Thank you, mystery person!

Thank you, mystery person!  On Friday morning, Fedex delivered a small box to us.  On the outside, it was marked “Collin Street Bakery”, in Corsicana, Texas.  Neither Debbie nor I had any idea what that bakery was, but hey – from a bakery it can't be too bad, can it?

So we opened the box, and discovered that it contained a fruitcake, in a traditional round tin.   We hadn't ordered it, so whoever did must be someone who knows me fairly well – well enough to know that I am one of 5 living humans who admit to liking fruit cake (well, good fruit cake, anyway).  Debbie is not one of the other 4 – she can't stand 'em.  Also, whoever it is knows our new address.  But there was no card with the cake, and no letter, so we have no idea who sent it!

Then we tried the fruit cake.

That's the best damned fruit cake I've ever had.  I've had some good ones in the past, but none even came close to this one.  When Debbie heard my exclamations of delight, she decided to try it, too – and now the cake is disappearing twice as fast as it was.  If a fruit cake is good enough to get Debbie to eat it, you know it's good!

So thank you, oh mysterious giver of fruit cake.  We don't know who you were, but thank you!

Geek: working around a Java bug...

Geek: working around a Java bug...  On Friday I ran smack into a weird bug in a most unexpected place, while doing something seemingly very straightforward.  I was creating a socket factory for SSL connections to a web site, using Jetty (which relies on standard Java library classes).  To do this, the socket factory needs to know about your certificates.  These are usually kept in a keystore file, which is what I am doing.  The standard API has you pass in the path to the keystore file, along with the password for it.  When I passed in the path, I got an exception (below with the first few lines of the stack trace):

Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: default directory must be absolute
   at sun.nio.fs.UnixFileSystem.(UnixFileSystem.java:54)
   at sun.nio.fs.LinuxFileSystem.(LinuxFileSystem.java:39)
   at sun.nio.fs.LinuxFileSystemProvider.newFileSystem(LinuxFileSystemProvider.java:43)
   at sun.nio.fs.LinuxFileSystemProvider.newFileSystem(LinuxFileSystemProvider.java:36)
   at sun.nio.fs.UnixFileSystemProvider.(UnixFileSystemProvider.java:55)

The default directory path was absolute, so this error made no sense.  Eventually I tracked down the source of the issue: a known Java bug (JDK-7181721)!  That's something one doesn't run into every day – virtually 100% of the time, the bug is either in your own code, or someone else's code that you're relying on – not the code that's actually part of Java.  This is so unusual that I was suspicious I was wrong at first.  So I came up with a workaround that avoided this code, and sure enough that fixed it.

The workaround?  It turns out that the socket factory as a completely separate way to get the certificates.  You can create a Keystore object (in memory) and load it yourself, then pass that in.  I did that this morning, and bye-bye problem.

I'd be quite happy to not run into another one of these!  On the other hand, finding and fixing such a bizzaro problem is kind of satisfying...

A slight change of plans...

A slight change of plans...  This past August we'd booked a trip to Hawai'i, to leave on January 13th, which would have been our first visit there in about five years.  With Debbie's surgery just a few days ago, and some recovery time needed, she's decided that she'd rather make that trip later, after she's more fully recovered.  So the trip has been canceled (boo hoo!), and we'll re-book it sometime later.

Happier news: Debbie's recovery is going rather spectacularly well!  Yesterday she spent most of the day on her own two feet, without crutches, cane, or any other kind of assist.  She reports that the pain that stopped her recovery progress over the past few months is gone – a pretty good indication that the meniscus tear has truly been the source of her issues.  Now she's got a different sort of pain, the soreness you'd expect after surgery.  It's already down to the point where she's not taking any pain medication except prior to physical therapy visits, and even then it's just ibuprofen.  She hasn't touched the opioids for days now.  Yay!

There's a new dog in town!

There's a new dog in town!  Not ours, but our neighbor Tim D.  Cute little bugger, isn't he?  For some reason they named the poor guy “Marley”.

We also heard from Sheila Miller, the breeder who has been the source of all our field spaniels over the years.  She's got a female who was just bred, and one of the puppies from her litter, if everything works out, has our name on it.  Sometime in March or April, there may be some yipping and squeaking in Paradise...

A geeky rescue...

A geeky rescue...  My friend and neighbor Tim D. had something of a computer emergency earlier this week.  His ancient Dell refused to boot, and made funny noises.  I checked it out for him, but it was deader than the proverbial door nail.  Not a hint of video, no audio, and no disk noises.  All I could really detect was the symptoms of a power supply in agony, which could be either the power supply itself, or something else drawing way too much power.  Tim didn't want to invest a lot of time or effort in it, so decided to upgrade to a new Dell: smaller, quieter, faster, and half the price.

Here's the rub, though: he had years of photos and documents on that old Dell that he really didn't want to lose.  He never backed up locally, of course.  He did have some kind of cloud backup running - but he had no idea what his account name or password might be.  Oh, my.

So today I went over to help him with his new machine.  First thing I noticed: the thing was larded up with an unconscionable amount of crapware, some of which was really obnoxious with the scary, misleading pop up screens full of doom-laden technobabble.  Sheesh.  I got rid of most of that, but at least one thing is still installed, forcing all of his web searches to go to Yahoo.  Shame, Dell.  I will never buy one of your machines again, nor will I recommend them.  Just awful.

Next I tried to figure out whether his Internet connection was up to snuff.  He's paying for a 105/50 connection, but his cable modem had a blinking orange light - likely some sort of problem.  Comcast told him to ignore the light.  I ran a speed test, and he's only getting a 13/12 connection - horrible, and not even close to what he's paying for.  He and I are declaring war on Comcast Commies!

Then I tried to figure out a way to log into his backup service.  Finally I got the account password reset, logged into his backup service - and discovered that he'd never actually backed up anything at all!  That meant that all his photos and documents existed in only one place: his old computer's hard disk.  Which, of course, might not be in working order.  Yikes!

So I removed his old hard disk, took it back to our house, and rifled through my boxes of junk to look for a magic widget I bought a couple of years ago.  This thing turns any SATA or IDE disk into a USB disk.  If Tim were really, really lucky, that would mean that I could mount that old disk on my Mac as an external drive, and recover his files.

Well, Tim must be doing something right, because that old disk spun right up.  Further, my Mac already had a read-only NTFS file system driver installed - so I could read it with no fuss at all.  A few minutes of work with the Finder and I had all his files on a thumb drive.  A half hour or so later, they were on his new computer.  Yay!

Now I've got him running on BackBlaze, my favorite cloud backup ... and I've recorded his credentials so he doesn't get in trouble like this again!  He'll have to find some new way to live dangerously :)

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  This time it's from the U.S. government, in a document just released called Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.  On the off chance that you're not familiar with this committee, they're the ones who issue the federal government's official dietary guidelines – the ones quoted so often in the press, and likely, by your doctor.

For decades these guidelines have contained strict limitations on the consumption of cholesterol.  Generations of Americans have been told that the science was settled: they should stop eating those nasty egg yolks.  So you might be surprised to see this in the latest (2015) guidelines:

Previously, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommended that cholesterol intake be limited to no more than 300 mg/day. The 2015 DGAC will not bring forward this recommendation because available evidence shows no appreciable relationship between consumption of dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol, consistent with the conclusions of the AHA/ACC report. Cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.

Translated, this says: our previous guidelines were bullshit.  Eat all the cholesterol you want, as the cholesterol you eat doesn't affect the cholesterol in your blood – we're not aware of any potential for eating too much.  So go right ahead and eat those egg yolks – jumbo, if you'd like.

Sheesh.

Flying colors!

Flying colors!  That's how Debbie's first physical therapy went.  Her tiny wounds are nearly healed already, no infection, and the swelling is almost completely gone.  Best of all: full range of motion with very little pain.  Yay!

Excellent speech..

Excellent speech ... by Brigadier General Michael Kurilla.   Via Michael Yon, much more here...

Another Dilbert strip...

Another Dilbert strip ... that resonates oh-so-strongly with my corporate experience:

One incident in particular comes right to mind, in which my then-CEO, a nice fellow named John T., sent me off to make a budget spreadsheet for the engineering department.  He particularly wanted it to show the effects of a planned layoff.  When I brought the spreadsheet down, he said (these are his exact words):

“Fix that so that the total savings is $1.4 million.”

My calculations had showed a roughly $600 thousand savings.  Further discussion revealed that he really, truly didn't care whether the spreadsheet represented reality at all.  All he cared about was the bottom line.  So I just changed (as he stood there) the total savings cell from a formula to a fixed value of $1.4 million.  He said:

“Great!  But add just a little bit so it doesn’t look like we just made it up.”

At that point I reverted the spreadsheet to the way I had built it, emailed it to him, and told him I didn't want to know what he did with it...

Debbie update...

Debbie update...  All is well!  She's progressing nicely, getting around on crutches, and already able to put considerable weight on her surgery knee.  Her bandage comes off this afternoon, and tomorrow morning we've got the first physical therapy session scheduled...

A great collection of animal photos...

A great collection of animal photos...  See them all here.  Sample at right is for my pistol-packing mama, who's a big fan of owls...

Highlights from the 2014 Budapest air show...

Highlights from the 2014 Budapest air show...  There's some mighty fine flying in here, along with some very interesting aircraft...

Debbie's meniscus tear, the photo...

Debbie's meniscus tear, the photo...  At right is the most interesting photo of the 20 or so images her surgeon took through his arthroscopic apparatus.  What you're looking at is the space between the outside ball and socket in her right knee.  The fuzzy white material is the torn up meniscus, which is most likely the source of the knee pain she's been having ever since her injury last June.  The metallic object at the right (just above center) is part of the surgeon's arthroscopic tool kit.  He tried to describe it to me; it sounded like a cross between a pair of scissors and a router.  Anyway, he used some of these tools to cut away all the torn part of the meniscus.  The tears were all on the outer edge of it, which means there's a good chance it will repair itself.  Even if it doesn't, Debbie's knee pain should be gone.

Despite being a technology guy my whole life, I was still surprised that the surgeon could walk out to talk with me just a couple of minutes after he finished with Debbie, carrying a set of high-quality photos of the operation he had just performed.  Using the photos he was able to describe to me – about as far from a medical expert as you can get – exactly what he found, what he did, and the likely outcome.  Technology has transformed our world in many ways during my lifetime, and this is “just” another one of those ways – but even so, it seems pretty miraculous to me...

Too much evidence can be a bad thing...

Too much evidence can be a bad thing...  This is a fascinating article that shows how evidence that is “too good to be true” often really is untrue – the result of a systematic bias of some kind, or outright fraud.  I particularly like the article's lead – it's not the sort of thing you see every day in a science journal:

Under ancient Jewish law, if a suspect on trial was unanimously found guilty by all judges, then the suspect was acquitted. This reasoning sounds counter-intuitive, but the legislators of the time had noticed that unanimous agreement often indicates the presence of systemic error in the judicial process, even if the exact nature of the error is yet to be discovered. They intuitively reasoned that when something seems too good to be true, most likely a mistake was made.

Armed citizens stopping crime..

Armed citizens stopping crime...  Who'd have thunk it?  Here's an interactive map showing the places in the U.S. where armed citizens stopped crimes in one year (7/1/2014 - 7/1/2015, the most recent data available).  The screenshot at right is a sample...

Just talked with Debbie's surgeon...

Just talked with Debbie's surgeon ... who had just finished working on her.  It was all good news: no surprises, no problems, and (best of all) he found a meniscus tear in exactly the right spot to cause the symptoms she was experiencing.  He was able to trim that meniscus up nice and neat, and also “sanded” off a few spots on one of the “knobs” of her knee joint.  Overall, the surgeon said her knee is in great shape – especially considering the injuries she's had over the past couple of years.  I have photos (taken during the arthroscopic procedure) that I'll share after we get home.

Big sigh of relief here!

Debbie's in the recovery room right now, coming out of anesthesia.  She'll be back in the hospital room (where I am) shortly, and then an hour or so later we'll be headed home...

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  This time from Megan McArdle:

And so we have the paradox of U.S. tax policy: Everyone wants things to be simpler, but no one wants to get rid of the things that make it complex.

That observation applies to many government systems, not just our tax structure.  Think about Social Security and Medicare, for instance.

This observation strikes to the core of why the only real answer for America may be another revolution: after 200+ years of accumulated complexity, maybe the only way to fix it is to start over...

IRS penalty or involuntary health insurance purchase?

IRS penalty or involuntary health insurance purchase?  For younger, healthier folks, this is a genuine quandary – and it's one that was loudly predicted by Obamacare's many detractors (including me!).  Here comes the New York Times with an article pointing out that for many, the IRS penalties are preferable – and that will likely cause problems for the viability of Obamacare's financial underpinnings.  To wit, it will cause insurance companies to drop out.  The Times largely couches this as a potential future occurrence, but in fact it is already happening in many states (including Utah).

Now, what do you suppose the government's reaction to this will be?  I see just two likely choices, and both are bad.  First possibility (and one that I judge most likely): the IRS penalties will be raised to the point where buying insurance costs less for everyone.  Second possibility: the government just abandons the entire pretense of providing Obamacare through private insurance policies, and goes the full socialist route, with the government (backed by our tax dollars) acting as the sole healthcare insurer.  There's still significant political resistance to the latter route, not only amongst Republicans but also amongst many Democrats – so that route seems much less likely.  Unless Obama can figure out how to do it with an “executive action”, in which case doom.

I note in passing that the linked article bandies about the “possibility” that between premiums and deductibles, the cost of Obamacare could reach $10,000 a year.  Our cost in 2015 was more than twice that, with nearly $15,000 in premiums alone – for a plan with substantially less benefits than our pre-Obamacare healthcare policies.  Never underestimate the ability of a socialist mouthpiece like the Times to downplay the actual costs of their socialist agenda.  In other words, they have zero qualms about lying through their teeth...

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Debbie's pre-op appointment was mainly for the purpose of educating us about the surgery today.  We're to appear at the hospital at noon today, where she'll spend an hour or two in prep, then 10 or 15 minutes (!) in surgery, then an hour or two in recovery (mainly waking up from the general anesthesia).  I double-checked on the duration of the surgery – they really meant 10 or 15 minutes!  Somehow that sounds insanely fast to me, but from what I've been able to read, that is quite a normal duration.  Wow!

We had an unexpected bit of excitement here yesterday.  A year and a half ago we “reserved” a Tesla Model X (their SUV).  We had no idea how long it would take to actually get it, so we've been waiting patiently for them to tell us.  Yesterday we got an email from them telling us it was time to go configure (meaning: select the options, color, etc.) our car.  We went through their online configurator, and (unlike the Toyota experience) were able to choose exactly what bits and pieces we wanted.  Tesla still hasn't told us when we'd actually take delivery, though – other than to say “early 2016”.  I'll translate that as “first half” and be pleased if we see it before July 1st  :)

Light blogging alert...

Light blogging alert...  Debbie's got her pre-op appointment this morning, and the actual surgery tomorrow.  She's getting some damage on her right knee's meniscus repaired, which (with any luck at all) will be minor, in-and-out sort of surgery.  The minor damage was spotted on an MRI last month, and we're hoping that fixing it will resolve the pain she's been having while diligently exercising to get back into shape...