bob – Page 2 – A Jaunty Little Blog

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

December 31, 2023February 5, 2024

The Fates

Friends,

The end of 2023 is fast approaching. Even though the calendar year is an artificial construct, I’ll be glad to see the last hateful, hurtful, and mournful 365 days go away. Just to give you a taste, my father in-law died on the day before Christmas Eve and his widow fell and hit her head later that evening. We spent Christmas Eve morning in the Emergency Room, which led to her admission for a brain bleed. We made our way home and got a few hours of sleep before she was discharged (“I’m not sure why she’s here,” said the attending physician.) so we picked her up and took her to her apartment. Did she fall again that night?

Of course she did.

This time, we asked if she was in pain or bleeding, then asked the attending staff not to send her back to the hospital. This bought us a day to see Mom in the desert.

2023 has been an expensive year, a sad year, a dumb year, a hate-filled year, a violence-choked year, and a year that we must not forget. Remember 2022? It was pretty terrible and sad and dumb. 2021? Not great! Previously, I filled these pages with scratchy-eyed moping about how awful things had become and maybe we should simply stay in bed ¹. Not this year.

This year I’ve had it with the defeatism and dour predictions.

I’m just not having it from me or from you. This is our year to punch real-life nazis. The bad guys, who mostly identify as Republicans here in the United States, but not always, are trying to take away our rights so that their masters make more money and accrue more power. in 2024, we’ve got a job to do, vote them out and reinforce structures originally designed to keep thugs and autocrats away from power. Using the plain language of the Constitution’s Article 3 is a good start if we hope to keep insurrectionist off of the ballot.

It’s taken us 150 years to finish Reconstruction, but it looks like the time for half-measures and appeasement is over. Whatever we do is going to have to happen this year.

Yes, I’d rather lick my wounds and feel sorry and mourn and regroup, and I honestly hope that we have time for that soon, but this is going to be messy. The bad guys won’t respond to reason. Maybe they’ll respond to a solid pasting at the polls. That’s going to require all of us getting out there again.

Your pal,

– bob

¹ My Mom’s mother had suggested that if things got too rough or scary, the best solution was probably to stay in bed with the covers pulled up. That might not be the best advice these days (or even in those days, to be fair).

November 19, 2023

The Bastards

Dear friends,

It’s been a little while but I do need to make mention that woodpeckers are bastards.

– bob

October 6, 2023October 6, 2023

The Conceit

Friends,

It’s been a while, but I’ve been busy.

However, I have a plan. Two weeks ago I visited my piney paradise (more on how much I miss the forest tomorrow) and stopped by the local thrift shop. While there, I was thrilled to discover a 1964 Olivetti Lettera 32 that I promptly picked up. This was in service to satisfy my newfound desire to own a nice typewriter (this is news. – ed I don’t know if you missed this, but I haven’t posted anything new in quite a while.)

The new machine is going to replace the previous two typewriters I picked up solely because the typing effort on the other two is way too high—I really have to stab the keys on the Sears machine and the Smith Corona very hard to get anything on a page and that’s annoying.

So here’s the idea: I type out a post on paper, plop it into the scanner, then it shows up here. It seems fun to me. Gizmos, scripting, and old mechanical things. What could possibly go wrong?

– bob

September 9, 2023September 9, 2023

Where to begin…

Friends,

I had an idea, which is dangerous on its surface, but it turns out that this idea has been kind of expensive. The idea revolves around the idea of distraction-free writing. Which is in itself a misnomer. Who isn’t distracted by things? Dogs, coyotes breaking into the backyard trying to eat dogs, Nine Inch Nails suddenly popping up in the playlist, a smell, the garbage trucks playing catch-up from the holiday weekend speeding down the street. You get the idea. Life is hectic.

I thought that if I were to spend more time posting to this here endeavor, I could dig through the rubble of history to find a nice technological solution to get away from the social media and email notifications constantly ding-ding-dinging just in my periphery.

I thought that I might take advantage of one of the best compact keyboards from the mid-90s. None other than the Newton External Keyboard with a USB adapter.

It works great, but there’s that distraction again with the iPad happy to share notifications about EVERYTHING. Geez Karen, cool it.

Then I thought that I’d spend a little time resurrecting the trusty Palm Pilot. I already had the folding keyboard, so how hard could it be?

Hard enough. Palm desktop won’t install on Intel Macs. Palm Pilots of a certain vintage don’t have drivers for the keyboard built in, and Memo stinks as a writing tool. Also, getting files out is just as challenging as it is with the Apple Newton eMate. In either scenario, there needs to be an old computer sitting around as an intermediary. It doesn’t help that the more recent versions of macOS don’t play nice with Appletalk and the Apple Filing Protocol. Because, you know, progress.

Also, did the Palm Pilot screen get smaller? Just me? okay.

The answer for distraction-free writing, staring down all of us tech nerds, is the manual typewriter. Slamming slugs against an ink-drenched ribbon to leave some meaning behind. You’ve heard of it.

I got very silly and bought a couple machines through eBay. Machines that looked cool, but machines that I don’t like very much.

The key effort is too high for me and my now-noodly copywriter arms. Also, I wasn’t ready for the stadium layout of the keys. It turns out that I just don’t want to reach that high for the number row, since I’ve spent all this time on flat keyboards. I stopped by the Idyllwild Help Center today and found the machine everyone has been telling me I’d love—a mid-60s Olivetti Lettera 32. The key layout is nearly flat and the effort is so light that I could type on this thing all day.

It’s an absolute joy to type on, and once I put in a new ribbon, it should be a nice addition to the typing horde.

The plan is pretty simple(-ish). I have a sheet-feed scanner that I can connect to a computer that’s on most of the time. I’ll type a page, plop it into the scanner, and through some scripting I can recognize the text and save the image of the page, so everything just posts to the blog.

Like magic.

I guess we’ll see if that works when I post my first typed blog post.

The 20-something marketing experts offering advice on how to build audiences suggest not making promises in your blog that you can’t deliver. I can’t let them down, can I?

Actually, I don’t mind letting them down, but not you, dear reader. Let’s make this happen!

Your pal,

– bob

June 30, 2023

Creeping fascism, alarms, and the tyranny of zero

Friends,

Let’s dispense with the apologia and get right to it. (good luck with that. you’re feeling terrible right now, aren’t you? -ed Okay, I’m not feeling great about the time that’s passed since the last post, but I simply wanted to get on with it. Is that so wrong?)

I work for a company based in London, as do a half dozen other charming individuals here in the States. Most are on the Atlantic coast, while only three of us are here on the left side of the continent. Because several of my colleagues live in Florida, I take a moment from my work day to give them grief about their current governor. This person is also a presidential candidate, and is working very hard to be more cruel, more inhuman, more opposed to human life on this planet than his opponents. Essentially, the Republican party game plan. Here’s a data point:

Florida bill allowing radioactive roads made of potentially cancer-causing mining waste signed by DeSantis

Because I don’t understand messianic Christians and their deal, I don’t get the destruction of the planet in service of their belief in some sort of redemption by fire or apocalypse or whatever. I don’t get it. Further, while I have shifted my worldview to allow for people’s religions as a fun fandom that we should probably not subject to our scorn, I’m not nearly as sanguine about the hard-right Catholics on the US Supreme Court. They’ve issued opinions this week to take away rights from a large swath of the population. This week, at the end of their nutso decision-making and making up stuff, they let us know that we shouldn’t criticize them for their highly partisan decisions.

In my country, we have a saying; “You need to go fuck yourselves.”

The modest proposals to fix this, to add four more justices—with 13 justices to coincide with the 13 circuit courts—still hasn’t gained the support of the president. Madness.

Maybe he’d prefer my plan, adding 50 justices, selecting a baker’s dozen for each case via lottery. It’s reasonable, which is why they won’t do it.

What’s left? The destruction of this democracy through the machinations of fascists and would-be fascists in Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio, and too many other places. It’s hard to be encouraged here. The only thing we can do is to keep them out of power.

That’s it.

Let’s go!

Your pal,

– bob