Silicon Valley Redneck

Last year we had snow...

This year it's wind.

Abundant wind to fill Santa's sails, I guess.  Only it looks to be sticking around all day, long after it was needed.

Going on 0500, and the latest reading on the weather station is 18 MPH.  Eek?  Mornings are normally calm.  Forecast warns of gusts to 35 MPH later on.

Guess I should secure the flag and the garbage bin.  After I get dressed.

Update:  As of mid-morning, the wind is getting stronger and gustier, and the direction keeps changing... predominantly arriving from the Southwest, as usual, but occasionally from the South, the East, or the North.

If this isn't a coincidence, it's remarkably stupid.

I mentioned that the Newer Prius, originally registered to my father, is now in Joy's name?  Effective about a week ago?

We got two, count 'em, two postcards today urgently warning that the vehicle's warranty is about to expire.  (Methinks those warnings come a few years too late.)

They're addressed to my father, i.e., him as no longer owns the car.

Another task attended to

Fuel cans in the barn are now full of gasoline or Diesel, as appropriate.

Well... except the round Diesel can is down maybe a pint.  Probably rather less, I guess.  On the way home, I had to slow rather dramatically (what with a vehicle in front of me stopping suddenly), the cans went sliding around all higgledy-piggledy, and that one can fell over and spilled some of its contents all over the truck bed while rolling around.

Anyway, the fuel I expect to use come spring is now on hand, and, in a pinch, the gasoline nominally meant for the lawnmower can be used to run the generator and, I think, the Coleman stove and lantern.  (I really need to test the Coleman appliances with the local ethanol-free premium; they're supposed to work with circa-1990 unleaded, before the outbreak of oxygenation, so it's probably a fair match for what they were designed for.)

Some rainy day (most likely next week), I should dig out the vacuum sealer and the recently restocked supply of bags, and set about packing grains, dry legumes, and suchlike for enhanced shelf life.  And a rainy week-after-Christmas should be a good time for attending to some IT tasks that I've been neglecting.

Oh, and before the rain arrives I should finish setting up the new flagpole, and also move a bunch more stuff from barn to basement so as to have it there for unpacking ans sorting on rainy and/or cold days.

(I'd meant to take the fuel cans off for a fill-up a couple of days ago, but woke up that morning with a very sore right shoulder, which made the prospect of slinging 40-pound cans around rather less than appealing.)

Ah, the slow and inefficient workings of the rural bureaucracy

So, last Thursday, being the 16^th of the month, Joy went down to the county offices to do the paperwork for registering the Newer Prius in her name.

Today, being the 22nd, the certificate of title showed up in the mail.

Amid the holiday rush and all the crazy.

Apparently nobody told the county workers about the "slow and inefficient" thing.  Or maybe the county somehow manages to employ enough workers to get things done?  By skimping on high-paid DEI directors and such?  'Tis a mystery that surely passeth the understanding of the Enlightened.

Right, pull the other one.

Email received this morning:

From: Accounts <Accounts@powerdc.com.au>
To: (me, never mind the address)
Subject: Test Results

Dear Employee,
This letter is to inform you that you have been exposed to a coworker who tested positive for OMICRON variant of COVID-19 sometime between December 15th and December 19th 2021.
Please, take a look at the details in the attached document and put your signature on pages 1, 3.
Due to security reason password is 68104
Thanks you for your business

Er, yeah.

The HR department here isn't outsourced to somebody in Australia, sorry.  Certainly not to Mr. Accounts.

I'm quite certain that none of my coworkers tested positive for any such thing in that time frame, as none of them got tested at all.  Besides which, I don't think there's even a feline version of the test available.

And I'm not opening the attached .XLS file, not even with a non-Microsoft product.

Half an hour to winter

And, no sign of snow.

Last year we had an actual white Christmas (my first ever, as far as I can recall).  Looks like that's not happening this year... while the forecast calls for some bitter cold in the wee hours of Thursday morning, and a little bit of precipitation on Christmas morning, the two are not aligned - Christmas morning temperature is supposed to be in the low 50s.

Figures.  Now that we have a plausible slope for snow saucers (or snow tubes, or whatever the thing is nowadays), there's no snow in the forecast.

Sidenote:  Whatever became of aa.usno.navy.mil?  The name resolves, a route seems to exist, but the host doesn't answer.

Right to Repair: not just an issue for geeks and farmers

Seems the Navy has an RtR problem, too.

According to this, one of the many problems with the Little Crappy Ship is that, somehow, the Navy doesn't have the rights to the tech incorporated in its fancy boats, nor the documentation needed to perform various sorts of repairs and maintenance.  Which suggests that the government didn't exactly have competent contract negotiators, or maybe that the supply chain has a pass-through licensing problem. Possibly both.

Y'know, on every custom development project I've worked on, the client was supposed to end up with a full design and documentation package.  So I (and whatever company I might have been working for) could go on to other work.

(And from the main part of the vid, it sounds remarkably like LCS maintenance is a complete ongoing fiasco.)

No user-serviceable parts inside

Between me being lazy and the bathroom mirror being a bit far away for proper use of a face-scraper, I've been largely relying on a several-year-old Panasonic cordless face-buzzer for whisker abatement of late.

Well, the batteries in those things do get old, and, while I get a few days of shaving between 100% charge and 50% charge, it's started going from 50% to zero in nothing flat.

Maybe I can replace the battery?  Probably one cell, lithium-ion, most likely an 18650 like everything else uses.  Almost certainly the tabbed kind, and I don't have a spot welder to attach tabs to a new battery, but I'm sure I can come up with some low-temperature solder (e.g., tin-bismuth plus a bit of indium, or even just a bit of lead - I understand that lead contamination in tin-bismuth solder can result in unexpectedly low melting points - don't want to use gallium, as the result might end up melting on a warm day).

So, how to open this thing?

... Oh.  However the front and back of the shell are fastened together, it seems to be covered up by the rubbery grippy bit.  Overmolded, or just glued on?  I dunno, and I don't feel like attacking it just now.  Maybe another time, and in the meantime I guess I'll just get in the habit of charging the thing more often.

So many things nowadays are just not repair-friendly.

Stark staring bonkers

Headline:

Pfizer Announces Vaccine Provides Insufficient Protection for Young Children

WTAF?  This is with regard to SARS-CoV-2, no?  Indeed it is.

Don't most children have sufficient protection without the not-a-vaccine?

But that's not good enough.  The Not-A-Vaxx produces an unsatisfactory immune response in wee tykes, so the trial must be modified to accommodate a three-dose regimen.

For a virus that's basically no threat at all to the young.

Insect fornicating tree seeds, is what.

Update:  Also, two out of three judges on an appellate court panel believe it's absolutely essential to the survival of Civilization itself that the executive branch have unfettered dictatorial powers for the duration of the Permanent State of Emergency.

Update 2:  Live coverage

Delta Thing

No, not that Delta Thing.  The kitchen faucet.  Which, based on trying to match pictures on Lowe's, was made by Delta.

It's developed a drip.

Well, now that I've (I think) identified it, I've ordered the appropriate (I hope) repair kit, so I should be able to fix it.

Maybe I should also try to scare up a replacement for the side spray, which failed shortly after we moved in.  And I should probably also identify the bathroom faucets and get repair kits for those, so as to have them on hand for when they're, inevitably, needed.

Catching up on paperwork

Shortly after the move, I went down to the county courthouse (the quaint brick building with the Dolly Parton statue in front of it) and re-registered the Venerable Prius.

The Newer Prius, being registered in my father's name, would be somewhat more complicated, and before we got around to dealing with it there was a dangerous flu making the rounds, then the Pestilence arrived, and we were very busy making preparations, and then we were pretty much sheltering in place and definitely not going into offices if we could possibly avoid it.

Well, my father's insurance company, being back in California, finally got around to noticing that his address had changed and the car was perhaps out of their jurisdiction, and wanted clarification.  Now, like.

After a bit of a scramble, the car is now duly registered here, in Joy's name (it's been her car in practical terms for something like three years now; this makes it official) and on my insurance, with my father's insurance being now cancelled.  Which will save him a fair bit of money every year, given the cost of auto insurance with a 90-year-old on the policy.

Real Soon Now, I gotta catch up on some stuff with the county revenooers.  Find out what became of the missing property tax bills, and get them some information on agricultural use of the Westward Expansion, 'cause that agricultural use makes a big difference on property taxes.

Electronics supply chain: well and truly hosed.

We can't even blame it on the Wing Bat Flu; this kind of thing was already happening back in 2017, but not as often.  Now...

Well, if you're trying to manufacture an existing subsystem, designed a few years back, and you didn't lay in a lifetime (or at least lifecycle) supply of parts, then you've got a problem.  ToasterCo has been having problems with FPGAs, EMI filter components, and now differential line receivers.

When I designed in that part, if memory serves, there were multiple vendors.  Now, if you go looking for a quad RS-422 line receiver chip in a 16-lead TSSOP and taking a 3.3V supply, you'll find the one I designed in (from TI, with a legacy non-TI part number), which is currently back-ordered out to forever; one from Intersil, probably compatible but also back-ordered; and one from Maxim, which is available in modest quantities and has better DC specs, but which is very pricey and uses a different enable scheme, so it'd require a patch wire.

Apparently the whole supply chain has been increasingly Just-In-Time-ified for quite some time now, so any little spike in supply, even absent a problem with production, means customers for parts end up waiting several months for more parts to be made and stocked.  And the actual part manufacturing isn't geared up for make-on-demand or anything; from the lead times, it appears that there's a set production schedule, and any given part is made but once per year.

So... nightmare for anyone trying to make tech stuff.  If you're designing a new product, maybe you can design around parts that are available and buy a year's supply up front, but that requires a pretty big budget, especially if you're a startup (double-especially if demand for the new product is hard to predict, which is always).  If you're trying to manufacture more of an existing product, you need to have your own parts warehouse, and buy parts when the buyin's good.  Either way, it ties up more capital, and creates inefficiency (which, after all, is why JIT has been a thing).

Groan.  Maybe (as a result of ensuing inefficiency) a bunch of excess inventory ends up on the gray market... but I don't think ToasterCo wants to build product with chips of uncertain provenance.

Afterthought:  As manufacturing companies that do have working capital adjust to this, it'll make the problem worse by increasing demand for parts from the normal supply chain, while adding a time-lagged supply of gray-market parts that responsible manufacturers will shun if possible - basically snapping up unusually large quantities of parts up front, when supplies are already tight.  Meanwhile, companies like Digi-Key have long since gone respectable, and only sell parts of known provenance, so now we have to look for the next generation of not-quite-respectable low-volume parts brokers to spring up.

Afterthought 2:  The demand surge is kind of like what happens with toilet paper, except that for the most part no matter how much toilet paper you buy, you'll eventually use it.  Anyway, the credible hint of a shortage leads to stocking up, which creates an actual shortage even if there wasn't one to begin with.  Also, toilet paper is constantly being manufactured, so it's not like distributors have to await production of the next scheduled batch (currently on the calendar for 84 weeks from now).

Huntin' cat needs additional training.

Back when Top Hat was a kitten, she liked to play fetch; I speculated that she could be trained as a retriever.

Well, she abandoned that hobby, but just now she came to full alert and pointed out my office window; turns out she'd spotted two head of venison.

However... 'twas two head, no antlers, and as I understand it antlerless deer are not currently in season.  They seem to know it, too; they crossed the front lawn in no particular hurry, then crossed it again in the opposite direction, with one pausing to peer in the window.

Oh, great. Another shopping challenge.

So we have this multi-function pot thingy with an accessory lid for air-frying....

But, when (well over a year ago, now) I contemplated actually using the air-frying feature, I consulted the instructions and found that the capacity was very limited indeed, so, given the batch size and the time per batch, attempting to "fry" up a mess of breaded catfish (or whatever it was) for the family dinner would take a very long time, and the first batch would be at room temperature long before the last batch was ready.  So much for that idea.

Then, a few days ago, I encountered this video: oh, look!  An air fryer is just a baby convection oven with some rebranding!  And... I had been vaguely pondering a countertop convection oven, to displace the bargain-basement broiler oven and provide some extra capabilities.  The broiler oven can be repurposed for lab uses.

So, shopping.  Look on line for countertop convection ovens.  So shiny!  And many of them are identified as having air-frying capability and/or have air-frying cycles!  But the reviews, well, those are awfully mixed.

Seems that the ones in the ordinary-consumer price range may be well designed, but the quality control may not be there.  This includes some high-profile brands.  At one point, I was looking at a listing for something that had all the right specs and mostly glowing reviews, but it was some brand I'd never heard of and I was kind of suspecting astroturf.

So, more research.  It's meant to be a Christmas present to myself (I expect Joy will also get some use out of it), but it could end up being more of a New Year's present.

... This reminds me: I need to measure the nuker nook and see what's the biggest Panasonic inverter-type nuker that'll fit there.  The one that came with the house is some random brand conventional type, and the many-second PWM cycle for the "power" control makes it highly suboptimal for just warming things up a little.

Update:  Ended up ordering a Kitchenaid convection oven with explicit air-frying capability.  Decent number of reviews, only 1% of them terrible, which puts it way ahead of most of the others, including upmarket brands.  Seems to have pretty much the capabilities I want.  Supposed to arrive Friday, but presumably not by air.

Update 2:  The "convection bake" feature is good for heating up basic hot lunches (burrito, meatball sandwich, that sort of thing).

I've tried the "air fry" setting (basically the same thing, but hotter) twice now.  Frozen breaded fish portions come out considerably better than in a regular oven, and don't need to be turned.  And, I just tried a personal-size pizza, cooked on a screen.  The results were highly promising, though I should have rotated it halfway through and I definitely should have made the crust thinner (it came out thick and chewy, when I was aiming for something vaguely crispy-ish; a screen in a convection oven is not the same as a preheated stone in a very hot regular oven).

Anyway, it's a useful addition to the kitchen, and I'll be browsing through a couple of specialty cookbooks for further inspiration.  Next time we're in the market for a full-sized electric oven, I'll certainly look for options with the convection feature.

Update 3:  Air-frying basic breaded chicken strips (cut up chicken thigh meat, paprika, flour, and a bit of oil) works better'n any alternative short of actual deep-frying, and doesn't have the inconvenience of maintaining a large supply of frying oil.  (I used to have a deep fryer, and kept a jug of used oil in the refrigerator, just for cooking squid.  Maybe I'll do that again someday, especially if I find a local source for squid tentacles, which make a fine treat for Halloween parties or fannish gatherings.  My tentacle supplier from back in the day is both far from here and no longer in business.)

... Yeah, normally breaded chicken strips would have salt added, but we've got my father on a low-sodium diet now.  And I didn't get fancy with the breading because it was getting late and I was in a hurry.

Technically true...

"Compulsory administration of the COVID-19 vaccines does not violate the Nuremberg Code, because it's not an experiment."

Well, yeah.  The medical(?) products involved have not made it through the testing ordinarily required to approve such things for widespread distribution, so the experimental phase of the lifecycle has not been completed, but...

... But, indeed, it's not an experiment, because nobody's minding the results.  There's no hypothesis being tested.  There's no gathering of information supporting or refuting the hypothesis.  Even to the extent that results are visible, they have no effect on policy.  Ergo, no experiment.

Unless it's an experiment on just how far and how fast society can be pushed into conformity with Decreed Policies.

So, Monday.

So very Monday.

The good news is, my father is back at home.

The Monday aspect: we were at the hospital from 0900ish to 1430ish.  I hadn't had lunch (normally around 1030).  Joy hadn't even had breakfast.  Neither of us had gotten anywhere near enough sleep.  (As usual, I woke up at Fur O' Clock, when the alarm cat went off.  Unfortunately, that was 0300 today.)  The last couple of hours of waiting turned out to be the result of a miscommunication somewhere.

And the patient will require pretty much constant supervision for the next couple of days, on account of we still don't have an explanation for why he fell down, not why his blood pressure was so high, and he's still a bit wobbly.

Mnfxt.  Still need to round up all the garbage and haul the bin down to the road, before it gets dark out there.

How to tell a human from a robot

Assignment: minimize human suffering.

Robot: STERILIZE IMPERFECTIONS.  KILL ALL HUMANS.

Alleged human: What the robot said.

OK, so maybe that test doesn't work.  Or maybe academia is infested with non-humans.  (See also: ESR's interpretation of "lizard people" as a metaphor for our sociopathic overlords.)

The best-laid schemes of pan-dimensional beings...

So here I was, with sundry tasks planned for Sunday.  Planting the new flagpole, doing some tractor work, and whatnot.

In the wee hours of the morning, my father fell down again.  This means a trip to the emergency department, though this time we took him there ourselves rather than calling an ambulance.

Er.  Wee hours of Sunday morning is, from a night-owl's perspective, the same thing as late Saturday night, isn't it?  What time do the bars close?  Just how busy will the emergency department be?

As it turns out, not very.  By the time I'd parked the car, Joy had taken him straight to the check-in desk, and they were ready to whisk him off to a room.  A few minutes after that, he was whisked off for a CT scan.

Anyway, Joy and I were there for about three hours.  My father will be there at least until Monday; they're still running tests, and they want to do another CT scan Monday morning to see if his recurring brain bleed is going to be a problem this time or if it's going to stabilize again.

Meanwhile, it's time to resume my interrupted sleep.  I presume the doctor won't call for at least a couple of hours yet.

Update:  Didn't actually get much additional sleep.  Attempted one smallish project, and managed to botch it; it may yet be salvageable, or maybe I'll have to start over.  As of 1830, the emergency department reports that my father's condition (including a followup CT scan) hasn't changed much; we're supposed to stop by tomorrow morning and try to get a report from the doctor.

Title from Robert Burns by way of Douglas Adams, obviously.  Maybe Steinbeck was in there too, unless it was Batman.

I can't keep up with this....

I'd encountered (at something beyond second hand*) the slogan: Drinka Pinta Milka Day.

Apparently the more recent recommendation, from a calcium perspective, was: Make that a pintana half.  Three cups, like.

And now, it seems, the recommendation is about to change again, to: Who needs milk, anyway?  Maybe this is based on actual nutritional research.  Maybe it's based on Saving The Planet.  Who cares what the basis is?  Our Betters are about to speak, and Oceania has always been at war with milk.

* In an Asterix comic, translated from French to British, in a Roman setting, and presumably having little or nothing to do with the original French: Drinka Jara Wina Day.

Two unusual vehicles, like and yet unlike.

Spotted in Maryland:

Spotted in Novosibirsk:

Some people are artistically weird... some are just weird.