| I have a shed. I had a carport. I have a small garage now.
The shed is sort of nice, but also sort of a dump. It had power (now disconnected), and a bench. There was no heat or A/C, it was a good 30 yards from my house, and I am fundamentally lazy.
Once I gave up the car habit and re-devoted myself to the computer and electronics habit, I knew I wasn't going to need a giant garage, but I was also pretty sure I'd like a workshop of some sort. We've been back in the house about four months, and I've moved a much of stuff from the shed (because it will go away) into the garage. I've set up a small folding table as a workbench and started taking stock of the tools I have.
I've completed a small handful of projects. More than I would have in the shed. I'd like to think I'm gaining a little momentum here. I can't stress how awesome it is to have a space that's comfortable to work in. I know that I'd do work in uncomfortable spaces (like the back of a Volkswagen?) if I really liked the work (most of the computer stuff I did was not in the shed and therefore in less than ideal conditions). It's awesome to have someplace to do it that works with me.
I think once I get the Raspberry PI up and running (and I just realized a shortcut I could take), I'll buy a new tool chest to replace the countless tool boxes running around and finally get a handle (heh) on all my tools. | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment   |
| On the good experience of  detritus, I got a Mohu Leaf HDTV antenna. I'd had a big antenna in my attic, but it didn't feel like it was performing very well, and I'd switched to a crappy antenna when we lived in the apartment and was still using that and it was ok. I was getting several of the local channels and it wasn't too bad.
Moving back into the house, it still wasn't too bad, but I'm always looking for something better, so got the Leaf and put it in my attic and did a before/after comparison with the old antenna. The numbers are the signal strength percentages coming out of MythTV connected to my HDHomeRun/. I only selected the "_1" channels, because once you've got a main multiplex, all the subs are the same.
| Channel |
Old Antenna |
New Antenna |
| 4_1 |
X |
60% |
| 5_1 |
62% |
79% |
| 11_1 |
X |
66% |
| 17_1 |
55% |
73% |
| 22_1 |
50% |
80% |
| 28_1 |
74% |
90% |
| 40_1 |
56% |
60% |
| 50_1 |
57% |
68% |
| 66_1 |
26% |
26% |
So I got a few new channels that I absolutely couldn't get, and a decent improvement overall except for 66_1, which I think is on a completely different antenna or on the fringe. Putting it in the attic gave it an extra yard of altitude and got some walls out of the way, but the antenna itself is a marked improvement. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Being a cable installation contractor has got to be a crappy job. You're paid probably by the job, not by the hour. People take their dislike of the cable company out on you. The most sophisticated installation tool you have is a drill with a bit long enough to reach from the outside of a house to the inside of a house. Most of the installations I saw growing up were of the "find the spot on the house closest to where the TV is inside the house, drill hole through wall" type.
That's how my house was when I moved in, although they did do the favor of running it in through a crawlspace vent and letting me take care of the rest. I wanted something more, though. When I had to get my power panel upgraded about six years ago, I remembered hurricane Fran, and a much more recent ice storm. Both times the power (and cable, and phone) line from the pole to the house had been brought down; leaving me without power and all the way at the bottom of the list of people to fix (and sometimes on the hook for the repair cost). I called up the power and phone company and got the lines buried. Here's how the call with the cable company went.
Me: I want my cable service buried.
Them: We can't do that, it's an aerial drop.
Me: You're saying you can't bury it because it's not already buried?
Them: Well, not exactly...
But they couldn't explain it further.
Fast forward to the home renovation this past year. The cable had to be removed from the house because the entire roof was being worked on. I cut the line from the house because we were out of it for seven months and I'd disconnected service as a result. Here's how the conversation went when we were moving back in.
Me: I need my cable reconnected.
Them: We're showing that you already had a connection at that address.
Me: Yes, but it had to be disconnected due to a home renovation.
Them: Oh, ok.
Me: And now, according to the HOA, it's a "new" connection, so it has to be buried.
Them: No problem, we'll set that up right away.
But of course that wasn't the whole story. Here's a diagram to help out. Pole #1 is at the street. My utilities all come off pole #2, with the power and phone going from #1 to #2 and then down #2 and underground to my house. Cable was still in the air.
So the first guy comes out, says some things about an "aerial drop" that I'm not quite sure I understand, and runs a cable down pole #2 to a little box and then across the ground to my house. I'm hooked up, and he tells me another contractor will come out to bury it. This makes a sort of sense to me, as the number of lines needing burial must be vastly fewer than the number of lines that simply need connecting. They're all independent contractors, though, which means coordination is scarce. This will become important almost immediately.
So the second guy comes out with a cable burying machine, and promptly says "I can't bury this, it's an aerial drop." I tell him the first guy said it was ok. The second guy remains adamant that this is not a possible thing. I start to get the impression that there's something magical about the suspended cable wire from pole #1 to pole #2 that keeps it above ground. This is only reinforced when the second guy offers to bury a new cable from pole #1 to the connection point on my house. This sounds like a swell idea, and I agree. Then the second guy will get someone like the first guy to come out and finish the connection. Now I have two cables to my house, except the connected unburied one has to go away now and the unconnected buried one has to be connected.
Time passes. It becomes clear that the second guy didn't correctly get the message back to Time Warner to tell them what to do. I gird my loins and prepare for voice menu hell. There are several problems at work here...
- I have Earthlink delivered over Time Warner Cable. Some help desk people don't actually know that that is a thing which can be.
- I had perfect internet connectivity.
- There's no voice menu option for "I need someone at my house.". "Technical Support" is pretty much the closest you get, there's no "Installation Support".
- It felt like "Technical Support" had to forward me to an inaccessible-from-voice-menu part of the system.
- No e-mail address. So I had to explain the same problem (and you see that a picture is almost a necessity) over and over and over and over again while someone tried to write down all the important bits. Or whatever they thought those important bits were.
A few calls and some time later a third guy arrived at my house with... a cable burying system. This was not the problem I'd tried to describe. He also claimed that the connected unburied cable could not be buried because it was an "aerial drop", so he said he'd do what the second guy said he would do and send a note back to Time Warner to get a guy like the first guy to connect the buried cable.
Time passes. Once again I realize that the message hasn't gotten through. Once again into the voice mail breach. This time as I describe my problem the salient point that comes across is I DON'T HAVE INTERNET which is not what I was trying to say but quickly results in a fourth guy who is the right kind of guy and is somewhat relieved that it's not an emergency like he was told and that I'm not super angry like he feared and he connects the new, buried cable (it still takes an hour or so) and removes the unburied cable and all is well.
The whole process took about two months. The most aggravating thing about this was talking on the phone, because it seemed almost impossible to get to someone who had the power to solve my problem, and when I did (or thought I did) getting them to understand what was going on. I'm super glad it seems to be over with. | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| For fun, I like to imagine the conversations with one of my software vendors as if they had sold me a hammer...
Me: I'm having problems with this hammer, the head is all mushy so when I try to drive a nail it doesn't work. This looks like a nail driving hammer, but the face is some sort of easily damaged metallic foam.
Vendor: Can you show me how you're holding it?
Me: (holds hammer like you would hold a hammer)
Vendor: Hmm, could you try holding it closer to the head?
Me: Well, sure, but then I can't swing it nearly as hard, and while I won't damage the hammer that way I'm also wildly unlikely to drive the nail.
Vendor: Well, can you bring what you're working on to the hardware store?
Me: I'm working on my house. With any luck, it's unlikely to move in the near future.
Vendor: How about just bring in some wood so we can hammer on it here?
Me: Isn't this a hardware store? Don't you have some wood here?
Vendor: Have you tried hammering with the handle?
Me: What? Well... no... but I suppose... No, that clearly doesn't work at all.
Vendor: Other folks find hammering with the handle works.
Me: So you're saying nobody's been able to drive nails properly with this hammer.
Vendor: Oh no! We have many successful customers!
Me: This seems like a fairly basic hammer feature.
...and so on. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| It's hard to tell if this is a specification problem or a specific implementation problem. There's enough suspicion to go around....
int index;
int intQueue[$];
thing objectQueue[$];
So say intQueue[$] is a list of valid indices in objectQueue[$], right? And the way to get the last element in a queue also happens to be the way to specify that you're declaring a queue, i.e. intQueue[$]. So if I wanted items from the element in objectQueue[$] pointed to by the index contained in the last element of intQueue[$], the natural way to do it is this....
objectQueue[intQueue[$]].item;
Because, after all, these all work as expected...
objectQueue[intQueue[0]].item;
objectQueue[intQueue[2]].item; // Assuming 2 exists, of course.
objectQueue[intQueue[index]].item; // Yes, even this is fine
Alas, no, I had to get all explode-y and do it like this...
index = intQueue[$];
objectQueue[index].item;
It's that kind of stuff that will in fact drive you quite insane. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| So I watched "The Day After" yesterday. It's been almost 30 years since I saw it, and I don't think I even saw it all the way through the first time. Maybe I did, I'm not sure, but the second half of the movie is such a mess that it's possible it was turned off a little over halfway through.
This contains spoilers, but the movie is 30 years old.
Thirty years on, it's easy to forget the Cold War (now we're stuck in sort of a forever Cool War). Some of you folks certainly weren't around then. I was maybe a generation after doing atom bomb drills, and it's quite possible that that's because they would have been unnecessary or useless at the time. We lived in Greenville, NC; which isn't too far away from Fort Bragg, Cherry Point, and Camp Lejeune. As one of my buddies tells it, there used to be a "Welcome to Ground Zero" marker in the middle of all the runways at Cherry Point. Greenville was far enough away to avoid most of the direct effects of a strike on any of these targets (though it's possible all were targeted), but that could be seen as either a blessing or a curse.
That's a roundabout way of saying that even as late as the 80's, people were genuinely afraid of nuclear war. The sheer scale of the destruction was hard to imagine (now there's a helpful web tool). What's changed these days is the sheer level of economic interdependence. China and Russia, after all, are still more or less communist dictatorships. Russia got outspent, and China realized they could court corporations for profit without having to be any more open or any less corrupt.
Anyway, there's remarkably little geopolitical stuff in "The Day After" (even less than in "Red Dawn" which tried to make a show of Russia being pushed to desperate acts). The Russians get all feisty in East Germany, eventually cutting off access to West Berlin, leading the US and presumably European forces to try and bully their way in. "Our" side reportedly uses a few "tactical" nuclear weapons in an airburst above Russian forces, a few more exchanges happen, and then it's all missiles in the air.
The special effects here are... bad. The missile launches are good, and some of the explosions are good, but that's because it's stock footage of the real stuff. The people blinking into skeletons and vaporizing seems schlocky now, and the gouts of flame (burning air, maybe?) seem all out of scale.
A shocking number of people are left alive.
Did I mention this all takes place in and around Kansas City? It's weird, I know, because you think "What the Hell is up with Kansas?" At the time, the US had a mostly land-based intercontinental ballistic missile system of underground "silos". A large portion of them were distributed throughout the midwest, and a handful in Kansas. Now, targeting missile silos (with missiles) might be strategically suspect, since it takes about 30 minutes for them to get to us (more than enough time to get ours in the air), but if you have the power to destroy the world several times over, you might as well be thorough with it.
The US still has a lot of land-based ICBMs (the Minuteman III series), but we also have a lot of submarine ones, too.
So about halfway through the movie, lots of stuff gets blowed up but good, and the remaining half is the survivors sorting stuff out. An interesting bit is that the Russians do an EMP with an airburst about five minutes before the rest of the cities in the area are hit. I'm not sure if this was just to show what it does (ie. a filmmaker decision) or if it has actual strategic merit (as much as anything in a thermonuclear exchange does, that is).
One of the things that does ring true is the complete lack of support from all levels of government. It's not unexpected, this is a disaster of country-destroying proportions (the platitude-laden AM radio broadcast from the president is particularly darkly comic). People all over the place are dying slowly, painfully of radiation poisoning and burns, and makeshift survival camps are everywhere. In reality, though, there's nothing to be done. There's a great scene where the farmers are being told just to scrape off the contaminated topsoil so they can get back to growing cold and UV tolerant food crops for people as quickly as possible, and the farmers are all "Scrape off the topsoil, and put it where? Leaving what? What kind of ridiculous advice is this?".
The church scene is completely ludicrous, to be honest. The preacher is insanely braying lines from Revelations at the pulpit in the middle of an almost completely roof-and-wall less church (the congregation mutely disengaged); cross dangling precariously behind him (it didn't fall, that would have been high hilarity, though). Also, where did they get living horses?
Overall, the second half was a little too long. You know that pretty much everything they're trying is futile, and so really the last half hour is belaboring the point. When you get to the message at the end "Actually, we think this is going to be much worse." it's almost a cheap shot, like you could have saved half an hour if everyone just died off more quickly.
If you want something more authentic, the Brits have it down pat. A fake documentary called "The War Game" in which you get to see how all those shelters simply get blown apart in an attack, and a movie called "Threads" which is similarly grim (even though the title makes me think of my teenage dalliance with the books of fantasy author Anne McCaffrey.
Now I'm off to watch the original of "The Flight of the Phoenix", or "The Day After Tomorrow". | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| Yes, I'm doubling up the days. I politely request that you deal. It was a busy weekend, after all, with the little lady and I moving that weekend and me still desperately trying not to get sick (spoiler alert: I got sick. Almost didn't make the Saturday show. Barely moving now. This post brought to you by Dextromethorphan). I'll bet, though, that you're not here to learn the boring details of my personal life (if you are, drop me a line and we'll talk). Friday night I was graced with L.'s presence after a bit of packing and frozen pizza. We hit the club and the music started relatively shortly thereafter.
We were greeted with a band of John Lennons. Actually, a band playing a handful of John Lennon's post-Beatles career hits. Three of the gents were dressed like various eras of John Lennon, while the other two were the guys I constantly mistake for Ethan. A very stripped-down sound (which didn't always work). Smartly ended with a killer version of "Instant Karma".
Next up was Beat Happening. The feel of the thing was perfect, all the way to the point where you couldn't tell who was joking or who was getting joked. Originally I thought they (the cover band) were making fun of them (beat happening), then I went and watched a few Beat Happening videos and now I can't tell. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's everybody. One thing I do know is that it's super-easy to make a K records t-shirt. "Black Candy" and "Indian Summer" had me rolling my eyes or rolling in the aisles or something.
I was wholly unprepared for how awesome T. Rex would be. I mean, sure, all those young dudes had the right hair, and the right clothes, and oh my did they have chops. What really endeared me to them, though, was that they completely snubbed "Get It On". Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. They did, however, open with "20th Century Boy" and hit "Jeepster" and "Children of the Revolution" along the way. Also, I am going to start glittering my beard. That was hot.
Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, out comes ELO. Again with the hair and clothes and chops! If you can't have a full brace of violins and cellos, you better have a good keyboardist, which they did. He gamely recovered an almost-dropped talk-box microphone during "Mr. Blue Sky" (it could have been a disaster!). They also did "Telephone Line", a slow number which still moved the crowd. Did they hint at a more complete show next year?
So, we get to the point were I should tell you about the Team America cover band. I can confidently say that if you like this sort of thing, you would have liked that. Very much. The costumes were sweet, and the eyebrows and headset were a nice touch. I just... I don't know how I feel about liking this. Clearly I have overthought some things, but I am also still randomly singing "Montage!" (just that word, not the whole song).
Wrapping up the night was The Smashing Pumpkins. Marc Bolan from T. Rex returned with completely different hair, clothes, and guitar playing style as James Iha. Backing up was D'arcy in d'rag. The band did not disappoint with a dense, heavy, sweet sound. Like a rum-soaked fruitcake or something.
Saturday almost didn't happen. I spent the day moving and setting up the new old place and doing laundry and then eating and sitting around wondering if I should go or not. I felt so peppy at 8p that I just hopped in the shower, threw on some clothes and headed out. I got there early! Got a seat in the back window, and settled in to watch.
First up, Joy division, starting out a little nervous and twitchy, but not in the usual Joy Division way. Still, these guys had clearly watched more than a few videos, and Ian had the moves and the stare down. They really hit their stride on "Disorder", and loosened up quite a bit. Ended strong on "Love Will Tear Us Apart".
I thought I'd heard Radiohead (Seriously, just type it into Google and swim through the returned hits) recently, but then I remembered I'd missed 2011, so it's possible that it's ok to do it again. We can't be really running out of rock bands, can we? Initially I thought the singer sounded a little too pretty for Thom. What really won me over, though, was bringing out a horn section (from a later band, but still) for "The National Anthem" (according to one of them, they improvised the whole thing). So that made me love them forever.
The next band, with so many people, caused much speculation. Sunglasses? Skinny ties? Brass? The Specials? No, a bunch of girls just came out. NO GIRLS IN SKA (I know this is a lie). It actually turned out to be Aretha Franklin (really? You need a link? Really? No. Just no.) with a ginormous and skilled backing band (including the brass that was used on Radiohead earlier), including backup singers. They ripped through a generous helping of her hits, obviously including "Respect" and "Think".
The Yeah Yeah Yeah's might have been the only cover band I've seen with members older than the actual band they were covering (although I seem to remember someone doing Justin Timberlake a while back). If there's one thing you have to get right, though, it's Karen's voice. They got it right, so very right.
The Sonics (or should I say, The Infamous Sonics, since The Infamous Sugar was leading them up) reminded me of The Cramps, except in rumpled clothing. Now I know The Sonics are older than The Cramps but there you go. The Infamous Sugar heeded one of the prime rules here: PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTHS. Dirty, loud, messy, profane, are all things that could easily be used to describe the band and the dudes covering the band. The Infamous Sugar (I can't believe I keep typing that whole thing), brought a little more silliness to the party, and it was welcome.
The scent of metal is in the air. The sigil had been thrown. It was At The Gates. Scandinavian Black Metal is sort of like Scandinavian Black Salt Licorice: Everyone who says they enjoy it is either lying or a masochist (I'm the latter about licorice). Singer sounded like Smegol, which is the way it's done these days (my only real knowledge about metal comes from these two videos). At one point, it sounded like the singer was saying "Midol, it helps with cramps. Use it when you bleed." Which was super-funny, but in fairness, menstruation seems pretty metal. Anyway, the only way I could hear actual notes was to push the earplugs farther into my ears and then hold them there, so it may have looked like I didn't enjoy this but I was really trying to combat the overdriven sound. The actual notes were actually good!
Then I went home and passed out. Still trying to catch up on sleep and get well. Mumble mumble next year mumble. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Can I start by telling you how bummed I was to miss the Great Cover Up last year? You know that "plague" that all your friends (and maybe you) are getting now? I'm so fashion-forward I got that crap last year, before it was all cool because everyone heard about it. So that laid me out for effectively a week and prevented me from seeing fucking CAN last year. I will never forgive illness for that.
This year I am determined not to be ill. I am so determined, my body is now like a measurable percentage of pure Zinc. How metal is that?
Anyway, I met up with Sean for dinner at the Borough and trundled on over to King's to check out the offerings. Doors were open more or less promptly, and they started cranking the bands through pretty closely to announced time.
First up was Cherubs. They were super-heavy. Grungy without being sludgy. A whiff of math came through in the incredibly tight drumming. The lyrics were all screamed and I couldn't understand (or maybe remember) a single word. Oh wait: "Shoofly". Maybe a phrase? "Shoofly on my taint"?
Next was Death in June; a band which even some of the performers admitted to not knowing about until recently (Tuesday?) This was very serious Goth music people (although apparently Wikipedia describes them as "neo-folk"). I might say they were a little hard to access. Certainly the people fleeing from the front of the room had that expression. I thought it was a hoot, but it's possible I didn't take it seriously enough. Props for props and masks and stage domination.
Derek and the Dominos. This is the point in the review where I mention the fact that I listened to a certain local Classic Rock station for two and a half years in the late 80's and never need to hear any of that stuff again. I have been told that Clapton is awesome, and a lot of more modern guitarists owe a great debt to him. I'm still not sold. These covering folks were skilled, no doubt; but I couldn't get past the dislike of the source material. Maybe more satire was needed?
Big Brother and the Holding Company is more commonly known as "Janis Joplin and the dudes she used to play with". These kids came through in a big way with choice outfits, good hair, and a wicked awesome Joplin. I mean, seriously, bringing all the ladies that left the front row two bands ago right up to the stage. Yes more please.
I'm not sure that it's a good thing that the Iggy Pop frontman made me miss Rawls. Maybe I'm too old and jaded for destructive stage antics that draw no blood? Maybe I'd like to hear all the words (damn, that's a sure sign I'm too old there). What's undeniable is that the kids had heart, and that goes a long damn way.
My first thought on the last band was: "Oh crap, someone finally did Bob Seger. Or has that happened before?" My next thought was sort of blown away as it was clear these dudes were in it for the laughs. If I'd done Seger, I would have done at least these songs: The Risky Business song, The Beverly Hills Cop song, and the Chevy Pickup Truck song. They only did the first one, but man, what a set. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| So everyone's been burbling appropriately about "How to Live Without Irony" as if it's the thing that can be used to define the up-and-coming hipster generation and what the big problem with them is and how they're ruining everything. I'd heard half reviews of it and some people making various approving noises and I thought "Jesus, this just sounds like some old lady bitching at the kids to get off her (contextual) lawn." I figured I had to go and read it to make sure.
...time passes...
I mean, sure, it purports to be about irony (the definition of which remains plastic, and in this case covers something that seems like sarcasm (remember when sarcasm was the big problem?)), but (and here is where the article whizzes by the real point entirely) you can't blame the rise of the hipster for that, anymore than you can blame punks, goths, ravers, slackers or any other generation of disaffected youth for attempting to squirm out of what the dominant culture is trying to do to them.
The dominant American culture is, to put it bluntly, so slow to change and so relentlessly and oppressively dull and all encompassing that it breeds these small (fashion only, really) rebellions with every generation. These are all meaningless and doomed to failure. The relatively small numbers of the hipster are ineffectual against the crush of the masses. They can't possibly be the problem.
Here's how it works.
- Teens do something vaguely interesting.
- Advertisers notice.
- Marketing begins.
- Fashion statement is adopted as window-dressing to product.
- Local news talks of the scourge that is sweeping the nation.
- Mildly notable member of previous generation expresses similarly mild distaste.
- Repeat.
Culture jammers of the 90's learned the almost-interesting-enough-to-be-terrifying-but-ultimately-sad fact that even appropriation can be appropriated. Now even meaning and context is cast aside as the next generation desperately yet futilely grabs for some sort of cultural relevance (or anti-relevance?) beyond a footnote, even as the previous generation vainly tries to claw back into it by decrying them in a sanctimonious opinion piece. We are all fading and dying by degrees.
What we complain about when we complain about the punk/goth/raver/slacker/hipster is not the change these creatures effect on our culture, but our own failure to do the same coupled with the fear that these new kids might actually do something great. We shouldn't worry.
I mean, Jesus, she's essentially complaining that LIFE LACKS MEANING. That sounds like a manifestly personal problem.
And that's what happens when you stop being noticed by the marketers. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
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