Message for Cadre

Cadre once posited that the motion pictures Casablanca and Pearl Harbor represent exact opposites. If you want an explanation, you'll have to wait for Cadre to place them here as a comment; that's his content. However, I'll riff off of that line of thought:

A Congressman is the antithesis of a telephone company.

Ask anyone in the abstract: Are members of Congress crooks? They'll answer yes, they are all corrupt, they appropriate and spend too much money, they don't give enough money to those pet projects to which I owe my job or my college tuition. They're tampering with my Social Security, and shoving Bible statues into public places.

They're all crooks, except my Congressman. He or she renders very good service to his or her constituents ("me"). I generally support term limits, but I don't want those term limits to remove my Congressman from office.

Ask anyone in the abstract: Are telephone companies crooks? They'll answer no, except for my phone company. They charge too much for advanced calling features, they're trying to get into long-distance service while keeping other phone companies out of competition with them for the local market, the majority stockholder is a so-and-so with backroom ties to the legislature. They haven't built out enough phone lines to support the new construction in my neighborhood either. It takes them too long to send someone out to fix my phone, and I heard they just laid off some repair people. I'd rather do business with any other phone company than this one, just to have a choice. In fact, I get my cell phone from such-and-such and long distance from whats-its-name. They're great!

RrrRRrrrRRRrrrRrRRrrRRreeeeEEEEEUUUURRRR, Part III

Part I is here. Part II is here.

I rushed home with the new power supply fan, the existing power supply, and a vision . . . a dream of a quietly-operating G4, repaired for less than ten bucks. Barbaloot was going to an event at our church, so she had time to grab burgers for the offspring units and a sandwich for the two of us. I had to wait, and manage the mealtime for offspring units, before I could move the vision to reality.

Two butt splices grafted the original fan's wiring connector to the new fan. In ten minutes the power supply was reassembled, installed, and the rest of the G4 closed and cabled around it. Booted up.

RRREEERRrrrrrruuuuureeerrrrrrrr.

Unprintable expletives were confined to the basement, while the offspring units watched a Kim Possible DVD upstairs.

I let it run and ignored the noise for the next two hours, either pluking around with other software on the noisy machine, or putting offspring units to bed. The machine's meltdown was imminent and inevitable. Barbaloot got home, ate her half of the sandwich, and asked how it went. I cupped my ear toward the basement. She stepped nearer the door and heard the whine.

"We'll just run with it, I guess. It's not a drive, it's not the power supply, it's not the side fan. I'm stumped." So she opened her Netscape and read her email while we pondered how to recover our stuff if the G4 goes over the edge.

Then I did the unprecedented, the bold---I followed the nihil desperandum outside-the-box follow-the-Force,-Luke hunch that has gotten me out of deep serious before. I started feeling the outside of the unit: sides, top, bottom, while Barbaloot worked. The vibration, in sync with the audible whine, was faint on the bottom and the top. Nonexistent on the front. Rear is too crowded with stuff for a vibration to get through. Sides . . . the side where the power supply and the cooling fan are mounted, nothing. The side where the mobo rests, it's there and strong.

So I turned the unit to the side, and opened the unit as it ran. I gently lowered the side to expose the motherboard. I groundstrapped my hand and started feeling around inside. Drives, nothing. CPU heatsink, faint. Motherboard proper, fair to middlin'. Are you sure there's no CPU fan? . . . Yep. No fan there. What other moving part is there inside this pig?

I let my hand rest for a moment on the edge of the rear panel of the unit, which swings out with the mobo side. My right thumb contacted the edge of the . . .


video card.


The component side of this card faces away from you when the unit is open and you look inside. I would never have seen the heatsink with a 38mm fan nested in it. I had to crane my neck around to see the fan. The aliasing of the fan blades, and the label on the hub of the fan, showed that it slowed down and sped up in step with the change in pitch of the grinding noise.

The unprintable expletives were again confined to the basement. "Do you use that mouth to kiss me?" Barbaloot asked.

No amount of blown air would clean it to the point that it would rotate freely under the tip of my finger. Plenty of dust was ejected from its heatsink-cage though. BreakFree quieted it down significantly but I can still hear the speed changes. So after work today, it's off to see DeeDee Who Could Be Cute again.

Lessons learned:

1. Get a dental mirror for the tool kit.
   
2. Get a mechanic's stethoscope for the tool kit too. A tube rolled from a sheet of paper didn't work.
   
3. Somebody really cranked the Torx-head bolts that hold the side panels on this unit. Do they use air tools to assemble computers? Jeebus.
   
   
   
   1. Get a new T10 bit when I go for the replacement fan.
      
   
   
4. Big-a$$ butt connectors don't look quite right inside a computer. Look at some connector kits for those leetle shrouded header affairs.
   
5. Ten bucks is an unrealistically low budget for repair of a 3-year-old computer.
   
   
   
   1. Increase it to $25.
      
   2. The cost of new or additional tools is not counted in the repair budget. Tools go under capital expenditures. Repair budgets in this here shanty are for parts and expendables only.
      
   
   

No Irishman can beat you for dogcatcher this time, Dad! You're a natural!

Let's get this over with right now, so it doesn't come up and bite me in the ass later.

I have behaved badly sometimes. I have done things that were not right which I thought then was playful but now I recognize that I have offended people. And to those people that I have offended, I want to say to them I am deeply sorry about that and I apologize because this is not what I'm trying to do.

There. Didn't hurt. Now you do it.

Babyfood bu|{{a|{e

A Cargill TV ad about the quality of baby food ends with a slo-mo gray spoonful of said product splashing on Mom's smiling face. Some really twisted mind could take that video clip and run with it. Not me, though.

RRReeeerrrrRRRRREEEEEEeeeeerrrrRRRrrr, Part II

Part I is here. Part III is here.

If Apple wants $144.50 for a 4-inch 12-volt fan, they'll want a hell of a lot more for a whole power supply, especially one for a computer that is 3 years old.

So, throwing caution to the wind and sipping Jose Cuervo to stoke my courage, I entered the existing power supply to have a look at the fan. Piece of cake, the case was screwed shut instead of riveted shut, and the fan came out with two Phillips screws. Nothing seemed the matter with it, but who can tell without dropping 12 volts across it and listening to it spin?

Next time I perform surgery on a noisy computer, I'll go to the trouble of checking the suspected component more rigorously. A stack of C cells to spin a fan isn't too much to ask if I'm troubleshooting a part that could cost as much as a whole new computer. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So on my way home from work yesterday (more on that later) I stopped a computer store where they have real geek girls. At the service desk, with the supply in one hand, and the fan from the supply in the other. As soon as I uttered "Power Mac" the guy behind the counter started, as if I had carried in a four-day-old sheep carcass with me. "Why don't you check at the Mac department?"

Riiiiiiggght. A fat lot of good that has done me. I wandered slowly along the power supply aisle. Fans there were, identical to the power supply fan, 8 bucks and up, just the wrong connector on the harness. That can be fixed. DeeDee, A Real Geek Girl Who Could Be Cute asked if I needed help, and I explained the situation. She looked at the power supply's harness and said it looked like an ATX type, but admitted that Macs are different and trying an off-the-shelf ATX supply would be risky. Reader DavidMSC agrees.

The fellow in the Mac department looked at my sheep carcass and said, "We don't handle parts here, you need to see the Service department."

"They suggested I see you first."

An unprintable expression flitted across his face, then he recovered his professional demeanor. "I understand, sir, please check with Service." I ogled a few G5s then headed back.

DeeDee Who Could Be Cute, in a Kathy Najimy kind of way, asked me about my progress while I was pricing open-box specials. I recounted my progress so far, and she offered to work the issue with the Service people for me. Not yet.
"Working the issue with" someone is a particularly Ambitious kind of thing to say. Geeks don't really say that unless they're translating themselves the better to be understood by Ambitious people. So DeeDee Who Could Be Cute may be that dreaded hybrid of Geek and Ambitious, the Sales Engineer. More on the comparison between Geek and Ambitious below.

Second trip to the Service counter. Different guy. "Why don't you check with the Mac department?"

"Negative. Already did that. They sent me back here," I replied with even voice, clenched teeth, and curled lips. He retreated, asked for the supply and walked it back to where the controlled-access geeks are kept. Moments later he came back with the same cautions. "Looks like an ATX, but Macs are different. I can't advise you to do it." Fair enough.

I stuck to the present game plan of buying a replacement fan. DeeDee Who Could Be Cute checked me out and I was on my way with a seven-dollar fan.

Lessons learned:

1. Macs are different.
   
2. It was unwise for Apple to shut down its program to license clones. They could have learned to make their computers, and their parts, less expensively. Off-the-shelf parts would have given them higher profit margins in the near term, or a larger market share, or both. They only partially learned that lesson, witness IDE drives and USB peripherals, and arguably BSD Unix.
   
3. The personal computer is still the most poorly supported consumer product in history.
   
   
   
   1. Who cares? Computers are now priced to the point that it makes more sense to replace them than service them.
      
   2. Macs are different, in this respect, but not by much.
      
   
   
4. The geek will not inherit the Earth, contrary to underground geek prophecy.
   
   
   1. The ambitious already own the Earth. None is left to be inherited.
      
   2. The ambitious are not inclined to share any more of the Earth than they absolutely have to.
   
   
5. The ambitious reproduce quickly enough (remember, they're ambitious) to rule out any likelihood that they will die out, allowing the geek a chance to inherit the Earth.
   
   
   
   1. Geeks do not. Remember, they're geeks.
      
   
   
6. But the ambitious will still need geeks to run things for them. In consideration for this service, they are willing to share some of the Earth with the geek.
   
   1. As the world becomes more complex, the dependence of ambitious on geek will intensify. More geeks will be needed to keep things running at a level the ambitious expect.
      
   
   
7. The ambitious will inherit Mars too, because, well, they're ambitious. They might not get there first, but they'll plant the flag and get their picture taken with it.
   
   
   
   1. Inhabiting Mars involves even greater complexity than inhabiting Earth, so even more geeks per capita will be needed to run things there than here.
      
      1. A geek will be operating the camera, another will be transmitting the image back to Earth, and so on.
         
      
      
   
   
8. If you're a geek, accommodate yourself with the fact that you will not inherit the Earth.
   
   
   
   1. Unless you get ambitious and start reproducing.
      
   
   

Ten seconds on high, or until just before the marshmallow explodes

The microwave smore.

rrrrrrEEEEERRRREEERRuuurrrrrrrrEEErrrrrrEEEeeeeerrrrrreerr

Daughter-units carefully built the case this past weekend that I should clean out the cubbyhole beneath the basement steps, so they could enjoy a Harry-Potter-style playspace. I accepted this value proposition, cleared and restacked all of the junk in the space, and sorted through many papers that had accumulated since the move from Leatherstocking Country to the Front Range. The dust raised in clearing this space out unfortunately settled inside our always-on PowerMac G4.

It now sounds like an elevator, grinding up and down with varying pitch and volume but overall sounding not well. After some browsing and some redneck troubleshooting, I have cleared the cooling fan and the hard drives, and figure it's the fan in the power supply. I'll heed the warnings this time and not enter the supply, unless I get very desperate.

Fortunately also, Apple's support pages show how to disassemble this model and replace the power supply, if I can come up with one. So it's off to some computer boneyard or other to find one, or a close-enough form/fit/function replacement.

This topic continues here.

Helplessness is learned

An animal can be taught to be helpless, in fact it can become helpless in no other way. No creature is born with a sense that it cannot do for itself. If a creature is helpless it necessarily follows that some other creature consciously taught helplessness to it.

Wisdom from Aragorn

If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be, and we must keep secret to keep them so.

Nothing good happened in the Seventies? Utter bullshit

The Fat Guy laments:

Sometimes, I just want to retreat into a little hole and never listen to anything new again, because there's already so much greatness out there that I'll never get to. It's overwhelming, really.

Let's start with Dark Side of the Moon, shall we?

The most miserable part of the Seventies was my adolescence and teenhood. But I'm not the one on trial here. Gimme a piece of that custard pie.

A policy, and a request

We have always left comments at the posts of other blogs, when we post something on that blog here at WUTT! It is both shameless traffic promotion, and a feeble attempt to strike up a new meme with other bloggers.

We ask you to do the same. If you post something on your blog, in reference to a post here, please leave a comment on the post here. Unlike many other bloggers, I do not blog from my day job. Uncle Sugar gets huffy and uses terms like "fraud, waste and abuse" and "Uniform Code of Military Justice" and so on. Between that and putting children to bed, I don't check my referral log often enough to see the waves of excited readers you send to me.

Please place a comment here, with the permanent URL of your post if possible.

There's that reset button again and here we sit without opposable thumbs

Publicola discusses Federal versus state powers, and what the Feds can demand of a state's constitution. You must go.

I am not a number, I am a free man!

Dustbury remarks on a proposal to classify blogs by the Dewey Decimal System. No blog, even a dude, your blog, like, sucks one like ours, can be captured or classified by a single number.

Knowledge springs forth at the intersection of two or more topics. I write about Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, the Stelzer motor, copyright infringement, and telemarketing, as well as shooting. What number would I receive from Central Weblog Classification Authority? A series of DDS? How about a product of them? Or a mean and a standard deviation calculated from them? Naaah.

Each post needs its own classification, in fact it needs at least two. We've admired (but regarded as somewhat anal) the categories that many other bloggers use to classify their many posts. Only recently have I decided that we can begin to do the same at WUTT!

Note that we don't use Movable Type here. Some of the enhancements made to Blogger will make categories possible, though we'll be using NZBear's WMDI meta tags embedded in the post template to do it, and they will not be tallied or accessed through a link in the blog template. It will not naturally occur to anyone looking for ideas on powered armor to say, "Dammit, all I need to do is go to Fûz's weblog! He's got a category of posts on that very subject!"

Don't look for Dewey Decimals any time soon, though, I can barely get through my own blogroll once a week, so have no time to look up each topic and post a decimal category for it.

Housekeeping notes

We just noticed some improvements that Bloogle has made to the blogging platform, such as blog titles. After some trial and error, we've implemented them. A few other improvements are coming, including WMDI tags in the post template, and some legibility adjustments in the comment window. We hope you like them.

A decade of wedded bliss

Barbaloot and I are about to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. Our Former Usual Sitter, older sister of our current Usual Sitter, will be playing more Rocky and Bullwinkle DVDs for the kids while Barbaloot, Fetus and I go out for a quiet dinner.

I am thankful every day for Barbaloot and I tell her so.

LC99 of DHMO is 10^6 ppm

The USAF invests more effort in training its personnel for hazardous materials awareness than for first aid. You'll learn plenty about how much water it takes to drown a person (hence the title of this post, which translates to 'the concentration of water in air that is lethal to inhale for 99 percent of typical people is one million parts per million') but you will not learn how to resuscitate that limp, cold buddy of yours, whom you pulled out of floodwater. Instead of a full-blown American Red Cross First Aid certification for all members, airmen receive "Self-Aid and Buddy Care" slideware, lecture, and demonstration. Not First Aid, but Self-Aid. Harrumpf.

Even in my career field, I'm more likely to catch a bullet or break my leg, or have to patch up somebody else's bullet hole or compound fracture, than to cordon off a spilled tanker truck of organic peroxide, n.o.s. Don't get me started on such military essentials as basic marksmanship either---Swen Swenson has covered that, with my two cents thrown in, of course.

We're not calling the no-call list

Our household pays the extra for caller ID on our primary land-line. We invested in phones with caller ID integrated into them. We screen our calls through caller ID to keep out the nuisance telemarketing calls.

Though Barbaloot has been tempted, we have not placed ourselves on the no-call list, either Colorado or National. We would rather keep control at our end (a service implemented at the "edge" of the network) than hand that control over to Leviathan (a regulatory device implemented in the "center" of the network). We would also rather see the telemarketing business model succeed or fail on its own merits, rather than have leave to complain that they'd be successful businesses if the invisible foot of the government hadn't stepped on them.

Two items frustrate our preferred, edge-implemented solution. One is a simple technical item. We want a telephone that can be programmed not to ring if a caller is unidentified. The overwhelming majority of callers we don't want to talk to mask their caller ID. Our phones IFF these calls as "OUT OF AREA" with a number of "Out of Area." We don't answer them. Barbaloot's folks' calls display as OUT OF AREA but their phone number shows.

Those telemarketers who do not mask their identities are at worst dismissed with a polite answer, "thank you for the courtesy of presenting your caller ID. We don't want your service, please remove us from your lists. Bye." Unless, of course, they are offering a service we want. We admit it, we refinanced our home last fall with a mortgage company who cold-called us (caller ID displayed). They've got a right to do business, and we've got a right to do it with them, or choose not to. And we choose not to work with anybody whose caller ID is absent, for whatever reason. Even if we miss out on a negative interest rate or a free python.

Our nifty new mobile phones can be programmed with a caller-specific ring. I've given calls from Barbaloot's mobile number a unique ring. We presume that a software upgrade would enable this phone to "counter-block": if caller ID is absent, the phone can be set to ring with a unique tone, or not ring at all, maybe shunting to the answering machine. I haven't seen land-line phones that are capable of any features like these. Why not? Where are you consumer electronics guys with mobile phone features? Huh? It's just chipsets! Jeebus!

Barbaloot experimented with a value-added service (meaning we had to pay extra to Qwest for it), which played a warning message to callers whose caller ID is blocked. A determined caller could record a spoken name that would ring through so Barbaloot could take or decline the call. The downside of this service is that some of my calls to her from a roaming mobile phone don't present caller ID either. That service didn't last very long. I don't want to pay extra-extra to get full use of a feature for which I pay extra. Implement this feature at the edge, i.e. in equipment I provide for myself, and pay for only once.

The other item that frustrates our edge-implemented solution is not technical. Too many companies have masked their ID, either by intent, or by using PBX or other switchboard gear that doesn't support caller ID (my knowledge of this aspect of telephony is limited, I could be wrong). The real problem comes from those entities with whom we already do business, whose calls we must take. Barbaloot hesitates over the phone now, instead of blithely ignoring OUT OF AREA calls, because our fetus's physician's office's caller ID doesn't display.

My current gig in Colorado (more on that later) identifies itself as US GOVT, even though I'm calling from a base that probably has its own 5E switch instead of a PBX---hmmm, maybe that's why their caller ID works. My peeps in Cheyenne display as OUT OF AREA and I catch them live only if they try to leave a message.

There are few legitimate reasons for an entity to have their caller ID intentionally blocked. A battered spouse's shelter is the classic example---a client of the shelter may have to call the batterer (but under those situations, isn't all communication supposed to go through an attorney?), and caller ID would enable the batterer to tele-abuse or maybe even locate that client. Apart from this reason, I can't coutenance a business or government blocking their identity, even by default.

So we're altering our telephony tactics chez Fûz. I will randomly answer OUT OF AREA callers, just to fsck with them tell them we don't do business with entitiies whose ID is blocked. Our answering system already does this, but our most annoying telemarketers' bulk dialing equipment can sense an answering machine, hang up on it and dial somewhere else, keeping the pitchman busy. Try it sometime: on the next call, take the phone offhook in a quiet room, but don't speak. You'll hear silence for a while, until a live operator is cut over to make the pitch. We consider that rude, to put it mildly. We might also ramp up the preemptive counter-rudeness of our answering system's outgoing message, so telemarketers will hear it before they hang up.

We have no way to gauge the success of this new tactic. "We haven't blocked our caller ID," whines one telemarketer. I tell him I don't believe him, and he needs to inform his manager; then I hang up. "We didn't know our caller ID isn't visible" coos another. I tell her I don't believe her, I consider it rude that a business seeks my money but doesn't release its telephone number, she needs to tell her manager to get it unblocked, and I'm hanging up now. Cocaine dealers leave better means to contact them for future business than telemarketers do.

The next frontier for this tactic is to apply it to companies we visit in meatspace. That topic is for another post, and perhaps a new Web-based activism campaign---ask your favorite businesses to take the Caller ID Pledge! Dis those who refuse, picket and shame those who break their promise!

If government has any role to play in this mess, I'd rather they not establish a no-call list. Such a list implies that numbers not listed on it are "inviting" telemarketing calls, so I expect the volume of such calls to just get worse. The dirty prints of the invisible foot are all over this crime scene. Besides, the marketers have what I consider a valid First Amendment argument against a no-call list.

Generally, the gummint needs to legislate in a way that allows edge-implemented solutions to emerge, instead of requiring centrally-implemented ones. Start by making sure that carriers deliver the full value of my $4.95 per month for caller ID, meaning that I want phone companies to pass that data, even be required by law to pass that data, if the called party is paying to receive it. For those telemarketers using banks of pitchmen offshore, from switches or premises equipment that doesn't generate a caller ID, you're not exempted. At the point where your banks interface to the United States PSTN, you can be required to identify yourselves.

If a telemarketer places calls from a residential line, or a line that's identified as if it were residential (yes, we get them too) maybe the gummint can get involved here, though that will be trickier from a First Amendment standpoint. Caller ID is worthless if the very people who prompted me to order it can duck it.

This is an outgrowth of a distinction I make in an earlier post on licensed concealed carry, and it centers on the status of a business as a "person before the law." I dispute a business's claim to certain rights that an individual enjoys, even though courts have ruled otherwise. Anonymity is one of those rights that an individual should be able to assert under certain circumstances, the right to exclude someone from real property is another; a business's right to anonymity or exclusion should be more circumscribed. Such circumscription should be acceptable in consideration for the limitation of liability that a corporation enjoys ('business' and 'corporation' are used here interchangeably). Of course it will be difficult to circumscribe a corporation's rights without infringing upon those of the individuals employed by the corporation.

In summary, Out of Area ought in most cases to be outlawed. Forget the no-call list.

Update: I almost forgot, but Qwest reminded me one day after this was originally posted: Qwest is one of the Out of Area offenders. They called to offer a cordless phone, which I could pay for through my phone bill. It will be difficult but not impossible to cease doing business with them. I typed up our talking points on how to chew up the a**es of the telemarketers and placed them by the kitchen phone.

Not quickly enough to claim the rattle

Driving home from work (more on that later) this evening, I saw a snake, torn up on the shoulder of the road, clearly dead, deceased, ex-snake. I mentioned it to Firstchild, and she said, "Let's go see it! If it's a rattlesnake, can we bring back the rattle?" She then itemized the things we'd need, such as a knife (the ever-present Gerber EZ-Out) and a Ziploc bag.
Barbaloot's cooking was not going to be ready for another half hour, so we got jackets (temps are falling on the Front Range, y'all) and headed for the van. Boy noticed the commotion and asked where we were going.
"To see a snake?"
"Yes."
"Can I come too?"
"Sure."
Middlechild didn't want to at first, but changed her mind. We left Barbaloot home alone with simmering tomato sauce and drove to Crowfoot Canyon Road. We searched mightily along that hundred-meter stretch but no snake remains. Something must have come to claim him.

Just purchased . . .
Rocky and Bullwinkle's first season on DVD.

Update: Firstborn adores it.

quotation recycling
I would vote against any legislation somebody felt they had to name 'Patriot.'

---Grover Norquist