It's the only way to be sure.

More weirdness ensued. TVs appeared and disappeared in Florida and in different Home apps, iOS and MacOS.

Finally, just used Reset in the AppleTV, which paves over all the stored data and restores it to factory settings. Then set it up manually. ("Like an animal.") Everything went relatively smoothly from there, though I don't know how intuitive it is to set up HomeKit from Users instead of the AirPlay and HomeKit settings. But, "Minds greater than our own," and all that.

Now the AppleTV is where it is supposed to be, in New York. I'd be calling Kwikset now but the electrician is here doing some wiring for Mitzi's new range and the motion sensor switch in the utility closet.

I'm still just so over Apple, and technology more broadly. So much aggravation.

I'll probably still watch the iPhone event.

Le sigh...

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:27 Monday, 9 September 2024

I brought an Apple TV (4K 3rd generation) to act as the HomeKit (or Apple Home?) hub. I originally set it up just to get our streaming services to the new TV in the living room, so I used the iPhone to set it up by NFC.

Well, that assigned it to our Home in Florida, because I hadn't created a new Home for NY.

This morning, I figured I'd get the Home app set up. Frustration and anger ensued.

At first, I figured I'd try to work from the MBP, bigger screen, I can switch around easier to Safari for help and so on.

How to add a new Home from the Mac app? Beats me. Nothing "discoverable" in the UI. Consult Help. No help in help. Because why would there be?

Consult the web, first hit from MacRumors says to use the iOS app in the phone. UI is different from when the article was written, because why not? Let's just keep screwing around with the UI. Gotta keep all those "designers" employed, right?

But I was finally able to find Add new home. Added Burdett.

Selected "Add accessory," figuring I'd add the Apple TV, right? Tried the NFC thing by holding it near the Apple TV. No joy.

After fumbling around and cursing Apple, I found out that this Apple TV was assigned to our Florida house because that's what it got from setup originally.

From Apple TV, in Settings, you can "delete this accessory" (or words to that effect, I'm not sitting in front of the TV.) "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave. Try from the iOS app."

Went to the phone and I tried there. Sure enough, there were two Apple TVs. Both showed as paused. One had an Apple Music screen, the other was just dark. Went back to the TV and went to Settings, General to get the serial number of the Apple TV. Found the right one. Deleted it.

At least, that's what iOS says.

Still shows that it's in Florida on the Apple TV here. Tried deleting it again here. "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."

Rebooted the Apple TV. Went to Airplay and HomeKit settings. TV didn't know where it was, but I got the spinning thing that shows that's thinking about how to screw with you again.

Popped back up in Florida.

Throbbing vein in the temple.

Apple just sucks. It sucks. It sucks. It sucks. Technology sucks. It's all bullshit.

I'm spending time doing this because the Kwikset help number doesn't go live until 10:00 a.m. Eastern time, and I can't reset the entry code on the lock. I was able to do a factory reset. I retrained the lock on which way the door opens. I was able to enter a Program Code (though it's nowhere evident where that's used for anything). Went to enter a new access code, error. Tried again, step by step... error.

Tried to factory reset again.

Error.

Took the batteries out and hit the "program button" to discharge any capacitor or anything.

Put the batteries back in and tried to do a factory reset.

Error.

Argh!!! Tried calling the help line. Monday through Friday only.

Let it set over night. Thought maybe it was timing out or something, maybe it would work after twelve hours of not screwing with it.

Error.

Called help line. "We're closed."

Okay, I'll work on getting HomeKit set up...

Now I just want to open a vein. These fuckers...

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:07 Monday, 9 September 2024

Clear sky last night and I was able to get this despite not knowing a damn thing about what I'm doing. I need to watch some more videos.

One thing I recall about New York but seldom experienced until now, is the low humidity. My skin dries out so fast up here. I don't know if it's because I'm adapted to Florida and it hasn't acclimated itself to the dryer air, or if everyone goes around feeling this way. Chapstick and lotion. It's amazing how slick your hands become when they're that dry. No "stiction" when you're handling small, plastic parts.

Making progress on getting the place set up. Seller's sister and brother-in-law came by with their kids yesterday evening. They're our nextdoor neighbors to the north. She brought brownies and we had a nice chat and got acquainted with each other. They're very nice and made us feel welcome.

Toilet runs, so I opened the tank. Oy! Should've done that at the inspection. Well water is very hard, and scale builds. I'll need to replace the guts soon, but for now a flapper valve should solve the issue. I'll turn the water off before we leave. It's not so much about the "waste," as the periodically running water builds scale on the parts. I don't know if having the water off will cause problems with the gasket between the tank and the bowl, but it seems like it shouldn't. Maybe ChatGPT will know.

Electrician's coming by today to look at wiring for an induction range. I'm going to ask him to put a motion sensor switch in the utility closet. I always forget to turn off the light, and it'd be nice for it to come on automatically.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:09 Monday, 9 September 2024

Checked to see if there was an update to Sequoia, and I'm on the latest beta of 15.1. Updated Tinderbox to 10.0.1. Let's see what happens...

Clicking Create Link dismisses the dialog and all appears well.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:32 Sunday, 8 September 2024

Let's see if I can create a link after a reboot. This is the first article I read last night about coyotes, and it kind of captured my experience. (Looks better in "reader mode.")

The crashing issue remains. Will try to update Tinderbox. I've been using the version that I created Captain's Log with, since a subsequent version made some changes to date calculations and essentially broke Captain's Log. Not sure where we're at on that, but maybe it's time to just refactor Captain's Log.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:24 Sunday, 8 September 2024

Got a bunch of stuff yesterday, including the SD-card adapter. This was shot Friday night after the movers had gone.

Yesterday, it rained or was cloudy until about noon, when it cleared up nicely. Our trip to Home Depot never materialized, we stopped after Target. Shopping is exhausting. We got a new TV for the living room, the seller left a 32" one mounted on the wall in the bedroom. The one in the living room is for the Apple TV HomeKit hub, a DVD player and a large collection of DVDs that mostly sit in a cabinet back in Florida.

We keep discovering little things we're missing, like a colander and mixing bowls, but it's livable as is.

I slept better last night, but not perfectly. I was wide awake at 0200, so I eventually figured I'd step outside and see if I could photograph the stars. I hadn't configured the camera before I went to bed, and trying to do it in the dark was an exercise in frustration. But I could see a lot of stars, and the Milky Way.

I also heard coyotes howling, and that's a spooky sound. When I came back in, I wasn't sleepy so I did some googling about coyotes. Here's a New York Department of Environmental Conservation page on coyotes.

Okay, have some weirdness with Tinderbox and creating links under Sequoia. Multiple crashes. Crash reports sent. Clicking the Create Link button in the dialog creates the link, (I then saved the file, or I wouldn't have had this one.) but it doesn't dismiss the dialog. It seemed to work in this file, under this version of Sequoia previously. I'm going to post this and reboot the computer.

Life goes on.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:56 Sunday, 8 September 2024

Not going to get to Home Depot going this way.

Well, I'd planned to post a drone shot of the place in NY, but I forgot to bring an SD-card adapter for the micro-SD card in the mini 2. I thought for sure I put one in the bag. Easy fix, we have a number of things we need to pick up today.

Things went pretty smoothly from the time we left Florida, apart from Mitzi leaving her CPAP machine in the driveway. The airport was pretty quiet, I guess everyone being done with traveling last weekend. Landed in Syracuse after a brief stop at JFK, and there was no line at the rental car counter. Mitzi got the car while I picked up her bag.

From there it was straight to the place for the "final walk-through" her attorney insisted we make. Probably wise, but it was are third time through this 960 square foot place, once with a home inspector. Anyway, you really have to live in a place to discover all its quirks and foibles, as we have begun doing.

The seller's parents live next door. We'd met his dad when we did the inspection, we met mom on Thursday doing the walk-through. Very nice people.

From that it was on Ithaca to spend the night before closing. Mitzi was coordinating the arrival of the trailer with all our stuff and the movers who would unload it for us. She's great at that sort of thing. We had an air-tag in the toolbox in the truck, so we could kind of keep track of where it was. Cell coverage is spotty in places around here, but we knew roughly where it was.

Closing went pretty smoothly. Had some additional docs that needed to be recorded, codifying an easement for the neighbor's driveway. (It's on our property a tiny amount.) And one transferring the mineral (subterranean) rights which weren't part of the original deed.

Then it was off to Wegman's to grab groceries for the week. Wegman's is a pretty fancy, small grocery chain that people are kind of passionate about. We spent a little longer in there than we'd planned because we're unfamiliar with the layout. Olive oil, for instance, isn't among the oils, it's in the "international foods" section. Seriously? Ever heard of California olive oil? We bought store brand, so who knows where it's sourced from. But other than that, it's a pretty cool store.

The movers arrived early but didn't mind waiting around. While we were waiting for the trailer, we noticed a constant parade of classic cars going by the house. Our neighbor mentioned there was an event in Watkins Glen that morning that was going to close much of the town while they paraded the cars through. She didn't mention anything about them driving all the way out here. I worried they'd still be going by when the truck showed up, but I didn't need to.

The trailer arrived pretty close to when promised and the driver had little problem backing it up the driveway; didn't even bat an eye, just did it. The movers got everything off pretty quickly and even put the queen bed back together for us. Mitzi had bought it from Facebook marketplace and the seller took it apart to fit it in the RAV4, and it wasn't perhaps in the most logical order. They got it sorted pretty quickly, we thanked them and they were on their way.

Spent the rest of the afternoon into the evening getting unpacked and set up. Crashed about nine. Slept fitfully, back complaining most of the night. Weird dreams about spiders and frogs. Slept with the windows open and it was nice listening to the crickets chirp. They got pretty quiet when it started raining.

I got the Verizon home internet thing set up and bandwidth is pretty decent. 100mbps down, 10 up. Had some hiccups this morning getting the MBP online. A reboot seems to have resolved all the issues.

Weather was gorgeous yesterday, thankfully. Started raining last night and hasn't stopped yet. The recycling center is only open on Saturdays from 8 until noon, so we're going to pack all the boxes up and run them into town. Then it's on to Target and Home Depot for some things we forgot.

We're here until Wednesday, hopefully the weather will get nicer.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:02 Saturday, 7 September 2024

For me, anyway.

What also seems to have worked is the Verizon 5G home internet. We went to a Verizon store yesterday to investigate and hopefully procure one of these devices to use in New York until such time as I can schedule fiber activation. They require two weeks notice to schedule, and we're going to be there tomorrow for a week.

Looks like I'm getting 100mbs down and 10-12mbs up from the box, which isn't far off what I'm getting from Comcast right now. Should be adequate for keeping tabs on the place while we're away.

It was a bit of a bear, getting the box. Because of recent data breaches, I'd frozen all my credit reports. I "unfroze" one while I was in the store, but it's apparently not an instantaneous thing, computers and the speed of light notwithstanding. Because why would it be? Bastards.

Anyway, we went to lunch at a Mediterranean restaurant and came back an hour later, hoping the "soft" credit check could be run, but no. We were the only people in the store, except for one woman who came in for some help putting her case on her phone. The guy who was helping us, Doug, was great. No high-pressure upsell, no fast talk. Very helpful and easy to work with.

He called his manager and he gave him a number to a guy who apparently had the cheat code to enable "God mode." Several minutes on the phone and we were all approved. Brought the box home, plugged it in and a few minutes later I was online.

It's bigger than I expected, but it'll fit in a suitcase. Good to go.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:14 Wednesday, 4 September 2024

Just an experiment to see if I can post video. I have a Vimeo account I seldom use, but if this works perhaps that will change.

I received the box o' disks I'd bought from eBay. Very fastidious original owner, printing out the catalogs of each disk and sticking them to the disk sleeves. So I booted one of the generic DOS 3.3 disks to see if the drive in the //c worked. I hadn't wanted to risk the disks in Micro Dynamo. It booted right up.

There are original disks of The Print Shop and The Print Shop Companion. I knew the reverse side of the disk contained a program of some kind, but I thought it was a graphics demo. It's actually a promo for the program. I guess a retailer could have it running in a store. Anyway, it just keeps repeating and at some point I took out my phone and recorded it.

This is being displayed via HDMI, which I was able to improve somewhat by using the TV's "Direct" setting. I think it's still stretched a bit horizontally, but it looks better. Anyway, without further adieu, let's see if this works...

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:53 Wednesday, 4 September 2024

Normally a pejorative, this one's a hero. If it's behind a paywall, this is the guy who disclosed Governor DeSantis's plan to reward developers and concessionaires with a huge windfall by defiling Florida's state parks.

“This was going to be a complete bulldozing of all of that habitat,” Gaddis said. He recalls his hand, hovering over a computer mouse, shaking with anger and frustration as he was told to rush his maps from senior leadership. “The secrecy was totally confusing and very frustrating. No state agency should be behaving like this.”

They were trying to jam this thing through in about six weeks! Beginning on July 29th when he was ordered to develop the maps to the 12th of September, when the whole thing would have been rubber-stamped by a committee of political appointees:

In his leaked memo, Gaddis said his office was to have all documents submitted to a group of appointees who vote on land changes, the Acquisition and Restoration Council, in time for its presumed approval in September. The agenda for the group’s Sept. 12 meeting doesn’t show any state parks issues will be discussed. The agenda also doesn’t mention anything about a secretive land swap, first reported by the Times, that would trade more than 300 acres of state forest land to a Hernando County golf course company. The deal still needs council approval.

The land swap deal is a separate controversy, but related in terms of its bullshit process.

The guy's a single dad to an 11-year-old daughter. He's looking to hire a lawyer to see if his termination is lawful. In the mean time, he'll need some help. His salary was only $49K/yr! He's got a GoFundMe.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:55 Tuesday, 3 September 2024

Caitie came by yesterday for dinner and a movie. We watched the movie first, because she had to leave early. Mitzi tried a new recipe for egg plant parmesan and I liked it! Normally I find egg plant wet and squishy and unappetizing.

When we said goodbye, there was this relatively spectacular cloudscape going on. Long hugs and so on, I wasn't able to get the drone prepped for launch until the show was nearly over. The remnants are posted above.

I thought I'd be more clever and had the bird ready for launch this morning, but it was a nothing event. I experimented with video and learned that there's a lot more I have to figure out.

I sent the mini 2 up to New York, one less thing to schlep when we go up there. But now I think I want to play around with video a bit, and it'll be nice to have it up there. I'll bring some cameras along with me this week to leave up there as well. Lenses are a different question, but I have a few I can leave up there and it's easier to carry lenses alone than body and lenses.

Called to get internet set up in New York and learned they require at least two weeks notice; so we're going to look at Verizon 5G home internet on a month-to-month basis until we can get fiber turned on. 500mbps symmetrical for $60/mo, all-inclusive. Pretty good deal, I think. Just wish I'd thought to call earlier. We need, well, we'd prefer to have internet access now so I can set up HomeKit and have some idea what's going on in the place while we're away. Plus I'll have the Ambient weather station set up, and I want to see what the weather's like. I could use NWS data, but I think it's cool to have my own.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:50 Tuesday, 3 September 2024

When I ran the script to post yesterday's photo, I thought something had failed. The post wasn't appearing in Tinderbox.

I keep the current month's archive open in its own tab, so all I see are this month's posts. I hadn't realized we'd turned the calendar and it was September already.

A couple of clicks in the tab bar, and there were two of yesterday's photo posts. Deleted one and carried on. It's nice to see all that automation happening seamlessly and without complaint.

I stepped outside this morning to check on my efforts at weed control on the back patio. (They're failing.) Spotted this guy and decided I needed to try and get a photo before a bird ate it. I thought it was dead at the time.

I grabbed the OM-1 and put the 60mm/f2.8 macro lens on it. I've tried using in-camera focus stacking with the TG-6 before, but I've never been satisfied with the results. It's not the camera's fault, it's the operator's. I've seen great images from the TG-6. But I figured I'd try with the OM-1 this time and see how it does.

I picked some settings out of the ether for number of shots and focus interval and let fly. Some more results are up on Flickr. It's not great macro photography, but it's just such a creepy, cool-ass bug that I had to share.

It wasn't dead, either. Flew off when I tried to get a profile shot from the other side. Kind of startled me.

Walked with the sticks this morning, after a lethargic weekend. 16'43" pace, 492 calories, 135 bpm average HR. Now I'm tired.

To upload images to Flickr, I export them from Photos to a folder on the desktop that the Flickr Uploader app watches. It automatically uploads them and 24 hours later, Hazel comes along and moves the images to the trash. Automations' grand.

Anyway, upload was pretty pokey this morning, but it won't be like that for much longer. We have IQ Fiber coming to the house when we get back from New York, and it'll be "Bye-bye, xfinity!" We'll lose access to local broadcast television, but there are some streaming services that offer it, which would still be saving us money compared to the cable company. I hate Comcast. It's not even a case of "love to hate," I just hate them, hate hating them, and wish I never had to think about them.

Kinda like how I feel about Trump.

Anyway, moving on.

Since all of my Makita tools are sitting up in Elmira, waiting for us to get to Burdett, I had to buy some replacements for here at home. This week is a sales tax holiday for tools, courtesy of the Florida legislature. I don't know what it might score on the equity scale, I tend to think it favors the upper-middle class more than low-income folks, because we can afford the more expensive purchases that yield the largest savings. But savings are savings.

So I went to Home Depot yesterday and splurged. The rules are that you can't spend more than $300 on any tool, or in any single purchase of power tools. I get a 10% veteran's discount with Home Depot and Florida sales tax is around 7% here. Using my NFCU cashback Visa (2% on any purchase at the moment), I could save 19% on a purchase. Pretty good deal.

It meant three trips to the parking lot and back to the store, but I got the drill/driver combo set with the 4 amp-hour batteries, which listed at $294. (A lot of my batteries are in New York too, naturally.) Then back to the store for the circular saw, finally another trip for the jigsaw. By the third trip in, the self-checkout manager was giving me a bit of the stink-eye, but the other people helping thought I was pretty clever. Of course, I did too.

When I got home, I wanted to see if they'd honor the sales tax holiday on the web site. It turns out, they will. Bought another Dremel cordless screwdriver. I got one for New York and I was pretty impressed with it. Like anything, there are people reporting they quit working after a month, but maybe I'll get lucky.

I saved a bunch of money, but I spent a lot too. So you can probably file this under "going broke saving money" too.

Hope you enjoy your Labor Day holiday. Thanks for dropping by.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:02 Monday, 2 September 2024

The joystick I bought from the auction site arrived yesterday. Works pretty well for being almost 40 years old. I suck at Choplifter, though I used to be pretty good at it, as I recall! I think you have to get as many hostages in the chopper as you can before you head back to headquarters, because the subsequent sorties invite all sorts of other bad guys.

I bought a VGA/HDMI video adapter for the //c, thinking I could use HDMI with my TCL TV. It works, but it doesn't seem to recognize the 4:3 aspect ratio, it stretches everything. I need to play with the TV's video settings and see if I can figure that out. The builder said that some TVs don't recognize the 4:3 aspect ratio of the signal.

I ordered a hardcopy of the Apple //c Technical Reference Manual from Call-A.P.P.L.E. and it arrived yesterday as well. It was only then that I realized this version doesn't have the ROM listings. I had a hardcopy of the //c TRF in my collection, alas. But the Internet Archive has the version I remember.

The Floppy Emu likes to have the files on the micro-SD card in contiguous blocks, and won't load a disk image that isn't contiguous. This involves basically copying everything off of the card and then back onto it. That's today's project, because a bunch of the games I stored on it won't load. Like Fortress, which is an amusing way to pass the time.

I'm still waiting for some software to arrive that'll include a number of 5.25" floppies I can use as scratch disks. I want to test the disk drive before I do anything "serious" with it, like play with Micro Dynamo.

I'm debating whether or not to "retro-bright" the case. It'll have to wait until we get back from New York in any case. That's probably when I'll open the thing up again to install the ROMxc anyway. Maybe I'll just disassemble the whole thing and try and get rid of the yellowing.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:52 Sunday, 1 September 2024

I have to think that J.D. Vance's thinly veiled misogyny is due to his childhood. He's angry at his mother, angry at women who choose not to be mothers, and desperately trying to prove to someone that he's lovable and worthy of being loved. (Presumably he should have had that all sorted when he got married.)

This guy needs a lot of therapy, short of which his marriage isn't going to survive and he's going to be a miserable human being.

I think his personal ambition stems from the same source, to prove that he's "worthy" of being loved. It's this blindness that leads to miscalculations like agreeing to be Trump's running mate, because nobody is ever elevated through their association with Trump, except perhaps in the eyes of people that you wouldn't otherwise wish to associate. Maybe Pence, but no. Not really.

I thought about commenting on Trump's stunt at Arlington National Cemetery, but why bother? He's demonstrated repeatedly there is no norm of decorum that he won't violate for the sake of attention.

He does seem desperate now, and flagging in terms of the level of energy he can bring even to his unhinged rants. He's just an angry old man. I suppose that does make him somewhat dangerous, given his cult following. But he's rapidly becoming a husk, a caricature of himself.

I look forward to a day, hopefully soon, when I won't have to hear his name ever again.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:29 Sunday, 1 September 2024

Apologies if this is behind a paywall, but I think you can read it. I know this is a "business journal," and they're talking to the CEO of a natural gas company, but it's as if nothing else is going on in the world. She throws the buzzword "resilient" in there, and they're using the word "reliable" as a counter to the threat that fossil fuels presents to the world. But it's just infuriating.

And then there’s distributed energy — all of the different, more modular approaches to natural gas. We’re focusing on how a hospital, for instance, can look at integrating natural gas into its sources of energy more than it does today for greater resilience. How can assisted living facilities evaluate commercial gas heat pumps to see how they might reduce air conditioning costs while adding more reliability?

We're not going to make it.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:20 Sunday, 1 September 2024

Has a CBS Sunday Morning kind of vibe.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:15 Sunday, 1 September 2024

Haven't posted a pic in a while, and hadn't flown in a while either. Went out to collect the paper (Support local journalism!) and the sky looked interesting with the clouds. Figured I'd put the mini 3 up and see what I could see.

Unspectacular, but pretty. The swamp is much wetter now. Nice to see, mosquitos notwithstanding.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:38 Saturday, 31 August 2024

I have one piece of 5.25" floppy disk software from my old Apple II collection. It's Micro Dynamo, a system dynamics simulation language based on Dynamo, which was the mainframe computer model used in the original Club of Rome effort in The Limits to Growth. It was published by Addison-Wesley, and accompanied by a text book for a college level course in system dynamics modeling. I have the book too.

I haven't seen Micro Dynamo "preserved" anywhere in the usual sites on the web. It's written in Apple Fortran, which runs on the USCD Pascal operating system. (Yes, you read that right.) I brought my copy to Kansasfest in 2017 to have Mark Pilgrim try to crack it, but I don't think he was able to get to it during the time we were there.

Anyway, it's copy protected and it requires two disk drives. Real disk drives, not one real one and an emulator. Well, don't hold me to that. It's fuzzy in memory.

Anyway, I wanted to play with it, so I went looking for an external drive for the //c. I could use any of the latter Apple //e disk drives, but I wanted something to match the //c's design. I found two, and each was going for about $120 with "make offer," invitations. I could get an Apple //e external drive for about $60, plus some shipping, so I offered a premium of $15 on the first one I made an offer on, and $25 on the second. The first seller came back with a counter-offer of $10 off. Sorry, no. The second seller just flat rejected the offer.

Ok, no big deal. Patience is the name of the game at the auction site.

You have to be somewhat expansive in your search terms. Many people list things using non-standard nomenclature. While I'm usually careful to type "Apple //c," which was how it was marketed, most folks just type "Apple IIc" (with the Roman numerals). Some people type "Apple 2c," and thereby limit their audience, because the algorithm doesn't pick up necessarily on the 2c.

In any event, I searched for an "Apple 2c disk drive" and found a listing for one. It was a listing for a "disk drive," Snow White design and all, but it also had an actual Apple //c computer in the listing. I don't really need another //c, but there were only three bids and the then-current price was about $67, which was a fair price for the drive alone. They'd also noted $29 for shipping, which sounds about right, given the cpu is also in the box.

Well, I put a watch on it and the auction ended this morning. I waited until 15s before the auction closed and put a max bid in of $117. That's me being competitive. It's more than I would have paid for a disk drive alone, but for a "free" //c thrown in, a pretty good deal.

I figured I'd get sniped and someone would get it for around $125. But I guess the market isn't that hot for retro computing these days. There didn't seem to be anyone actively watching that auction.

The clock ticked down and I won it for $88! $3 more than what I bid on the second "make offer" drive. The whole bill's going to come to about $125.

It doesn't appear as though the unit will ship with the power supply, but that's no big deal. It's a massive brick and it saves a lot on shipping, also making it easier and safer to ship. That thing's a sledge hammer in the box if it's not carefully packed. It's untested (no power supply, probably) but it'll almost certainly work. Seriously, the things are damn near indestructible, short of physically smashing them. Check out this video of four Apple //c "barn finds." Spoiler alert: They all worked. I was surprised.

I've got to reach out to the seller and have him hold off on shipping for a few days. I'll be out of town when it's anticipated to arrive and I'd rather not have it sitting in front of the door until I get back.

Not sure exactly what I'll do with the second //c. I mentioned I'd recently bought one to my son one and he laughed. He recalled playing Captain Goodnight and the Islands of Fear on ours back when he was a kid. Maybe I'll give it to him. It's an OG //c, model A2S4000, so it doesn't have the memory expansion slot or UniDisk 3.5" drive support, but it'll run everything just fine. The keyboard isn't as nice as the 4100, which uses Alps switches, but it's fine. It's not missing any keys.

Anyway, stay away from the auction sites boys and girls. It can become addictive. There's a //e with a bunch of cards, including an Applied Engineering Transwarp accelerator for low money. Won't boot, but it doesn't look like it can't be fixed. I have no room at all for a //e. But, um, there it is...

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:18 Saturday, 31 August 2024

Out of mind.

Infrastructure.

An Indian tourist disappeared in an 8-meter sinkhole in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Not to be gross so early in the morning, but...

Reports said the blockage was made of human waste, tyres, hair and solidified used cooking oil, among other things.

This is a genuine problem with sewage systems throughout the world. People think you can put anything down the drain or the toilet and it just goes "away."

I think infrastructure literacy should be part of the elementary school curriculum.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:13 Saturday, 31 August 2024

Got both the Moderna COVID vaccine and the flu shot yesterday. Uncomfortable night, and running at about 60% this morning.

Anyway, caught this story on the news yesterday evening. (Flooded housing complex in St Marys, Georgia.) Seems like this is a growing problem.

The problems are three-fold:

First, the climate we're presently living in has never existed before on this planet. Yes, it's been hotter. Yes, there has been more CO2. But this particular climate is a transient, with significant ice caps that don't historically exist with this level of CO2 and average temperature. Plus, it has a couple of centuries of human developmental impact altering the landscape. Our present climate has no historical precedent. It has never existed before, so it's uncertain how it will behave.

Second, our infrastructure was built for a climate that no longer exists. All of our recurrence intervals are, if not useless, of far less value than they were when we built the existing infrastructure.

Third, we don't maintain the inadequate infrastructure we do have, exacerbating its deficiencies.

Looking forward, there's a fourth problem in that we continue to develop in regions that are vulnerable to extreme weather events, and building inadequate infrastructure based on historical data that is no longer relevant.

That doesn't mean we're in a Noah-type, "better build an ark," situation. It just means that we're going to have far greater economic losses due to extreme weather events than our current institutions are designed to mitigate. (Insurance and government assistance. Some private efforts.) Economic losses that will be cumulative and exponential.

Here's an interesting web site from the Miami office of the National Weather Service, addressing the Fort Lauderdale extreme rainfall event last year. I haven't looked for similar sites covering the events in Vermont and New England, but similar phenomena have occurred, and are occurring, there.

We could have addressed this earlier and be confronting a more manageable problem today. But we didn't, chiefly because of greed. But we're in deep shit now, and the sooner we figure that out and start working on it, the better.

It's not clear to me that we've figured it out yet. We seem to think we have a lot of time to do something. We don't.

So, go ahead and "OK, doomer," me. Just sayin'. We squandered all our best opportunities while the scale of the problem grew larger, and the solution set of effective responses grew smaller.

Demand action.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:32 Friday, 30 August 2024

I think I'll put up an album at Flickr after I finish posting this.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:59 Thursday, 29 August 2024

Every week is "Infrastructure Week" in a warming world.

Case in point: The Lake Azzure (sic) apartment complex in Hillsborough County. In case that's behind a paywall, the parking lot in the apartment complex has been flooded to knee-deep levels since Debby passed through weeks ago. The reason?

“Multiple pipe failures within the apartment complex’s outfall system are contributing to the flooding,” Josh Bellotti, the Director of Engineering & Operations for Hillsborough County said in a statement. One source of the problem is a blocked drain that runs under Himes Avenue.

Beneath much of Florida's developed landscape lies a network of pipes designed to move stormwater from where it's unwanted to someplace less problematic, usually "retention ponds."

I was unaware of the size and extent of this network until a hole opened up in one of the parking lots at my former condo complex. We asked our professional engineering firm to investigate and tell us what was happening and how to fix it. That's where I got an education in drainage.

Although the crack that grew into a hole in the parking lot wasn't anywhere near a "storm drain," it was located above an area where two pipes met in a "vault," a large concrete structure shaped like a cube that coupled two drain pipes, five feet in diameter. One of the pipes had become partially detached from the vault and soils were entering the pipe through the opening, undermining the paved area above it.

(It just occurred to me that I have photos from that event. I'll post one above. Good thing I hadn't deleted all my old emails from the engineer. They gave me the date to look for in Photos.)

A large project ensued to excavate the area and repair the connection, which involved getting a new vault. It was rather expensive as I recall, though not beyond our capacity to pay for it, obviously.

Bryan Busse, our engineer, recommended that we inspect all the piping, which we did. Fortunately, that was the only problem area. But it's the kind of thing you need to inspect with some periodicity, maybe every five years or so, to make sure you aren't developing a problem.

As a condominium, we owned the stormwater management system on the property. These large gated communities everywhere in Florida own their stormwater management systems, though this often comes as surprise to them when, after decades of neglect, they begin to fail and they start to complain to the county. (Looking at you, Marsh Landing.)

Anyway, "The more you know..." as they say.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:42 Thursday, 29 August 2024

I don't know why the Moderna version of the vax always seems to show up first at our local Publix, but I'm on for getting stuck tomorrow. The Moderna version puts me down the next day. Pfizer is mostly a non-event.

But since I'm an oldster, I can be pretty confident that Pfizer will be available when I get my second round near the end of the year.

I'm also getting the flu shot tomorrow.

Should be fun.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:04 Wednesday, 28 August 2024

That is all.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:47 Wednesday, 28 August 2024