Silicon Valley Redneck

Agh.

Another stinkenhot day ahead.  Up to 75°F already, and it's not even 8 yet.

And!  I mentioned one of the HVAC units was out of commission?  Outside unit fan wasn't starting, but if, while it was emitting its angry not-starting buzz, I gave it a push with a stick it'd spin up and run?

Well, the replacement motor-start capacitor (identified as such on the parts list) had arrived, so I installed it this morning.  (Push-starting had ceased to work yesterday; I could get the fan sort of rotating, but it would just slow down instead of spinning up.)  Now... very slightly better than yesterday, in that it speeds up a little bit after a push start, but then slows down again and stops.  Foo.

Well... maybe the run cap is also bad?  Or it was the run cap that was failing in the first place?  Growf.  Look online.  Check Amazon: oh, hey.  That one's available with Prime delivery Saturday.  I guess we can survive that long.  Order two: a replacement for now, and a spare for when the other unit fails.  (I really should look up spares for the inside units, too, I guess.)

And, speaking of Amazon: a couple of packages arrived yesterday, on schedule.  Several others that were supposed to have arrived yesterday, well, according to the tracking system they all arrived at the local carrier facility around 0900 yesterday, then made the jump into hyperspace and haven't been heard from since.  (Except for one package, last heard of at an Amazon facility one metro area over.)

Funny thing is, we heard the driveway alert this morning, around 0400ish.  Twice.  With about the timing of a delivery vehicle coming and going.  No packages, though; guess it must have been critters.

Aw, you're no fun anymore.

In a move no one could possibly have seen coming, Kanye "O'er Frae France" West has dropped out of the Presidential race.

Such a shame.  Though I did have my doubts about the Wakanda scheme; do we really want to be a closed ethnostate with a hereditary monarchy?

This should have been a day for sleeping in.

(Or at least for returning to bed after breakfast and staying there as long as I could get away with it.)

For one thing, it's definitely time for that year-overdue caffeine taper.  I'm currently at the stage where I can have a caffeine overdose headache and a caffeine withdrawal headache simultaneously.

And... in my headachey, fuzzy-brained morning state, I set forth to address a problem from a few days ago.  The new lab computer (a refurbished - cheap! - Dell) had developed a habit of rebooting every so often for no apparent reason, and, no, it's not running Windows.  I'd ordered a replacement power supply, thinking that a likely suspect.  I removed the old one, installed the new, and... Didn't Work.  Oopsie!  Following an incorrect visual cue, I'd plugged in the ATX 12V connector rotated 90°.  Eek!  Hope I didn't fry the motherboard.  Plug it in right-way-which: still no boot, but at least the fans now spin up.  Swap the old supply back in: fans spin up, no boot.  Wander off for a while.  Return.  Take a close look at that 12V plug: plugging it in rotated 90° can't damage the motherboard, but might possibly damage the supply.  Armed with this reassurance, reconnect the new supply: now it boots up, and I can log in, and... the display goes wonky and the system reboots.  Which is kind of like what was happening before, except that I never saw the screen go wonky before.  The seems like a Clue, and it points away from the power supply.  (Oh, well.  Having a spare power supply is good policy.)  Unseat and reseat all the RAM sticks, and try again.  Oh, and this time (as one one previous occasion, but not since) the Grub menu comes up, offering a choice of Linux or Memtest86, so I choose the latter and let it run for a while, with no errors reported.  Reboot into Linux.  Seems to be working now.

Then, after lunch, 'twas time to break out the Bluetooth OBD scanner and read the codes on the ol' Prius, to see what might be causing the Skoda light (Czech Engine) to come on.  Hm, I don't seem to have the app installed on my new phone.  Install it.  Then the dongle needs to be paired, and I don't recall the PIN (and can't find the paperwork that came with it; probably somewhere in a box in the garage).  It's not 0000, nor 1234, nor 6789.  Argh.  Wait... I still have my previous phone, and the battery is charged!  Fetch that; it's still paired with the dongle.  Run the app.  No codes logged.  What?  I can see the bloody light, right there on the dashboard!  Clear the (nonexistent) codes.  Turn the car off and back on.  The light is still on.  Read the code again: aha!  Now it's showing P1455.

Now, it seems that P1455, in a Prius, means "Vapor Reducing Fuel Tank System Malfunction", which apparently can sometimes mean "the gas cap wasn't quite fully closed sometime in the past", or it can mean that there's a loose hose, or a leak somewhere.  Rumor has it the code can also result from use of excessively-high-octane gasoline, and I did put in a couple of gallons of high-test lawnmower gas a while back, but that does seem rather unlikely.

Guess I'll try reseating the RAM sticks gas cap, and see if the light goes out eventually.

Oh, and in odd bits of time I've been digging out some tools'n'stuff that had been in storage the past couple-dozen years.  Some of them, it looks like they don't make that model anymore, or it's been redesigned, or something.  So trying to replace any documentation that's gotten lost may be problematic, should I find myself needing documentation.  Some things I remember having haven't turned up yet, but there are still a lot of boxes piled up in the barn.  At least I'm making some progress.

Ah, well.  Guess I'll go fiddle with the gas cap, rummage around in the barn some more, and eventually do some watering, being as how the next significant rain looks to be a couple of days out and it's currently stinkin' hot and sunny.

What's the turnaround time for dead-tree magazines?

I thought it was quite a while, but somehow the recent monthly glossies seem to be filled with articles about race.

It's almost like they all got the memo well in advance.

Well, that's screwy.

Awakening from a nap, I find two, count 'em, two messages ostensibly from a bank with which I do business informing me of suspicious activity on my account.

The return address doesn't look right, but companies ain't exactly consistent about using right addresses.  The link provided for resolving the situation looks downright wrong, going through some sort of link-shortening service, but, again, the bank might just be dumb enough to do that.

Not clicking the link, I instead use a bookmark to reach the bank in question.  I log in, and…

… And access to my account information is currently out of order.  Huh.  I wonder if the sender of the messages knew this… and whether it was opportunistic or arranged — DDOS, anyone?

Looking at the headers on the e-mails, I note that one is to my main address and the other is to an alias that the bank shouldn't have.  Ergo, definitely random phishing.  But it's kinda weird the actual bank's actual on-line access being b0rked just now, innit?

I may have mentioned this before

TurboTax is really dumb about estimated taxes.  Like, really dumb.  For real.

It won't print out vouchers with the amount left blank; it's gotta fill 'em in with the quarterly estimate assuming constant annual income.

Which is a bad assumption for anyone whose main income is from a Schedule C business and/or occasional sales of securities.

It's a really bad assumption for someone whose main income last year was from sale of his primary residence.  Like I'm going to do the same thing again, for the same amount of money, this year?  I think this year's taxable income will be whatever dividends trickle down, plus maybe some business income if both I and a client or two can get things going again in the coming months, which is looking a mite questionable.

Anyway, the handy pre-filled-in 1040-ES forms feature a quarterly amount that's likely more than my entire taxable income for this year, which is probably wrong unless we're already at the liquidation-of-the-kulaks stage of modern governance.

(Yeah, taking full advantage of the deferred deadline.  We were going to look for a local accountant in January, once we got moved here, but then 2020 happened.  Somehow, finding the time and focus to round up all the numbers and feed them into the computer was just not happening for a while there.)

2020 strikes again

Grant Imahara just died.

Not, apparently, of Pestilence, atomic mutant wasps, nor any of the other trendy causes.  Just one of those things that could happen to anybody anytime, but not usually to a young'n.

Well-meaning, but misguided

Opinion piece, via Insty:

To stop ‘cancel culture,’ protect people’s viewpoints under civil rights law

Well, maybe, but the devil is in... you know the rest.

Title VII should be amended to add to the list of prohibited discriminations — race, color, religion, sex or national origin — a new category: “viewpoints or ­beliefs.”

Um.  Would "viewpoints or beliefs" make flat-Earthers a protected category?  Marxist revolutionaries?  NAMBLA activists?  Sometimes, viewpoints and beliefs are very relevant to employers, landlords, and such.

And don't expect such laws to be applied uniformly.  They haven't been, and they won't be.

No, I don't have an answer.  I'm just pointing out that this isn't an answer, or at least not a good one.

Problem? I see no problem.

Headline:

Dead Cat Gets Voter Registration Form in the Mail

So?  If a dead cat can run for President (on the Meadow Party ticket; anyone remember them?), why can't a dead cat vote?

Whew!

Well, I staggered through the available records, feeding the numbers into TurboTax, and not being able (something about two moves in the last year-and-a-bit) to lay my hands on all the relevant expense information.

Looks like my guesstimates last April (after selling the Sunnyvale house) were a tad generous, so (after a few, er, clenchworthy moments) it seems there'll be refunds, both federal and California.  Not a mad scramble to come up with tax due, as I thought I was seeing at one stage of the proceedings.

The as-of-early-January plan for the year had called for finding a good tax accountant and having him wade through all the papers, but what with the Pestilence that kind of didn't happen (and a bunch of the expense- and cost-basis-related papers seem to be still in boxes somewhere, even now).  Had things gone as planned, I think the refunds would have been bigger, but oh well.

And, me being me, I'll probably blow the refunds on capital equipment or something.

Now it'd be time to go out in the back yard and de-stress, but 88°F, 65% humidity, and a UV Index of 9 say otherwise.

The Prius is not a Skoda

The "Czech Engine" light should not be on.

Yeah, came on during the Friday morning grocery pickup run.  I haven't hooked up the OBD scanner yet to see what the complaint is.

And then upon our return, one of the dagnab wasps stung me in the finger.  Ow.  Time to spray the bushes again (but not right now; the wind is picking up).

Just another day in another week in 2020, innit?

"You can't tell the players without..."

What in the wide world of sports is up with soccer?

Apparently there's some new gimmick whereby players' jerseys are color-coded, not by team, but by race.  So you can tell at a glance what race they are, which is the most important thing in the game.  White players wear white; black players wear black.  And, I suppose, Jewish players wear yellow stars, right?

Yeah, the Progressive Apartheid program proceeds apace.

Totally not me. At all. Really.

 

That's "Power Tools" by Ray Stevens, just in case the U-Toob embed disappears.

Update:  Did you know you can get bolt-on toothbars for loader buckets?  They're a thing!  (Drilling is required, to provide places for the bolts to go.)  That'd make my back-yard Tonka project(s) ever so much easier!  There's even one available from stock on Amazon, but it's about an inch and a half too wide for my bucket.

Ugh.

Got some kind of metabolic crud.  Drowsy, headachey, not much appetite.

No, I'm not having respiratory symptoms, other than minor allergy-type stuff, about like a really good day back in Silicon Valley.

Probably something to do with having shifted into weight-loss mode a while ago; that always triggers some side weirdness.

Oh, well.  I did get one important thing done so far today: out long before the day-o with a bunch of empty cans, returning with 10 gallons of Diesel and about 19 gallons of Baptist gas, so the Tonka toy and mowers can be kept fed. And I managed not to spill any, nor start any fires.

Time to stop trying to type and go back to bed, I think.  Not awake enough to use the strimmer, let alone do paperwork.

Wait, when was this written?

Current reading for my useless time: From Barsoom to Malacandra: Musings on Things Past and Things to Come.

Now most of the way through Chapter 3, wherein the author speculates on invasion by various sorts of skiffy aliens and the ease of defending against most of the usual suspects.  Then I get to the ones he dreads: the Psychohistorians of the Foundation!

They will not fire a shot.  They will land an agent or two, maybe publish a book, … and then depart.  Math does the rest.  We will stare in bewilderment as riots and changes in demographics, unexpected movements of immigration or sudden shifts in the economy …

Look up publication date:  January of this year.  Not yesterday.

But suddenly everything is making sense.

 

Addendum:  When I try to recall the title of the book, Malacandra keeps coming back as Pachysandra, and then I try to remember who, exactly, Pachy Sandra is, and whether she might be Elly Elephant's sister.

Update:  Oh, this just gets better.  Chapter 4 (I'm partway through it) turns out to be a detailed review of Star Wars Episode 7. Only... it's not a review of A Farcical Awookening, oh no.  It's a review of the other Episode 7, from the universe where DisneyCorp is into truly epic storytelling, respecting the audience, and, apparently, slipping in out-of-mythos Kalonians.  I wanna see that one!  The one we got in this universe sucked!  (Now, how do I change my DVD player from Region 1 to Region √-1?)

Update 2:  I'm not sure, though, that Episode 7 needs the out-of-mythos man from U.N.C.L.E.; anyway, does DisneyCorp have the rights to that show nowadays?

Showing how PPE is used

Pic from the front page of the Morning Fishwrap:

So we have here an amusement-park greeter offering squirts of hand sanitizer while wearing, let's see now, a sneeze guard over a chin mask.

Well, I sometimes use a face shield of that sort... when I'm using the strimmer and don't want fragments of blackberry vines hitting me in the face.  Back when I had a lathe, the face shield got a fair amount of use.

And I guess a chin mask is useful if you want to keep soup out of your beard, or your beard out of the lathe.

But neither of these has much to do with preventing the propagation of respiratory aerosols.  (Nor, for that matter, does a token one-time dose of hand sanitizer, but I guess the hand sanitizer makes more sense than daily disinfection of parking lots.)

You'd think a planet settled by telephone sanitizers would be better at this sort of thing.

And even more fun!

We had that HVAC malfunction, a few weeks ago, that turned out to be easily fixed?

Well, now the system for the other end of the house has its own new problem.  When it tries to operate, the outside unit emits an angry buzz but the fan doesn't turn.  So, presumably, some problem in the motor start circuit, maybe a failed capacitor.

Giving the fan a push-start while the buzz is happening gets rotary motion.  So, yeah, start problem; the motor itself seems to be OK.

Have to call up the HVAC company again, come morning.  Hope it can be fixed without anyone having to come into the house.  (I have neither wiring diagrams nor a supply of motor start capacitors.)

Update:  Looking up the model number of the outside unit, I found a parts list, and thence found the start cap listed on Amazon for a price that's not wildly unreasonable, though even with expedited shipping it's a week or so out.  Oh, well: I ordered two, so when the one at this end of the house eventually fails I'll have the replacement on hand.  Meanwhile, we can leave that end of the house on fan-only, and have this end cooled by the working unit, which will (especially with the ceiling fans going) result in some of the cool air ending up in the un-cooled end of the house.  And I guess once or twice a day I can turn on the misbehaving unit and hit the fan with a stick to git 'er goin' fer a while.  That, and opening the windows during the early-morning cool time, and I guess we can get by for a while.

Just to make life more fun

The power went out for about an hour this morning, starting about 0835.

KUB showed 430 customers affected, which, around here, is a fairly large area.

But, Tennessee not being California and KUB not being PG&E, power was back on after about an hour.  Hardly time to get bored.

Whew!

Just went looking for some important family files (digital type).  One of them was Not Where I Expected To Find It.

There were upstream files that had gone into its creation.  There were downstream files created from it.  But the one key file I was looking for was not there.  ("There was the case, but the horn itself was missing.")

Panic.  Run around like a headless chicken.  Wait.  Is is just possible that the work was done on my father's PC, and all the files copied over into my documents except for the One File?

His PC is still packed.  There's a backup disk.  Where's the backup disk?  Not in my desk drawer.  Not in the pile on the bookcase.  Aha!  It's plugged into the new workstation, behind my desk!  And, yes, it contains the backup of everything from the old PC, including the file I needed.

I still need to dig out a bunch of other stuff, though.  But probably not this afternoon.  This afternoon, I need to make some phone calls (eek).  Which probably means spending a few hours on hold.  Maybe I'd better bring a book.

Update:  The two urgent phone calls are made.

The first involved hardly any time on hold, and it turns out that the late-payment notice dated mid-June was the result of a transaction-processing error way back in April, and which I'd corrected (updating card info) within a day or two.  So all's well.

The second did involve several minutes on hold, but then I got half of the issue resolved promptly.  The other half apparently requires getting my father to make a call, but that one is less urgent anyway, being added to the must-do-by-October list.

There are a couple more not-urgent calls to be made based on that pile of papers, but I think I need to study the situation a bit more first.

And!  Just to make life more confusing, another item in the stack is a new credit card to be activated.  It replaces the one I've been using for various recurring payments.  Expiration date is three years out... wait a minute.  This has the same number, expiration date, and CVV code as the old one.  So, why did they send me a new one?  'Tis a mystery!

A suggestion for purveyors of storage shelving

When you're selling, e.g., 5-shelf wire shelving units?

Howzabout offering extra shelves, eh?  Some of us have lots of relatively low-profile stuff that needs organizing, so 7 shelves on a 6-foot-tall unit would make a lot of sense.

Update:  An increasingly common application for variably-spaced extra shelves?  Canned food!  We have some large plastic shelving units in the basement, with fixed spacing.  Filling up the available space on the shelves with bales of paper towels is fine, but stacking cans of food to occupy the available space results in seriously saggy shelves before they're nearly half laden.

With all the neo-preppers out there nowadays, there might be enhanced demand for stable shelves for storing shelf-stable foods.  (There might also be interesting consequences if apartment dwellers start stockpiling heavy stuff.)