Month: August 2025

When I started to babysit Cray Supercomputers it was just another step. Massive mainframe handling many users, doing many things.

But I quickly learned that there are ways of making “supercomputers” that don’t require massive mainframes. My mentor used to say, “Raytracing is embarrassingly parallel.”

What was meant by that is that every ray fired is completely independent of every other ray fired. His adjunct program rrt was able to distribute work across 1000s of different compute nodes.

We were constantly attempting to improve our ability to throw more compute power at any problem we were encountering. It was always about combining more and more nodes to create more and more powerful compute centers.

Which moved the bottleneck. We went from being CPU starved to being memory starved to being network starved. So we added more network bandwidth until it all balanced out again. Until we bottlenecked on networks again.

After his passing, I did work with a company that supported multiple large corporations.

I was introduced to VMware. A virtualization framework.

Instead of taking “small” computers and joining them together to create larger computers, we were taking “medium” computers and breaking them into small virtual devices.

What is a virtual device

A virtual device is nominally a network interface, a virtual disk drive, or a compute instance.

To create a virtual computer (instance), you tell your vm manager to create a virtual drive, attach it to a virtual computer, attach a virtual DVD drive, allocate a virtual network interface, and boot.

The virtual drive can be a physical drive on the host computer. It can be a partition on a physical drive, it can be a file on the host computer, or it can be a network-attached drive.

If you attach from the host computer, you can only move the drive to other instances on the same computer.

If you attach a network-attached drive, you can only move the drive to other instances with access to the network-attached drive.

I use libvirt for my virtual manager. If I expect the instance to stay on the same host, I use a file on the host computer. That is easy.

If I need to be able to migrate the virtual computer to different machines, I’ll use a Ceph Raw Block Device or a file on a shared filesystem.

What are the cons of using a virtual machine

It can be slower than a physical device. It doesn’t have to be, but sometimes it is.

While you can oversubscribe CPUs, you can’t oversubscribe memory. Memory is always an issue with virtual machines.

When the network isn’t fast enough, network-attached drives will feel slower.

And the big one: if the Network Attached Storage (NAS) fails, all instances depending on the NAS will also fail. Which is why I use Ceph. Ceph can survive multiple drive or node failures.

Another big con: if a host computer fails, it will cause all virtual computers running on that host to also fail.

What are the pros of using a virtual machine

It is trivial to provision virtual machines. There is an entire framework OpenStack that does exactly this. Using OpenStack you can provision an instance with just a few simple commands.

You can migrate an instance from one host computer to another. Even if the disk drive is located on the host computer, it is possible to move the contents of that drive to another host computer.

If you are using a NAS, you can attach a virtual drive to an instance, work on it with that instance, then detach that virtual drive and attach it to a different instance. This means you don’t have to use over the wire data moves.

You can also increase the size of a virtual drive, and the instance can take advantage of more disk space without having to be rebooted or any downtime.

Besides increasing the size, we can attach new drives.

This means that storage management is much easier.

Virtual Networks

The host computer lives on one or more physical networks. The instances can be bridged onto that physical network.

The instance can also be protected behind a Network Address Translation (NAT) service. This gives complete outbound connectivity but requires extra configuration for inbound.

But an instance can be placed within a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). A VPC provides the complete internet IP space to the instance (or instances).

This means that user A can have their instances on 192.168.100.x and user B can have their instances on 192.168.100.x with out collisions.

None of user A’s traffic appears in user B’s VPC.

VPCs can be connected to share with gateways. When this is done, all the VPCs must use non-overlapping subnets.

In other words, 192.168.100.1 on user A’s VPC cannot communicate with an instance on user B’s VPC at address 192.168.100.55.

But if user A agrees to use 192.169.100.x and user B agrees to use 192.168.99.x then the VPCs can be connected with a (virtual) router.

Using a VPC means that the user must use a gateway to talk to any other VPC or physical network. This places a NAT service in the gateway.

A physical address is assigned to the gateway, which forwards all traffic to one or more VPC IPs.

Conclusion

While every infrastructure manager (network manager) needs to know their VM Manager. They all work in similar ways. If you know the basics, the rest is just a matter of finding the correct button or command.

This stuff is easy once the infrastructure is set up.

What is Children’s Day?

The Fort runs many events. During the summer season they will have an event almost every weekend. Sometimes it is a group “garrisoning” the fort, that is, they are staying in the fort, manning it as if it were the 1750s. Other times the event is only during standard hours. In still other times, the event attendees stay in an encampment outside the palisade.

Since a major part of the fort’s goals is education, they have many events for schools, homeschooled children, and just children in general.

In the spring we have multiple school groups attend outside normal days we are open, but yesterday was an event for children of all ages to visit.

Manning The Fort

When everything is going well, we will have people in every building doing things, teaching as they do. My hiding place is the Joiner’s shop.

Ally mans Sartwell House, cooking up a storm, attracting every body to come visit.

It made my heart swell an extra size when I heard a group enter the fort and immediately head to Sartwell House, saying very loudly, “Ally’s cooking in Sartwell!”

I don’t get the same level of excitement, but I still have fun.

The Fort Is Coming Back to Life

In Johnny Cash’s video cover of Hurt there are a few brief glimpses of The House of Cash. By the time he made the video, the House of Cash was closed to the public.

That video is haunting, not only for the music but also for the visuals. That empty place which once was alive, thriving, a museum worth visiting.

When I started going to the Fort, it had that feeling of barely hanging on. The same 4 or 5 people were all there were.

Amber, Albert, and Bill were the people that I saw interpreting every time.

Then something amazing happened: more people showed up to interpret. More people were visiting. People that had stopped volunteering came back.

The Richards are there and many others whose names I can’t recall.

All of this because the leadership of the fort put their shoulder to the wheel and made it happen. While the Director doesn’t interpret, she does so much to drive the Fort into the future. Without her, I do not believe the Fort would still be viable.

Today we had over 50 children attend. They brought parents, grandparents, and friends with them. Every house was open with interpreters in the buildings. I was warned that we had three people that could handle the joinery which would allow me to do something else if I wanted.

The fort was alive with people. It was a wonderful feeling.

State of The Joinery

The first thing I noticed was that my wood chips were in the collection barrel, but that there were more chips and shavings. Others had been working in the shop. It wasn’t just me doing the old-timey thing; others were doing it as well.

The best part was that Bill and a volunteer had braced the lathe. They had also replaced the spacer blocks so the belt was tensioned better.

One of my self-imposed tasks for today was to apply a bit of TLC to the drive belt. What do you call it when a leather belt drinks nearly a cup of neatsfoot oil?

I call it thirsty. The belt looks and feels much better now. It should last for many more years.

Eric had also been doing stuff in the shop. He has done an incredible job of cleaning and organizing the shop. It looked like it was a shop ready for use. Thank you, Eric.

Dull Tools Everywhere

I came to the fort prepared to sharpen tools. I picked up a DMT extra course 8×3 diamond plate. Think 220 grit. This is in addition to my existing 320-grit and 1200-grit diamond plates.

I decided to go with diamond plates instead of my oilstones is because I would rather not have to deal with oil. Diamond plates require no oil and no water. You can use water with them, but it is just as easy to wash them every so often.

My first tool was a 1/2 skew chisel for the lathe. I sharpened this by hand.

Two sides with no guide. I did an “okay” job. I saw the facet extend to the edge. I was able to feel the burr from one side and might have been feeling it on the other side.

When you have the facet touching the edge, it will roll a burr. If you can feel a burr across the cutting edge, this indicates that the facet reaches the edge across the entire edge.

I worked my way through the stones, then stropped the chisel. It looked pretty.

Better, when I used it to do a pairing cut, it just worked. I got real shavings.

From there I went to a small wooden coffin smoothing plane. It is called a coffin plane because of its shape.

The blade was in poor condition. I used my jig to establish the correct angle then started sharpening.

By the time I had the burr at 220-grit, I was pretty much finished. It took more effort than it should have. After stropping the edge, I was able to see that the blade had chips in it. It cut nicely but left small grooves in the work.

I should have done more work on the blade until the pits were gone. I choose to move to the next iron.

The third blade/iron was for the jack plane. It looked ok, but it wasn’t. After over an two hours at the stones, I still had 1/8″ of edge that was not turning a burr. That’s as far as I got. I didn’t have time or energy to do more.

I tested it straight off the 220-grit stone; it did an impressive job. I am pleased with myself. I’ll get it done next time.

I have many more irons, chisels, and other tools to sharpen. Once they have a good grind on them, it will be much easier to maintain.

What are the kids interested in?

Augers. We have a wall of augers. They are post 1750s design, but they are old timey so people think they are period. I had a dozen kids use an auger bit to make a hole in a piece of scrap wood.

The augers are not something I’m interested in. Why? Because I can’t find the old-school style my father had. I would rather not pay for a tool I don’t know how to sharpen and which might be of poor quality but high price.

Sometimes they are interested in the planes, but generally not. Maybe one out of a couple of dozen.

Working with the shaving horse is something they enjoy. Unfortunately, the drawknife we use needs to be sharpened. And somebody put a bevel on the back, which should be perfectly flat.

Then there is the lathe. The lathe is still my favorite. Because of the work Bill and his helper did, it was purring yesterday. I did have to adjust the tension, but the drive wheel axle had been adjusted and greased; it moved much better.

Some kids are interested in the lathe.

What did they seem most interested in?

Making fry bread with Ally. That was the winning demonstration, in my opinion.

A (nearly) working lathe!

After over a year of playing with the lathe, it is nearly fully functional. We need to remove or modify a bit of wrought iron that interferes with the treadle. Once that is done, I think it will be perfectly usable.

I managed to actually make some cuts while powering the lathe myself. That’s an impressive improvement.

I had a few “apprentices” working as the lathe motor. Two of them got the wheel spinning, and I was able to make real progress on rounding the shaft. A sharp chisel lets that happen.

I always start by showing them how it is done. Because I have practice, I can almost always get it going on the first try. As long as I only have to treadle I can do it without issue. Trying to make cuts while powering the lathe, not so much.

A young college-age man got the wheel going and was going long enough that I felt guilty. I was making excellent cuts and didn’t want to stop.

Normally, they tire long before I feel guilty; he beat me at that game. Except, as he walked back, he told me that if we had gone just another 2 minutes, he would have had to quit.

Conclusion

It is my home away from home. I love going to the Fort. I love interacting with people in that controlled environment. I love interacting with the kids with such a giant joy of learning.

We need to see you at the Fort. I think you would enjoy it.

P.S.

I have been working on a minimum viable product website for the Fort. With the new client, I’ve had to push that project to deal with the new client.

As soon as I knew, I had Ally inform the Fort people. They responded.

I spent the rest of the week feeling like shit for letting them down. I found out yesterday that they felt bad because they went back to the full project with a delivery in 2026.

I was lucky enough to be able to hug it out with the director. We are both more worried about the other’s feelings than we need to be.

She’s doing a wonderful job. I’m glad she is the director.

For those of you who live in the area, Chris and I will be up at the fort today, and I will be there tomorrow as well. He will be doing woodworking, and I am doing a project on fry bread today. Tomorrow I am teaching bread baking to a class of six. I hope to see you there!

There are a zillion books out there on various aspects of prepping, and I can’t recommend them ALL. But these are some I consider to be truly important, or they’re ones that have been recommended highly by others. I’m going to stick stuff in categories to help make it easier to look through.

SELF-SUFFICIENCY

• The Perfect Bug Out Bag
• Emergency Food Storage and Survival Guide
• Best Guide to Disaster Readiness
• SAS Survival Handbook
• The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It

MED/FIRST AID

• SpecOps Forces Medical Handbook
• Where There is no Doctor
• PDR for Herbal Medicine
• Medicinal Plants of North America
• A Book for Midwives
• The Survival Medicine Handbook (TY Tom!)

SECURITY/SELF-DEFENSE

• 100 Deadly Skills
• Prepper’s Home Defense
• Holding Your Ground
• Navy Seal’s Bug In Guide

GENERAL SKILLS

• Encyclopedia of Country Living
• Basic Butchering of Livestock
• Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties
• Wildwood Wisdom
• No-Grid Survival Projects
• The Way Things Work (TY CBMTTek!)
• 98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive (TY Tom!)

CRAFTING/DIY

• The Barefoot Architect
• The Off-Grid Living Bible
• Make, Sew, and Mend
• How to Build a Moonshine Still
• Footwear Pattern Making
• How to Build Wind Turbine (etc)
• Wind Mills and Wind Motors
• Homemade Contrivances

FICTION

• Homestead Bound
• The Collapse
• One Second After
• Going Home
• Getting Out

Ceph For The Win?

One of my Ceph nodes had started acting up. It would stop responding, and I could get no network traffic to it.

It is a truly headless server. My only input was the power button. Which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t.

After the third time the node went offline, I put a monitor on the node and got to see it die.

It limped along for a few more days before I remembered I had hot-swappable cabinets and moved the large drives to a different node.

Ceph is now rebalancing the cluster by moving 24+ terabytes around. It should finish in a couple more days. The cool factor is that nothing that depends on the Ceph cluster noticed. It all just works.

I would be replacing the dead node, but other work is interfering.

New Work

I’m in the process of bringing on a new client. It has been an interesting 48 hours. My first task has me busy for the next 4 days, if their networking team can get their network configured correctly.

They depend on Linux for several servers but have had nobody with Linux skills in their IT department for many years. Troglodite to the rescue.

I love this stuff. Doing emergency fixes faster than most other people can even evaluate the problem is where I shine.

Democrats AWOL

In a move that reminds me of pickup baseball games of my youth, the Dems of Texas were losing, so they kicked sand on the plate, grabbed the ball and bat, and took off for the hills.

Being Dems, this wasn’t “I’m taking my ball and bat and going home.” No, it was “I’m stealing your ball and bat and taking off with them.”

The governors of New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, and other Democratic strongholds are threatening to redistrict to remove Republican districts.

This would be a real threat, except that these states already did it. There are no Republican representatives from Massachusetts.

Ebay is an illness

So there are three or four planes you need for hand processing wood.

You require a smoothing plane, a Stanley #4. You require a jack plane, a Stanley #5. You require a jointer, a Stanley #7. And you should have a fore plane, a Stanley #5 with a wide mouth and specially shaped iron.

• Veritas #4: $290.00
• Veritas #5: $389.00
• Veritas #7: $459.00
• Veritas #6 Fore plan: $346

I’m not about to add those up. I’m lucky in that I already owned the #5 and #7.

eBay has Stanley #4s for around $50 plus shipping. Stanley #5s are going for $25 to $50. #7s are a bit more, in the $70 to $125 range.

Wooden planes are even cheaper.

I need to stop spending any time on eBay.

Diets

The weight is slowly coming off. It working for me. I just need to keep up the exercise part of the diet.

Question of the Week

What incident sticks out in your mind where you were told that there was a difficult problem and you gave the simple solution?

To give an example. I once interviewed with one of the big three automakers. My friend had gotten me the interview.

The interview went well. They explained the project I would be working on. They explained how hard the problem was that I would be working on.

I received permission to use the whiteboard and sketched out my proposed solution.

A few days later I received an apologetic phone call from the project manager. Seems that my 15-minute whiteboard session had provided them with the solution they needed. They had completed the project and the project was being shut down. The position they were going to hire me to fill was gone.

People do a poor job of creating, managing, and remembering passwords. We are horrible at making random numbers and worse at creating things that are random-like but we can remember.

Part of this is because of the rules put in place by NIST and ISO. ISO 27001 has this to say about passwords:

As computers have become faster, the need for better passwords has also increased. Brute forcing a password has a simple cost formula:
$$\frac{{\mathrm{complexity}}^{\mathrm{length}}}{2}$$
For example, if the complexity is all uppercase letters and the length of the password is 8 characters then we have:
$$\frac{{26}^8}{2}=\mathrm{104,413,532,288}$$

Which might look like a large number, but in computer terms isn’t really. As the complexity goes up, the final number goes up. Adding length causes the number to go up even faster. Consider adding the set of numbers, 0-9 to our complexity verse adding one more character to the length of our password.
$$\frac{{36}^8}{2}=\mathrm{1,410,554,953,728}$$
And adding one more character to the length:
$$\frac{{26}^9}{2}=\mathrm{2,714,751,839,488}$$

Adding just one extra character gives us nearly twice as many values to test.

Oh, the divide by 2 is the average number of tests before we guess right.

If the characters are not truly random, the number of guesses decreases substantially. Using names or words, even with character exchanges, produces a much smaller search space. Regardless, the formula stays the same, even if the vocabulary changes.

Consider just using a 3-word passphrase:

$$\frac{{\mathrm{104,334}}^3}{2}=\mathrm{567,868,237,365,852}$$

As you can see, using a passphrase increases the search space incredibly. The only requirement is that the search space of the letter search meet or exceed the search space of the word search.

Unfortunately, many password methods do not handle long passwords well. In early Unix times, no matter how long of a password you entered, only the first 8 characters were used.

Which brings us to

Password Managers

A password manager stores passwords in an encrypted form and retrieves them for you on demand.

For a password manager (PM) to be acceptable to the users, it must interface with the users browsers and other tools that need passwords. This means it must have a mobile app. If it does not, it will not be used.

The PM should monitor applications for password requests and autofill those requests.

The PM must lock itself after a certain amount of idle time or browser/device restart.

Finally, and in some senses, most important, the PM must be secure from data breaches.

To be secure from data breaches, the PM should never store credentials in clear text.

LastPass

This is one of the better-known PMs. While it had a good track record, there was a data breach and credentials were exposed.

One of my clients used LastPass, so I used it. I never particularly liked it. When I could, I moved away from it.

One of the big downsides is that it requires a live, active internet connection to function. No network, no access.

Keeper

I have used Keeper. It is a well-rounded PM with all the expected features. It stores all credentials encrypted by your password. They can’t access your credentials even if they wanted to. Since they can, your passwords cannot be exposed in a data breach.

One of the strong points of Keeper is the ability to share “folders.” You can have a folder for passwords related to a single project or client and share that folder with other users, inside or outside the organization.

The ability to share passwords means that the administrator can update a shared password, and every member with access to that password gets the change immediately.

Shared folders requires a paid tier.

There is also the ability to store small files securely.

The one downside I discovered with Keeper is that it too requires an active internet connection to function.

We were on a long road trip when my kid ran us out of data on my mobile plan. They consumed nearly 10GB of data in a little over 6 hours.

This left me in the position of attempting to log into my provider’s website using credentials stored in Keeper. Except that the amount of bandwidth available to me was so low that it took 30 minutes to get that password and login.

BitWarden

This is my current PM of choice. It provides all the features of Keeper with a few that appeal to me.

First, it is can be self-hosted. This means that all the data security is provided by me. With the self-hosted version, I can offer PM services to anybody at cost to me.

When you move up to any of the paid tiers, the lowest being $4/user per month, you get the ability to create organizations and then share a collection (folder) with that organization.

The mobile application does not need to have Internet access to function, though you might need to request a sync if there are recent changes to your vault.

All data is stored encrypted. The key to decrypt your vault is your master password. Even if there were to be a data breach, your password would still be secure because decrypting your passwords requires your master password.

The BitWarden allows for the use of a Personal Identification Number, or PIN. Unlike most PINs, the BitWarden PIN can be any number of digits. I find that it is easier to remember a number sequence than to remember random character strings.

You can set when the master password is needed to unlock the vault.

If you happen to forget your PIN, you can still unlock your vault with the master password.

Like all good PMs, BitWarden offers two factor authentication (2FA). It supports YubiKeys and TOTP options. TOTP is commonly referred to as an authenticator.

You can use a secondary authenticator for your 2FA to access BitWarden. But you can also use BitWarden’s integrated TOTP generator.

The pricing appears to be reasonable: $4/user per month for “small teams” and $6/user per month for enterprise-level features.

Psono

This is another self-hosted option. It does not seem to have the same polish as BitWarden. It would be my choice if I were just playing.

Conclusion

If you are not using a Password Manager, now is the time to start. For my readers, I’m willing to give you a free account on our BitWarden server, though you are likely better off using BitWarden’s free offering.

AKA: Maine Renaissance Faire, weekend the third.

I have somehow managed to create a “Conservative Safe Space” at Ren Faires. I’m not sure how this happened, but it’s definitely an interesting thing!

As I’m writing this, I’ve just gotten home from the third and final weekend of Maine Renaissance Faire. I had a blast, sold a ton of books, and cooked my way through a heatwave and the smoke from Canadian wildfires. I’m slightly sunburned, though not badly, and I managed to avoid getting dehydrated this weekend. I’m rather proud of that. I made Good Choices LOL!

By choice, I stayed on site one extra night, both to get a bit of extra sleep and to not have to load and unload the truck while exhausted and filthy. Instead, I helped other people pack up their stuff on Sunday evening, and then at 9pm I retreated to my tent with some gatorade and my phone (which I basically didn’t look at for most of the weekend). With the big queen bed out of the tent and just my single low cot in there, I had room for my comfy chair and a table, as well as my basket (which doubled as a foot rest on Sunday night). I sat down and watched some Futurama, played a couple of games, took my meds, and was out cold by 10:30pm. I didn’t even shower, even though I could have, because the sheets were already dirty anyhow and I really didn’t care. Come Monday morning, I was up by 8am, feeling actually RESTED. Once the ibuprofin kicked in, I was in fine fettle. I organized all my stuff, packed it neatly, and piled it for easy movement into the truck when Chris arrived to pick me up. THEN I went and showered, and lordy, it felt lovely.

Anyhow, safe spaces. If you listen to people long enough, you can usually tell if they’re liberal or conservative. There are enough code words in both groups that you can pick up on and make an educated guess. I spent the last three weekends learning who the closet conservatives were. I say closet, because at a Ren Faire, you just don’t really talk politics. Well, definitely not conservative politics, but even liberal stuff is largely not spoken about. It’s supposed to be a place to enjoy the fantasy of medieval or Renaissance life, and most everyone does their best to stick to the fantasy and ignore the real world outside.

As I found those I suspected of conservatism, I found a way to privately ask if I was correct. Bonus, I was right every time! I’m sure I missed some people, but that’s fine. I invited several of those people here to the blog, because they’re awesome folks. I let them know that, in my kitchen, we have true equality. Everyone is welcome. I also made it clear that I make my money off of liberals as much (or maybe more) than conservatives, and so if patrons or others were around, we needed to not talk politics. They all understood. Every conservative on site is well versed in keeping their mouth shut while liberals say things they dislike. That’s the price we pay for enjoying the fair and selling our wares to the liberals. It’s fine, most of the time it’s not all that painful.

Read More

In part 1, I showed how the 2011 congressional districts for Maryland were designed to stop Republicans from winning elections. The 2025 congressional districts look better, but I don’t know.

Watch this video to learn how it is nearly impossible for a human to evaluate if a districting is good or bad or how badly biased it might be.

In addition, you have to define what it means to be “biased.” Does it mean that if your general election shows an R 30%, a D 60%, and Other of 10% that you should have a 30/60/10 distribution of representatives?

What happens when you have a large city that is nearly 100% Democrat while the rest of the state is nearly 100% Republican? Does that one city get more representation because of its larger population?

These are all policy decisions. And I’m not in a position to say what the correct answer should be: