I remember the old KKK doing this when I was a kid. Playing the media like a fiddle. And where are their Proud Girls?
Year: 2020
House Wiring Project Final
Got my 16 port switch and cables today. Hooked them all up and moved a few things from wireless to wired. As usual it took a while longer than expected. Seems some old devices might have hung on to old IP addresses for a while. An old Apple TV had a really crazy IP address. After much rebooting it looks like it is all working.
House Wiring Project
My house is probably 25 years old. It was wired with CAT5 but it was only used for old fashioned POTS two wire telephone. All the jacks around the house (9 of them) are RJ11 telephone plugs. The wires all meet up in the garage at a patch panel near where the old phone service and DSL came in.
This week I removed the old patch panel, pulled all the wires up into the attic and put ethernet connectors on them. Then I went around to all the jacks in the house and replaced them with ethernet connections. Making those plugs was tricky and took lots of re-work (I estimate a third to half of the ones I did were bad). Pushed them through the wall in the attic into my office and made this slick little recessed patch panel. Gonna buy a 16 port switch and put wired ethernet thought the house. There is even a connection outside on the back patio. That stray coax cable is for my Spectrum cable modem.
Leadership Matters
i like to check out the foreign press. Sometimes it gives a better perspective on what is happening in the US than just domestic news sources. Sometimes a story about events in another country holds up a mirror to what is going on closer to home. A story about Covid-19 in Spain, translated from Spanish but printed in the (domestic) New York Times.
No Home Visits in Scotland
Somehow this was in the Politics section of Bloomberg. I worry that people in the US are forgetting (or being led to forget) that there is a terrible worldwide pandemic going on. The rest of the world is responding while US numbers keep rising.
Scotland Restricts People From Visiting Other People’s Homes
J. J. Redick Podcast with Michael Lewis
New Orleans Pelicans player J. j. Redick has a popular podcast. I’m not much of a podcast guy but his latest episode with author Michael Lewis is pretty good.
The Old Man and the Three with JJ Redick and Tommy Alter
Episode 15: Michael Lewis (featuring Duncan Robinson)
What Is Happening Here
WordPress has a new editor that is challenging me. I especially miss the old Google Photos interface. Android also updated. The icons and fonts now come in two sizes:. Too Big and Too Small. Night mode seems to be on all day long and I cant seem to get my old keyboard back. Had my first Zoom call. Used my Raspberry Pi 4 and a decade old Logitech USB camera. Not a complete success. Refrigerator broke yesterday. Ordered a new one but it will be here in a month. We hope. On the bright side internet is stable. Still making ramen, saw a snake in a tree, got an exercise bike. Walked around the deserted Domain. Making some cat5 connectors, converting my old home phone wires to ethernet.
Logging and Plotting
Been having internet problems lately. I would usually wait until things got bad and then do network traces with MTR and point out where the problem was. Would also text neighbors to see if they were also down (they always were) just to verify that it wasn’t just my own home wiring or equipment.
Not getting much traction with Spectrum, I started logging network data to see exactly when and how bad the latency problems were. I even used a dedicated, wired, Raspberry Pi Zero to make sure the numbers weren’t wobbly due to wifi or other software running on my host.
The end result is two smallish but powerful logging and plotting programs I have shared on GitHub. The Logger is actually similar to an industrial strength tool I wrote for a large bank that was deployed on thousands of production servers. Enjoy.
Wall Street and Main Street, Again
A good read that explains what is going on in the US economy. The US Federal Reserve rescued the financial system, as it should. Congress, however, is balking on a similar rescue for Main Street. This resistance is coming from the Republican side, which normally would not surprise me, but there is a big election going on. I suppose it does not seem to be hurting their election chances much. Do people understand what is going on here?
Steven A. Guccione 