Blackcap Blog

Published at 18:09 on 30 July 2017

Last fall, I took my old single-burner Coleman stove camping. It was the first time in decades I had used it, but I knew how badly canister stoves acted when temperatures were in the forties, and this was a trip to Wyoming, where lows could be expected to be in the twenties each night.

The pump didn’t pump well when I tried it. After some research with a search engine, I fed it a couple drops of household lubricating oil and waited a few minutes. It pumped perfectly. I filled the tank and did a test firing. The stove operated just as I had remembered it from years back.

And it was very nice to have a stove the just belted out the heat, no matter how chilly it was. Gone forever was the “tank is only partially full, so performance sucks in cold or even cool weather” syndrome. But it was tippy, vulnerable to the wind, and difficult to make it simmer reliably.

I had been lusting after an MSR Dragonfly, but those are way too spendy to rationalize on my presently limited budget. So I’ve been keeping an eye on the local Craigslist instead. Most of the Dragonflies there were still $70 and up. Then I spied a Coleman two-burner car-camping stove on sale for $35, about $10 less than the norm for such things, in the “items available in nearby areas” section. Its picture showed it in very good condition, atop a stack of other such stoves, and the ad mentioned the seller being hard of hearing. Ah, thought I, a fully checked-out and restored stove from a retired tinkerer with a hobby business to pass the time. Probably every bit the deal it appears to be.

It’s not lightweight like the Dragonfly, but I seldom backpack anyhow. My Dad had (still has) one and used it for years on camping trips and (when burn bans were in place) picnics. It never let him down. It was not tippy. It simmered easily. It performed acceptably in the wind.

But it was for sale in Mount Vernon. Add the ferry tolls and gas and it’s totally not a justifiable expense. Except that I was going to Lopez Island this weekend, and Mount Vernon is essentially on the way there. So I contacted the seller and said that if it was still available Sunday (today), I was interested in buying it. It was, and the seller was basically as I had sussed him out. He demonstrated the stove worked, we chatted a bit, and I left with it. It set me back 1/4 the price of a new Dragonfly.

My ride partner had asked to be dropped off downtown, so he could visit a used book store he liked. While the proprietor was ringing up my friend’s purchases, I remembered a highly-regarded (and out of print) book on mosses I had been wanting for some time. I asked where the botany section was and darted off. And there it was, priced at $9.95. It sells for $40 and up on Amazon. It followed me home, too.

Published at 21:20 on 26 July 2017

Well, chalk up another blown interview. I’m not sure if it’s just age discrimination at work (and deliberately creating impossible hurdles as a pretext) or just trends moving in ways that I am fundamentally incompatible with (so much of the “agile” trend might more accurately be described as “give software developers as little privacy and personal space as possible, and maximize the number of interruptions they are subject to”).

Whatever the reason, it’s becoming increasingly clear that today’s tech workplace is probably not for me. I could make yesterday’s work, but that was yesterday, and yesterday is gone.

So I’m increasingly thinking it’s time to move on to something else. The big question is what.

Published at 17:35 on 23 July 2017

Some years ago, I was renting a room in a house. In the utility room was a box of a product called “Dirtex,” which could be used for, amongst other things, a floor cleaner. Because I needed to clean a floor that day, and it was handy, I tried it. It worked wonderfully.

A glimpse at the ingredients showed that it was mostly “sodium sesquicarbonate,” a compound new to me at the time. It’s basically a double salt of sodium carbonate (a.k.a. washing soda) and sodium bicarbonate (a.k.a. baking soda).

I couldn’t find that product after I moved to Bainbridge Island, but the grocery store here sells both washing soda and baking soda, and I have a gram scale. So it was a simple matter to weigh out 286 grams of washing soda (being a decahydrate, it has a high molecular weight) and 84 grams of baking soda, and mix the two.

No, that’s not making true sodium sesquicarbonate unless I dissolve and recrystallize the result, but given that I’m just going to be dissolving it in a bucket of mop water, it makes no difference to the resulting solution. And yes, I’m sure there’s a little bit of variation as the powders separate and settle, but mopping the floor isn’t a precision science. It works well enough.

Which, to the best I can recollect, is about as well as the commercial product worked, which in turn is quite well indeed.

Published at 16:16 on 11 July 2017

Just to be able to talk to an actual person at the company? Does this anonymous employer have any idea how onerous a demand that is on someone’s schedule?

Demanding a four-hour time investment just to be able to speak to a human, even a personnel droid, is bad enough. Demanding it be in the form of a timed on-line exercise that cannot be paused takes the cake. Now it has to be four consecutive hours, blocked off in one’s schedule. That’s nearly as big a time commitment as a half-day on-site interview!

And realize, I do poorly on timed exercises. My style is to shelve things and think about them “in the background” for a while while working on other things. Timed exercises are fundamentally incompatible with that technique. So it’s hardly a surprise that the number of job applications that have gone further as a result of attempting such things are, in my case, exactly zero.

With those kind of odds, you can bet I am not falling over myself in eagerness to start the exercise. I may still attempt it, but frankly, there’s things right now I can do that have more promise than this particular time sink.

Published at 11:47 on 28 June 2017

A few months ago I had the opportunity to use an iPhone. Unbelievably, the thing took eight keystrokes to simply hang up an in-progress call. Eight! I am not making this up:

1. After 30 seconds or so of idleness, the phone locks itself due to security measures. (The phone for some reason considers itself to be “idle” even though it is actively in use for a call at the time.)
2. Given virtually all calls last longer than 30 seconds, that means you must first get the attention of the now-locked iPhone. Press the one and only actual mechanical button offering tactile feedback the device has (1 keystroke, 1 in total).
3. It is now time to enter the unlock code for the phone (4 additional keystrokes, 5 in total, and counting).
4. Despite the device being a phone, and a phone call being actively in place, for some reason you are now in the phone’s default mode, which has nothing to do with making or managing telephone calls. Tap the icon that puts the phone in phone mode (1 additional keystroke, 6 in total, and counting).
5. Despite there being a phone call actively in place, when you enter phone mode you are placed in the mode where you can make an additional call, not for managing the existing in-progress call. You must manually select the current call (1 additional keystroke, 7 in total, and counting).
6. You are finally now presented with the desired icon to click on that will end the call. Click on it (1 final keystroke, grand total of 8).
7. Congratulations! You have at long last managed to hang up.

By the time that’s all done, odds are at least 50-50 the other party has long since hung up already and the call has timed out before you could hang it up.

Why would I want to have a device that packs so many non-phone duties into itself, and implements its total set of duties so poorly, that using it for its primary intended purpose is then severely compromised? The nearly 40-year-old 2500DM set on my desk never has firmware to update, will never radically and unexpectedly change its user interface, and has a set of hook switch buttons that are always there waiting for me to use them on a moment’s notice whenever I want to hang up on a call. Even the cheapest flip phone has an END button that’s always there waiting for me to use it. Neither phone decides in the midst of an in-progress call of all things that it’s “idle” and now needs a password to be unlocked.

The killer came when I realized that this is an iPhone, and Apple has a well-deserved reputation for the best-designed system software. That is how the best smartphone on the market implements its user interface. The other smartphones are almost certainly worse.

Published at 19:39 on 16 June 2017

So, I see a job listing. It’s obviously posted by a recruiting firm, but it’s a distinctly better than average match, and I haven’t sent anything to such people on a long time, so I decide to give it a try.

It almost immediately prompts a callback. There’s just something sleazy about the level of eagerness in the guy’s voice, and how it’s hard to get a word in edgewise. Finally he calms down enough to where I can ask a few questions.

At that point, it becomes clear that:

• No such job actually exists; he just crafted the job description to prompt responses and pad his list of existing contacts (he even admits as such), and
• Most of his clients are in Bellevue, despite his listing the job as being in “Seattle.” Bellevue is an unacceptably long commute for me, so I deliberately ask Indeed to search for jobs “only in” Seattle proper.

And that’s why I have such a dim view of recruiting and consulting agencies, and as such generally shun them. They misrepresent.

Published at 08:37 on 8 June 2017

So, I’m in this basement where a washing machine has just been installed. Two plumbers are there, having just added the supply and drain lines for the machine. There is also a washtub sink in the basement.

The basement lies below the level of the sewers, so both washtub and washing machine drain to a small tank which has a lift pump in it. Note I said small: the tank was intended to serve the washtub sink only and has not been upgraded to reflect the new washing machine. I point out to the plumbers that it’s almost certain to overflow and flood, and they both dismiss my claim, pointing out my lack of professional experience as a plumber.

The first load of clothes is loaded and the machine started. When it reaches the end of the wash cycle and drains, sure enough, the tank overflows. The plumbers express surprise about this mystifying and unexpected (to them) outcome, and propose solutions that fall short of expanding either the tank and or pump capacity sufficient to prevent further such incidents.

I point out that at minimum, the tank needs to be able to accommodate the maximum volume expected to be drained from the sink at any one time plus the volume of water from the machine, or the pump must be able to accompany the sum of the two corresponding flow rates. My objections are dismissed; there is insufficient space for a large tank and it is considered too costly to replace the line from the pump with a larger one.

At this point I wake up.

Published at 21:55 on 3 June 2017

I was at the grand opening of BARN today and a woman first commented on my style (or would that be my anti-style) then asked me what tattoos I had. “None” was my answer. I’ve never managed to come up with a design I’d want to have permanently on my body, you see.

To which she suggested the text of some quote that was meaningful to me. At that point, I knew immediately what the quote should be. It’s somewhat long, and would have to coil around my arm a bit, but I’ve seen tattooed texts that do that on other people and they are often very attractive. (I am not going to divulge the quotation ahead of time.)

It’s all very early in the process, so this is something that may well never happen. The process is so difficult to reverse that it must be considered irreversible. The regret from a little extra delaying and consideration pales in comparison to the regret for having it done at all.

Published at 07:59 on 18 May 2017

The excerpts below are from this article by the New York Times.

Enemies from within have launched a “deep-state” smear campaign, news organizations are acting with ulterior motives, and the worst attacks are yet to come.

The term “deep state” is not a neologism; it’s been around for a long time and applied to many political situations. And there does appear to be such a thing at work in the USA presently. That’s a good thing, in this context, since it’s acting for the preservation of an Establishment that while deeply flawed, is greatly preferable to the sort of fascist state Trump desires to create.

The worst attacks are indeed probably yet to come, but it must be pointed out that the most effective attack strategy so far has been to simply tell the truth about how awful Trump is. If Trump stopped violating the norms of a free, open society, he’d be brutally effective in disarming his adversaries (who in turn would dwindle in number and diminish in militance as motives to oppose Trump vanished).

The bit about the media I will cover after the following excerpt:

Pushing back against the biggest threat so far to Donald Trump’s young presidency, his most fervent supporters are building alternative narratives to run alongside the “establishment” media account — from relatively benign diversions to more bizarre conspiracies.

Sources such as the New York Times are definitely the Establishment media. There is no inaccuracy on the part of anyone (including the far right) describing them as such. And they are out to get Trump. For good reason; Trump violates numerous basic norms of a free and open society.

With varying degrees of credibility and credulity, conservatives have fed stories that Mr. Trump is the victim of sabotage by an adversarial intelligence community full of Trojan horse holdovers from the Obama administration.

“There is someone burrowed into the intelligence community who wants to hurt Trump,” the conservative author and radio host Laura Ingraham warned.

There are individuals in the Intelligence Community who want to damage Trump. For good reason: Trump violates basic norms. These acts on the part of the Intelligence Community are not a violation of duty. These agencies do serve under the command of the president, but the oath they pledge to upheld is not one of loyalty to president; it is one of loyalty to the US Constitution. Intelligence agents have not merely the right but the duty to disobey orders, regulations, and even laws if doing so is, in their sober judgement, the best practical way to uphold the Constitution they pledged loyalty to.

This goes for more than just the Intelligence Community, by the way. All civil servants (as well as all members of the armed forces) take similar oaths. The wording of the oaths was deliberately chosen long ago, for the express reason of helping to incite precisely the sort of resistance from within which we are now seeing, should an enemy of a democratic republic ever take possession of the White House.

The “deep state” is very real, but far from being an unforeseen aberration on the body politic, it is a deliberately created check against the sort of situation we find ourselves in.

The part about the Obama administration is mostly baseless smoke-blowing. While it is true that there are many in the civil service who were hired during those years, the civil service has long been operated at arm’s length from the presidency. Moreover, the civil service is full of individuals who have been in it for many decades; there’s plenty of civil servants who were hired under Republican administrations.

For many Trump loyalists, the issue is not whether his presidency is messy and chaotic and dysfunctional. Many of them seemed resigned long ago to the fact that it would be. The more relevant question is whether they see anyone else who is equipped to change Washington in the way Mr. Trump promised he would.

None of the above should be construed to deny that many of the motives for voters to choose Trump are in fact valid. The Establishment has ignored the desires of many working-class people, for many decades. This is true for both political parties.

That anger will not vanish when Trump vanishes from the White House. Nor should it. It needs to be given a more fact-based and less hateful outlet by creating a left-wing populist movement. This may prove easier than many assume (witness how the Occupy movement emerged seemingly out of nowhere).

Trump supporters will feel plenty bitter and let down when their führer falls, but the vast majority of people have shockingly short political memories. After the anger dies down, many will become potentially receptive to alternate messages.

Any alliance the Left makes with the Establishment should therefore be a temporary one aimed at addressing the current crises the Trump presidency represents. If not, the anger will remain, searching for an outlet, and there will always be demagogues on the Right willing to exploit it.

Ultimately, the Establishment is untenable and cannot stand in its present state for long. If one desires to preserve basic freedoms, it is going to be necessary to move society leftwards.

Published at 21:31 on 17 May 2017

But it is encouraging to see how much the Trump regime has unraveled in the past week or so. Trump is a supreme threat, both to this country and the planet as a whole, and the sooner he goes, the better.

At this stage, it bears observing that everything publicly observable about Trump is consistent with the thesis that he is a Putin puppet. This includes the bombing of that Syrian air base (remember, he warned Russia first so they could move their planes out). When it’s topped off by first firing the FBI director for refusing to stop a Russia-related investigation, then the leaking of classified information to the Russians, things really smell fishy.

No this doesn’t prove anything, of course, but the Putin puppet thesis is the simplest explanation going, and even if ultimately proven false, the willing obstruction of justice is itself an impeachable offense.

Now we wait. Investigations take time, and while that happens it’s likely the “downward spiral” will continue. I do not necessarily think it will continue to happen at the rate it has this week, based on Trump’s campaign (he had his epically bad weeks, but then he’d have better ones, and even occasional times when he appeared mostly normal).

But, who knows, it just might. Trump is extremely thin-skinned and emotionally immature (on the latter point, he himself has admitted he’s basically the same person he was in the first grade), and leaks from the White House indicate he is taking recent events very poorly. Things may well have passed a tipping point wherein bad news has created an emotional breakdown which ensures further erratic behavior (and thus further bad news).

It also bears pointing out that the Trump regime may end sooner than most people think, if Trump chooses to resign in frustration. If the latter happens, expect no small amount of purile outbursts about how the evil system and ungrateful public have deprived a now unworthy country of its greatest president ever. According to Trump, everyone is potentially responsible for Trump’s problems save for Trump himself.

Who knows, it may even end in Trump’s suicide, particularly if damning enough news comes out during the investigations. The motivating factor would be an existential crisis caused by being forced to acknowledge that far from being the greatest ever, he’s a miserable failure the likes of which the presidency has never seen before.