Silicon Valley Redneck

A spectacular ending to 2020

In which my spectacles come to a bad end.

I'd mentioned, hadn't I, that new eyeglasses had been on the probably-March list for this year?

Well!  The new ones, like so many things this year, didn't happen.  And the old ones just broke.  Right half in two, as our favorite potty-mouthed Canuck says.

Lenses are OK, for sufficiently old-and-worn values of OK.  Frame is well and truly busted.  I'll have to see if I can hard-solder it back together (with the lenses removed, natch).  Epoxy certainly won't work, unless accompanied by some additional structure.

I had to walk over to the barn, mostly-blind and in the rain, to find the old glasses that I'd been keeping over there (mainly because they worked better under safety glasses than did the new ones).  I think I have another reasonably-usable old spare pair around here, somewhere.

The breakage happened right at the end of the year, Vladivostok time.  Local time here, it's morning yet.  Plenty of time for more to go wrong.

Don't trust China...

Found via Captain Capitalism: there's a new business in taking white men who have been kicked out of the technology sector in the name of Diversity, and matching them up with Chinese companies.

Yeah.

Silicon Valley has notoriously been casting its graybeards aside for many years now, and with the current Diversity push, there will certainly be a lot more available for recruiting.

Thinking back to 2004, just after the Layoff... one of my graybeard colleagues got a consulting gig in one of the big tech centers in India.  Seems India had plenty of bright young engineering grads, but lacked the pool of experience that gave Silicon Valley its strategic advantage in tech.  Another generation, and they'd catch up with us.

Now?  Corporateland is aggressively casting off experience... and China is recruiting it, for the long term.  It's almost like our overlords want us to lose.

Spammers can't math

So I left a comment at Insty... and got an e-mail notifying me of a reply.

It was comment spam, of course.  But here's the opening bit:

Get $192 hourly from Google!...(a340) Yes this is Authentic since I just got my first payout of $24413 and this was just of a single week

Hm.  24413/192 makes for a 127+ hour week, and that's assuming nothing's being taken out of your paycheck.  Working 18×7 and then some?

Must be using AOL time.  ("1000 hours FREE!  Must use all hours in the first month.")

Phone day

Gngh.

Mid-day phonery!  This started out online, yesterday, when I was attempting to use a function of a financial institution's Web site that I'd used twice before, once last year and once this spring.  This time... Chrome (same browser I'd used before) popped up a "Your security is important!" box.  With no content.  It looked like it ought to have been one of those dialog boxes for selecting a second authentication factor, but I got only the title bar.

Much futzing with turning off browser security features (mainly uBlock Origin).  No change.

Try a couple of other, vanilla browsers.  No soap.  Firefox, for whatever reason, isn't even giving me the initial login box...?

Eventually, try Firefox again.  I can log in!  If I turn off ad block and script blocking, and attempt the operation, I get an intact popup, with three options for getting an authentication code.  Two of them involve my phone.  I select "Text message."  Oops, error.  This site does have my cell number on file, right?

Ah.  My cell number is there, but under "Home" instead of "Mobile."  Fix that.  Also, update my postal address.  Try again....

Now, both the options involving them communicating with my phone are absent.  Only the third option is offered: call their 800 number to get an authentication code.  A site banner is warning of very long call wait times.  Call the number.  Wait.  Wait some more.

After a process that involves spending a lot of time on hold and being passed around from one department to another, it turns out that even if I'm given an authentication code over the phone, the site accepts it, then asks again for an authentication code (right under where it says the first one succeeded), and, if I give it the same code again, it says my session has timed out (it hasn't; the rest of the site still works without my needing to log back in).  Logging out, clearing cache and cookies, and logging back in changes nothing.

Eventually - after an hour and a half or so - the final techie opens an IT support ticket for the strange behavior and initiates my financial operation himself, bypassing the online weirdness.  Shows now as pending, and supposed to go through tomorrow, which qualifies as this calendar year.  Good enough.

 

Afternoon phonery!  Joy had been trying to follow up on The Adventure Of My Father's Expensive Prescription Drug.  Today, she spent a lot of time on the phone, basically exhausting options for getting it cheaper (other than taking him in to have it professionally administered at the hospital, where the cost would be fully covered by his various medical plans, but he'd risk exposure to the Pestilence, besides which the hospital turns out to be out of the 6-month version so he'd be getting the 3-month or 1-month shot), then giving up and calling the pharmacy to proceed with the order.

Which also involved an unexpected amount of time on the phone, divided between the local chain pharmacy and (as it developed) a specialty pharmacy that actually distributes the stuff.  All seems to be resolved, aside from the specialty pharmacy actually verifying everything, getting the drug in hand, calling me to confirm payment, and shipping it to us.  Which... I guess we shall see.

 

Update:  While my issue with the financial institution got sorted out manually (the underlying problem still lurking, maybe), here it is the next day and Joy has spent a bunch of time trying to sort out a different issue with the same feature (or at least a closely-related one) of their web site.

Another new sound

Since its last low-12V-battery incident, the Venerable Prius has, from time to time but especially at startup, been making a strange and rather alarming buzzing sound that seems to be coming from somewhere behind (properly speaking, forward of) the middle of the dashboard.

Something to do with the defroster?  Turn that off; the buzzing still happens.  The fan?  Turn that off; the buzzing still (eventually) happens.

What else might have some sort of electromechanical dingus in that area, that could buzz not loudly but alarmingly?

Er.  Come to think of it... it could be the CD player making a seeking noise.  Maybe it's trying to play a disc that it doesn't like, despite the sound system being turned off.  I'll have to check that out.  Later.

Your daily dose of duh

Front-page headline:

"Tech vulnerabilities exposed in bombing"... ya think?

You call 911, you expect to be connected to the local dispatcher.  In an emergency situation, like.  Why should your call depend on infrastructure hundreds of miles away, plus all the infrastructure between here, there, and the dispatcher?  Especially if there's an emergency going on?

The solution is obvious, right?  Nationalize the entire 911 thing.  Have one, uniformly managed, national network for emergency calls, all routed through one central call facility.

This will of course be contracted out to the lowest (or, these days, best-connected) bidder, and the infrastructure will end up outsourced to the Elbonian Telegraph Agency, with requirements that certain work be done in particular House districts.

What's in a name?

Living far from San Francisco nowadays, I hadn't been aware of the identity of the Mayor's spokescritter.

Just noticed it here:

Breed’s spokesperson, Jeff Cretan

What a perfect name for a spokesbeing!

(Complete the sentence: All Cretans are _____.)

New sound

Snow melting on the roof, and patches of it sliding down.  Not a sound that's familiar to me at all.

And, out in the barn, there's a strange dripping sound unaccompanied (whew!) by interior drippage.  I suppose it must be runoff from the loft roof dripping onto the main roof.  Sounds alarming, but there doesn't appear to be a problem.

What you find is not always what you seek.

So, off to the barn in search of comfy old ankle-high hiking boots.  While I'm at it, I take the NO STEP stickers along, to apply a couple of 'em to the mower deck.

Stickers applied: yup.  Placement is suboptimal, but I didn't want to remove nor obscure any of the mandatory safety warning stickers that came with it from the factory.

While I was poking at the tractor, I took another look at the seat interlock switch situation; back in spring, Joy tried to operate the tractor, but didn't weigh enough to activate the switch, apparently.  I'd been thinking of adding some padding on the bottom of the seat, just above the switch, so it wouldn't have to travel so far and thus wouldn't require as much weight.  But!  The switch bracket is angled slightly downward.  Looks bendable.  A little torque with the big pliers, and... well, it should require slightly less weight now.  Have to test it sometime.

And, those boots.  Search through the piles of boxes not yet dealt with.  Find two boxes of my footwear, one of which contains my Serious Backpacking Boots (great clunky stiff leather things from the mid-1980s).  The comfy ones?  Er... I guess I'd disposed of those as being rather badly worn out, figuring to buy new ones after the move.  Which kinda didn't happen this year.  New boots, new glasses... things one generally buys in person, that had been on the "March 2020" list.

While searching, though, I found some more boxes of books, CDs, and DVDs that should really be moved over to the house.  And!  I found my ultrasonic cleaner, T-handle hex keys, and the mega-set of transfer punches that I'd really been wanting a couple of times earlier this year.  Well, now I know where they are.

I think I need to get a bunch more shelving for the basement, so I can bring boxes'o'stuff over and at least somewhat organize them or their contents.  Maybe a CD/DVD storage rack for the media room.  Other organize-y stuff.  The barn really needs to be decluttered over the coming months, so in spring we can (I hope!) set about transforming it into a proper workshop.

A mind-scrambling sentence

I may be awake enough to spot errors on the front page of the newspaper in the early-morning dark, but...

Returning to bed and picking up my Kindle, whereon I'm currently reading Knowingly Familiar, I encountered this sentence:

Maybe I should get bulk eggs and freeze them some way?

And, of course, when I hear a reference to freezing eggs, the obvious* association is deferred IVF.  But... get bulk eggs?  Wait a minute.

Oh.  The topic here is cupcakes, and the keeping on hand of sufficient ingredients for such.  So, chicken eggs.  Not a bargain mega-pack of random people eggs.

And now, back to bed.

 

* For sufficiently random values of "obvious".

Layers of editors...

Front page of this morning's paper:

I guess nobody learns the difference between "lie" and "lay" nowadays.  And computers aren't so good at checking grammar, never mind idiom.  (Heck, they're increasingly bad at checking spelling.)

Hey, I remember this thing, from an earlier vision!

Just stumbled across Scott Manley's vid on the Roton test vehicle.

The concept seems to have evolved a fair bit since the presentation at Making Orbit in... 1995?

Back then, the rotor was meant to be the entire lift system.  Yes.  No aerospike in the base, just the rotor.

If memory serves, the rotor was supposed to be somewhere around the middle, not the top.  It would act as a centrifugal propellant pump for the tip rockets.  And, as the air thinned, it would adjust its pitch from very shallow, with the rocket thrust serving to spin the rotor for aerodynamic lift, to very steep, with rocket thrust providing the lift and just enough angle to keep the rotor spinning for pump action.  I don't think emergency autorotation was part of the plan.

A spinoff (so to speak) concept was the spinny engine: an aerospike with canted combustion chambers and a big honkin' bearing in the middle (plus rotary plumbing arrangements), which, like the rotor, would be its own pump.  Should actually have been simpler than a bipropellant rotor, but still a bit of a nightmare.

The pseudo-aerospike, with a cluster of conventional little engines clustered around the rim of a truncated plug nozzle, was a largely unrelated concept that was making the rounds at about the same time.  I guess Rotary Rocket maybe picked up on it for the same reason it was being discussed, i.e., it would be more convenient to fabricate than a "real" aerospike?

And... there were suggestions of using Roton as a suborbital cargo vehicle, capable of making a round trip on a single fueling.  Obviously, for high-value, urgent cargo... or for high-value cargo that some third parties might want to interdict (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

Ah, the wild and crazy times of the mid- to late-1990s!

Bleah.

Had low-grade crud the past couple of days.

I think it's a combination of too much time indoors (in the nasty dry heating-season indoor air) and too much caffeine (the past couple of years, but especially the past month or so).  Maybe also too much nervous snacking.

I need to spend more time napping, so's I can taper off the caffeine, and also resume spending more time outdoors as weather permits.  (Sundry stuff does actually need doing out there, but not while there's snow on the ground.)

Maybe also get a much bigger humidifier.

Snow pics

A selection from the very local Great Outdoors these past couple of days:

Christmas morning!  I didn't expect Santa to have left anything in the mailbox overnight, but I was expecting to find a morning paper in the designated receptacle (it turned up the next morning, along with that day's edition).  That snow cap adds a few inches to the mailbox's height.

Now we're into Boxing Day.

Some critter's been bounding through the snow.  A bunny rabbit?  A very small Pierson's Puppeteer?  Something with a three-toed foot, two forward and one back?

It's truly amazing how cold weather can change the appearance of a humble mud puddle.

I wandered around the back lawn a bit, carrying a calibrated dipstick.  This was about typical: a bit under six inches.

And, as I post this, the air temperature is barely above freezing, but the snow on the back lawn has been melting enough that there are now exposed patches of grass.

Oh, and I'm reminded that snow blindness is a thing.  I don't seem to be in much danger of that, per se, but on my little outings the scenery can be so bright that my eyes can't fully adjust... and then they take a long time to recover when I'm back indoors.  I guess I should keep a pair of dark safety glasses (suitable for wearing over my regular glasses) handy near the exit.

Update:  No pics, but late in the afternoon one of the kids across the street was sledding behind an ATV, pursued by wolves a large playful dog, because 'MURRICA!

And, come night, the undisturbed snow outside the bedroom window was sparkling in the bright moonlight.

Seems this "winter" thing needs to be taken seriously around here.

Just back from fetching the paper.  Papers.  Yesterday's turned up too.

Long pants: check.  Boots: check.  Warm jacket: check.  Headlamp: check.  Ushanka: check.  Flaps fully deployed: check.  Nomex gloves: check.

Well, I didn't come down with frostbite nor actual hypothermia, but I did get rather chilled on that trudge.  Something to do with 6°F, I suppose.  At least there's no wind just now.  And the footing on the driveway is treacherous.  The snow on the gravel area got partly melted yesterday (especially where it had been trodden upon), and has subsequently refrozen (see: 6°F), so... yeah, regular boots, even with aggressive tread, just aren't the thing for walking on crunchy ice.

Supposed to get warmer the next few days, so I probably don't really need to search the closets and boxes for serious winter gear.

Rather a specialized music genre, innit?

Rock, Cornish, Gay Men's.

I'm sorry, I'll read that again: Rock Cornish Game Hens.  (Cue Angus Prune Tune.)

Thaw.  Stuff with cooked wild rice and herbs (plus oil and balsamic vinegar) and drape with Bacon! (Did I mention I'm not real big on dietary laws?)  Put in the oven at 350°F for the recommended time, then give 'em some extra time at reduced temperature to make sure they're cooked right through to the stuffing, 'cause we really don't want anyone getting sick just now.  Remove from oven and allow to cool for about the time it takes to nuke a bag of frozen green beans.  Serve, with plenty of napkins and bone bowls.

Comes the morning light

The world is covered in snow!

I think this may be my first ever snowy Christmas.  Not my first snowy morning, mind you, but I think all my past Christmases (Christmæ?) were in the Bay Area, sans snow.

The road has clearly been driven on, leaving an appalling icy-slushy-refreezy surface (outside air temperature now 18°F).  I wouldn't venture out on that without 4WD and really good tires and some pressing need.  The locals seem to be taking the same approach; traffic is very sparse, and moving very cautiously.  Also, as of 0800, the paper still wasn't here.  Maybe the paperboy can't get to the tauntaun stable?

And those turning-around tire tracks at the bottom of our driveway?  Might just be related to that stranded pickup truck across the road.  (Guessing by the additional tracks, it appears that someone with better traction came along and rescued the driver.)

Update:  Now there's a one-size-larger pickup truck come to the aid of the stranded one.  Meanwhile, there's at least one more stranded vehicle in view, just on that little stretch of road... and I think there's another at the intersection, and maybe also one hidden behind a house.

Not a good day for being out on the road.

Update 2:  A little before 1100, a snowplow went past!  Well, a pickup truck with a snowplow attachment on the front and a lot of rocks in the bed.  I didn't realize these roads got plowed; I assumed people mostly just waited a day for the snow to melt.  (Um.  Forecast for today is a high of 25°F; there may not be much melting happening.  Supposed to get well above freezing the next few days, though.)

Update 3:  Additional snow during the afternoon, fairly heavy at times.  That hadn't been in the forecast!  Around 1600ish, I stuck a probe in the fluffy powdery stuff on the back lawn: a bit over 8 inches.  Yesterday's winter weather alert said there might be an inch or three of snow accumulating... so I guess this is kind of unexpected?  Maybe Al Gore is in town?

Meanwhile in Nashville, it seems an RV blew up.  My first thought was of course "propane leak", but there are apparently strong signs that this was intentional.  Like, a computer-generated voice saying "I'm a thirty second bomb!" or something along those lines.  Word is that a big AT&T facility was damaged, and this is affecting telecomm infrastructure over rather a large area.  Like, possibly out to here.  Hm.  An attack on infrastructure, with a warning so as to avoid casualties.  Someone been reading Edward Abbey?

Ah, well.  The Sun doth set, outside air temperature is back down to 18°F, and dinner is in the oven.

One year ago...

... give or take an hour or so, we embarked on our migration.  Then, too, it was the morning after a dark and stormy night.

Monday will mark the anniversary of our arrival.

Yup, we're having weather all right.

Been rainy, and variably windy, most of the day.  A bit over an inch and a half of rain since midnight.

There was a break this afternoon... but the rain was resuming just as I headed down the driveway to fetch the mail.  At least I manged to return before the heavy rain resumed.

And, just now, the moderate rain gave way to snow.

If ya gotta go out tonight, make sure to install the snow hooves on your reindeer.

Update:  Just after dinner now, and we seem to have a couple of inches of snow on the ground, with more falling.  Weather map suggests the major snowfall is nearly past at this point.

Also, the lights have been flickering.  Back in Silicon Valley, this would likely portend a few hours of no electricity.  Here, the infrastructure seems to be better maintained (and repairs, when needed, happen faster).

Update 2:  Right around 2030, just after we'd wrapped up some (checks status... yeah, our part is done for now) important family-business paperless work (about which, more in January) via the Interwebs, the power went off... and stayed off, this time.  The KUB outage map looked like it had a serious case of rainbowpox — color-coded dots of various sizes all over the service area.  Repair crews must have been busier than a one-legged pony in a paper-kicking contest </biden>.  Our power came back up right around 2200, though the map still shows rather a lot of outages.

Come morning, electricity seems OK, but water pressure is low.  Once it gets light, I'll have to inspect the outside plumbing fixtures and make sure we don't have a leak.  Meanwhile, I've rebooted such computers as I need for now.

Weather station is reporting 19.9°F, brrrrr!

Turn off lights, look out office window: yes, the townsfolk have their power back, too.  Last night, all was dark across the road except for the cell tower and, oddly enough, a few sets of Christmas lights.  On battery backup?  Solar powered, so they necessarily run on battery power after dark?

Update 3:  Came time to rinse my breakfast dishes, about 0605, water pressure was back in the normal range.  Whew!  Maybe power had been out at the waterworks, leaving us on gravity feed from that tower off in the distance?

Time to put on my boots, winter jacket, and ushanka, go fetch the paper, and declare a new day.  (Sub-update:  As of 0620, the paper hadn't arrived yet.  The paperboy may be trying to put the snow tires on his bike, or round up a tauntaun.  It's definitely boots conditions out there, and maybe hobnailed boots would be more suitable than jungle boots.  Some critter left tracks across the lawn and driveway, and somebody used the end of our driveway to turn his vehicle around, leaving nasty icy tire tracks; did I mention that hobnailed boots would have come in handy, or perhaps footy?)

Ordering more stuff from Amazon, again...

Cheap white cotton gloves, sold by the bushel.  Inspection type.  Or, generally, meant for handling stuff that mustn't get finger grease on it.

'Tis not beyond possibility that I'll put some of them to the canonical use.  What I really want them for, in the near term, is keeping Bag Balm and such off my keyboard and mouse... because the skin of my hands has gotten really bad the past couple of days.  Not just the usual rough, dry fingertips; the backs of both hands feel like they've been in a grilling accident.  So, time for lots of moistifying goo, and some way of keeping it on my hands and off of the world at large.

Which, according to the product description, is a common use for such gloves.  Funny how that works out.

 

And: whole green chilis, pursuing a thought brought on by Gun Jesus remarking on burger toppings.  A whole green chili atop a burger?  Haven't done that in years.  Indeed, I'd entirely lost track of the concept.  A burger topped with a whole mild green chili is good.  So where can I get a can of them...?

Not the next grocery pickup; Kroger has never heard of such a thing.  Not Walmart; they carry diced green chilis (I think that's were my current inventory came from), but the whole ones don't seem to be a thing, at least not in any reasonable can size at any sane price.  Amazon?  A dozen little cans runs kinda pricey, but not outrageous.  Should get here sometime in earlyish January.  Ah, for the days when I could just buy such things at a grocery store on my way home from morning walkies!

 

Arriving today from Amazon: more saw blades, and a pair of chaps.  No, I didn't go shopping for chaps in a local kink shop.  These are bright greenish-yellow synthetic, not black leather, and they're sold as chainsaw protection, though the reviews say they're also thorn-resistant, which from my perspective is a huge plus.

Update:  Both of today's packages came by UPS... with a non-uniformed driver, in a blue Jeep Cherokee.  Nary a trace of Official UPS Brown to be seen.  UPS does seem to be putting on extra resources lately, but the packages are (at least here) showing up when they're supposed to.