Twitter Blizzard - 21 December 2022

There has been a blizzard of commentary about the Musk takeover of Twitter and the consequences thereof.  My personal experience is that Twitter took a massive nosedive in the quality of the content and I have migrated to a Mastodon instance.  There remains a tumultuous debate about alternatives that replace Twitter, but there remains a singular problem that Twitter has solved and that is a barrier to entry for all alternatives.  Scale.

The "magic" of Twitter is not who owns it, who moderates it, or who subscribes.  These are all interesting and important factors, but they are not the key differentiator that made Twitter successful.  The key differentiator is that Twitter exchanges messages among millions of users in fractions of a second and creates a storehouse of comments that can be served up in seconds.  I could write code that collected short comments, microblog entries, and redistributes them, but it would handle a few hundred users, tops.  Much  more than that, and my little empire would fall over.  The good folks at Twitter have spent the last decade learning how to collect new entries, sort out subscribers, and redistribute those messages - and how to be efficient about it.  The blockchain/bitcoinage people designed a system that was intentionally inefficient while Twitter, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and the others were seeking ultraefficiency at the scale of millions.  Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon.com) used to say his strategy was "get big fast", but I think it would be more accurate to say "get big AND fast".  If you want a counter example, insurance companies and banks are big but hardly fast.

'Tis snowy outside.  Happy Hanukkah, everyone!

Coffee as a metric of business success - 13 December 2022

Coffee was not always my favorite beverage.  For a long time, I drank tea, both hot and iced.  At some point in college, I learned to drink coffee.  It would be more accurate to say that I trained myself to drink coffee for in the early days I did not like the actual taste of coffee; I merely tolerated it because of the caffeine and the warmth.  

I was an engineering co-op student in college.  At Purdue University, this meant that one alternated semesters of work and school.  Freshman and Senior years were two semesters and the intervening Sophmore and Junior years were spread across three years' duration with work semesters filling the time.  In my case, I worked During one of the work semesters and decided that I needed coffee to keep up with my work and social plans.  This was reinforced by the fact that the company provided free coffee.  

The company was a small company that made medical computing equipment.  Today, we would call them a start-up, but then it was simply "a small company".  Several departments were under one roof - business, marketing, manufacturing, test, and engineering - and there was a designated cafeteria.  There was no food service, no microwave ovens, no refrigerators, and no vending machines, but there were tables, chairs, and a coffee pot.  It was the kind of coffee pot that used paper filters to hold the coffee grounds that was brewed into glass carafes.  A coffee service provide packets of coffee containing the proper measure of grounds.  I quickly learned how to brew coffee as I tended to come in (relatively) early, and this got me warm and moving in the morning.  

The company made medical equipment and computers.  The computers generated a lot of heat and needed to be kept cool.  Because they were all minicomputers, there was no computer room - the computers were everywhere and so the entire building was kept cold.  I took a sweater to work even in the summer, because it was so doggone cold.  To help counter the cold, I decided to start drinking coffee.

I started with everything to hid the tast of the coffee:  creamer and sugar.  The creamer and sugar helped to cut the acidity.  It was powdered creamer because we had no refrigerator for dairy products.  Over time, I eliminated the sugar and then the creamer and became a convert to black coffee.  

This rather stunning conversion was facilitated by the fact that the coffee was Yuban in foil packets.  The brand seems to have been lost, but Yuban was considered a premium coffee at the time as the foil packaging attests.  The foil sealed the coffee well and helped keep it fresh.  At the end of the semester, I wrapped up work and returned to my university studies.  When I returned, the company was still producing computerized medical equipment, but the business was not as high flying as when I had left: the development engineering of the new products was costing more than expected and competition had entered the market to grab for those sweet profits.  While I am sure there were many things done to control costs, the one that struck me as a co-op was the change in coffee.  From Yuban in foil packets, the supply changed to Folgers in plastic packets.  The corresponding change in coffee quality was noticecable, but I was not deterred and I resumed drinking black coffee.  After the semester passed, I returned to university, and then came back to work.  Competition was fierce in the medical computing business and more belt-tightening had been applied.  The coffee was still provided by the company, but it had been changed from Folgers in plastic bags to Mr. Nick-L-Cup in paper bags.  It was tough.  The coffee was not bad, but it really needed help.  I think I kept drinking it black, but I cut back.  By the time I returned to my studies, I had pretty much abandoned coffee and stayed that way for several years.  I went back to tea and did not return to coffee until I was able to grind and brew it fresh in my own kitchen.

The business metric in the title is a simple observation.  Companies are generous when the times are good, but when the quality and quantity of the benefits start dropping, it is a sign that the company is not doing well.

When I graduated, the company was doing well enough to make me an offer for a permanent position, but it was the lowest offer I received.  And, by that time, I was concerned about the future success of the company, so I took another offer.

Management by Objectives (MBO) replaced by Management by Skills (MBS) - 7 December 2022

Management By Objectives, MBO, is the traditional way to evaluate employees at ratings time, usually annually.  MBO might work well for routine work such as clerical situations, and it may work well for sales and support, but it fails when managing a research and development team.  For R&D, we need an evaluation framework that accounts for creativity, innovation, and unpredictability.  I have used Management by Skills for this purpose.

In the traditional MBO plan, the employee writes down a series of objectives for the rating period, about half a dozen.  Often the employee will be asked for four objectives, one per calendar quarter.  These objectives are "SMART" - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound, and are usually written in the third-person voice.  Thus, an example might be "complete 100% of incoming requests within two working days".  The typical MBO embeds a lot of assumptions.  In this example, we assume the incoming work is enough to fill 40 hours per week, the individual tasks are not onerous (can be completed in a few hours), the incoming work is evenly distributed in time, how to resolve incoming tasks is well understood, and there is little or no prioritization of the incoming requests.  This simply does not describe an R&D environment.  In a research group or product development group, the tasks vary dramatically in scope and difficulty, some require invention while others are routine. The tasks usually arrive in clumps, and some tasks are much more important than others.  This variety is very difficult to oversee using MBO methods and metrics.

Furthermore, R&D is a career position and individuals want to grow, to get promoted.  It is not wise to promote someone for "just doing their job" - the manager will want to encourage people to learn and demonstrate new skills.  The skills can be specific, such as learning a particular technique, or the can be general, such as leadership or planning.  I addressed this by focusing on skills rather than objectives.

Management by Skills, MBS, defines a set of skills that are to be mastered and demonstrated by employees.  These skills are usually on a spectrum, from simple and small growing to complex and large as the employee's career advances.  The newly graduated employee cannot be expected to perform at the level of a 20-year veteran, at least not until that have had a chance to develop their skills.  The skills I identified for my team were derived from HR-provided documents and can be summarized as: flexibility, communications and listening, technical depth, technical breadth, scope of influence, leadership, and impact of decisions.  These may overlap in some situations but they describe important skills in an R&D workplace.  We take them one at a time.

Flexibility is required to survive the rapid pace of change in research and development.  The requirements for a project often change during the project as new information is uncovered.  Someone who is slow to adapt will fall behind as they work on tasks no longer relevant.  Someone who resists change will be eternally dissatisfied.  Those who embrace change and flex with it will focus on the right tasks and have the greatest success.  There is no convenient metric of flexibility and this skill is usually best measured using examples, both pro and con.

Communications and listening.  This is usually listed as "communications" and that can cause one to lose sight of the fact that communications is two-way.  A one-way communications method has a name - broadcast.  Communications also comes in many forms - written & spoken, formal & informal, in person and electronicly, individual and in groups of varying sizes.  In today's world,  a successful researcher cannot only publish and a successful developer cannot only use email.  One must learn to use successfully a variety of forms.  An employee who communicates only with peers may succeed but they will not likely advance until they learn to speak with management.  Finally, success at the highest tiers requires the ability to work with large groups, and someone who communicates a lot but has little effect will be left behind.  As before, there is no convenient metric for communications and listening; it is not sufficient to count papers, technical reports, pages written, or talks given.  This skill is usually best measured using examples where the communications had an impact.

Technical depth is usually what the more junior employees focus on, identifying all the clever tasks they completed.  Technical depth remains an important skill, but it must be evaluated in the larger context of the full set of skills.  In other words, the employee will not be promoted if they lack technical skills, but they will not be promoted if they show only their technical skills.  Technical depth has no easy metric and can be best evaluated with comparisons to (anonymized) colleagues and peers.  Technical depth can sometimes be measured using feedback from peers, such as from talks or papers, or using independent counts such as patents or peer-reviewed publications.

Technical breadth is often paired with technical depth.  An employee who is "a kilometer wide and a millimeter deep" will not succeed.  One needs to show a willingness to take on tasks that require one to learn new skills, and build on those skills.  As a positive feedback loop, skills in a new area can often be applied to familiar problems and generate new solutions.  Technical breadth has no easy metric and can be best evaluated with comparisons to (anonymized) colleagues and peers.

Scope of influence is an important skill to demonstrate.  Presentations given and papers published must be converted into research and development results.  An idea that never leaves the lab has little or no value.  This skill goes beyond simple formulas or techniques - the ability to influence another often depends on communications skills.  A good idea presented badly is unlikely to be adopted in practice.  Influence ultimately comes back around.  When people seek out the employee for advice and ideas, that employee has a broad influence on the organization.  The metric to use here is typically based on examples, especially when the employee causes existing practice to be changed.

Impact of decisions is closely related to scope of influence, but focuses more on the magnitiude of the resulting changes.  The metric can measure efficiency changes (e.g., process improvements), dollar impact on the business, or the scale of the change (local to a group or product to across an entire corporation or product suite).

Leadership is probably the hardest and most dynamic skill to measure.  It is even hard to define.  Early in one's career, leadership is often assigned by management, but later in one's career, leadership is earned.  In one's early career, an employee can be assigned to oversee an intern or a more junior employee.  As one's career advances, the employee will identify opportunies that need addressing and assemble the required skills and team members.  While the junior leader is assigned by management, the senior leader tells managers what they are doing and why they are doing it.

Evaluating employees is a difficult task and changes with the environment and the individuals participating.  This note summarizes some techniques that can be used for effective evaluations in a research and development environment.

Domestic Terrorism in the US - 6 December 2022

Headlines are buzzing with fragmentary reports of an attack on power substations in Moore County, North Carolina.   It could have happened anywhere, but the reports out of NC say that one or more people broke down a fence and shot up a power substation.  Well, two power substations.  This has resulted in power outages for 40,000 customers of Duke Power.  The exact methods of the attack are not very surprising.  It feels like every year a squirrel takes out a power substation, so using guns and trucks is not a major advance.  That it is human-done seems to be the surprise this time.

We should not be surprised.  In fact, we should have been prepared.

On 12 September 2001, we were back at work and wondering what could happen next.  What could the international terrorists do after the attacks on the Pentagon in Washington DC and the Twin Towers of New York?  My regular lunch crowd was sure that 9/11 was but the first of a series of attacks and we debated what would come next.  Perhaps someone would drive a truck of explosives half-way across a major hydro dam and blow up the dam, depriving Las Vegas and LA of power and drowning anyone downstream?  Perhaps someone would ship checked bags in airlines - good thing that airlines were grounded.  Perhaps someone would dump a truck full of chemicals into a reservoir and poison a city?  Trains, planes, trucks, cars, chemicals, nukes, gas clouds - we came up with quite a list.   After a bit of debate, because that is what engineers approach problems, we realized that the luncheon spot had gone silent and everyone was watching us, so we quickly changed to the latest baseball scores.  In the following days, it became clear that this was a one-shot attempt and that the terrorist group did not have a sustained plan of terror.  Airplanes were again allowed to fly and security at the airports was beefed up.

The aspect we did not examine was the international terrorist.  We took that as a given.  We never considered that domestic terrorists would play this deadly game.  The Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans, to name a few, have continued to attack the United States through cyber means but no one has really tried to attack using conventional means.  We must be honest with ourselves:  in the last 20 years, if a foreign agency had been determined to execute a physical attack, they would have launched it by now and there is a good chance that at least one attempt would have succeeded in doing some damage.  I certainly do not wish for this, but no defense is perfect for 20 years.

After watching the development of self-described "militias" in the US, it is painfully clear that one or more of them are going to do something stupid.  This particular attack in NC could be the result of excessive beer by some dimwits, but the synchronization of mutiple sites simultaneously indicates some forethought and training was pursued.

So I think there are two lessons here that must lead to action plans.  First, we need to watch the militias and bring them to heel.  I would argue the January 6 attack on the US Capitol is included here, but we know that these self-described militias (Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and the rest) are actively seeking opportunities to do something stupid.  We must find them and stop them.

Second, we need to strengthen the digital protections of our infrastructure.  This threat is greater than a power substation.  This threat covers power, water, gas, and communications.  The SCADA systems must be upgraded to block false access,  other computer systems must be self-policing, the physical assets must be hardened to prevent access, and surveillence of the physical assets must be improved.  

Some might cry out that these steps are an imposition by an overreaching government intent on control, but these are protective acts and not offensive actions.  We must protect ourselves against enemies, foreign and domestic.

Vacation Restrictions - 27 November 2022

This recollection dates to many years ago, about 1986 or so.  I started work for United Airlines (at the time, later to become Covia and now named something else that escapes me).  UAL had a lot of rules that felt odd in an IT position, but they derived from the union rules that governed most of the employees (pilots, flight attendants, and ground-based staff).  The vacation rules were of particular note.

1. Each employee earned X days per month worked.  In the end, a new employee earned ten days (two weeks) per year, but they accumulated.  since I started in June, I was accumulating a week of vacation in that year.  

2. The vacation accumulated in year Y could be used in year Y+1.  As I was earning vacation in 1986, I could use it in 1987.  

As a result, in the first eighteen months I worked for UAL, I had one week of vacation to use.  After that, it settled into the two-week norm, but that first year and a half was tough.

Jouralists say Amazon Alexa to lose $10 Billion in 2022 - 23 November 2022

Journalists at Business Insider are claiming that the hardware division of Amazon is on track to lose $10 Billion (with a B) in 2022 because of Alexa.  The story has been picked up by other news sources and is being repeated as factual.  Let us look closer at the claims.

The report at Ars Technica says:

The Alexa division is part of the "Worldwide Digital" group along with Amazon Prime video, and Business Insider says that division lost $3 billion in just the first quarter of 2022, with "the vast majority" of the losses blamed on Alexa. That is apparently double the losses of any other division, and the report says the hardware team is on pace to lose $10 billion this year.

Engineers are paid a lot of money and they get a lot of benefits, so engineers are expensive.  Engineers at high-tech Internet companies are paid even better than average (e.g., Facebook and Google engineers are better paid than AMD and Intel engineers).  To understand the situation, we need to make some assumptions.

First, although the article blames "the vast majority" of the losses on Alexa, let us just assume all the losses are due to Alexa and stick with the $10B.  Further, let us assume that Alexa makes no money and that $10B represents the entire cost of the Alexa organization.  Other articles claim that hardware products are sold "at cost", so we assign zero to the cost of consumer products sold (the cost will equal the income, therefore having no impact on our estimates).  As a generous guess, let us assume that the annual cost of an engineer is $500000 (half a million bucks), including benefits and overhead (building rent, computer equipment, heat, health benefits, stock grants, and so on).  This is high, but it is an average across engineers and it is based on industry knowledge.  

If we take the claimed loss of $10B and divide by the $500K, we get 20000 engineers.  I am pretty confident that Amazon does not have 20K engineers working in the hardware division.  Elsewhere in the article, it is claimed that Amazon as a whole is eliminating 10K jobs (e.g., CNBC report) out of 1 million or more employees.  But remember that most of those 1 million jobs are at the entry level in the warehouses (fulfillment centers) and are about $15/hour or about $30K annualized.  Converting that to a "loaded salary" is still only about $60K per year, so it would take almost 170K employees to achieve a $10B savings in lay-offs.

So if the number of laid-off employees does not match the headline, it must be the amount of the losses that is wrong.  And I submit the losses are exaggerated.  Significantly exaggerated.  

Because we are talking about sad things like lay-offs, I have attached a picture of a cat as a palate cleanser.

The ABC trifecta of Art, Blockchain, and Crypto - 17 November 2022

Music is not often associated with technology, but this Spotify track offers brilliant treatment of the blockchain and crypto circus that has gripped techbros for the last couple years.

Crypto $oy or Crypto Boy.

I am not sure how to insert the "bitcoin currency" symbol that the artist uses, so I had to insert a dollar sign.  salem ilese has created a nice ballad for your favorite crypto enthusiast.  To be complete, I further acknowledge the songwriting skills of Alma Goodman, Henry Tucker, Marc Sibley, Nathan Cunningham, and salem ilese.

ETA: put the year 2022 in the Title.

The balance on Twitter is shifting, 17 November 2022

Famously, Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla fame has purchased Twitter.  As part of his plan to remake the corporation, he announced a plan to lay-off 3/4ths of the staff.  Not a typo, that is 75% of the people to be fired. Oh, that is bad, said public perception.  In a thoughtful moment, Elon backed off and laid off "only" half.  Not a typo, that is 50% were fired within about three (3) weeks.  I am not sure how he expected to keep the company running after that, but Twitter has not fallen over.

Once all the fuss about the lay-offs died down, Elon imposed a sudden work-from-office requirement:  40 hours per week in the office, minimum.  Although I have concerns about the long-term success of unfettered WFH (work-from-home), that was the Twitter policy and the suddeness of Elon's dictate was extreme.  A target date and time for transition plans would have been reasonable (assuming the target date was into 2023).  

Not content, Elon announced a further 5% trim of staff, another lay-off in which the managers were required to identify a further 5% of the staff as low performers.  Yeah, always a popular move.

Finally, Elon send out an email message that required staff to commit to unpaid overtime, a loyalty oath, and (I suspect) consent to absurd delivery schedules.  Failure to commit was essentially volunteering to get laid off.

As a consequence of any layoff, there are collateral resignations.  The targeted population to be laid off may be the low performers and the low revenue groups (a common assertion), but the untargeted resignations are usually the very people who can get another job quickly.  Those would include your top performers.  The remainder are a mix of the true believers, the ones who are "stuck" (e.g., because of health care), and the inertial.  This is not always the employee base that you would want to retain.

In effect, Elon has now laid off 3/4ths of the Twitter staff and achieved his original intent, except for the "retain top talent" objective.

In compensation, I offer you a photograph of a sleeping cat. 

When appliances fail - 15 November 2022

Appliances should last a really long time, but they never do.  They are simple devices, usually made from simple materials, but they seem designed to fail long before their time.  Take the typical American water heater.  It is basically a tank of pressurized water with a gas or electric heater in the body of the tank.  There is a thermostat to control the temperature of the water, and the thermostat controls the heating unit.  In my case, the thermostat controls a gas valve.  Unlike a gas furnace, the pilot light is lit all the time and the "waste" heat from the pilot light goes into the water in the tank.  When the temperature falls below the set-point of the thermostat, the gas valve is actuated and the pilot light ignites the burner.  When the water gets sufficiently hot, the gas valve is closed and the burner goes out.  Insulation keeps the hot water hot while the burner is off. 

No pump in, no pump out, nothing active but the gas valve.  Unfortunately, there is a bit of aging due to the thermal expansion and contraction of the hot water, and more due to the various minerals in the water.  There is simply not much to fail, so why does a water heater last only about a decade?  

Our last water heater was installed in spring of 2005, so it lasted about 17-1/2 years.  It did not fail dramatically, but it was failing, so I replaced it.  I was living on "borrowed time" and I decided to replace it in a controlled manner rather than waiting for a dramatic failure at an inconvenient time.

Manufacturers should design the water heaters to be more robust.  The cost of the water heater would go up, but if a minor increment in cost doubled the expected life of a water, it would be a win for the consumer.  On the other hand, the current system rewards mediocre designs (manufacturers sell more water heaters) and the installation (plumbing) business installs more water heaters.  The consumer does not get the "best product", they get the product that generates the greatest profits for the manufacturers and installers.

The other problem with appliances is that Nothing Is Standardized.  It is just a water heater.  There should be some standard connections at standard locations and the units should come in standard sizes.  Then the installer would just disconnect the old unit, connect in the new unit, and be done.  However, the installer had to spend hours adjusting the installation process so that the water heater would fit into the space.  If you look closely, there are three (3) foam disks under the water heater; one is needed to insulate the heater from the cement floor (saves energy), but this install as three because the water heater was too low.  The gas connection is weird (the new water heater is the same diameter as the old water heater, but it just did not fit).  And the safety valve had to be soldered into exhaust plumbing with a custom fit.  This is really stupid.  If the connecterization were the same on all water heaters, it would save hours of labor at install time.  We faced a similar problem with the furnaces - they all seem to be custom installations.  And do not get me started about kitchen standards.  

The good news is that we have hot water for the next decade or so.

Checking in - 7 November 2022

Winterizing has been the name of the game for the last few weeks.   This comes from three factors.

Due to benign neglect, I have let some shrubs get overgrown over the years.  The resulting blooms have been gorgeous, but we now have a lot of shrubs that are too large for their location.  Several have been blocking windows while others are encroaching over the lawn and some are just too large and tangled to be healthy.  

Then we had a windstorm on Friday or Saturday night.  This storm created yet more lawn and garden waste than the maintenance pruning.  We have a lot of large trees, and the wind came from a direction that pruned the upper parts of the trees, dumping the branches and needles on our house and lawn.

Finally, the decidious trees are dropping their leaves.  The pine needles are coming down, too, to make room for new growth on the evergreens.  

Any one of these could generate a lot of organic waste that we put in the lawn-and-garden bin for pickup.  However, all of them together overwhelm the 96-gallon capacity of the weekly bin, so I get out the chipper-shredder and make mulch. 

The chipper-shredder is an old one and I do not know how much longer I will have it.  I bought it from a catalog company when we lived in Chicago.  That would have been in the 1980s.  I loaned it to a friend for use in the autumn and he kept it for the winter.  Unfortunately, he was not aware of the maintenance requirement to drain the gas tank (or treat the gas), and the chipper would not start after he returned it.  He moved away shortly thereafter, so the chipper followed us to Massachusetts and then to Washington.  I am not much of a mechanic, so I did not really know how to fix this.  The chipper weighs a lot, maybe 75-90 pounds, and it is large, so I could not figure out how to get it to a repair shop.  And so it sat, moved dutifully with us as we bounced around the country.  

A few years ago, I got bold.  I bought some cleaner sprays (e.g., carb cleaner) and started poking at it.  I could get it to run by spraying carb cleaner down the throat of the carburator, so that suggested to me that the problem was rooted in the stale and evaporated fuel rather that some outright mechanical failure.  I carefully disassembled the engine, not really knowing what I was doing.  I sprayed everything I could find with the carburator cleaner and I sprayed all the moving parts with WD-40, then I reassembled it as carefully as I could.  In particular, there was some oddly shaped bit of plastic that I carefully placed back.  I am just guessing here, but I think that was the fuel pump.  Anyway, I got it all back together without any "extra" parts, so I put in fresh fuel and tried to start it up.

It started.

I was amazed.  I ran it for a bit so ensure this was not some start-only magic, and it has been working reliably ever since.  I am careful to run out the fuel in the autumn, and it keeps chugging away.  The only other maintenance is to sharpen the blades and change the oil.  The chipper manufacturer is no longer in business, but the engine is Briggs & Stratton, so I can probably get parts when that becomes necessary.  I hope.  In the meantime, I keep running it so that I can try to keep up with the organic waste that I am generating.

  

Visitors in the side yard, 30 October 2022 (15 October 2022)

 Bobcats, I think.

There are three, perhaps a small family unit on the prowl.  

Original image: 15 October 2002 in the middle of the afternoon.

ETA: formatting.

In the balance on Twitter, 30 October 2022

Elon Musk completed his takeover of Twitter on Thursday, 27 October 2022.  There has been a lot of speculation about what this means, especially for free speech and civility.  So far, Musk has repeatedly said that there are no changes as of yet, and he has appointed a committee to review current policies and recommend changes.  Musk declares himself to be a "free-speech absolutist" which most people seem to believe is a statement that the Nazis and nut-cases will be allowed free reign.  I have been trying to withhold judgement to see where Musk takes Twitter.  I am not optimistic, but neither am I at the panic-and-run stage.  

Then, today, this report surfaced.  It seems that Musk replied to a tweet by Hillary Clinton about the attack on Paul Pelosi and cited an article in a newspaper declaring that Pelosi is gay and the attacker is a prostitute, the attack was about a lovers dispute, and that Pelosi was in his underwear.  The FOX station that reported the underwear has since withdrawn their report, and the newspaper turns out to be a Qanon-aligned craphole of a news site.  Musk defended the tweet with weaselwords about "it seems", but he eventually deleted the tweet after the condemnations grew.  This is not sufficient.  Musk is an adult and should know better than to spew unsubstantiated drivel to his millions of (Twitter) followers.  

The point of this note is two-fold.  First, Musk needs to have an adult nearby at all times to supervise him (that is advice based on prudence; I am not proposing any sort of law).  Musk's failure to heed this idea will contribute to his $42 Billion collapse, and that will be penalty enough.  Second, I am concerned that Twitter will indeed become a cesspool of drivel.  This suggests that I will not be using Twitter a year from now.

Halloween is approaching, so I have attached a photo of a neighbor's decorations.  Happy Halloween!

When in Nantes, 28 October 2022 (9 September 2022)

Distractions kept me from posting photos from our recent travels.  I shall take steps to remedy this oversight.

In September, 2022, we traveled to France and Greece for long planned and long postponed vacations.  After repeated delays and changes, the travel followed a three-part structure.  The first part was a week of vacation in France near Bordeau and Perigord, a week of being in the "delegation" in Nantes, and a week of sailing in Greece.  

On our first night in Nantes, we had dinner that featured the local tradition of crepes made of buckwheat, dining al fresco.  We stayed in an unusual hotel - Micr'Home - and took in art throughout the town.  The walking was good and helped us fight the insidious tendrils of jetlag.

The destinations of the first week required that we pick up a rental car at the Nantes airport.  We traveled with our son, A, to Les Epesses, home of the famed Puy du Fou historical theme park.  Puy du Fou is an interesting place.  On the one hand, it is a bit schmaltzy (campy) for Americans, but it is extremely well done and a lot of fun.  Various bits of history have passed by or near a chateau near Les Epesses, and these historical facts are turned into spectacles.  For example, there is evidence that Romans were nearby and so there is a colloseum with a spectacular show that involves chariot races, wild animals, and gladiators.  There is evidence that Vikings raided in the area, so there is a spectacular show that involves a Viking longship and burning barns.  Laperouse, a famous explorer, is featured in an exhibit about his explorations because he was born in the nearby town. 

I seem to be having trouble with the blogging tool, so I will stop (albeit abruptly) and continue in the next post.

It took me a couple minutes, 28 October 2022

Reading bumperstickers is an old hobby of mine.  I have been reading them for years.  I do not know why as most are pretty boring.  "My child is the honor student of the week", or someone's favorite politician, or "Wall Drugs".  So when I run across an interesting one, it is a secret pleasure.

In the parking lot of a nearby grocery store, an unusual bumpersticker was found.  It took me a few minutes to work it out, so I will delay the reveal to give you, dear reader, a chance to read the secret message.

Another odd hobby of mine is to read license plates.  Well, not merely read them, but interpret them.  Today, personalized license plates are common and "reading" a plate is a common game.  However, at one point, license plates were not personalized and they all seemed to use a single format:  AAA NNN, or three letters and three numbers.  I suspect this simple rule was the result of sample bias, but it held true for many years in my experience.  I used to interpret the AAA letters as computer instructions.  "BRA 565" became 'BRAnch", "BNE 354" became "Branch if Not Equal", "ADC 757" became "ADd with Carry", "LDA 324" became "LoaD Accumulator", and so.  Not all three-letter groups had actual instructions that correspond to anything I had seen or used, so part of the game was to make up instructions that fit.  A famous example would have been "HCF 523" for "Halt and Catch Fire".  A silly little game that kept me alert on many long highway trips.

In my first reading of the curious bumpersticker, I thought about convenient substitutions that might resolve into something, and that thought is partially right.  I finally realized the entire expression does not resolve into one thing, rather there are independent pieces that resolve into separate things that, in turn, combine into the meaning.  The key was to realize that there is nothing one can do to reduce the square root of minus one except i.  Yes, one could stick in Euler's formula (e^(i*pi)+1=0), but that is more complex rather than simpler.  So we have, potentially, three tokens and the middle one is "i".  (As an engineer, I might try to put in a j rather than an i, but let us put that aside.)  That leaves the E/c^2 and the PV/nR.

Well, the first E that comes to mind is Einstein's - E=mc^2.  This immediately reduces to mc^2/c^2, or m.  This give us "mi" plus a third token.

By inspection, it is clear the third token is a play on the ideal gas law: PV=nRT.  If you take the ideal gas law and rearrange it to put the P, V, n, and R terms on one side, we are left with T.

Our solution is: miT, normally written MIT, and that is consistent with the playful spirit of the puzzle.  Do you have an alternative solution?

Jibe 1 - sloppy use of cases, and an educated person would use formulae that have uppercase M and I.

Jibe 2 - a graduate of a proper engineering university would know that j is the correct terminology for imaginary numbers and this was clearly created by a mathematician rather than an engineer.

Smoke 5, 23 October 2022

Although we are celebratinig the return of the rainy season and clear air, the recent past has something to teach us.  

Smoke is in our future.  

Since 2000, the four smokiest summers have been in the last six years.  Prior to 2017, Zero was the typical number of unhealthy summer days.  Keep those N95 masks handy.

Smoke 4, 19 October 2022

According to KIRO-7, a Seattle TV station (emphasis added), Seattle has the worst air quality in the world at this time.  This source did not quote numbers, but other sources quote ratings at 300 and above.  From IQAir, the Seattle Eastside is generally above 300 (hazardous), as illustrated after the quote from KIRO-7.  Our neighborhood is reporting 296 or 366, depending on the sampling station one selects.  The air has been distinctly amber or brown all day.  To be honest, I have been to Delhi and Beijing when the air quality was worse, but this is bad today.

Heavy smoke from wildfires continues to reduce air quality in Seattle and Western Washington, and an air quality alert has been extended for a second time.

The poor air quality landed Seattle the top spot for the worst air quality in the world, according to IQAir’s air quality and pollution city ranking, as of 6:45 p.m. on Wednesday.

After starting the day in the top 5, Seattle fluctuated up and down the top 15 before taking the top spot in the afternoon.

The cities that ranked below Seattle were Kolkata, India, at #5; Chengdu, China, at #4; Delhi, India, at #3; and Lahore, Pakistan, at #2.

Portland, Oregon came in at #6. 

Smoke 3 - 18 October 2022

While we were traveling in September and early October, we read reports of continuing smoke in metro Seattle coming from the forest fires east of here.  One featured in the news was around Route 2 and the town of Skykomish.  We have been back for a week, and the smoke continues.  I posted a couple days ago about the intensity of the smoke, but it was clearing in the days since.  Today, the smoke has returned.  In the morning hours, there is a distinct haze and color cast in the air, visibility has dropped dramatically from the norm, and there is a scent of woodsmoke in the air.

Photo taken soon after sunrise.

Smoke 2 - 15 October 2022

 How bad is the air quality, I hear you ask.  Well, this bad.

Smoke - 15 October 2022

We have returned from travels to France, Greece, and Canada, only to find that the fire season continues and air quality is getting bad.  When we returned yesterday from Canada, the air was hazy but did not smell.  Today, the air is much hazier, smoky looking, and there is a clear scent of burnt wood in the air.  An odd thing we noticed that that there were air quality alerts for metropolitan Seattle but no such alerts for metropolitan Vancouver (BC) - yet the air quality seemed about the same.  I conclude that Canadian authorities have lax requirements, either for air quality or for reporting of air quality.

We flew to France via Amsterdam.  I masked the entire trip as I was spending time in a small aluminum tube with a couple hundred strangers.  It only takes one or two hoseheads to make an entire airplane sick (I debated using a different phrase, a more sympathetic tag, but I cannot imagine why an intelligent person knowingly ill or feeling ill with COVID symptoms would intentionally travel on an airplane, but I digress).  We staved off some jet lag by wandering around Nantes (FR) and settled on a small crepe restaurant for dinner.   The next day or so, we picked up a car at the airport and headed out for some tourism.  There were three prongs to our travels: Puy du Fou, Cognac, and cave paintings.  I will give particulars later; for now, it was a great leg of the trip.

For the second leg, we were in Nantes and environs as members of the "delegation" from the Seattle-Nantes Sister City Association (SNSCA).  Originally scheduled for 2020, the trip was to celebrate the 40th anniversity of the twinning of Seattle and Nantes.  COVID changed the world, so the 40th became the 41st and then the 42nd anniversary.  With any luck, the 45th anniversary will be celebrated in 2025.

For the third leg, we flew to Greece to go sailing.  We met up with six friends to sail a 48-foot catamaran among the Saronic islands, including Ydra (Hydra) and Poros.

Shortly after returning home, we went to the cabin in Canada to do the annual burn.  This was to be for the Canadian Thanksgiving, a long weekend (3-day) in October that is the traditional weekend when the holiday is celebrated and the cabins are closed down for the winter.  The winter rains have usually settled in by now, making it safe to burn the accumulated prunings and tree cuttings down on the beach.  This year, we are in a continuing drought and the days remain clear and warm.  The burn ban remains in place, so we hope to return in mid-November to burn.  We could wait until Spring for the burn, but that gives the brush piles a lot of time to build up thick growths of mold and mildew that will give my sinus passages a rough ride.  We have burned in the Spring in the past, and it was no fun.

Now back at home and looking forward to the rains and the end of the fire season.

Charles III seems an ill-advised choice for a name - 8 September 2022

With the passing of Elizabeth II R, her son Charles is being called the King.  However, official reports are not naming him as "King Charles III" yet.  I suggest this is wise.  Charles I came to a bad end, and Charles II was mired in controversy.  The controversy may look peculiar from today's perspective, but it was wild enough at the time to eject Charles II and to bring on William and Mary in a Parliamentary coup.  (As I understand, this is the origin of the "divine Right" moving to a "divine and Parliamentary Right".)  Adopting the title of Charles III would recall some bad times and questionable royalty.  Much better that Charles (prince) adopt another name with better associations. Of course, others get to decide this and a rebellious colonist has but little to say in the matter.  To distract us all from this weighty decision, here is a picture of a cat.

Roll, do not brush - 14 August 2022

Having applied fiberglass to the bottom of the kayak, it was time to apply epoxy to fill the weave, creating a smooth surface for final finishing with varnish (to protect the epoxy from UV destruction).  For the fiberglass, I used a scraper to apply a thin coat of epoxy.  For the first fill coat, I used a foam roller to apply the epoxy, and it went quite smoothly.  I was happy with the uniformity of the resulting coat.  I was concerned about the amount of wasted epoxy left in the foam roller when I was done with the application, so I decided to use a chip brush to apply the second filler coat.  Although the brushed coat seemed to use less epoxy and it left a smooth coat, it also had two problematic consequences.  First, the inexpensive chip brushes tend to shed bristles; this is no surprise, but I did have to stay alert to remove the bristles so they did not set in the epoxy to become permanent features of the kayak.  The second problem is that the brush left a thick layer that had a tendency to slump and drip on the more vertical surfaces of the kayak.  This will require quite a bit of sanding to make fair.  I plan to return to the roller for future applications of expoy filler and the coats of varnish.  I will use the brushes for areas that are not amenable to rolling, such as the areas around the coaming.

I also learned why being generous can sometimes leave one in a bit of a pickle.  During the construction class, the instructor suggested that people share epoxy bottles so as to reduce the number of epoxy stations that were needed.  I volunteered to let my adjacent colleague draw from my bottles.  The kayak kit comes with a gallon of epoxy, and that sounded nearly infinite to me.  Well, I ran out today, and I am not yet done.  I ordered a half-gallon kit, but it will take time to ship from the East coast, so my construction is temporarily stalled.  I guess I can go back and sand down some of those drips.

Assembling a RAD Power RADmission bicycle from late May 2022 - 8 August 2022

RAD Power bicycles is an e-bike company in Seattle.  I finally broke down and got my first e-bike, the RADmission 1.  The big arguments in the e-bike world revolve around mid-drive and hub-drive.  This bike is typical in that it is hub-drive, therefore the motor is in the rear wheel, but it is atypical in that it is a single-gear bike.  No derailleur, no speeds.  The bike has a power-assist option from 0-5, where zero is no e-assist and 5 is full power.  The power-assist works to amplify your pedaling; when you stop pedaling, the motor stops assisting and you coast.  There is also a twist throttle that provides variable assist independent of pedaling.  I bought the upgrade to the control system that displays the wattage that the motor is putting out.  The motor peaks at 500 Watts; other bikes from RAD Power are in the 750W range.  The bikes comes with 2-inch wide tires and disk brakes, so it is comfortable on many trails, including gravel.  The power assist stops assisting above 20 miles per hour, so it is a Class 2 bike in the U.S. because it has a throttle.  The bike was pretty easy to assemble when I followed the printed instructions.  Many or all of the tools are provided, but I often used my own tools because they are of better quality and easier to use.

I am still learning how to ride it well, but here is what I have learned so far.

I use the electronic assist in three ways.  I keep the assist level around 2 and that works well for me in almost any mostly level situation.  Power assist ranges around 100W.  When I hit a hill, I use the throttle to help, and that applies anything up to 500W to get me up the hill.  For steeper hills, I have to stand and pedal to get up.  Finally, I also use the trhottle to accelerate from a stop.  Nominally, this is not needed; the automatic power assist should kick in to help when I start pedaling, but I find that traffic (cars) are often impatient and the throttle-boost gets me going fast enough to stay out of their way or to cross the road (e.g., when riding on a trail that crosses a road).  When hill climbing, I will occasionally boost the power-assist level to 3, but I back it down to 2 for normal riding.  This gives me a pretty good range - I have yet to find the bottom of the battery.

This time-lapse video should have been posted here on 31 May 2022.

U.S. Savings Bonds - 8 August 2022

Going through some old files, I found a cache of U.S. Savings Bonds that were issued in late 1979 into the early 1980s.  Savings Bonds were once a "thing" but are now rather obscure.  They were denominated in smaller amounts ($25-$50-$100) and often sold through monthly payroll deductions.  They are bonds backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, so the purhaser does not need to worry about defaults or corporate bankruptcy.  As a consequence, the interest rates are not great, but neither are they as terrible as, say, a checking account at a commercial bank.  They have a defined date of maturity (10 years or so) and keep earning interest after that date - although the interest rate may drop post-maturity.  Some bonds are bought at face value and some are bought at a discount (e.g., half of the face value).  Today, Savings Bonds seem to have moved to an elecrtonic version, but these are old-fashioned paper bonds.

These bonds are old and long past maturity.  They would have matured before 2000, so the actual value of each bond today is far beyond the face value.  I checked the internet and found a page that describes how to redeem the bonds.  

Go to a bank.

Yep, there are a bunch of rules about paperwork that must be signed in the presence of a witness or a notary public.  

Many banks will decline Savings Bonds.

We visited three (3) banks before finding one that would redeem Savings Bonds.  One had certain designated offices that would redeem Bonds, but not the one we were standing in.  Another simply did not handle Bonds.  The third one would.

The banks require an account at the bank to redeem the Bonds.

We do not have an account at a local bank.  Gave it up years ago to consolidate our finances into a high-service brokerage account.  We have been doing all banking electronically for over a decade, but now we need a local account.

And there you have it.  To redeem your U.S. Savings Bonds, you need to have a local bank account and process the paperwork in the presence of a notary public or a designed bank official.

I am now opening an account at a local bank so that I can redeem my ancient Savings Bonds.

Picture of a rabbit because, well, why not?  Photo courtesy of Kathy Perko-Porter.

Frontier is the Fastest Supercomputer on the Planet - 1 June 2022

Announced on Monday, 30 May 2022, the Frontier computer is the fastest computer on the planet, driven by AMD EPYC CPUs and AMD Instinct GPUs.  I was a manager on the research projects that led to this success.  The research ideas were turned into reality by a large team of dedicated engineers across a variety of disciplines.  The AMD part of the story began in about 2014.

The AMD Research "FastForward" project on supercomputing started in about 2014 when the fastest computer in the world was 33.86 Petaflop/second (0.034 Exaflops/sec).  That machine was the Tianhe-2, a supercomputer developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology.  The Top500 list tracks the fastest computers, and in 2014, it looked like this.  In the research project, our challenge was to invent a 1 Exaflop/sec (1000 Petaflops/sec) machine that used 20 Megawatts of power; at the time, it was predicted that such a machine would require nearly 100 MW if built using then-current technology.  Further, it required so many chips that reliability calculations gave dismal predictions: the machine might not stay up long enough between failures to deliver the useful results.  It took years of research from 2014 - plus the blood and sweat of hundreds of engineers across many disciplines - but the Cray branch of HPE delivered Frontier at 1.1 Exaflops/sec using 21 MW of power.  News report here and here from The Next Platform.

AMD EPYC CPUs and AMD Instinct GPUs (with AI/ML extensions) form the heart of the Oak Ridge Frontier machine.  Once the system is tuned, it is expected to deliver 1.5 Exaflops/sec on the Hi-perf Linpack (HPL) benchmark.    

When the FastForward (FF) project started, AMD had a declining number of systems on the Top500 list and I doubt any of them had AMD GPUs.  The list was dominated by Intel (CPUs), IBM (CPUs), and Nvidia (GPUs).  The Tianhe-2 (China) and Fugaku (Japan) were unusual.  There were a lot of people, many within AMD, who thought AMD Research was wasting its time on supercomputers and high-performance computing.  The AMD FF project received some outside funding from the US Government's Exascale Computing Project (ECP) that allowed us (AMD Research) a bit of independence to pursue the HPC (high-performance computing) research.  The external funding even helped AMD Research survive and grow during times when the rest of AMD was shrinking and suffering.  FastForward was followed by DesignForward, FF2, DF2, and finally PathForward (PF) funding from the ECP.  This money did not cover the costs of the research, but it provided a reliable core of funding around which we could build a stable series of projects.  

Innovation was rampant in the FF work and continued into successive projects.  The AMD Research group varied in size (it grew), but at one point, it represented about 1% of the AMD engineering population.  At the peak, we produced about 40% of the AMD patents. Corporate-wide.  The average Research member was 40x as productive as the average development engineer when comparing patents. With an increased emphasis on patents, the productivity of the rest of the corporation has risen and the Research group produces about 25% of the AMD patents.

There was a strong body of publications coming from AMD Research.  The 50-odd researchers produced more peer-reviewed papers for major conferences than companies like Intel, Apple, Microsoft, and Google that had research staffs that were literally 10x the size.  To be fair, this was not because AMD Research was smarter, but because AMD had a liberal publication policy.  This publication policy changed dramatically in about 2018-2019.  A publication went out (not from Research!) that revealed AMD confidential information, and so the valves were closed for a while.  After internal debate, the valves were slightly reopened, but never to the same level of disclosure that had previously been allowed.  Certain topics were not eligible for publication because the very topics were sensitive, and this caused significant internal friction.  But such are the requirements of corporate research as distinguished from academic research.  The AMD Research publication remains strong but is not as voluminous as the historical level.

The next machine is to be El Capitan at Lawrence Livermore National Labs, and it is projected to deliver over 2 Exaflops with the next generation of AMD CPU and GPU silicon.

Personal Security Through Shredding - 29 May 2022

Security has been a research thread of mine for years.  I have studied computer security since about 2005 (my first patent application was in early 2006).  As a result, I often look at the security aspects of processes and procedures that I encounter in daily life, such as credit card fraud, financial fraud, and identify fraud.  My personal security plays a common role in these thoughts.  We get a lot of mail, "paper mail" via the US Postal Service, and while much of it is junk advertising, some of it is financial in content - credit card statements, credit card offers (usually unsolicited), bank and finance statements, and miscellaneous items like stock proxy solicitations.  Quite simply, I shred all of these that I do not need to retain.  

* credit card statements - keep for a year or two, then shred;

* credit card offers - use immediately or shred (usually:  shred immediately);

* bank and finance statements - keep for tax purposes, then shred at end of life (seven years or so);

* stock proxy statements - exercise the vote, then shred; and

* stock proxy documents (e.g., annual reports, 10K statements) - these are too thick to shred, so they just go in the recycling as they are not personalized in any way.

My minimum rule is to shred anything that has an account number, personal information (name, address), or any identifying number (such as a ballot number).  This absolutely includes credit card numbers, Medicare numbers, Social Security numbers, or any parts thereof.  

The risk is that a Bad Actor can get access to the shredded material and use manual or automated processes to reassemble the documents to get information useful for fraud or identity theft.  After a few years, I realized that by shredding sensitive documents, I was providing the Bad Actor a clue:  anything shredded was valuable and everything else was not.  Therefore, I started shredding the entire packet: envelope, explanator letters, and sensitive documents.  Ths roughlly doubled the amount of shredded matter, making the reassembly puzzle more difficult to solve.  I now go even farther and shred random bulk mail, intermixed with sensitive documents.  This doubles again the reassembly puzzle.  The Bad Actor will have to process a lot of magazine subscription requests to get the the useful stuff.

Finally, I put the shredded paper into the "yard waste" bin where it will be mixed with my banana peels and apple cores to make compost.  And with all the apple cores and banana peels from my neighbors.  Where this was not allowed, I would mix the shredded material with used cat litter; this may not destroy the little puzzle pieces, but the Bad Actor will have a very unpleasant time of reassembly.

Some materials do not compost: credit cards and backup CD-R disks come to mind. I do eventually shred these to make physical recovery difficult, but I demagnetize the strips on the credit cards becore I shred them.  These bits of plastic get mixed with regular garbage.

Even electronic information can be hacked.  As I write that, it seems pretty self-evident, but I have a specific transaftion type in mind.  I will occasionally pay bills by sending a credit card number in an email message.  I split the credit card information into (at least) two messages, each of which contains only part of the information.  The first eight digits and the expiration date may go in the first message, and the final eight digits with the CVV code go in the second.  The person on the receiving end need merely "glue" the bits of information together to effect the transaction.  This splitting is not a lot of protection, but the Bad Actor will have to find and hack both messages to extract useful information.

For those who have fireplaces, another option is to burn the documents.  However, one must be careful to thoroughly stir the ashes to break up the page structure of the documents, preventing reconstruction.  I would also feed the pages into the fire a few at a time, as the center of a wad of pages may not reliably burn.  Stirring would reveal unburned pages and allow for a second attempt at destruction.  Once cool, dump the ashes with other garbage.

If you have confidential documents on computer media, the options change dramatically  A good quality USB flash-drive could survive a fire.  It may look pretty messy on the outside, but the electronic contents may work when in the hands of a suitable expert.  If you are concerned about the contents of a USB drive or an SD/micro-SD card, smash them with a hammer and check that this produces small pieces and that the chips are damaged.  The circuit board (usually green) may be recoverable if the chips are intact.  If you are concerned about the contents of a disk drive or a "harddrive", you can either drill holes in it or dismantle it.  Drill right through the metal shell, not just in the circuit board (often green).  The disks rotate inside a vacuum or a special atmosphere (e.g., helium), so one hole is pretty safe, but drill all the way through the platters if you can.  I take old disk drives to Boy Scout troops and let them disassemble the drives to learn how they work (an extension of the Computer Merit Badge).  A destructive teenager can accomplish a lot with simple tools.  The platters within modern disk drives are glass, so I recommend a good whack with a hammer.  If you shake the disk and hear a rattling sound, you have hit it hard enough.  For CDs, CD-Rs, DVDs, DVD-Rs, and BluRay disks, your best bet is to shred them.  Sometimes it is sufficient to bend them in half (break them in half if you can), but extreme physical damage is the objective.  Except under the most extreme techniques, the information in RAM (memory sticks) is lost within a few minutes of turning off the computer (typically seconds).

As a special case, modern copiers have computers inside them - meaning that they have disk drives or other storage.  If you surplus a copier, be sure that the data is wiped to your satisfaction by the copier technician. 

In the end, no security scheme is perfect.  A Bad Actor with sufficient motivation and technology can undo the simple actions, so be destructive.  Your damage may convince the Bad Actor that it would be easier to steal data from someone else, and that would be success.

Allergies and Hummingbirds - 11 May 2022

Sneezing and a bit of watery eyes are my classic symptoms for allergy responses.  For the last 1-2 weeks, I have had intermittent episodes of sneezind and watery eyes.  I just finished moving some of the felled trees from the backyard to the wood rack behind the garage, and I am sneezing.  About two weeks ago, we had a massive pollen release, probably from the western red cedar trees with contributions from others.  I say massive because there was a coating of yellow on everything.  The black asphalt of the driveway became brownish.  The black enamel of the BBQ became brownish and took on a crust after a cook.  Cars were covered in yellow dust.  It was bad, but I did not react.  Well, maybe a little, but nothing serious.  After moving the firewood, I am stuffed up and sneezing.  It is not as bad as some of the November episodes in Chicago and Boston, but it is worse than normal in Seattle.

On a more positive note, I saw two hummingbirds at the feeder today and they were each comfortable in the presence of the other.  Normally, two hummingbirds would be ballet-fighting over the feeder and only one would remain, however these two were clearly traveling together.  The second part of the surprise is that the hummingbird population took a drop in February or March down to one-a-week or so.  The population is now rising again.  It is still low - about one a day - but that is well above the one-a-week rate that I was adapting to.  Nice to have them back.

Elon and Twitter - 28 April 2022

Elon Musk did not like something about Twitter, so he threatened to buy it to take it private, and then change something or other.  He yarbled about "free speech" but did not make a coherent statement of the problem he sought to solve nor of the solution that he would impose to solve this hypothetical problem.  

After fussing publically for a bit, he actually came up with a $42B (billion) offer that the Twitter Board of Directors took seriously.  The press announced that Elon was buying Twitter.  The regressive party (so-called "conservatives") rejoiced that "free speech and the First Amendment" would be restored, that Donald Trump would be restored to his Twitter platform of awfulness, and that the voices that they did not like (the progressives) would finally be silenced.  (Yes, so much for "free speech.")

A few more days have passed and the details are coming out.  Elon planned to use Tesla and/or SpaceX stock for multibillion dollar loans to cover part of the purchase price, and he claimed he has some backers to cover the rest.  Well, except that Tesla (TSLA) fell from about $1000/share to about $800/share in a day or so, causing Elon to lose billions of dollars.  TSLA, itself, is currently about $900B in market cap, so it was over $1T (trillion) in market cap before Elon announced that he had secured financing.  I do not know how much Elon lost, but I am guessing he lost tens of billions of dollars in the slump.

It was reported today that Elon may have lost enough on TSLA that he can no longer afford the purchase.  The report suggested that there is a $1B (billion) penalty if the acquisition does not proceed.  

I belabor all this because Elon is a lucky jerk and a poor businessman.  He spoke off the cuff to the tune of billions of dollars and I hope he pays for his stupidity.  I cannot see that he has any idea how to improve Twitter (as much as it needs improvement) and he has skirted (broken) SEC regulations several times.  I hope he gets what he deserves in this instance.

Edit to add: here is Elon's view of the political world.  His self-proclaimed victimhood is on glaring display.  

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519735033950470144

If you plotted Dwight Eisenhower on Elon's chart, Dwight would today be far-left but he was a steady conservative in his day.  Now tell me again how the political spectrum has changed?

Island Time - 28 April 2022

Keats Island is located in Howe Sound, just north of Vancouver, BC.  On the northern side of the island is Plumper Cove and we have a cottage there.  The US-Canadian border is now (generally) open to vaxxed people, so we went up for the first visit of the season on Friday, 22 April (Earth Day 2022), and returned on Tuesday, 26 April.  There are several special chores to process in this season that go beyond the usual maintenance and chores.  The weather was the usual unstable mix for the springtime season in the Pacific Northwest (Pacific Southwest for the Canadian perspective):  episodes of sunshine, clouds, and rain in sequences.

Normal chores include restoring the water system, mowing the lawn, pruning some of the shrubbery near the house, cleaning the paths by the house, and general cleaning (cobwebs and dead mice).

This year, we have some added chores.  One of the bathrooms developed a stench, just a plain old funky stink.  It also appears to have developed a leak on the water feed.  Both require further diagnosis.  At the end of last season, I did some major tree-trimming that I need to finish up this year; in particular, I need to remove a large stub branch from a cedar tree that I trimmed.  I also have 2-3 large cedars to remove that will allow sunshine on the cabin in the mornings.   These trees are nestled in and around the switchback trail that goes up behind the cabin; one is a concern because it could take out a power line if it falls astray, and another is a concern because it is big and parts may reach to hit the cabin.  I have trimmed this tree before, but not for 20 years.  I want to remove two standing stumps, one from last year and the other from a decade ago (left for obscure reasons) - both are 8-10 feet tall.  I want to regravel the trail up to the cabin from the boathouse.  To reclaim the picnic area (rarely used becaue of shadow), I need to get the large rounds of cedar up to the woodhouse.  After two years of enforced neglect (COVID), I need to do a lot of pruning to free up trails.  Finally, I want to revitalize the lawn and recall it from a mossy takeover.  

In summary,

1. Renew my fishing (crabbing-prawning) license for 2022.
2. Bathroom fixes.
3. Remove large stub branch.
4. Remove two tall stumps.
5. Remove three cedars.
6. Move cedar to firewood house.
7. Restore the lawn.
8. Prune, prune, prune.

I have been thinking about the bathroom stench and came up with a theory.  The situation is more complex than it may seem and a precise diagnosis has been difficult.  After some thinking, I decided that the wax sealing ring had failed in the heat dome (110F temperatures hit the area in the summer of 2021) and that we were smelling the septic tank, leaking past the now-spoiled wax seal.  When we got up to the cabin, I removed the wall-mounted toilet bowl expecting to find a sagging wax ring.  I had a replacement ready to go.  Imagine my surprise when I found that European-designed wall-mounted toilets do not have wax rings.  They use a close-fitting pipe junction with some sealant.  I have since ordered some sealant and will apply it at the next opportunity.  However, I am not convinced this will solve the stench problem.  While the toilet bowl is off, we have a 4-inch open pipe leading to the septic tank - and no stench.  Perhaps the organic load was processed over the winter and the septic tank is now smelling minty fresh (I exaggerate), but I do not quite believe that.  I expect a residual aroma, at least, but there is no significant stink.  I temporarily boarded over the black-water hole and more experiments are required.

I did remove and cut up the large stub branch.  I was going to cut it in two pieces from the tree, but I could only find one safe place to put the ladder and that allowed only one cut.  In the photo to the side, it is difficult to make out the branch, but it is pointing toward the viewer from the large, warped tree above the wood shed.  The cedar tree was topped years ago (40?) and this triggered the branches to grow.  This is a typical pattern in cedars that are topped; the surviving branches compete to become the new top, so they sweep out and then grow up.  These sweeping branches can also grow suckers that are easy to see in the photo - slender shoots that go straight up from the branch.  Because of the way this one had been topped, the side, swoopy branches grew thick to support tall "subtrees" that were trying to become the new top (leader).  the branches needed great girth to support the mass of the upwards growth.  The target stub was about 4-5 feet long, about 12-18 inches wide, and about 2-3 feed high to support all that weight.

As I mentioned, my original thought was to cut the stub in two pieces.  The branch was about 10 feet in the air, so I needed a ladder to reach it.  Because I could not place the ladder safely except leaning against the trunk, I was forced to cut the stub in one piece.  It was a monster.  In retrospect, I will guess it was a half-tonne or a full tonne (wet, living cedar is heavy).  I made a small undercut and then went at the main cut.  It took a while, maybe five minutes, and the stub started to fall under its own weight.  The timing was great and the undercut worked as planned - the stub came off cleanly.  And then it bounced down the hill to rest against the wood shed.  One of the bounces was unfortunately against the wood shed.  Fortunately, although there is a crack in the wall, the shed was well constructed and survives in fine shape.  I will patch the crack from the inside, but it is cosmetic.

I would like to remove the cedar tree, or trim it in a major way, but it is a privacy shield between us and the neighbors, so it shall remain.  After dropping the stub, I spent 30 minutes or so cutting it into more manageable pieces.  This is not really "splittiing", but it got the pieces small enought that I could pile them in and around the wood shed for further drying.  This created a lot of sawdust and I burned through a full tank of gas for the chainsaw.  You can see some of the "chunks" in the photo.  

I trimmed the tree in the first place (last year, especially, but also in prior years) because it had adopted a very unhealthy growth habit that would eventually cause it to drop limbs on top of a trail and on the passers-by using that trail.  The recent trimming left an odd stub that, at first, I was willing to tolerate, but became uglier over time (the opposite of "grew on me").  The tree now has a large, oval scar, but the growth habit is improved (still not great, far from it, but if I cut much more we will start to lose the privacy screening capability).

The tall stumps will be quicker to remove.  One, not far from the tree in the photos, will take 30 minutes or less.  I left it because I did not want a trip hazard for Graham on a trail he used often.  But Graham's days on the island have become few and so I will cut it now and cut it as low to the ground as I can.  The other tree is by the corner of the deck on the cabin.  It will take longer to cut, mainly because it is on a severely sloping hill and steady footing is hard to find.  But another 30-45 minutes.  Both will end up in the wood shed, although I may try to take some lumber from the long-standing stump.  It could become a kayak paddle if the wood is in good shape.  Maybe.

The lawn is a mess.  It has been battered by two summers of neglect, one of which included the famed heat dome, and not even a trace of fertilizer.  The winters have been perfect for moss (as measured by the results in Redmond), and moss has really taken over.  I plan to use a water-vinegar spray to kill or stun the moss.  Then I have to remove it, somehow - I hate the idea of raking it but I also do not want to take the dethatcher up for a small job.  So - raking it shall be.  Then some grass seed and some hope.  Given the water supply at the cabin, I do not plan to water any grass.

I am ever optimistic that I will catch crab and prawns.  I may even try some hook fishing for finfish.  Therefore, I need to renew my saltwater fishing license for BC.  This can be done on-line, I just need to remember to do it.  I am old-fashioned enough that I feel I should have a paper copy and not just an electronic copy; and I need to get some bait.  Finaly, I shall also check for a senior-citizen discount.

Chores are calling.