Silicon Valley Redneck

Wait, what?

Reading this, I suddenly noticed something peculiar.

Quoth one of the women confronting Jeff Flake:

I was sexually assaulted, and nobody believed me. I didn’t tell anyone

Er.  Nobody believed her.  And she didn't tell anyone.  So.  Um.

I guess making any sort of sense is not expected?

Now, just a doggone....

Update to this and this.

When the Ford-Feinstein letter first hit the news, we were told that Ford had originally sent it to Eshoo, who forwarded it to Feinstein, who was more appropriately placed to deal with such information.

A belated double-take reveals that the actual letter was addressed to Feinstein in the first place.  Not forwarded.  And third-hand word is that Ford wrote the letter after a personal meeting with Eshoo.  And... that the letter was hand-delivered?  (That would seem consistent with the phrase, "given to me in confidence.")  Did Ford meet with Feinstein personally on or shortly after July 30^th?

This stinks worse with each revelation.  The false claim that Ford was unable to travel by air was obviously a delaying tactic, as were various other assertions, such as the claim that she didn't know how to dress.  Now I'm developing a rather strong suspicion that she was being coached, and has having trouble remembering her lines - especially since, while she got the little-girl-in-distress voice down pat, she remained wildly inconsistent on the details of her story.

(Hmmm.  Maybe there's another reason Ford "didn't hear" about Grassley's offer to send someone out to California to interview her.  Apart from denying the Democrats their circus, this might have revealed that she was already in DC, rehearsing.  Does anyone know for sure where she was, the week before the hearing?)

But, hey - she's getting north of half a million bucks out of the gofundme, even if no book deal materializes.  And she can sleep soundly, knowing that she's helped ratchet up the partisan rage level in this country by several notches.

The fun just never stops.

Morning: haul one carload of my father's books to storage, and two carloads of my assorted HAZMAT to official drop-off points.  So there's that accomplished.

Afternoon: time to get some work done on a toaster project that I've been neglecting for far too long.  Get the hardware all set up (this involves a considerable amount of searching for things that haven't gotten unpacked yet at the interim location).  Build the new firmware-to-be-tested, and install it on the hardware... also updating the very outdated bootloader and FPGA code on that unit.  Run the communication test script....

Oops.  Won't run.  Nor will various other flavors.  Some of them have a flurry of syntax errors; seems Ruby 2.1.0 doesn't like having a when statement terminated with a colon; this is easily fixed.  More vexing, however, is the apparent absence of a Ruby binding for gnomecanvas2, which I used in my old Ruby GUI library, without which these scripts don't work.  And it looks like the not-so-new version of Debian I have installed here doesn't include any down-rev versions of Ruby.

I can't seem to find anything that'll fix this just offhand, so I fire up the archived VM of the classic development environment, assign the appropriate USB comm dongle to it, and run the script there.

Er... no communication?  Well, maybe the protocol is messed up.  Load the firmware for an older model, and run its test script.  Still no communication.

Break out the scope, and start tracing signals.  I see bits coming out of the dongle.  On the transceiver chip on the target board ( a DFN, so a right pain to probe), I see bits coming in.  And I see bits coming back out, indicating that the target is receiving valid messages and responding thereto.

Instrument the receive thread in the test script: it starts running, and no received character ever turns up.  Wut?

So... the incoming bits are somehow not making it to the getc.  Either that, or the receive thread is dying early for some reason (getting such events reported in Ruby takes some extra attention, and I may not have included the necessary incantation in the script at hand).  Time to refresh my memory on such matters.

Update:  The serial-port getc function is calling getbyte to return the integer value of the character returned by the system-level getc.  Alas, while that is necessary on some newer version of Ruby, the function in question doesn't exist in the ancient version of Ruby in the archived environment.

Seems I need either an intermediate-vintage environment or a run-time test for availability of getbyte.  Growf.

Update 2:  Came up with a hack that gets it running on the older version of Ruby (haven't yet confirmed that it still works on any newer version).  Now the script runs... for a while.  Then it gets a wedgie.  Rather, it appears that the ftdi_sio driver gets a wedgie.  Maybe some issue with the VM?  Unloading and reloading the driver unwedges it for a while.

Update 2½:  I hit "Publish" on that last update... just as the U-Verse router decided to go offline for a moment.  It does that a lot.

A prediction for the coming week

A new witness will appear, with an even more terrifying tale.

While she was attending the McMartin Preschool, an unknown high-school-aged boy arrived in a flying mortar*, waved his pestle at her, and turned her into a newt!

After seeing the recent news coverage, and spending a fortnight in close consultation with a team of therapists and lawyers, she finally recognizes that boy from so long ago as none other than Brett Kavanaugh!

Burn him!

* No, not one of these.  The witchy kind.

Celebrate National Stink Up The Kitchen Day!

Which seems to be what today is.

When I emerged from my slumbers this morning, there was something very much amiss.  After some contemplation, I realized that I'd emptied some Mystery Containers From The Back Of The Refrigerator into the burn bag yesterday evening, and not subsequently taken said bag out to the bin.  Moldy, much?  Oops.

Remedy the oversight, open some windows, turn on the vent fan... after half an hour or so, put things back to normal.

Fast forward about three hours.  My father sets out to boil an egg, first raising it from refrigerator temperature to room temperature, as is his custom, using the nuker set on minimum power.

Only he apparently pushes the wrong button, resulting in an exploded egg all over the inside of the nuker and a horrible stench.

Oh, well.  Windows, vent fan... cleaning up the mess is left as an exercise for him as pushed the wrong button.

It remains to be seen what will happen when it's Joy's turn in the kitchen.

Now, here's a thought.

Suppose, for a moment, that there's a government proceeding of monumental importance coming up.

There's a key witness, who must appear.  Said witness has reportedly received death threats.

Should the witness not be in protective custody?  With a passel of, say, U.S. Marshals to ensure that the witness arrives at the appointed time and place all safe and sound?  And perhaps to discourage any last-minute witness tampering?

Just how seriously does anyone take this stuff?

This guy has a law degree?

Creepy Porn Lawyer's latest public outburst begins thus:

Because @realDonaldTrump and the Senate Republicans refuse to allow my client Julie Swetnick to testify,

Excuse me?  What authority does POTUS have over Senate proceedings?  What does he have to do with any of this?

Mob rule

We occasionally hear conservatives warning that straight-up democracy, unconstrained by a Constitution, Bill of Rights, and so forth, would amount to mob rule.

Except... mob rule can actually be remarkably un-democratic.

The heckler's veto, for example, is a sort of mob rule: a small mob can shout down or otherwise intimidate all those who are attempting to go about their everyday affairs under the normal rules of society.

Rule-by-mob does not require a majority, nor a plurality.  It requires only a cadre of sufficiently nasty shock troops to cow the normals into submission.

And the new rules we're seeing?  An unsupported denunciation (we're rapidly working up to unsupported and anonymous) suffices to stir up the rage mob, destroying reputations, careers, and lives.  Designated targets and their families already receive death threats, and the mob-inciting rhetoric seems calculated to inspire murder - for the greater good, of course.  A dangerous game, indeed.

Vocabulary note

It seems that searching for certain slang terms on the Internet will yield unambiguous definitions.

This does not, however, establish that the 2018 Internet meaning matches the 1982 high school meaning.  Not unless we postulate that someone's been playing with Karl Rove's time machine again.

How "corroboration" works

Step 1: Tell three people the same story.

Step 2: It's true!  Just ask anyone!

Yes, I have seen this pattern before.  (Better you shouldn't ask.)

Followup to a random discussion

Sunday afternoon at the winding-down phase of the class reunion, a discussion of hazards of Tennessee.

Which included fly-ash dumps.

This, as one might expect, led to speculation on ways of effectively immobilizing fly ash, rather than just storing it in giant slurry puddles.

I wondered whether anyone had worked on incorporating it into concrete.

Which, yes.

But I guess it'll take a long time to work through the existing inventory.  Especially when said inventory tends to be in the form of nasty wet muddy slurry.

Pondering the new lab already

Actually equipping it is a few months off yet, but 'tis never too early to contemplate new tools.

Given the scarcity of prototype manufacturing facilities in the Knoxville area (so far as I know at this point), I'd been thinking of looking for a used pick-and-place machine, to save a bunch of hand work on prototypes and in case I wanted to make short production runs of board-level Gadgets in my own lab, before going through the headaches of outsourcing.

Well, turns out there are some benchtop pick-and-place machines on the market now that have decent specs and are in the plausible price range brand spankin' new.  The number of feeders may be a limitation, though; one shiny model can handle up to 48 tape feeders (if all the tapes are 8mm wide; I think the number diminishes as wider-format feeders are added), but a representative Gadget has 58 line items in the BOM.  Even allowing for some of those being through-hole parts and some being no-loads, I think I'd better be looking at a machine that can take north of 60 feeders.  Preferably well north.

And I'd been thinking of building my own hot-air reflow oven, but there seem to be serviceable IR reflow ovens available pretty darn cheap.

Now, if only trade with China is back to normal by the time I'm looking to buy this stuff for real....

Additional:  Having my own board-stuffing robot could affect design choices.  I might, for example, go to 0201 resistors and bypass caps as default, instead of 0402, and not leave as much space between components (currently space is required for tweezers wielded by clumsy hands).  Also, I might consider using individual resistors where I'm currently using labor-saving multiple-resistor packs; this would (depending on the values involved) cut down on the number of line items, as well as having a lower BOM cost, with just the cost of machine time offsetting those considerations.

Still need more'n 48 feeders, though.

My comic books are packed, or...

... I'd look up the scene - I think it's in Asterix the Legionary - wherein Asterix and Obelix are attempting to navigate the bureaucracy of a local Roman office.  Trying to learn where Tragicomix had ended up?  Anyway, every department refers them to another department, eventually leading back to the beginning.

Joy is busily attempting to communicate with a facet of the California bureaucracy, regarding something that ought to be a routine matter.  The main phone maze refers her to the web site: such matters must be handled on-line.  This requires recovering her login credentials, as she hasn't used the on-line system in a great long time.  That being done... the web site, once the maze has been navigated, informs her that she needs to call the main number.  Which is where she started.

Eventually, she finds another number to try.  This turns out to be a private contractor; no can do, but there's another number.  Which leads to another number, which (bouncing among state and county bureaucracies and the occasional outside contractor, and spending half an hour on hold one one number before it disconnects itself) eventually leads to the definitive number for this sort of thing.  Which has been disconnected.

Hark!  Sounds like she's reached some sort of service center.  And is answering the same questions as always.  Let's see if they can handle this.  (Apparently so, but why they need to confirm her race first is a mystery.)

This, in turn, opens a whole new can of worms, but we'll deal with those another day.

Update:  Hey, looky what's on line nowadays!  But those Roman bureaucrats were pikers.

I'm not driving too fast, I'm flying too low.

Or, reversing that...

Remember how Christine Blasey Ford simply couldn't get to DC for a hearing yesterday, because she's terrified of flying?

Well!  Via Hot Air, here's her original letter, as finally released by Feinstein.  And what do we find in there?

I am currently vacationing in the mid-Atlantic until August 7^th and will be in California after August 10^th.

So that's, what, about 65 MPH for a solid 16 hours/day?  With no allowances for traffic, meal breaks, and so on?

Heck with this.  Subpoena her.  And her passport.  And her credit-card records for the last six years, and any travel records that those credit-card records point to.

And confirm Kavanaugh in the meantime.  This isn't about him, and never was.  Somebody, and likely several somebodies, has been making false statements to the Senate, which is a crime.  Feinstein, alas, is immune to prosecution by vice* of her office; while she can be expelled from the Senate for her appalling conduct, it would only be symbolic, as she's likely to lose her seat in the upcoming election, and in any case the appointed replacement would be someone even more crooked.

* The expression "by virtue of her office" seems singularly inappropriate here.

Update:  What'd I tell you?  One of the few things that came out today (the 27^th) was that Ford routinely travels by air.  So "her" lawyers (who may actually have been working for Feinstein) did in fact lie to the Senate.  I want to see a nice round of disbarments and prosecutions, and, yes, that includes Creepy Porn Lawyer.

Update 2: see here.

Busy weekend

My (many)^th high school reunion was held this weekend just past.

I more or less re-connected with some people I hadn't seen in a long time.  Some of whom are invisible in Web searches.

There was, as in past decades, a fair turnout of the math/science nerd contingent (including some who've left no footprints in cyberspace).  Indeed, at least two who'd long been absent turned up this time.  Curiously, it seems most of the Jewish math/science nerds disappeared from view straight out of school, remain invisible to the alumni committee, and are now known only by faint rumors.  And those were some of the people I'd really hoped to see again.

Anyway: I'd meant to write a fairly detailed report, but today got Busy again.  Got a couple of technical mysteries to deal with.

If they could meet the last round of standards...

That, of course, is the premise of ever-tighter standards for fuel efficiency, emissions, and so forth: if manufacturers managed to meet the existing standards, then surely they'll find ways to meet new, stricter standards.

Thing is, it's now coming to light that car-makers haven't been meeting the emissions limits for diesels.  According to the latest report, many (not just one or two) of them were only pretending to meet the limits, and various governments have been pretending to believe them.

Which has led to interesting problems for, e.g., a tractor company trying to find a small diesel engine (because, for a tractor, you really want that diesel, for functional reasons) that's legal for the U.S. market, and finding that such engines are much larger and more expensive than older models of the same rating.  The car companies have been pretending to comply, and getting away with it.  When someone tries to comply for real, the true costs become apparent.

Discrepancies, and the game of "telephone"

Four boys, or three boys and a girl?

Did Christine Blasey Ford tell some people the party consisted of herself and four boys, and others that it was herself, three boys, and another girl?

Or did she list the names, and some people just assumed that "Leland" was a boy?

And do we now have an Illuminati connection by way of Leland Ingham Keyser Söze?  Tune in next week, when we learn that the accuser is actually a car dealership in Oklahoma!

Addendum:  This morning's hot take is that Ford sent her letter to Eshoo instead of Feinstein because such a letter addressed to a Senator would fall under the false statements law, while if addressed to a Representative it would not, and therefore this was a carefully thought out way of avoiding ever making a statement subject to punishment for falsehood.

Or, y'know, when I first heard of the route the letter took?  I figured she'd sent it to her Representative because of the whole representative thing, and Eshoo had then forwarded it to the person best placed to act on it.  Who, in turn, sat on it (except perhaps for some leaks to the press) until after the hearings, before putting on her Tail-Gunner Joe act.  Could have been, everyone but Feinstein was acting in good faith.

Except that Ford's elaborate ongoing refusal to make any sort of statement under oath (except subject to absurd conditions, and possibly not even then) kinda suggests that the whole thing is a fantasy and she knows it.

Update: see here.

Huh.

Digging out some of the better-protected archived Stuff now.  Including a large flat box of art things: should be a Greg Brown print, and various other stuff.

Hm.  I'd forgotten that the print in question was signed.

And I'd completely missed the news that Brown died a few years back.  So no more of those delightfully weird (and quite novel, back in the day) murals around Palo Alto.

Danger cream

Southmoon, in full pygmy mountain lion mode, defends the carton against all comers, especially Huckleberry.

Wait, what was that sound?

Well, that took a chunk out of the afternoon.

Need to review a schematic-in-progress, supplied by a client as a PDF.

Old fogey that I am, I want it on paper.  On "A" size, it's really too small to read.  No problem; that's why I have the inkjet printer that takes "B" size paper, right?

(It doesn't help that the supplied PDF was scaled from "B" to "A", that is, the drawing being originally on "B" size sheets was converted to a PDF of "A" size pages, resulting in large top and bottom margins on a page that doesn't scale neatly back to its original size.)

Growf.  There's been strangeness since I moved the printers to the new file/print server; probably the version of CUPS on the workstation is too far behind the version on the server.  Much fiddling to try to find the option settings at all, never mind the right values.

Eventually, it looks like I'm close to having the magic formula.  Except!  When I try to print what should be a correctly-formatted page from the workstation onto "B" size paper, the printer disconnects.  Or maybe the USB hub disconnects.

A huge amount of fiddling later, I end up just plugging the dang printer into the workstation, where the software does turn out to be recent enough to support it.  All seems well... except that the colors are off, and the legibility is bad.  Ink?

Open the cover.  Decipher the blinky lights: the little black cartridge will need replacing soon.  The other four (C, M, Y, and the big black cartridge) all need replacing now, dang it.

So, off to the closet for the 10-pack of off-brand cartridges (2 of each flavor) bought from Amazon quite some time ago.  Install one complete set of replacements.  Try this again....

Yeah, finally it worked right (modulo scaling by 129% instead of scaling by 154% and cropping top and bottom).  But now I think I need a nap before I can do anything useful.