Trailers in Paradise, and ancient cats...

Trailers in Paradise, and ancient cats...  Well, I made some more progress today, though not as much as I'd like to have.  I've got one of the long sides assembled.  Each of those 18 joints (between 2x4 and 1x6) has a bolt through it, and was glued.  Partway through I realized I hadn't purchased enough 1x6s for the slat.  Dang!  Another trip to Lowe's or Home Depot...

Our oldest cat is a fellow we call Koa.  We're not sure exactly how hold he is, but it's somewhere around 16 or 17.  We noticed a hard lump on his right hip a few weeks ago, and we've been visiting the vet with him to try and figure out what the heck it was.  Yesterday on one of those followup visits, she (Dr. Russell) advised us that it was getting larger, faster, and had started to invade some bone in his pelvis.  That didn't sound good, and the behavior was tumor-like, though she saw no other indications of cancer.  She advised surgery to remove it.

So today we took him up there to get that surgery.  He came through it just fine, and he's home now trying to recovery his dignity (and get some sleep).  The bad news is that the mass she removed was like nothing she's ever seen before – it looks like neither a typical infection nor a tumor.  We always get the weird things, it seems.  So she's going to simultaneously send samples off for biopsy (mainly to see if its a tumor), and culture it (just in case it's an infection of some weird kind).  We're putting the poor lad on Clavamox (antibiotic) preemptively, just in case it turns out to be an infection.  Early next week we should have a bit more information, and can make a decision about what to do.  We hope...

Shrimp in Paradise...

Shrimp in Paradise...  Last night Debbie made a new dish for us: shrimp in a tomatoey sauce with stewed tomatoes, with garlic, bell peppers, and mushrooms sauteed in butter, Italian seasonings, over spaghetti noodles.  Delicious!  Somehow we both managed to eat these gigantic servings, much to the disappointment of the dogs...

Progress in Paradise...

Progress in Paradise...  I got a few good hours in my shop this morning, and got enough done that I'm enjoying a sense of satisfaction about it.  First thing I did was to install the handle and wheels on my welder.  I'd bought the “portability” kit a while back, but then stupidly never actually put it together.  That's done (at right) and it does indeed make the welder portable.  Well, more portable than it was :)

The rest of the photos show various steps and progress with my fabrication of the stakes.  There are 18 stakes, each of them 2'6" long.  These were cut out of 8' 2x4s, and then one end of each had to be sawn down to match the pocket size.  That involved sawing about 1/4" from the bottom 5" of each of the narrow sides of each stake, and about 1/8" from the wide side.  In the first photo below, you can see just how thin a slice that made on the wide side!  I did this with my band saw, which made short work of something that would have been quite tedious without it.  Then I drilled three carefully placed holes in each of the stakes (for 54 holes in all); these are where the bolts that hold the slats on will go.  I finished all of that fabrication today – so now I have all 18 stakes sitting nicely in their steel pockets, and holes in the right place for each one.  Tomorrow I'll start putting on the slats!

“I hate you both!”

“I hate you both!”  You'll see why...

An even better way to stop robocalls?

An even better way to stop robocalls?  I've written here several times about our Sentry 2, the best call blocking device I'd ever tried.  A few weeks ago I read about an alternative to having your own call blocking device: a free service called Nomorobo.  We've been using it now for three weeks, and I have only positive things to report:

• It really is completely free.  They never even asked for a credit card.
• It's a blacklist-based system - it looks up the number calling you, and if it's in their (apparently huge) database, it gets blocked.  If the caller is not on the blacklist (and presumably your friends, family, and local people are not), they get through without any trouble.
• You don't have to do anything to maintain it.  With the Sentry 2, I spent some time every week adding numbers to block and numbers to allow.  With Nomorobo, I do nothing.  I like nothing :)

Here's what it's like to use the service.  Whenever someone calls you (including any robocalls), your phone rings as usual.  If it's a robocall, the phone rings just once: after that, Nomorobo blocks it and you're done.  If the phone rings more than once, it's a real call.  That's it.  That's the complete operating instructions.

We've had just one robocall slip through since starting our use of Nomorobo. That was a political call for Bernie Sanders (boy did they pick the wrong household for that!).  Our neighbors reported getting dozens of robocalls in the days leading up to our primaries this Tuesday.  Nomorobo blocked all but one of them.

At the same time, now we have zero problems with people getting through that we want to get through.  The Sentry 2 greets callers it doesn't know with a deliberately intimidating message, so if a store calls us and we don't have their number programmed in, they get that message.  Now they just hear the phone ring, as though we had no call blocking at all.

Summary: winner!

Can you...

Can you ... read this without feeling the doom?  What's going to happen when these precious little snowflakes meet the real world?

A doctoral candidate...

A doctoral candidate ... says she understands why women are less attracted to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) than men.  Her doctoral thesis is all about this phenomenon.  Here's an example section:

At first, the course purpose statement presents a view of knowledge as constructed by suggesting that there is a possibility that different conclusions can be drawn from the evidence by the choice to use “a” instead of “the” conclusion. However, the second sentence indicates that the techniques to analyze the evidence, once learned, are to be used instead of applied.  This indicates that the knowledge of the tools, as well as the tools themselves, are facts, and students will learn how to use the tools to find correct answers instead of becoming independent constructors of knowledge. This represents a conflict between active learning techniques and a view of knowledge as a static concept. While there is a recognition that students learn better through active learning techniques, the knowledge being learned is still viewed as factual and unchanging, further reinforcing the masculine nature of STEM education.

So, according to her, saying:

The answer to two plus two is four.

Is masculine, wrong-headed, and off-putting to women.  Instead we should say:

An answer to two plus two is four.

Because that's so much more sensitive, the answer might change over time, and it would make STEM more approachable for women.

There's much more babble of just this sort if you read the entire paper (it's not long, nor is it technical).

Somebody take this planet, please!

Here be dragons...

Here be dragons...  Bill Whittle's latest.  It's excellent...

Paradise pockets...

Paradise pockets...  All the trailer pockets are now installed: 72 holes measured and drilled, 72 carriage bolts seated with a mallet, 18 pockets installed onto the bolts, 72 washers and nuts threaded on and tightened, and 72 bolts cut off.  It was actually a bit more work than I just listed, as after I installed the 14th pocket I discovered that it matters what direction they're installed – there's a top and bottom to the things.  Who knew?  Well, I had a 50/50 chance of getting each one installed correctly, and in fact I had installed 7 of 14 the right side up.  The other 7, though, I had to uninstall, turn over, and re-install.

But it's done now :)

Tomorrow I shall start on the stake sides.  Woo hoo!

A reader asks...

A reader asks ... what I think about Obama's trip to Cuba.  From the wording of the question, it's obvious the reader thinks I will be appalled.

I am not appalled by the idea of normalizing relations with Cuba, dropping the embargo (which Obama can't do on his own; he needs the Congress for that) , and encouraging business to invest there (assuming the Cuban government changes their policies to allow it).  In fact I support these ideas, as it's been clear for 30 years or so that the 50+ years of Cuban embargo and isolation have been a complete failure in terms of their original goals (bringing the Cuban government to its knees).  It seems at least worth trying a different approach, especially when that different approach will bring at least a little more prosperity to the Cuban people.  It's also possible that it will bring changes in the authoritarian government.

But...

I am appalled by the way that Obama has gone about it.  The optics of that portrait of him saluting in front of the Che Guevara mural are just horrible.  He's apparently obtained very little in the way of concessions or commitments from the Cubans.  He's allowed himself to be used by Raul Castro in a way that makes the U.S. seem like the supplicant.  He's managed to take an opportunity for America to shine and turn it into a moment of American shame.

But nevertheless I'm glad to see some movement on this front. 

Now if we could just get the U.N. out of the refugee business, we'd really be making some progress!

Trailers in Paradise...

Trailers in Paradise...  So I restarted working on a project I stopped last fall: building a four-wheeled stake-bed trailer.  Yesterday I installed six “pockets” for the stakes, and today I'm hoping to install the rest of them. 

Aside from some tricksy measuring (involving division of fractions!), there's nothing particularly challenging about installing these pocket brackets.  I'd cleaned and painted them last fall.  All I had to do yesterday was mark the holes, drill them, and then fasten them with bolts.  The nuts I used have nylon elements built in to hold them in place (the same thing that lock washers do, but neater).  These take quite a bit of torque to screw on – more than the square end of a carriage bolt can resist, in most cases.  So there was a bit of tricky use of pliers to keep the ends of the carriage bolts from twisting.

One nice little touch was enabled by the oscillating saw that I bought last year (in the second photo), after watching some of our remodeling craftsmen using one.  I was able to cut the bolts off to the exact correct length.  It took six seconds for each bolt with that saw.  Lovely thing, it is!

This guy thinks...

This guy thinks ... we should all be legally required to vote.  Under our current system, I think that's completely absurd, for reasons given right in his article: for many of us, voting is a completely meaningless act.  Why?  Because we know our vote wouldn't count for a darned thing.

For instance, here in Utah casting a vote for a Democratic candidate for president is just such a meaningless act.  The state is completely in the tank for Republicans, and there is precisely zero chance that a Democratic candidate could prevail.  So what would be the point of forcing someone to cast that vote?  It will have no effect on the outcome at all.

Utter uselessness aside, I also object on a different basis.  Refusing to vote is just as much an electoral choice as casting a vote is.  The absence of my vote for, say, Trump is contributing to the outcome exactly as much as a vote for Clinton – but without endorsing Clinton.

Then there's this.  Consider that the likelihood (at the moment, anyway) is that the November election will be a choice between Trump and Clinton.  The idea of forcing someone to choose between those two is morally repugnant.  It would be like forcing someone about to be executed to push the button that injected them with fatal drugs...

I finally found...

I finally found ... the quote from John Ehrlichman that first started me thinking about the abject failure of the war on drugs.  Here it is:

“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

This is an admission by an insider to the initiation of the so-called war on drugs that the motivation was political, not out of any concern for the people using drugs or the rest of the population.  It was all about winning elections.

I found it in an article that I almost didn't read, because I know I have major disagreements with the author, Dan Baum.  He's an advocate for legalizing drugs (and ending the war on drugs), as am I.  However, he strongly advocates for making drug production and distribution a state monopoly, a notion I find abhorrent.  We have a state monopoly on alcohol distribution where we live in Utah, and the only things that accomplishes here are increased prices and inconvenience.  But the rest of the article is a good backgrounder for anyone who isn't already aware of the scam that's been pulled on them concerning drugs...

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  This time from Scott Adams, who has been correct about Trump more often than anyone who makes their living as a “pundit”.  He's also been far more interesting.  Here's the quote:

“Those who think the past predicts the future are condemned to pick the wrong stocks.”

...and here's the (interesting!) post it comes from.

If Scott Adams is right about how the (human) world works, then we're all a bunch of damn fools.  And there are bits and pieces that feel very right to me...

I wrote about...

I wrote about ... our excellent meal at Sea Bears Fish House in Ogden last month.  This morning I see that they're in the news, mainly because of their second amendment support.

Have I mentioned that we love living here?  :)

Rainbow airglow...

Rainbow airglow...  Via APOD, of course...

I don't know the whole story on this...

I don't know the whole story on this ... but still, it's hard to see how this is in the best interest of the little girl...

Heavy rain in Paradise...

Heavy rain in Paradise...  The noise woke me up around 1:30 am, and it's continued non-stop since then.  The radar picture as of a few minutes ago (at right) shows no end in sight.  The forecast called for a half inch of rain tonight, but I'm guessing it's going to clock in over that.

What little snow remained on the ground last night should be melted by the time this is over :)

Good eats in Paradise...

Good eats in Paradise...  First thing this morning, my lovely bride made bacon and eggs, with pan-fried potatoes and onions to accompany it.  World-class eats, those were: fresh eggs from Macey's (our local grocery chain) just four days out of the chicken, Dailey's applewood-smoked bacon, and Idaho potatoes from just up the road.  Yum!

But then wait, there's more!  We stopped to pick up sandwiches at Logan's Heroes, and they were terrific as always.  Fresh torpedo rolls, top-notch meats, friendly service, and all the right condiments and veggies.  Dang those sandwiches are good!  And of course I washed it down with a big glass of Rosehill Dairy milk.

Now I'm practically comatose, but I'm going to go back out to my shed to do some more work.  I'm trying to finish up the four-wheeled trailer project I started last fall...

“My passion was my weak spot.”

“My passion was my weak spot.”  That's the title of this interesting piece by Jacques Mattheij.  There's much in here that I agree with, and that I might offer as advice to an aspiring technologist myself.  There's one part, though, that I strongly disagree with.  That's Jacques' advice to never work for free in return for the promise of a future (paying) job.

My reason for disagreeing is quite straightforward: agreeing to work for free in exchange for future paid work was the key to my entrance into the technology workforce.  Back in the early '80s, on the tail end of a couple of less-than-successful businesses, I needed a job.  I very badly wanted to work with microprocessors (whether that meant hardware or software I didn't much care).  I knew that I could do the work, as I had been doing it for six or seven years at that point – as a hobby, as a consultant (where credentials matter less), and in my own businesses.

The biggest challenge for me at that time was that I completely lacked the credentials to be employed as an engineer.  I had no college degree.  There was no open source movement back then, and no Internet, so there was no obvious way to use the peer recognition I had to help get a job.  For instance, most potential employers had never heard of Gary Kildall or MP/M, and the code with my name on it was proprietary.

I needed a way to prove myself to a potential employer.  I decided to offer my free services to such a company (Xscribe) for a limited time, with the understanding that after 90 days they'd either boot me out or hire me.  I also made it clear that I'd be looking elsewhere while I worked there for free.  I figured that if they weren't convinced of my skills after 90 days, they never would be.  As things turned out, they made me a (great!) offer less than a month after I started.  I never had trouble getting a job after that, as I then possessed a credential of sorts: a referenceable, verifiable track record.

So I'll disagree with Jacques on that point: sometimes working for free is a good idea...