Silicon Valley Redneck

Nu, another mutation?

Overnight financial reports look disastrous.  Look around a bit, and...

Well.  Just as the world was getting over the Delta Elite Variant (with its cracked frame rail) and the Lambada Variant (with its crazy Latin dance moves), now, just in time to save the Pestilence from obsolescence, comes the dreadful Squozz Variant from farthest Bingle-A-Ree to lay waste to college savings plans and financial markets in general.

Un-named persons who might or might not be public health officials of some sort are quoted as saying that this is amazingly terrible and the world must once again go on total lockdown.  Also, this is all the fault of an unvaccinated 3-year-old in Florida, whose name will be revealed at a press conference this afternoon when he is put on trial for crimes against humanity.

Fifteen years to flatten the curve!  Afterward, the survivors can Build Back Better™, for a society in which what little wealth remains is controlled by the Oligarchs, serfs know their place, and Droit du seigneur is once again the law of the land.

Update:  Early reports suggested that the '529 variant would be named "Nu", hence the title.  Apparently it's being called "Omicron", or "OMG", or something along those lines.  Oh, My Freaking Cron!

How '529 comes after '617 (which blew up a few dams, but had little effect on the war overall) is not clear, but nowadays nothing is.

Indoors day

It's a fine sunny fall afternoon out there, and there are things I should be doing in the yard, and things I want to be doing in the yard, but...

Well, Thanksgiving.  I can't be away from the kitchen for very long.

Currently baking a pumpkin pie and some impromptu muffins made with excess pie filling.  Got a chicken marinating (with just the three of us, my father not eating all that much nowadays, and Joy not being overly fond of turkey, a chicken is now the usual thing), and that'll go in the oven soon after the pie comes out.  I need to decide which roasting pan to use, and also make some rice-based stuffing.

And, I guess I could cook up some of those long beans I froze during the summer.

Rain seems to be on the way, likely arriving in a couple of hours, which is about the time afternoon warmth gives way to evening chill these days.  Tomorrow... yikes! - looks to be downright icy in the morning, and cold all day.  There are a few more warm afternoons in the 10-day forecast, though.

Update:  Food mostly turned out well; the defrosted beans were merely OK.  (I think this was partly from having been frozen, and partly from having been picked somewhat later than optimal.  I have many gardening notes for next year, and picking the long beans early is on the list.)  Rain arrived eventually.  Winding down now.

Contact!

Excuse me, contacts.  Plural.  A pair of them, in fact.

Tried them out this morning for a couple of hours.  Comfortable enough on the eyes, and after half an hour or so I was having excellent distance vision.

For staring at the just-beyond-arm's-length monitor... methinks I need some milder reading glasses than the ones I have handy (+2 diopter glasses seem right for things at book-reading distance, but not for nearly a yard away).  And, I was starting to feel a mite queasy.  I think afternoons (outdoors time) might be a better choice for breaking-in time, but wanted to get through a complete cycle, including removal, while I was sure the eye doc was open for business.

Removal turned out to be difficult, but I managed it eventually.  It had been about 15 years since I last wore contacts, and 30 since I wore soft lenses, so there's definitely some re-learning here.

Anyway, I think they'll work.  I've ordered a goodly supply of the recommended cleaning solution, and some +1.25 diopter reading glasses for things that are a few feet away.  Old concerns return: at some point, I'll need to resume keeping a contact-lens emergency kit in each vehicle.

Amazon has some silly filters.

If I search for motorcycle goggles...

... Amazon thinks I might want to be sure they fit my 2017 Toyota Tundra.

(No, in fact, I want goggles that fit my lawnmower.  My first try was steampunk goggles, but all the results came back way too steampunk, to the point of being utterly impractical.  I ended up ordering a pair of fairly-retro motorcycle/barnstormer goggles.  Also a couple of pairs of +2 diopter safety glasses.)

Busy day.

Morning: brush burn.  The guy who'd been doing the brush clearing in the Annex returned to incinerate one mound that had turned out to consist of new bushes and vines growing up through a years-old unburned burn pile.

The well-decomposed wood in the bottom was uncoöperative at first.  "I don't want to burn!" it said.  "It's too cold this morning, and besides I'm still wet from Sunday night's rain!"  (To be fair, the temperature at sunrise was right around 21°F.)  With sufficient encouragement (involving extra Diesel and application of a leaf-blower), much of it eventually did burn, leaving a mixture of ashes, small pieces, roots, and really old rotten wood that the tiller can deal with.  Once it was pretty well burned down, I went up the hill to fetch a bucket of water, a process that involved putting the bucket back on the loader (I'd most recently been using the pallet forks), adding many gallons of water, and then trying not to spill too much on the drive down across lumpy terrain.

Around noon, I decided it was sufficiently out, if not entirely California out (Tennessee is much less flammable than California, so people are a bit more casual about small smolders).

Afternoon:  Errands!  In town!  (Well... not technically a town, but at least a census-designated place.)  Owing to household scheduling constraints, I ended up leaving around 1500, which turns out to be just about the wrong time, as that's when the after-school traffic gets going.  Main errand was to the eye doc's office, to pick up my new glasses (I can see clearly!  They're not all scratched up yet, nor otherwise damaged!  And, I can kinda-sorta wear some types of safety glasses over them) and contact lenses (which I guess I'll try out tomorrow).  Before that, I swung by the local post office (not the less-local one that handles our mail) to have another go at sending a small package that the Post Office had bounced after I tried mailing it using a bunch of stamps - it seems that the old First Class rule of thumb, one stamp per ounce, no longer applies, and now it's so much per ounce plus so much per being over ¼" thick plus so much per various other factors.  Meanwhile, Amazon is apparently getting super-cheap rates on priority parcel delivery (except when the destination post office gets overloaded and gives up on delivering stuff, which event is seemingly not communicated to Amazon, because the lines of communication are apparently FUBAR).

Anyway, in one sense I arrived at the post office at the wrong time, there being a few people ahead of me, and the clerks being tied up with customers who had a lot of special-handling stuff, but in another sense it wasn't the worst time, because the after-school crowd started accumulating rapidly behind me.

Oh, and the "masks required" sign was getting maybe 20% compliance, which included neither of the visible employees.

Then home, deal with Tuesday afternoon chores, cook & eat dinner, and now it's well into evening and practically time to start winding down from the day.

"Nearly"

Seen in my feed on the U-Toobz:

I nearly got COVID while fully vaccinated!

Nearly got... WTAF?  What is that even supposed to mean?

I was nearly born a chimpanzee!  Well, within some fraction of a percent of the genetic code.

Some of the Jan. 6 miscreants nearly brought guns to the Capitol!  I mean, aside from intentionally leaving the guns at home.

Who's writing this propaganda, anyway?

What a curious expression.

Quantum Vapor.

?

Well, many things with "quantum" in the name are vaporware.

Or is this some arcane physical effect?  The steam coming off a black hole, perhaps?

Oh.  It's a brand of fishing gear.

OK, then.

I'm so old...

... I can remember when Uncle Ronnie was too old to be President.

Layers of editors and fact checkers...

... and yet several mainstream media sources fail basic spelling.

My feed shows many headlines along the lines of "Interview with family of Rittenhouse victim!"

Excuse me?  I think it's spelled "assailant."  Given that the jury just ruled that he acted in self-defense, this seems like the sort of factually out-to-lunch "reporting" that must have libel lawyers salivating.

Something under the desk is squeaking.

Been hearing odd noises, on and off, the past few days.  More so this morning.

Could be disk seeking noises; I'd initially noticed it early in the morning, when maintenance tasks (such as backups) might be running.  But this morning, it was more persistent, and really didn't sound right.  And it was getting louder.

Sounds like it's coming from the cubical mini-server.  Which has the only usually-on rotating disk drive in the room (the one in the fireproof box only runs during backup operations), but also of course has fans.  Shut it down: the noise promptly ceases.

Crawl under the desk, amid dust and cat hair (cough, cough).  Remove the mini-server's cover.  The front fan has an awful lot of play!  Start it back up: yup, that's the source of the noise, all right.  Measure it: yeah, 120mm.  Order a couple of good 120mm fans from Amazon, for Sunday delivery.

The noise has gotten worse, and more obnoxious.  With the room unlikely to get very hot the next couple of days, I don't think that fan is really needed, so maybe I should just disconnect it while awaiting its replacement.

... That mini-server was meant to be a stopgap, from 2018 to shortly after we got moved.  The plan called for setting up a datacenter, with a real rack-mount server (second-hand) and gigabit Ethernet connections every-which-way, in the basement, plus a couple of decently capable WiFi access points... but then the Pestilence arrived before we could get an electrician out to wire the server room.  Next year, I hope... the interim network capability, via a rather basic WiFi access point, is just not a good way to interconnect the office and lab machines.

Trips into town

So, off to Sevierville this morning to unclog the postal-parcel pipeline... Amazon having attempted to ship a bunch of stuff through the post office this week, including our new flagpole, which didn't nohows fit in the delivery vehicle.

The plan called for going into Seymour this afternoon to fetch my new glasses, but oops!  The eye doc is closed Friday afternoon through Sunday, and not just because it's Deer Season Eve.  So, Monday then.

Going to Seymour this afternoon presumably would have been fine; I wouldn't want to visit a big blue city just now, but a rural crossroads with some stores scattered around the vicinity isn't exactly Riot Central.  No TV cameras, for one thing, and also three, count 'em, three red-state sheriffs' departments on tap, not to mention the residents being unlikely to put up with destructive shenanigans.

Ah, well.  It's a fine cool sunny afternoon, and while out for a stroll I noted that the grass in the family-meadow region has gotten a bit taller than I'd like, so I suppose I ought to give it one last going-over with the mower before winter.  A short haircut should discourage any surviving Johnson grass and favor shorter varieties.   Before that, I should drag the cart through the area and gather up fallen bits of trees that might gum up the mower.  There's just no end to the yard work!  (Come spring, I figure on giving that area a going-over with the tiller, then applying a lawn roller and a fresh dose of lawn-type grass seed and probably also some clover.  Historical imagery seems to indicate that part of it was tilled a few years ago, but the Jonson grass quickly took over.)

A bold prediction!

The case-number stats for the Pestilence will shortly increase.

And why is that, you may ask?

Firstly, there'll be an increase in positive test results because there'll be an increase in the number of tests performed: people traveling during the holiday season, various mandates, and so on.  More tests means more positive results, hence more cases.

Secondly, there'll be an increase in diagnoses based on individuals having two or more of the ever-lengthening laundry list of symptoms... even if a test comes back negative.  Being as how we're getting into cold-and-flu season, there ought to be plenty of symptoms around.

What I don't expect to see is a significant excess death rate as compared to what would be expected for a normal (i.e., Pestilence-free) winter.  Unless it's from people overdosing on ivermectin fentanyl, or there's a war, or something.  Or people can't afford to heat their homes (or just don't have fuel/electricity available) and end up freezing; it's looking like that kind of winter.

Is it November already?

It's always coldest just before the dawn, right?

Early morning low was right around 23°.  Fahrenheit, that is.  The lawn is very frosty indeed.  I stepped outside briefly, and my legs got frosty.

This must be the cue for all the deer to put on their nice warm orange parkas.

Not something one ordinarily complains about

We didn't get enough property tax bills.

The numbers on them look reasonable, as far as they go (Californians might think there was a misplaced decimal place), but... we didn't get the bills for the two parcels that make up the Annex.

Could be related to the fact that they used to be part of a larger parcel, which was re-subdivided this year, just before we bought the two big lots.  I just dug out the title papers, and the parcel number shows as "parts of ...", so recordkeeping may have gotten strange.

Anyway, I guess I need to call up the county tax folks one of these days and see what's going on.  On-line property records appear to be in order, though the entry for each parcel shows the last selling price being the combined price we paid for both.  (That isn't a problem for property tax purposes, as mark-to-market isn't a thing here.  The appraised value is what the appraiser thinks the property is worth, not what some fool paid for it... or for some nearby property.)

Almost reconsidering

So there I am, dithering with regard to the CR-10 v3 or maybe v2 thing, and wondering why Prusa didn't have anything in a large format....

Now there's the Prusa XL!  A CoreXY printer with a 14" cube build volume!  Yay!

But.

Starts at $2K, and shipments nearly a year out.

Looks seriously cool, but I probably won't be going that route.

(I am, however, looking at making various upgrades to the old FlashForge Creator X, starting with a Micro Swiss hot-end upgrade on one side.  And... a few years back, someone had an upgrade for the extruder parts to make it play nice with TPU filament, but that seems to have disappeared.  Foo.)