Linguistic Patrol: I Don't Know Who Else Needs To See This...

      ...Other than that guy at Atlas Obscura, but tenable and tenuous are not synonyms or even different forms of the same word.  They have, in fact, very nearly opposite meanings.

      I swear, you turn your back on a perfectly good language for five minutes, and the kids are spray-painting stuff all over it; only about ten percent of the additions and modifications come anywhere close to art.

      Look it up -- especially if it feels like a clever turn of phrase.  English steals words from all over, fools around with their meanings without due regard to origins and pays very little attention to fiddlin' details like inadvertent near-twin antonyms. 

The Blame Game

      Some days, I swear I'm gonna go Sledgehammer Barbie on a recalcitrant piece of electronic equipment.  User-hostile support only makes it worse.

      We've got a gadget that takes a bunch of meter readings and status indications (off or on?  Okay or acting up? and so on) and hands them off via a network connection to a number of distant locations, while outputting on-off commands from the same locations.  A lot of companies make them.  Over 40-odd years, I have installed four different models from four different companies and worked on at least six varieties.  It's not unusual to total a couple of hundred "channels" of telemetry, status and control.

       The details of how they interface with external hardware vary and I have learned to always build a connection panel; barrier-type screw-terminal blocks used to be standard but the last couple have used "Eurostyle" connector blocks and crimp-on ferrules, a combination that works well with solid and stranded wire in a wide range of sizes.  The reason for this is that with one exception, every last one of them has used some quirky, high-density connection system for inputs and outputs.  They are awkward to change connections on, especially without disturbing other connections, and most accommodate only a few sizes of wire.  So you set things up so you only have to make the difficult connections once and all subsequent changes are made using something simpler and easier to get at.

      The most recent such device has jumpers (with SCSI-bus obscure high-density connectors at each end!) from their devices to panels with custom 110 blocks, a punch-down, insulation-displacement connection developed for telephony.  They are compact, secure and extremely reliable -- if you use the one exact right kind of wire (#24-26 solid) with the right kind of insulation and the proper spring-impact tool to shove it into place and trim off the excess.  So I did; I bought 25-pair telephone wire, put the 110 bit in my punchdown tool and wired the 110 blocks out to Eurostyle blocks, where I was able to connect the mad array of different wires that go to all the widgets this thing has to talk to.  I followed the proper color code for 25-pair cable, making the wiring relatively easy to follow -- despite the OEM having installed their color-coded 4-pair 110 blocks backwards, so each group of four is marked in ascending numerical order but color-coded for pairs 4, 3, 2 and 1.  (That's brown, green, orange, blue, for those keeping track at home.)

      This same device turned out to have a software "gotcha:" if you followed the instruction manual in naming, setting parameters, calibrating and assigning each channel of the interface device, that channel would become "invisible" to the other end.  There's a hidden command level to make it visible again (by entering all the information again) and end-users cannot access it; only factory support can make those changes.  The manual doesn't tell you that, so if you're me, you set the system up and check it before handing it off to factory support -- or you try to check it.  I spent a month messing around with it, trying to figure out what was wrong, before I admitted defeat.  The manufacturer was cagey; all they'll say is, "The manual is out of date," but they won't tell you anything more.  In four and half years, no updates to the manual have been forthcoming.  It looks like they just don't want us in there.

      As a result, when we make changes or have trouble, factory support has to be involved.  So when the network connection with one of the devices became unreliable and we'd eliminated other causes, they sent out a new device, (supposedly) ported all the settings from the bad one to its replacement, and once that was done, I moved the connectorized jumpers over.

      Half of the indications were wrong.

      The first question from factory support, working remotely: "Will you check the punches?"  Yes, sure.  I reminded him that I had not changed that part of the system in any way, got out a meter, checked and reported back.  All was as it should be.  I already knew that.  When I installed this system, I did so in parallel with the one it was replacing, and left it running.  The old system has a nice interactive computer display of all the relevant parameters, essentially a web page of geekery.  At least I think it's nice -- probably because I laid it out and did all the fiddly work to set the appearance, calibration and colors.  It was still okay.

      I suggested that perhaps not all of the settings for the individual channels had been ported over from the flaky device to the new one.  I cannot see those settings; after the debacle of the original setup, I don't have a computer at the site able to access the system at that level, since anyone making the slightest change, even by accident, will make it "disappear" from the other end.  Factory support wanted me to re-check the punches.  I sent him a photograph of them, and followed up another set of measurements.  If you use skinny probes with sharp-pointed ends, you can check directly at the contact terminals of the 110 block, affirming that the electrical connection between the wire and the block is okay.

      The factory tech was assuming we had punched whatever kind of wire we had directly into the block.  This is a known source of intermittent trouble -- and it's why I used genuine telephone-type wire to run from the 110 block out to a more tolerant kind of connection.  It's a lot simpler for their tech to blame me -- "The punches/grounding/jumper settings must be messed up." -- than dig back into the individual channel settings of the device, with multiple parameters to be looked at and possibly reset for each one of 96 channels.

      In the end, I moved the plug-in jumpers back to the original device and -- what a wonder! -- all of the readings went back to normal, just as if the punches, grounding and jumper settings were okay.  We'll have another go at it next week.

      I am hoping the next attempt will not involve a round of mutual finger-pointing.  I'm more than happy to show my work.  So far, the factory has not been.

Spoke Too Soon

      Back pain is ramping up again, after a day of only moderate effort.  I do not recommend this.

Better -- Also, The WGA Strike

      After spending nearly 36 hours in bed with occasional recourse to a heating pad, I'm feeling much better.  Not a hundred percent, but I can draw a deep breath, sneeze and even turn my upper body without a spike in pain from my lower back.  The dull ache has faded -- not gone but much, much less.  Considering that at one point Monday evening I went to lean over and reach out from a seated position and ended up crashing over on my knees, this is a considerable improvement.

      I'm going to spend some time lightening my purse and briefcase.  There's a lot of odds and ends in each -- useful, most of it, but not all of it needs to be lugged around every day.

      One source of weight: I carry two small laptops -- an old Surface Pro (much heavier than you'd expect) and a MacBook Air (which is indeed lightweight) -- and the only reason for the Surface these days is that my employer has never managed to come up with an old laptop or desktop on a cart to do the control interface for a number of devices we run at the North Campus that don't have control panels and only occasionally need to be got at.  They have their reasons: proper security requires official company computers must have current, updateable operating systems and protections and if they can't, they are discarded.  But it's inconvenient.  It appears that a Raspberry Pi will do what I need and satisfy the security gurus, so I may be able to retire my personal Surface and ensure anyone filling in for me will be able to get at the virtual meters, knobs and buttons.

*  *  *

      On Twitter and elsewhere, many writers have proclaimed their support of the Writer's Guild of America strike.  WGA are the boys and girls and etc. who write scripts for TV and film; their last agreement with the people who make such entertainment predates the Golden Age of Streaming by over a decade and as a result, they aren't seeing much of the gold.  The issues are complex, the sides are far apart and I hope you're got some older programs in your to-be-watched queue, because it looks like they'll be a while sorting things out.

      As for me, I can proudly proclaim that I have not been writing screenplays for more than 60 years and I expect this trend to continue.

      "Writing is writing," I suppose, but screenplays diverge considerably from other forms of fiction -- and are sold differently, too.  If you write a novel or short story and a publisher "buys" it, you effectively lease it to them, retaining copyright for later sales. A screenwriter doesn't get to do that; turning a screenplay into a film or series takes a whole lot more creative work from other people once the writer is (mostly) done, so the screenwriter receives a paycheck and (maybe) a piece of any "residuals," rerun money (and that's a big part of what they're striking over), but does not hold copyright.  No few talented writers of printed fiction have gone off to Hollywood (and related locations) and burned right out.

      "Scabbing" at screenwriting might not burn a writer out, but it'll burn a bridge: the WGA bars membership to any former scabs.  Harsh?  Yes.  And that's Hollywood.

Frustrated

      My back was aching through last week and got a little better on Saturday.  I spent about an hour gardening, and Sunday, I felt worse.  Monday, things got worse all day,  I left work early and today it has been pretty bad so far.

Inspector Shan

      The seeds of the night sky grew in Tibet.  There the stars were the thickest, the dark blackest, the heavens closest.   People looked up and cried without knowing why.  Prisoners sometimes stole from their huts...to lie on the ground silently watching the heavens.  The year before at the [gulag] an old priest had been found in such a position one morning, frozen, his dead eyes fixed on the sky.  He had written two words in the snow at his side.  Catch me.

      That's the opening of a chapter in Eliot Pattison's The Skull Mantra, the first book in the Inspector Shan Tao Yun series, which is more or less a noir detective series set in contemporary Tibet.  The "Inspector" isn't one, not any more, having gotten himself crosswise with higher-ups by solving crimes without due attention to political concerns and been sent off to an indefinite sentence in a "work camp" in Tibet.  He has been there some years by the first book in the series, when the prisoners uncover a headless, recently-murdered body while building a road.  Suddenly, there's a need for an investigator, one who can be counted on to be discreet, and Shan finds himself with no choice but to cooperate.

      I started with a book much farther along in the series.  It was on sale and the sample looked interesting.  It turned out to be outstanding, so I circled back to the first book.  I'm about halfway through and it holds up.  The background is an absolutely unflinching portrait of Tibet under the Chinese government, neither sugar-coated nor played for pathos, and Shan's deft but hopeless manipulation of the various authorities is skillfully drawn. I recommend the two books I've seen so far, and I have every reason to believe the rest of the series is as good.

You Must Be New Here

      There's been a comment waiting the queue that makes assumptions about my positions or opinions that are so askew that I probably won't approve it.*

      Instead, I'm going to clarify some items here:

      - I think politicians in general are fiscally irresponsible.  Republican, Democrat, Green or Libertarian, they all have pet causes and hobbyhorses that they are more than happy to spend your money on.  I have never made any secret of this opinion.  At the Presidential level, the historical record bears me out, with the two World War Presidents leading the pack and two Republicans and one more Democrat filling out the top five.  So you don't need to tell me, "the Dems are just as crazy in their efforts to pile up the national debt to stratospheric heights," because officeholders of both parties stack up that heap.  That some of them stick a clothespin on their nose and complain loudly about the process does not mitigate their actions.

      - I don't think government ought to be in the business of defining or enforcing any "cultural values," period.  The government should encourage secular civic virtues of lawfulness, political participation ranging from voting† to various forms of petitioning to running for and serving in office, and even providing or facilitating access to information (the Government Printing Office, allowing C-SPAN access, various "Sunshine Laws," etc.), but no more than that.  External services (Voice of America broadcasts and so on) might promote positive aspects of our national culture as-found, but our culture was not created by our government and is not directed by it.  (One of the markers of totalitarianism is the government runs the culture -- or tries to.  That's not how we do things in the United States and if you have a problem with that, you have a problem with America.)

      - I do think governments should strive to increase the freedom of citizens, and not restrict it without clearly articulated cause.  There are plenty of issues on which government should either remain silent or deal with as they deal with the formalization of contracts generally, and these include such supposedly "hot button" matters as marriage and medical matters related to reproduction and gender identity.  There are a great number of complex issues for which there is no single universally-right course of action; our governments should recognize this and leave the decision to the individuals directly concerned rather than getting involved.  I think the government didn't go far enough in Obergefell; while the various forms of plural marriage are uncommon, they already exist and failing to give them legal recognition simply makes a messy situation even worse.  Such matters are complicated and emotionally fraught, difficult to navigate even in the absence of State or Federal opprobrium, and they are not bettered by becoming matters of public debate and heavy-handed, restrictive law.  Yes, this does mean other people will sometimes do things of which you -- or I -- will not personally approve.  We're not the boss of them, just as they are not the boss of us.  Accept it.  Freedom applies to everyone, not just to the people are who precisely like you or me.  If you have a problem with that, you have a problem with America.

      The same commenter wrote, "I agree with you that what Peter Thiel is doing, or not doing, is great. Now if only George Soros would do the same."  That's nuts.  They're both citizens.  They both have exactly the same right to try to influence the government that you or I do.  They both have exactly the same right to create, join or participate in organizations that attempt to influence popular and/or government opinion that you or I do.  And they have the same right to choose to not do those things that you or I do.  And that is what I think is great. I didn't express an opinion about Mr. Thiel's present actions; I pointed them out and shared his stated reasons for so doing, and left the reader to make a value judgement.

      I'm sick and tired of asshole noseyparkers trying to run other people's lives and I don't care which political party they vote for.  I'm tried of people trying to hammer in the nails of culture with the crescent wrench of government.  I don't think they're going to stop, but I'm sure as hell going to remark on it and I'm going to try to slow 'em down.  YMMV.
________________________
* You can thunder "censorship" all you like, but blogs are free and you can write whatever you like (and the blog provider allows) on your own blog.  This blog is mine.  I make the editorial decisions and I'm not going to indulge in long debates over strawman assertions in the comments section.
 
† An opinion that puts me at odds with today's Republican party, which favors increasing restrictions on voting  IMO, that's not a good sign.

"Halfway Across, The Scorpion Stung Him"

      Republican mega-donor Peter Thiel will be sitting out the 2024 campaign, checkbook firmly shut.  The man who told us in 2009, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” has had his fill of the GOP's focus on culture wars while largely ignoring economic issues.

      Thiel happens to be gay as well as rich, and it's not a huge step to wonder if he's thinking the second is becoming increasingly poor armor for the first with a party that's gone all in on not merely encouraging cultural conservatism but hardwiring it into law.  Today it's outlawing abortions and drag shows, tomorrow...maybe Mr. Thiel's marriage?  (I don't know, maybe he's got a pal touring with Charley's Aunt in the title role and doesn't want him languishing in a Bible Belt jail.  Whatever.)

      Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "...the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."  I'd like to think he was right, but human history suggests to me that the arc doesn't move all by itself -- and humans have long been willing to turn a blind eye to violence and injustice if it's not happening to anyone too much like themselves.

      If you want to be treated fairly, you've got to treat others fairly first.  And you ought not ferry too many scorpions across the the river, confident that because the scorpion logically doesn't want to drown, you'll never be stung -- hey, Mr, Thiel?  Let us all drink to character!  (Follow the "stung" link.)

Roasting Rack

      No, it's not a metaphor for the Presidential primary.*  It's my Perfect Pot.  Some time back, they had one of their (frequent) sales, and I still had a discount coupon.  So I decided I'd better get one.  Mine's even a screamin' wasabi green color that they don't have available right now.  It's been just as useful as you might think a large, heavy-walled, non-stick stewpot would be, ideal for simmering Hoppin' John, beef stew or pasta sauce supercharged with fresh vegetables and extra meat.  But it's got one feature I have rarely used: a drop-in roasting rack, coated in the same ceramic non-stick as the inside of the pot, that stands about an inch above the bottom on three small, silicone-cushioned feet.

      Our corner grocery had nice-looking beef pot roast at an appealing price.  It's good stuff but a little fatty.  I can work with that, pouring the broth off into my grease separator in batches and adding it back in, but it's a lot of bother and the end result is still a bit greasier than I'd prefer.  So I decided to try the rack.

      I put coarse salt, pepper and a touch of garlic powder† on the roast, and browned all sides in a little olive oil in the pan first; then I lifted it out, set the rack in place, and set the roast on it, pouring a little black coffee into the pot.  That's an old trick; it tenderizes the meat and adds some depth to the flavor.  I put the lid on and let it get to simmering while I got ready to add vegetables; after thirty minutes, I lifted the lid, had a look, and added beef broth, keeping the level lower than the top of the rack.

      I washed a couple of potatoes and cut each one into six big chunks.  Those in, I cleaned up a double handful of the short "baby carrots" (they're not) sold in bags, added them, and took my time preparing three big stalk of celery, cut in sections an inch or so long.  I finished with a white onion, sectioned in fairly large pieces.  The onion went in about an hour after I'd put the roast in the rack.

      The pot kept simmering.  I looked at it every half-hour or so and added broth if the level seemed low (not easy to see.  The pot was pretty full).  At the two-hour mark, I added four ears of corn, still on the cob.  At two and a half hours, the corn was cooked, potatoes were soft and the meat thermometer said the beef was done.

      Sliced, it was reasonably tender and not overcooked.  With the roast out, I poured the broth into the grease separator -- the pot's got a good-sized spout, like an old cast-iron pan -- and the vegetables were flavorful, well-steamed and not greasy.  A little of the separated broth over the meat and vegetables, corn on the side and there's dinner -- and the leftover meat, vegetables and broth made a nice stew the next day.
________________________
* Would that it were, though.  Candidates don't get anything like the third degree I'd like to see all of them face.  Instead, it's a battle to see who can thump out the bassiest appeal to the partisan base. This runs a real risk of building so hermetic an echo chamber that the post-primary campaign never broadens out and the November results arrive as either foregone anticlimax or a terrible shock.  They shouldn't take the outcome for granted.  Winner or loser, I want 'em to worry more about ways to appeal to everyone with genuinely good ideas than trying to blow on the spinning dice.  Yeah, "Welcome to Hell.  Would you like ice water?  Tough."
 
† This is a compromise.  If I try to keep fresh garlic around, it's either dried out or gone funky when I when I need it, and it's hard to work with without getting the kind of garlicky fingers that mean no petting the cats until scrubbed and scrubbed: that whole allium family is not good for cats. Garlic powder keeps a long time and is easy to handle, but it's harsher than fresh garlic.

Sore Winners, Again

      There was a short window -- mostly post WW II, pre, oh, call it the Newt Gingrich-Bill Clinton sparring, when legislative supermajorities behaved with some restraint towards fellow legislators who were members of the minority party.  They might be sticking it to disfavored constituents, but their nominal peers who were in the club and far away from the levers of power were ornaments of tolerance and open debate -- it wasn't like they were going to get anything done, after all.

      It doesn't work that way now.  From expulsion (at least two successes in at least three recent attempts, and the successes backfired spectacularly) to the shadow-ban approach of the Chair simply refusing to ever acknowledge a member (at least two examples in two different state legislatures), supermajorities are behaving in ways that reflect deep-rooted insecurity, and treating debates they know they will win as if they were threats.

      In more balanced legislatures, where compromise and accommodation are the only way to get anything done, members instead embrace deadlock and use the unlikelihood of moving the needle as an excuse for preposterous, base-pandering efforts that play well to their electorate but accomplish nothing -- see the U. S. House and Senate for as many examples as anyone could want, if they were fool enough to truly want them.

      "The politics of personal destruction" has become the norm and, unsurprisingly, created ruins.  You can make a wasteland and call it peace -- but it's still a wasteland.

      Be careful what you wish for.  Be magnanimous in victory.  Work and play well with others.  Share your toys.  It doesn't diminish you.  Nor will fingerpointing reverse present trends.

      I suppose it'll all be moot once (or are we still saying "if?") China slips the leash and trips into WW III, but it's certainly awkward now.  Well, it was awkward last time, too.

It's Back

      The final season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is available on Amazon Prime Video now and if the first two episodes are any indication, the series is as good as ever.

      It's a fantasy, a musical comedy in saturated Technicolor™ hues, but one that makes a considerable effort to capture the look and feel of its 1950s - 60s setting.  This season has (in opening segments) wandered farther ahead in time and maintained a look appropriate to the times.  The dialog is sparkling and the storytelling remains sharp.

      There's a lot of "period" technology in the background of Midge Maisel's stage, radio and TV work, and the props have been an honest effort, steadily improving.  (This is squarely in an area of interest to me and it's an effort sometimes to not go looking up model numbers for an old TV camera or reel-to-reel.)  It reminds me of AMC's Remember WENN, set in a radio station in 1940 - 42: the scripts were always good and the sets and props caught up as the show progress.  But while WENN is a lost gem, Mrs. Maisel is a jewel in Amazon's crown and they know it.

      It's not incisive social commentary -- but it's not lightweight fluff, either.  That's a difficult balance to maintain and yet the series has consistently managed.  Tam and I are watching the series a little at a time.

Surprise!

      Last night, I learned that a somewhat foulmouthed comedienne/actress with a whiskey contralto whose work entertains me* has a more than adequate singing voice, with remarkable range.  She's got a nice ear for harmony, too, dances well and has considerable ability at accents when speaking.

      It was, among other things, a reminder that acting and comedy are crafts (or skilled trades, if you prefer) and people who at good at it (which overlaps with being a "star" only a little) often have considerable depth to their skills.  It might look like play, and indeed, a pretty or handsome face and physique can cover many deficits; but for the rest of 'em it's like knitting or mountain-climbing or welding, a thing a person's got to work at to be any good and quite something to see when it's done well.

      We do not live in an age of totally untrammeled boobery and undeserved fame; it's not wall-to-wall "reality stars" who are famous only for being famous, at least not yet.
________________________
* If you're one of the many varieties of thin-skinned types who can't tolerate performers whose politics don't align with your own, her work is not for you; she's all over the place along those lines and if you weren't vexed by the opening monologue, one of the next two or three bits will set you off.  Not to worry -- the entertainment Automat's got lots of different kinds of sandwiches and sides; you'll find another place to spend your nickel if you just keep looking.