Silicon Valley Redneck

Failing e-commerce 101

So there's this ToasterCo project....

Gonna need a specialty (standard, but not a commonly-used one) communication interface for the test setup.  (Yeah, it's a toaster with a communication interface, and it ain't WiFi.)  Preferably in the form of a USB dongle.  I do a little searching, and quickly find a product that sounds promising.  Technical overview seems right.  Comes with both Windows and Linux device drivers.

So!  Where can I buy one, and what does it cost?

Er....

I can't seem to find that information at all.  Driver downloads, sure.  Buy the product, no.

Guess I'll have to contact the company and inquire.  You'd think this stuff would be right there, prominently featured.

Update:  Got a prompt response.  The price is in nosebleed territory (roughly three times what I figure I'd sell a vaguely-comparable product for)... but such alternatives as have prices listed start in that range and go way up from there.  And it saves me the trouble of actually developing and qualifying my own.  I'll probably end up recommending it, should the project proceed.

Though... the Product Line (should I ever have the time and focus to revive it) is definitely meant to include a multi-purpose communication dingus.  For not a lot of money.  (The key FPGA code exists... written on my own time, dagnabbit, exactly because I figured I'd have my own uses for it later on.)  And, it's meant to have a header for an arbitrary electrical interface, just in case anyone needs a USB-to-ARINC-429 dongle someday.

Good choice, bad choice

Good choice: deciding to knock off yard work a little earlier than planned because my back was starting to hurt.

Bad choice: deciding to fix stir-fry chicken something-or-other for dinner despite my back already hurting.

Ah, well.  My back has mostly recovered this morning, and it looks like the next few days are not conducive to further yard work.  Guess I'll be spending a bunch of time at my desk, or out in the garage.  Which... argh.  I need to spend a chunk of today on a ToasterCo thing, and maybe I should print out all the documents, because my wrist is acting up and using the mouse makes it worse in a hurry.

Steel cores turn up in unexpected places.

So I assembled one of my prototype boards....

Did all the SMT/reflow stuff, then the through-hole header connectors.  The snap-apart header strips I could find easily had overly long tails for soldering into a 1/16" thick PCB, so once they were soldered in place, 'twas time for the flush-cutting wire nipper.

The single-row headers' tails having been trimmed without incident, I proceeded to attack the double-row header.

Oops.  It's not wanting to cut, is it?  And what's more, it's bloody well notched the blades of my semi-brand-name flush cutter!

Yup.  The double-row header strip likes magnets.  Steel-core stuff.  Not what the flush cutter was designed for.

Oh, well... order a 5-pack of HAKKO* flush cutters for future use, and ponder how to deal with steel-core headers in the future.  Preferably avoid using them where tail length matters, I think.  I may need to order a bunch of proper ones; I think the ones in the header bin came from Anchor Electronics, where they're cheap but don't come with specs.

Anyway, by that time it was getting to be the yard-work portion of the afternoon.  I didn't encounter any steel-core trees.  (I think the carbide-tipped saw blade might cope somewhat with mild steel, assuming steel-core trees suddenly turned out to be a thing, like if tree-huggers had come through and spiked the undergrowth.)  Sore elbow, sore wrist, sore legs, and I was starting to get dizzy, alternating between crouching to cut off little trees at ground level and standing up to move to the next one.  Time to rest, er, I mean fetch the mail, take out the garbage, and figure out what's for dinner.

* No, not Hakko Warner, the Fourth Animaniac, whose name has been erased from history.

Ah, standardization!

Consider the nigh-ubiquitous 18650-size lithium-ion cell.

It comes in two flavors: flat-top and button-top.  Some devices will work with either; some specifically need one or the other.  This is not necessarily apparent from a quick look at the device.

Now I note that the button-top cells have an additional sub-type that's a little bit longer... so it doesn't fit in some plastic storage cases, and, as it turns out, doesn't fit in my headlamp either.  (The headlamp requires button-top cells, but they have to be the standard length.)

The extra-long ones came bundled with specialty flashlights that work just fine with flat-top cells, but since those are the only devices on hand that I know work with the extra-long button-tops, I guess that's where I'll use those cells.

Oh, I completely missed the owl yesterday.

I'm hearing it wasn't all that superb, anyway.

I didn't even observe my old custom of spending the day at the beach looking for elephant seals.  Might be a bit futile here; I don't think there are any elephant seals in the French Broad River, nor in any of the lakes nor reservoirs.  Maybe I should come up with something else to look for on a fresh-water beach in winter.  (No, we don't have alligators around here either.  Nor, apparently, aquatic tigers, despite the sensational stories last fall.)

Afterthought:  Five nickelbacks make one quarterback, right?  I find this specialist terminology confusing.

Wintry weather

The back yard yesterday:

The sprinkling of snow all melted by early afternoon, but apparently there's more on the way.  Also, there's supposed to be rain on the way.  This morning, freezing fog (which seems to be a local thing; there's no official alert for it).

Looking at my pictures... a year ago, the pond was full right up to the top.  Early January of last year, there was a fair amount of water in the pond.  This year, there's still no visible water in there, though the soil is pretty well saturated.

We shall see what weather actually shows up.  I now have a goodly supply of marker stakes, so I can mark the course of the drainage from the pond, once that happens, and then come along and dig a proper drainage ditch, leaving (I hope) the good-soil zone non-floody.  May also need to adjust the drainage pattern from the side yard, but I think the path through the pond is the biggie.

Today, once the fog lifts and the temperature gets up to something reasonable, more yard work.  And one of these days, soon, I need to give the tractor its first oil change.  Calls for an afternoon that's warm enough for crawling around on the barn floor ('cause the manual also calls for replacing a couple of hydraulic-fluid filters, ugh).

Speaking of the tractor... I just tried to look up its alternator capacity.  Seems it's a wimpy 14.5A, and there's (maybe) an upgrade kit available to replace it with a proper (-ish) 40A alternator.  Since I've been pondering electrical accessories, this is probably something I should look into.

I've seen this movie...

There's a word which must not be uttered.

Even telling people what word must not be uttered is strictly forbidden.

Sorry, I'm not telling you what the word is.  It's forbidden.

J*H*V*H!  J*H*V*H!  J*H*V*H!  No, not that one.  The other one.

Uh... sproing?

As I trudged down to the curb in the dark this morning to fetch the paper, I heard a sound.

A deep, drawn-out SPROINGGGGGG!

The sound of an ACME^® Giant Spring™!

No, I never did determine whence the sound had come.  The front neighbors do have a pool, but I don't think they have a diving board, and I seriously doubt anyone would have been using it in the sub-freezing morning weather.  Besides, the sproing wasn't followed by splash nor thud.

Maybe one of the neighbors was tinkering with a siege engine of some sort.

Addendum:  No sign of a flying cow, either.

Another Google SNAFUBAR

YouTube subscriptions.

I seem to recall that there used to be some way of managing subscriptions, maybe starting with calling up a list of all subscribed channels on one page.

Now, near as I can tell, there are two views: (1) the subscription list in the sidebar, and (2) the "Subscriptions" view.

The former lists the channels in alphabetical order, but in my case it's now cutting off halfway through "S", so channels whose names begin with "The" are hidden, never mind Veritasium and Zefrank1.  Hey, Google!  Some of us subscribe to a lot of channels!

The latter lists recent postings from subscribed channels, not the channels themselves.

(There's been some other weirdness for a long time; some months ago, I couldn't find a certain low-in-the-alphabet channel in the sidebar list; I looked it up, and the "subscribe" button indicated that I was already subscribed to it, but it just wasn't showing up in the list.  The channel in question does have a lot of content that Google's censors likely find offensive.)

The yard is getting muddy

Maybe it was the half-inch of rain last night... but when I drove the tractor across ground that had been OK yesterday afternoon, it left great muddy tire tracks.

I think I'll refrain from driving it across the back lawn until the ground is a little less soggy, whenever that may be.  Areas that I've been keeping mowed tolerate traffic better than unmaintained areas, but still: no point chewing up the lawn, even if getting it re-graded and re-planted is somewhere in the grand plan for the next couple of years.

This leaves us with several small-to-middlin' brush piles on and around the back lawn, but I suppose we can use the hand-dragged garden cart (which weighs a bunch less than the tractor) to move those to someplace more appropriate.

Ah, the lazy ways of these Appalachians

Registration comes due this month on both the Venerable Prius and the pickup truck.

Since we're not going into offices these days, I filled out the on-line renewal form late-morning on Wednesday.  There was no multiple-vehicles option, but when I called up the form for the second time, the name and address fields were helpfully pre-filled.

First thing Thursday morning, I got e-mail acknowledgements that the transactions had been processed.

The new tags arrived in today's mail, both in one envelope.

If this county were being run efficiently, by Smart People, I'm sure the whole thing wouldn't have taken more than two weeks.  Three at the outside.  OK, so maybe a month.  And the tags would have arrived in separate envelopes, because reasons.  Also, filling in the forms would have required creating an account, with delays for validation, because we shouldn't have un-validated people paying bills.  (Trying to recall how this stuff worked back in California.  I think the process was much more sophisticated*.)

* By at least one of the definitions of "sophisticated"; the traditional ones are not what you probably think of, but may be more applicable.

A cold-morning mystery

So there I was, out in the garage....

I heard yelping sounds outside.  Like, the dog wasn't happy about being outdoors on a cold morning.

Wait.  We don't have a dog.  If we did, it wouldn't be out there in the direction of the yelping.

Neighbors do have dogs, in that general direction, but they're quite some way away, unless one of them got loose, but then why would it be yelping outside our garage?

So... maybe the flag is yelping about being outdoors on a cold morning?

Go take a look.  Yup.  The no-more-tangles slip rings on the flag pole are in fact the source of the yelping noises.

Maybe I'll oil them... sometime when it's not so cold.

Thursday morning music

My mind wandered as I was out doing yard work yesterday afternoon, and I pondered WallStreetBets confronting the big hedge funds.  A song sprang to mind: Bob Kanefsky's "Bashing the Balrog" (tune by Leslie Fish*).

A young and ill-trained party confronting a powerful and highly-capable monster, indeed.

For the rules of this game are obscure and arcane,
And the party that plays it is lost!

But... it's not just the stock-market game, is it?  There are plenty of Balrogs about, and there seem to be rather a lot of young and ill-trained parties bent on challenging them.  In most cases, the parties seem to have been infiltrated and possibly controlled by Balrog agents, because Balrogs gotta eat.

As the QAnon/Proud Boys/whatever crowd** should realize:

And that is called bashing the balrog.
But should any witness survive,
He’ll see, once you’ve bashed on the balrog,
The balrog will skin you alive.

* The tune was originally for Kipling's "Dane-Geld", which is also widely applicable.

** Update: Henceforth known collectively as the Tappa Kegga Revolutionary Front.  This applies to all whose drunken frat-boy stunts are branded INSURRECTION!

Time for the dance of the "Ours!"

That bit of family business that started just before Christmas?

On beyond the fence line... that patch of land adjacent to our Southeastern border, extending Eastish?

As of lunchtime Monday, it's ours.  Not all of it; a couple of patches by the road got snapped up by a developer, and there'll be seven houses springing up on little lots.  But the bulk of the land, two decent-sized lots including everything along or near our fence, is now under our protection and won't be developed until we're good and ready.  It does include two strips connecting to the road, for driveways.

Hmmm, annexing the Realm to the (South)East.  Seems like there should be a word for that...?

Anyway.  This affects my plans for fixing the drainage below the pond, because fixing that drainage affects the downhill neighbors, and now we're those downhill neighbors.  So I have more flexibility.  Also, that area of (according to the USDA soil map) prime farmland down there does flood during a rainy spring, so I'll want to do something about the drainage there, too, before I start preparing a site for the spring victory garden.

(From there, the drainage ditch meanders across the lawn of actual next-door neighbors before crossing our driveway and heading across the front neighbors' side yard on its way to the road.  I think the part downstream of our new side yard is in reasonable shape at this point.)

Aaaand... there are big fallen branches to deal with.  And patches of probably-mostly-blackberry-vines.  Always there's work.

Anyway, this is why I'll be needing a few hundred feet of garden hose.  Come spring planting time, the new garden will need occasional watering, depending on the timing of rain.  (Eventually, I really ought to put together a water trailer for hauling water wherever it's needed.)

Well, that was early.

Looks like the USPS parcel wagon is visiting twice today.

Got a bunch of stuff supposed to be coming sometime today, mainly via USPS but with one little box coming UPS.

USPS brought a big, heavy box around 0815.  My new little portable generator!  It's a "2KW" (1.7KW sustained) inverter type.  Decently cheap, and has the quiet/efficient mode in addition to the full-power mode.  Seems like something we really ought to have around here.  (I may also want to acquire a basic brute-force 5KW unit for maybe powering an arc welder, if I decide to build any steel structures out around the yard, and a natural-gas-powered whole-house standby generator is kind of on the wish list.  For now, this should do for powering various tools without use of absurdly long extension cords.)

Once it gets a little warmer out there, I'll lug the generator over to the barn, add oil and gasoline, and give it a test.

Update:  I didn't read the instructions before unpacking it.

Unpacked it all by myself, I did.  (Keeping under my one-hand weight limit was one reason I picked this model.  It's meant to be portable.)

A muddy misadventure

The promised "early this week" post is delayed until I'm certain of my facts.  It'll arrive eventually.

Meanwhile, a sunny afternoon was time for relocating a few more of the little brush piles.  Or, at least, that was the plan.

Joy got busy out by the back fence, turning brush into more little brush piles.  I got out the tractor and started moving little piles from the bottom of the pond area to the big pile on the hill.

After a couple of loads, I took a brief detour: there was an area of dirt that could stand to be a bit more level, and a quick scrape with the loader bucket ought to do the job just fine.

I misjudged the angle, and instead of a little scrape took a pretty big scoop.  Oops.

Aaaaand... can't back out.  That nasty hard clay?  In winter it becomes nasty soft slippery clay.  After much fiddling around, I conclude that the tractor is well and truly stuck in the mud, in a tight space.  Foo.

Well, I find myself with an urgent errand back at the house, so I trudge back while pondering my options (up to and including fetching Joy, the pickup truck, and a long piece of chain).  End up returning to the incident site with a shovel.

Dig up some nearby turf and put it behind the rear tires.  Consider doing likewise for the front tires, but it looks like that might be counterproductive; instead, use the shovel to redistribute the heap of loose mud the front tires had churned up and deposited underneath the tractor while getting their tread thoroughly clogged.  Note that my early attempt at dumping the loader bucket had not in fact dumped anything like all the contents, which might explain why the front wheels had been trying to do all the work.

Back on board.  Start 'er up.  Dump the bucket, properly this time.  Give it a couple of extra shakes.  Low range, 4WD, diff lock, and reverse... YES!  Out she comes, slick as a... well, muddy as a pig, to be honest, but out.

Put the shovel away.  Resume brush-moving.  (The spot I'd attempted to level is now a much greater mess than it had been, but I'll return one of these days with a shovel.)  Get a couple more loads moved, a decent amount of progress, before deciding that I'd better clean up.

Park the tractor a fair distance back from the barn, with the bucket moderately raised and in a partly-dumped position.  Go find the hose and hook it up to the yard hydrant.  Turn the water on.  Discover that the hose-end sprayer is leaking badly.  Go find the other one.  Also, disencumber myself of things that ought not to be gotten wet and/or muddy, namely my jacket and gloves.  Commence hosing down the tires, bucket, and other muddy portions of the tractor.

Remind me: what season is commonly associated with the washing of vehicles?

Oh, well.  I got the worst of the mud off without getting severely hypothermic, nor any fingers actually falling off.  Then back indoors to start fixing dinner.

Farcebook zombies

Are definitely a thing.  For all the personal information that site tracks, you'd think alive-ness might be one of them, no?

Went to check one of the on-line comics this morning.  Got a birthday reminder for a guy I used to know, years back, in the Bay Area.  Thought maybe I should message him.

His timeline includes various comments suggesting that he now identifies as vitally impaired.  Follow back... yeah, seems he joined the vitally-impaired community about a year and a half ago.  Somehow (as with others I've noted in the past), his official Farcebook status remains as he left it, with no indication (other than comments on his timeline) that he's no longer among the living.

You'd think a company like that would handle such matters better.  Oh, wait.  A company like that?  No, you wouldn't.

Not as much of a blizzard as advertised.

The snow started on schedule early this morning, and started putting white patches on the lawn, but by late morning the accumulation, such as it was, had all melted, even as snow continued to drift down from the sky.

It's still falling, and still melting.  I'm hoping for a non-snowy patch of afternoon for taking the garbage down to the curb and fetching the mail, but I'm no longer worrying about the possibility of the driveway being so badly snowed in that rolling the garbage bin down it might become unreasonably difficult.

So much for a warm, sunny mid-day

The weather forecast says it's supposed to be much warmer today than yesterday.

It also says the projected temperature right now is 10°F warmer than the actual temperature right now.

Meanwhile, the five mostly-sunny hours between mid-morning and mid-late-afternoon have disappeared entirely.

Oh, and tomorrow's snow forecast has gone from 3.4" to 2.7" to 4.5" to 4.6".  Could get Interesting.  Well, I stocked up on emergency lighting, the house is decently insulated against loss of heat during power outages of moderate length, and we have a gas cooktop.  I may end up having to clear snow from the driveway on Tuesday, to let delivery trucks arrive.  We don't have a snowplow, but the loader ought to be of some help, and a heck of a lot better than trying to shovel it by hand.

I'm so old...

I can remember when the various Sedition Acts were regarded as shameful episodes in our nation's history.