Silicon Valley Redneck

More progress!

After however many months, we actually got the well-drilling guy out here for a look-see and discussion.

In general terms: they can do what we want.  Won't be cheap; how not-cheap depends on how far down the water is, and how far down the bedrock is, plus sundry other factors.

We should be getting a little more information later this week, after his boss looks at the state's well map and sees what wells already exist in the area, how deep they are, etc.

On the toaster front, I got one phase of the project pretty well tidied up and now am starting on the next phase.  Almost time for another interim check-in.  Running into some annoyance with regard to Ruby-GTK2 and file locations, now that I'm setting up a Ruby script in a subdirectory of the one where most scripts of this type live (because this one has a Very Different Aspect to it). Oh, well: symlinks to the rescue... maybe.

Addendum:  I forgot to mention that the lead time on a well is 6-8 months... so, next Spring.  Which I guess is a suitable time, assuming the pond fills up this coming Winter; the main purpose of the well is to keep the pond from drying up in the Summer so's we can stock it with fish.

Plumbing is done.

The plumber turned up first thing this morning and did one of the two projects.

Joy had done the other one over the weekend.  It was one of those should-be-DIY things that I've done in past years, back when I was younger and more flexible.

My back had been doing better... but I keep overexerting when it's only mostly better, instead of doing careful exercise to strengthen it.  Now it's worse again.

Toaster project status: one phase is pretty much wrapped up, though some further testing is still needed.  The next phase, meanwhile, has fallen even further behind schedule.

Gotta get my back working again soon; I need to lug a backpack sprayer full of herbicide around the fallow zones again, in preparation for further tilling and rock removal.  (Also need to procure a rock bucket and a toothbar suitable for clearing brush, old cornstalks, and whatnot.)

Another Friday comes round.

The acute back problem is now mostly gone... leaving the longer-term thing, which will require various stretching & strength-building exercises (plus weight loss).

Been making progress on the behind-schedule toaster project - and running into inconsistencies among a new-to-us controller chip, the documentation for said chip, and some example code (which, in the grand tradition of modern sample code, is strange and contorted and shows more evidence of its history than useful information about how the chip works).  Doesn't help that the chip I'm testing with has a date code that precedes the datasheet.

A chip dated after the datasheet is supposed to be arriving by FedEx before it gets too much past morning.

Meanwhile!

We had a multiple circus here yesterday.  Joy did some calling around, and a plumber and a septic-system guy both showed up in the afternoon or evening.

Septic guy located the tank - it's in the likely-looking spot, and not very deep.  But!  He's not sure if the standard riser they have on hand will work on this particular 5000-gallon tank.  (Yes, it's oversized.  Apparently the builder got a Deal on it.)  Not gonna dig it up right away to have a look, what with this not being an emergency and the weather conditions being non-conducive to manual diggage.  He'll get back in touch when the weather seems more favorable.

(Heat index at the moment is 101; it was about this bad yesterday afternoon, and will surely get worse as this afternoon progresses.)

Plumber came, stopped his truck in the driveway just below the junction/turnaround; I was about to have him park up at the top, so as to leave the driveway clear for deliveries, when the UPS truck came down the road, slowed briefly at the bottom of our driveway, and hastened hence.  Argh.  Joy was expecting a delivery of food-type items....

Anyway.  Plumber came in, looked at the work that needs doing, and came up with a quote, which reflects contemporary labor costs.  Ouch.  Said he'd be back first thing in the morning to do the work.

Joy checked UPS's web site and found nonsensical status for her package.  Called the help number, and got a particularly stupid and unhelpful robot.  Eventually got hold of a human, and maybe got the situation sorted.

So, plan for today!  Wait for plumber and FedEx; once the plumbing is done, the bill paid, and the chip received, go off on some kinda urgent errands.  Joy can watch for UPS while I'm out.

The reality: plumber got sidetracked by an emergency call, and here it is past lunchtime already and he's not here yet.  FedEx hasn't been yet, either.  Looks like errands will have to wait.  (And here I am wearing my most flamboyant Hawaiian shirt!)

Oh, well.  Back to sitting in my air-conditioned office and trying to make sense of what this controller chip is doing.

Update:  FedEx delivered the chip.  Behavior appears the same as the early part, so that doesn't fix the problem but at least it eliminates one line of investigation.  (Now downloading the software for a better sort of logic analyzer pod I bought a while ago; it should be useful in sorting out what's going on.  I'm currently seeing two opinions as to what's happening: on from the offending ship and one from mysterious Linux software hiding behind layers of abstraction; a low-level third opinion is needed.)  Plumber is rescheduled to Tuesday.  It's now a bit past 1600 and UPS hasn't shown up yet.

Been a stinkin' hot day, and humid to boot.  Good day for being indoors.

Update 2:  That weird chip behavior?  Two largish bitfields are swapped relative to what the datasheet shows.  Wunnerful.  Wasted a few days chasing that one; now that I've caught it, a couple of mask-shift-combine operations should get things behaving themselves.

Life remains in slow motion.

Still got the acute back trouble from Tuesday.  Seems to getting better, gradually, but it's still limiting, and distracting, and interfering with my sleep.

Making slow progress on the toaster project, in my limited productive time.  Communication with the next layer of hardware is working; now I have to finish configuring it, and then get the actual driver layer going and integrated.

Tomatoes, melons, and squashes are happening.  Green beans have been and gone, but the ones remaining in the thicket of bean plants and weeds can be treated as shelling beans.  The irregular weather, very limited gardening time in July, and back trouble are making for a poor harvest (what with weeds, spoilage, and whatnot).

There was quite a boom a few minutes ago.  Just the one.  Some neighbor playing with pipe bombs, or shooting one each Tannerite target?  There's no apparent commotion.

A very Monday sort of Tuesday

Ongoing back trouble gained a new wrinkle this morning; one particular muscle started getting really spazzy if I move even a little bit wrong.

Ow.

Even trying to do desk work, ow.

And speaking of desk work: I spent such working time as I could manage bringing up a new interface combination for the current toaster project.  Should have been totally simple.  But!

1. It appears that I have at least some of the pin mappings wrong.  I need to review this, to determine whether I made a mistake or there's an issue with the board rework.
2. Some of the changes I needed to make, a week or so back, to integrate the data & control paths inside the FPGA either weren't completed or weren't right.  In some cases, I hadn't thought things though.  In another, there was some oddball legacy logic that I don't think was required in the original code I'm adapting.
3. I was getting really wild results on data reads.  This turned out to be a pipelining issue; the read from the buffer was happening during the CPU read cycle, so the actual data on the bus for the CPU happened on the next cycle, so the CPU read it the next time it came around to read the data register.

Anyway, it seems to be working now.  Next up: oog.  Next up should be connecting the next layer of hardware, and bringing up the corresponding layer of firmware.  But first I gotta sort out the pin-mapping issue.  Maybe I can do that this evening.

Monday, and everything's behind schedule.

Doesn't help that I've had some sort of low-grade crud the last few days.

I did a little bit of weed management over the weekend.  A lot was needed, but a little was all I could manage.

I salvaged some tomatoes; they're really not appreciating the heavy rain just as they're ripening.  Also some peppers.

Looks like varmints are getting all the corn.  For next year, I think I need an electric fence around the corn zone, or maybe some coyote attractant.  (The neighbors with the goats would probably not appreciate the latter option.)

Tomato plants definitely need a different approach to both planting and support (staking, I think, rather than cages).

Ah, well.  Back to work.  The current toaster project is also way behind schedule, I didn't manage to accomplish much on it over the weekend (though I did reach the "everything compiles" milestone), and I'm almost awake enough to be productive now.

Ah, weather.

There was supposed to be a bunch of rain overnight, including dangerous thunderstorms.

Didn't happen.  We got a little rain in the evening, but nothing additional before 0400.

About which time - well, moderately later - 'twas getting a mite thundery, and the weather map showed a fairly impressive storm approaching kinda fast, so I figured I'd better get dressed and let the chickens out of their coop early, before the lightning got too close.

it's now just after 0700, and we've had right about 2 inches of rain.  Looks like there's more heavy rain on the way, but the lightning has moved on.

Guess I could have waited until it got light out there, but the forecast was for thunderstorms on and off all day, and I didn't have much clue when there'd be a break.

Still here, but busy.

Southmoon seems to be doing better... mostly.  She's still having digestive issues.  Joy is suspecting a food problem, and is trying to work out a diet based on real food rather than canned/bagged cat chow.  Huckleberry's respiratory issues seem to be cured, and he's acting almost normal now.

I need to be focusing on toaster work, but there are endless disruptions.

There's one massive distraction that's non-bloggable at this point.

I haven't spent enough time in the garden, and weeds are seriously taking over.  Tomato harvest is looking unimpressive, what with the irregular rainfall - we keep getting heavy rain just as fruits are ripening, and they split.  Critters seem to have gotten most of the sweet corn - I'm not sure what kind of critters, but maybe an electrified fence next year would help, assuming it wasn't crows.

Definitely need to add yet another round of Notes For Next Year.  Also, gotta get a rock bucket before Fall tilling.

Such a... Wednesday?

Apparently this is Wednesday.  Which means there's a conference call this evening.

The day so far:

We dropped Southmoon off at the vet clinic early this morning for extensive tests; she'd seemed to be doing better over the weekend, but she was worse again yesterday.

Right around my usual lunch time, power went off.  Very shortly afterward, my computers shut themselves down... they're not supposed to do that until the UPS's battery runs low, but maybe it needs a new battery.  I decided to go do stuff outdoors; while I was out, our power-outage status got updated to show that were were part of an 800+ - customer outage which should be fixed Real Soon Now, and then I get a message from the cable company informing me that the Internet outage would be fixed eventually.

So, somebody crashed into a utility pole?

Stuff outdoors: a frequently-used walkway alongside the pond has basically nothing growing on it, and has a couple of low spots, so when it gets rained on it turns into a strip of mud with puddles.  So!  Yesterday I gave it a good tilling, then spread several tons of better topsoil on it, then tilled some more.  Today: add fertilizer and superabsorbent polymer granules, till again, backdrag until somewhat even-looking, add lawn seeds, and strew straw.

I really wanted to get that done ahead of the rain that's supposed to be arriving tonight and sticking around for a couple of days.

There are more areas that'll be needing that treatment before we get too far into Fall.

Anyway, waiting to hear back from the vet.

Update:

Southmoon ran up quite a vet bill this time, almost all of it for various tests - we'd decided to have a vast array of tests done today, since she needs to be sedated for almost anything, and sedating her is a challenge.  (Apparently she was feeling well enough today to be a real handful.)

Not all the results are in, but: she has a urinary tract infection (treatable), and some relatively small anomalies, but nothing that points to cancer, major liver problems, etc.

The vet did recommend one particular type of vets-only kibble, so we came home with a bag of that to try.

The clinic was apparently having a very busy day, so instead of getting her back midafternoon we got her back in the evening - which stepped on the scheduled conference call.  Foo.