Silicon Valley Redneck

Maybe the sky is wrong.

Maybe the air smells wrong.

Seems critters have been behaving oddly of late (possibly including the mountain lion(s)).

And, this afternoon, on the road in Sunnyvale, I encountered a police car with a back-seat bork-bork being yappy nor a purse dog, but in a big-dog voice.  Dunno what that was about.

That's California!

Joy, also, needs to have in-person dealings with the DMV, and her deadline is nearer than mine.

There's an on-line system for making appointments.  Yay!  It seems to be optimized for Internet Explorer 1.0.  And... the first available appointment anywhere near here is three months out.  Great.

So off she went, early this morning, to brave the lines, thinking that if she got there 15 minutes early the wait wouldn't be all that long.  Oops!  The line had been forming for two hours already.  (This being the day after a long weekend might be an aggravating factor.)

Seems there's much standing around in her immediate future.  And I still need to get my documentation together and then pick some reasonably dry morning to go stand around and wait.

Also California:  Just ordered a respirator and some spare filters, for some upcoming house-fixery-uppery work that's likely to get a mite dusty.  Amazon presented me with Prop. 65 warnings.  For both items.  Because of carcinogenicity-by-association, apparently.

Smoky with a chance of mountain lions

The local air isn't quite as bad today, but still smelling strongly of burnt forest, and there's not much daylight yet (though the overcast seems to be at least part clouds today, not all smoke).

And, up at Rancho San Antonio?

There were a few trails closed Friday morning, and a lot more this morning (I missed yesterday).  Today's closures include my usual beyond-the-farm territory, but at least there are still some plausible routes open.  I hear that basically the entire preserve, except the farm, was closed over the weekend.

All of which made life rather exciting for this little guy's arrival:

Update:  According to recent satellite imagery, this morning's overcast should be 100% clouds blown in off the ocean and 0% smoke from Paradise.  Still smells of smoke at ground level, though.  Oh: the clouds are coming from the west.  Ground-level wind is (a) not much, and (b) N to NNE, so likely still bringing smoke with it.

Seasonal note

The fields in question did not belong to Mr. Flander; there's no apostrophe in "Flanders".

... nor in "Swann" for that matter.

Yeah, that'll work.

What with PG&E being blamed (in advance of any actual investigation) for at least one of the current crop of wildfires, some politician is already proclaiming that we mustn't have privately-owned utility companies.

Well... actually, PG&E is publicly owned, in the sense of shares being publicly traded.  But anyway.

The lesson here is that having such a business nominally owned by private investors but micromanaged by the State (isn't there a name for that?) is unacceptable, and that infrastructure must be owned, not merely controlled, by the State (methinks there's a name for that, too).

Which change is unlikely to improve matters, except insofar as the State would be clearly to blame for all the troubles of its wholly-owned utility operation.  I kid, I kid.  Of course the State wouldn't be to blame.  The forces of Snowball are always working to sabotage the windmill.

And, if you look at the mandates on this enterprise?  Provide reliable electricity; outages are unacceptable.  Zero emissions!  Tear down the dams and restore natural rivers!  Keep prices down.  Pay top dollar for excess output from rooftop solar arrays.  Prevent wildfires at all costs.  Don't cut down any trees.  No nukes!

I tells ya, it's enough to drive a golem mad.

Curiously worded and/or timed tweet

FrenchPrez Mācrōn, yesterday:

When brave American soldiers came to France one hundred years ago, etc. etc.
            12:38 PM - 11 Nov 2018 from Paris, France

Er.  One hundred years ago yesterday afternoon.

Those would be the ones who arrived after the cease-fire, then?

"And we won't deploy till it's over, over there!"

Now that's just wrong.

Sumdood hollowed out a (defunct?) Osborne 1 and replaced the innards with a RasPi running an emulator, plus an Arduino to translate the keyboard.  (Via Hackaday, via Digi-Key.)

And a color LCD.

Y'know, you can still buy an actual Zilog Z80 chip.  Brand new, like.  For authenticity.  And whatever no-longer-available LSI chips were on the original motherboard could be emulated in small FPGAs.

For an extra challenge, the whole dang motherboard (power and analog bits excluded) could be emulated in a moderate-sized FPGA.  Stick a dinky PCB under it, with voltage regulators and some interfacing, and you've got replacement computer guts.

That, kids, would be a proper project.

Centennial

It's not just 11/11.

It's 11/11/18.

And we may reflect on the madness of setting the Armistice for the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month... and having both sides keep the conflict going at full intensity right up to the very last second.  Because doing any less than the utmost when there's technically still a war on simply isn't done.

Red sky at morning

Those fires are still going.

Down south, a cousin is in an evacuation zone but staying put for the moment, with cars packed and ready to go.

Up north, much news out of Paradise, little of it good.  Vanderleun, at least, is safe.  The town itself seems to be gone.  No word, one way nor another, of my friend who lived there; she'll most likely be trying to make her way to the home of a relative in Nevada, and likely won't have 'Net access (maybe not phone either) until she gets there.

Those videos... I drove through a forest fire once.  Not a very vigorous one; cause for extreme caution, but not necessarily for turning tail and fleeing.  (When I found the trailhead moderately on fire, though, I decided the backpacking trip simply wasn't on.  No, we didn't have cellphones back then.)  The scenes from Paradise?  Yikes!  More'n an order of magnitude worse.  Seriously reinforces my belief that I don't want to live in a pine forest.

And, more notes for real-soon-now rural living.  Keeping trees at a safe distance from the residence was already on the list, for a variety of reasons.  A suitably-constructed root cellar / storm shelter can be fire-resistant storage for family documents, and, in a pinch, for people.  Some sort of local firefighting capability can be a good thing, and not just for those who like to play with pyrotechnics.  And I'll need to review the home-fireproofing tips from my-cousin-the-volunteer-firefighter; there was something about noting where on the roof leaves collect, and figuring those will be the same places firebrands will collect.  There are always lessons.

Update:  Cheryl just checked in, from her brother's place in Reno.  Got her dog and other essentials packed into the car quickly, got on the road ahead of the crowd, and was out of danger before the chaos hit.

Update 2:  The cousin in Newbury Park has evacuated, what with fires being on both sides and one of them getting close.

Regarding ballots, and the counting thereof

If the election officials in your county are still, days after the election, "finding" marked ballots to count?

Those officials are, at best, criminally incompetent.  More likely, they're just plain criminal.

There's supposed to be a chain of custody for marked ballots, to ensure that no legitimate ballot gets "lost" and no spurious ballot gets "found" in the process.

And, since there is (or at least should be) no way of matching a marked ballot with its owner, and therefore no way of re-establishing provenance, it is vitally important that boxes of ballots not get misplaced even momentarily.  If no box of ballots gets misplaced, there's no way for a box of ballots to turn up mysteriously after the deadline for counting, as so often seems to happen in certain places.

Additional:  Incredibly stupid headline at The Beastly Day:

Republicans Freak Out as New Ballots Threaten Florida Senate Win

"Freak out" - no bias there, right.  And "new ballots"?  This is kind of the point: there's no such fargin' thing.  Any ballots that "turn up" after the election are, right there, conclusive proof of either gross incompetence or skullduggery; take your pick.

Maybe, for a change, we'll see some prosecutions this time.  And it's looking like there may be some perjury prosecutions in store for those who made clearly false (like, preposterous) accusations against Brett Kavanaugh... and also for their lawyers.

"Count every vote" is a meaningless slogan when you can't verify that the votes being counted are the ones that were legitimately cast.  And with boxes of ballots being "lost" and "found" by partisan election officials?  Trust Level Zero.  Maybe less than zero.

Remember: the people who count the votes decide everything.

Meanwhile...

I smell wood smoke.  Seems to be coming from outdoors.  Getting stronger.

Is a neighbor using his fireplace in the wee hours of the morning?  Or is there yet another wildfire off in the distance, and the smoke is blowing this way?  (I don't think it can be very far off, given the lack of wind this time of morning... can it?)

Update:  Huge fire in Butte County; multiple towns evacuated.  Including one where a friend lives.

Smoke or no, I'd better go walkies.  Had an overly-sugary breakfast, which must be burned off, Or Else.

Update 2:  Feels like Mordor out there.  The smoke isn't quite as thick up in the hills, but still bad.  There's a brand-new (since yesterday morning) trail closure due to a mountain-lion sighting (presumably a full-sized one, not an Angry Novelty Sofa Pillow).  Apparently smoke alone does not suffice to keep monsters away; fire and Jell-O are also required.

Rant to follow. Might want to short TomTom.

My TomTom Via Something* GPS unit appears to be permanently bricked.

BECAUSE WHOEVER IS IN CHARGE OF THE MISSION-CRITICAL DEVICE-UPDATE SOFTWARE IS A SMEGGING INCOMPETENT STHONDAT.

Seriously.  MyDrive Connect is completely wrong from beginning to end when it comes to managing updates.  And if a device company can't do device firmware/data updates, it's being incompetently managed.

And it doesn't look like they honor the "lifetime map updates" either.  Or maybe the subscription expires if you don't use it enough.  Or maybe "lifetime" means "until your device dies of a botched update, which can be arranged at our convenience."

It appears that their business model depends on screwing over customers and expecting repeat business.  Which Ain't Happenin'.

* Maybe it's supposed to be a 1525LMT.  There's no model number visible, and I long since discarded the packaging.  The program shows it as a "TomTom Start 25" or something to that effect.

Update:  Turns out there is a way to force reinstallation of a map; you have to switch to the "Content" tab to manage what content is in the cloud and what's on the device, and tell it to install the map.  Which wasn't installed on the device, despite the app's insistence that all was up to date and hunky-dory.

Which doesn't fit, so I had to install a subset.  Or install a memory card.  For which I don't immediately see a socket, but I guess I can look for that later.  And "The contiguous United States" is not an option, when picking a subset.

Funny thing is, the fool thing had gotten to "57% done installing the new map" last night before zoning out.  If the map wasn't going to fit, why didn't it tell me ahead of time, then?

And, assuming this works, I'll see whether the firmware update fixed the problem I'd been having the past week, of the GPS function sometimes taking for-freaking-ever to find the satellites.  And the clock being persistently about 3 minutes fast during the can't-find-the-satellites time, despite my attempts to set the system clock correctly.

Update 1.5:  After many tries (and the increasing realization that MyDrive Connect sucks horta eggs), I managed to get the map subset installed on the device and apparently working.  But it's just a subset.

Then I looked for the memory card slot.  Which is hidden behind the USB cable.  And which has a 16 GByte card in it already.  Apparently the gadget forgot it had a card installed.  Removing and re-installing the card got the "format card?" prompt, followed by recognition of the card.

But!  Installing the full map didn't work, for unexplained reasons.  Could be because UT&T's A-Verse service took one of its coffee breaks during the process...?  And the memory card once again got forgotten and the device had to be reminded of it.

Now trying again.  Maybe I need to replace the memory card?  (I hope it's not the socket that's going bad.)

Update 2:  Various additional attempts mostly resulted in an utterly uninformative "something went wrong" message.  Somewhere along the line I swapped out the memory card for another of the same type, and eventually managed to install the full map on the card.

So the unit is back in operation, with at least a somewhat updated map (I don't know what happened to the "lifetime updates" that I thought this model was supposed to come with).  The software is a load of bantha droppings.  It remains to be seen whether all this will end up curing the recent difficulty in finding satellites.

Novelty pillow

Spotted in the living room:

Pygmy mountain lion pillow.  Very lifelike.

That seems to be Southmoon's new spot when I'm not around.  Well camouflaged and largely safe from marauding deer.

Changing user interface, unchanging language

Spotted here:

Battel attempts to hang up after giving her number, but the phone remains connected.

Consider the term hang up.  Back in the old days, the term referred to hanging the receiver back up on the hook; more recently, to placing the handset on the cradle (which contained what was still called the hook switch, though 'twas no longer a hook as such).  You knew when you'd done it.

Now?  You pushes a button and you takes your chances.  If it's a smartphone, the "button" is just a differently-illuminated region of the screen.  Maybe it disconnected, and maybe it didn't.  There's usually some sort of visual indication that the call is no longer live, but the casual user may not be checking for this.

It doesn't help that, on an Android phone, hitting the "back" or "home" button will make the "phone" screen go away while leaving any connection unaffected.

The ʻOumuamua goes swimming by

Hadn't been following the story of that particular space rock in any detail.

Seems now there's speculation that it's really an alien space probe: an intriguing, if highly remote, possibility.

Song time.