Thursarrgh

The Tom Cat is after my coffee and oatmeal -- cat, did your Mom not tell you you're a carnivore? -- I have like five minutes to get in the shower and there is much to do.

I probably don't have time to tell you about the co-worker, half-listening to a news segment about Mexico (or was it Easter?), thinking he heard the phrase "armed resurrection." At first I was thinkin', "Kewl!" but then I realized this means the zombies have guns. That's so not kewl.
There's only one defense: lock them in a newsroom, where they'll starve to death for lack of braaaaiiinnns.
Why do zombies never try to eat each other's brains? Don't tell me it's implausible -- I've seen what cockroaches do in a Roach Motel! I can picture the scene now: after a week, they unlock the door of the tile-glue warehouse and one really fat, bloated zombie slowly looks up from the sprawled, brain-et remains of his ex-peers and mutters querulously, "b-b-braiiiins?"

...No time, either, to mention the commercial for some health-insurance policy, in which the voice-over sincerely tells us, "It pays out from Day One!" Or it gets the hose again? Ew.

I have gotta stop watchin' the late-late horror movies.

Thank You But Please Try Harder

...If you are gonna e-mail your pals about my Real Life Tales Of Starship Tech-ery On The Hidden Frontier, get the tag right: it's "I work on a starship," not "I work on a star." Them star things are hot, an' you weigh too much on 'em, too. Plus it's hard to get any sleep.

New readers (both of you), they're in reverse chronological order. Click on the link, then scroll back to the earliest and read forward. Or read them in reverse, it's your dime and my novel.

Lighting Update

...The blame thing commenced to HUMMMMMMMM at dusk for about thirty seconds and...gave up. Stopped, quit, fell silent and did not illumine nohow. The lux, she no fiat.

I am not stuffin' a new bulb on a crummy ballast, especially not in the dark, on a ladder, into an iffy fixture; there's another light at the back door and this night, that'll have to do. Surplusage de Escargo,* here I come!
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* What, that's not "Tractor Supply?" My sincere apologies to the French but even more to Francophone Quebequois, since it was my baby brother's attempts, at age six or seven, to "talk French" while visiting their fair and pleasant land that have inspired my utter lack of a grasp of the language of luuuve and diplomacy.

What Happens

...If you cross this (we'll call it FOO) with this (we'll call it BAR)?

Could it be.....FUBAR? (Or BARFOO, I suppose, which isn't slang AFAIK but sounds disgusting).

"We're from the government and we're here to help you," keeps sounding more and more frightening.

Also? I'm thinkin' about studyin' Mandarin. Just in case.

So, It's Come To Cat-Blogging

...Last night, I picked up Tam's cat, Random Numbers, who is pretty much a one-woman cat. Rannie promptly settled in, began purring and after a few minutes, suddenly perked up and looked around for the traitor cat who was in the arms of Not-Mommy and yet purring. She only stopped purring long enough to make Serious Eye Contact and call me what must surely be a very bad word indeed. ...And then right back to purring and kneading at the air.

She was miffed when I started laughing but I just couldn't help it.

An interesting Rannie-rule: (usually) only Tam can hold her upside down like a baby for very long but she will ride on my shoulders quite happily. It almost makes sense, if you are a very suspicious (tactikewl?) housecat: easier to escape if I suddenly turn out to be eeeeevil.

Guns, American "Cowboys" And Whatnot

The usual vast blank white space, a gaping maw of Write. Something. Now. stares at me and the topic(s) that are most bubblin' have yet to coalesce. So I'm just riffin'.

Kevin (The Smallest Minority) Baker linked to a Rachel Lucas posting about firearms and the UK with a long and fascinating debate in the comments section; at one point one of the anti-gun UK subjects commenting remarked on the "appalling disregard for human life" in the U.S. as compared to the UK, citing our gun laws vs. theirs and it gives me to think.

Let's see, after the tragedy of Dunblane, did the Brits come to the conclusion that nutters represent a danger to the young? Did they decide that school security was too lax, or that persons wanting to work with children needed more careful vetting? Maybe they raised an outcry for better access to mental health services? Were teachers trained and armed in the manner of their Israeli counterparts? Did the Brits, in accord with their previous trends, demand better screening of persons applying for firearms licenses? Oh, hell no: they blamed the tool. 'Cos loonies would never, ever torch a school full of kids, or walk in with a sledgehammer. What kind of "regard for human life" does that indicate? Are there any humans even in the focus at all?

With the ban on guns handguns,* knife crime is up in the UK, so much so that swords and knives are getting banned, too. No one, no newspaper, no M.P. or Mayor, no nobody is callin' to even look into what the problem is that so many Crown subjects, the majority of them young men, are turnin' to predatory violence. People? What're they? Take the knives away! --Cos that shows, you know, "regard for human life." The bad 'uns and their victims, forgotten, and now the poor darlings will just have to pick up a brick or a cobblestone or a cricket bat, while their victims are sternly warned never to carry, let alone use, use anything that might be deemed an "offensive" weapon.

Lecture me about the American "disregard for human life," willya? At least we give the victims a chance to fight back; for that matter, given that the vast majority of defensive gun use incidents do not result in someone on a slab, it could be we even give the aggressor a good, strong incentive to re-examine his chosen path, too.

And people wonder why, with my MGB and my (sadly, now lapsed) RSGB membership, I am not the least interested in visiting the UK; lovely though much of it is, I strongly suspect their "regard for human life" will get me stomped flat.
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* There's a gun-fearing lad (who's hoping to get sued by a gunblogger, or perhaps it's luuuuv) who pointed out, quite correctly, that Britain does not have a total ban on all guns. They've a near-total ban on handguns, while long-arms require begging permission for each one from the local authorities, who have complete discretion over not only if you may have them but how much ammunition you may possess and the manner in which they are to be stored -- and they do check. Compared to the freedom to keep and bear arms enjoyed by even citizens in Massachusetts or Illinois, it's a ban. Also? I am not all-knowing. Oh, the horror, how can any of you ever trust me again? And why should you when you are hooked into the greatest engine for finding out for yourself yet invented? Anything you wonder about, go look it up. And if you'd like, you can come back and tell me where I got the facts wrong. Go team you!

April BlogMeet?

When's good for you?

Thank You, Congress*

Hey! Congress! You miserable, creepy, crepitating, crepuscular bags of pus; you whey-faced daughters (and sons) of the horseleech, forever lookin' for what's not yours:[1] thank you just all to hell.

See, my old barnyard light that lights up the back yard here at Roseholme[2] is acting up. Tam claimed it sounded like the compressor was going out. (Nontech people, that's, like, a joke).

Tonight, I tried changing the photoelectric control and the lamp to no avail. It's a mercury vapor light and the noise is the ballast growling. It's goin' out. It'd be a pain to change -- there's no marked breaker for it and it is several feet up in the air but hey, I can do that. If I can find the part....

No prob, I'll just hop on the 'net, surf over to McMaster-Carr[3] and...hey? Hey!

No dice. It seems you can't get that kind any more. EPAct 2005 did 'em in. (PDF) I might be able to horse around and stuff in a dual-marked one, but the light won't be UL-rated any more, which is the kind of thing insurance companies like to fish out of the debris and point out when they are denying claims. "Lookie here! Didn't say 'Simon says,' naughty-naughty!"

So it looks like I'll be hangin' a new light. I might instead be able to buy one of these (it's the right spec an' all) and keep the old one going but the more I look at that fixture, the less happy I am about it.

Tractor Supply -- a kewl place anyway -- has a light I like. It just might do.

And oh, yeah, Congress? Thanks ever so. Ya jerks.
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* Funny, I typed "Congrass" first try....

1. The heart of that's from the Bible, I'll have you know. The Old Testament, and a fine description it is, too. Can you not just look at 'em and see the resemblance?

2. We of Roseholme have lights at the street, the porch, the back yard and the alley, 'cos the previous owner was a LEO and he got it. In the same way that I was happy to pay for a street light at my old place.

3. You know how people lookit the old, old Sears catalogs and exclaim over how they had everything? McMaster is still kinda that way. They can be spendy on some things but A) they have it, B) their tech support is outstanding and C) it ships today. Today. Website has excellent drilldown, too.

Sharing Distraction

A long wiki-wander led me to an interesting place: Europe's only Buddhist nation!

...To the very long list of obnoxious acts of the Soviet Union, add the attempted homogenization of Kalmykia. Doesn't appear to have worked. People are like that.

A Little Knowledge?

I Am Not A Lawyer (oh, so very not) but I have always read the various warnings to be found on the 'Web about how "treaties trump the U. S. Constitution" with no little skepticism. Didn't have a reason, the idea just didn't sit right; it is surely not what the Framers intended. Turns out there's some basis for that grain of salt: Reid v. Covert.

Back in 1957, the Supreme Court averred: "[T]his Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty...."

Mind you, such decisions are not written in stone. It is, however, one more impediment to the kind of tricky end-runs around the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights that folks worry over.

FWIW

...Don't forget that there once was a real, working flying submarine.

Kinda makes most hobbies look a little weak.

Another Day, Part 6

So the inner hatch opens -- and these are the oldest type on the Lupine, slightly-modded 1950s submarine-style, with analog gauges and brute-force idiotproofing: if pressure's not equal on both sides, they won't open. So it's not like, say, a door in your apartment. Not even close. Opening (and closing) takes some effort and time, the four dogs scraping free, the bolts backed out by the gear and wheel (which is why there's a nice little "trip bar"to hook your toes under on at least the floor side of such hatches and a grab rail on the side opposite the hinge, too, or you wouldn't be able to open them in zero-g) and then a nasty "schluck" as the seals break.

Followed by Jonny Zedd, puffing like a steam engine but grinning nonetheless. "Helloo, Bobbi! Have you got it figured out?"

I gave him The Look, slightly modified on account I was glad for the help. "Well, maybe, but we're gonna have to hang a 'scope on a couple of spots on the Analog-Digital Interface board to find out -- hey, did you close up the outer hatch? -- and it's behind the Logic and Control board. It'll take three hands just to get in there..."

Jonny turns to check the hatch; over his shoulder, I can see the bolts are engaged but the dogs, not so much. So he sets them and makes a production of closing the inner hatch as well. I understand his casualness but we are at the end of a long corridor. While it is unlikely we'd end up trying to breathe vacuum, I'd still rather not have to try.

While he's finishing, I start in on the #2 'Drive Amplifier: unlatch the "door" that carries half the meters, the "Christmas tree" display and local control buttons. The door is about four inches thick and on the back of it, there's another set of latches that free up the back panel to swing away, revealing the tops of two circuit boards, each about two feet square: Logic And Control on the front-panel side and Analog-Digital Interface on the back. ADI has a nice collection of connections, fiber-optic, coax, data bus and such and up in one corner is the fiber lead for Back Heat OK and the IC that buffers it -- the hard-to-reach corner, naturally. Oh, and if you shut the door assembly with the back unlatched, it hangs up on the cabinet and takes careful finagling to open again. At least it's not surface-mount. Something to be said for conservative design! However, there would also have been something to be said for not having to have my head stuck in between two very critical PC boards, unable to see the local control panel.

Jon's done and peers over my shoulder. "Which one is bad?"

"I don't know if any of them are, yet. Should be an IC test clip stored on the 'scope cart, would you get it?"

He rummages and finds it, a gadget like a wide clothespin, studded with test points; I clip it over the IC, allowing me to hang the scope probe on the pin I want to look at. Jon takes up position on the control side and steadies the door without having to be asked, I get the ground and probe tip attached and we both look at the scope. Flatline. The signal asserts high and the amplifier's off, so that's right.

"Hit BACK HEAT, wouldja?" I ask. (Have I explained the "heater" is the glowing filament inside the phantasmajector tube? It is. Except we can't see it, since the tube is made of ceramic and metal and nestled inside the tuned cavities, so the "glowing" part is kind of a matter of faith, plus the tube would not work if it didn't).

"You got it."

No change. "Try HEATER ON."

" HEATER ON. See anything?"

For an answer I turn the 'scope a bit so Jonny can see it. Fat nil is what there is to see.

"Is the tube even gettin' heater voltage?"

Fair question, the answer to which is behind door #2, the tall door that closes the larger half of the amplifier cabinet, behind which is the phantasmajector, on a cart and wrapped in trick RF plumbing -- and behind that, there is a Plexiglas window through which can be glimpsed the various meters operating at the -36,000 Volt Beam supply, including Heater Volts. I pop the latches and we take a look: 6.4 Volts, normal for this tube. So why...?

Sometimes dumb wins. Why ask why when you can just turn it up? I have Jon drop us back to BACK HEAT, take the screwdriver from my back pocket, and run up the Back Heat voltage (counterclockwise, I have to remind myself, which is not the usual direction of "up"). I see the 'scope trace wiggle, turn into a series of square-wave pulses and then steady at about five volts, just as Jon calls out, "Back Heat light just went green!"

"Drop to STANDBY and we'll get unconnected."

He does, we do, and in a trice -- for a certain large value of "trice" -- the IC clip is off, the halves of the control door are back together, the door's shut and we're in BACK HEAT once more. I punch HEATER ON and half a minute later, the FULL HEAT led goes green, too. Hey-la! And then it flickers. I say a bad word and inch the Full Heat voltage up a bit, too. "Five minutes, Jon, then we can hit the go-button and find out. Could be loud."

"Loud? You don't know from loud. Why, I remember the time Vanderhooven cut through a 208 line up here and about threw his cutters through the bulkhead...."

It's an old, familiar story but we've got five minutes to waste while the beast warms up. Might as well hear it again.

(TO BE CONTINUED)