A Jaunty Little Blog – No-wax, easy maintenance, bacteriostatic, and anti-slip.

April 24, 2025

Things that matter

Friends,

I lied to a nun.

I was asked to lie and I went along with the lie. My pal Bruce, the schnoodle entrusted to my care by those caring for a beloved centenarian, was killed on my watch but I couldn’t bring myself to share that news. I danced around the issue at the Idyllwild Indivisible rally where we spoke. Protest rallies are a thing now that the country is descending into authoritarian rule. We meet and we chat and we wonder how to best use our voices to help those who can’t defend themselves. We hugged and she asked me how he was doing. Why was one dog here but not our little boy.

“We had to leave him at home.”

The nuns are lovely and I just can’t break their hearts. They know loss, but do they need more loss? More grief?

We’ve got work to do. We’ve got marching to do, and letter writing to do, and we’re not going to stop the kneecapping of our institutions by crying. We’ve got work to do.

And for that, I lied to a nun. I spent hours working on her computer for free later that day to try and atone, but it still feels wrong. I spared her feelings, but she deserved to know.

Your pal,

– bob

January 7, 2025January 7, 2025

Settle Down 2025, It’s Only Tuesday

Friends,

These are the things that are making my teeth ache today, on this seventh day of the new year. It’s by no means an exhaustive list, but it’s full of things that if taken individually, would make you at least want to close the drapes and stay in bed.

With that fun lead-in, let’s get to it…

Jimmy Carter’s body has arrived in the District of Columbia today to lie in state. I happened to turn on the teevee when a half dozen burly men transferred his casket from the hearse to the caisson in front of the U.S. Navy Memorial. I didn’t anticipate how hard it would hit that the funeral procession for such a decent man would begin the countdown to the inauguration of such a corrupt man as the incoming 47th president.
The incoming administration keeps making noises about buying or in some way taking, maybe by force, Greenland and the Panama Canal. The news outlets assume that these plans will be carried out in some way, so I’m not sure who’s more unhinged here.
Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp has decided to run without fact checkers. This is more pre-obedience to the upcoming regime that’s going to get all of us in a lot of trouble by amplifying the dumb (see above) and burying the truth (see below).
The former and future president’s favorite judge, Aileen Cannon of Florida, has ruled against the release of Special Council Jack Smith’s report on the crimes he was investigating. She managed to get the order in 45 minutes before the report was to be turned over to the most ineffective U.S. Attorney General in the modern era, Merrick Garland. The release of the report relies on a ruling by the 11th Circuit and then a Supreme Court appeal. I’m sure we’re all on pins and needles wondering how that’ll go.
Intense winds are blowing through Southern California over the next few days, and Tommy’s Real Good Electric Utility (aka, Southern California Edison) has already warned us that they may have to shut off power to prevent wildfires. Too late to keep Pacific Palisades safe from fire this afternoon, but maybe that’ll be the extent of the destruction.
I just learned that the Apple Newton OS has a Y2026 bug. I’d let my Newton eMate 300 know, but it’s enjoying a spa day of deep battery cycles and a light vacuuming between the keys.
Justin Trudeau’s resignation as Canada’s Prime Minister is remarkably bad news, I think. He seemed to have a chance to deescalate the incoming administration’s tariff nonsense, but if he’s replaced with some hard line nationalist goon, who knows. A tit-for-tat trade war with Canada could be very bad for all of us.
Speaking of trade wars, can somebody rein in the once and future president’s pet billionaire? Elon Musk appears to be picking fights with European democracies and nobody can be sure if he’s acting alone or if he has the blessing of Time’s kleptocrat of the year.

Did I miss anything that’s keeping you up at night? Drop it in the comments and we’ll add it to the list of horrors!

Your best pal,

– bob

January 1, 2025January 1, 2025

There’s Never A Better Time Than Now

Friends,

I was excited. I’ll freely admit that I found the prospect of a female president exhilarating. Dudes have had their shot, so it seemed that a fresh perspective would electrify an electorate in deep malaise and a large minority of the country agreed with me.

But it was still a minority.

That means that it’s time for a psychological reset. It’s also time to acknowledge that a majority of the electorate has a short memory and couldn’t be bothered to read or think or look out for their fellows. That’s the product of a half-century long Republican project working as planned, but also the subject of a later post.

My plan for this first post of the new year is to think about how to proceed and what I can do to contribute (you’re probably going to share something about taking better care of yourself, too. – ed Don’t be silly. I’m a paragon of good health and virtuous living.). Here’s a first draft of a list of thoughts that I’m considering to firm up at some point to create something of a plan…

Things to do to make 2025 better

Stop giving artificial intelligence your thoughts for free

The suits consider me a “content creator”, which is as far as I can tell, anybody who fills blank spots on empty pages with words or pictures. Those words or pictures don’t have to be pretty or insightful or memorable or meaningful. They just have to fill the space.

What we need to do first, is stop being “content creators” and return to being writers and authors and artists and photographers and philosophers and scientists. And yes, pundits and cranks and rabble-rousers too. It’s not “content,” it’s perspective and we need more of it. That said, there are better places to do that than social media sites. They have more traffic, but I’m not comfortable with Meta and Bluesky and Google owning what I share on the Internet. That’s why there’ll be more here and that’s why it’s behind a robots.txt file that seeks to block their crawlers.

Also, I thought it’d be fun, even though I don’t know how long it’ll be fun, to just post photos taken on a Handspring Visor with a first generation eyemodule. They’re really awful and it’s a pain to get them from the device to here, but I love how they’re turning out. Lo-Fi pixel slurry that’s sort of a cross between Super 8 and a Fisher-Price PXL2000.

Stop obeying in advance

Yes, the good guys lost the election, but that doesn’t mean we need to kneel in front of a deranged kakistocracy even before it has been installed. They can’t tell you what to do or how to act or how to spend your money or when and how to enforce your laws. Even when their clown car has disgorged its passengers in the District of Columbia, there is every indication that there will be a wide gulf between the evils they want to do and the evils they’ll actually be able to implement.

You can’t build concentration camps and run a mass deportation regime if Congress can’t agree on how to fund it.

Of course, they probably can’t fund the government either, so that’s a different hardship. One thing at a time.

Make somebody’s life easier

Here’s my plan. I know a few things about a lot of things. In the past, I didn’t think too much about this. Everybody has the capacity to learn about stuff and figure things out. Intellectual curiosity is baked in, isn’t it?

Nope!

As the election taught me, sometimes people need more help. That’s a good reason to share more of what I’ve been working on and maybe drop some tips that may have been missing for somebody else. The people who contribute to archive.org are famous for this, scanning old documentation for obscure things or uploading drivers for ancient tech. Speaking of that…

Cut down on buying new stuff

The oligarchs have plenty of dough and don’t need any more of mine. I’m trying to be mindful of where my dollars go since the California insurance market is crushing my finances. I’m patronizing local businesses first, then far-flung small business. Only when neither of them carry what I’m looking for will I resort to Amazon or, well, Amazon.

By the way, now that Fry’s Electronics is gone, where are you sourcing your electronic parts?

Back up your stuff

This sounds paranoid, but I’m seeing a lot of people I trust online recommend full, offline, or air-gapped backups. The US Treasury just got hacked by China, so my Javelin pictures may seem like small potatoes, but they’re my potatoes and I’d like to keep them safe.

Does that mean journaling on a typewriter to keep my memories of this time safe? No, but that seems like fun. I might have to get back to that.

So there it is. The first day of 2025 in the books. I think we’re going to okay, but we’ll need to look out for each other. It’s going to be a rocky few years.

Your pal,

– bob

August 14, 2024

Softening the Readership

Friends,

I really haven’t seen people in the country and in my circle change their mood so dramatically from dour resignation to cheerful optimism, as when Joe Biden (may the goddess pour blessings upon him) stepped down from the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris. It turns out that the enthusiasm is not confined to we liberal elites on the coasts. People love her across the country.

There are 83 days until election day (can we talk about always having 100 day elections?) and if we keep this up, we could potentially have a landslide election and win enough down-ballot races to keep the Senate and take the House. Think about that for a moment.

I have.

Your pal,

– bob

August 14, 2024

What, Another Computer Post?

Friends,

A lot of years ago, when I used to work at the Omnipresent Charitable Organization, we got a donation of broken PowerBooks. I wanted to use one of them as my work machine, so I sent them out to Powerbook Medic for diagnosis. The doctor did not have good news: One had a bad logic board and the other had a bad power board. No way the charity would pay for repairs, so they had to go.

I bought them for next to nothing to see what I could do with them, and they spent a little time with my sister. Bad logic board machine charging batteries that would run the machine with the bad power board. That got tiresome (of course it did!) and they ended up on a shelf.

Fast forward ten years, and my interest was renewed. Why? A sale on PowerBook power boards showed up and I bought one. Old board out, new one in. Then the hard drive packed up and I gave up.

Another few years forward and a member on the 68kmla site asks if anybody has a line on Pismo parts. I was pretty sure one of the two was a Pismo, but wasn’t sure which. I pulled out the bronze keyboard big boys and discovered that the dead one was a Lombard, and the good one, the one I have now fitted with an SSD, is a Pismo.

Our 68kmla friend still wanted the Lombard, so we arranged for shipping and it went out the other day.

A working Pismo was not in my plans, but here it is. The keyboard is very good and it’s pretty responsive despite the small amount of RAM. I’m kinda digging it.

Your pal,

– bob

June 20, 2024June 22, 2024

No Love

Friends,

Something was up about a certain computer that I happen to be using right now. Remember this?

In case you were wondering, the fans in my 2019 Intel Macbook Air are going nuts right now. Is it because I’m dropping so much truth (i’m not feeling very well right now. -ed Me neither, dog. um, gross. -ed). I think the problem is that this machine is underpowered, unloved for its zero-travel keyboard with the dodgy zero key, and ready to be retired. UPDATE: Or mail.app crashed. Why? No idea.

Apple does too, and they’ve decided that this machine is best suited to prop up a rat’s nest in a landfill.

What Macs will support macOS 15
iMac — 2019 and later
iMac Pro
MacBook Air — 2020 and later
MacBook Pro — 2017 and later
Mac Pro — 2019 and later
Mac Studio — 2022 and later
Mac mini — 2018 and later

…because they believe, and with good reason, that this machine can’t handle the next version of the operating system. It’s a ruthless decision and a reasonable one all at the same time. This machine is a little sad about everything but the most lightweight text editing. Sad, really.

I’ll miss it, though. It’s got a cool shape and the battery life is very good, even after all this time. I’m sure my new M3 Macbook Air will spare a thought. It probably won’t be a kind thought, but it’ll be a thought.

Your pal,

– bob

May 14, 2024May 14, 2024

Dad’s Purse

Friends,

When we were kids, we used to call Dad’s work truck his purse. Mom’s purse was usually an enormous handbag with every conceivable item to address every conceivable contingency. Band-Aids, breath mints, toothpicks, tiny sewing kits, and safety pins were all there. Mom’s purse is much more modest these days, but Dad’s purse, long after he’d retired, contained everything you’d need to build a house. Once the pickup truck was retired, a subset of all of the tools made its way into his Jeep. Power tools yielded to a corded drill and an extension cord, but the utility was retained.

I have continued this tradition. The tools in my Jeep could help you find faulty circuits, drill holes, attach things to other things, and fix a lot of plumbing problems. It’s, essentially, my purse. Last weekend, I hitched a ride to the desert with my sister to see Mom for her birthday. The purse stayed here for the first time, which was really weird.

What if something breaks!

I guess we would’ve tried to figure it out. But nothing broke. If you listen to Mom’s concerns our childhood home is falling down, but it’s actually highly unusual that things break over there. She was fine. I was fine. We had a great time.

There’s a lesson to be learned here.

Your pal,

– bob

April 22, 2024

Did you try turning it off and on again?

Friends,

It’s been one of the Monday-est Mondays in a while, but here’s some good news that makes me remarkably happy. The engineers at JPL correctly diagnosed the problem on the Voyager 1 spacecraft that put it in a boot loop since November. They uploaded a patch (22+ hours from here to there) and have been waiting all day for confirmation that it worked. That’s pretty decent tech support for a 50-year old hand-built computer that’s 15 billion miles away.

I guess patience pays off.

Your pal,

– bob

April 20, 2024

No, YOU need to cool down

Friends,

It’s been a while and the wet paper bag of events has finally managed to drop its load on my keyboard. In other, less pale mauve terms, a lot has happened and it’s time to share some of it with you, dearest reader.

The structure of this post is kinda up in the air, so let’s bookend the thing with good news. Nothing here is particularly bad or concerning, but a sort of positivity sandwich seems like the way to go, so let’s get started!

I’m still gainfully employed in my chosen profession! If you’ve been following the advertising and marketing industry, this is quite a feat. There have been massive layoffs—if not actual agency failures—here in the States and in Europe. Clients seem to be taking advantage of this by forcing rates down into the basement, but that’s probably not a great idea if they’re hoping to retain talent for their future projects. It works to bolster their quarterly results, sure, but skittish creatives are going to jump ship or change industries entirely. I’m not that easily spooked, so I’m sticking with it.

With that in mind, we were pretty excited when the call came in to get ready to come to London this summer. My sweetheart and I have been musing about our first European trip together, so a free ticket for me meant half-priced travel for both of us. England? Great. We can get a free trial for Babbel to learn the language, and we can get plug adapters for our chargers. Let’s go!

needle scratch.wav

The call today was postponing the trip. We bought non-refundable plane tickets, which added some complication, but there’s a happy resolution for that on the horizon. I’m not entirely sure what it is at the moment, but it’s gonna be amazing. Probably.

Before this happened, we moved my mother in-law out of her retirement apartment and into a great memory care facility. “Is there such a thing?” I hear you ask. What I know is this: she’s happier, healthier, and is more engaged. I think it’s very reasonable to say that it’s a great facility.

My illustrious writing partner was scheduled to have a hip replacement months ago. She’s SOOO much older than I am (eight months, friend. maybe cool it. – ed It’s a running gag. Relax.) but it really doesn’t seem like the hardware should pack up this early, and I don’t envy her having to wait another few months to get the procedure done. Also, I missed commemorating her birthday, so I’m a bad friend and feel terrible.

Speaking of repairs, and I know that she has, if you’ve heard of P0456, that’s a small leak of your car’s evaporative emissions system. Without a smoke machine it’s hard to find those small leaks, so I acted on a hunch and replaced the evaporative system sensor based on a bunch of YouTube videos. It seems to have worked so far, but I can’t be sure because, well, I’ve stopped smoking.

audience light applause.wav

Since you asked, I got the extra parts to install the Gotek floppy eliminator I picked up at VCF SoCal in my Kaypro 2x. Have I done it yet, no. I’m looking forward to not relying on 5 1/4″ floppies to make things happen on the machine which admittedly can’t do too much, but I still want to plop the machine on a table at the local Panera and start working.

In case you were wondering, the fans in my 2019 Intel Macbook Air are going nuts right now. Is it because I’m dropping so much truth (i’m not feeling very well right now. -ed Me neither, dog. um, gross. -ed). I think the problem is that this machine is underpowered, unloved for its zero-travel keyboard with the dodgy zero key, and ready to be retired. UPDATE: Or mail.app crashed. Why? No idea.

Remember how the Republican tax cuts from 2018 benefitted the very wealthy and threw the middle class a bone for a couple years to keep “the people” from revolting? It turns out that whatever enticement we had to not storm the Bastille has ended this year. Will low-information middle class voters blame the Biden administration for the tax increase or understand that this was a deliberate sabotage of our system by a bunch of cynical finks who are only in it for themselves? It’s hard to know!

Well, that’s about it for now. More soon.

Your pal,

– bob

February 14, 2024March 13, 2024

A Small Confession

Friends,

I’m using the Olivetti Lettera 36, an electric typewriter from the past that feels like it was intended to predict the future, to write this thing. It’s Italian, but I don’t think that has anything to do with my current problem: How do you make an exclamation mark on this thing? I’ve figured out how to make an apostrophe by rolling up the platen half a line and type a comma. I’ve even figured out that the lowercase “L” is a good substitute for the number one. The problem with this typewriter, as with many others, is that there’s no one key. On this machine, that’s been taken up by the “Keyboard Release” key. I think this machine has a problem with keys jamming in the basket and you need a special key to unjam the jam that they clearly considered to be inevitable.

I can’t say that I blame them. I find that as I grow more comfortable I with the machine, I’m coming perilously close to jamming it myself. Or it’s full of gunk, or rust. Also, let’s be honest, this thing is fairly loud. I’m concerned that the obsolete plastic gears or elderly drive belts are going to give up in short order. We’ll see…

Your best pal,

– bob

UPDATE: I just had to use the Keyboard Release button. I’m not sure exactly what I did to jam the keys, but the Release key did the trick. Super weird. Also, I could still use some help making the exclamation mark.

ANOTHER UPDATE: It looks like there’s a simple solution. Lowercase L for the number one. That was easy. For the exclamation mark, shift+8 for an apostrophe, and continue holding down the shift key, then hit period to stack the characters without advancing the carriage. I must’ve slept through typing class on this one. Amazing! Or, you know, amazing!

AN ADDITIONAL OTHER UPDATE: This post is part of The Typewriter Project. A post nearly every day on a typewriter, then scanned and posted here.

a_small_confession.pdf

February 5, 2024

Crystalizing Block Theory

Friends,

I’ve been poking around lately, reading different theories of the nature of time and our place in various models. Everyone does in one way or another during their Birthday Holiday Season. I just chose the theoretical physics route because that just seems to make more sense (even when it starts making less sense? -ed Spoilers!).

I started thinking about how far away the nebulas and galaxies captured by the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes actually are. Considering the time it takes for those images to get from there to here, what we’re looking at must’ve happened eons ago. Naturally, you start wondering what’s happening in those places now. Do those things even exist anymore?

So one thing leads to another and it’s easy to start thinking about the definition of now, which starts getting into definitions of time. What I didn’t think I’d have to consider is exactly who gets to decide when or even what is now. What we perceive as now has already happened, because like the telescopes, there’s a lag between the sensory inputs and our receipt of them.

And by the way, there’s a lot of screwy speculation about whether we’re all simply living in a simulation. I think this is easily dismissed if you’ve ever watched an episode of Silicon Valley or Halt and Catch Fire. Moving on…

So one theory of how time works is the Block Universe Theory, which is as straightforward as it is unsatisfying. Essentially, according to the theory, everything that has happened or will happen has already happened and our linear perception of time leads us to move through all of the moments<—>in order. Sad for fans of self-determination though. Why should you even make a choice if everything is already set?

Fine. What if you had a Growing Block? Sure, everything that has happened is fixed and agreed upon, but that only happens as our “now” progresses. Things in the future aren’t set, which pleases the folks who dig stuff like relativity, but the past is the past and now no longer exists. The only thing that matters is now, but events taking place now determine how the future will be shaped. Pretty good, right?

It’s fine for most of us, but how do you account for uncertainty, and when does all future get around to, ahem, crystalizing into the present and form the past? And again, whose “now” is creating this narrow and ever-changing band of existence? Should it be yours? Must it be mine for what I’m seeing to be true at any given time?

Anyway, I had a nice little birthday get-together with my sweet wife, my sister, her significant other, and my niece at the beach. The storms in Southern California let up for the day and revealed the lovely view pictured above<—>in the past.

Your pal,

– bob