Sat, 06 Apr 2019

I Dream of Tornados, Part II

For ages, my psyche has marked the start of spring by having a dream about a tornado. At least back to high school, warmer weather, trees start budding and flowers start poking out and — boom, tornado dream.

This year, however, I've had two dreams about tornados in the past week, which is the first time I can remember this happening. I'll have other dreams about weather, but just one with a tornado there ever spring. I'm not sure what this means.

Posted at: 10:34 | category: /random/2016c | Link

Mon, 15 Jan 2018

Updates and Engagement

The standard end-of-the-year party and eating season conspired to keep me from much creative work here, but I've been off work this past week and managed to wrap up a new issue of Late Night Thinking and do some work on my restic systems backup setup. Both will appear here shortly.

Also, if you're one of the small number of people who haven't found this out from any number of places, on 1 November 2016A I got engaged to E, my boyfriend of two years. Wedding is this coming November.

Posted at: 11:36 | category: /random/2016b/01 | Link

Mon, 04 Sep 2017

Techno Housekeeping

A long weekend (here in the US) combined with a few strategic days off, and I had a long, five day weekend. A few of those days I managed to get out of the house and down to a coffee shop, so I got a bit of work in, and managed to wrap up a bunch of techno housekeeping.

First, with a new laptop and a fresh VM install of Debian 9, I've got all the components in place to reach my ideal PGP setup ‐ my day-to-day keys are on a Yubikey 4, ssh can now forward unix domain sockets, and gpg has well-defined socket locations for the agent that deals with keys. Any key operations on the remote VM tunnel back through ssh to the gpg agent running on my laptop, which passes them along to the Yubikey. PIN protected, touch required for operations, and the key material never leaves the Yubikey. This gives me a deeply warm and fuzzy feeling inside. In a year or so, when I build a new colocation box, my key material won't ever touch it.

The info for this is spread out in a few places, perhaps soon I'll put it all together, at least what I do.

Attempting to straighten out the mess of cables under the TV at home caused me to plug the wrong power adapter back into the USB3 drive I have hanging off a NUC that I use as the secondary site for backups for the colo machine, which sent it into the afterlife. A spare drive and 24 hours later, I had all the material re-synced, but it gave me the gumption to start throwing together a plan to shove those backups into at least a third location. I've been doing backup stuff long enough in my career to definitely not trust stuff backed up to two different locations, and to cast a very wary eye on stuff not backed up to at least three different locations.

I'd been wanting to use the Backblaze B2 storage since I first heard about it. After fooling around with it, it's nowhere near as full featured as S3, which I've used a decent amount, but it works and you certainly can't beat the price. After coming across Filippo Valsorda's review of restic, circumstances aligned and I started shoving copies of my AFS volume dumps into B2, encrypted and tracked with restic. Things are slowly bubbling up, which I attribute to the fact that it's not the world's beefiest USB drive setup. After that's up, I'll send a copy of all my system backups there ‐ I've been using a venerable rsync backup script for over a decade now (I just checked the date in the script header). And, with a new laptop, I have a new drive on the way to use for Carbon Copy Cloner, but, owing to this new allegiance to the "at least three sites" mantra, I'll probably be shoving that into restic as well.

That said, I'm also increasingly coming to the opinion that if you use any cloud service, you should use at least two distinct ones. So, depending on what my B2 bill is like, I may end up shoving restic somewhere else as well, perhaps S3 shoved into Glacier.

Posted at: 21:46 | category: /random/2016a/09 | Link

Mon, 29 May 2017

Dear Google Recruiters

Hi! You, or one of your colleagues, has decided to recruit me for Google. Typically, I've been reluctant to consider Google as part of my career path, but I thought I'd give you folks a chance. But first, a story.

Back in the Mists of Time(TM) (July 2006) I created a YouTube account at youtube.com/users/tproa/. Then, Google, starting along the path to becoming the computing behemoth we think of it today, bought out YouTube. For the longest time, I resolutely refused to associate a Google identity with YouTube, logging in with the account name "tproa" for years, until I finally gave in (I think when you folks made it near impossible not to), associating it with "kula@tproa.net".

Then you folks unleashed Google+ on the world, and I'm pretty sure I refused to tie that to my YouTube videos at all.

Then we come to 2015. I've decided that running my own imap service just isn't as much fun as it used to be, and I moved my primary domain, tproa.net, to be a Google Apps domain. Of course, when I did that, I had to rename the former Google identity of 'kula@tproa.net' so I could have it in my new GAFYD, so I renamed it 'old-kula@tproa.net', and made 'kula@tproa.net' one of the accounts in my GAFYD.

When I did that, suddenly all videos associated with youtube.com/users/tproa/ vanished, and I couldn't see them logged in as either old-kula@tproa.net or kula@tproa.net. Much sadness ensued — no longer would I be able to see the wondrous thundercloud formation outside of Ann Arbor, or the ad-hoc tire repair at bike polo, or making coffee with a Chemex at Ugly Mug. Google, in all of its wisdom, has essentially no support, even when I'm a paying customer, so those videos have been stuck, somewhere in the aether, unwatched, unloved.

So here's where you come in. If you can get my videos back, then you'll be the Recruiter at Google who Got Me to Interview.

Posted at: 09:47 | category: /random | Link

Wed, 16 Feb 2011

2011 Coffeeshop of Record Report

Ever since May of 2005 I've had the habit of designating a local coffeeshop as my "Coffeeshop of Record" — it's the place I always hang out at, and my favorite local caffeine establishment. Or, as I sometimes put it, "my drug dealers". Because I'm also that kind of person, I keep statistics of how much I spend there.

Shortly after moving to Ypsilanti I designated the Ugly Mug Cafe as my CsoR. This previous year's statistics (16 February 2010 - 15 February 2011) are:

It adds up, doesn't it? (This is the reason I keep track of it). But, the way I figure it hanging out at the Ugly Mug is my primary form of entertainment, and $7 a week is relatively cheap as those things go.

Notes for those who care: supplies I purchase at the CsoR do not count, e.g. beans I purchase at the Mug for use at home or at work are not counted.

Posted at: 13:03 | category: /random | Link

Thu, 30 Sep 2010

My Life As A Wedding Witness

Every Wednesday, my boss and four of us in our group have what we call a "Small Group Meeting", basically a way of brainstorming and hashing out things that just don't work well in a discussion involving the number of people that make up our entire group. It is traditionally in a coffeeshop down the road from the office, so we can talk without getting interrupted by folks wandering into my boss' office or a meeting room. This Wednesday, however having been a bad one for a couple of co-workers, we went to a place called Roger Monks (area folks may recognize this as the Lord Fox, which changed it's name a while back). They have a bar, and a happy hour, and we could have a meeting and then, hey, bar.

We were most of the way through our meeting when a young couple drove up, walked up the ramp to where we were sitting on the deck outside, and said they had an unusual request to ask of us. They had just decided to get married and were having the ceremony at a place just down the road, but they needed two people as witnesses — would any of us volunteer to do so? We sat there for a few seconds absorbing it, and then I said we were having a meeting, even though it may not look like it. I believe one of my co-workers suggested they go in and talk to the staff, so they wandered inside.

We talked for about five minutes more and were almost done with the meeting, when they came back out and said the staff couldn't leave, and we being pretty much the only folks there at the time, could they beg a couple of us to witness. I asked my boss if we were basically done, and as we were, I said I'd do it, there's too good of a story here to pass it up. My co-worker Steve S. said roughly the same thing, and we got into a rental car with the couple and drove down the street.

There's apparently a place in Dixboro that does this — Teacup Wedding (they bill themselves as "Michigan's Premier Short Notice, Elopement, Small Wedding Chapel) — I never knew it existed until today. Apparently they do a decent amount of business; the couple mentioned that the staff at the restaurant said this happens on a semi-regular basis. The groom rang the doorbell, and the lady who is the officiant opened the door and welcomed us in. She had their marriage license, and asked to see ID from both the bride and groom. She asked Steve and I if we were both over 18 years of age, which we definitely were. She then explained that they were about to get married, and that it was going to be a very simple ceremony. She asked the bride and groom in turn of they were freely willing to wed the other person (and some other stuff here, I was snapping pictures at this point), and when both in turn answered yes, she pronounced them married and they kissed.

Then came the part Steve and I were required for, the signing of the marriage license. Interestingly, in Michigan, the bride and groom are required to sign their name readably, but the witnesses, having a line on which they must also print their name, could use the regular scribble so many of us have cultured as a signature. They signed, we signed, three times, a copy was provided to the newlyweds along with the packet the county clerk gives you, and we were off.

For those of you familiar with the classic Spaceballs, it wasn't quite the short-short version, but it also wasn't as long as the short version.

We weren't gone for more than twenty minutes, and back at Roger Monks the couple bought Steve and I a drink, were inside for a bit, and then were off.

Dante and Annalyn, congratulations!

Posted at: 07:22 | category: /random | Link

Fri, 19 Feb 2010

2010 Coffeeshop of Record Report

Ever since May of 2005 I've had the habit of designating a local coffeeshop as my "Coffeeshop of Record" — it's the place I always hang out at, and my favorite local caffeine establishment. Or, as I sometimes put it, "my drug dealers". Because I'm also that kind of person, I keep statistics of how much I spend there.

Shortly after moving to Ypsilanti I designated the Ugly Mug Cafe as my CsoR. This previous year's statistics (16 February 2009 - 15 February 2010) are:

It adds up, doesn't it? (This is the reason I keep track of it). But, the way I figure it hanging out at the Ugly Mug is my primary form of entertainment, and $7 a week is relatively cheap as those things go.

Notes for those who care: supplies I purchase at the CsoR do not count, e.g. beans I purchase at the Mug for use at home or at work are not counted.

Posted at: 17:37 | category: /random | Link

Tue, 24 Mar 2009

If AFS were in the movies....

Posted at: 00:40 | category: /random | Link

Mon, 16 Feb 2009

2009 Coffee House of Record Report

Ever since May of 2005 I've had the habit of designating a local coffeeshop as my "Coffeeshop of Record" — it's the place I always hang out at, and my favorite local caffeine establishment. Or, as I sometimes put it, "my drug dealers". Because I'm also that kind of person, I keep statistics of how much I spend there.

Shortly after moving to Ypsilanti I designated the Ugly Mug Cafe as my CHoR. This previous year's statistics (16 February 2008 - 15 February 2009) are:

It adds up, doesn't it? (This is the reason I keep track of it). But, the way I figure it hanging out at the Ugly Mug is my primary form of entertainment, and $11 a week is relatively cheap as those things go.

Notes for those who care: supplies I purchase at the CHoR do not count, e.g. beans I purchase at the Mug for use at home or at work are not counted. Last year I did come in one evening to be a volunteer judge when a couple of the baristi were practicing for a competition, the six drinks I had (two espressos, two cappuccinos, two signature drinks (!)) were counted as items of zero cost.

Posted at: 21:22 | category: /random | Link

Sat, 07 Feb 2009

Specific Heat of Bacon

I posted this in responce to a discussion here, and I just had to preserve it here.

Using some rough values I found on the Intertoobes [1], one slice of bacon weighs 29 grams and has 12 grams of fat. Those 12 grams of fat will produce 444 kJ of energy. The specific heat of bacon is 1.51 kJ/( kg deg C ), so those 12 grams of fat, if converted perfectly to heat, could raise 294 kg of bacon 1 degree C. Going from room temperature (20 deg C) to the safe temperature for consuming pork products (70 deg C) is a change of 50 deg C, so that energy could move about 5 kilograms of bacon from room temperature to a safe eating temperature.

I'm slightly not sure about this answer, but I suspect that the problem is that in the messy real world no burning process would turn the energy in the fat in the bacon perfectly into heat that could cook bacon. So there's likely some sort of fudge factor there, and also this assumes that my brain can do calculations like this on a Friday evening --- corrections are welcome. And, of course, depending on your desired outcome you may only care about getting the fat liquid enough so that it could flow and serve as a fuel, or you may care about getting the bacon to the desired crispyness level (which may require a higher temperature).

Of course, what you are doing here is not making a perpetual motion machine, since you are constantly putting in energy in the form of supplemental bacon (that is, if you stop putting bacon in, you eventually will stop getting energy out). What you really have is a rather inefficient (but delicious) long-tail solar power generator: the sun provides the energy to grow crops which provides the energy to make pig which provides the energy to cook pig. There's probably some renewable energy grant you could get for this.

[1]: Goddess bless America that I can think "I wonder what the specific heat of bacon is" and *find* an answer online.

Posted at: 08:45 | category: /random | Link