Silicon Valley Redneck

Hot and tired already

0917, 75°F, and, yeah, hot and tired.

I just spent an hour going around the less-accessible areas of the Victory Garden with the mini-tiller.  Well, some of that time was spent lifting it out of soft spots, picking rocks out of its teeth, and so on.

I figure after 0800 on a workday, in an area where the houses are decently separated and well insulated against heat loss and, incidentally, against sound incursion, should be an acceptable time to fire up a noisy little yard appliance.  I don't aim to be the neighbor who mows his lawn at 3 AM on Sunday morn.

Filk fragment, not exactly related:

What do you do with a working farmer,
What do you do with a working farmer,
What do you do with a working farmer,
    Ear-ly in the morning?

Give him subsidies until he's idle,
Give him subsidies until he's idle,
Give him subsidies until he's idle,
    Ear-ly in the morning!

Hoo-boy, the corn price rises,
Hoo-boy, the corn price rises,
Hoo-boy, the corn price rises,
    On the way to famine!

Not out hitting the sales today

'Twas a day for yard work.  Again.

Morning, before I got all hot and tired: deploying the rest of the tomato cages - looks like I need to buy some more, and I should probably also buy several of those square, folding tomato towers for the future - and weeding and mulching.  Much more spreading of mulch will be called for; I didn't even finish putting the stuff around the bases of currently-identifiable plants (tomatoes, peppers, sweet potatoes, etc.).

Got some mowing done - not caught up, mind you, but this time of year there's no such thing as being caught up on mowing.

And, tilling.  A pass over the strip alongside the orchard (site of the 2020 victory garden), which will need at least one more pass in a couple of days or so.  A pass over the next large area of the New Victory Garden where I figure on doing some planting (there are also areas which require application of the mini-tiller, maybe tomorrow).

According to the clock, it's evening already.  Time to be fixing dinner - I think it'll be chicken with some kind of seasoning, with leftover butternut squash as a side dish.

Speaking of chicken, the li'l chickies graduated to a bigger cage... sort of.  They were looking awfully crowded in that bunny cage, so Joy set up a cat cage, which has much more room but bars that are farther apart... and it turns out that the two smallest ones (cinnamon queens, or chickmunks) are still small enough to fit between the bars.  I found a roll of fine-mesh anti-deer netting, and Joy wrapped some of that around the cage to keep the little critters in.

Could have been worse... and probably will be.

Mad scientists at work:

Gene-editing experiment turns fluffy hamsters into ‘aggressive’ mutant rage monsters

At least it was just hamsters, and a finite number of them.

Imagine if it had been tomatoes!

Warm out there.

Early, with minimal breeze: spray insecticide around the house & barn perimeters, and on wasp nesting sites in the vicinity.  Then spray herbicide in various areas that need it, in particular on the blackberry vines that are attempting to brambulate one of my walking paths.

Later: do some weeding down in the Victory Garden, realize that some of the tomato plants are well overdue for caging, fetch the cages, and set about coaxing the plants into them.  'Twas a struggle, and some of the plants lost minor stems, but the situation now seems to be under control (though I'll still need to deploy a few more cages and/or stakes within the next couple of weeks).

I got hot and tired doing the cages!  I think I'll do more weeding, and some mulching, this evening and/or tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, the squash and melon plants are coming up well, and the peas and beans are poking up little shoots.  I need to get their proper trellises deployed soon.  And the chicks are growing like weeds; they'll need transplanting to a larger cage soon, and I should probably be rounding up materials for their outdoor accommodations.

Resting and hydrating now.  Almost time to make a grocery run, then take an afternoon nap.

I question the timing

Spotted here:

If the timing is left unspecified, I'd hazard a guess that a lot more than two French kings bumped their heads against door frames while they were alive.

When basic laws of economics are broken....

I noticed a couple of examples back in the 1980s:

The Phone Company rolled out Touch-Tone™ dialing, a new technology that would save the company vast amounts of money on infrastructure buildout and operating costs compared to pulse dialing.  The new, cheaper-to-provide service cost more for residential customers to use than did the old service.  Wouldn't you think the company would jack up the price of the old service, to encourage migration to the new?  But, no.  I never did see the true explanation, but always assumed government regulation was forcing the irrational price structure.

Powder cocaine was, as ever, popular with the rich and famous.  But there was a new menace: crack cocaine!  This nearly-pure form of cocaine was selling for many times less per gram of product than was the powder (which was cut 10:1 or so with any cheap white powder that was handy).  Who the heck sells pure product at retail for less than a highly-diluted version?  And there must have been some mighty powerful enforcement to keep enterprising ghetto kids from buying cheap crack, grinding it up, diluting it with large amounts of confectioner's sugar, and selling it in upscale neighborhoods at a crazy markup; how could the government have turned a blind eye to such enforcement?

 

And now:

Retail food prices are through the roof.  Some items are scarce as well as expensive.  And yet: actually growing the food is becoming increasingly unprofitable; the costs of inputs (fertilizer, pesticides, Diesel) are up, retail prices of products are up, but it seems that the prices farmers can get for their crops and livestock are not even vaguely keeping pace.  Government price-stabilization programs left over from the New Deal working their magic?

You know it's a holiday weekend when...

Thursday, going on bedtime: the toilet in the middle bathroom isn't wanting to flush properly.  Shower seems to be draining fine, though.

Application of the toilet plunger doesn't work.  Water is draining slowly, so it's not a total clog, but proper flushes are not happening.  Try pouring in some drain-cleaner gel in hopes of softening the clog for later plungering.

Friday, early morning: still mostly clogged, and the plunger still isn't working.  Bring hither the snake!  Either the snake is the wrong tool for the job or my technique is faulty; it isn't making it past the bends to where the clog is.

Friday, slightly less early: now the toilet in the master bathroom isn't flushing.  Like, at all.  Guess the clog must be at the confluence of the drain pipes?

We've got someone coming at 1100 to discuss some minor bathroom repair/remodel work.  I'd been planning on making a post-office run before that, to pick up a parcel that wasn't delivered Wednesday.  Instead, it looks like we'll be trying to get an emergency plumber out here.

Update:  About 0556, as daylight was beginning to creep over the great outdoors and with the plumber not yet called, I heard a flushing sound.  Could this be good news?  Middle-bathroom toilet was empty.  Flushing it gave a proper flush.  Likewise the one in the master bathroom.  "A miracle happened!  I'm well!"

Anyway, looks like it's no longer an emergency.  Sometime soon, we really ought to get the septic system checked out and maybe some general plumbery-fixery done (there are a couple of annoyances that I really ought to be able to fix, but my back suggests otherwise, and besides I have plenty of other things to keep me occupied).

Update 2:  I did in fact make that post-office run, to pick up a rather small package (apparently the driver that day was afraid of gravel driveways or something).  The "facial coverings required" sign was gone, but one customer was wearing a disposable respirator.

The bathroom repair/remodel guy showed up on schedule, we agreed on a plan, and, once the factory turns out the required stuff, we'll be having the shower stall in the master bathroom fixed and upgraded (it's been out of service with a cracked pan since before we bought the place).

And, I made an early-afternoon Tractor Supply run for a sack of pelleted horse bedding (which we're hoping will make acceptable chick litter and not get all over the place, into food/water dishes, and so on) and another bag of chick feed (because they're consuming rapidly, and we'll need another bag in maybe a week).  It was surprisingly quiet there in terms of both customers and employees.

Other than that, not a very productive day: headache, fatigue, general crud, and a sense of maybe having some sort of vaguely-cold-like thing.

We got a total of 2 inches of rain Wednesday through Friday - most of it on Thursday - so it'll probably be a couple of days before I can apply the tiller to any of the soil that still needs it.  Meanwhile, there's plenty to be done.

Oh, and we seem to have made connections with a handyman who comes well recommended and is just launching his own business.  We may finally get that fancy custom-made interior door out of its crate in the garage and installed in its proper place!  And, if that goes well, we've got quite a list of projects....

Might turn into a product...?

Wall-mount, solid-state heat pump for chicken coops.

12V power, Peltier module sandwiched between, conceptually, two tallish CPU coolers (I think it ends up being 40mm heatsinks with fans and some custom ducting), and a controller to drive the module in either heat or cool mode and control the fans appropriately.  Some kind of communication interface for local or remote UI, and for coordinating multiple units if applicable.

I dunno, maybe somebody's already making ductless mini HVAC units for chicken coops, dollhouses, and the like.  (Insulating the walls in chickenproof fashion is another matter.)

... No, running it off a solar panel is probably not practical, especially in winter (when power will also be needed to keep the water from freezing, etc.).

Meanwhile:  A component needed for a different project turns out to be basically nonexistent.  What I'm looking for is a low-side inductive driver chip, about 8 channels, suitable for relays, solenoids, and such, rated for at least 12V loads and 100mA drive, with an SPI interface, fault detection and reporting, and compatible with 3.3V logic.  Having a PWM input would be a definite plus.

These used to be plentiful; now they're very much not.  Nearest approximation I can find is from TI, and it has a 5V logic interface and no PWM.  Oh, well: level shifters are still a thing, and I suppose I can take a different approach to modulating the solenoid supply voltage in the immediate application.

I can't entirely blame this on recent events; I already had two preferred parts of the general character go suddenly obsolete starting in maybe 2006 or thereabouts.  The best ones came from Infineon, and Infineon's product line ain't exactly stable.

Early to rise, late to bed...

... Is unsustainable.

Fuzzy-brained and headachey this morning.  Caffeine makes it worse.  Sugar makes it worse.

There's a package to be picked up at the post office, but I don't think that's a today thing, especially since the weather right now has somehow gone from a break in the storm, as forecast just a couple of hours ago, to a considerable amount of rain, with thunderstorms on the way.

(If this week's postal driver is afraid of gravel driveways, there'll be another package to pick up tomorrow anyway.)

Bleah.  Nap time.

Happy Towel Day!

Remember to have a towel with you today.  You never know when you may need to hitch a ride on a flying saucer, or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.

And, even should you find yourself in a particularly celebratory mood, never drink more than two Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters unless you are a thirty ton mega elephant with bronchial pneumonia.

Clickbait, translated

Seen on the Tweeter sidebar yesterday and today, under super-duper-TRENDY!!!!! things that everyone NEEDS to CLICK!!!11!

8 celebrities you didn't know were pansexual

Translation:  Here's a list of eight people I've probably never heard of and don't care about, but who are somehow connected to Show Biz, and who, contrary to all expectations for celebrities, will boink anything.

No, I didn't click the clickbait.  It's just kinda... interesting?... what clickbait Tw*tter's Totally Algorithmic And Unbiased Algorithm will pin in the suggestions.

Gotta upgrade the plant protection.

Baby artichokes like to be outdoors in spring, soaking up rays.

Alas, baby bunnies like to nibble on baby artichokes.

And, as I learned last year, baby bunnies can squeeze through the mesh of the basic chicken wire I used on the plant protective box.

Guess I should re-do the box using half-inch hardware cloth or similar.

This is Tuesday, isn't it?

Those li'l chickies that were so tiny on Saturday have been eating and growing, and I suspect that by the weekend they'll be ready to transplant to a bigger cage.  Soon thereafter, it'll be time to shop for duckies.

Some of the tomato plants out in the garden are growing quickly, too, and are about to need cages.  The plan calls for clearing the weeds around them, mulching the heck out of the surrounding area, putting in the cages, and soon putting in the drip irrigation system.

I did buy another couple of bales of pine shavings to use as mulch; it looks like a cheap, biodegradable material for the purpose, and I do have rather a lot of garden to cover.  Sometime before fall tilling I should round up some high-nitrogen fertilizer to compensate for the wood - and using clover for a winter cover crop shouldn't hurt.

The area that I didn't start tilling until last fall does seem to have a surfeit of Johnson grass, so another pass with the herbicide will be called for.  I think that end is where I'll put some late-season things that should help stop erosion and also maybe produce some crops eventually.

Ah, well.  Too muddy for much gardening today.  Better deal with various indoors stuff.

Additional:  The smallish food/water silos I bought for little birds in a little cage turn out to have some deficiencies as we're trying to use them, so I set about CADding up alternatives.  But, the design and the 3D printing parameters need fiddling, and dialing in, and... well, the critters are growing fast enough that it's probably not worth it; they'll graduate to a bigger cage before I get usable parts ready.  I could make the parts anyway, for duck use, but... probably not worthwhile.  Maybe I'll just create little tripod bases to raise the dispensers a bit higher above the level of the cage litter.

Oh, and I picked up some seed mix for a chicken garden; it seems like a good thing to include when preparing their outdoors run, and I suppose I could start some in a little plastic container, after the manner of kitty grass.

Monday Morning Mussorgsky

Straight up:

Goofy:

... No, we're not letting them dance on the living room floor.  The cats might just decide they were toys.

Jeepers creepers

Tractor Supply.

That's where I got these here peepers:

Ran down there yesterday afternoon in search of a starter set: half a dozen chickies of various egg-oriented breeds, suitably compact food & water dispensers, starter food, and bedding.  We already had the bunny cage, which seems like the right combination of being big enough for a few teeny flooves and having the bars close enough together to keep the critters from slipping out and chasing the cats.

Speaking of whom, the cats seem worried about the newcomers.  What are these things?  Are we supposed to be doing something about them?  (Top Hat seems least worried; she seem to figure the funny little things are just one more thing to watch.)

These specimens seemed perky enough in the store, but after the trip home they were acting very stressed and tended to take naps in the basic "dead bird" posture.  By early morning they'd perked back up, and now they're a lively bunch.  At least one has already gotten ambitious enough to fly up to the top of the food silo.

Once they grow a little, we'll move them to a larger cage (with greater bar spacing, hence not suitable for them at this point), and consider populating the bunny cage with duckies.

Meanwhile, time to go Read The Feathery Manual.

Google strikes again!

So, on my Android phone....

There's a screenful of app icons.  Actually, multiple such screens.

Across the bottom is a single row of app icons shared by all screens.  (I don't know what this is called, or maybe I could DuckDuckGo a solution to today's idiocy.)

Up until this afternoon, that row always contained the same five apps, with no apparent way to change them: Phone, Text, Gmail, Chrome, Camera.

Well.

As of this afternoon, the two on the left have gone dynamic, and I see no way to control what apps are there.  Very often, they're two of the same doggone thing.

Hello?  Mr. Google?  I would very much like to have Phone and Text in fixed locations again.  I don't like to have my apps rearranged at random.

Update:  While there doesn't appear to be any way to turn off this new "feature", I found what might be a long-term workaround.  For each unwanted app suggestion, press, hold, drag toward the top, and drag to "Don't suggest this app."  Repeat until something you want to keep turns up, then press, hold, and pin.  Maybe this will result in "Phone" and "Text" staying put here they used to be.

Also... just a little note to the loose cannons at Google?  Old people may be using Android phones.  They may not be able to deal with icons randomly moving around, disappearing from the visible menu, and so on.  This is dangerous.  If some oldster has an emergency and can't call for help because some idiotic software "feature" unexpectedly hid both of the icons used for initiating communication, I gorr-an-double-damn-tee the ambulance chasers will be lined up and drooling.

Ah, how the Horsemen stick together!

I remember, back when Pestilence showed up, thinking that Famine and War would surely follow, most likely in that order.

Now War is having a little romp in one corner of Europe... and, while disruption of Ukraine's agriculture is surely reducing the next crop, Tsar Vladimir's shipping blockade is already preventing the previous crop from going to places where it's needed, notably the poorer parts of Africa and Asia.

The ensuing regional outbreak of Famine will lead to further mass migration (facilitated, no doubt, by various government-sponsored transnational organizations)....

Latest thing in the headlines: monkeypox.  Hmmm.  Monkeypox.  Monkeypox*.

Ah, right.  Famine will make people more susceptible to various flavors of Pestilence, and drive people, including infected ones, to migrate to places where there's promise of food, bringing Pestilence along with them.  Refugee resettlement programs will hastily spread them everywhere, because it's so much better to move people around than to try to help them in situ.

(Those desperate masses trudging northward through the Darien Gap?  Some of them trudged all the way from Africa and Asia; apparently they have the miraculous power to trudge on water.  Expect more of this, especially after our tax dollars dollars conjured out of thin air go to building a highway through the Gap.)

And, looking back to yesterday evening's post: Famine brings War, which only makes things worse.  Round and round it goes....

 

* (Does best impression of Petey Otterloop pondering a wasp on a manhole cover, while being unable to dig up the strip in question.)

No true haircut

This seems like a false trichotomy:

It quite literally provides the poor nations of the world with their daily bread - without which their populations can either starve, riot or overthrow their governments.

Er.

If said populations do riot and/or overthrow their governments, they'll still starve.  So it's not a choice as stated; in the circumstance postulated, starvation is inevitable, while rioting and insurrection are optional in the meantime.

... Riot hard enough, I suppose, and maybe there'll be enough food for the survivors...?

A lurking danger

U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 5 begins thus:

Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members

Which has worked well enough so far, overall, and should continue to do so as long as a majority of each House is acting in good faith.

However.

Suppose... just for the sake of argument... that, by a simple majority vote, the House of Representatives determines that being a Party member in good standing is a required qualification for the position of Representative.  (Pick a party, any party.  Assume, if it helps, that the Potrzebie Party has somehow gained a majority in the House.)

Suddenly a temporary majority has become permanent one-party rule.  If the Potrzebie Party also controls the Senate at the same time, and likewise adopts such a rule there, that's the entire Legislative Branch forever controlled by one party - and by a party with enough party discipline to enact such a rule, which implies that removing an President, or other official, not of the Party would be a trivial matter.

Such an action would be completely nuts, and unspeakably destructive.  And yet... look at all the crazy things being done by politicians all over the world right now.  I don't think "acting in good faith" is a safe assumption, nor even "being minimally connected to reality".

Even the simplest things have user interfaces

As, come to think of it, Donald Norman expounded on in some depth.

This year, I decided to use store-boughten trellis netting for the various clambering legumes.  I'm now taking a break from setting up a few nets (15' long; 5' nominal height, though the T-posts I'm using only have 4' sticking up above ground).

The good: they're much easier to store and to carry around than the trellis material I used last year (which was salvaged hog wire).

The not-so-good: finding the corners is a pain.  The netting is made up of synthetic string, all white, all very similar looking, and it offers little in the way of clues as to what's a top or bottom, what's an end, and what's internal mesh.

Were I designing such a product for enhanced user experience, I'd make the perimeter strings conspicuously thicker than the internal mesh, and make the top and bottom strings a contrasting color.  (I'm not sure whether making the end strings a different contrasting color would be helpful, but it couldn't hurt.)

Or maybe make the horizontal strings a different color than the vertical ones?  Anything to help the user sort out which way is who.

Theoretically, this netting can maybe be packed up at the end of the season to be used again... though I'm not sure how it'll hold up to UV exposure.  I probably won't bother; methinks I'll look for other options that are a little easier to use and more practical to reuse.