Silicon Valley Redneck

Wrongheadedness

Commentary thereon by Sarah Hoyt; this paragraph kinda jumped out at me:

Which honestly is why so many people go abroad and then come home and work to destroy the US because they think that the only way we can be that prosperous is if we’re stealing from others. Their guilt sends them into stupid global redistributionism, without their having any clue of what really causes the foreign immiseration.

Brings to mind one of the stupider bumper-sticker slogans:

Live simple, that others may simply live

Er, riiiight.  Because Our lifestyle is supported by stealing food, electricity, vaccines, and so on from the teeming billions of the Third World.

And not by, y'know, all the work that Our People (in a very extended sense) put into developing and applying systems of agriculture, industry, medicine, and so on, while Their People remain oppressed by (largely local, but also largely universal) social dysfunctions such as tribalism, superstition, absence of recognized property rights*, and all that baggage that people are constantly trying to restore to Western society.

But, hey: maybe we should stop exploiting the impoverished masses.  Just cut off all contact with them.  Our lifestyles would take a hit, yes.  They would die off in droves, as their supplies of vaccines, pesticides, fertilizer, machinery, spare parts, refined fuel, and other Western perversions dried up.  So much for simply living.

 

* Which is becoming a big problem with the Internet economy, as dominant platform companies refuse to recognize basic contract law.  As they retreat into tribalism and superstition.

Every day, in every way,

The old house is getting emptier and emptier.

Sifted through the stuff in my bedroom desk today.

Cat medical records (keep), Tinga's medical records (discard), Prius maintenance records (keep), various checks for long-closed accounts, mainly with banks that no longer exist (toss in the shred pile anyway).  Two polio vaccination cards from when I was a wee lad (keep, what the heck).

Various daggers, coins, plastic arrow-poison frogs, a large rubber snake, and things I bought over the years as gifts for maybe-for-somebody-someday and tossed in the undesignated-gifts drawer.

Also the stuff in the dresser.  Keeping some; discarding much.

And the pile of pants, which had gotten disorganized.  Looks like I'd already disposed of anything that was two sizes ago, so current inventory contains my current size (rather loose) and one size smaller (kind of tight).  We shall see where things stand next spring; I may well be back in one-size-smaller shorts.  One-size-smaller long pants, though, probably won't work unless my leg muscles atrophy, so if my waist shrinks I'll be looking at having current-size pants taken in at the waist.

Tomorrow, I need to get an early start (before it gets hot) and sort through the remaining shirts, identifying OK-and-still-fits vs. OK-but-doesn't-fit vs. trash.

Massive cleanup

Trash haulers showed up at my father's place this afternoon... later than planned, as there'd somehow been a mixup and the session hadn't gotten onto the company's schedule, or had dropped off it.

Anyway: they came, they loaded a truck and a third, and they drove off (after getting paid, of course).  The garage has space in it!  We can bring over our bikes, plus a modest stack of stuff from my place that's inappropriate (for one reason or another) for putting in the storage locker, and still have room for using the garage as a staging area when we get organized for the big move.  Also, most of the rat habitat in the yard is now cleared, modulo piles of leaves that can be relocated to the compost heap now that the other stuff is out of the way.

What we didn't have them take is the high-density stuff: bricks, stepping stones, clay flower pots, and such.  Hauling that stuff gets extra expensive, and disposing of those items wasn't urgent.

Tomorrow, they come for the big pile of junk (much of it e-waste) on my patio, plus maybe some furniture, the mattress, the decrepit old pottery kiln, etc.

... And I still need to sort through the stuff in the sheds, a process guaranteed to generate a whole new junk pile.  Once the side-yard shed has been sorted through, it can be used to store stuff I'm trying to give away, while I try to find recipients.

Which reminds me: I need to grab some obvious junk out of the sheds and add it to the pile.  Better get an early start in the morning.

Update:  Joy postponed tomorrow's trash-hauling session to give me time to finish at least clearing out all the stuff in the house that I plan to keep (some important documents, some less-important documents, some subset of the remaining shirts and shoes - I need to try on a bunch of shirts to decide which to keep, various lab stuff to be either stored or moved to the interim lair, and the remaining contents of my office).  This last reminds me: I need to turn off the DSL service, and probably also the land-line phone service, before the contractor starts working.  Probably turn off the DSL first, then convert the number to VOIP, just in case I want to be reachable later on by people who have the old number from way-back-when.

Once the house is empty of stuff-to-keep, we can just tell the trash haulers to take everything.  Which probably gets into three-truck territory.  I hope we can give away some of the furniture first; putting it in the driveway on garbage day with "FREE" signs on may be effective, at least for things that are reasonably portable.

Memory's a strange thing.

This morning, on my way to walkies, I was trying to remember a silly Czech song about a swamp monster and a crop duster.

I could vaguely recall the shape of the tune, but not the words (duh, they're in Czech), nor the name of the song, nor yet what the name of the song is called.

Back at my desk, a quick search turns up Jožin z bažin.  But now I can't remember why I was trying to remember it in the first place!

More sifting

Hauled off another carload of stuff to storage, and filled the paper recycling bin about halfway.  In sorting through the boxes of accumulated documents, I found (as expected) various financial records (to be retained in case needed) and lots of work history (also to be retained, just because)... and also various important documents that ought to have been properly filed a decade or more ago, but that somehow ended up among the clutter.

More sifting to do tomorrow.  Got to get through the last of the boxes in the living room, and the contents of the bedroom desk (much clutter, but also some important records).  Trash haulers coming Saturday.

And they'll have to come again in another week or so, because I'm nowhere near done with the sheds.  But at least we can get the trash pile off the patio.

Also:  I haven't been able to log into my Bank of Italy account in many years... in fact, maybe never at all; the account is just for two credit cards (no, I don't remember why two), which were originally with a different bank that got bought out sometime in the Neolithic age.  Still couldn't sign on today, nor (more to the point) do a password reset.  Apparently it thinks my account number and Social Security number don't match.  So, today I swung by the local branch.  Got my address and phone number updated, confirmation that my Social Security number is correct in the bank's files, and also verified my registered user ID (which is more or less what it ought to have been).  But... still no ability to do a password reset, with the same lame error message.  Maybe I need to go back into the office and try to do a password reset there.

Update:  I found the password corresponding to that bank and user ID, in the archive of my old Palm Pilot.  Aaaand... you guessed it... no soap.  (Yes, it seems that I was at one point able to log in after the old bank was acquired, since my notes included the new bank's name.)

Also today

Much noise and commotion: the crew from Kelly's Stump Removal showed up (rather behind schedule, owing to some job from yesterday having slopped over into this morning) to discombobulate the largely-deceased avocado tree.

Which took them well into the afternoon, but in the end it's all neat and looks (Andy Barnes voice) a proper job.

Meanwhile, I was sorting through minor piles of paper, and finding many old pocket notes, mostly mundane, but some baffling and some worth setting aside.  Also, I found the sheet with the critters' transponder numbers and information on how to update their information, which is kinda relevant at the moment, being as how they've already had one change of address.

The postman stopped by while we were there, and commented that Joy had filed a change of address and I hadn't; she came out and said hi, and I explained that I just hadn't gotten around to it yet.

That, and another carload of Stuff hauled off to storage (and more junk added to the grand pile), and Joy detaching lots of things from walls and ceilings... it made for a busy day indeed.

Another thing I didn't know I had

In a crate in the lesser shed, buried under such things as my old N-gauge model train stuff and some forgotten toys....

A gen-u-wine, name-brand, Veg-O-Matic!

I have no recollection of ever having acquired such a thing.  Probably picked it up at some long-ago garage sale, just for giggles.

Seems to have no collector value.  Hey, Wally❈World carries brand-new Ronco Veg-O-Matices!

Wonder what the Venn diagram would look like (again)

Set A: People and companies that demand government-enforced Net Neutrality, to prevent last-mile Internet service providers from censoring content.

Set B: People and companies that support banning Alex Jones from the Internet, or that have already censored his content.

Friday the 13th come on a Monday this month.

Things that happened this morning:

A tree-removal service came by, a bit behind schedule, to quote on removing the big mostly-dead avocado tree and some assorted lesser trees and bushes.

The number (including tidying up the big bay tree in the front yard so it'll look all nice) came in considerably below what I'd feared.  Also, the proprietor might want to buy my machine tools, which would save me a fair bit of hassle.

We gave away some of my old furniture.

I foisted off one of my old Tektronix oscilloscopes on the Evil Mad Scientist folks.

All round, not a bad morning, if busy.

Wonder what the Venn diagram would look like

Set A: Trump-era "No border, no wall, no USA at all!" anti-border protesters.

Set B: Bush-era anti-globalization protesters.

They sure look alike, and act alike.  I wonder how many of the members (and organizers!) are actually the same.

More busy

The house, garage, and sheds are gradually getting emptier, the storage locker is beginning to look occupied, and the trash pile on the patio is getting quite large.

Got trash haulers scheduled for next weekend to make the trash pile go bye-bye.  It may need to be consolidated before then; we've got tree removers coming around Monday morning to quote on removing and replacing the avocado tree, and they may want more of a clear path from driveway to back yard.

There's not a lot of house/garage stuff that still requires my attention.  Got to try on some clothing from the back of the closet (where it had been inaccessible for a while) and sort into keep/donate/trash.  There are still piles of financial records that need sorting through, or at least packing up.  There are knick-knacks; I probably want to pick a few of those to keep.  There's a little kitchen stuff still to be packed.

And the big stuff in the garage, hmmm.  Better call up a used machine-tool dealer Real Soon Now.

Then there are the sheds... a lot of the contents I'll probably end up discarding in one way or another, but I need to open all the boxes and make decisions.

Oh, and there are still administrative-type some things I need to do at the old house while the land-line is still in operation and my old desk is still there.  Which means within the next couple of weeks.

This sure does get complicated.  (It's one of those problems that come with having farmer genes and only moving every few decades.)

This is just getting stupid.

Latest variant of the password-porn-ransom e-mail begins thus:

It appears that, (), is your password. Will possibly not know me and you are probably wondering why you're getting this e-mail, right?

Really?  Don't you think it might be more convincing if you included the password?

Busy day.

Big carload of cardboard to recycling.

Four carloads of boxes-of-stuff to storage.

Many things boxed up, and much sorting residue added to the big pile on the patio in anticipation of a visit (a few days hence) from a trash-hauling service.

All in the August heat.  Ugh.  Many water breaks.

More of the same tomorrow, except e-waste instead of cardboard.  And I need to procure at least one more big roll of bubble wrap, though maybe not tomorrow as such.

Parsing

Latest outrage on the Right:

Democrat Jokes About Wanting Blackburn to Commit Suicide

At Newsbusters, via Twitchy.

Except:

“The big orange President — that’s not somebody from Knoxville. He’s going to come down here and he is going to endorse Marsha Blackburn, because Marsha Blackburn, if he says, ‘Jump off the Harahan Bridge,’ she’ll jump off the Harahan Bridge. I wish he’d say that. She will do anything he says,” Cohen declared.

Er.  I think he was saying more that she'd jump off a bridge if Trump told her to.  Though the "I wish he'd say that" addendum makes the outrage at least a little plausible.

Overall, this sounds a lot like one of those "microaggression" things for which it's so fun to mock the Lefty cornflakes.

As one thing brightens, another darkens

The local sky is almost back to sort of normal-ish this morning!  I got going a bit later than usual, and missed seeing the Yellow Face clear the gates of the world, but the sky is mostly blue and the sunlight seems relatively normal, at last by the standards of the last couple of weeks.

But, on returning from morning walkies, I checked my e-mail, started to look at other things... and my screen went black.  Eh?

Can't get a display from the second computer (VGA, rather than DVI, connection) either.  The light on the monitor is green, indicating that it thinks its power on and it has sync.  Turning the monitor off and back on gets about a second of normal display before it goes dark.

Well, foo.  I'd figured on replacing that monitor (being an old not-quite-HD model that doesn't play nice with most HDMI sources) as part of the big move, but I guess it needs replacing today.  And not with the giant 4K monitor I'd been figuring on.

So, off to Fry's in search of a roughly 24" diagonal, 1080P monitor with both VGA and DVI inputs (as well as HDMI).  End up getting a clearance unit - their demo, in fact - decently cheap.  It's quite a bit brighter than the old one, and I think I need to mess with the settings.

Did take a reboot to get the workstation talking to it properly (the file server, via VGA, was displaying OK right from the start).

And now it's well into my lunch time.

The smokes of Mordor blot out the Sun.

Mordor, Redding, whatever.

Monday and Tuesday, we had very red sunrises indeed.

Wednesday and Thursday, pretty much no sunrises at all.  The sky gradually became illuminated, but no big bright Yellow Face was to be seen in the sky until 'twas well and truly up and cleared not just the hills but the smoke above them.

This morning, everything smelled like a wet grass fire.  (Think: grass-fire smoke plus wet dog.  Or hot campfire ashes plus an insufficient bucket of water.)

And if it's that bad way down here, with just the smoke that's drifted all this way?  Must be really bad in the afflicted area.

Oooh... consulting the map, I see that there's a big fire up by Mendocino, too.  Um: two big fires.  Started about an hour apart?  Is that normal?

 

Meanwhile: made more progress on the house contents this afternoon.  Might actually manage to get all the "keep" stuff in the house proper packed & stored by the end of the weekend.  Then there's the garage... and the sheds.  And I need to contact some very specific people about giving away some particular stuff (that should go to good homes).

Why not IPv6?

El Reg is asking, once again, why IPv6 adoption is so slow... and offering explanations, but not looking at it from an implementation perspective.

Yeah, deployment is awkward, even when someone else has gone to the trouble of providing you with a working IPv6 stack, a typical network connection, and all-IPv6-capable routers.  It's still awkward, and sometimes really weird stuff can happen for no obvious reason.

But, a few times over the years, I've looked at the actual spec, and what would be involved in writing an IPv6 stack, and in some cases using it over a constrained link.  Gaaah!

It's a classic example of the second-system effect.  Not that IPv4 is all that elegant, mind you (especially when you take TCP into account), but it's decently designed for resource-constrained systems.

IPv6, contrariwise, has a grotesquely bloated spec, starting right up front with the decision to use 128-bit addressing instead of 64 bits.  OK, so the address space still falls far short of Eddington's Number, but what solar system needs more than 64 bits?

What harm, may you ask, does the extra-long address do?  Well... one of the factors that's supposed to drive IPv6 adoption is the Internet of Dinguses.  But a Dingus is likely to have a relatively small MCU in it, and to use a low-budget communication channel.  So consider poor 6LoWPAN, trying to cram IPv6 packets into 802.15.4 (and similar) packets.  The minimum IPv6 packet header is 40 bytes, including two address fields (source and destination) of 16 bytes each.  The maximum packet size in normal 802.15.4 is 127 bytes, and some low-power radio products only allow 64 bytes/packet.  Do we begin to see an issue here?

Yeah, the sane approach is to use some more appropriate protocol on the radio network, optimized to play nice with the short packets, and then to have a gateway between the Dingus-net protocol (Zigbee or whatever) and the Internet at large.  In fact, you'd want to do that anyway, because making all your IoT thingies globally accessible over the 'Net at large is an incredibly dumb move.

Which kind of tosses the whole justification for the appallingly vast address space right in the dumpster, doesn't it?  Each Dingus has a globally-unique EUI-64 address, which suffices to avoid collisions, and in a proper security-minded installation they're only visible to the universe at large via a gateway that handles access control, authentication, and all those pesky details that you'd rather not leave to a bunch of cheap gadgets whose firmware is of dubious origin and unlikely to receive security updates.

Wasn't a day for doing much

It's my father's birthday, so the morning was spent fishing.  We caught several bluegills (mostly quite small), a few bass (all short of the legal minimum), and quite a large turtle (but we hadn't brought a net, and it was considerably heavier than the rating of my leader, so it swam off trailing monofilament; anyway, I hadn't bothered to look up the regulations for turtles, on the assumption we were after bluegills).

Afternoon of sundry errands and whatnot, dinner, and cake.  Which raised the question: how many candles?  I think, past a certain age, one candle is traditional.  But, hmmm.  Candles in various colors.  One gray, one purple?  We settled for two grayish-purple.  (I'm still in the brighter portion of the RETMA spectrum.)

Now, with a moderate case of chocolate poisoning ('twas a very rich cake), it's time to relax.  (Some say it's time to pet the cats, but then they always say that.)  Tomorrow, extra walkies, and then I'd better spend a fair part of the day being somehow productive.

Useless financial news is useless

Chipzilla took a major dive yesterday morning.  Possibly something to do with this thing called an "ex-dividend date"?  Of course not!  The news was abuzz with downgrades and speculations on loss of market share (complete with a graph showing Chipguana's 3% share catching up to Chipzilla's 97%; amazing what you can do by giving each variable its own Y-axis scale).

By the end of the day, the share price was nearly up to Friday's close, despite the dividend.  This morning, it's up significantly.  And the "news" is still yesterday's gloom'n'doom.

Lame reporting

Over at the Daily Caller:

The man who threatened Rep. Steve Scalise and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers last week allegedly had different types of ammunition, materials and instructions on how to build bombs.

Um.  Doesn't everybody?  (Well, maybe not in New York.)

investigators discovered 150 rounds of 7.62-millimeter rifle ammunition, 50 rounds of shotgun ammunition, a 2004 receipt for an SKS assault rifle, and a 1987 receipt for a .38-caliber revolver

Ain't no such thing as an "SKS assault rifle."  The Simonov carbine is not, and never has been, a select-fire weapon.

C'mon, guys.  Try applying a little reality filter.

Yeah, it sounds like the person in question made a threatening phone call, and, if so, he needs to be taken out of circulation for a while.  But getting all hysterical over a few boxes of cartridges and a modest selection of Loompanics books?  Sounds like the reporter needs a wider variety of friends; he'd totally freak over some of the things in my library, never mind the contents of a typical Texan's hall closet.