randomdreams

The bathroom sink was dripping slowly the other day so I figured I'd come home today and tighten down the gland nut and fix it. I figured out how to remove the cold handle, and tried tightening the only big hex nut available, which did nothing. So then I figured I'd have to take it apart and see if the seal and land were damaged and needed to be replaced, which meant turning off the cutoff valve under the sink.
Which promptly started leaking.
I bravely converted a leak going into a drain, into a leak going into the inside wall of the house. Go me.
Thankfully the local home depot had replacement cartridges for the sink valves, once I managed to wrestle one out, and while I was there I bought newer quarter-turn cutoff valves to replace the vile old gate valves.
The replacement cartridges went right in (I replaced both sides, because I know how MTBF seems to work) and then, full of hope and optimism, pulled the handle off the gate valve and tightened the gland nut.
It stopped leaking.
So I'm leaving everything alone. Another day I'll replace everything: the cutoffs, the terrible old hose going up to the faucet, and the faucet. But today, I'm going to stop while nothing is leaking.

Today:
I wrote a test program that turns on various parts of my chip alternately, to see if they interact: if one part is affected when another part switches on or off. Then I added to it to start running at very high frequencies, and then I added a bit more that drives a thermal forcer so I can run the chip between -40 and 130C. It turns out that at high power, at high temperature, at high switching frequencies, it blows up. Flames shoot out. It doesn't seem to be associated with the switching-on-and-off, though, but with being hot.

At the same time, my sweary twin (he looks very much like me but curses a lot) was trying to set up a test system that somewhat emulates mine, so I spent a big chunk of time doing code review with him and walking him through hardware and software choices I'd made when designing this thing.
(Side plot involving explaining the SPI protocol, which is really weird to someone new at it: you write a word to the chip, and then have to wait until the next transaction to get a response. The offset-by-one is surprisingly hard for people to work with.)

At the same time, I was helping my prickly PhD coworker get a board working, which involved iteratively swapping out parts to get a slope compensation value working right, and simultaneously documenting all the changes so we can recreate this later.

At the same time I was also helping my other coworker get his system working. He's using the previous revision of hardware and software that I built last year, and it keeps having communication issues, and no matter how many times I explain troubleshooting the system to him, he never seems to understand the overall concept, so he does the first step over and over and then when it doesn't fix the problem comes to ask me for help. (I got him set up on a software repository system last week, because it's been a requirement for us to use for a year, and I am pretty sure he still doesn't understand that the repository is on a separate, remote, managed system, and is not just another directory on his hard drive.)

And all of these are fine, but the only one my manager will notice is the fix-the-board-for-prickly-PhD, and then most likely all he'll notice is if there were any problems with it. All the other projects are things that he doesn't think are important, so he doesn't find my handling of them relevant.

I know I shouldn't complain about my job, but should instead just find another one.

One of my favorite coworkers announced he is quitting yesterday. He said he'd work until it wasn't fun anymore. Soon after he got assigned to work for my manager, he stopped smiling as much, and apparently this week he got to some Social Security magic age, so he's done. I truly liked working with him, even if we were quite different socially and politically, because he's kind, generous, and sympathetic.

I had a professional development discussion with my manager yesterday. He's not changing my job functions: I still get to do 30% hardware development, 60% software development, and 10% dealing with random emergencies, and that's fine. What's not as fine is that the problems that led to him being so frustrated last year are probably going to be worse this year. The unspoken premise is that I need to work more like 55 hours a week from April to August, and then I'd have the time to finish everything by his deadlines, and I'm not going to do that. Instead I'm going to rush things and make mistakes. Oh and go find another job.

There are bald eagles all over the place lately. That's been nice.

The spring that makes the Spitfire seatbelt retract and stay tight across the driver's chest failed. Actually a little plastic bit failed. I ordered some replacements off The Internets and they totally don't work, because I have to heavily modify the mounting points to match the original Spitfire mounting points, and there's not enough metal on these to safely modify. I could in theory remanufacture the spring-to-roller mechanism that failed, but everything online says once you open that and the spring tension changes, it's not fixable. Presumably breaking qualifies under the same proviso. I could easily machine the part, but I don't think I'd ever trust it. (Hm. I have another one just like it on the other side. I could measure the spring tension and adjust this side until it had the same tension...) So it looks like I have to order another one of the same make/model as the one that failed, which is precisely the wrong incentive for improvements in quality. Plus I'm about 1/3 of the way through reupholstering the seats and am stalled because of a logistics issue: all the instructions say "take one seat apart and leave the other mostly together so you can figure out how to put it back together because it is really not obvious" but the frames are so rusty and what I really want to do is take them both out, strip them down, and have them sandblasted and powdercoated, because, like the seatbelt, I really don't want to have weak seats. Everything on that car is dangerous, but those are exceptionally dangerous. I replaced the old (rusted to dust) seat mounting bolts with the strongest bolts you can buy, and added reinforcements under the seat pan because I've seen seat bolts rip through and result in a loose car seat thrashing around in the car. (I suspect this may have been what caused my dad's death, but I don't have proof.)

It's snowing madly. The roads are simultaneously really slick and icy, and covered in halfway-to-my-knee snow, at least in my neighborhood. Cars off the road on either side the whole way home, and lots of crashes. By the time I was halfway home it was foul enough there weren't too many cars on the road anymore, so I got to drift sideways through turns, which I enjoy (when there's nobody else around.)

One of my coworkers is doing a ski trek from Nederland to Winter Park tomorrow, and back the next day. It's kinda cool because the driving distance on roads is over 100km but his route is only ("only") 20km. In total wilderness, over the Continental Divide. He kept asking if some of the rest of us wanted to come along. I'm all I'd be glad to do that on a bike in August when it's above body temperature. (In fact, I once got hypothermia on that pass, in August, because of a surprise blizzard, so maybe not even then.)

I got a bad year-end review at work. I'm unhappy about that, in part because I think my manager looks at every mistake as catastrophic, while not even acknowledging ideas and implementations that fix other mistakes. (When I swap three pins on a connector we're not using, because there are 300 pins and I have no time to double-check my work, he brings it up in every meeting for a month. When I write a macro that sorts data from a database into the format we need, after someone else changed how the database logging system works, instead of being happy that I fixed the problem, he gets mad at the person who changed the database logging system, even though that person had to do so.)
One of the things that came out of this is that he thinks my lack of an engineering degree is holding me back. That, I think, is definitely wrong, but oh well. So I'm trying to take the graduate-level EE course that all the system engineers I work with have taken. They, fresh out of college, said it required fifteen hours a week of homework, with them working together. It's taking me more than that, and my progress is slow. So tomorrow I'm going to get some tutoring.

Probably related to this is a random dream from last night. I was trying to go through my Japanese alphabets, and worked my way through hiragana without a problem, but just at the beginning of katakana, all the characters started to move and then run off the page. I was trying to corral them back in by drawing lines around the outside of the page but they moved too fast.

Driving to work yesterday sucked. We got a large amount of snow here, taller than my snowblower, and it was still snowing heavily when I headed to work. Up at work there was virtually no snow at all, so the in-between was very heavy slush. At some point, enough slush and ice lodged beneath my car and froze that it displaced a long flexible heat shield that covers the exhaust system. (This is because occasionally people actually drive these cars offroad and park them and the hot exhaust starts grass fires.) So now the heat shield is touching the driveshaft and making awful noises.
This car has been nonstop difficulty.
Anyway. Today I drove the old car, the one that failed ALL THE EMISSIONS TESTS, and I was glad I had it to drive, because I was trying to donate it to the local radio station and their criteria for donation ("They said donating was easy, and it was even easier!") keep getting tighter and tighter, so I have yet to finish that process, and driving into work in the Spitfire when it's this far below freezing is a daunting idea. So is cycling through ankle-deep piles of ice and slush.

Here's an interesting, unexpected consequence: as I was leaving, our silicon design manager walked by, wearing a huge puffy coat and a big knitted cap and snow pants. I was all "...are you riding home?" because he often commutes by bike, and he said "no, I'm driving" and I was all "you look like you're about to go skiing" and he laughed and said "I have an electric car, and using the heater reduces its range."

How old are you?
51. I have to do the math repeatedly because somehow I don't believe that number.

Tattoos?
Not on purpose. But if the criterion is organic material injected deeply enough into the skin to leave a permanent mark, then yes. I did it through an explosive rather than a needle. I recommend against that.

Ever hit a deer?
I hit an elk once. It went 'oof'. I did too. It and its comrades kindly refrained from goring me while I was getting back up and on my bicycle.

Ridden in an ambulance?
Does a flight for life count? How about if I don't remember it?

Sang karaoke?
Not officially.

Ice skated?
I mostly would skate over to where the really dangerous holes in the ice were and poke around there until some adult yelled at me.

Ridden a motorcycle?
I've had a motorcycle endorsement on my driver's license since 1987, which was the last time I rode a motorcycle, alas.

Stayed in hospital?
I only found out about four years ago how long I was in the hospital after the big car crash. I had lived for a decade thinking it was only three or four days.

Skipped school?
Oodles.

Last phone call?
State Farm and I are having a long discussion over how my house is insured, because I want it insured for its present value, not its purchase value, in case it falls in the swamp and burns down, which seems increasingly likely.

Last text from?
A pokemon go friend who desperately wants to have lunch so we can trade pokemon.

Watched someone die?
No.

Pepsi or Coke?
Coke, specifically diet coke that uses Splenda. The molecular structure of Splenda makes chemists wince, but I've read a _lot_ about sweeteners.

Favorite pie?
Almost any. I wasn't big on the lucky charms pie my friend made, but that's about it.

Favorite pizza?
Blue Pan, Highlands district of Denver.

Favorite season?
I'm torn between June 21 (the longest day of the year) and August 10 (the hottest). In there somewhere.

Broken bones?
Jaw, collarbone, pelvis, femur, scapula, humerus, are the ones I have not broken. I remember being in the hospital, and the doctor showing me the x-ray of my torso and saying "I can't find a rib that isn't broken in multiple places." The time they had to bolt my tibia back together hurt the worst, but the broken metatarsil was the grossest.

Received a ticket?
I consider it a gold star year when I don't get a ticket. 2018 was a gold star year. 2014 was the previous one.

Favorite color?
Cobalt blue, more specifically RAL #58.

Sunset or sunrise?
I would stay up to sunrise on a regular basis if I had a different job.

I'm still coughing but I no longer sound like I have tuberculosis, so there's that.
Today I got up and drove through a blizzard to get a cracked filling replaced by a crown. My dentist is extremely quiet unless I start talking about cars, and then he lights right up.
I now have a very delicate temporary crown.

Work is the same as it has been. Once my profit sharing bonus is actually deposited in my bank account, in two weeks, I'm going to start actively looking for another job. I love my coworkers. There have been times where I enjoyed my job itself. But I'm really frustrated with my manager. Our division manager just got rid of the other objectionable manager, and it's possible if I waited long enough he'd do the same here.

My old car is going away as soon as I call a donation place, during work hours, with the title in front of me, a concatenation of events that I have not yet managed to coordinate. Tomorrow morning!

I was looking at Obama's book list and seeing a bunch of very interesting-looking books, so: "Why Liberalism Failed" by Patrick Deenan.
I have to start out with some explanation. He feels that there were three major political experiments of the 1800s and 1900's: liberalism, fascism, and socialism. He also feels the latter two definitively failed, and he feels the first one is now failing. So when he says liberalism, think representative democracy with an emphasis on personal freedom.
And, really, I think he has a love/hate relationship with personal freedom. He seems to be very big on tradition and values and thinks that a culture where people can just, well, decide what gender they find attractive or what gender they are, is Way Too Free and the doorway to ruin. I don't feel that he acknowledges that the traditions and values he thinks are so amazing, are arbitrary constructs that he likes, and a lot of the stuff that makes him feel our society is falling apart aren't actually decisions but realizations.
Some of his critique of late-stage capitalism is good, and relevant. But it's hard to dig out when it's so deeply embedded in a rejection of anything other than nostalgia for a time when everyone was a white anglo saxon protestant, or at least everyone worth mentioning.

So, onto something a lot more fun: "the curious incident of the dog in the night time" by mark haddon. (The original is all in lower case too.)
This was somewhat wrenching to read. It's excellent. The conceit of the innocent kid, who in telling a simple story, conveys a vastly more complex story to the reader, is an old one. This has more than a touch of To Kill A Mockingbird. But it's sophisticated and hard-edged, with no hint of sentimentality. I felt just terrible for every person in the entire book and what they went through.

I got in the new-to-me car and drove half a block and the oil light came on. Sure enough, it's out of oil. It got a refill/oil change two weeks ago. Oil is not leaking out the bottom, so there's an internal seal that's failed, likely a head gasket.
I took the old car over to the DMV to deal with my expired license. The website says if your license is expired you need to bring alternate ID and an ophthalmologist report on your eyes. They were all "oh, you don't need any of that." From the time I walked in to the time I walked out with a new license was 8 minutes. However, they couldn't do registration, just licenses. So I went to DMV 2, who do new registrations. That one took ten minutes, and my new oil-sucking car was registered.
So then I drove the old car to the emissions testing facility because a passing emissions test is required to sell it. Usually it takes ten minutes. My car took 50 minutes. That's because it failed every single test and they kept retesting it to see if they could get it to pass.
Which totally overlapped my dentist appointment, so I had to reschedule that.
Now I'm off to a funeral of a friend (father of childhood friends) who died of Parkinson's.
Oh, on coming back home I found Monty had eaten one of threemeninaboat's hat, so I yelled and now she's hiding.
and it's only noon.

I dreamed I was helping my parents clean out their basement and found an entire room, a spare garage, I didn't know they had, and found they had a Cessna 206 sitting in the garage. They were all "oh, yeah, we forgot about that. We're going to get rid of it because we never use it" and I was all AAAAAAAAAIEEEEEE!
Then I dreamed a well-known-on-another-social-network person, who has never interacted with me at all, started calling me up because she heard I could fix cracked screens on expensive cellphones and she was desperate to get hers fixed, and I was all I totally cannot do that.
Both of which are improvements on the fever dreams that preceded them.

Update two:
I put my clothes away, hauled a fist-sized glob of hairy solids out of the shower drain, and am about done.
BUT! The mechanic called about my car.
All the previous cars I've worked on, the oil light on the dash is an oil pressure light. If the engine is on and the pressure is low, the light's on.
On this newer model of subaru, the oil light is not an oil pressure light. It's an oil system alarm light. So if the pressure goes low, even if it is refilled, the light stays on. If the oil level is too high, the light turns on. If the system thinks you're in need of replacing the oil filter, the oil light turns on. And it stays on until you get into the communication bus and clear the alarm.
Which is good to know.
This doesn't answer why the car was low enough on oil to trigger the original fault. They don't see any reason for it to lose oil. So, now that it's full, I have to rigorously check the oil level and characterize loss rate, which I can do.
I think I'm going to buy one of those obdII-bluetooth modules so I can separately monitor the oil pressure.