Perette's Journal: 2011

1. Ways of thinking

2011-01-19 12:43 (Wednesday) journal

I’m thinking about types of knowledge and thought after therapy today. To come up with a somewhat good description of a person’s manner of thought, we need to look at the following factors:

Knowledge: Breadth (focused or broad), depth (how much knowledge there is for a given topic), metaknowledge (knowledge of the accuracy and limits of one’s mind and the information it contains).

Thought: Speed (how quickly a person processes data), breadth (how much data a person includes in the consideration process), quantity (superficial or extensive, refering to how much a person analyzes data before reaching a conclusion), associativity (how much the person can relate similar concepts and/or draw connections), perspective/dimensionality (the ability to view one concept from different perspectives and consider it in new ways, especially with respect to others' viewpoints).

Abilities: Intuition (ability to formulate connections from unrelated data), skepticism (tendency to look for validation before accepting intuitive ideas), application (the ability to apply knowledge and thought in common ways), improvisation (ability to apply knowledge in unconventional ways), imagination (ability to create new ideas from scratch).

Using these terms: I have a fairly broad knowledge of generally moderate depth, deeper around computers/software engineering and somewhat shallower around social skills. Metaknowledge is exceptional, except around social skills where I’m somewhat dodgier. In social situation, I often don’t understand when/why I make mistakes, and other times I don’t act out of fear I’m misunderstanding but in retrospect seem to have correctly understood things.

I have a very wide, extensive thought process that that tends to yield good results, given time. Unfortunately, its nature makes it slow, and where data is inconsistent or unavailable I can get stuck. Associative is well above average. For example studying my furnace yielded a better understanding of how to build campfires and a practical perspective of chemistry; yielding a flogger as part of BDSM is physics of pendulums.

Dimensionality has grown through the years, and I often shift viewpoints with material things. A furnace is concurrently a metal box, and electrical machine, and a chemical lab; imagining how to get somewhere, I shift from map-views to street-view in my brain; when working on electrical things, I shift between the mechanical assembly and a schematic view and logic. Applying this to others' viewpoints has come more slowly, but has developed in the last 5 years or so as I’ve realized I can’t make others understand what it is I think without understanding what they think, and have thus put effort into modeling their perspectives.

I have moderate intuition of so-so accuracy, but high skepticism. This feeds back into my metaknowledge, helping ensure that new ideas don’t make it to “true” status until there’s some verification to them; overall, this ensures a general internal consistency of knowledge.

I am good at applying knowledge, but there needs to be a certain tangibility to the things I work with and the end goal. I’ve wished that software projects would assign me to client sites to use software for a few weeks from time to time to get a sense of what is done with what I am creating. Even worse, high abstraction and super-complex algorithms can leave me lost and/or uncomfortable when I can’t grasp how things work—I hate transliterating things into code when I don’t understand why they work.

I work best where I understand and am focused on implementations of things, where I excel. Although I don’t have a lot of imagination for wholly new ideas, I am very innovative/improvisational in figuring out how to make something work. I come up with different ways of accomplishing things, whether it’s fixing a broken spoon or making my furnace work or jury-rigging my car or writing a piece of code to achieve something I want done. Still, it’s rare that I have the imagination to conceive a new product or feature in the first place, unless it’s specifically related to something in my life or something I want to achieve. In that sense, I’m more of an exceptional fabricator or craftsperson than an engineer.

(Incidentally, I think I’d classify the general masses as follows: Broad knowledge that’s shallow, often focused on unimportant matters like sports and TV, with a pretty variable sense of metaknowledge. People generally think fast but superficially, narrow to moderate consideration depending on how much information “comes to the surface” in the moment of need. They have low to moderate ability to make connections; this limits real understanding. They can shift perspective if needed, but generally don’t unless they’re a “people person” or have ulterior motives like changing someone else’s viewpoint. People tend to rely on intuition with so-so accuracy, but have little skepticism so their brains become polluted with bogus ideas. Most are good at applying skills they’ve been taught, but don’t improvise (not that more couldn’t, but I think most aren’t motivated to and it hasn’t occurred to them that they can, so they don’t try). I think many have good imaginations, but no basis for this belief.)

2. DSL woes, network and plumbing upgrades

2011-01-28 00:57 (Friday) journal

My DSL contract expired in December, which inspired me to look into service problems so I could decide whether or not I should just move to a competing provider. I wrote a shell script to collect performance data at ₁₆ minute intervals, then another script that simmered the data into a report.

After collecting a week and a half of data, it was clear the line died when the kids got home from school. I sent the data to Frontier, who sent a tech to my house, where he then called a guy down in the central office to switch me from shelf 9 to shelf 16. Ongoing testing has shown the line’s average highs are now lower, but it no longer tanks when the kiddies start surfing for porn.

Meanwhile, when I was home for Christmas Tim and I looked into my sister’s DSL problems, which turned out to be a dead wall-wart power supply. Not being able to get one easily, we replaced the overpriced AT&T-branded 2Wire modem and I inherited the dead one. A shopping trip on EBay and now it works, so I gave Frontier theirs back; this saves $3.99 monthly and gets rid of flakey wireless problems and the line occasionally going down and requiring a power cycle to recover.

The AT&T negotiates a better speed, but with the penalty of not being able to maintain sync. Every hour and a half or so, it loses its connection and has to reconnect; this takes 1–2 minutes. While it doesn’t break open connections, it is a nuisance. The AT&T also won’t talk wired to the MacBook—it establishes a connection for about 30 seconds, then loses it until the jack is unplugged and replugged. (Broken in a firmware update, possibly along with its ability to stay trained. Planned obsolescence.)

Another trip to EBay yielded a used 24-port 10/100 Ethernet switch. I spent $36 instead of $30 and got the nicer one, which looks to be a good investment: I got a managed switch with two gigabit transceiver ports (not yet populated). Not realizing how cool the switch is, I proactively upgraded the 6 Category 3 network jacks in the house to Category 5, and added one additional drop in the yellow bedroom. I might not have bothered if I realized that the speed could be set in the switch on a per-port basis, but this is probably good because everything is all upgraded to late-90s tech now and much speedier than 10-base-T.

So now all the internal stuff works beautifully, and I don’t have to pick-and-choose active jacks, and I’ve got more control than I know what to do with. Externally, I may end up replacing the DSL modem; it’s a real nuisance to have it stall so often.

That out of the way, I got busy replacing a section of galvanized pipe that’s been a nuisance periodically when its rust flakes demand snaking the line. I couldn’t unscrew it, so I chopped it off and used a rubber boot to join it to some new PVC. I also added a NovaVent (essentially a check valve for air) so the line is properly vented, and the sink doesn’t gurgle when doing dishes or the washing machine is draining.

I’ve also been asked to look into a member management system (MMS) for RKS. The board hasn’t responded much to my requeest for requirements, so partly I feel like just blowing it off. But some other people have suggested some ideas, and they’re things that lead toward custom development. Which could be a cool project, but I’m concerned about sticking RKS with custom code. I’ve been the primary person objecting to setting up our own forum system (phpBB or something similar) on the grounds that it’s unmaintainable and once the person who installs it leaves, we’re screwed. It’s a very reasonable objection to a custom MMS as well. On the other hand, a custom system could be built around the group’s processes (rather than bending the group’s processes to fit around a generic MMS), and (unlike the forum people) I’ll leave behind design documents and I’ll use some established technology rather than some bleeding-edge, unmaintainable crap from the Internet. Still…

3. Windows... Rrrr.

2011-02-07 22:16 (Monday) journal

One of my clients wants a video on his website, so I’ve been working getting that going. It was pretty straightforward on the Mac; I tested my concept in a few minutes and then spent a day or two researching and writing JavaScript to make it all happen automatically. There was some screwing around getting it to resize to what I wanted, but I even got around that. Seems to work just fine.

Then there’s Windows. F’ing Windows doesn’t even like playing its own goddamn WMV format; it wants this CLSID property that no one else in the known world uses, but they want it set to some cryptic value. Oh, and the source of the video—yeah, that doesn’t go in the DATA attribute like every other CODEC; instead, it goes in a subsequent PARAM element. And whereas the rest of the world interprets “display: none” as “don’t do anything with this right now”, on the video player <OBJECT> Explorer takes it as "launch the video sound-only, and just don’t show it.

And just for good measure, they don’t bother supporting the “navigator.mimeTypes” data structure either. It’s not spec, but several other browsers do, and it is handy, but no.

And periodically while I’m testing, Explorer notifies me there’s a problem and it’s closing the window and looking for a resolution. Then it tells me it’s reopened the window to where I was, although nothing seemed to change.

I don’t get it. How and why does the world put up with this? There are better options out there, like, pretty much anything that works and isn’t broken.

I also replaced my dodgy AT&T DSL modem with a quite nice Netgear DGND3300 DSL mode/N300 router/4-port switch all-in-one. It speaks 2.4 & 5.0 GHz wireless, concurrently, with two different transceivers. And best of all: so far, the friggin' DSL line stays up. $60 well spent.

4. Windows

2011-02-10 00:36 (Thursday) journal

“Internet explorer has blocked this site from using an ActiveX control in an unsafe manner.” After IE literally interpreted the CSS “display” attribute being set to “none” and consequently didn’t display the video while playing them audibly, I tried modifying the code to create the HTML markup for the player dynamically. I’ve been pulling my hair out about that for days, too, because it mysteriously didn’t work. Eventually I noticed it would occasionally display an error (but not always) about ActiveX security kicking in.

I was trying to start the video player by following established standards and best practices by creating an HTML <OBJECT> through the DOM’s createElement() call—the way you’re supposed to do it. I added the necessary attributes and added a few <PARAM> tags to follow, then appended that whole chunk into the document via an appendChild() where it was supposed to go in the document. Worked great in Firefox (Mac and Windows both doing Quicktime and Windows doing WMV formats), Chrome (Mac using Quicktime and Windows using MP4 formats), Safari (Mac using Quicktime, WMV, and MP4 formats), Opera (Quicktime), and the iPhone simulator (3gp format).

Internet Explorer (Microsoft’s browser) on Windows (Microsoft’s OS) playing WMV (Microsoft’s format): No. Just like always, Microsoft imposes the most inconceivable problems. You can’t create the video player this way because Windows paranoidly thinks you’re trying to hack it (via “a scripting exploit”), so it prevents you doing it even though it’s a perfectly reasonable and necessary thing to do.

The workaround is instead to paste together HTML text, then stick it into the document by setting the surrounding object’s .innerHTML.

I’ve mentioned how much Windows sucks, right? I just spent a week building something that should have taken a day, maybe two. I know it keeps a few people employed, but it’s not worth it. Stop using it. It’s a garbage operating system. It makes your life and computing experience miserable, and mine too because I’ve got to support this shit for you bastards that keep using it. Safe our sanities, please, and don’t do it anymore. Just please stop it, heck, ¡SAFEWORD! goddamnit.

5. Hackiest fix ever

2011-02-24 13:16 (Thursday) journal

“Hi. I’m fixing my computer—where’s your plumbing department?”*

Odayaka, my G4 PowerBook Mac, came back in from the field yesterday. Between the state of deterioration and slowness, Brynn had enough and got a new MacBook for college. I got the machine back with a broken hinge, a dead power supply, and a flakey power supply. I’d earmarked her or Shelly as a music server for RKS last April or May, and been waiting for one to finally return home.

A plastic piece of hose from the plumbing department fit nicely along the flange at the bottom edge of the screen. I cut it just long enough to slip over the hinge edges since one of the hinge pins is broken. Cost to repair hinge: $0.35 + tax.

I cracked open (literally cracked) the original Apple power supply with a frayed cord, cut out the bad section, soldered it together and covered that with heat shrink tube. Two metal hose clamps now hold the power supply case together (I probably could have gotten by with one, but I didn’t want to half-ass the job). This is the first time this end had to be fixed; the other end has been fixed or replaced 3 times over 7 years or so.

Total cost: $3.50. I had a $5.00 customer reward coupon, so I got some lip balm too and told them to keep the change.

• Okay, I didn’t actually have to ask, because I know where the plumbing department is at Ace Around the Corner. There was, however, a hacksaw involved.

6. How do you cope with stresses?

2011-02-25 15:20 (Friday) journal

For job/activity stressors, I use coping skills out of CBT/DBT (behavioral therapies, not cock/ball torture), which align with some Pagan practices, which align with similar things in other models but with different linguistic wrappings. In general, these include: meditation/intentional relaxation, stretching/exercising/yoga, consciousness raising (reminding myself it’s temporary, looking at the good side, etc.). Getting the hell of the Internet and spending time with people in real life helps too—there’s just something about this tech stuff.

As for social anxiety… I avoid interacting with vanilla society, at least as far as friendships go, because I just don’t fit in. Within our community, I just keep at it despite my fears of others and awareness that I don’t understand the rest of you. One particular difficulty is that I tend to be a freethinker, so my ideas and beliefs leave me feeling isolated at times. I think it’s good in debate/discussion to have dissenting opinions, so I think it’s a good trait; and it helps me relax if I express my ideas and am heard, (usually) even if it doesn’t change others' opinions. But it’s difficult presenting contrarian ideas without upsetting others and causing infighting, and it takes a lot of time and effort to put ideas into words. So there’s a trade-off of stress between staying quiet, and making the effort to say things. (Saying things carelessly causes fighting, which is a stressor and unhealthy for relationships and community bonds. So I avoid saying things carelessly now.)

Sometimes when I have ideas or frustrations but don’t know how to express them helpfully, they end up as journal entries or essays, which both helps refine my thoughts and helps me feel like I’ve “gotten it out of my system”.

Reading, creative writing, spending time with friends, playing games, going hiking, and other activities to “get my mind of things” also figure in there occasionally. Being flogged heavily falls into this category, but also seems to have some sort of physiological aspect to resetting me as well.

7. How do we define who we are?

2011-04-11 11:33 (Monday) journal

(From a FetLife discussion)

Who any of us are depends on the context you’re looking from. There’s the me that I am, the me that I think I am, and the me that I want to be. There’s also the Perette that each of you see me as and the Perette that you each think I’m trying to be, and every one of you sees those Perettes differently.

Add to that, there’s the problem that we change every day as we grow or respond to different things we encounter. By my particular nature (being a thinking/intellectualizing person as opposed to intuitive), this creates problems when in seeking to understand who I am, I stifle my development to ensure that who I think I am, who I actually am, and who I am becoming are all synchronized. This ends poorly, as straitjacketing my identity acts like a pressure-cooker, keeping it all controlled and neat but under increasing tension until need for change shatters the force of will trying to prevent it, and then there’s a burst of change that happens in a very sudden, uncontrolled, and typically very reckless way.

Thus, I’ve learned not try not to do that (nor to be constrained by others' attempts to define or label who I should be) and to just let my self-concept go with the flow of who I seem to be.

So how do I know what I am, who I am at any given moment? I don’t. At best I’ve got a fuzzy concept of who I am akin to a blurry photograph of something in motion. Based on that idea of who I am, or who I think I’m trying to be, I apply some labels to it so I can communicate it to others how I feel about myself. But the process is inherently imperfect: who I think I am lags who I actually am, which is at best an approximation, the accuracy of which is sacrificed even more as it passes through language.

Are there people for whom everything is in sync and they really know who they are, steady like a rock over a long period? People I’ve met that claim this, but they seemed terribly self-repressed, so I don’t buy it. If someone has achieve it, I imagine they’d be boring and uninteresting because they would become so stagnant.

8. Testosterone Poisoning

2011-04-25 23:37 (Monday) journal

Then, like a day or two after I wrote that, I woke up and I was in the no man’s land of identity change. Attachments I’ve felt for years, gone overnight. My thoughts on who I am, suddenly empty.

I feel empty, hollow; at some level, there’s a nagging sense of incompleteness; it’s more of an ache than an acute pain. I look at RKS, one of the central factors in my life for the past several years, and now…nothing. I don’t know why I participate. There are a couple of people I think of, and I feel a bond of friendship, but when I think of the group I feel repulsed. Not in a “you’re sickos” kind of way, just not wanting to be affiliated with it anymore. How can that happen overnight?

Yet now I seem to be able to go through the motions of finding employment. It’s terrible, mindlessly filling out online application after application, but I just don’t seem to feel enough to notice how horrible it is. For years I clung to the hope that I could make Devious Fish work, because the possibility of having to trade my soul for employment was unpalatable; then overnight I decided to give up on the dream of having a viable life and I seem to be emulating the masses, looking for unimportant, uninspiring work so I can have an income stream. I suppose I no longer feel like I’ll give up my soul because I no longer feel it.

More than anything, the way I feel reminds me of being male. My dull existence when I went through the motions of being who I told I should be. I’ve been on Testosterone for 2 or so years now, and been tweaking the levels over that period, up for a while as it seemed like it was doing something but I couldn’t tell quite what, then back down as I haven’t felt quite right, like things are out of balance. I can’t help wondering if it’s not the immediate level that matters, but that long-term exposure has a gradual, long-term rewiring that’s finally tipped a scale.

And what are my choices if that’s true? Stay on the drug, and distance myself from my soul; go off the drug and stay being dysfunctional girl. With the drug I take things more personally, I get angry with people, and I’m maybe a little more willing to fight for what I think is right. Without it, little things roll off of me and when it matters I don’t fight back, I let myself be abused until I give up and remove myself from a situation, figuring it’s not worth the effort to fix. Yet that contradicts other behaviors, because with T I just feel jaded about the world; I’ll fight for me but not for what I believe in. Take it away and I’ll write endless position papers arguing for what I don’t think I can change, in hopes that somebody will finally bloody well listen.

But is it really the medication? All that’s conflated with a relationship with a person 30 years older than me, who I dearly love but our lives are so different. It never mattered before the T, but now it worries me how confining the relationship could be. Is it the loss of intimacy since David’s radical prostatectomy, or is it impatience driven by this synthetic hormone?

And what the fuck is my sexuality doing? Fetishes that used to be strong are now ambiguous, yet I feel them there, like they’re lurking and trying to wire themselves into daily life. I’ve worried about the possibility; I’ve watched others become weirdos when this happens. And now it’s lurking, attempting to commandeer my body to its own perverted devices. And I know how strong my sexuality is, and that I will lose to it in a head-on battle, so I ponder strategies to give it harmless wins and divert the rest in harmless directions, and I wonder if this will work.

I used to know who I was, and I felt good about it. Now I just feel empty. It feels wrong, but I don’t have a sense of what is right either. I wish I could feel again.

9. Response to Phil

2011-04-28 10:25 (Thursday) journal

If we look at the factors: first, the introduction of student loan programs in the 60s and 70s, intended to combat urban poverty and help overcome racial disparity in wages made a way for more people to go to college than could previously afford it. The decline in the manufacturing sector starting in the 1980s pushed parents and schools to direct kids on a college path, including the ones who in prior years would have been seen as better candidates for skilled trades. Even skilled trades are in decline; we buy new appliances or electronics instead of having a repairperson fix them; instead of the laborious process of plumbing with copper we now use PEX tubing which can be installed with much less labor. It’s not that the education is more valuable, it’s that there is more demand for it

Back in the 80s as we began losing large numbers of jobs to overseas (Japan in particular back then) there was an idea that we’d keep the design at home and just let the manufacturing happen elsewhere. But as my father would say, “They’re not all rocket scientists”; I would change this: we need a heterogenous mix of jobs to fit the range of people’s natural skill sets. There are those who would make brilliant craftspeople, but instead they’ve gone to college and developed skills in areas where they are limited. Instead of having them do brilliant things with their hands, they become mediocre engineers or administrators or whatever they studied for in college, and/or unemployed; either way, excess people with training for too few jobs is just supply/demand, forcing value of people’s labor to fall. Some end up taking jobs below their training, which has gradually created more expectation of a college degree among employers.

Meanwhile, corporations aren’t stupid or wasteful; why build an expensive lab building and hire full-cost staff when you can donate some cash to a university, probably take a write-off of some sort, then fund some research at the university and get graduate students to do the same research at dirt-cheap prices. The university probably pairs your money with some alum donations to help fund the building, as a school it’s got some tax dodges in place to keep its cost low, and the students work hard on the research in hopes of making a name so they’ll be able to get one of the limited number of jobs in real industry when they leave. They’re freshly training, motivated, and not distracted by a family to boot. On the university’s side, they’re getting some exciting new research to put on the 4-color glossies, and if the research works out the university might get a cut of rights to whatever is discovered.

This falling back on “because they can” bothers me because it ignores all the whys and wherefores in between. If enrollment had been limited by not having student loan and grant programs, this mightn’t have been set up. If we had a broader range of jobs, including more with on-the-job training as it used to be, this mightn’t have happened. If we didn’t have the Internet, which has allowed us to share information-based jobs with others in other countries, maybe we could have become the country of rocket scientists and this mightn’t have happened.

But that’s coulda, woulda, shoulda; we let this happen by ignoring the changes the processes we set up. We do this again, and again, and again; setting up processes for some purpose, not really thinking it through to full depth, then starting it up and forgetting about it. Then the side-effects interact and magnify with other things, and it gradually goes out of control and we ignore it for a while, then we look at it and think, “Uh oh, we didn’t mean for that to happen.” But then the whole thing has become complex with intended effects and unintended side-effects of multiple things interacting, and we come up with some overly-simplistic explanations as whole systems spiral out of control. Usually we impose some new regulation that’s intended to control it but typically doesn’t and just makes the whole thing go off kilter and then spiral off in a new direction of trouble. But when it gets so bad we can’t decide what to do, or we just wait to long, then eventually it goes “bang” and there’s huge fallout and we angrily find someone to blame it all on.

In any given system, people will figure out how to turn it to their personal advantage. Yet, we keep creating systems and regulations that are meant to provide communal benefits. Given a bit of time, though, someone always figures out how to exploit that creation. If we want to create a system that works and stays in balance long-term, we need to go back to something with a basic, simple set of fair rules; if we want to make on-the-fly adjustments they should be temporary because they need to be monitored for when they start to do more damage than good. The system we are in now is so complex, with patches and fixes on top of patches and fixes, that I don’t believe there is any hope of making it work right.

10. Curiosity

2011-04-29 18:18 (Friday) journal

Curious about something. How do y’all handle information overload as it applies to the excessive amount of mail in your e-mail box?

• (a) Try to respond “properly” to everything, and find it takes up way too much time.
• (b) Leave things in the mailbox intending to get back to them, then delete them later when the matter has passed.
• (c) Make a quick judgement and delete if right off even if a response is expected but you think it’s not worthy.
• (d) Give quick, half-ass responses to everything with the thought that at least you’re getting back to someone.
• (e) Some other method I haven’t speculated on.

I’m a (b). I respond to quick things immediately, a few important things get serviced, but when there is too much then things get queued and then not dealt with, and later it gets deleted it’s clear it’s too late to respond.

11. Curiosity follow-up

2011-05-02 14:18 (Monday) journal

Thanks to Jan and Mike for responding. I’ve been mulling on this some more in light of their thoughts.

Mike commented he uses a variety of strategies to attain, ideally, a zero-size inbox at all times. This doesn’t seem to work because I idealize (a) but realize (and encounter) it’s impossible, which is why this actually fall into (b). (c) and (d) are unacceptable, so…

I respond with quite a bit of thought (even research/verification) even to things that are casual questions/inquiries. The resulting quality of my responses, I think, is far above average; I’m annoyed when I write others and get casual responses ala (d) even when I’m looking for details, because I’ll already have tried to find an answer on my own and tried the simple stuff. If I actually ask for help, it’s because I need it, but rarely do I get it.

I’m frustrated that this creates a sort of double-whammy on me: I’m studying/researching not only the things that are important to me, rarely asking for help unless I really need it; but I end up doing research or just taking time to write a detailed answer for the people who don’t have the courtesy to do the same before asking something of me and often could have found an answer on their own.

I see this as a bug in me; my failure being not returning “513 RTFM Before Asking Me Questions” status. Individually, of course, no single question is a problem; but when it’s a regular occurence (as it has become) it’s a nuisance. I want to fix this bug, and I’m not quite sure how.

Maybe I’ll write an AppleScript semi-autoresponder that replies with the human equivalent of that 513 message.

12. Chart of Suckage

2011-05-09 15:55 (Monday) journal

So as part of fixing my life, this book I’m reading called Changing for Good suggests I identify and write down the strategies I use to avoid changing. I keep being afraid of/avoiding getting a job because I don’t want to be all-consumed by one. So I did some math, which resulted in a chart.

Instead of starting with a job that provides a wage, then figuring out what I can afford, I’m working backward from the cost of living. I cost $345 per week (C), (or $50 per day) to live, give or take: $8 taxes, $6 car, $6 housing, $10 food, $8 misc, $3 communication, $6 utilities, or so. So how much do I need to work to earn that money?

If I earn $100/hour (W or Wage), as I did when I was a pro-domme, that’s 3.5 hours, or 3 or 4 sessions per week. If I do a few more, I can take some time off.

If I earn $30/hour, as I did when I was in software, that’s 12 hours of work per week. If I worked three 8-hour days, or four 6-hour days I’d do just fine, banking money as I went. If I worked four 8-hour days, I’d be rich though I’d start feeling pressed for time.

If I earn $12 or less/hour, I’m forced into working long hours to make enough wages to pay for life. Less than $8/hour, and I’m still on a downward spiral even if I work full-time.

And because I understand vehicles aren’t cheap, I added extra columns to accommodate the cost of getting to and from work. Given the expense/mile (Em), and the mileage 1-way to work (m), the additional columns include the amount I must work to cover not only my $345 but also the additional wear and tear, gas, etc. to go to/from that job. I’m using 0.50, the last IRS figure I knew; rough calculations I’ve done in the past show it’s not a bad figure.

Of course, if I didn’t have David, I could rent out another room in the house and cut this by 20%. If I rented two rooms, maybe I could cut it by 40%. I could maybe cut a few percent by frugaling up a bit more, but there’s a lot of fixed costs. So the $8/hour situation is still not pretty.

Which means I have to get a “real” job for financial solvency. Unfortunately, most skilled jobs that pay “real” wages demand full-time employment. I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t; a crap but easy part-time job means low wages so I have to work long hours to earn enough to live, but a real job means employer expectations that I work long hours despite not needing the money.

I’m open to ideas on moderate-wage, part-time jobs that would allow me to have a life in balance. I’m not stupid and I work hard when inspired by interest. Alas, most of the job-hunting resources are targeted at putting people back onto the 40-hour a week treadmill, or giving them some minimal employment just to give them something to do, and just don’t seem to have any idea what to do with me.

If anybody wants to play with the spreadsheet, it’s available in Excel format.

13. Tired

2011-06-19 22:20 (Sunday) journal

The “B” Hard drive in my RAID array reported as “failed” when I returned from my hike. I ran some tests, though, and it seemed to be working fine so I upgraded the array’s firmware, stuck the drive back in the array and it happily went back into service.

A few days later, the filesystem reported corruption. I should have known better and just pulled the dodgy disk out of service, but I ignored sense.

Instead I blanked the “it seems to work just fine” drive, copied the data off the good disk with the now-corrupt filesystem and put it onto a bad drive with a pristine new file system. Then I put the array back into redundant/mirroring mode and let it rebuild. It was ominous when the unit didn’t want to talk during degraded mode, and more ominious that it was still rebuilding after like a day and a half. I finally just yanked the cord.

So today I put the good disk in an inherited Drobo NAS appliance, got it running on my 'net, and repeatedly used rsync(1) to grab as much data as I could off the dodgy drive before it would offline itself. I’ve lost the 2-years of backup history for the automation server, which isn’t a big deal; I may try to grab the backups of my laptop later in the week, if I’m up for more dorking around, but they’re not critical (I have aged offsite backups) so we’ll see. I did manage to preserve my audio/video files, my mom’s offsite backup, and various as-yet-to-be-properly-filed photographs.

And in between trying to keep the recovery progressing, I was trying to crunch some numbers and do some typing for David.

The flakey drive is now sitting on the kitchen table offline, the good drive is running solo in the NAS until 2 new terrabyte drives arrive later in the week, at which point there will be redundancy, and there will be regular backups happening again, and it will all be good. I’ve also got a gigabit ethernet card on order for my switch, so the NAS network connection won’t be a bottleneck when multiple machines are accessing the file server.

I don’t think I’ve lost anything important, though my confidence in the matter isn’t superb. Plus I’m still at high risk until the new drives are in the array and it’s had a chance to replicate.

I still don’t know quite what’s wrong with the messed up drive… It’s not consistent, intermittently just doing something completely weird. But it’s warrantied for another month, so I’ll have to see about getting it replaced.

14. Who am I?

2011-06-20 22:54 (Monday) journal

Thinking about my personality. Who am I? It occurs that my speech patterns, the things I talk about, the attitudes I take–they all change based on who I talk with.

When in groups I’m comfortable with–Looneys in the past, RKS more recently–I think I begin to stabilize more. I theorize that I most often mirror, personalitywise, whoever I’m iteracting with because I don’t have a built-in personality; I simulate or emulate one.

Recent occurrences (the reboot) also suggest there is underlying maleness, which sees the other parts as creations. This makes me wonder if us other components are complementary to him, simulations for him to interact with that grew into actual existences. Oddly, that suggests that my Asperger’s-like gaping deficiency in personality was not solved by interacting with the personalities created to practice with, but instead through the creations of the simulations themselves.

I don’t mean this to sound like I’m questioning my existence; I surely exist and I find this a fascinating idea about my own creation. I am not lessened because of it.

But if it’s true, then it’s time I create my personality. One that represents who I am, who I am striving to be. One that doesn’t change and kowtow to whomever I’m interacting with. One that can stand on its own two feet, and hold its ground.

The limits of simulation, run unconsciously and haphazardly, are nigh. I’m neither sure how to decide who/how I want to be, nor sure how to make these changes happen to my “software.” But if the theory is right, then self-aware, self-directed growth is the way forward.

15. Update on recent news

2011-06-23 13:31 (Thursday) journal

I’ve now installed Skype on my iPod (really a first generation iPhone that’s been dechipped—thanks Jan!), so now I have a phone replacement anywhere I go that there’s free wireless. Alas, free wireless isn’t as ubiquitous as it used to be (stupid masses figuring out about wireless security).

Terrabyte drives arrived yesterday and got installed and Drobo replicated my data and it’s all safe now. Unfortunately, Drobo is insanely slow over the network; speeds top out at about 7 MB/sec (which wouldn’t be bad if it was consistent, but it’s not; I’ll get into that in a moment). I moved Drobo this morning to a USB connection on Mugenshi and it seems to perform somewhat better—which means the problem may be that the DroboShare (the NAS adapter box that does the file serving) is a dog. If nothing else, moving the unit to Mugenshi means I got the file ownership concept back, which the DroboShare seems to lack.

But looking at some iostat(8) reports, even when directly connected, Drobo’s performance is widely variable on writes: when writing bulk data, performance can exceed 15 MB/sec, but writing small chunks (small files, updating a directory/the catalog to add or remove a file, the journaling that goes with a directory update) it tanks; the transactions/second seems to be the limiting factor, maxing just over 100. Lots of 4kB or 8kB updates, and the Drobo’s I/O rate drops to 400–800kB/sec (and if a bunch of that is directory/catalog updates, say as part of creating/copying tons of tiny little files during backups, then the actual data throughput is even poorer). The old solution, a WD MyBook Mirror Edition, used mirroring and therefore avoided the parity maintenance issues associated with small writes with parity-based redundancy. But it may not be entirely Drobo’s fault: the new drives are “advanced format” drives, with the new 4k sector size, so the drives themselves may be forcing Drobo to do read-modify-write cycles that didn’t happen on my older drives.

There’s a guy selling a DroboFS unit (a newer unit with built-in NAS capability) on eBay in the suburbs; it sounds like these do much better. I could probably buy that, then re-sell the existing unit for $150±50 differential; I’m not decided if it’s worth it. Depends on prices/risk, I guess, but given the small-write problem and not seeing how a faster/better CPU and improved network support will fix that issue, I’m beginning to think risk is high that it won’t fix the problem.

And in other news, I had holes drilled in my head today to get two old-style amalgam fillings replaced with the newer composite resin ones.

16. Save the earth, shitcan your cable TV

2011-06-26 16:16 (Sunday) journal

The New York Times had an article today, Atop TV Sets, a Power Drain That Runs Nonstop documenting how the set-top boxes and DVR devices in the US typically consume large amounts of power. CNet ran a similar article based on the same NRDC article some time ago.

Part of the problem is that the devices never really shut off; when you turn them off the screen goes blank, but much of the electronics stay on to maintain synchronization with the digital signal and to accept programming schedule updates so when you turn it on, you can immediately both watch something or look at the TV listings. The devices can also receive software updates while “off”.

Peri’s suggestion for dealing with these leeches? Get a Roku or similar streaming-media embedded device. Here’s why:

It’s not just the box that’s a power leech: the cable company is leeching your money in the form of cable fees. Not only that, but all those channels that you pay for come with ads that leech your time while trying to browbeat you into wasting your money.

The Roku does power leech, like everything else these days, but it’s 6 watts as opposed to 30–40 watts—about 20% of amount with the typical cable box. For $10/month, you can get Netflix, from which 6 Rokus (or other streaming devices) can stream much of the content, and what can’t be streamed they can mail on DVD. Okay, it’s not always the latest, but let’s be realistic: there’s 100+ years of films and videos made, more than you’ll ever be able to watch in your life; surely there’s something good or important or otherwise worth seeing. For a little delay in new stuff, you’ll have access to more choice than cable or the DVR ever offered, and on your schedule.

For your trouble you’ll be able to ditch cable and save yourself a bundle on those outrageous fees you pay for tons of channels that are complete crap. If you have internet through the cable company, you’ll need to retain that and may have to pay a little extra for à la carte service, but you’ll still be up on the deal.

Besides the financial pay-off, you’ll have the benefit that TV will be 100% commercial free (except possibly Pom Wonderful: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold). You won’t even have to screw around fast forwarding like with the DVR.

One caveat worth noting: If you’re on an ISP (Internet Service) with bandwidth metering (which probably means you’re in Canada), you should probably run some bandwidth calculations before you commit to this plan. If you do, you’ll want to set your image quality on NetFlix to regulate bandwidth utilization.

Save electricity, save money, save time, and stop being brainwashed by ads.

17. Cancel what I just said

2011-07-15 07:58 (Friday) journal

Well, maybe. NetFlix just announced they’re redoing their pricing structure, so now they want $8 for both the DVD and the Streaming plans. It annoys me; if it was $2 more like before, fine, but because of their inability to provide me a video in the format I want I’m going to have to pay double? Sounds like they just want more money. sigh

TV was bad for me anyway, right?

I’ll write them a disgruntled letter advocating for a “DVD fallback” plan, where I have access to all the instant media, and can only get DVDs that aren’t available on Streaming.

18. Twenty Twenty-Four

2011-09-13 09:45 (Tuesday) journal

I recently finished reading Orwell’s Nineteen Eight-Four. If one was to update it for the direction of American society, what would it become? I speculate on Twenty Twenty-Four.

19. Life after a mobile

2011-11-19 14:55 (Saturday) journal

I ditched my mobile back in late July and switched over to Skype. I ended up transferring the mobile number to Google Voice, so it continues in service although it’s no longer my primary number. I’ve never been fully able to “scrub” the line from it’s use as a pro-domme, and still get calls about that periodically. So despite the inconvenience, changing numbers did have its advantages.

Dropping the mobile saves a lot of money. Skype with a phone number and voicemail is $60/year. The downside is you get what you pay for; Skype can be dodgy about interfacing with the PSTN: sometimes somebody answers but it doesn’t immediately set up the voice connection the way it should, and I imagine I sound like a call from a telemarketer where there’s a conspicuous silence at the start of a call. Occasionally it never even seems to accomplish that far.

On the incoming side, Skype is also dodgy. It’s got a nice configurable call-processing setup, where you can tell it how long to ring on the computer, how long to try different forward numbers, and whether or not to forward to voicemail. Unfortunately, actual behavior is inconsistent. It seems to ring the laptop reliably, then transfer to the landline, but the landline’s ring time and whether or not it transfers to voicemail aren’t what I told it to do. My mom has also said that occasionally she gets messages about not accepting calls from her phone service.

That all said, $60 is very good, or maybe more accurately, not having a $50+ recurring bill is very pleasant. Eventually I’ll habituate, I guess, but so far I’m enjoying not having that $50 bill each month. It definitely makes it easier to balance out the Chart of Suck, not that that’s an issue now that I’ve joined the ranks of the Overworked Americans again.

I will digress for a moment and say, while I’m getting along okay full-time, I guess, it seems silly that we have lots of people out-of-work and suffering, some protesting on Wall Street that they needs jobs, when I have more than I need and could happily work only 3 or 4 days and give that additional job time and income to one of them. But the cost of employment isn’t just wages, and the way it’s set up it benefits employers to keep a smaller number of workers and employ them full-time, even over-time. This means a bunch of people who don’t have jobs, which ensures labor can’t bargain for what it’s worth effectively; it’s that supply-and-demand thing. But if we could get lots of people to cut back and share the supply of jobs that are there, and get to a near 100% employment, then labor might have an option to bargain again. Unfortunately, that’s not likely to happen…so back to mobile-free life.

I’m enjoying not having a mobile. I’m not interrupted while I’m out with David. I don’t have to worry about where I misplaced the damn thing. I don’t get texts or calls while I’m driving; I just have to decompress and listen to the stereo. If people can’t get hold of me… why did they need to? I can at least have Skype follow me if I go to Connecticut or something, but there it’s when I’m at home and have the laptop up. So I’m still taking calls on my time.

I used to joke about the “enchanted shackle”, a term I picked up at Sterling Renaissance Faire. I noticed it a little when I got the thing, but now that it’s gone… it’s conspicuously nice to be free of it.

And in other news, my DSL modem/router crashed today, after uptime of roughly 270 days. Although I would prefer never, this I find acceptable. Service under Frontier… after setting up my own equipment and my own DNS intermediary to fix DNS hijacking, it actually works okay.

20. Neighborhood Assocation vs Shops in my neighborhood

2011-11-19 16:14 (Saturday) journal

I also want to plug Hy Design and Image, 246 Winton Road North, a cool little boutique in my neighborhood before the neighborhood association puts them out of business. It’s a very cool little trendy shop, and they’ve done a nice job of keeping the property clean and maintained. As a form of promotion, they got hold of ₄ life-size mannequins and have been putting them out on the lawn, fully dressed and accessorized. They’re admittedly out-of-character in the neighborhood; they look like a clutch of women out on an outting on Queen West, Toronto or Fifth Ave in NYC.

While I’m aware it is advertising, it’s never felt that way; it’s always just been a couple of very well-dressed (sexy, but not in an inappropriate way) couple of women on the lawn, complete with purses, jewelry… the works. It’s not a torso-on-a-stick with a mismatched blouse and skirt with a sign sticking out of the head, “CLEARANCE 50% OFF”. This is me, anti-consumerist person who wrote Inventory Hell, I’ve paid Wunderground $5/year for the last decade to avoid ads, I don’t listen to much radio and use Netflix for TV because I don’t want to be brainwashed by adverts. And I don’t identify it as advertising.

Sadly, the owner has said the mannequins have been huge in helping out the store’s bottom line, and without them she doesn’t think it’ll make it.

I guess we just can’t have nice things. At least, not if they’re something that appeals to youth and not the old cronies that have the time to badger the government instead of working and taking care of families.

21. Typing in Dr Seuss

2011-12-10 00:18 (Saturday) journal

The mv (move) command to move your CSS files from the RCS of RKS to the RCS in the CSS folder of RKS is not very long, but is amusingly difficult to get right.

RKS ~/Sites/RKS$ mv RCS/*css,v CSS/RCS

And in other news, the RKS now has support for iOS and other "smartphones'. Of course, if their designers had been smart enough to respect the spirit of the CSS specification, this this would have worked 3 years ago and with no additional effort on my part.

INDEX(Apple, snootily disregarding specifications) Apple: I like your operating system. No, I love your OS. But the iOS devices don’t respect a lot of CSS (inputs that still create a shadow of border even when border:none is set), smart numeric inputs that “helpfully” display commas (not helpful when the numeric input is a credit card number field), failure to respect @media handheld…

I remember a time when Microsoft used to make whatever it wanted, and often that meant stupid, half-ass, unreliable, incompatible piles of shit software, and if you didn’t like their offerings they directed you to figure one. Thankfully, they’ve spent recent yeares turning their act around.

Let’s just say I have a discomforting, growing feeling of déjà vu.