Category Archives: Administrative

Light Posting

It’s going to be a crazy week. We’re redoing the countertops in the kitchen, and after they demo today, I’m going to run wire to add outlets and undercounter lighting, plus a new water line to above the stove so we have a spout for filling pots. Not to mention I have to do my corporate taxes by Thursday. So I’m around, but probably not at the computer much, other than to do bookkeeping.

[Wednesday-evening update]

Since everyone is having such a good time with that typo, I’ll just leave it as is. I ended up not running the water line, because time was short between demo and install, and it’s only three feet from the sink to the range.

Off To Denver

We’re flying this afternoon, and will be back in a week, but I’ll have computers there.

[Update on September 8th]

OK, I decided to just take a break, other than a couple posts. We went up into Rocky Mountain National Park, and did a lot of chores at the place in Golden.

[Bumped]

New Pond Problem

The neighborhood raccoons have decided to use it as a bathtub. They don’t seem to be successful at fishing in it (probably the fish dive too deep), but they displace twenty gallons of water at night, that I have to refill in the morning. The pond is right next to our bedroom window, so we hear the commotion.

I flash a tactical light at them and tell them to vamoose, and they do, but I don’t like being woken up to have to do that. I’m going to install a security light and camera to see if that will discourage them. At least we’ll be able to better see what’s going on.

[Saturday-morning update]

For the curious, this is what I’m going to install. We already have one that looks at the driveway and mailbox. This one will be right next to it, looking at the side yard, and the wiring is simple, because it just USBs to the other one.

[Sunday-morning update]

OK, so it turns out that the USB thing works for cameras, but not for floodlights, so I still have to run wire. Fortunately, I can pull it out of the same exterior junction box that the other one is using. I’m not going to bother with 12 gauge, though (despite the code requiring it on a twenty-amp circuit), because it really isn’t any kind of hazard with external wiring on stucco, so I’ll just use some of the 14 gauge Romex that I’ve got hundreds of feet of.

I should add that some of the fishing was successful. I’m now missing my two biggest koi. They were probably the easiest ones to catch. Fortunately, there were less than a year old, and I recently bought a couple others that will be growing (currently, they’re smaller than many of the goldfish).

Weird Fedora Problem

Fedora 35 has started randomly crashing. Sometimes it happens when I highlight and ctrl-C a URL in Brave, but sometime it just does it on its own, as in I go away and when I try to wake it up, it’s just black screens. Any ideas? I’ve reported it to Brave.

[Wednesday update]

Now it’s randomly doing it when I try to move the cursor in Libre Office Writer. It doesn’t seem to be a resource issue; none of the cores are very busy, and it’s only using about half my memory.

[Bumped]

[Update a while later]

The triggering event primarily seems to be a copy to clipboard. I managed to do it twice in a row with the same action, copying a specific email address from Thunderbird. I’ve logged into it via ssh from my laptop, so when it happens again, I’ll be able to see if the machine is still running. If so, it’s clearly a GUI issue, maybe a problem with Wayland. While I’m connected, I’m going to back up data to the laptop so I can work from there until I resolve the issue.

[Late-afternoon update]

Well, it’s apparently more than a GUI problem (which doesn’t mean that it isn’t caused by Wayland). When it died, my ssh session died as well, and I couldn’t reconnect. I guess the next step is try logging in with Xorg, and see if it persists.

[Update late Thursday night]

Well, clearly it was Wayland. I switched the default to Xorg this morning, and it’s gone all day without issues.

[Bumped]

Light Posting

I’m going down to Long Beach in a few minutes for the Space Tech Expo today and tomorrow. Then on Thursday I’ll be flying to DC for the ISDC. I’ll have my laptop with me, but not sure how much posting I’ll be able to do. It’s the first space conferences I’ve attended since the beginning of the plague, so I’ll have a lot of networking and catching up to do. Consider this an open thread, and be good in comments.

Checking In

So, the Reason Weekend was great. Saw many old friends, made some new ones. Average age of the attendees was pretty high (Patricia and I no doubt contributed to that), but it’s a gathering of long-time Reason supporters, so no surprise, and there was an encouraging number of young people.

We’ve been ensconced since Sunday in a vacation rental just north of the park boundary of Smoky Mountain National Park, above Wear Valley. I’ll put up a picture of the view after I take one from our balcony. Yesterday we drove from the Gatlinburg entrance down to Cherokee, with a side trip to Clingman’s Dome. The weather up there was funky; fifties and windy, and drizzly, so we didn’t other to walk the half mile to the top for the non-view. From Cherokee we came back up I-40, back to Gatlinburg, where we had dinner. One drive down the main drag there was enough to convince us that we didn’t have to visit again, It’s a place for families with kids to be separated from their money.

Today it rained most of the day, so we cocooned and enjoyed it (even heard some thunder). Then, when it cleared up, we drove the loop around Cade’s Cove, and saw several bears. We’re heading back to Nashville tomorrow, maybe via Chattanooga, to see a little more of the state, then flying back to LA early Thursday morning.

It’s been a nice break: our first real vacation since October 2020, and our second one since the onset of the plague.

[Friday-morning update]

We did drive through Chattanooga, and went up to Lookout Mountain. It doesn’t really look like a battlefield (in the way that Gettysburg or Antietam do), but it provides an interesting perspective on the Battle Above The Clouds. We thought about seeing the cave and Ruby Falls, but didn’t really have time, so it’s an excuse to go back sometime. We did manage to get to three states, but just for brief sojourns in North Carolina south of the park, and a brush with Georgia in going up on Lookout.

Had a hectic early morning yesterday getting on the flight (American check-in at BNA was chaotic, nothing like LAX), and had to suffer through a mask for six hours, but back home now with the cats, and life getting back to normal.

New Pond Problem

After all the rain in December, the pond got very murky. It eventually cleared up, but the stream flow had slowed to a trickle from when I first installed it. I figured the filter box must be clogged up with the sludge, and when I took it apart, I was right. But I cleaned it all out, and put it back in. But now the problem seems worse. Is there a failure mode for a submersible pond pump that would result in not zero, but low flow?