Silicon Valley Redneck

And a Mondayish Tuesday to boot.

Well, not entirely Mondayish.  I did in fact get some useful work done.

But then... I went to test some additional aspects of the toaster project.  This involved, among other things, using the comm test program, which runs on the loaner PC.

After a while, the program got wedged.  I killed it and restarted it.  Strange error messages ensued, with a vague hint of "maybe you should reboot it, like a good little Windows user."  OK, so tell it to go reboot itself.

Win 10 hadn't had an opportunity to update itself in a few years.  It gave me the "0% updated, please don't turn me off."  Half an hour later, 21%.  Several minutes after that, it commenced rebooting.

I think it did, anyway.  Did something vaguely suggestive of maybe a reboot, and the screen went blank.  Maybe the screen just went blank because the screen-blanking time had run out.  Anyway, it went blank and stayed blank.  No output on the VGA port either.  But the disk activity light is on, and occasionally blinking.  So maybe it's still installing updates?

Well, I don't think I'll be getting much more work done today; it kinda depends on that PC being operational.  I hope it'll come back eventually.

Time to figure out what's for dinner.

A very Monday sort of Monday

The Mondayness actually started around 2200 last night; I'd been asleep for maybe an hour when Joy injured a finger while packing up holiday decorations and thought a ride to the ER might be a good idea.

Eep.  Try to get awake enough to drive....

Set course for UT Medical Center, hoping we won't have to wait many hours.  About the midway point, see an urgent care place - obviously closed for the night.  But there's another one, just ahead!  Pull into the parking lot: nope, also closed.

However, at this point Joy decides that the bleeding has diminished to the point it's maybe not so urgent, never mind an emergency, and she really doesn't want to sit around indefinitely in that waiting room, so we head back home for some home bandaging and we'll see what the new day brings.

Morning... I need to sleep in, but can't.  Joy seems to be doing better, but really needs to sleep in, and can.  Tend critters, fix breakfast (including BACON!, whereof course Southmoon demands a share), attend to father, make a grocery run because Joy most urgently needs ice cream and a few other things are creeping up the need-soon list.

Have a rather nonproductive day, overall.  And the afternoon brings a USPS mystery!  Informed Delivery shows three packages delivered here (confirmed) and one available for pickup... at the originating post office... in Maryland.  Huh?

Joy spent rather a long time on the phone with a negatively-useful USPS phone bot (I'm beginning to suspect someone told the Legions of the Damned to learn to code), but now seems to be talking to an actual human-type person, trying to determine what the heck happened.

(Apparently the package in question should contain some sort of ornament, not something awkward like a herd of live goats.)

Ah, well.  Almost time to button up the coop and fix dinner.  Dinner tonight is going to have to be something easy and not demanding of attention, 'cause I'm still not exactly focusing.  And meanwhile ToasterCo is running into issues on the new model that I thought we'd fixed on the previous one, so maybe the fixes in the FPGA code didn't propagate...?  Anyway, I don't think I'll be able to make sense of that before morning.

Sneaky chemicals

Some substances are just escape artists.

Usually they eat their way through containers, but not always.

I just went out to the garage to refresh my memory on the presence, or lack thereof, of brazing materials.

I found silver brazing wire, and a jar of corresponding flux.

Turns out the flux had been leaking out of its jar.

Out the top of the jar.

The jar, having been opened once, had been sitting there upright for a couple of years.  The flux had somehow been managing to creep up the inside and out under the cap.

I think it needs some sort of secondary containment.

Saturday morning. Much to do.

And... I woke up with a headache.  Adding caffeine made it worse.  I really should go back to bed, but can't for at least a couple of hours.

Those flashbacks that started Wednesday night are continuing.  Making me ponder, in many aspects, the Trousers of Time, and how a slight change in, say, 1976 could have drastically altered the course of my life - in ways somewhat predictable, in general terms, for the following couple of years and filled with unknowable possibilities both good and ill thereafter.

No, this is not a subject about which I'm prepared to elaborate under my own name.  It would need to be thoroughly laundered and published as fiction.

Anyway... got toaster stuff to work on over the weekend, and into the coming week.  I didn't get nearly enough done yesterday.  And the household to-do list keeps getting more longer than shorter.

Mnfxt.  Headache getting more worser.  Need nap.  Various cats are misbehaving.

It's Friday, isn't it?

Must be Friday; I'm wearing a Hawaiian shirt.  That's a pretty good sign.  Otherwise, the days tend to get all scrambled.

Had to do some further setting up for the ToasterCo project: communication didn't appear to be happening, so I figured I should connect the serial console to the loaner PC and have it and the comm test program in the same place.

So, install TeraTerm.  Find a couple of USB extension cables and string them from the PC to the work table.  Plug in the serial dongle.

Windows can't find the driver.  It needs an Internet connection.  Grrrr... find a Cat 6 cable of suitable length.  Connect it.  Fiddle with... wait... find where this flavor of Windows keeps those settings, then fiddle the settings from what worked with the odd-hack 2019 network configuration to the current slightly less odd configuration.  Unplug and replug the dongle.  Shows up as a Prolific PL2303, which makes sense; I bought a few non-FTDI serial dongles because the FTDI driver on Linux conflicts with using FTDI-based non-UART dongles.  Try to use it; it doesn't work, and I notice that to the COM3: name is appended a message about it not being a genuine Prolific chip.  Guess somebody sole me a Prochoicic chip somewhere along the line; plays nice with Linux, but not with the official driver.  Dig around in the storage bins for another dongle: this one works.

Step away from the tech stuff and make a shopping run: Home Depot (for a top rail for a shelving system, which somehow I'd forgotten to buy along with the rails and whatnot) and Walmart (for various stuff, including a bargain on a bunch of 12 quart storage bins).

Let the indoors chicken play with the rest of the flock on the lawn for a while, meanwhile (while Joy guards them) replacing the soiled coop-straw with fresh and hauling the old stuff down to the compost heap.

Remainder of the day... aside from fixing dinner and whatnot, I need to run some sort of comm test on that toaster setup and poke things with a scope to get a handle on what's going on.  I hope I just have a wire wrong somewhere.

 

Oh, yes: dinner.  Reminds me that yesterday I made my first batch of from-scratch biscuits in living memory.  Found a basic recipe on line, substituted white whole wheat flour for regular flour, substituted butter for "shortening", and went for it.  Came out basically OK, though I think the recipe needs some fiddling to accommodate whole wheat. Anyway, it worked a heck of a lot better than the recipe on the Bisquick box.

There's always another rabbit hole.

Just went off on a tangent, pondering chicken-coop electronics.

What extra features should a chicken-coop controller include?

How about a few outputs for RC servos, to control adjustable vents according to indoor and outdoor temperature?

And... also relating to vents... is there some handy sensor module for monitoring ammonia?

Seems to be a thing called an MQ-137.  On the other hand: the cheap & plentiful MQ-135 air quality sensor picks up ammonia among other nasties, so maybe that's the right choice.  If the air is getting too stinky, favor keeping vents open and alert the stable boy.

Setting this aside for now.  Got another MQ-something sensor project in the queue, for monitoring fumes in the flammables-storage area.  Now, there's plenty of other stuff I'm supposed to be doing.

Disturbed morning

Semi-awake at 0130, having not-fun flashbacks to high school and college years.  Could be the basis for an essay, not under my own name, in response to this, that, and the other tweet... but that's not how Twitter works - neither the essay part nor the convergent response part*.

Couldn't get back to sleep.  So, crawl out of bed and read some Internets.  Then back to bed.  Up again around 0430, and... still not properly awake.

The gray morning outside the window probably isn't helping.  Another caffeine booster would likely be counterproductive.

I suspect what I really need is a nice long walk after breakfast, but, given the current household situation, that ain't happening.

* I suppose there might be a way to structure a response thread, but Twitter is basically a colossal time sink - something I need like a hole in the head - and I have no intention of putting in the time to learn the platform, especially when it's an ever-shifting target and besides I could be learning KiCad and FreeCAD, or even working on stuff I get paid for.

Windy

Windy early this morning, unexpectedly.  Took shingles off the garage this time.  The roofer hasn't gotten back to us yet with a quote on reroofing the front side properly.  Maybe we can get him out here before the next major rain to do some patching again.

Now we're getting into afternoon, and the expected wind is showing up.

In between, and after the morning rain stopped, I did some cleaning up in the kitchen chicken pen: moved the inside stepping stones slightly away from the gate, to remove a pinch hazard, and hauled a bunch of spilled food-pellet residue off to compost.  Dealing with little bitty bits of the toaster project.  Juggling household matters.

Boredom isn't a thing.

Correction:  It seems my fingers misheard "chicken" as "kitchen" when I was typing the original post.  Maybe I should get their ears checked.

How did it get to be Wednesday already?

Oh, right: Tuesday got busy.

I don't actually remember what happened to the morning.  Probably just the usual household schedule-clutter.  Oh, I did get the humidifier back in action, including assembling a cover for the place where the tank goes, so I can keep Huckleberry from drinking from the base of the unit while I'm filling the tank; this allows me to use the bacteriostatic additive, which I'm sure isn't good for cats.

The afternoon... I got a somewhat late start on errands, mainly a trip to Knoxville Seed.  This year's seeds are just starting to filter in; I bought a modest selection, plus various sprouting trays and medium-small pots.  I still need to order some things from Burpee, though, at Burpee prices.  Local seed company is much cheaper, for the things they have.

Then home, find that ToasterCo needed some of my attention (which ended up mixed in with the remainder of the day's activities), and Joy wanted to give all the chickens some lawn time, then it was time to fix dinner, then it was getting awfully late, so just a little bit of winding-down time.

Oh, yes: in an effort to calm down the feuding felines, Joy had been spritzing a little bit of cat-calming spray around the house.  Yesterday, she got a couple of plug-in dispensers for the stuff.  ACKTPBBBT!  The fumes built up... and built up... all the while, I was in my office with the door closed, and assumed the smell was some transient thing from a household cleaning product, but no.  Eyes stinging, difficulty breathing... out with those things!  Open the sliding door and a window or two; turn on various vent fans.

Time to finish waking up, bake some blueberry muffins, and confront the day.

Busy, mixed-up Monday

Start the day early, with a headache.  Go back to bed.  Start the day again, this time late, still with a headache.

Joy's car had that flat tire... since Wednesday afternoon, the tire in question had leaked down from 35 PSI to 9-ish.  Not a catastrophic leak, but bad enough.  Sidewalls of all four tires were looking kinda old... like, there was still tread on the tires, but, the car not having gotten many miles per year on it since the tires were new, the rubber had been gradually deteriorating.  So, definitely time to replace all four.

Joy had looked on  the 'Net last night, and found that Smoky Mountain Auto Service & Tires got good reviews; she called up this morning, specified what car and what size tires it had on it, and got a quote that sounded reasonable enough.  Wait for the call that the tires were in; drop off the car; late afternoon, get the call to retrieve it.  All seems to be in order.  We're thinking we might take the cars there, rather than to the distant dealership, for routine stuff: if nothing else, it's much more convenient.  And... maybe that's the place to take the truck for various fiddly stuff it needs.

Meanwhile, toaster stuff.  Gotta make a special comm cable, so scare up connector pinouts and dig out the medium-sized box of Cat 5 cable - it doesn't really require Cat 5, but that's what's handy for a couple of twisted pairs plus a signal ground.  Cut off four fathoms - that'll reach; no need for the full fathom five - and find the connectors.

Well, the headache is mostly gone.  Gotta put in some more productivity on the toaster thing, and sometime soon mount a temperature/humidity meter in the sprouting cabinet (magnetic mount to a steel right-angle bracket, I think), finish skinning it, and go see what the seed company has to offer in the way of pepper and tomato seeds before putting in the inevitable Burpee order.

Not the most productive day ever.

Sprouting cabinet is finished, including wiring up the grow lights, except for putting the plastic film on the door and the top.

Two of the defrosted chickens are back outside.  The remaining one remains indoors, and we brought in the other of the same breed to keep her company.  The one we brought in seems to think her mission is bullying rather than keeping company.

(All three defrostees were temporarily outdoors while Joy cleaned up the cage area.  There were henfights as they reëstablished the pecking order.  Then, come birdie bedtime, the two we're leaving out there didn't want to go in the coop; they were looking at the house.  I had to put them in the coop so I could close it up.  They, by the way, hold the top two positions in the social hierarchy.)

I didn't manage to dig out the special interface cable I'll be needing to use that ToasterCo PC that I dusted off.  I have a pretty good idea which storage bin it's in, but now I'm into winding-down time, and wasting the evening watching the latest from Sacred Cow Shipyards, as the Dockmaster cubifies The Attack of the Killer Yamato or whatever - an entertaining takedown, though I'm not into the anime thing (not even live-action anime), but I don't think I'll really be watching the whole 2+ hours.  Wasted too much time already today, and my bedtime approacheth.

Update:  One more thing accomplished.  Got the fireproof hard drive - now a fireproof SSD - reconnected to the mini-server, and NFS resynchronized so the other machines can see the new drive as the old one was.  Oh, and the script that backs stuff up is now re-enabled in crontab.

I should still write a backup-local-/home script for each machine, to ensure that local user data on each machine gets mirrored on /fireproof/local.$HOSTNAME/ in case of local failure.

Found a PS/2 keyboard!

Yay!  It was in one of the innumerable small moving boxes remaining in the barn, along with a couple of USB keyboards and a bunch of other stuff.

And now I remember about those AT keybooards: I snarfed those up, back in the day, because they have the XT/AT mode switch.  XT mode was simple, and the interface could easily be implemented in TTL chips, back in the days when microcontrollers were yet luxury items.

If memory serves, AT mode is the same as PS/2 except for the connector, but I don't know as I have any adapters that run that way, and if I do I don't know where to find them.

Anyway, keyboard.  Plug it in to the ToasterCo loaner Windows box.  Turn on power.  BIOS error screen comes up on the VGA monitor.  Press F5 for onboard diagnostics.  It acts like I'd pressed F1 to continue: boots up Windows.  OK, then.

Windows doesn't recognize the PS/2 keyboard.  Select port 4 on the KVM switch: now my USB keyboard and mouse drive it.  And, I do indeed have the password!

Connect the HDMI cable + adapter to the DisplayPort: main monitor is now the right-hand display for Windows.  Cool.  Guess it's just the BIOS that doesn't like DisplayPort nor USB.

Fiddle around a little, disconnect the VGA cable, and reboot.  Comes up as it should.

Needs connecting to the under-desk network, and installation of the software for the new project.  I'm assuming that will go more or less smoothly.

Time go play Easter Bunny.  Lenin's Deathday Bunny.  One of those things.

Later that same day...

Project for ToasterCo is definitely coming back to life, with some urgency.

Next phase calls for dusting off a loaner PC, running Windows, with a specialty interface card installed.

Find PC: easy; already found.

Realize that it needs to be at my desk, not the workbench, so instead of plugging into the brand-new USB/VGA KVM switch I bought for the lab it needs to plug into the somewhat-newish USB/HDMI switch.

Hm.  It's a business PC, so it has a DisplayPort output, not HDMI.  Crudsicle.  Well, I should have some manner of DisplayPort stuff around here - meanwhile, order a few adapters from Amazon, since I'm planning to repurpose some refurb business PCs for lab and office use.

Find a DisplayPort cable... and a DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter.  Great!  Connect to the office KVM switch, select that port, turn on....

The lights indicate that power is on, but it doesn't make booting noises nor does anything turn up on the display.  Not configured to use DisplayPort?  Some incompatibility with my monitor, or with the switch?  Try using an actual DisplayPort cable, without the switch.  Figure out how to make the monitor listen to that input.  Same thing, or same nothing.

Down to the basement for an older monitor.  Find a suitably long VGA cable.  Hook stuff up.  Turn PC on.

Ah.  On the VGA, if gives various BIOS errors: things missing or not connected, or maybe it's not configured right, or maybe the BIOS data-retention battery, or supercap, or whatever got all run down in the 3½ years it's been unplugged?

Says F1 to continue, F2 or F5 for other stuff.  Does not respond to the keyboard.

Which... again, business PC.  Has PS/2 ports.  Maybe the BIOS doesn't speak USB by default?  Needs a PS/2 keyboard and maybe mouse?

Have to search the barn; I should have such things in one moving box or another.  Meanwhile order one of each from Amazon, for Wednesday delivery.  Once again: planning to work with some business-PC refurbs, so I should be sure to have spare PS/2 stuff around.

Ah, well.  Off to look for stuff.

Update:  Found three, count 'em, three AT keyboards.  A little too vintage.  Also a pair of ¼-scale cannon wheels, various homebrew computers from the 70s and 80s, the box that probably should have the laser power meter in it, the tile saw, and various other Stuff.  But nary a PS/2 peripheral.  Surely I had some that were still in working order and got packed for the move... hm.  But I'm probably looking for a mini keyboard, which could be better hidden; I think my last full-size PS/2 keyboard may actually have worn out.

Well, maybe during tomorrow's mostly sunny afternoon, assuming the forecast is correct, I'll do some more searching.  It's getting a mite dim out there, and the lights in the barn are only over a work area, not the piles of moving boxes.

Such a morning it's starting out to be

Early morning dream:

Rummaging through the clutter on my workshelf (which puts the scene in my childhood bedroom), I'd come across an appointment card for some dental procedure that I'd forgotten about, with a specialist whose name and exact office location I can't remember, and it's for sometime tomorrow, and I'd set the card back down, and now I can't find it.  And, somehow, in the half hour since I set it down, a year's worth of trash has piled up on the shelf - including actual trash like granola-bar wrappers.

Wake up with dream unresolved.

Stumble into office.  Step in big puddle of few-hours-old kitty barf.  Clean bottom of foot; get cramps in calf.  Clean floor; get cramps in lower back.

Gonna be a great day, right?

Another fun thing I discovered yesterday

I had the vague notion I'd been missing calendar alerts on my phone.  Not hearing them, or something.

Yesterday one came and went, and there was definitely no alert sound nor vibration.

Turns out that, somewhere along the line, the Android alert system changed, again, and now alerts for calendar events are hidden in a sub-sub-menu of the calendar app, independent of the systemwide settings.

And, regardless of the systemwide setting at the time this went into effect, the default is no sound, no vibrate.  Real helpful, guys!

Some comment sections seem Bloggered again.

Just tried to leave a comment over on a Blogspot site, and got the Mysterious Malfunction Message.

Looks like the software gets conveniently clumsy when people badmouth (badkeyboard?) the WEF and its minions.

This sort of thing happens often enough for me to suspect it's malfunctioning as intended.

But wait, there's more!

Feline conflicts having been somewhat put on hold for now, I dealt with stuff like cleaning out the coop, helping Joy clean up some fallen insulation in the basement, and suchlike.

Then out to give the outdoors chickens some treats, and check for eggs.  No eggs out there.  OK, so down to the curb to fetch the garbage bin and see if the mail has come yet.

Except... I don't get past the garage.  Joy had been headed off to the grocery store, but her steed pulled up lame in a hind hoof.  Yup, very flat indeed.

Send her off in my car.  Air up the hoof in question, to see how fast it goes squishy again.  Maybe it'll last long enough for a trip to the major crossroads; I'm pretty sure there's at least one automotive farrier down there.  (Indeed there is; have to inquire whether they have the right tires.)  If it stays inflated for a while, fine; elsewise, we gotta break out the peewee spare.  Anyway, that's for tomorrow or maybe Friday.

I'm pretty sure there were things I should have been accomplishing today.  Somehow none of them happened.

Feline conflicts

Details maybe another time... around midday, Southmoon found her world reduced to the inside of a small moving box in the office supply closet.  It was the only place in the entire house that she hadn't, yet, been attacked by one of the newcomers.

We're trying to keep them separated, and provide some sort of safe space for her.  She's always been the most feral one, and lately seems to have a serious case of PTSD.

This, of course, makes for yet more disruption of my schedule, and even less likelihood of having a block of time for doing anything productive.

Oh, drat these computers. They're so naughty and so complex.

In the midst of afternoon stuff, my computer got a wedgie.  Thought it was the browser at first, but... no.  Everything's wedged, including the command line.

Hm.  Maybe switch to the cube server, ssh over, and see what's going on?

Cube server is... not waking up?  Ah, powered off somehow.  Push the power button.  Wait for reboot.  Seems OK...?

Note that the "upgrades available" icon is showing.  OK, so apt update; apt dist-upgrade, and yes, and....

And, partway through installing the upgrade, it turns itself off.

Unplug all cables.  Move box to desk.  Open box.  Carry box, minus top cover, out to garage.  Apply air.  Dust emerges.

Hm.  The little CPU fan isn't spinning when blasted with air..  And the heatsink beneath, even after several minutes turned off, feels decidedly warm.

Yeah, seems the fan has seized up.  It's one of those 40mm square, 10mm thick jobbies.  Do I have a box of those, real industrial-spec ones left over from evaluation for a telco project, lying around somewhere?

Eventually find the box-o'-fans in the barn.  The industrial ones are a size or two larger, but I do have some 40x10mm, 12V, 2-wire fans, looking rather used, maybe pulled from those cheap removable-HDD trays I used to use.

Pull the fan from the cube.  It's a 12V model, and the same brand as the ones I dug up, but it's 3-wire.  Well, the tach isn't actually necessary, is it?  Try to plug in one of the spares in defiance of the connector difference: no soap.  Back out to the workbench; swap connectors.  Plus it in, attach to the heatsink, put everything back together, test.

CPU temperature ventures a little north of 60°C while finishing the apt dist-upgrade (a nontrivial process, as the interruption meant that two special commands were needed to put things back as they should be; good thing apt suggests the required actions in such cases), then settles down to 50~55ish at idle.  So, I guess the fan is working.

Off to Amazon in search of a correct replacement.  Those fans ain't cheap any more!  Order one pricey one with a very high rating, plus a several-pack of relatively cheapish ones to keep around as random spares.

Maybe this year I'll finally get electricity in the basement alcove, and Ethernet cables strung hither and yon, and then I can set up a secondhand rackmount server down there where it wont be getting clogged with cat hair.

Ow.

Got a case of mouth pain.

First I bit my lip a couple of days ago; that always takes time to heal.

Then, last night, I made a pot of stew... which had some oil in it, and not enough starch to keep the oil dispersed.  So, mouth burns.

The week is not starting off fun.