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Happy 2019 Winter Solstice!
- To: robert-friends
- Subject: Happy 2019 Winter Solstice!
- From: http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert (Robert)
- Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2019 08:13:00 -0800
Happy Winter Solstice! 🌅
Here is my latest contact information:
Robert
.
where-I-live
my-Oakland-voicemail-number (voicemail)
our-San-Jose-phone-number
our-Oakland-cell-phone-number (cell)
http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert
http://www.
My solstice update is below.
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News
Lifestyle
* Careers
* Economic indicators. For a while, a friend and I were running a
weekly, then a bi-weekly, then a monthly, and then a bi-monthly
job search group. Eventually, nobody would show up. We figure
that the economy is just too good now. So, we closed shop, for
the most part. We give a disclaimer that if anyone wants to
meet, just to shoot us a message. So far, nobody has taken up
the offer.
* Peeling away team mates. Over the last year, our group at work
lost 2 people: one was laid off (never got a good explanation of
why) and the other left. It's an unfortunate situation because,
until we get some replacements, there's precious little time
beyond just fixing software bugs.
* Health
* Back
* The spine's fine. In the twilight of my back problems and
subsequent surgery, I have been in less pain than I have in
years. I still use a rolling backpack for carrying my things
to work when taking the light rail and ride my bike to work on
the other days. I'm back in business!
* Exercise
* Things won't be great when you're downtown. Our downtown
fitness center/health club/gym closed. It was extremely
convenient for us; we could ride there and do our workouts. It
hit me the hardest since I could no longer take Aikido classes
at night or ride there before work for a workout. We hardly
ever go downtown any more except for the occasional film
movie. I've been using the spartan weight room at work and I
have yet to find an Aikido replacement.
* Living notoriously. Hot off the heels of RBG (Ruth Bader
Ginsburg) mania last year, Noelle got a few 2019 RBG Workout
Calendars. I brought one to work. It's hanging next to my
desk. While the stretches and exercises look inspirational, I
haven't done them. (I usually do my canonical exercises,
'tho.) For my calendar at work for next year, Noelle got me
the 2020 Museum of Bad Art calendar, with the masterwork of my
great uncle, Ted Cate, on the cover, Swamp Picnic. You can
see it here:
https://www.massbaytrading.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=BMM1012
* Insurance
* The greatest health care system on earth. Wikipedia says that
flexible spending accounts were an invention of IRS spurred by
a 1978 law. My impression is that it is one of many
workarounds to a very broken medical care system. Last year,
I made my estimates and set aside some money, but it was
apparently too much. I kept worrying about it, looking for
things that were eligible to spend money on. My back-up plan
was to spend it on hearing aids, despite having only minor hearing
loss. I ended up going wild by buying prescribed eyeglasses
frames and got it below the $500 roll-over amount.
* Home
* Fixing a hole where the rain got in. Or, rather, fixed. The
flat part of our foam roof was resealed. It was only earlier
this year that I found out from the roof repair person that
you're supposed to have it resealed every 6 years or so. (My
web searches had said 10 years.) Which explained why we kept
getting annoying roof leaks. There haven't been any major rain
incidents yet, but I'm hopeful that this problem is behind us.
* A nine year endeavor. Ivy started to crawl up the sides of our
garage. While pulling it down, loads of paint came off. It was
9 years ago that the home inspector said that we needed to have
the garage painted. I finally thought it was time. We hired a
handywoman to paint it. It took her several weeks during the
summer, she did a great job, and it was likely much cheaper than
hiring professional painters (if I could even hire any since
it's impossible to get painters and contractors these days).
* Garden
* Goodbye prunes, welcome business park. A south bay
institution, Orchard Supply Hardware, finally closed its doors
for good. There were liquidation sales. Almost everything
useful was sold, but we managed to find a single lime tree. We
bought it and we planted it in our back yard. It's already
produced a few fruits so far. We're already looking forward to
mojitos, gin and tonics, and lots of thai food.
* Family
* The talk. Or one of many, I suppose. We began the awkward
discussion about finances with my parents. It started out
slowly and has expanded over time. Now, we're trying to hold a
meeting once per month, with an agenda and action items.
* Travel
* Not too hot yoga. In early May, we drove to a retreat spa
called Wilbur Hot Springs north of Sacramento. The stay
involved yoga classes, rest and relaxation, and hot springs, of
course. For me, it was just a tiny bit of yoga and lots of rest
and relaxation. The whole grounds is off the grid (solar
power) and there was no electricity (well, no power outlets, at
least) and no internet. So, other than just the general worry
about computers going berserk in my absence, relaxation was the
only option. I had the luxury of sleeping 12 hours a day and
getting lots of reading done (finally finishing "Man in the High
Castle").
* Fog City. It's always a crap shoot when going out to sea off
the San Francisco and Marin counties. Sometimes a whale,
sometimes a porpoise, sometimes sea fowl, sometimes just fog.
This time out to the Farallon Islands, it was fog. For the long
boat trip out, we were told to dress for winter; I think it
would've been more appropriate to have dressed for a strong rain
storm since every wave hit dumped lots of water onto the deck of
the boat. (I tried my best to stay off the deck.) Eventually,
through the fog, we could see some rocks sticking out of the
ocean and some wild life flying and crawling on top of them.
(Humans are not allowed on the islands themselves.) On the way
back, we did manage to see a whale and some porpoises, which was
nice. You can see pics at
https://www.flickr.com/photos/noelle/albums/72157710124072887
* Alone to the Land of Enchantment. Noelle was needed by her work
during the Thanksgiving holiday. But, because I felt that I
could help out my parents and I actually had some free time, I
decided to trek to . I got a lot done there. I
managed to make their email more useful on their smart phones
and completed an inventory of their storage unit.
* An old stuck in the mud. The day after landing in ,
while driving to my parents' place, we decided to take a look at
a piece of land in Belen, , that my parents own. It
was well off the beaten path. After driving 45 minutes, about
30 minutes of which were on dirt roads, we reached it. It was
rather nondescript. (See
https://www.flickr.com/photos/noelle/49154786503/ for an
example.) After snapping some pics, we were on our way. Or, at
least, we thought. The GPS decided to take us out the other
way. We obeyed. We had encountered a few mud spots during
arrival and we encountered different mud spots on the way back.
By driving fast, the first one was fine; driving fast through
the second one didn't work. I was driving and thought I had
control, but the car just slipped off to the left no matter what
I did. We slammed into 12-inch mud going at about 40 mph. I
opened my driver's side door and saw that the mud came right up
to the door. So, I slipped off my sandals and socks and
proceeded outside. My feet sunk into the mud and it spread over
my pant bottoms. I examined the front of the car and the back
and concluded that there was no way it's getting out of there.
* Clay feet. Thankfully, our phones had connectivity, and my dad
was able to call AAA. They said that they'd be there in 45
minutes. I then proceeded to spend the next hour (they were
late) trying to get this mud off my feet. At the time, I didn't
know that this was clay mud which, besides being quite slippery,
sticks onto everything, including tires. We saw the AAA tow
truck coming down the road. I suppose the driver was thinking
that they could just drive right by the car so it could be
pulled from the front. We saw it go whizzing by and plunked
right into the mud on the other side of the road. The driver
tried and tried to get the truck unstuck, but no luck. The
driver called his AAA-mates and they agreed to send out two more
trucks to pull everybody out. Recall that we were in the middle
of nowhere; we were happy that we still had cell connectivity
because it would have been a 8 mile walk to get to civilization.
Two hours later, after getting lost, two trucks show up to
unstick us: an SUV and a dinky tow truck.
* Pay dirt. The dinky tow truck alone wasn't sufficient to get
the car out -- the car kept slipping off from the middle of the road
into the mud again. The tow guy ended up jury rigging a system
where a pulley was connected to the SUV and the dinky tow truck
would pull the tow cable. Eventually, the tow cable ran out.
At that point, both the tow truck and the SUV drove forward to
pull the car to the dry part of the road. Five hours later
after first getting stuck, we were ecstatic that the car got
out. See pics at
https://www.flickr.com/photos/noelle/49183715642/ and
https://www.flickr.com/photos/noelle/49183513296/ .
* Not yet out of the woods. We were instructed to drive slowly
out of there along the dirt roads. Once we hit a paved road, it
dawned on us that there was a serious problem: the car would
violently shake if it went over 40 mph. In the hopes that it
would clear itself up, we kept it at 40 mph on the highway; we
put the flashing hazard lights on. After the first hour, we
realized that it was not going to fix itself. We got off at a
random exit and, in the deep dark night, tried chipping away at
the mud encrusted on the wheels. That didn't work. At a rest
stop an hour later, we tried again. And, again, no improvement.
Going 40 mph all the way to my parents's house took about 4
hours. To pass the time, we sang along while listening to the
Beatles Sirius channel. Breakfast was our only meal for the day.
Despite that, we had just a small snack before collapsing into bed.
* Finance
* Unsafe at any speed. After all that trouble to get that Bank of
America temporary credit card service working again last year,
they just ended up closing up shopsafe. So, now, Abine Blur is
my only source of temporary cards, and, in comparison, it is a
lousy (expensive, inconvenient) service. Unless I take the bold
step of opening up a Capital One to use its virtual card
service, I am bound to using regular credit cards.
* Food
* The plant-based pizza has come of age. A new pizza place opened
in our neighborhood. And, amazingly, they have a vegan pizza.
In fact, the places I know with an option of a vegan pizza
numbers in the tens at this point. Progress.
Entertainment
* Spoken word
* Knocking on doors for democrats. That was the topic of Charlie
Varon's first story. Monologists Charlie Varon and Brian
Copeland put on a spoken word "political comedy" show in
mid-August. It thoughtfully highlighted the great divides in
our country. It spurred a lot discussion afterwards.
* Outdoors
* Whisky a-go-go-going. I'm always happy to be sipping on a good
scotch. And there was plenty to go around at the Scottish
Gathering in early September. Noelle had been planning to go
and I decided to join her this year. I was trepidatious about
tagging along since, unlike her, I wouldn't know anybody and
would be hanging out at the McPherson clan tent (I have no
Scottish background). They seemed very accepting, however.
Noelle entered the McPherson raffle and won a bottle of excellent
Glen Moray and shared part of it with the "cousins", as is the
tradition. It was delicious and fun.
* Music
* Cramped and cold. Or maybe it was cold and cramped. Noelle
found out that solo rock artist Robyn Hitchcock was playing in
Santa Cruz late in December 2018. She, of course, had to see
him. We got there early, got to drink some booze, and found
good seats which we guarded with our lives. It got very, very
crowded at the bar/club. Despite this, we could hear the music
quite clearly. And despite the crowdedness, it remained cold
inside the bar, which was bit unpleasant. It was a relief that
we had a warm, cozy hotel room to crash at afterwards.
* Art
* A hop to a misty mountain. Minus the misty part, I guess. At
the very least, it was quite cold at the Montalvo Arts Center
in Saratoga in mid-February. I probably could've brought more
padding for Bruce Munro's Stories in Light show. It was very
interesting and impressive. Suffering through the cold was
worth it.
Politics/Society
* Ecology/Environment
* Misc
* Striking against the climate? I'm not sure who came up with
the name "global climate strike" since it doesn't really make
sense. (Maybe "global climate catastrophe strike"?) In any
case, we took the day off from work to participate in the
Global Climate Strike on September 20. This primarily
involved marching (walking) with a bunch of young people for a
few miles and then ending up at a rally at where-I-live city hall
plaza. Of course, it was encouraging at the time, but it
seemed like everyone just went back to what they were doing
before: expending energy to make more stuff that ends up in
the ocean or a landfill.
* Labor
* Those who cannot remember the past. In mid-July, in a small
setting, I and a few comrades gave a presentation (called a
"learning club") on the History of Unions and Unionization in
Tech in conjunction with the Tech Workers Coalition (TWC). We
did research and developed slides and discussion points.
Interestingly, I myself learned a lot and we had a stimulating
conversation during and after the presentation.
Technology
* Computers
* Software
* PC
* A failure to reboot. It had been months since I had
rebooted my laptop. I never felt the need since I had been
using the same kernel for a while. One day, I figured that
I may as well give it a try. Big mistake. Although it
booted fine, the UI would not come up again. I struggled
with it for hours, trying to figure out how to get my UI
back, swapping out parts and rebooting over and over again.
Eventually, I found a tiny configuration item (the
equivalent of a variable in a Windows registry) that was
referencing a windows manager that had long ago been
deprecated. I reset the value so that it take on the
default and all was good again. The lesson? Reboot early
and reboot often.
* Beware the upgrade. All my email broke in early October
when Debian released a security fix for openssl. It turned
that fetchmail continued to use the old ssl (tls) protocol,
despite the underlying library being upgraded. Fixing most
account information just involved a few changes to the
openssl configuration files. However, for my mail server,
because my self-signed certificate had such a short key
(which were no longer supported), this involved generating a
new certificate, key, and distributing the key to the
clients -- something that I had to re-learn.
* Hardware
* PC
* Linux
* The elusive reliable kernel. Sad to say, I've grown to
distrust the Linux kernel. Back in September, I started
having problems with sleep and hibernation, both on my
work machines and my home machines. I kept thinking that
it was packages installed and scripts that were or were
not being run, either while going to sleep or waking up
from it. It turned out to be the kernel all along; only
with the right kernel would sleep mode work. All these
years, I had trusted the kernel to work from upgrade to
upgrade. It never dawned on me that basic operations
would start to break. I kept rebooting and switching
kernels until I found the ones I could rely upon. Now I
have a cron job which downloads every single revision of
every kernel in case I ever have to roll back to or roll
up to a particular version which "just works".
* Mac
* Hit the road, Mac. The Mac Mini that Noelle had been using
for years kept getting slower and less robust. Software
kept assuming that there were more resources available when
there were not. We had to switch it out. I had brought an
Asus Mini PC in October, but it wasn't until late December
that I worked on the project to replace the Mac. It was
less difficult than I thought it would be and, using
clonezilla, I could have the result be identical to the
original, except much faster and with much more disk space.
* Internet
* The fright of losing your email address. Noelle had had the
same email address for many years. In early April, email
started not being delivered. Thinking we were very clever, we
logged into her alumni account to see if we could fix
it. email is controlled by Google. We were surfing
around trying to figure out what was wrong when, suddenly, Google
locked us out. Not only could we no longer log in but no email
would be forwarded again. Over the next several days, I was on
the phone, fighting with the Cal bureaucracy trying to
get this email address reinstated. It was Kafkaesque in its
magnitude, being shuffled from one office to another. I was quite
exhausted and relieved when it was all over.