Silicon Valley Redneck

Hey, kids! Know what day it is?

Right!

It's the day we make post-Thanksgiving turkey, vegetable, and rice hotdish!

I didn't use cream of mushroom soup.  Heresy, I know.  I used the remaining gravy (which had mushrooms added)... and then, realizing that there just wasn't enough gravy, rummaged around in the cupboard for a can of chicken gravy, whereof I had one lonely can.  Remaining turkey leftovers, a pile of frozen mixed veggies, remaining brown jasmine rice blend; mix well and bake.

There was an unexplained abundance of clam chowder in the cupboard, but that somehow seemed even more inappropriate than chicken gravy.

Anyway: once it's done baking, there'll be hotdish to last me a few days.

Update: Wasn't as much as it looked like; I ate almost half of it for dinner.

Just when you thought it's safe to stand beneath a grain bin door

Swung by the pet supply place after morning walkies, in search of a bag of mountain lion chow and some canned goods.

Right by the register, where one couldn't possibly miss them, were catnip tribbles.

So, yeah.  Bought one.  I didn't even have a chance to unpack the bags at home before Huckleberry dove in and carried it off.

Alas, they don't coo.  Top Hat doesn't make the tribble cooing sound anymore, either.  Have to see if I can get her to do it again.

Filk reference in title.

A Debianate adventure

Yes, I finally got around to the dist-upgrade on my workstation, from Debian v7 to v8.  Started the process around noon yesterday.  After observing the pace of downloading, I interrupted the process and restarted it with -d, so it would continue downloading into the night and then stop, awaiting manual intervention this morning to do the actual installation.

Installation took all freaking morning.  Well, actually I don't know how long it was awaiting a response while I was out doing my laundry, but it certainly did take a long time.  Probably something to do with the vast number of packages I have installed.

Curiously, kdm didn't come up when I rebooted; I had to do a manual restart of kdm to get the X login screen.

Apart from that... so far, it looks healthy, and I can finally run the current version of Google Chrome.

Except...

As with the laptop, EAGLE seems to have lost the font metrics for the Proportional font.  Fixed and Vector are both OK, but xref-style labels using Proportional are of minimum length, with the text protruding from the box.  And, in EAGLE v7 (but not v6), rotated text (again, only in Proportional) is seriously mis-rendered.

I need to dig out my notes: didn't I create a clean Debian 8 VM, install EAGLE v7, and have the text come out right?  Or was that a test I didn't get around to?

Aside from that, all the indispensable development tools seem to be OK, at least on basic testing.

Update: Yeah, so I install EAGLE 7.6.0 on the Debian 8.1 VM, show it a copy of the schematic that's currently not having its text rendered properly, and it's fine.

Ergo, something to do with History.  Foo.

Guess I'll experiment with the laptop first, to see if I can make the historical whatever go bye-bye.

Hmmm... a quick test (launch a session on the workstation as the guest user; start EAGLE; create a schematic; place some Proportional text) reveals that the problem is at the system level, not the user level.  Probably means doing a complete friggin' re-install of the OS and all the software, right?  Phooey.

Update 2: Thinking it might - possibly - be related to doing the OS upgrade after EAGLE was installed, I did a new install of 7.7.0 on the workstation.  Doesn't fix the problem.

Um.  If memory serves, a design I'd imported from Olimex didn't have the font-metrics problem when viewed on the laptop.  Now, where'd I leave that...?  Oho!  No font-metrics problem, because it's set for always vector font, that's why.  So I guess there's a workaround, though the schematics come out kinda ugly that way.

I wonder if Autodesk (they're the new owners, right?) will give us the long-requested capability of using normal system fonts in the schematic.  Though, last time I used AutoCAD, I think it was still using pen-plotter fonts.  And we had to keep a flock of geese, to keep the plotter supplied with pens.

Oh, and one other revolting development: somehow, the audio volume keeps getting set to 100% while I'm not watching.  Could, for all I know, be one of the cats standing on the "🔈+" button.

The early bird avoids the crowds

Actually, I don't know how crowded the stores may have gotten around here the past two days; I'm just assuming that things got hectic later in the day.

I followed my usual (even when it's not Black Friday / Dark Gray Saturday) pattern of getting out shopping early: post-walkies (a bit after 0900) on Friday, and just after special early opening time (0800) on Saturday.

Friday morning, Smart & Final was quiet (nobody rushing in to snap up clearance-sale turkeys), as was Orchard Supply.

Saturday, I don't think I was actually the first customer to show up at REI, but the minimal staff greatly outnumbered the shoppers.  Next up, Trader Joe's: looked about normal for early morning, as one might expect.

Morning traffic both days was very light, at least as compared to the same time on a normal weekday.

Oh, and at REI?  I found a possibly-suitable pair of "barefoot"-ish shoes on closeout.  Gratuitously ugly, but comfortable and good enough for hiking on muddy mornings, saving the stiff leather New Balance things (which, no, I didn't burn in pro-globalization protest) for looking presentable while doing moderate walking (e.g., trade shows).

In other news

Turns out the white parts of my house were originally light blue.  Then yellow.

Yeah, I was dealing with the aftermath of the Downspout of Doom.  Still not really finished, but I removed the mangled remains of the straps, scraped away the damaged and peeling paint in the vicinity, and applied primer (which conveniently is a fair match for the overall white paint).

I got to see the strata of paint, all the way back to nineteen-fifty-something.

Later, sometime, I'll need to seal up the hole I made for the hydraulic-mining operation, create new straps of correct dimensions for the little old downspout, install them, apply more primer over the straps, and then re-paint that whole section of wall properly.

While the can of paint is around, bits of the shed need a fresh coat.  Mainly the doors.

But, for now, weather conditions are not conducive to further outdoor efforts.

Not having leftover pumpkin pie...

... And anyway having Issues with sweets, I set about constructing a reduced-sugar pumpkin pie.

Take one bargain-basement ready-made crust out of the freezer.  Grab one can of Trader Joe's pumpkin (because there's a bunch of it on hand).  Look at the pie recipe on the label.  Improvise.

Use the full amount of heavy cream, but omit the milk.  Use four eggs instead of two.  Use maybe a third the specified amount of brown sugar.  Be generous with the spices, and add about a teaspoon of minced ginger.

Result: not too sweet; about the normal amount of fat, but extra protein.  It came out unexpectedly light and fluffy, and a bit on the bland side.  No obvious adverse effects from eating some of it.

So, next time?  A bit less cream, and at least double the spices.  Definitely use more ginger.  And more cloves.  And more cinnamon.  (But no ghost peppers.  That would be the Wrong Kind Of Spicery.)

Actually, next time is probably a reduced-sugar pecan pie.  Lotsa pecans, lotsa eggs, a little maple syrup.  Serve, re-heated, with bacon in the morning: yum.

The day after

Well, I started out today about half a pound heavier than yesterday: within normal variation, and not bad for a post-holiday morning.

The cats were disappointed when I sat down for breakfast; they came in looking for BACON!, and I was having sausage instead.  It's just not the same.

Came time for walkies, the turkeys were out in force again.  The farm was apparently celebrating Black Friday, or at least the greeter this morning was a black cat (one of the two new-last-month barn cats, represented at the time as feral and non-adoptable; they're actually turning out to be fairly social).  There were also rather a lot of mushrooms, of undetermined edibility, along the trail.

Morning walkies time is getting a mite chillsome, and, not being as cold-hardy as some people, I've been responding to the 40°F conditions by wearing a heavy overshirt over my usual Hawaiian shirt - though I'm still in the shorts and Five Fingerses.  My tootsies have been getting cold, so it's getting to be time for shoes and socks for insulation from the cold, cold ground.  Another week or so and I'll be breaking out the long pants and culturally-appropriative hat.

Those of a more characteristically Californian disposition, meanwhile, have been bundled up for an Alaskan winter since the morning temperature fell below 65.

On the way home, stop at Orchard Supply for sundries: a bath mat, hot-glue sticks, a can of indoor/outdoor latex primer, and various other things.  Gotta do some home stuff this weekend.

Lunch was supposed to be chicken with triple-ginger teriyaki sauce.  Sauce: check.  Excess-O-Pak of chicken breasts bought Wednesday at the Chinese market: check.  Chop up enough for lunch... um.  Sophisticated organoleptic testing methods suggest that the entire package is now or never.  This is not according to plan.  So: chop up all the chicken; toss a moderate pile into a bowl of sauce to cook soon for lunch; dump the remainder into a pot with some water and olive oil; cover, and set it cooking.  Once the chicken is safely cooked, and the water boiled off, dump the chunks into a freezer bag and freeze for later.

And now it's early afternoon, I've had my lunch, the cooked chicken chunks are in the freezer, and, despite all the stuff I really should be accomplishing, I think it's time for a nap.

Update: To make up for the lack of leftovers, I've just put one of those 3-pound turkey lumps in the oven.  Should be ready by dinnertime, for some reasonable value of dinnertime.  Also have to remember to put sweet potatoes in the oven partway through the cooking cycle.  And maybe concoct a low-sugar pumpkin pie?  Cornbread?  How ambitious am I feeling?

While it's cooking, I'll get some actual work done on the current toaster project: updating the firmware-development lash-up to use a bigger MCU (regrettably, a higher pin count as well as the additional RAM I needed) and a 40 MHz reference clock for the CPLD instead of 100 MHz (because the CPLD's built-in PLL is less flexible than one might wish, choice of input frequency is important, and clocks derived from 40 MHz get me the best compromise in terms of doing what's needed while avoiding timing problems).

Update 2: Lately, the water dish in Tinga's little sleep cage in the lab has been getting empty much faster than expected.  Like, I'd expect to dump a nearly-full dish every couple of days, and refill it; instead, I'm finding it nearly empty after a day or two.

Turns out Top Hat has been drinking from it during the day, while Tinga is in her main cage.

A very Huckleberry Thanksgiving

Huckleberry's thankful for a mousepad to rest his head on, and a tame house ape to rub his belly.

Symmetry?

The latest foofaraw concerns a call for election audits in three states.

Curiously, they're all states that Candidate X barely won.

No one's calling for audits in states that Candidate Y barely won.  Surely such states exist?  Shouldn't those results get the same level of scrutiny?

And does anyone else think this sounds like a certain post-election season in Florida, some years back, with selective recounts in counties that Candidate Z had barely won?

Is this a case of keep playing the game until we get the result we want?

Фемен, or just bꙭbs?

We've all heard of Femen, right?  Holds topless protests in places where there's a nontrivial risk of being arrested (and seriously mistreated) for such antics, or just for being disrespectful of the authorities?

Well, in the modern activist spirit of "Me too!", there's some group in the U.S. of A. (well... NYC; not exactly the same thing) holding topless protests against Trump.

What, exactly, this is meant to accomplish is not clear.  From the video, their logic seems to be thus:  Jesus was gay [citation needed]; ergo, Cheeto Jesus must also be gay; ergo, the sight of BEWBS!!! will cause him to freak out and run away.  Or something.

There's no one home, and there aren't even rumors of a light.

No thanks.

Morning e-mail from Linkedin:

Eric: Fitbit, Theranos, and Apple are looking for candidates like you.

WTF?  Thanatos is hiring?

Doesn't exactly sound like a good long-term employment prospect.

And, given the rumors about Number One's management style, somehow I don't think I'd want to work there anyway.

Wildlife sightings

Judging from what I saw out walkies this morning, it must have rained turkeys last night.  Also deer.  And newts.

Well, one newt, anyway.  And that one was kinda squished.  Musta landed awfully hard.

I guess newts can't fly.

Cute webmaster trick o' the day

I just noticed something on the New York Post's site.

The "most popular this week" list on the sidebar?

The links point to archive.org's copies of the articles.

So... if there's some future reorganization of the Post's own archives that changes the URLs for the actual articles... the links should still work.

Assuming, of course, that the Wayback Machine retains its format.  And, um.  Isn't that list generated dynamically, per-view?  So, unless someone's looking at a saved copy of a viewed page, the links ought to be fresh, right?  And if the user is looking at a saved copy on archive.org, don't the internal links get pointed to the archive anyway?

Cute: check.  Interesting: check.  Useful?  Maybe not so much.  But I guess it's a way of pushing the bandwidth for the older content onto someone else's server.

Time to abolish the College!

Time and past time, I say!

Yes, it's so picturesque, what with the smoke signals and the members all in their nice red uniforms, but its time is past.

Back in the day, 1100 years ago and more, it made sense to have delegates travel from the furthest reaches of Christendom to choose a Pontiff.  But with modern communication, the need for travel is eliminated, and with it the need for delegates.

Elect the Pope by worldwide popular vote!

And don't go limiting the vote to Catholics.  Oh, no.  We know that trick.  The Pope's influence affects, in one way or another, the life of everyone in the world, so we should all have the vote.

It's only fair.

"It's like Uber for eggs!"

I had several very strange dreams last night.  I think we can discount the one that involved discovering a high-quality color video of Aunt Laura defending the family garden against marauding bunnies with an integrally suppressed SBR circa 1947.  And, indeed, anything else regarding the paternal line.

But, one kinda-sorta-almost made sense: an egg-distribution service that collected excess eggs from households with backyard chickens, and delivered eggs (all packed in cartons) to customers.  A loosely-organized egg co-op that picks up and delivers.  Hmm.

I have the feeling the USDA wouldn't appreciate that sort of thing.  And there would no doubt be issues with unscrupulous suppliers.

But it's still an interesting notion, and one that ties in with various foodie movements.  Doesn't have to be just eggs, either; it could handle all manner of excess output from hobby farming.

More on the "fake news" foofaraw

Used to be, the mighty professional Press protected us from fake news.

Um.

Except for... exploding Chevy truck gas tanks?  The Killian memos?  Satanic ritual abuse of children, at the McMartin preschool and elsewhere?  The latest alternative-energy invention?  Post-Katrina cannibalism?  Every story about guns, ever?

Ever since I started sanity-checking mainstream news stories against a combination of personal knowledge and basic logic, I've noticed that stories in the big-city newspapers (never mind on TV!) are consistently wrong in every important respect, and greatly sensationalized* in the interest of selling eyeballs to advertisers.

See also: Gell-Mann Amnesia.

Oh, and climate reporting?  Charles Fort, call your office.

* Exception: Genuinely huge disasters may be underreported, owing to the difficulty of getting news crews to the scene and to the mind-boggling scale of, e.g., the Boxing Day tsunami.  All disasters must be rescaled to within acceptable news-sensation bounds.

 

Added:  See also, "Pallywood".  And CNN's Baghdad bureau, back in the day.

The things you miss by working at home

Not having any business to the south today, I completely missed all the fun.

There's been a Blob Attack in Santa Clara!

 

"ZOMG fake news!!!"

Curiously enough, those who are suddenly concerned about how to eliminate fake news don't seem to be worrying about the fake news that Trump hates gays, Jews, and immigrants, and will shortly be deploying his legions of stormtroopers to round up the opposition.

Somebody is sure putting that out there, and it's being believed.  People are acting on that belief.  Rioting, even.

Tangentially: if Party X persistently tells its followers that Party Y wants to round up dissidents, eliminate Social Security, ban contraception, bring back racial segregation, forcibly convert gays, and start World War III for fun and profit... is it really appropriate to label Party Y "the party of fear"?

Hype.

Can you tell Elon Musk from Donald Trump?

Earlier this week, there was some great hype about an Easter egg that would turn some model of Tesla into the Fastest Car In The World!!!! - By which the hypester apparently meant fastest 0-60MPH acceleration of any current production street-legal car, which is considerably less headline-grabbing.

Today, it's the news that the Tesla photovoltaic roof will cost less than a traditional roof, and the shingles will be less prone to damage in transportation because regular roofing materials are brittle and... wait, what?

I'm not sure what color the ceiling is in Tesla's factory, but in my world, traditional roofing materials are not noted for their brittleness.  Yeah, I suppose in a North Dakota winter composition shingles might become brittle, but that's not normal working conditions for roofers, is it?  And steel roofing is downright malleable.

...Oh.  The cost and brittleness comparisons are based on rich people's roofs.  Terra cotta and slate.  Not roofing materials that actual people can afford to put on their actual houses that they live in.

Sheesh.  If I had that kind of budget, I'd go for brazed copper.  Last for centuries, a good brazed copper roof will.  'Course, it makes no sense to put a roof for the ages on a particle-board McMansion, which I assume is the target market here: leave one of those fancy new houses out in the weather for a decade, and it'll get all crumbly like damp Ikea furniture.  Chances are, the house will be torn down anyway, to make way for something newer, before the warranty on the solar panels expires.

Somewhat relatedly:

The link in the previous post was found here: overall, quite a good (and lengthy) essay on the topic of Don't Panic.

I have, however, a couple of quibbles.

Item #13: SSC assumes that the threat of terrorism is the only reason to worry about Muslim immigration (and notes that the domestic death rate from terrorism is fairly inconsequential... for current demographics).

But!  There's also a cultural concern regarding immigrants from hostile cultures.  We've heard reports that Muslim refugees / migrants in Europe have been, e.g., demanding that Germans stop drinking beer and eating sausages.  There have been scattered reports of Muslims in the U.S. taking public-facing jobs and then refusing aspects of them, or discriminating against some customers, for religious reasons.

Bringing in large numbers of immigrants whose culture is hostile to our own, and who may demand that the rest of us change to suit their religion, seems ill advised.  Maybe we do want to be kind of selective about letting in just the ones who are likely to assimilate?  When we took in refugees from Europe in the 1940s, wasn't there some effort to weed out Nazis?  (I'm too lazy to check on that right now.  Besides, I need to get back to work.)

Item #16: Little sub-item, "How could Trump insult a disabled reporter just for being disabled?"  Hmm.  I thought someone had subsequently noted that Trump makes that sort of derpy gesture on a regular basis, and that it had nothing to do with the reporter in question.  Maybe I'm misremembering, or is the truth still lacing up its shoes?

But, apart from quibbles, that essay is well worth a read.

Update: Here's an explanation of the Trumpderp thing.