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  The FOX station that reported the underwear has since withdrawn their report, and the newspaper turns out to be a Qanon-aligned craphole of a news site.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.

Seven Pounds - 15 April 2022

Quickly lose weight!  I just lost about seven pounds.  It may be temporary but it sure was fast.  My secret?  Well, I shall tell you.

COVID seems to be winding down.  I emphasize seems because the hospitalization numbers are down, I have my full vaxx and booster, and the weather is getting nicer.  After two years of caution and lock-in, it feels like it should be OK to get out and circulate a little among selected (healthy) groups. So I did.  We have a group, a delegation, visiting Seattle from France.  Although 2020 was the 45th anniversary of the twinning of Seattle (USA) and Nantes (FR), COVID postponed the plans for an exchange of delegate groups.  In early 2022, all the signs were shaping up and they culminated in a group of 40-50 visitors from Nantes arriving in Seattle.  The group represented maritime, aviation, elected/municipal, and cultural interests.  From this, a series of meetings and explorations were planned throughout the week to explore opportunities.  During the times of roaring COVID, we had arranged cultural exchanges such as art shows and a collaborative beer, #8000Kilometers with Lantern Brewing, and some face-time allowed us to seek other common interests and issues.  

As a cultural and social activity, the local Seattle-Nantes Sister City Association hosted a potluck dinner that featured local and American foods.  This brought people together for an evening of socializing.  We were brave: we went without masks indoors.  I left the event very tired and went to bed somewhat late.

It was not a pleasant night.  I woke in the middle of the night with classic symptoms of the flu.  A low-grade fever, general pains, nausea, dry heaves.  I was sorta-kinda OK until I went into the kitchen for some water.  The lingering smell of warmed pizza (a midnight snack for someone else) hit me like a bat and I went straight for the toilet to empty my stomach.  I went back to bed and repeated this dry/wet pattern a couple more times.  I was pretty empty, dehydrated, groggy, and listless.  I belabor all this because I do not think it was COVID - no breathing problems at all - just classic influenza symptoms coming down hard.  I basically napped the next day and only kept down about four ounces of water throughout the day.  The second night was unpleasant but far better than the first.  I slept better, even after napping much of the day, and did not need to get up.

During this time, I skipped a pub crawl in the Ballard area one evening and a mayoral reception in Seattle the next.  Sacrifices were made.

I woke up the next morning feeling fine.  A bit dehydrated throughout the day, but alert and feeling fine.  

So with this as context, I dropped seven pounds in 48 hours.  I do not recommend the method, but I must admit it is effective.  I shall do my best to make the advances stick and even multiply them, but that is only a silver lining from a very dark cloud.

The photo is from the Seattle Japanese Garden in the Arboretum.

Because of Easter weekend, US Taxes are due Monday, 18 April.

Backup your data - 4 April 2022

Backups are your friend.

I was working for a large company in the 1980s that was delivering a large project to replace thousands of "dumb" terminals (think "IBM 3270", but not as smart) and dumb displays with "smart" PC-based systems connected on a large LAN.  The Great PC Invasion and Distributed Computing Revolution were underway, so the company had hired a a collection of experienced PC and minicomputer programmers who were led by a management team of Mainframe Gods (as they viewed themselves).  As a bunch of hot-shot PC and UN*X types, we demanded a version control system and a tool for backing up the source tree.  In their wisdom, the Mainframe Gods chose not to invest in spurious tech like backups and version control, therefore each programmer had a personal responsibility to back up their source code.  As you might imagine, this was only loosely honored by most of the staff.  For all intents and purposes, there was no backup.  There was, however, one developer who was nominally the build engineer and therefore kept all the current, official source in one place:  on his PC.  Let us call him Bob because that is not his name.  

Bob was a big guy.  He was at least six feet tall and sturdily built - think "footballer" but soft, pudgy, and pale.  Bob was soft-spoken and kept his opinions to himself.  Mostly.  He had his eccentricities, such as a fondness for rifles that he kept in the trunk (boot) of his car.  He was a hard worker and wrote a lot of code.  Lacking any sort of code-review process, I cannot say how good the code was, but he wrote a lot of it and he delivered the official software builds for the terminal-emulation software that ran on the PCs.  To do the build, he had the sole copy of all the official source code residing on his PC.

After a long-running series of, uh, issues, Bob had a Big MeToo moment of such significance that he quit simultaneously with being fired.  Rather than make a fuss, management allowed Bob to finish the work day.  During the afternoon of that day, Bob's manager looked out the window to see Bob loading boxes and boxes of floppy disks into his car.  This was a curious action to take on one's final day of work.  On a hunch, Bob's manager went to Bob's desk and found Bob's PC in the midst of a FORMAT operation that had wiped most of the disk.  And thereby wiped the only known copy of the official sources from the face of the earth.  Bob's manager intercepted him at the elevator and they walked together to Bob's manager's office for a conversation.  It seems that the floppies in Bob's car were the backups, the ONLY backups now that his PC disk was blank.  To his credit, Bob's manager talked Bob off the cliff and got the backups returned to the office.  Then he escorted Bob to a nearby coffee shop to finish the day off-premises.  Someone was tasked to extract the backups from the floppies to the now-blank PC so that we could continue the project.  The project did eventually succeed, but we did have further harrowing moments with more conventional causes.  We did establish regular backups and duplication of key source code.

The moral of the story:  back up your data.  Trust but verify.