!

That growling under the desk?

This was the morning to do something about it.

Crawl under desk, reach behind computer, unplug all 47 cables.  Lift computer onto desk.  Remove cover.

Carry computer out to garage; vacuum & blow much dust out.  Accessible fans spin freely & quietly, except for... the one on the graphics card?  That one seems to be seized up right proper, and of course I don't have a spare for that one.

Connect power.  Turn on.  The fans that do turn seem to do so quietly enough.

Remove fan from graphics card.  It's an oddity.

Put everything back together, minus that one fan.  Should be OK as long as I'm not using this machine to do intensive graphics.  Back under the desk, reconnect all 47 cables, power on.

Now it's back to making fan-in-distress noises, but not as loudly as it had been.  Further diagnosis will be required someday soonishly.  Also, this seems to imply that the graphics-card fan had failed some time ago and I just hadn't noticed.

Oh, well.  Replacement fan & spare ordered from somewhere in the Far East, there seemingly being no localish sources for this type.  I suppose I could (the next slot being vacant) kludge on a normal fan, but it doesn't seem necessary.  When the replacement arrives, I can install it and also try to identify and replace the noisy one.

Hm.  Now the machine's making flying-saucer noises, interspersed with grinding noises.  Replacing that fan may be more urgent than I'd thought.  Well, at least we're having cool weather, so even with a fan out things probably won't get hot too fast.  Unless it's the CPU fan that's going bad.

Maybe I should track it down today.