Tag: Modern Problems

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We’ve reached the end of the week.

Annnnnnnddd… Nothing is new!

Had a job offer rescinded. Disappointing but in truth I had some reservations about the job. The pay was good, but the Job itself was in Florida.

Florida wouldn’t be bad for me personally, but it would mean leaving Jesse, my home, and probably any reasonable chance of returning to California would be gone too, except to sell the house eventually.

I thought about it and had come to peace about all that I’d be leaving and all that I’d have to clean up eventually.

The reservations about the job in addition to those stated, also had to do with the relationship of the person I’d be working for and my family’s involvement. What happened to the job if things went sour between my boss and the family? Those questions were apparently answered when the offer was rescinded. I know from the family’s perspective that something happened.

I’m trying to convince myself that it was for the best and have mustered at least some strength of will to continue this fruitless search.

I’ve been considering just entering warehouse work. There’s a nice symmetry in that. One of the first jobs I had, involved warehouse work, and I sorta liked it.

No politics, simple labor, In motion all day long, and not trapped behind a desk. Do your job, do it right, and go home at night.

There’s also a pot grower nearby that is looking for help with the growing. The pay isn’t as high as the warehousing positions, but I like making things grow. I’d also be a good candidate because I don’t particularly like pot. The employer wouldn’t have to worry about me taking merchandise or being stoned out of my mind on the job.

The longer this unemployment goes on, the more I’m leaning toward abandoning technology as a career and doing something that’s actually constructive.

I’ve been thinking maybe it’s time to let software continue it’s slide toward horrific inadequacy without my interference.

After all we’ve all seen the debacles across the software industry in recent years. From simple things like, Typos salted through menus and help texts, to data breaches exposing a corporations entire customer database to the world.

Remember… the software “Passed” testing…

I wonder how happy I’d be returning to an office environment where any bug I discovered could be called “Racist” based on the color of a programmer’s skin or their national origin. Software either works correctly or it doesn’t. As a QA person my job is to find the problems and report them. I don’t care who or what the programmer is, a bug is a bug.

The problem is, that if you’re assigned to test a particular part of functionality it’s often a particular programmer’s code. Programmers hate QA finding bugs in their code I could see it devolving into a “He’s just a racist and going through my code with a fine tooth comb because he hates: X, Y, Z colored people.“

No matter how you play that scenario out, as a white man these days you lose. Even if you’re treating all the code you test in exactly the same way.

Then I ask myself do I really want to deal with being afraid of using the wrong word or pronoun.

Years ago I was called on the carpet during a class that I was teaching for using the term “dikes”. It was a common term that described diagonal cutters (as in for wire).

I don’t know how the term came into common usage, as that happened decades before I was an itch in my Daddy’s pants. But there I was, facing a pissed off lesbian who’d taken offense.

First of all, I didn’t know or care that she was a lesbian. Second of all, I used a term that the other 30 people in the class knew, and my use of that term caused them to all pick up the indicated tool to perform the indicated action.

I asked her what term I should use, her reply was, “diagonal cutters”. “Fine,” I said, “I’ll use that term for the rest of the class.”

While she was yelling in my face about how hurtful the term “dikes” was, I could see the other 30 people in the class rolling their eyes in annoyance.

I told her in front of the class that I happened to be gay and that I wasn’t offended by the term “Fag.” In fact I expected to hear that term frequently when I was in London.

I then asked if we could get on with the class. She’d have none of it. She demanded satisfaction in the form of an immediate written apology for using an offensive term.

Her boss spared me wasting time on an endeavor to satisfy 0.03030303 % of the class by removing her from the classroom.

Several other women were present and two of them said they too were lesbians, and didn’t mind my use of the term in this context. One of them quipped, “I hope Sheila NEVER visits Holland!“

The class burst into laughter and we got on with business.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that incident over the past year. I honestly can’t say if I’d be happy in an office full of people just waiting to pounce on the wrong word, action, or pronoun, just to be offended and cause drama.

Perhaps I’ve had enough of the corporate grind.

I know I’ve had enough of the HR bullshit where a corporation states their policy then promptly discards the policy based on skin color.

Yeah, the last place I worked had a few incidents like that. I’m rule based. Give me a rule & I’ll follow it until you aren’t following the rules. At that point, don’t try making me selectively follow your rules, especially not based on the color of my skin versus someone else’s.

The last place I worked, was just starting to see the perpetually aggrieved. I have to wonder how much worse that’s gotten over the past year.

I just want to go to work, do my job, be paid for my effort, and go home. I don’t want to be terrorized all day into silence or be expected to show up at some event to show corporate support for a cause that I don’t believe in.

Sadly, that too seems to be required by some companies.

Time will tell…

I wonder if it’s too late in my life to move to Norway. A nice simple one room cottage perched on green hills overlooking a fjord. Maybe some sheep, a cow, and a windmill or solar panels to charge the electronics, (At least much of the year…)

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Uhgggg! Reloading Software is a pain!

Several months ago I did my usual software update of MacOS.

Everything went perfectly… or so I thought.

Then about 4 weeks ago, my computer started acting odd. At first, it was just a minor issue here or there and all were easily resolved.

Then suddenly, my computer would go to sleep and I couldn’t wake it with the bluetooth keyboard. Annoying! After a day or two, my computer wouldn’t wake from sleep pressing a key on the built in keyboard. I had to press the power button. SUPER ANNOYING!

Then I noticed the backups that were supposed to be happening hourly, were sometimes happening 15 minutes apart and other times many hours apart. Strange!

Then my computer stopped unlocking with my Apple Watch. When I went to the control panel to find out why, it turned out that the option to even turn that on or off had completely disappeared.

After fiddling with things for a while, I called Apple. Nothing made sense and the system was behaving more and more badly as each day passed. Two weeks of trying the things that Apple Engineering suggested and sending them logs (sometimes multiple logs) per day and still no progress.

Yesterday, Apple and I finally decided to do the ultimate fix.

I wiped the hard drive and began again. I’ve managed to get most of the software back on the system and working again. There are a few bits that can only be described as, “The child ain’t right,” but it appears that I have a system that’s stable and working correctly now.

Why didn’t I use my TimeMachine backups? Because I didn’t trust them!

After reinstalling the operating system, and while I was moving my documents back onto the machine. It occurred to me that this computer had been restored from my MacBook Air backup in 2019. That system had been in continuous use through 9 versions of the MacOS.

God knows what leftovers were on that machine!

I noticed while I was poking around trying to fix whatever problem this MacBook Pro had, that there were preferences and bits of software that hadn’t been touched since 2012. I dunno, I somehow thought Apple did a better job of cleaning up.

On the other hand, there had been 9 operating systems on the Air and I’d never had to reformat the drive in all that time. DO THAT WITH A WINDOWS MACHINE!

My machine is once again “happy” and I’m getting there myself, even though I’ve been in digital hell for the past 36 hours.

It’s coming together, but you never realize how much crap you’ve got until something like this happens. Once I’m finished, I’ll probably wipe one of the backups and start fresh.

For the time being, I’m running backups OFF. Until I get the last bits of software working properly. VMware as usual, is being a pain, (Actually VMware is fine, Windows is being snotty,) Another application that I downloaded from the Apple App Store, doesn’t want to reinstall its license so it’s not fully operational yet.

I think that may be a delete and reinstall situation. I’ve had to do that before with this particular application.

If you’re having weird problems after upgrading to Big Sur, you might want to go nuke on the system. Since I’ve done that, I’ve noticed a lot of little things that are working. These are little things that you don’t notice until they show up correctly, and you say, “Oh, that’s what they meant…”

Anyway, back to it…

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After two days of Snow clearing…

I can see the road in front of the house. It had about an inch of compressed ice on it.

The snow players, as anticipated made their appearance. Saturday wasn’t too bad, Sunday on the other hand was an absolute shit show.

They actually pulled up the stakes labeled “Reforestation” that marked where new trees had been planted. Obviously, the stakes were in the way of these people’s fun.

The police were up here at least 3 times running everyone out of the neighborhood, because they’d parked so that the roads were blocked. I do appreciate the police and they were ticketing and towing to beat the band.

One humorous incident came when a full sized expedition was backing into my driveway and about to hit the other half’s car. I stepped out onto the deck and yelled at them to stop. The vehicle was loaded with people, but the woman in the passenger seat told me they were locals trying to avoid the snow players.

When I pointed out that they must be new to the area because all the locals know there is no way to get to town except via Hwy 2 due to the bridge being under construction and the wash, she realized she’d been caught lying through her teeth. Then the driver of the expedition backed down the street. Where they went, I don’t know.

I can tell you that to a local it’s obvious you don’t live here. Your vehicle is too clean and if you look at other vehicles from around here, you’ll notice ice on the roof or muddy snow or splashed mud on the quarter panels and in the wheel wells.

My car is in the garage, and even it has evidence of having been driven in snowy conditions. During this time of year it’s pointless to wash your car except about once a month.

Then there was the neighbor next door who noticed an adult male trying all the doors on a house for sale across the street. When she asked him what he was doing he replied, “I’m here to fix the water heater.”

When she asked him where his truck and tools were, he disappeared behind the house and she called the police. We suspect that he was looking for a bathroom for his 3 children and wife who were playing all over the property.

Dude… This ain’t Disneyland and we don’t need to cater to your wishes or needs. Of course that means someone is going to find human poop in their yard come springtime.

Ugh! Those are just two of the incidents that stand out. The whole day was like that. So I spent most of the day shovel in hand chipping at the ice. It gave me a good excuse to keep an eye on the stupidity and generally keep folks off our street and out of our yards.

Today, has brought light showers and warmer weather it’s about 39° and thankfully the showers are more rain than sleet.

We’re expecting warmer temps and even sunshine later in the week. There was supposed to be another snow storm on Wednesday but it looks like that’s breaking up over the coast. That is a relief! All of the neighbors are tired and achy from the snow removal and none of us were looking forward to having to do it all again so soon.

We never had this kind of snow play problem before the county decided to widen the wash as part of an ill conceived flood control project. A project that over ten years has resulted in the county spending millions in overtime digging out the log flume they created, year round.

Finally a year or two ago, someone decided that replacing the bridge that had washed out was more cost effective.

Funny how the residents suggested that in the first place and also pointed out that the county solution would cost more in the long run and cause other unanticipated problems in the area.

The wash before the county messed with it, was a natural meandering space with trees and a lovely trail. The wash itself wasn’t a 50 foot deep straight gash in the landscape. It was obvious to everyone visiting the town that this was not a place to play in the snow.

After the county work, the wash looks very much like a ski run and tourists use it as such because they’re tired of sitting in line to get to the actual snow play areas or ski runs.

The first winter after the county work, everyone at this end of town knew we were screwed.

For 7 or 8 straight years we’ve watched the county dig out the wash year round, to keep the road open. Each spring the county shows up with saplings to plant in the devastation they created. Each winter, those saplings are trampled and destroyed by snow players looking for free winter fun, instead of using the appropriate and safe designated areas.

People fall and get hurt every single weekend playing in the wash because they have no idea there are rocks under the snow that they cannot see. Having to split the paramedics between both ends of town also means that skiers who are injured on the actual slopes have to wait for medical help or be airlifted out if their need is really great. Not to mention having to pay triple shifts to fire and police.

These are all things that I personally mentioned in the town meetings opposing the county’s wash project. They were only concerned with the official environmental impact statement and basically told me to shut up. They were unconcerned with the impact this would have on the property owners.

They kept telling us it was for erosion control.

Now the county is having to pay property owners whose property fronts the wash for loss of property and fences that are washed away.

If you hike up to the national forest property that was left alone, you’ll find that nature knows best. Beyond where the county boondoggle stops, the original wash is largely unchanged. Erosion is minimal and the natural habitat has naturally occurring pools of clear fresh water for the animals of the forest. It’s beautiful and doesn’t look like the lunar surface.

I think it was Reagan who said the most terrifying words every heard were, “We’re from the government and here to help you.“

I’m going to go take the dog out for a walk. He’s been cooped up in the house all weekend. I’m thinking that we’ll start picking up the trash in the wash too. I can see from the back deck, there are hundreds of surgical masks littering the landscape. Those in addition to the food wrappers and broken plastic sleds give the wash and the one remaining trail the appearance of living in a land fill.

If the dog will be more or less calm, I’ll take some pictures and update this post with them.

Sigh…

Here’s a few pictures. The cleanup is ongoing.

We’ve got a call into the Board of Supervisors.

Apparently, their phones began ringing at 8:00 AM on Monday Morning. Folks are tired of being trapped in their homes by the chaos.

However, I know a lot of people up here don’t really expect politicians to actually do anything.

This last photo is of blood in the snow. Unfortunately, the red in the photo looks more brown. In daylight, the red was more vibrant. I think this wasn’t anything more severe than a nose bleed, caused by cold dry air.

It’s probably going to take a large patch of bloody snow to get the County’s attention. Unfortunately, that means someone is going to have to really get hurt.

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The Storm

So the storm was everything the National Weather Service claimed it would be.

Wind, rain/sleet, and snow. Lots of snow. About 16 inches at my elevation.

The front deck 1/29/2021

It’s not all that unusual to get snows like this here. What is unusual is that we’ve had essentially 3 back to back over the course of a few days.

The street. which was clear down to the pavement on 1/28/2021 and is buried again on 1/29/2021

The problem with our street is that it’s not county maintained. Meaning the residents have to clear it ourselves.

So we all pull out shovels, snow blowers, and one of the neighbors has an ATV with a snow blade on the front. Unfortunately, in the last snow he broke a shear pin and is waiting for the replacement which is on it’s way from MN via the USPS. He’s thinking that he won’t get it until spring.

The snow mound that is my front yard.

So after a full day of working, resting, & working again I can see most of the driveway again. One of the neighbors is at the far end of the street running his snow blower. What usually happens is all the neighbors fire up their snow blowers at the same time and the begin a carefully choreographed series of passes on the street.

That doesn’t begin until driveways are cleared otherwise we end up losing track of the driveways and have to do more work to find ’em and clear ’em. Something you don’t find out until you’ve regularly used a snow blower is, after you’ve blown the snow with a snow blower, it tends to compress into ice. So if you bury someones driveway sometimes the only solution is a pick and standard shovel instead of the traditional snow shovel.

One other really nice thing is that if one of the neighbors is away, and there’s a snow storm those of us who are home clear their driveway so they have a place to park when they get back. It’s not something any of us have talked about or agreed upon. It’s just a nice unwritten rule of kindness.

The other rule is that if the storm was really bad and your driveway isn’t cleared yet, you park in one of the neighbors drives until we get to yours. That rule is also unwritten and one of the nice things about our street.

We also have a common bag of various sized snowblower shear pins, unfortunately, none of us had anything big enough for the neighbors ATV snow blade. Dang IT!!!!

A shot of the house after clearing the road

In the picture above, the dark streaks are where the new guy on the block ingested some of the dirt from my yard. Ooops! No matter, the yard will be fine, but his snow blower was very unhappy for a couple of minutes. This picture isn’t super pretty but it gives a good reference of ground level and the relative depth of the snow.

Fortunately, we haven’t had to contend with snowplayers today. They have a bad habit of turning onto our road then freaking out when the realize 2 important things. 1) It’s a dead end. 2) It’s very narrow and there isn’t anyplace to turn around unless there happens to be an open driveway.

Usually they end up having to back down out onto the wider county maintained road. Which is also full of snowplayers trying to get up that road to its dead end, or it’s full of those who have found out that there is no way through and turned around.

This is why we don’t like snowplayers up in the neighborhoods. There are lots of little roads that dead end. Lots of these people come up here thinking the whole town is a snow/ski area, and they refuse to read signs that are clearly posted saying that a road is a dead end, or following the larger and equally clear signs that point to the designated play areas, and ski resorts.

They get tired of crawling along on the main, and well maintained road and tend to turn onto the first side road they see. Then the police get involved and start running them out of the neighborhoods, writing tickets, and towing vehicles.

Us locals, stop with a smile and present our drivers licenses (to prove our address and get waved on through police checkpoints). Sometimes we’ll provide thermos refills for the officer on duty. Especially if we notice an officer who hasn’t had a break in many hours working in the cold.

I’m afraid that tomorrow (Saturday) will bring a ton of rude, giddy, idiots, which will make all of the neighbors weekends a pain in the ass. We tend to take turns shooing the idiots off our lawns, out of the streets, and out of the reforestation project(s).

Then we spend Monday and Tuesday picking up all the trash. Broken plastic sleds, paper, dirty diapers, gloves, shoes, face masks, and the amazing detritus of human beings.

I am amused by the irony as well. These are the same people who would scream at the top of their lungs against pulling out of the Paris climate accords, but think nothing of trashing a pristine mountain town.

After all, they don’t have to actually clean up the mess. They don’t have to call the forestry service to help sick wildlife. They don’t have to worry about anything do they? It’s someone else’s problem when they drive back down the mountain.

Following are some pictures that illustrate the point really well.

A local creek about 10 miles from home. This picture was taken 15 year ago before the road to the creek was paved.
The same area about 4 years ago.
There is a creek under these uprooted trees. People were climbing the trees and then using their weight to pull them over. Seems the people wanted a bridge so they could cross a creek that has at best 10 inches of water in it during the Summer.
Filthy Humans!

If I sound harsh about people. It’s because I see the kind of wanton destruction and disregard all too many people have for the “Natural” surroundings that I live in and appreciate.

Ironically, lots of these people come to these wilder places to, “Get away from the city,” Unfortunately, they bring all their bad habits with them and just expect it to be magically cleaned up every night.

Before anyone talks to me about Climate change, the Green New Deal, Carbon taxes, or my gas powered car. They better have a simple appreciation of what’s happening every day in their local wilderness.

Cause if they don’t… I’m going to eat them for lunch!

Sorry, I digressed…

I’m not a traditional tree hugging Eco-Warrior. I’m just a guy who likes nature and gets really mad about the hypocrisy of people who are willing to pay stupid taxes and force everyone else to do the same, terrorizing us with dire warnings about Climate Change.

Too many of these people have never in their lives spent a day carrying a big trash bag through a forest picking up other people’s trash. Or tending a trampled sapling, or scrubbing graffiti off of rocks, or looking after an animal that ingested something left behind by a thoughtless person.

I do all of these things, and for the record, I’m not part of any organization. There’s no-one taking pictures. The big garbage bag ends up in my trash or recycling bin which ever is appropriate. I do this because I believe it’s the right thing to do, and should be done for no other reason. I’m the human walking in the forest seeing all the mess. Rather than tut-tut about it, I’ve got two hands, and a backpack with at least one trash bag inside.

Leave no trace. Leave a place better than you found it. That way the next person on the trail can appreciate the beauty and hopefully they’re operating on the same philosophy.

I’m a big believer that until you tend to the local issues you can’t really address the global ones. I also believe that if everyone simply tended to their own local issues, the world would be a lot prettier and healthier.

After all anyone can write a check, or click “Like” and feel smug about it. Put some skin in the game if you’re really serious.

Just my two cents. What I’ve said may not be right. It may not be right for you in particular. But It’s right for me and given that I do have skin in the game I’m not going to apologize if what I’ve said offends anyone.

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I’ve been putting off this little project…

Several months ago I got a nifty server. 5 drives, I configured it in a RAID array with two drive redundancy.

For those of you that think I just spoke Greek. I didn’t. Simply put, I have a server with 5 hard drives that work as a set. Any two of these drives can fail without me losing all the data stored on the server. I can pull the bad drive out, replace it and tell the server to fix the problem. A few hours later the server will be back up to full operating speed and while it’s fixing the problem, I still have access to the data.

Anyhoo, I’ve been meaning to put the thing on the shelf in my wiring closet. It will be protected and I won’t have to worry about the dog bumping into it when he comes in to the office to ask me to play. He doesn’t just ask, he’s a bit aggressive about it. He’s a dog… He doesn’t understand that some electronics are fragile and don’t like being bumped around while they’re running.

So I decided the other day, that the time had come. I’ve been putting it off because 1) nothing with computers is ever as easy as it seems. 2) I knew there was a rats nest of cables I’d have to sort through. 3) The other half had to get a new computer (The second hard drive in 6 months failed and I didn’t really want to mess with it.

I start shutting things down. Then I started pulling unused or un-necessary cables out of the wiring closet. I finally got to the point where I could route power and network cables and encountered a major problem.

The cables I wanted to run were too thick to run them the way I’d done in the past. I’m standing there holding a shelf in my hand thinking, “Well damn, this isn’t going to work.”

Then I remembered my nifty new RYOBI tools in the garage. I knew I had a 1″ hole bit in a bit set I’d recently purchased. I take the shelf downstairs and grab the new drill and the bit set. That’s when I noticed that I’d also gotten with the set, 4 different sized hole saws.

OH Goody! I’d wondered what I’d use those for and now I know and have a good excuse to boot.

I set the 1.4″ hole saw on it’s bit, locked it down and fit the assembly in the chuck of the drill. 10 minutes later I’ve got two beautiful holes in the shelf right where I need them. The drill didn’t even breathe hard.

I was standing there looking at my work, for the briefest instance I considered where else I might need a convenient hole. Thankfully something in my brain hit the emergency stop on that thought process!

I put the tools away without drilling anymore holes. I patted the new drill appreciatively and put it back in it’s case.

I suspect that I’ll be drilling and cutting some things in the near future as I run antenna cables for the HAM rig. (Yeah, that’s another project on the list. I need to get some better antennas and get them installed so I can get out a bit better. HAM is another of those hobbies where getting a new radio just leads to a bunch of supplementary purchases.)

I head back up into the house, shelf in hand and put it back in place. The cables routed easily and I was able to put the power cabling through one hole while putting the data cables through the opposite end of the shelf. That keeps potential interference from power away from my data. As I’m standing there on the ladder I was thinking, “I’m a moron. I should have done this exact thing years ago! I’d have saved myself a lot of aggravation over the years.“

I put the server in place, and powered everything back up. Simple and it’s a nice looking installation.

Well, that chore done… I turned my attention to another round of data recovery. That was 48 hours of pure hell. Thankfully, my computer is fast, my network is fast, and I’m pretty good at this sort of thing. Corrupted backups and a person who has no concept of a data storage plan, not withstanding. Recovering data is just plain tedious in the first place. Not having specific documents stored in logical folders to assist in targeting the important stuff makes it very frustrating.

So to any of you out there who just spatter documents and files anywhere and everywhere on your computer. I’ll give you this advice. If you value your relationship, tell your techie other half what is most important, and keep the booze coming. One other thing, move your files into some kind of logical order to start with!

As it turns out, the backups were corrupted from the previous three hard drive crashes. The other half hadn’t done any organization after any of those crashes. In fact, after me telling them that the backups were corrupted, they kept using them anyway, compounding the problem.

With 10 Terabytes of storage available, the other half had also not copied the important files out to the server for redundancy. Sigh… and I’m the bad guy for being pissed off about it.

Mischief managed. The other half is running on the new computer. The server now has copies of all the files I recovered in a non-backup related directory and there’s a duplicate scanner running on my computer looking at that directory eliminating duplications and preserving edits in chronological order. When that’s done the files will be moved to a directory structure where Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Photos, Music, Musical Scores, and other files will each have their own directory path.

Now to create a scheduled process that updates those directories once a week from the other half’s computer. As things stand right now, I burned 4 Terabytes on the server in recovery. I’ve got the other half sorting through tons of their own shit to figure out what is important and relevant to keep.

Just punishment, I think.

When they’re done with the space, I’ll be able to delete the corrupted backups (Hanging on to them for the moment in case I have to dive in to find some super important thing I missed. Then the recovered directories (except the one I’m processing) will be gone. I’m not going to be surprised to see about 2.5 – 3.5 Terabytes suddenly be available again on the server.

While I’m at it, I may go out and access one of my really old archival backups to consolidate more storage. I can move the files and documents to the main server in my home folder and then delete the old archive backup too. Then I’ll keep only the important stuff that provides history back to 2008 when everything was destroyed.

This has been my week, I hope your’s was better and in the midst of all of this I’ve managed to apply for jobs… Not that anyone is responding to my inquiries.

But I’ll keep at it.