A Conversation You Don't Want To Have

Paraphrased a bit, but more or less accurate, and the gist is definitely real:

Hey Jeff.

Hey Name.

You have a pickup, right?

Yeah.

Any chance I could borrow it?

Uh, sure, but when? I've got some commitments and...

This afternoon?

Well, I'm using it right now, but maybe when I am done. What's up?

I've gotta pack up all my stuff and get it into storage.

You're moving?

Yeah, but I don't know where I'm going yet.

I am not making this up. Someone I know is moving out - with no place to go - thanks to the economy and the loss of a job some time ago.

I'm hearing noise about how things may be bottoming out. I sure hope so. This sort of thing is getting really depressing.

A rough time...

Yes, I've been away for a while again. Sorry about that.

Have you ever had to interrupt some one's vacation to give them awful news? When they were travelling? In another country? With a nine hour time difference? Well, I hadn't either until just a couple of weeks ago.

My other grandmother died. It's been a hard year for my family on that front, as that makes two.

The first to die, however, had been in poor health for some time and it was mostly a relief to have it finally end. This one, though, was another matter entirely. A completely unexpected event in a woman of reasonable health for her age of 90. And her son - my father - was travelling in Europe with my mom when things started to go bad.

They managed to talk to her on the phone before she died, but they couldn't get back fast enough. Aortic dissection can do that, and it's actually pretty good they talked to her at all.

I found myself travelling as a result, assisting with funeral arrangements, helping clean out her apartment, and so on. Not a fun way to spend a week, but necessary.

I cannot claim that's the only reason I haven't written here lately. There are other factors.

First and foremost it seems that all I do these days is work or come home so tired I have no energy left for anything else. As a programmer you know it isn't physical exhaustion that's the problem, but rather mental stress. I wish I could write about that, but I can't. It's enough to know that it's a job and the checks still clear.

In addition there aren't many mundane things to write about lately. The overhead of life rarely makes for good blog posts. The few interesting things that happen tend to wind up in Facebook lately. Of course that's a totally different format. Assuming you're someone I know - and why else would you be reading this? - if you're also Facebook user and we haven't "friended" (I hate that word) each other yet, please do so.

One bit of recent news is that I am embarking on a writing project with some of my stone carving students to document what we teach in our classes. This will wind up online one of these days, and there are at least two of us working on it, so maybe we'll keep each other going and it will actually get finished.

If there's something you think I should be writing about, please let me know. I know I still owe the next post in the water saga, and I will get to it one of these days. But other than that suggestions are welcome.

Geeze... gone nearly a month

Sorry folks. I've been busy with life for the last few weeks and, unfortunately, it's that part of life that doesn't get blogged about. It seems unlikely anyone reading this will want to know about my doing laundry or mowing the yard (well, that might be worth mentioning, actually), and the actual contents of my work life are off limits these days for various reasons.

In general, we (Anne and I) are just fine. We got our income tax rebate checks, had dinner guests over one night, and continue to get by. It's just that there hasn't been much excitement lately. I can't even get that worked up about anything political right now. It appears (based on news.google.com) the most exciting political story this weekend is that the Obamas are getting a Portuguese Water Dog. Oh joy. Can't we, as a country, worry about something else?

I guess it's finally OK for me to mention one significant thing: I've had to withdraw from the volunteer fire department. Technically I'm on a 6 month leave of absence, but unfortunately I'd guess the odds of going back within that time are really small. I don't know if the chief has announced this yet - probably not, as he's even busier than I am - but I don't think anyone from the department reads this. (If you do, please let me know, OK?)

I left because I simply couldn't make the time - mentally - to both work and be a VFD member. The time required isn't that large, but the simple fact is that I wasn't going on calls since going back to work. It seemed more than a bit silly of me to stay on the department without actually going on calls, so I did the honest thing and said so. The six month leave is at the request of the chief, who says if I can come back in that time there's nothing lost. We'll see, but as I say it seems unlikely. They way I am wired, work takes over on just about every front.

I suppose I should mention that we got through the great ATT cable cut of 2009 without much issue. Our Sprint EVDO connection went down, but amazingly Surfnet stayed up. Both are working now, though the Surfnet connection still only "works" in the most generous sense of the word possible. They claim they're installing new equipment to help improve things for us, but we see no change yet. Oh well.

There. One big bit of (not so happy) news and the rest is trivia. That's all I've got to show since the last post. Sorry.

Living With New Glasses

This is an interesting change in my life. I've had reading glasses before - that I used when working on computers, mostly - but not glasses that I've worn all the time. Making the adjustment is not as simple as I'd like.

I was told that these new glasses would make driving at night easier, and - so far - perhaps they do reduce eye strain from oncoming headlights, but they also give me lots of "spikes" from bright point sources that I find irritating.

Certain lighting conditions seem to result in light bouncing off the edges of the lenses and give things a slightly foggy look, too. I noted this most strongly while watching a concert last night. Depending on the angle I held my head at, the light off the stage caused the issue. But, of course, looking at the lenses directly against a uniformly colored background shows they are perfectly clear.

Condensation and rain clearly don't mix well with glasses either, and I've already experienced both of those, though not to any huge degree yet.

The most irritating thing, though, as to be learning to turn my head instead of just moving my eyes. The "sweet spot" with these lenses isn't always in the right place, particularly when I am reading. I find that I have to adjust the position of the book because my head can't comfortably point any farther down.

It's while reading that I am doing most of my experiments with what is and isn't in focus, and I'm wondering a little bit about that too. Sometimes, while reading I think that one eye - generally the left - is in focus, while the other is slightly out of whack. I move things around - head, eyes, reading material - and play games. (Close one eye, bring the reading material into focus with the open eye by moving reading material and/or head around. Switch to the other eye being open and see if things are in focus for it, doing the best I can not to move during the process.) I wish I had something conclusive on this issue, but I don't yet. Just an odd feeling that things might not be quite right, but it could just as easily be that I'm not yet adjusted to how to hold my head while using these new glasses.

I'm sure I'll work this out eventually, but it gives me new appreciation for the difficulties of full time lens wearers.

New Glasses

I'm getting old.

New glasses.

And not just any new glasses, but bifocals. (Well, technically, they aren't bifocals - they're progressive lenses.)

These are going to to take some getting used to.

On The Stupidity of Employer Provided Healthcare

Time for a rant. Sorry.

I've been hearing and reading a lot of crap lately. All kinds of people are up in arms about the fact that Obama wants to do something about health care. There's all kinds of FUD being spread around as a result. I'm no health care expert and I would never claim to be one, but I do have an opinion or two, and a couple of facts to state:

1) I personally know too many people who don't have and cannot afford health insurance. I'm not talking about bums living under overpasses either, but good, hard working people - some with jobs, some who've lost jobs in the economic crash. And if a working software engineer is seeing these problems regularly, they're going to be a lot worse among people whose incomes are lower.

2) Getting health coverage through one's employer is stupid. Even in the best of cases it means that things can change in nasty ways during a job change, but much worse is possible. Lose your job, lose your insurance. Have a serious medical condition requiring ongoing treatment? Too bad. Got a family that depends on you? Too bad for them too. If it really was the case that everyone who lost his or her job deserved to lose it you might make an argument in favor of this turn of events, but I think you'd lose it when others - dependants of one sort or another - are considered.

3) A lot of vitriol is thrown around about the government being a lousy solution. How it is inefficient or corrupt. But no one ever stops and says "compared to what?" Recent events in the financial system - multiple ponzi schemes and billions of dollars lot - should be enough to make everyone take a step back and realize that there is no group of people that isn't subject to corruption and the effects of greed. Not one. The government is no worse than any business in this regard, and (in fact) it might be better, since much of our government is supposed to be open and accountable. The same cannot be said for the innards of most corporations.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I have a solution for health care in mind. I don't even know to what extent the government should be involved. In truth, I haven't a clue what a real solution will look like, but I do know that anything that continues to tie health care to employment is a problem. I've also come to the conclusion that insurance as we currently do it is a bad idea. Insurance companies are supposed to spread risk around. Everyone pays a little in and the company pays out when people experience the insured risk. But if they limit themselves to only insuring those at little or no risk, they aren't performing the service for which they were created and have instead become money making machines. In the process those who cannot get coverage are hurt. I find that unconscionable.

It may be un-American, but I actually think we get something for our taxes. Things like roads, courts, national defense, police, fire & EMS services, environmental protection, and (when it works) regulation to keep the most greedy among us from taking advantage of everyone else. My list is a good deal too short, but you get the idea. My taxes get me something in return. The life I lead is better because I pay them.

Specifically on health care, I would love to see a day when someone who is sick or injured doesn't face death, bankruptcy, or poor quality treatment for lack of money. To be honest, I'm willing to see my own taxes go up to make that happen. I've seen enough people worry about whether or not to go to a doctor or hospital already in my short life. That is not a choice anyone should have to make for financial reasons. Ever.

To this day I think a society can best be judged by how it treats the least fortunate among its members. On that front the US stinks. It needs to be fixed.

Something Complicated Actually Worked!

I've been so busy lately I haven't been posting much. I apologize to each of my three readers for leaving them in suspense too often.

Today I get to report on a bit of good technology news. As you may know, my recent luck with tech - particularly computers - has not been stellar, but just this once I have something to share that seems to be OK.

My ISP - a no name outfit that does wireless connections here the in the Santa Cruz Mountains where Verizon and cable companies dare not provide reasonable service - has been giving me fits lately. The connection has been poor at best, and sometimes didn't work at all. They've been out for a couple of visits (one of which they've billed me for, which I will be complaining about to them soon) but in the end had to admit that they were simply unable to get me a reasonable signal. Not good.

In desperation I've searched for alternatives, and finally settled on something that seems to work. It's not lightning fast, but it works. It's an EVDO connection provided by Sprint in my case, though others can get something similar from Verizon.

I ordered an EVDO modem from Verizon and a Kyocera KR2 EVDO router. The modem arrived on Friday and I began playing with it. There, I appeared to hit a wall. Initializing it required a Windows machine which I lack. Thankfully I managed borrow one from a friend and did the initialization there. Once done, I could simply plug the EVDO modem into my Ubuntu 8.10 system and connect to the network from the network connection tool. It just worked. Amazing.

Even more amazing was the fact that the router arrived before I visited the friend who loaned me the Windows machine. Once I had initialized the modem and tested it in my Ubuntu 8.10 laptop, I removed the KR2 from the box, plugged the USB modem into it, connected the router to the laptop, and plugged in the router's power supply. Once everyone's POST had completed and the EVDO modem had said "hello" again to Sprint, I was back online, this time through the router, which also acts as a WiFi hotspot.

In other words, except for the silly requirement that my EVDO modem be initialized under Windows (or a Mac), it all just worked. Perfectly. First time.

That never happens.

So now I get to do some speed testing with it and see how it actually performs. So far we know it is an acceptable alternative, but we've done no optimization about placing the modem, etc. I may also need to add an external antenna to increase the bandwidth, but I'll learn that with time.

Right now what I have is something we can use when my regular ISP's connection isn't working properly. And if we can live with the data rate and the 5GB/month cap, I may be able to say good-bye to my old ISP permanently. Give me a couple of months to figure all of that out. I promise to report on it here eventually.

How Much Rain?

As many of my readers know, California is in the midst of a three year long drought. Between that and recent economics and politics, it appears to me that everyone is about to die of a massive heart attack. So I thought I'd keep this post light.

This morning we clawed our way to 33" of rainfall so far for the rainy season, which runs from July 1 through June 30 out here. 33" may sound like a lot to some of you, but it's not. If we have no more rain it would be our fourth lowest rain year on record since we moved in back in 1992.

Anyway, as I was writing the numbers down this morning I realized that the only place we have a record of them is on a beat up 3x5 card held to the fridge door with a magnet. That seemed kind of silly. So I put them into a spreadsheet, and actually figured out what the average rainfall in our area has been for 1992 - 2008: 49.59" at our home rain gauge.

So, as you can see, 33" is still well below average, and given we're near the end of February already it's going to be hard to get back to average before the season ends.

Anyway, here are the actual numbers:

• 1992-1993: 45.75"
  
• 1993-1994: 28.80"
  
• 1994-1995: 74.50"
  
• 1995-1996: 53.55"
  
• 1996-1997: 54.70"
  
• 1997-1998: 74.70"
  
• 1998-1999: 40.85"
• 1999-2000: 52.70"
  
• 2000-2001: 38.85"
  
• 2001-2002: 48.95"
  
• 2002-2003: 50.80"
  
• 2003-2004: 38.80"
  
• 2004-2005: 63.00"
  
• 2005-2006: 67.80"
  
• 2006-2007: 25.35"
  
• 2007-2008: 34.35"

May you stay out of drought wherever you live.

Mountain Living - Water Part XI

Another in the ongoing saga of our water woes...

Now we have a 5000 gallon tank full of mud.

Well, that's a bit hyperbolic, but still somewhat factual. The other day I noted that the water in the dog's dish was slightly brown. Wondering about that I did some research and discovered that all the water in the house was that color except what comes from the RO unit.

So I wandered out to the water tanks to see if anything was up out there. Oh yeah. Suspended silt in the water. Probably the result of two years of drought and then finally getting some water into the water table this year. Cruft is getting dislodged and washed out into our well. Fun!

Eventually I think it will settle out, but it will take time. And in the meantime it's ugly. I backwashed the filters and things are better now, but it's not pretty out there.

Once again I repeat for those who hate city water: you have no idea how good you've got it. Just pay your bill and quit complaining.

At the moment I am waiting for referral information on how to build my own sand based turbidity filter that might help with this (and other) water quality problems. We'll see if that ever shows up or not. And in the meantime I'll keep asking the oracle.

I hate computers...

Yes, it's true, I despise computers, despite having programmed them for nearly 20 years and continuing to earn a living from the silly things.

I have a nice big rant building up inside me about how Linux is only the lesser evil among a selection of evils ranging all over the map in power and degree of vileness (is that even a word?), but for now, let's just say I hate computers in general. Every beeping one of them.

Why, you ask?

I've been trying to setup a new computer for 2 days now. Not much luck.

Oh, it runs, sort of. But I can't get the device driver for my graphics card to work, and the sound drivers completely fail too. But my OS is from April of 2008, so clearly it's just too old. The proprietary video driver is only supported by the latest version, and it appears that version may have better support for the open source driver too.

So far today the only thing that has gone right on the computer is this: I managed to replace the busted keyboard in my laptop with one that works. The stupid little trackpoint thing was causing the mouse cursor to move whenever I typed on the keyboard, and since I use focus-follows-mouse, that was a bit of a problem. Plus, once it started moving it was sometimes 30 seconds or so before it stopped being wedged in a corner of the display. Very irritating.

So at least that's working again, which is an improvement. It's actually possible to use it as a laptop again.

So, while I continue waiting for Surfnet's lousy network (don't get started... don't get started...) to download an ISO image of the latest Linux version - in the desperate hope it will deal with the video and sound options in my new computer a bit better, even though it will have bugs too, some of which I am already familiar with from other installations - I am going to go do something much less painful: tax preparation.

That should give you some idea of just how screwed up my weekend has been thanks to these infernal "labor saving" devices.