Silicon Valley Redneck

In the coming year, watch my kitchen...

...for...

A new refrigerator.  Delivery scheduled for the 4^th.

Because ice cream should not be a liquid.  (The freezing compartment still keeps pure water ice properly frozen, but "frozen" foods are mighty soft, and ice cream is more cream than ice.)

In the coming year, watch my driveway...

...for...

The disappearance of the ancient Jeep.

Yeah, it's still there.  Making it go bye-bye is a task for early in the new year.  If When I need to do any haulin', I can always rent a pickup truck, or a small van, and do it right.  (No, fixing it up for further use is still looking Not Economically Viable.)

...Hm.  That means I need to charge the battery, make sure the transmission fluid level is still within acceptable limits, and other such fiddly details, so that it can stagger to the wrecking yard under its own power.  (That's important, just as it's important that a cow enter the slaughterhouse under her own power.  It's the difference between small positive cash value and negative cash value.)

Hooking stuff back up

With a new AC adapter, the fireproof disk drive is back in action and connected to the new file server, and I've migrated the script for mirroring important data to it.

This reminds me that I should review the backup procedures for the rent-a-server, and make sure I'm really keeping all the important stuff safe, Just In Case.  Should be stuffing regular Subversion snapshots into alternative storage, at a minimum; the various working copies are not sufficient insurance.

While I was fiddling around, I found some exceedingly outdated (and entirely redundant) stuff I could delete, thereby freeing up space for current backups.  There's quite a bit of other clutter that should really be stored off-line, or just discarded.  (Hm.  I think there's still a fair amount of space on the pocket drive that's supposed to go in the safe deposit box soon; maybe I should sweep the archives onto that.  Maybe I should get that started now, while I'm thinking about it.)

Additional:  Now I remember that I also want to plug the various printers (laser, inkjet, label) into the new box, and make it the print server, if only because it's running the latest release of Debian, and therefore has the most nearly current CUPS, drivers, etc.

So... order a new USB hub from Amazon.  USB 3.0, 7 ports, so there's plenty of room for plugging in other things (such as external hard drives, for which 3.0 is preferred nowadays).  The stubby little machine doesn't have a lot of ports on it, so a hub seems a good idea.

Update:  Much ancient-and-redundant clutter now resides exclusively on the goes-to-the-bank pocket drive, plus the various other places it's been archived over the years, wherever those may be.  The fireproof drive is now well under half full, so no need to shop for a larger drive to stuff in the housing just yet.

One of these days, I really ought to clean up the various iterations of my home directory in its various locations.  Could probably lose a great many gigabytes of obsolete and/or redundant stuff.

And, in the new year, I really should set up some sort of cloud backup, for both the home fileserver and the rent-a-server.  The latter will require writing some scripts, as there are things that can't be backed up directly just by copying the filesystem (the fileserver will eventually need some similar scripts for similar reasons).

That's a strange expression, Bruce.

Still in use: "decapitated head".

You can't decapitate a head, unless it has a head of its own.  Headception!

If you decapitate (or behead) someone, you end up with a decapitated body and a severed head.

Hmph.  Writers.  Like to sling words around, but don't care for them.

And, just to make life even more interesting...

Somewhere in the computer shuffle, the fireproof backup drive stopped working.

This afternoon (after it was too late for an impromptu run to a store), I got around to extricating it and its cables and having a look.

Its AC adapter claims to put out 12V at up to 2A.

My voltmeter says the adapter is putting out a bit under 3.7V with no load.  Think this might cause issues?

So, another under-the-desk lump needs replacement.  While I'm at it, perhaps I should make sure the drive's fan is still in working order... and maybe open the thing up and clean out all the cat hair.

At some point, I might even want to replace the drive within the fireproof housing - I believe it's a standard 3.5" SATA drive - with something new, maybe higher capacity, and with all the modern power-saving features (it's powered up continuously, but only, in the normal course of events, used for maybe an hour every night, so having the drive go into a deep power-saving state would be helpful, and using something that's designed for low power rather than high performance is in order).

Momentary panic

Was getting ready to create a new AVR firmware project, using Atmel Studio.  It's kind of like a recent one, and kind of like one from a couple of years ago.  So, first order of business is to find the two projects.

The recent one is easy; Studio 7 remembers it as recently-used.

The older, and much bigger one, from which I maybe want to borrow a few (but critical) lines of code?  Nowhere to be found.

The recent project is the only one on the Windows machine's hard drive (which isn't where it belongs, really).  A search of the shared directory on the file server turns up several other Studio projects, but not the one I'm looking for.

Aieee!  I put quite a bit of effort into that code, back when, and I may want to build a few more units of that gadget someday, as well as wanting to borrow some parts of the code for other things.

Then I remember: that project wasn't in Atmel Studio.  The gadget was built around an ATmega328, which I'd programmed with the Arduino bootloader, and then the application code was in Arduino, using various other people's libraries.

Whew!  Looking where the Arduino stuff lives, I find my code.

But... now Studio 7, while it'll open the existing project, won't create a new project, nor do much else, including displaying its "Help... About" screen.  Growf.  Apparently this was a known problem last year, so maybe installing the latest version will fix it.  We shall see.

So now I'm having a download break, while I wait for all the bits to trickle in.  (And performance on the lab Windows machine has gotten appalling.  Does the latest update to Windows 7 require additional RAM or something?  Or a much faster CPU all of a sudden?)

This just in from Alabama: Doug Jones will be certified.

Also from Alabama: Roy Moore is certifiable.

You went full Hillary, man.  Never go full Hillary.

In the coming year, watch Jerusalem...

...for...

A Saudi embassy.

(This is one of the more predictably absurd predictions.)

In the coming year, watch your grocer's shelves...

...for...

Cannabis Twinkies.

(More absurd predictions may follow, but I can't predict what they'll be)

Happy St. Boxing's Day!

Just because some of the stores have special early opening times doesn't mean the crowds show up early.

There are indeed Deals to be found.  This is handy if your family celebrates Christmas a couple of days late, or if you're getting a head start on next Christmas and are sure you can remember where you hid things.

Some department-store credit-card machines are finicky about signatures.  I encountered one that wouldn't accept anything resembling the squiggle my bank has on file.  I eventually had to break it into two squiggles and put a dot over each of them.

Spotted at an upmarket housewares store: solid copper cooking utensils: spatula, soup ladle, etc.  Ouch?  I rather suspect these are for display, not for actual use (especially given that the spatula was much too thick to be slid under anything).

Speaking of copper, there was a sign in the window of a day spa that seemed to be promoting some process whereby one's face is covered with powdered copper...?  Huh.  I gotta revive the infamous Halloween costume with aluminum powder on my face and hands and bronze powder in my hair.

Mnfxt.  I don't think I get around to refrigerator shopping this afternoon.  I was up too late last night, arguing with the computers (and getting the immediate issues more or less sorted out).  Gotta have a nap, then argue with the computers some more.  I don't think there's any special today-only appliance sale anyway, and the most likely candidate for a new refrigerator is on sale through January 3^rd or something.

Well, foo.

The new file server is alive, mostly - haven't configured Samba yet, but NFS seems to be doing its thing, and the workstation and the lab Linux box are now using it.

Except... I try to open one of my working copies (via NFS) with kdesvn, and it hangs.  I try svn status from a shell, and it hangs.  Wha...?

I can do svn status from a shell on the new server.  But not on the workstation, which is where Subversion working-copy manipulations ordinarily happen.  (Working copies live on NFS so that I can get at the latest binaries, etc., from the lab machine without having to check everything in before I'm ready.)

Maybe I should try checking out a fresh working copy to a new location on the NFS filesystem, and see if that works...?

Nope.  Checkout goes into disk sleep status.  For some reason, Subversion and my shiny new NFS server Just Don't Get Along.

Growf.  I wonder if it's something in the NFS configuration, or if the new version of the server has some exotic new incompatibility.

Oh, well.  I should have some time tomorrow for wrestling with this.

Update: Turns out I needed to add nolock to the list of mount options in /etc/fstab; this gets everything working fine, so far.  I guess the old server didn't support locking, so this wasn't an issue until now.

CAUTION: MEN COOKING

Just popped an apple pie in the oven, using up those Braeburn apples from Thanksgiving (and using a cheater crust, because I'm lazy).  Been quite a while since I made an apple pie, or spiced apples; I hope I got the spices right.  Real Men Don't Follow Recipes; I was working partly from a recipe that was handy, and partly from memory (the recipe at hand included sugar, which is unnecessary with most modern apples, but had neither cloves nor ginger, which I think belong, so I tossed some in).

Now to wrap a few packages, so there'll be something under the tree for Christmas Eve (since actual festivities are later in the week, getting everything wrapped is not urgent).

Then some rice-based stuffing for a chicken to be roasted later this afternoon, using an actual roasting pan for the first time in forever.  (It's a fairly large chicken; I suspect tomorrow's dinner will be Leftovers Casserole.)  My usual brown-rice blend plus extra wild rice; onions; mushrooms; garlic-herb butter; maybe a couple of bay leaves, just because the tree is out there.  Bacon?  Some salt, too.  Maybe some other seasonings, depending what catches my fancy; tarragon might be good.

I'd vaguely planned on getting some work done today, too, but that seems to have gotten squeezed out of the schedule.

Oh, and Southmoon seems to like my choice of pie seasonings; she's been gnawing on my hand again.  There's not much overlap with goulash; I wonder what she's reacting to this time?

Update:  I looked up a couple of rice-based-stuffing recipes on the 'net for starting points.  Those stuffing recipes that start with 1½ cups of rice?  That's for a turkey.  The large chicken (just barely fit in a standard-size non-turkey roasting pan) didn't take anything like the full batch.

Which was just as well, because the rice that was on the surface during roasting got very crunchy indeed.  Best results were obtained by taking the large amount of excess stuffing and dumping it into the pan, after removing the roasted chicken, then applying heat atop the stove and stirring for a while.

And the pie?  I was remembering the right spices, but got a bit carried away as to quantity.  It came out smelling wonderful, but tasting mainly of the spices, with not much apple flavor coming through.  There's nothing like homemade apple pie, in the same way that there's nothing like eating hay when you're faint.

CAUTION: MEN SHOPPING

Christmas Eve.  0800.  Valley Fair mall.  Commence shopping!

Parking at 0755 was actually not a problem, aside from the complication that the mall turns out to have massive construction in progress, so I had to find my way around to a functioning entrance, and then try to keep track of how to get back to my car in its unfamiliar location.

Much wandering around, looking at things, basically in search of things for two family members for whom I hadn't bought anything yet, plus supplemental gifts for two more.

Aside from the usual rule - don't get anything that needs to be fed, walked, or watered - gifts this year generally shouldn't be bulky, unless they're meant for immediate consumption.  Oh, and just about everybody is on some sort of restricted diet (no two alike).  This makes gift shopping extra fun!

Oh, well.  By 0930 I had at least something for everybody, plus a bottle of wild blueberry syrup for myself.  Also, I really should check the bottom drawer of my desk; there may be some undesignated gifty items lurking therein from past years.

Actual family Christmas gatherings aren't until later in the week, so it's not real panic day today.  Probably have to hit a different mall with my father on Boxing Day (before going refrigerator shopping).

Oddly, it wasn't just men at the mall this morning.  Perhaps men-only time doesn't start until 1700?

Additional: Is it just me, or has the number of stenchmongers at the mall increased?  Used to be, I could steer clear of Candle Yankers and Triumphant Heron and my sinuses would be OK.  This time, there were several other establishments pouring forth apparently-intentional odors, like little olfactory rock concerts.

And, as always, the mall was filled with the customary strictly-secular-Christmas songs, whereof there have to be new performances every year, each with some new mutation just for the sake of distinctiveness.  Some of these songs, it seems like 80% of the words are "jingle".  And then... does anyone else get "Holly Jolly Christmas" mixed up with "Matty Groves"?

Logic

This brought on by a meme currently making the rounds on the Institutional Left.

NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, et al., all carry exactly the same message.

Fox News caries a very slightly different message, with different emphasis.

Ergo, Fox news is propaganda!!!!!

Reminds me of an apparently smart guy I used to encounter from time to time, many years ago, who once went on a rant about how all those foolish people who didn't believe as he did were clearly brainwashed from only watching Fox News.  A moment later, he proudly announced that he only listened to NPR, which told him everything he needed to know.

Ah, bubbles.  Mental safe spaces: you can just crawl into one, never again hear anything that troubles your little mind, and stay there forever.  Alternatively, you can choose one that provides you with constant reminders of how horrible those people on the outside are, and remain in an eternal state of moral outrage.  How fun!

O tidings of madness and woe!

This afternoon was The Time to get That Which Is Destined to Become The New Home Server off the dining table and into...

... Dare I mention it? ...

... The datacenter space under the table next to my desk.

Tentacles!  (OK, so eldritch tangles of cable bundles.)

Killer dust bunnies!

The process involved putting in a new KVM switch.  Not the right one for the job, because the right one nowadays would be USB/HDMI; firstly, the soon-to-be-retired server doesn't have an HDMI port on it, though I suppose I could use a DVI-to-HDMI dongle; secondly, while the monitor currently on my desk does have an HDMI port, I have not had good results using it - apparently hardly anything that speaks HDMI plays nice with a 1680x1050 monitor.

So... gotta get in among the years of dust, and around behind the desk, and remove the two existing KVM switches: a 4-port PS2/VGA and a 2-port USB/DVI/audio (of late only connected to the workstation).  That gets rid of a lot of the tentacles.  Then hook up the new KVM switch (4-port, USB/VGA), plus a direct DVI connection from workstation to monitor.  Then power up the old server: all seems well, except that the fireproof external USB drive isn't showing up.  Huh.  It looks like everything's plugged in.  Guess I'll sort that out later.  Then the new server: having sat idle and disconnected since September, it needs a bunch of software updates.  Fine.  Also, the screen resolution comes up at 640x480, but that's easily reset.

Finally, the workstation.  Seems to wake up OK, except... er... KDM isn't presenting me with a sign-on screen.  Hello?  Various sorts of restarts don't solve the problem.  Switching to GDM works.  Hm.  Maybe it's something to do with having both DVI and VGA cables connected?  Is KDM putting up the login prompt on the other screen (which is the same monitor)?  I dunno, but at some point I'll probably want to try again with KDM and only the DVI cable connected.  Since the workstation normally runs continuously, login oddities aren't that much of an issue.

Yet to be done... oh, so much!  Synchronize the user filesystems on the new server with those on the old.  Switch the clients (workstation, Linux machine in lab, Windows machine in lab) to use the new one.  Migrate the routing/firewall rules to the new box.  Switch the DSL connection to the new one.  Retire the old one.  Somewhere in there, migrate the backup scripts to the new box, and connect the fireproof drive to it.

I think I have most of tomorrow, most of Christmas, and most of Boxing Day to finish up stuff that involves disruptions to connectivity.  Should be able to get it done in that time.

Anyway, all three office machines are now sharing the USB keyboard & mouse on my desk, which is kind of nice compared to the hodgepodge I had before (the installation dating back to the days when everything was PS/2, but having acquired sundry kludges along the way as PS/2 support slowly faded away).

Looks like January brings more work.  Like, for clients.  Paying stuff.  Be nice to have everything stable by then.  (Oh, and there's some stuff for a client that I should also be getting done in the coming week, but getting the clutter off the table was sort of a necessary step.)

Mobile browsing hazard!

While waiting around, elsewhere, this afternoon, I called up Twitchy on my phone, just to see what the latest stupidity was.

Something - I think it must have been an ad on the main page - took control of the browser, disabled or commandeered the "back" button (and I have a notion the "home" button wasn't working either), and displayed a full-screen warning about how my phone - it gave the exact, if not exactly right, model - was 28.7%  (or some such number) damaged by malware, and offered something-or-other to "fix" it, if only I'd click on a link.  I eventually recovered by getting back to where I could see the top menu, and closing the tab.

Bad ad service!  Bad Twitchy!  And...

Bad Google, on multiple levels!

First off, there shouldn't be a way for an ad to jam up the browser like that.

And, second: Google has banished all ad-blockers from the app store, with a few exceptions that only work on Samsung phones.  So there's no straightforward way to protect your Android phone against this kind of crap.

The motivation is obvious: Google is an advertising company.  But, guys?  I paid for the dang phone.  I pay for the bandwidth the ads consume, even when they're not doing anything blatantly malicious.

And now I think I'll be much more careful about browsing on my phone - if nothing else, I don't really know how much damage can be done by in-browser malware served up through advertising networks.

Attempting to get a handle on which... Chrome on Android has permissions for everything.  It's not just a browser; it's bloody well got its tendrils all through the OS.  It's like Internet Exploder all over again.  Bad Google, again!  And perhaps I should really be using a different browser on the phone - one that doesn't demand all those permissions.

Food-related injuries

Food safety isn't just about bacteria and inappropriate chemicals, oh no indeed.  Food has many hazards, from sugar overdoses to being trampled by food-on-the-hoof.

I've lately been having superficial damage to the back of my right hand as a result of using too-short grilling tongs.  (Hm, gift idea: my father needs proper long-handled grilling tongs, fork, and spatula, to go with that monster grill on his patio; salad tongs, a carving fork, and a pancake spatula aren't really the right tools for the job.)  In addition to which...

My right hand is further damaged as a result of Monday's dinner, which was goulash.  After I got done cooking it, my hand smelled of something that got Southmoon all excited.  Sniff, sniff, lick, gnaw, grab, hold, gnaw... now I've got tooth & claw marks all over the hand.  (And Southmoon is normally the careful, gentle one!)

Well. This could be useful.

As I may have mentioned, I'll likely be using STM32-series MCUs in a new line of Gadgets, next-year-ish.

I worked with an STM32 part a couple of years back, and getting the development environment set up (Eclipse plus GCC toolchain + ST debug pod) was a major annoyance.  When I started to look at the available tools after this years ARM TechCon, I was not very impressed - mainly, there was no captive free-to-use-so-you'll-design-in-our-chips offering.

Now ST has gone and bought Atollic.  I have a vague recollection of having tried the free-sample edition of TrueSTUDIO a few years ago, in connection with some NXP part (LPC1100 series, if memory serves), but don't remember much of what my impressions were at the time.  Taking another look (especially with the recent expansion of free-to-use-ery) had been on my list for a while.  If the full-featured thing is going to be free for STM32 targets?  Sounds like a win.

(Using GCC for the build is important, for a couple of reasons.  One, some of my code is meant to be open-sourced eventually, so getting locked into some other vendor-specific platform would be bad.  Two, I make extensive use of GNU-specific features and custom ld scripts to manage configuration data.)

... And, when and if I get around to the AGROS overhaul, I should really figure out how to integrate the configuration utility with Eclipse, given the latter's ubiquity.  Also, getting the debugger and my task management to play nice with each other would be wonderful; have to see how FreeRTOS does it.

Can you identify this skeleton?

Looks like some sort of long skinny vertebrate with lots and lots of ribs.

Alas, I didn't have the whole thing in view.  (Click for bigger.)

Whatever it was, it must have been huge.  And very, very lightweight.

Train-system engineerin' is weird.

Comes the news that another Amtrak train that went off the track was taking a curve much too fast.  And the control system that was supposed to prevent this was installed but not yet operational, apparently because it was supposed to have some sort of Grand Opening ceremony when the entire system was finished.

This whole business seems wonky, systems-architecturally speaking.  Some aspects of a train-control system require communication, which requires some sort of infrastructure (though surely the existing mobile data network would be sufficient in built-up areas, and paying carriers to build out coverage in the big empty areas could be the cheap approach, as well as making many passengers happier - or perhaps one of the satellite data services would do, though the household ground stations wouldn't work so well on moving trains).

But, for basic stuff like speed limits?  All's ya need is a GPS receiver and a route map that includes normal speed limits.  Update the map as network availability allows.  Even without updates, it's enough to keep trains from going way too fast around permanently-installed curves (temporary curves, as may be added by large earthquakes, are a less frequent issue).