jc blog - tales of a modern-day nomadic hunter-gatherer

Follow jcomeau_ictx on Twitter This is the weblog of Intrepid Wanderer. You never know what you might find here; graphic descriptions of bodily functions, computer programming secrets, proselytizing for the antichrist, miscellaneous ranting and kvetching, valuable information on living off the land... if you don't share my rather weird interests you may want to try slashdot instead.

You can consider my Del.icio.us links an extension to my blog, as are my LifeTango goals and my other to-do items. My to-buy list is also public, but only for sharing any useful ideas that might be there; I'm not requesting charity, neither do I offer it.

You can find me easily in google searches, as jcomeau, jcomeau_ictx, or jcomeauictx. There are lots of other jcomeaus, but AFAIK I'm the only jcomeau_ictx out there so far.

If you want to comment on anything you see here, try the new Facebook comments, reachable by clicking the "[comment]" link at the end of each post. If for some reason that isn't working, go ahead and email me, jc.unternet.net. You know what to do with the first dot. Make the 'subject' line something reasonably intelligent-looking or it goes plunk! into the spambasket unread.

This RSS feed may or may not work. Haven't fiddled with it in forever. RSS Feed


2016-06-28-2013Z

I'm in lesson 4 of the EDX course on Justice. John Stuart Mill's writing is a tough slog.

yesterday no joy at the Grocery Outlet dumpster, but inside there was a pound of ground lamb marked down to $3, which, along with a 69 cent bag of egg noodles and a 50 cent can of tomato sauce, made last night's dinner and will probably suffice for all today's meals as well.

I also scored at this morning's food giveaway outside the senior center. two loaves of bread, some onions, and some celery. it was at about 10:30, not 11:30 as I remember from last week. I almost missed it, having gone across the street for coffee at RCU and to TJ for the daily food sample, but I made it back just before the truck pulled up. [comment]

2016-06-25-0256Z

a common rejoinder from ammophobes to the right to keep and bear arms is "what about my right not to be shot?" there are so many things wrong with this, one might be temporarily befuddled as to how to best approach it. I've come to the conclusion that one of the best ways is the positive/nagative classification of rights.

self-defense with firearms doesn't require anything from anyone else except to leave you alone. you are spending your own money and risking your own life. but the imaginary right "not to be shot" would require a massive mobilization of armed enforcers monitoring every area your holiness deigns to visit, each one ready to lay down his own life to save yours. and all it takes is one armed asshole, perhaps even a disgruntled element of that same security force, to deprive you of it.

you might come to the conclusion that your "right" is prohibitively expensive. but since you're sticking "society" with the bill, why would you care? [comment]

2016-06-19-0010Z

just noticed something while debugging a web app: when a Chromium tab isn't the active tab, or Chromium is minimized, setInterval timers are slowed to one per second, regardless of what you had set for the interval. can make for some long nights tearing one's hair out. [comment]

2016-06-18-0140Z

this looks like the simplest way to restore cast iron that I've found. I've got a pan and a dutch oven that both need this done. [comment]

2016-06-15-1443Z

I'm taking the online Justice class, free, from Harvard, in preparation for getting my law degree. I think it might be the source of the "trolley" dilemma posts I've seen on Facebook the last few months. highly recommended. [comment]

2016-06-15-0023Z

in a Facebook argument with an acquaintaince, I pointed out Switzerland as a place where there was high gun ownership, including actual assault rifle ownership, and very little crime. in the course of the discussion I looked up the one mass shooting there in the past 100 years, the Zug massacre. the perpetrator had been filing numerous lawsuits which had been dismissed. since the system had failed him, he took it upon himself to fight the system. as a result of his actions, now the Swiss compile lists of people disgruntled with the authorities, and regularly detain them and search their homes. perhaps unrelated, Swiss gun law became much more strict with the Schengen treaty.

anyway, I was thinking about the Zug massacre in comparison to the Pulse Orlando shooting. in both cases the shooters felt powerless and driven to lash out against those who taunted them: in the first case, the arrogant authorities, who casually dismissed his lawsuits, and the second case, the gays who freely enjoyed their love for one another, while he, oppressed by an overbearing father and religious background, could not.

it isn't the strong and confident who commit such cowardly acts, it's those who have lost hope in their own abilities.

the original argument with my Facebook friend was a quote purportedly by Reagan about how unnecessary AK-47s are for "sporting purposes" or even defense of home. besides his conflating of AK-47s with "machine guns", which were already effectively "banned" with FFA 1938, so most AK clones on the market already being semi-auto, he was the one who signed the detestable Mulford Act into California law to prevent the Black Panthers from their courageous open carry demonstrations in Sacramento. whatever my disagreement with the Panthers' politics, it is undeniable that the image of them proudly marching through the halls of the devil's den, standing tall with their rifles, empowered blacks a hell of a lot more than the government's EBT card ever did or could. the death of that movement set back race relations so badly I don't know if the rift is reparable within my lifetime.

anyway, I'm wandering off topic, I'm not even sure now what this blog post was supposed to convey. gonna hang it up. hope I planted some seeds. [comment]

2016-06-12-1652Z

Florida law states that concealed weapons may not be carried in "Any portion of an establishment licensed to dispense alcoholic beverages for consumption on the premises, which portion of the establishment is primarily devoted to such purpose."

https://www.uslawshield.com/florida-gun-law/

so, the Pulse Orlando shooting took place in... you guessed it... a "gun free zone".

I also tweeted to Pulse asking why they "allow guns on premises" just to see what they say. haven't gotten an answer yet.

already the anti-gun crowd is dancing in the blood, looking for ways to exploit this to make guns more difficult to obtain for the millions who didn't do it.

and note how, after the attack was over and the perp killed, a "state of emergency" was declared on the whole area, punishing all the inhabitants for the acts of someone who went there from another town with the express purpose of mass murder. closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. [comment]

2016-06-12-0506Z

rode about 40 miles on the bike today, round trip to REI in Santa Rosa. got me a water filter to replace the broken LifeStraw. I went with the Sawyer this time, it looks a lot more rugged.

the large, padded seat, as I've probably mentioned before, doesn't help all that much. I keep sliding forward, it's hard to keep good posture, and my butt and balls still hurt, albeit not as bad as with the tiny factory seat.

from Commerce Blvd., turning right onto Golf Course Drive to make a left onto Roberts Lake Rd., is still a real hassle for bicyclists. the traffic doesn't want to let you in to make your left turn. lots of road rage here. I was almost deliberately run over by a cowgirl in a monster pickup truck once. today I just had to curse a lot and give lots of hand signals (no upraised middle finger -- probably counterproductive) and I finally got across.

40 miles is about the maximum per day I'd want to go on this rig. oh, and I've got to change the front bearings. when I sing to myself while riding, the tremolo is added by the front wheel automatically. and every now and then there's some banging and clanging going on. not a good sign. [comment]

2016-06-11-0029Z

learned how to get the pin back into a bike chain. never knew that you shouldn't punch the goddamned thing all the way through. duh.

in any case, my bicycle seems to be rideable again. will maybe give it a try tomorrow. [comment]

2016-06-09-0742Z

finally found the magic incantations to use my old DSA keys with ssh: at the top of ~/.ssh/config, put:

PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes +ssh-dss
HostKeyAlgorithms +ssh-dss

still doesn't work to get me back into freeshell though. there's a password recovery feature but I didn't set it up, none of my old passwords work, and I'm too broke to offer smj a donation to reset it for me. so I guess I'm locked out for a while unless my password comes to me in a dream. [comment]

2016-06-07-2003Z

here's a weird one.

root@vps39987:~# lsof -p1
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
init 1 root cwd DIR 182,564737 4096 2 /
init 1 root rtd DIR 182,564737 4096 2 /
init 1 root txt REG 182,564737 224568 2202 /sbin/init
init 1 root mem REG 182,564737 274084 (deleted)/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnss_files-2.13.so (stat: No such file or directory)
init 1 root mem REG 182,564737 274087 (deleted)/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnss_nis-2.13.so (stat: No such file or directory)
init 1 root mem REG 182,564737 273955 (deleted)/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnsl-2.13.so (stat: No such file or directory)
init 1 root mem REG 182,564737 274061 (deleted)/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnss_compat-2.13.so (stat: No such file or directory)
init 1 root mem REG 182,564737 273075 (deleted)/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl-2.13.so (stat: No such file or directory)
init 1 root mem REG 182,564737 265765 (deleted)/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread-2.13.so (stat: No such file or directory)
init 1 root mem REG 182,564737 272111 (deleted)/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.13.so (stat: No such file or directory)
init 1 root mem REG 182,564737 274113 (deleted)/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt-2.13.so (stat: No such file or directory)
init 1 root mem REG 182,564737 39744 262559 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libjson.so.0.1.0
init 1 root mem REG 182,564737 126232 262470 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libselinux.so.1
init 1 root mem REG 182,564737 286488 264017 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdbus-1.so.3.7.2
init 1 root mem REG 182,564737 38848 264236 /lib/libnih-dbus.so.1.0.0
init 1 root mem REG 182,564737 96216 264225 /lib/libnih.so.1.0.0
init 1 root mem REG 182,564737 272094 (deleted)/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ld-2.13.so (stat: No such file or directory)
init 1 root 0u CHR 1,3 0t0 95 /dev/null
init 1 root 1u CHR 1,3 0t0 95 /dev/null
init 1 root 2u CHR 1,3 0t0 95 /dev/null
init 1 root 3r FIFO 0,8 0t0 212010621 pipe
init 1 root 4w FIFO 0,8 0t0 212010621 pipe
init 1 root 5r DIR 0,10 0 1 inotify
init 1 root 6r DIR 0,10 0 1 inotify
init 1 root 8u unix 0xffff880425366100 0t0 212012641 socket
init 1 root 9r DIR 0,10 0 1 inotify
init 1 root 10r FIFO 0,8 0t0 978022228 pipe

what happened is that I did an apt-get upgrade, which overwrote the libc6 package among others, and those libraries got replaced:

root@vps39987:~# dpkg -S /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt-2.13.so
libc6:amd64: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt-2.13.so

how I found this out is that I couldn't use initctl list (yeah I know, Upstart on a Debian box? don't ask...)

root@vps39987:~# initctl list
initctl: Unable to connect to Upstart: Failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused

even reboot doesn't work. I'll have to use -f, and maybe even that won't do it. [comment]

2016-06-07-0148Z

chemical burn starting to itch instead of just hurt. that's a good sign, I hope, a sign of healing. [comment]

2016-06-06-0409Z

van camping outside Caspar Inn on Friday night, I could smell pot wafting through the open window late at night, and had some weird dreams. in one, a stocky, moustached, smiling, well-dressed man (brown shirt and navy jacket and pants... not many could make that work but he did) kept advancing towards me, pushing me back, over and over.

another dream that same night was a recurring dream in which I had a bracelet-type thing that was supposedly the "New Universal Bible" which I had never read. some woman said she told me years ago that to read it I needed the key. she showed me, a bracelet like mine with two other pieces, each of which looked something like 3/8" by 8" zip ties, joined together somehow.

last night I had a dream of a race similar to the Kinetic Grand Championship, and met a black guy selling some knick-knacks like butterflies, the color of amber LEDs, and incongruously, well-made American tools. he used to be a Moonie, he told me.

when we got home today I went to Grocery Outlet and bought a Hurricane malt liquor for a dollar, a tasteless brew only useful for the alcohol buzz, and drank it down by the river in defiance of local ordinances. it's important to find TAZes (google Temporary Autonomous Zones) in your area and use the hell out of them. then, after a nap in the tall grass, went to the gym for a short workout followed by a shower and shave.

missing ej Parker. "he" still posts on Facebook but it's his wife Andrea, who's having a hell of a time with him in lockup. I guess I'd better write him a postcard or something.

most of the country doesn't even realize we're already in a civil war. cold, for now, but that could change overnight. and a large percentage are cheering for the enemy, either the red or blue teams. the trumpmonkeys and berniebabies. the coming years are going to be dismal. I hope I'll be ready in time. [comment]

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