Posts by jake 26716 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2007
Strange. My heat has been working just fine since before I can remember ... and I have my fuel records going back that far, too. No hive needed.
I don't need to control my HVAC with my phone, I just set it and forget it. For years on end.
Perhaps I'm doing something wrong?
People are usually pleasantly surprised when I re-introduced them to the concept of non-computer controlled washer and dryers. Here in the United States, look up Speed Queen.
Speed Queen are the folks who make bullet-proof laundromat coin-op equipment ... but they also make home machines, sans the money slot. Hand made in the US, and the price reflects it, but they last forever in a household environment. And no fucking computer to go TITSUP[0] on you after getting blasted by static from the dryer. Most of the machines here at the ranch have been abused and battered for well over a decade with no sign of slowing down. Recommended.
[0] Total Inability To Select the "Unmentionables" Program
Crooks don't pick locks. Takes too long (and a small amount of brainpower, which most crooks lack ... that's why they are crooks). Instead, crooks heave a brick through the window next to the door, reach in and open the door from the inside. Faster. The noise isn't an issue when you;re in and out in under 90 seconds.
Or they just kick the door in. Thievery is mostly dumb-heavy work.
Let's face it, real versions of the likes of Raffles and The Saint are few and far behind.
I was recently looking for a cheap, well built, simple blood pressure monitor. Most of them on the market today seem to require an internet connection or "smart phone" in order to work. Why? All I need is a simple sys/dia/pulse output.
Fortunately, I found a source for the tiny pressure transducer in my decade old (older?) unit. Simple soldering job, and it works again. Hopefully in another ten years this whole "must be internet (or phone) connected to work" fad will have blown itself out. Or I'll just replace the transducer again ... they shipped me four units for the price of one, so I taped the spares inside the case.
Not too long ago, I was reading some PDP11 machine code for the first time since I wrote it 40-odd years ago, and scratching my head. I couldn't figure out WTF I did what I did ... clearly it worked, but it was also clearly wrong. I'd been going over the (seemingly) simple code for eight or ten hours and was getting increasingly frustrated, which is rare for me. I wrote the shit, why couldn't I figure it out? My wife (ever the wise one) suggested I sleep on it. So I took a nap.
I woke an hour or so later with two words on my mind: DEC Tape.
Now, I seriously doubt that even that pile of steam-powered, smoke-belching, carved from solid rock back in the age of Wizards and Grues will ever need anything as weird of DEC Tape again ... So I should excise that block of code (and the others like it, throughout). I should streamline things, make it more efficient, right?
Should I fuck. It fucking works. Is has worked for over four decades. I ain't touching it. I have been called in far too many times to "fix" projects that started like that, "just one, small tweak" to fall for that one ... I HAVE, however, added comments ("notes to my future self") that I should have added in the first place but didn't, because "it's obvious, innit?".
"when the visitors from Ophiuci get here, their archeologists are going to be scratching their head organs"
Those aren't head organs, and they aren't scratching. It was a long trip in close quarters, and they don't float that way ...
"while they try to work out why a society died out with no-one owning anything at all..."
You may jest, but I know Millennials who seemingly own nothing. They lease their car/home/furnishings/clothing/shoes(!!)/knick-knacks/books ... name it, it's all somebody else's. They don't even own the food in their fridge ... because there is no food in their fridge, just water. They eat out every meal.
These people pay far more money per month to rent "stuff" than they would if they owned it outright. Makes absolutely no sense, but it seems to be the way kids are doing it these days ... Might be part of the same marketing campaign that sold the plebs on "clouds", no? Or maybe that was just a happy artifact ...
"In my original copy, I wrote "bollocks", which is no longer acceptable."
No longer acceptable to whom, pray tell? Were the commentardariat polled?
"I'd just like to add my congratulation to our sub-editor for the expression "horse-puckey". I had never heard or read this expression before."
It's kind of a middle-American variation of bollocks. Close enough replacement, at least considering the origins of the folks ElReg probably had working over the bank holiday weekend.
"Is it similar to "monkey tennis"?
No, that phrase-equivilant would be "horse hockey".
This cross-pond translation service brought to you by the number e and the letter O.
and like all of 'em from time immemorial, doomed to failure.
"This isn't the moving-fast-and-breaking-things future we wanted"
But it's what we've got, thanks to the greed of the perpetrators and their sycophants.
On the other hand, having a brain, I ain't "we" Kemosabe. Are you?
The original models were, indeed, written by climate scientists. It just so happens that those scientists were (mostly) post-grads specializing in climate science.
To anwer your question, the thing that has changed is that "climate science" is political these days, with very little actual science involved. One must create pretty graphs to ensure funding. Don't need to waste time programming to make pretty graphs.
"when the models were first constructed."
You seem to be under the impression that said models were constructed, the programmers slapped each other on the back and congratulated each other for a job well done, and we've been using those very same models ever since.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, the models have been updated/extended/improved near weekly, just like the hardware they run on. Same for Fortran, BTW. The models are far from static.
Now if only we can convince ThoseInCharge to provide us with raw data that hasn't been dicked around with ...
Note: I'm not a "climate skeptic"[0]. I'm a scientist. Don't TELL me. SHOW me.
[0] Why do you lot always use loaded, scary words when referring to people who don't march in lockstep with your belief system? Do you think it somehow makes your points valid? In my mind, it makes you rather sad and pathetic ...
During the meanwhile, I have my great grandfather's planting records, my grandfather's planting records, my father's planting records, and my own planting records.
These are pretty detailed (temperature, rainfall, wind speed & direction, seeds planted, crop yield, etc.).
Near as I can tell, since the 1850s there has been no appreciable change (outside statistical aberration). Even our current drought has historical precedence. I'm in Northern California.
The Fortran you and I learned in 1960 was not the program of today. It's kind of false to to think of today's Fortran and 1960 Fortran as the same language ... Rather, Fortran is a long sequence of individual languages, all named Fortran.
What they have in common is the ability to crunch lots of data on machines with massive IO. Which is the point of Fortran. We have spent the last 60+ years updating it, speeding it up, and generally making it work better for things like climate data, and making it make use of bigger, faster better hardware. It;s an ongoing process.
And the fizz-heads are going to throw away this massive installed base and community because Uni Students think Fortran is HARD?
Cry me a fucking river. Learn something, or give your seat to someone elfse who is interested in learning, you twits.
The Romans were growing wine grapes between Hadrian's and Antonine's walls. Try that today ... clearly it's now much colder than it was.
On the other hand, when was the last time you attended a Frost Fair on the Thames? Clearly, the temperature has gone up.
What a quandary ... The answer is that the climate doesn't "change" (a loaded, scary word), rather, it fluctuates. Not quite as scary.
Perhaps you should ask yourself instead, who is trying to scare you into compliance ... and why.
"he's realized that "traditional climate models are in a language [MIT] students can't even read.""
So basically, instead of teaching the kids Fortran (which is hardly dificult), they are going to throw out 50+ years of climate modeling, redo it all from scratch, and instead teach the kids Julia?
That makes zero sense. At least with Fortran, once they realize there is no money in climate modeling research, the poor kids will be able to get a job at the financial institution of their choice, and at a very high rate of pay. Julia? Not so much ...
Basically, me and four or five other guys were enjoying a beer and wondering how we could MAKE MONEY FAST ... It was right about the end of the early '90s mini-resession, at a time when banks were starting to sit up and take notice of the money making potential of Silly Con Valley.
Well, we came up with an idea, something the world needed. It could be built with modern tech, we thought, and with our range of talent all we would need was a finances guy. The guy we hired played hard and fast with a couple of financial institutions, playing one against the other. I honestly don't think they bothered to read our own internal already drawn up contract.
It wasn't a software company, it was a combination of specific hardware and the software to read that hardware and display what it was reading. In near real time.
It turned out that the hardware capability of the day didn't quite match what we were trying to do with it. Drew too much power to last for very long on battery power, and it was a hair slow for the more 3D features (OK, two or three hairs slow).
But the writing was on the wall ... We had a working(ish) prototype, and hoped we could keep moneybags off our backs long enough to reap the benefits of the next CPU upgrade. Didn't happen. The financial institution wanted their cut, and they wanted it now. So they closed us down. Last time I ever went with a bank for this kind of thing ... Sand Hill Road is the way to go!
ANYway, I moved on to other projects, and a couple years later Hitachi and Seimans came out with what was in essence our project ... but they targeted Humans in First World. We were only targeting Veterinarians here (medical certification is a bitch) ... although our device would work well on humans as well, and we had plans on selling it as such in the Third World ... and once we had proof of its safety, here in North America and possibly Europe etc., as well.
What was the product? An ultra low cost Ultrasound Machine built into a laptop, with just a subset of the "all the bells and whistles" that you'll find at your Doctor's office. We weren't targeting professional radiographers, we were targeting the little-guy physician, offering a tool for quick & easy diagnosis ... "Yes, Mr. Client, your pup DID swallow several little balls" ...
Can't blame us for trying ... but I do sometimes wonder "what if".
Just over a billion years ago ...
... as the Internet measures time (call it roughly 1984), I received a brand new Sun 2/160. It was a dual pedestal beast, with all of 8 Megs of RAM and a pair of 380 Meg CDC SMD drives. Roughly 65 grand worth.
I decanted it from the boxes-on-pallets, plugged all the cables in, and fired the thing up. Into a beautiful new GUI on the Sony Trinitron monitor, just as advertised. Logged in as root, on purpose as there were no other accounts as yet(!!), using the default password(!!!!) ... and poked around. All was well, near as I could tell.
The plan was to repartition the disks to better suit our needs and then reinstall the OS. So I made absolutely certain I had the correct tapes, and did the one thing I had never done as a sysadmin ... closed the GUI, and from the # prompt ran rm -rf / intentionally. I was curious to see how long it would take to lose it's tiny little mind. It trundled away to itself for a few minutes, but seemingly was still working fine, enough of vmunix and the shell were in RAM and the swap partition to keep doing simple stuff. I was quite surprised, but that wasn't really what I was there for ...
So I shut her down, went and got a cuppa coffee, reached for the first tape and went to fire up the machine ... only to discover it didn't ship with a tape drive, despite one being listed on the packing list. It had a lovely bezel that LOOKED like it might be a tape drive, but the space behind it was empty. Oops. So there I was, 8AM and stuck with 65K worth of dead Sun hardware that I was supposed to demo for the Brass at 4PM.
Fortunately the 1980s Sun had Clues about customer service. One call, and their field service rep had the SCSI tape drive, the requisite cables, and a couple of VMEbus cards, (E)EPROMS and spare OS tapes "just in case" on my desk in under forty minutes. She even hung out and made certain that the system worked properly after we took it apart to install the bits that needed installing, and then partitioned it and re-installed the OS.
I made the 4 o'clock deadline ... and bought the Rep the first of many well deserved dinners.
Silly Con Valley was a very small place back then ... Sometimes I miss it.
When we drew up the terms of a startup, I included language that indicated that I would be sole owner of all the software that I generated for the new company should the company go under within three years. As is typical for most small startups, we went under before two years was up. Bad management. The Bank shut us down and took possession of all equipment (complete with Santa Clara County Sheriffs ensuring we didn't walk out with the kit).
I managed to start the SCC disk formatting and my computers wiped of all traces an hour before they got there ... There were no backups, because expensive. (Have I mentioned bad management?) However, I was quite secure in the knowledge that I had already transferred the entire code-base to my coloed server under Bryant Street in Palo Alto. The new-fangled Internet was handy for that kind of thing.
It took 'em a week to realize that the code no longer existed, and that without it all the hardware was so much scrap. As the only IT guy in the former company, they figured it must be all my fault, and the Bank sent me a very threatening letter. Which I immediately passed to my lawyer (brother). Who sent them a copy of the initial terms. I never heard from them again ... but I did find some of our kit at Weirdstuff Warehouse, selling at scrap value. I ignored it. The whole project had left a bad taste in my mouth.
I still have the source, but it's useless now. We were trying to fill a niche that was filled by a couple of multi-nationals a couple of years later. It's a shame, really, we didn't even have patents on our tech, because spendy. Perhaps I should mention bad management?
Look up "Spiral Flute Bolt Extractor".
I have a couple kits of these things. They are not a day-to-day tool, but when you need one, you really need one. Handy when restoring old tractors. Use with a good impact tool, or with a large ratchet & breaker bar.
Hint: Don't waste your money on 3/8 drive ... get half inch, and/or 3/4 if you're a pro. The smaller size is guaranteed to break the knuckle off the drive tool under load.
Failing that, drill it out. Be very careful so as not to ruin the rim. You'll have to replace the lug as well as the nut, but they are inexpensive. I've had some luck grinding a flat spot on the ruined lug (another real use for a Dremel), drilling a small hole and then using a small cold chisel to crack the nut. This last is most likely to cause damage to a rim. Be careful.
Back in my day, the conversation went something like this:
Management: MARKETING SEZ WE GOTTA SHIP IT!!!!
Engineer: Sorry, it's not ready to ship. I'm not signing off on it.
Marketing: BUT YOU HAVE TO! WE HAVE ADVERTISING READY!!!
Engineer: Ok, Marketing, YOU sign off on it.
Marketing: BUT WE'RE NOT QUALIFIED TO DO THAT!!!
Management: Now, now, Engineer. Be nice to Marketing. They have ADVERTISING!!!
Engineer: Then you sign off on it, Management. I'm not going to.
Management: We could FIRE you for this insurrection!!!
Engineer: Go ahead. Then you'll never have a working product.
Management: ::sputter::
Management: OK, WE'LL HIRE NEWLY MINTED ENGINEERS TO SIGN OFF!
Marketing: Yeah! That's EXACTLY what we'll do! (BTW, what does "sign off" mean?).
Management: (It's a technical term. I don't really get it either. Don't worry about it.)
Marketing: (Thank heavens for that. Ignoring technical stuff is easy for me.)
Engineer: Good luck with that, guys. I'm taking early retirement. Have fun.
RIP, DEC
I have a copy of an invoice for an 18Meg drive that set my customer back $4,200 in July of 1980. It was a North Star HD-18, plugged into a parallel port on a North Star Horizon to supplement the overloaded two year old stock 5Meg drive. The system ran a proprietary, home-built inventory and invoicing system for a local indy auto parts store in Mountain View, California. A guy from North Star arrived with the unit to swap out firmware, update the OS, and make other changes so the machine would accept the second drive ... there was no charge for his services, including travel from Berkeley. It worked quite well for about a decade, when I upgraded them to a Coherent based system, which was followed by a Slackware system about 10 years later.
In 1981, Apple debuted their first HDD, 5 megs for $3500.
In 1986 my Sun server had a bottomless pit of a drive for user space. It was a 300 megabyte CDC Wren IV SCSI drive. It cost US$14,000 ... that's just the drive, mind. The computer cost around $65K. (The "user" was a database archiving network statistics, if anybody's wondering.)
"In many parts of the US that's legal."
No, it is not. According to Federal Law, pot is still a Schedule I drug, and is illegal, even for medical reasons.
Federal Law trumps State Law in this case. At some point, the Feds are probably going to feel free to crack down on pot growers, dealers and users unless the law is changed. It may be a multi-billion dollar industry (and growing fast), but I have no intention of investing in it until this issue is resolved.
The Republicans (probably still heavily traumatized by seeing "Reefer Madness" in their mid-teens, the poor, poor dears) are just biding their time ... They would have done it during the Trump Administration, but the hypocrites know damn-day well that a large percentage of Trump supporters are red-neck pot-heads. Even losing a few percent of that vote would have lost him the first election.
As I'm absolutely certain you are aware, while "a couple" does indeed technically mean "two", in this case I was using it as a vernacular euphemism for "a small number, much less than normal".
Total capital cost was about $10,000 after Federal and State tax credits. Finding the HDPE for under a nickle on the dollar[0] at a failed building project helped. Using your 50 years, that's under 17 bucks per month. It'll probably last twice that, maybe more. Yes, there will be a few wear points to replace, but it shouldn't be all that spendy. How much does your HVAC and water heating/cooling cost?
I did the digging, and indeed most of the physical installation. The engineering firm who speced it out is owned by a friend, they donated their services for free as an R&D thing. Said friend and myself also formed a company to monitor the system underground, placing sensors in a 3-D grid to keep an eye on temperature, moisture and a few other things underground. The first of many, we are now monitoring about 35 installations. The graphs are boring, as expected. Thankfully.
[0] 7 silos of 8,000 feet each, "As is, where is, get it gone by Friday", my favorite sale price. I sold off the excess at about 80 cents on the dollar, delivered.
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