Alternate Means of Communication

 

If anyone wants to arrange more secure messaging that respects users privacy, I'm on Signal, and I strongly recommend it to others. 

I've switched mobile providers and was unable to port my old number, so I've got a new Signal account. Message me directly to arrange contact transfer.

Oh, and in case anyone wants to connect there, I'm also on MeWe: https://mewe.com/i/cbyrneiv

And on Parler: https://parler.com/profile/Cbyrneiv

Though I don't really do much with either, since there isn't much to do, or many to do it with.

And of course, like everyone I'm still on facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/cbyrneiv/

And twitter at: https://twitter.com/chrisbyrne

Y'all Dudes Are Culturally Appropriated and Stuff

I am a native New Englander, born in south Boston, and grew up split between New Hampshire and the southern suburbs of Boston.

I don't have a Boston or New England accent... I pronounce the letter R just fine... Though I do use the words "sure" and "ayup" for "yes" reflexively... something of a New England stereotype.

I am not a southerner, or Texan... though I have lived nearly half my life in the southeast, Texas, and the southwest... and I use "y'all" many times a day. Because it is a very useful word.

I am not a Californian... though I did live in NorCal for several years... but I use "dude" many times a day... because it is a very useful word.

I have culturally appropriated these good and useful words from the south and California, because they were good and useful words, and I am absolutely not sorry about that.

Might as well just build me a Florida room...

Seems I'm getting used to Florida. It was 93 and over 90 percent humidity yesterday... and it wasn't THAT bad...

Maybe a little TOO used to Florida...

The day before that was the first time I had worn a garment covering my legs below the knee since I had arrived, something I basically NEVER do in public, unless at the beach or working out (shorts are just not personally acceptable for me to wear in most circumstances), and it was again over 95, and over 90% humidity...

...and for the most part, I wasn't uncomfortable.

At first I thought "Well... it's only May, it'll get a lot worse soon", but actually, since we got here, we've been in an unusual warm spell, and though it's been very humid, there has been no rain.

So, I looked up the historical climate data for this area, and every day we have been here so far, we have been WELL above the mean for the date... and in fact, above the mean MAX temperatures... for JULY AND AUGUST.

Every day has been a record, or near record temperature, AND at or near the record humidity (we're averaging about 15% over the mean for each date right now... Some day 20+ percent over the mean).

It hasn't rained at all yet, which is a bit unusual, but historically we're about to hit the summer monsoon here (in fact, t-storms are forecast for this afternoon), and get 8+ inches of rain a day from now through... Oh... about August. That should cool things down a bit. I hope...

Since we arrived, every day has been at least 86 degrees, and most days have been 92 or over, peaking at 99 point something, with humidity each day averaging over 90%, peaking at 99.something%

So... Yeah... it's been hot the last couple weeks.

...and, we're getting used to it... Which is a good thing.

Really the only discomfort issue I'm having, is my medications make me sweat a lot... And with the climate here, it just POURS off me if I try to be active outside in the afternoons.

So long as there's plenty of airflow (driving, a fan, a good breeze etc...) I'm OK. With the box fan and ceiling on in the bedroom, Mel and I aren't constantly wanting to turn the AC down anymore... at least not to 60 something....

Though a dehumidifier might be helpful.

... and, of course... Gold Bond is my stalwart friend and constant companion. Because the million tiny gnomes, are far better than the alternative.

I don't want to set the world on fire...

Overheard in my household... 

ME: 

Thus far, the boy has seen fire, but has not yet created it for himself.  

At some point he will discover the means to create fire for himself.  

From that point forward, the entire world is at risk.

EVERYONE within earshot:

Facebook that quote NOW!

I am basically Ron Swanson...

In an earlier post, I linked to a video talk with actor and professional fine woodworker, cabinetmaker, and finish carpenter, Nick Offerman.

For those who don't know, Nick Offerman, in real life, is basically a more "sane" and slightly less sociopathic version of his character Ron Swanson (who is based on Offermans own personality, interests, hobbies etc... just taken to ridiculous extremes)... only with a cooler job, and still married to "Tammy" (one of his ex-wives in the show, and played by his actual wife, Meghan Mullally).

Swanson (and largely Offerman), is a burly, blunt, confident, sometimes aggressive, plain spoken, mostly unfiltered (though able to filter and moderate when he chooses to, he just generally chooses not to), libertarian, disgruntled catholic, gun owner, meat lover, stupidity and ignorance hater, history lover, bad science debunker and skeptic, lover of fine spirits, wood and metalworker, believer in personal responsibility and self reliance etc...

For those who don't know me personally (or those who do but don't know the character)...

...I am basically Ron Swanson; except that I sport a vandyke and a high and tight (one of Ron's 3 "approved" haircuts), instead of an epic moustache and mane (though my hair does that exact thing when I let it grow), and I'm not technology hater.

...Well... and I'm slightly more sane, and less sociopathic.

... and I like fruit, as well as meat.

We even have the same red-brown wavy hair and red beard...

Hell we even wear the same clothes.

Seriously, I have a bunch of those same long sleeved collared knit shirts, rugby jerseys, golf/polo shirts, jeans, slacks, casual/dress shoes, and boots, that Ron wears. They're basically what I normally wear, every single day of the year (I never wear sneakers unless I'm working out, never sandals unless I'm at the beach; and never shorts or a shirt without a collar in public, unless I'm working out or at the beach).

...And when I say "the same", I mean not just a similar style... I mean the same shirts, in the same colors and patterns, probably from the same stores (Sadly, they most definitely did not cost him just $40 for ten years of his wardrobe... In fact they're actually damn expensive). We even wear the same styles of watch (... maybe even some of the same watches. We both wear divers and pilots chronometers and chronographs).


...And then theres these:



















... and then theres this 34 minutes and 15 seconds of concentrated Swanson... the vast majority of which strikes me as entirely reasonable, and full of good ideas:


...Yeah... I'm basically Ron Swanson... ... and I'm entirely OK with that...

Random...

4x4 heavy mustard fried only, extra toast, pickles on the side, fries light-well, black and white shake.

Let's celebrate the NordoCeltic peoples ruling the world

We do yaknow... Or at least we did...

As it happens, this is the 947th anniversary of the battle of Hastings, wherein the Normans under William the Conqueror, earned him his name, by rather embarrassingly whipping the force of the Anglo-Saxons under Harold Godwinson (Harold II), the last Anglo-Saxon king of England.

 Now, the historically ignorant amongst us have often made fun of poor Harold for having been conquered by "the French".

... but in reality, the "Norman french" weren't "French" as we think of it.

...well... and to be honest, what we think of as the French were actually Germans and mostly Spaniards originally (the Franks from which France gets it's name, and the peoples historically from the spanish and french borderlands).

 The other people in France were mostly celts, or nords.

 The Norman French were in fact mostly a mixture of the Gauls (celts), and the Norse.

 That's right... William the Conqueror was a Viking crossed with an Irishman. ... which of course is why his grandchildren then invaded Ireland and became "more Irish than the Irish".

And as history has shown, there is no shame in being conquered by the greatest western conquerors and assimilators of culture, the Celts.

 Hell... we loved taking over England so much, that we did it again 539 years later, in the person of James Stewart (himself a further cross between Vikings and Celts).

 So, let's hear it for the NordoCeltic peoples!

Hmm... yeah... there's your problem right there...

So, my MacBook Pro has been acting a bit wonky lately... and I'm pretty sure I know why.

A few weeks ago, I started getting disk corruption, that couldn't be handled with the normal disk utilities; and required me to get a clean backup on an external drive, wipe and reformat the internal drive, and restore...

Well, I kept getting the corruption problems after a few hours or a few days... and they kept getting worse.

Finally, I ended up rebuilding the thing 5 times in two day; and 3 times in one night (this was the night before my big compliance webinar. I didn't sleep at all the day before or that night, and ended up working all night and all morning before the webinar to try to get sorted).

This was basically two weeks of escalating pain, but until the last night the issues were intermittent with variable recurrence, so I couldn't get enough diagnostic info to nail it down.

With the 3 in on night episode, I was finally able to see the problem occuring...

And it's something I have NEVER seen... never even heard of...

What was happening on the HDD was lots of tiny single bit/single block/single write i/o errors. Ok, that happens... but why? It was a less than 90 day old relatively high end SSD (my last SSD went bad this past summer).

So I looked deeper at the errors, and noted that not all of them were from the hard drive...

Some of them were from the DVD drive...

Which had a scratched up DVD-R in it...

I pulled out the bad DVD-R and... holy crap, no more I/O errors.

What was happening, was that the particular damage on the DVD drive, was causing the I/O controller to constantly attempt to re-read the drive, and fail... hundreds of times a second. Instead of just limiting out though, it was causing enough latency in the SSD, that it was getting I/O errors as well...

Thing is... I didn't notice, because the DVD drive wasn't constantly spinning up... just a couple times an hour maybe? Which could have been explained by finder doing crap.

I've never seen that before... never even heard of that before, in a desktop or laptop (it's something that can happen with large high volume high transaction count servers, if they don't have sufficient spindles or cache, and their i/o controllers don't handle the exceptions properly).

Anyway... I got that resolved, and got my MBP functional...

But, ever since the last rebuild (after I figured out the problems), it's been a bit wonky. The finder doing some weird things etc...

I've run all the normal diagnostics, and at this point I'm pretty sure that to get sorted, I'm going to need to do another clean beackup, but instead of just restoring, I need to do a clean install, then migrate my apps and data.

It's a PITA, so I'm putting it off until I can't put it off anymore...

Meantime, I'm living with assorted wonkiness.

One of the items of said assortment; I hadn't really noticed it until a couple days ago, but I couldn't empty my trash.

This happens on OSX sometimes, it's not really a big deal. Usually it's a file that is locked somewhere and it can't be forced to let go because of a zombie process, or a bad pointer somewhere etc...

It's generally easy to fix. You just go into the trash directory from the command line, and force delete everything.

So, I went in, as root, and did a listing of my .Trash.

And it took a while... a LOOONG while... many many many screens of data flashing by my screen...

24 MILLION ITEMS... for a total of 243.8 gigabytes.

Well... there's yer problem right there...

It seems that the detritus of the multiple rebuilds... including several complete copies of my hard drive... ended up getting stuck in the trash for some reason; and couldn't empty out.

So, I started the force delete and went on to other things in other windows... after about 20 minutes I came back... and my command prompt hadn't come back...

I figured it had frozen up, or otherwise wasn't working; so I cancelled the job. Ran the listing again...

Nope... it had been working... It had deleted 9 million of the items, there were still 15 million left.

So I started the job back up again and went away for 20 more minutes... went back... still working...

As I was about to switch windows away it finally finished.

It took 40 minutes to delete the crap from the command line, no wonder I couldn't empty or open my trash in finder...

Why I don't bother writing certain posts

A conversation overheard in my household:

Mel: You know what post you haven't written... 

Chris: Hmm? 

Mel: It's one of those "gonna piss people off posts"... about {insert "controversial" topic here} 

Chris: Ahh... yeah... that... 

Mel: Oh? That? 

Chris: ... Frankly... I don't want to deal with those fucktards. 

Mel: Hah! 

Chris: Seriously... there is only so much fucktardery I can deal in any given time period. Those fucktards will exceed my fucktardery limit in about 12 microseconds... I just can't handle that much concentrated fucktardery... 

Mel: Hah! Coward! 

Chris: No... not cowardice... a reasonable stance to protect my sanity... and my blood pressure... and my faith in humanity...

Out of sync...

There seem to be some things that I am out of sync with our culture on...

The first...

Something I don't get... never have, probably never will...

Why is it so many people feel they were "forced", "pressured", "oppressed" whatever... into doing things they didn't want to do, or being things they didn't want to be...

When no-one every ACTUALLY forced them...

Others just expected they would be or do something, and didn't like it if they didn't.

That's not oppression... that's just life.

If being what you want to be, or doing what you want to do is important to you, then maybe it should be more important to you than the approval of others.

If it isn't... maybe it isn't really what you want to do or be...

The second...

I've come to believe that in our overly emotionalized, self esteem oriented, naval gazing, culture as it is now...

The combination of intelligence, knowledge, competence, valuing results over efforts and intentions; valuing what is real, or true, or what works, over what is theoretical, philosophical, emotional, or desirable; and possessing a drive to excellence, and intolerance for mediocrity, incompetence, and apathy...

... makes up a particular form of sociopathy...

Those that possess (or aspire to) these traits, simply do not have the same responses to the world, the same emotional patterns, the same communication... as those who do not. So much so, that it's as if they were living in two different worlds, or they were two different species.

They certainly seem to speak two different languages, and derive two entirely different sets of meaning from everything they see.

The language of the former seems to mightily offend the latter... even when it is meant to be complimentary. The basic facts and realities of life that are acknowledged by the former also seem to offend the latter.

In order to deal with those who do not possess these traits; those who do, need to learn how to deal with, and often mask themselves with, the "normal" reactions. It becomes an extra layer of abstraction for them... a translation from their basic natures, by which they are slightly (or greatly) handicapped in their interaction with the "normal".

I'm not actually dead

I'm just exhausted, burned out, braindead...

I went almost an entire month without writing something on the blog, because... Life has been less than great for too long... we're worn down.

Anyway, I've either been "all cancer all the time" or just writing the same crap over and over again ever since Obama was elected the FIRST time.

Same shit, different day.

Lots of time's I've had an impulse to write something real and substantive here... for about 20 seconds and either I decide "it's not worth the effort", or I write a short comment on twitter or facebook or one of the forums I frequent... then I go try to work, or try to read.

Blogging isn't dead... far from it... it's just not very interesting right now... It doesn't pass the threshold of apathy and energy expenditure.

Eventually, it will again.

Don't Feed Me No Lines

And keep your hands to yourself...

And I wish off my Google Reader... Unfortunately, Google has decided to stop giving us that particular flavor of free ice cream, and I am most displeased.

July 1st, Google is shutting down the Google Reader RSS feed reader... which is the only feed reader I've ever liked, and the entire reason I switched from a tab system.

Before I switched, I bookmarked everything I wanted to read periodically, in folders based on how often I wanted to read them (daily, weekly etc...); and would "open all bookmarks in tabs" or "refresh all tabs", when I wanted to read my blogs, news sites etc...

My problem with RSS feed readers has always been that I hated the interface and reading experience.

Until Reader.

Now that it's going, I can't find a reader that I like.

I really LIKE the Google Reader interface. For me, it's simple, it's clean, it lets me do what I want to do.

I read my feed on multiple computers, my tablet, and my phone; so I need a cloud based reader. I want it accessible from all those devices, across multiple platforms.

I sort my feeds in groups, so I want to have an interface that handles groups well.

I like to read the full post in the reader, not just the subject line; particularly for my webcomics; but I also want to be able to switch views to compact etc...

And I'm broke, so free would be good.

So far I've tried Feedly, the old reader, NewsBlur (which they charge for), and NetVibes.

Of those, I hated the Old Reader, and NetVibes the least. Neither really does it for me though...

Any other suggestions?

My Fortune at Dinner Just Now

Seriously... I just had a great second interview with a great local company this morning... I interviewed with their CEO and CFO for 2.5 hours.. I think I'm getting an offer next week.

Holy crap... a place I've been to is on Bar Rescue right now

Kid Chileens Badass BBQ Steakhouse, in Black Canyon City AZ.

Been there a few times... and saw it go WAY downhill over the years... This ought to be interesting.

Pics From Around Idaho

Found in a restaurant:

From the parking lot of that same restaurant:

A panorama from the top of the pass north of Lewiston (click to embiggen):

Puppies on ice

Snowed here yesterday (Thursday/Friday overnight) for the first time this winter... or the first time at our altitude anyway. We're at 2200ft, and the snow line has been 3,000 up 'til last night.

There was 2-4" of snowfall around the region, but we had about an inch of accumulation (the first inch or so melted).

Last night, it got down below 20 degrees (its been above freezing most nights), and the black ice was REALLY bad.

...Really bad black ice, on a two lane, unlit 6omph limit highway; mostly with no guardrails, and a couple of long 6% grades with 90 degree turns in the middle...

The one major disadvantage of where we live really.

We went down to Spokane to celebrate our anniversary with friends (a couple days early. Our anniversary is tomorrow), and on the way down, we saw six cars off the road; including two that actually went off the road right in front of us (black ice, on a turn just over the crest of a hill).

The truck handled the ice just fine, but knowing how to drive properly helps. Four wheel drive and good snow tires are great, but they don't trump the laws of physics.

It doesn't matter how good your vehicle is, or how good your tires are; inertia overcomes friction pretty damn easily on ice.

When you are maneuvering in a low friction environment, you want your motion to be a simple vector. You can either accelerate, decelerate, or turn... just one, not two; or the product of your vector components is going to be greater than the friction force acting on your vehicle.

Four wheel drive, and good tires, increase the friction component of your total forces, (and help keep them balanced between your front and rear tires), but there's only so much that they can do.


Simple physics.



It got even colder while we were down in Spokane, and rather than risk driving back up into the mountains, with the rest of the idiots sliding around, slamming into us or running us off the road; we ended up staying over with them (and then going for breakfast in the morning).

Overall, a good night, but ended up a pretty long one, since we only got home late this afternoon.

Having this little problem

Over the last few months, I've had this little problem.

See... I've started writing dozens of pieces... and I just haven't bothered finishing, or posting them. some of them I've actually finished, but still... I just can't seem to get motivated enough to bother.

I've written some decent stuff... It's just that I feel like I've already said it a dozen times; or that the issues have been covered a million times etc... etc...

A couple things I wrote that I thought were really good, but I didn't want to deal with the morons who would be commenting on them...

Actually more than a couple...

Not my good regular comments and most of the commenters of the gunblogosphere and libertarian blogosphere; the "truth brigade" idiots and the paulbot types and 9/11 truther types... THOSE idiots.

Part of the problem is that the leftist idiots have got to the point... in fact they're way beyond the point... where I can no longer tell their actual positions and rhetoric, from ridiculous over the top satire of their actual positions and rhetoric.

We have reached a point in this country, where it's not just that headlines from "The Onion" are entirely believable; but that the entire articles are not only believable, they are in fact more reasonable... and better written... than the "real" thing.

I've actually got a bunch of pieces sitting in "draft" status right now that I could publish... but yaknow, I just don't feel like bothering.

I do have a megapost on the AR10, and a couple of non-gun posts that I will probably hit the button on in a couple of days....

It's just that if it isn't something really big and important, or really quick, or just fun... I just feel like it's not worth the time or effort right now.

A lot of it has been the cancer of course, and I think a lot of it is election fatigue.

I'm REALLY hoping that I'll feel different after the election.

Had a pretty good week

Jim, my best friend of 29 years visited this week, from Sunday through Wednesday morning. This was the first time I had seen him in 3 years, and we really took advantage of the visit to have a great time.

Mostly, we just drove around from cool place to cool place here in North Idaho, enjoying each others (and of course Mels) company.

... Actually not ALL north Idaho, as we also visited eastern Washington, and western Montana (for a few minutes anyway. We just drove the scenic route around Lake Pend Oreille and the Clark Fork River, hitting Montana a bit before sunset, before driving home).

Otherwise, we hung out back at the house, with the dogs hanging out all over us (Jim is as big a dog person as we are), watching movies, talking, and eating large quantities of smoked meat (we smoked beef and pork Monday).

We were originally going to do some ATVing, maybe get some shooting in... and just decided that we were having more fun relaxing and not doing too much, so we'd keep doing that.

We dropped Jim off at the airport early Wednesday morning, grabbed a bit of breakfast, ran some errands then came home and collapsed. I hadn't really slept much the previous few days, so I ended up sleeping pretty much the rest of the day, got up and had some leftovers for dinner, then went back to sleep 'til this morning.

Finally, we got a bunch more errands done today; then Mel and I hung out at the local dog friendly microbreweries tap room, with our little escape artist doggie friend Wash.

He has a habit of sneaking through the fence one way or another. When he does, we sometimes gather him up in the truck, and take him around to run errands with us. Most of the area is very dog friendly, and Wash is great around people... and he just loves to be out and about.

It's been beautiful this whole week, mid 60s and sunny in the day, and not hitting freezing overnight (though it came close). The indian summer is winding down, and real fall is starting, but not this week (the rains will be starting Saturday or Sunday... and rain and snow will pretty much be the order of the day 'til next April).

All in all, a pretty good week.

Oh for gods sake, not another one...

So, a few minutes ago, we heard some noise from out in the yard. I'm pretty sure I heard some 'yote chirping and yipping; and there was some obviously distressed wailing.

It's nearly pitch black out tonight, between the new moon, and the smoke from the Washington forest fires (it's been a problem south of us for days; but just finally reached us today), but we went out to check it out (firearms ready of course... This IS north Idaho) ... And still couldn't see a damn thing; but we could certainly hear it.

When we went out to investigate we disturbed a large animal of some kind, and several smaller ones; which jumped and ran away (the large animal running all the way down into the lake); leaving behind a terrified wailing little thing:

Who instantly jumped into Mels arms, and started purring.

Apparently, after the first one, it's gone around stray cat circles that we're a bit of a soft touch for a sob story...

She's a black female, green eyes, unspayed, and as you can see there, she has a fairly distinctive feature: She's got no tail.

It looks like her tailless state is from a non-surgical amputation at about the second tail vertebrae. It's fully healed and grown over, but it was definitely a post birth injury, and not surgical.

She's pure black, and hasn't been declawed; but her claws are clean, not ragged, and seem to have been trimmed at least once.

She's only about a foot long nose to tail root, and if she weighs two pounds I'd be surprised. From her size and state of maturity, I'd call her four to five months old.

She's completely clean, no matting of the fur; no sign of mites, lice, fleas or ticks (or any other visible infection or parasite), and seemingly has no other injuries.

She does have what seems to be a bit of inflammation at the rectum (we're keeping her isolated from the other animals); but her stool seems clean and healthy, but very dry and firm (she may be dehydrated, and she certainly attacked the bowl of water we gave her).

She's also incredibly affectionate, very purry, very curious, and very vocal.

She's housebroken... in fact, she started looking for a litterbox shortly after we brought her into the house; and the second we gave her one, she used it.

Oh, and VERY VERY HUNGRY... but apparently unused to wet food:

As with the last one... who is now a permanent (and very happy) member of our household by the way... clearly, this is a well socialized, well cared for cat, that someone is probably missing. 

Unfortunately, also as with the last one, we haven't seen any posters around, and no-one local posted anything on craigslist or in the pennysaver...

Tomorrow (or later today I guess, given it's now 3am) we'll ask around the neighbors, go to the local vet, put some up notices, check the local free paper and pay paper again, call local animal control etc... 

Funny thing, having a lost and damaged little black cat show up needing our help, right at this time in our lives, and on the eve of the autumnal equinox.

 Well... Another opportunity to pay it forward.

If you are any kind of music fan at all

Or a Henry Rollins fan, or a serious workaholic, or a nutjob fan of any kind... This is the craziest most amazing podcast I've ever heard:

http://nerdist.libsyn.com/henry-rollins

It's basically a 90 minute stream of consciousness from Henry Rollins, and a couple really big, really smart, fans of his and the music he is also a fan of. 

I was laughing my ass off the entire time, and just having my mind blown.

... But every time I hear Rollins do a spoken word performance, or do a long form show etc... He blows me away.

When people ask me how it is that I can write blog posts off the top of my head that take them an hour to read, I just tell them "that's just how I think. It comes off the top of my head like that, at a million miles an hour... "

I actually write like twice that much, typing it near as fast as I can think it; and then maybe I go back and revise it a couple times and clean it up, cut out the excessive or obscure detail, cut out the irrelevant 20% or 30%, clean up the language a little, add in the numbers and the images, and thats it... Takes me about as long to write it as it would to have it as a conversation. 

Well, my friends and I, this is what we sound like when we get going. It's just a mind walk all over the world. Anyone who has ever sat up with us at a get together (especially the Gunblogger rendezvous)... That's what this particular podcast was like. 

Anyone who's like that, even if I have no idea what they are talking about, even if I'm not even interested in the subject matter, I love the passion and the detail, and that you're really SEEING who these people are.

I just love it. 

Well worth the hour and a half... Frankly I'd listen to this for 8 hours and be bummed out when I had to stop.