awa

A.A.R.P. with SCOTUS

This is just sitting there, waiting for the Justices to give an opinion. This is a motion for terrorists being removed under the Alien Enemies Act to be paused.

The legal argument is that the terrorists haven’t been given enough warning to petition for a hearing. The argument also includes statements that the warnings are only printed in English, so the terrorists don’t know what is being put in front of them.

This is mostly a nothingburger. I suspect the Supreme Court will let the Fifth Circuit do something then will say, yes, what they said.

Trolling Garcia

The amount of world-class trolling going on makes my heart sing. The RNC is offering to pay Democrats to fly down to El Salvador to attempt to see Garcia.

There is a question of the Login Act, but all in all, this seems to be a gift that just keeps on giving.

His wife has taken to posting all images of herself with her wife-beating husband, with cute hearts over his tattoos. It doesn’t matter, the images are already out there.

Ally is reporting that even some of her leftist friends are starting to get a clue about this.

It Is Always A Surprise

I ordered a small fiber switch (L2) from somebody in China. It arrived. What I was expecting was a box around 1U high, 6 inches wide, and 4 inches deep along with a 12v wall wart.

What I got is 1U high, 9 inches wide (have rack), and 4 inches deep. It has an internal power supply and uses a standard three prong power cord for 110v AC feed.

I’ve not tested it yet. If it handles jumbo packets, this is a going to be a winner for me.

Oh, it showed up with this cute power cord. Standard female at one end, to plug into the box, and the other end had two round prongs with the third prong removed/missing. I think that what I am seeing is a British style power cord.

Fun with CSS

Every time I start working with CSS, I end up frustrated. Why? Because I’m generally starting with somebody else’s base and I need to modify things.

In this case, I needed to make the logo a little larger. Look it up in the debugger. Add a new class, modify the height, no change. Turns out that somebody was taking advantage of SCCS and so had created a more specific selector of .header .logo img which was firing instead of my .trog-logo

Used the correct selector, things got much better.

Also JavaScript

JavaScript, jQuery, Bootstrap, jQuery-ui, custom.css, main.css, bootstrap.css, oh my.

Everything is magic when significantly complex. Don’t breathe hard, it will break.

Question of the Week

What is the most ludicrous thing you’ve heard somebody on the left say this week?

And on the right?

Trump Before The Supreme Court

Thursday afternoon, the Supreme Court consolidated three cases on appeal from by the administration and scheduled oral arguments for May 15, 2025, at 10 a.m.

24A884, 24A885, and 24A886 are consolidations of 10 different cases, though some of those are duplicates as they came through the circuit courts.

In short, this is the vehicle for the Supreme Court to knock down the raft of inferior courts granting nationwide TROs and preliminary injunctions.

I don’t know if this will extend to final judgment, regardless, this is the case to watch.

Fort at #4 — Projects

I will be up at The Fort tomorrow to take some pictures. I just finished two woodworking mallets. Boy, I’m a poor wood turner. They look ok. I’ve polished one of them and put a sealing coat on it. On the other hand, I can see ever mis-cut and catch as I learn how to do this.

I’m hoping to get at least one of the spinning wheels down and into the cabins. This will give me something to do when I don’t want to be in the wood working shop.

Which means I need to finish the clamps for the clamp to hold my wool combs. I like the way wool spins once it has been combed.

I might even try spinning some carded wool. I’ve not tried that yet.

I have a reed in our big floor loom. We got the loom for cheap, but the reeds were rusted nasty things. I’ve not recovered them yet. I need to make a raddle to allow me to warp the loom. And I have to spin some yarn for the weft.

Computer Frustrations

There are two standard ways that power is supplied to computer type devices. One, they take a 110v AC into a power supply, which then generates 12V and 5V from that for the system. Two, they have a “wall wort” which generates 12V DC, which is then converted as required internally.

More and more of the small devices I’m picking up use the 12V wall wort. The issue? Space for the wall worts.

Wed, I went to plug in a new device. Accidentally unplugged the wrong wall wort, dropped my room switch until I got it plugged back in.

Once I had the correct wall wort removed, I found that I had 2 open outlets but the orientation of the outlets and the orientation of the wall wart don’t fit.

Now I’m dealing with another issue, A new switch that won’t come online.

Snope

The SCOTUS Friday Conference was moved to Thursday. Snope was conferenced again.

I really, really, want to see some forward motion on these Second Amendment Cases.

The reason I don’t update you on Ocean State Tactical is that it has been following Snope and I’m too lazy to have another tab open on https://www.supremecourt.gov

Tea!

I used to drink Coke-a-Cola. I stopped years ago, mostly because of the sugar content. I was converted to coffee.

I do drink tea occasionally. It is not my go-to drink.

In 1773, a bunch of rebels dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. Approximately 92,000 pounds.

For much of my younger years, I thought they were talking about Lipton tea bags. I.e., loose tea in individual small filter bags. There was no way that you could get that much tea into just 342 chests. Then I found out about real loose tea. This was better.

Then I found that what was actually transported were bricks of black tea from the orient. These bricks were solid.

For use at The Fort, we ordered a brick of black tea. It is formed the same way it would have been formed in 1773. Our brick is 2.5 pounds.

The cool thing? It has a shelf life of 50 years. This is prepper paradise!

Question of the Week

What do you think will happen when Karmelo Anthony is convicted for murder?

SCOTUS is Busy

Yost v. Brown et al. was just granted a stay.

The plaintiffs (not bad guys) are attempting to get an initiative on the ballet. Before this happens, the AG of Ohio reviews the summaries of the initiative to verify that it is an accurate summation. The AG’s opinion differed from the plaintiffs so they took it to court.

The district court (bad guys) issued a preliminary injunction to force the AG (not bad guy) to “immediately certify” the plaintiffs’ desired summary language.

This is another case of the courts overstepping their Article III limits.

They have been clearing out 100s of cases requesting cert in the 2024-2025 term.

The slapped down the DC District Court for calling preliminary injunctions a TRO to avoid review. And they also slapped down the DC Circuit Court for allowing the District Court to do so.

The did the same for the Massachusetts District Court, which “issued what it styled as a temporary restraining order (TRO)”. This included a Gibb’s slap to the First Circuit court.

They have not granted Cert for Snope or Ocean State Tactical, nor have they denied it. They keep conferencing the cases. I’m not sure what they are waiting for.

They sent Antonyuk back to the District Court to finish their work.

I think everybody has learned that fighting for a win on an interlocutory state just isn’t worth it. The Circuit Courts over these rogue District Courts are just a rogue and just as bent. The Supreme Court isn’t going to deal with an interlocutory Second Amendment case until they have a new Second Amendment opinion out.

Simply put, the rogue inferior courts will just twist the Court’s words to get the outcome they want.

Market Fluctuation

What goes up must come down? Or maybe it is the other way around, what goes down must go up. I absolutely understand the panic day traders and market players must be having. People panic, people sell, the price of shares goes down.

If you are worried about your unrealized gains or losses, you aren’t in the markets for the long run. There are very few investment securities that will lose money in the long run.

You might not make as much, but it is unlikely that you will lose money. Just ride the trough out. Many people did just that for the four years of Biden, riding out a couple of months under Trump should be a no-brainer.

Hypocrisy lives

Elizabeth Warren is trying to get a bill passed to ban congress critters from investing in individual stocks. Of course, this doesn’t touch the astonishing wealth she’s accumulated since taking office.

As Allyson says, “Read the Bill.” I don’t believe anything a Democrat says about a bill. I need to read the darn thing myself.

It is straightforward to write a bill that sounds like it stops insider trading but leaves gaping holes for congress critters to make money from inside knowledge.

One of Chuck Schumer or Adam Schiff got out there and said that Trump was guilty of insider trading. His proof? Trump said that it was a good time to buy while the market is in this panic sell off.

Yet, Adam and Chuck seem to make way more money than a government employee should.

Trump and the Second Amendment

There are things that are happening in the administration that seem to be good. I’m concerned because nothing is set in stone. I’ll start cheering once I hear the Solicitor General get before the Circuit and Supreme Court and back The People.

Question of the Week

Do you think Trump is getting what is best for our country with his tariffs?

That New Car Feeling

Well, a portion of the inheritance from my parents arrived. I gave myself a small amount and the wife. Money that wasn’t spoken for in other ways.

The last few times I’ve needed a rental car, I’ve gotten a current version of my Toyota Tacoma. Every time I came away wishing I had a new truck.

Then a few days after getting back in my truck, I would realize that I didn’t want a new Truck. What I wanted was the new radio/head end.

So that’s what I got. A serious upgrade, It is an Alpine unit with Android Auto. I will be able to get in the truck and when I turn on the unit, it will hook up and give me navigation, calls, and music. Life is nice.

And for much less than a month’s payments on a new truck.

Boy they last a long time

In 1967, my parents bought a VW Microbus. It had hauling capacity that a standard station wagon did not. It was the equivalent of today’s mom van.

At the time, most cars were getting an astonishing 5 to 7 MPG. The VW got 20MPG. Given the amount of travel we did, this likely made a difference.

They gave me that car when I turned 16. I drove it until 1987 when I traded it in.

At the time I traded it in, it was on its third engine, its second gas tank, it didn’t have a working speedometer. The floor was nearly rusted through. Hell, it was rusted through. The aux. heater hadn’t worked in years. The main heater wouldn’t even defrost the windshields.

The bumper was a replacement that my brother wielded up out of diamond tread.

In short, it was at the end of its life. A year after I traded it in, I saw somebody driving it around town.

My truck is 15 years old. At 15 it is in better condition than that VW was at 10. It is still on its first engine. There is no rust on it. I expect it to keep going for at least another 5 years.

Lawfare

We keep moving closer and closer to the administration telling the courts to pound sand until the Supreme Court Rules.

It is sickening how inferior courts can find their way to always rule against trump.

A stat I heard was that between 1900 and 1999, there were 22 nationwide injunctions issued. There were 87 issued against Trump in his first term.

I believe I heard that there have been 30 so far in his second term.

People Fall For This?

I had numerous ads pop up because I purchased some computer stuff direct from China. Would you believe that you can buy a 2023 GMC Sierra for only $1,500? Sounds too good to be true.

Looking at the listing, they only accept payment via Western Union or wire transfers. Yeah, too good to be true.

And This

A friend ordered a DVD he had been searching for over the last 5 years. It arrived. New In Box.

Except it was just the box and book. No DVD. Amazon seller who was long gone by the time my friend received his package.

Amazon is covering the costs, but still…

Tariffs

I spent the last two weeks adding tariff processing to a B2B e-commerce website. The Canadian was just frustrated at the extra work for him and having to finally track tariffs. He had just been eating the cost of tariffs for years, a part of doing business.

In the meantime, I’ve been told that Trump’s tariffs are going to cost me thousands of dollars per year.

I’ve watched videos of leaders in other countries say, “We aren’t going to take this from the USA!”

One article pointed out that Vietnam has tariffs on the $10B they import from the US. Trump has put tariffs on the $150B we import from Vietnam. Isn’t it stupid that he did this to them?

Question of the Week

If the United States putting tariffs on imports is so bad, why is it good when other countries put tariffs on our goods.

What do you think of this entire tariff thing?

Vanderstock

I am unhappy with the decision because it feels like we got played. I’m with Alito on this one.

My issue with the decision is that outside things are considered when determining what a thing is.

I have a Bridgeport mill in my workshop. Does my having that tool mean that, for me, an 80% lower is actually a firearm?

If I have a CNC milling center with a program to turn a block of 6061 into a lower receiver, does that make a piece of 6061 a firearm?

This takes us back to the days when having one of the 6 forbidden M-16 parts while owning an AR-15 showed constructive intent, and that AR-15 was really an NFA controlled machine gun.

Signal

The oops of that chat session escaping into the wild has been shoved down my throat. I’m tired of hearing about it.

My opinion here, worth exactly what you paid for it, there is a security issue, and it wasn’t using Signal.

Every communications method used by the government has a classification placed on it. It could be only good for unclassified materials, or it could be good for TS and above. It doesn’t matter. It has a label and the people who are using it should know what the levels are.

Consider my situation, I’m just a computer geek. Any traffic that travels over one of the subnets is absolutely insecure. It is on a Wi-Fi. Any traffic that travels over the air waves can be intercepted.

This is why that subnet is labeled DMZ. to remind me that it is insecure.

There is another set of subnets that are fiber connected with no outside connections. That isn’t part of the DMZ, but it is still not secure.

I have another virtual network. This virtual network uses encrypted tunnels between the different nodes. Any traffic that enters the virtual network is securely encrypted until it exits the virtual network.

This is used for transfer of data blocks for the Ceph file system.

Any traffic that should be secured is secured on an end to end basis. I use SSH for node to node connections. I use SSL for other types of connects.

You can’t even connect to this website without using SSL.

In the case of the Signal chat, that application is labeled to handle a certain level of classification. From what I’ve seen, the traffic that was transmitted over the Signal chat did not exceed the levels authorized for that application.

What we have is an operational failure. Somebody without the proper clearances and with no need to know was added to the chat.

My opinion is that it was done maliciously by somebody.

This is functionally equivalent of using SSH to connect to a remote node but having the password to log into your computer, “password123”.

It doesn’t matter how good the communications channel is, if you are going to give away access to the channel through poor operational security.

Tariffs

I have a client that has to deal with the new tariffs being imposed by the United States. They aren’t unhappy, they just need to deal with in.

What I found was that they just built the cost of tariffs into their prices and never worried about it.

Now that I’ve written a new module for them, they will be using that module to handle tariffs to all the countries they ship to.

Prices will go up. I’m hoping that some of these foreign countries decide to do “the right thing” and the tariffs are removed.

Question of the Week

If somebody were to come to you looking to buy firearms for a SHTF situation, what would you recommend and why?

For me it would be:

1. 30-30 Lever Action with scope
2. Sig P365
3. AR-15 with red dot
4. Bolt action .22LR, with scope
5. 7.62×51 bolt action, with scope

The 30-30 lever action doesn’t scream tactical, can be used for taking game as well as self-defense. With the side gate, it can be reloaded on the move. Dual purpose and non-threatening.

You can substitute whatever pistol you like. Be it a Glock or a 1911. I like the compact nature of the P365.

For personal security, an AR-15 with red dot seems to be a suitable option. Light weight, easy to acquire your targets, reasonable stopping power. It can be used on some small game.

There will be times when you need to take small game, a .22LR will do a good job on squirrels, rabbits, and other small stuff.

Finally, a rifle to reach out and touch game and two-legged varmint at distance.

My Luck be with you

In an amazingly lucky series of events, having nothing to do with skill or will power, Kash Patel is reporting that the FBI has captured 3 of the FBI’s top ten since January 20th.

There is no way that this had anything to do with policy changes, it must have been luck that allowed the FBI to accomplish this.

Chinese Made, Doesn’t Matter If It Isn’t Crap

I’ve talked about my fight with hardware. Currently, I have the pieces of a NAS enclosure on the healing bench, ready for the motherboard to be returned to Amazon.

Why? Because it is the wrong motherboard!

As I’ve said, the standard for Mini-ITX boards is 17cmx17cm. There are many motherboards that are advertised a Mini-ITX which are 17×19. Not a big deal, unless it means that it doesn’t fit in the case.

After I figured this out last time, I made sure I ordered a motherboard that was 17×17, 4 SATA ports, PCIex16. That’s not what arrived today, after waiting for a week+.

What arrived today was another 17×19 board. It is also short by one SATA port. I’m unclear as to what motherboard it is, but it is going back.

Amazon will give me a refund, but I’m back to waiting for a motherboard, again. I’ll get there.

Microarchitecture

The first computer I worked on was an 8080. This was an 8bit CPU. The second was the 6502, another 8bit CPU.

Over time, the CPUs became more powerful. The computer I type this on is more powerful than the Cray X/MP I babysat. It has more memory, more cores, more threads. It has more network capacity. It is also a 64bit machine.

The problem that I’ve run into is that an X86-64 architecture CPU doesn’t fully describe what the CPU is capable of.

When I moved from the i386 to the X86-64, it was simple. Unfortunately, Intel and AMD have been adding instructions to their CPUs that extend them past the base X86-64 definition.

To work around this, operating systems and libraries have become more complex as they attempt to determine what features are available and how best to use them.

Coding for the base X86-64 works on all machines, but it is handicapping the newer CPUs.

Thus, several groups came together and created a new standard called Microarchitecture. In this system, the CPU is at the X86-64 X86-64-v1, …-v2, …-V3, or …-V4 level.

RedHat stopped support of X86-64-v1 several years ago. They are dropping support for X86-64-v2 with REL 10.

I’m replacing machines that don’t meet the minimums, and having to try three different motherboards is upsetting me.

SCOTUS Watch

Snope and Ocean State Tactical are back for conference today. The earliest we hear the Court’s decision on Writ of Certiorari will be Monday.

I do not expect to hear anything except, maybe, that they are re distributed for the conference on the 28th

If they are heard on the 28th, they will be heard in the same conference as Antonyuk. This could lead to all three cases being heard at the same time.

This would mean that the Supreme Court would be addressing magazine bans, semi-auto bans, and sensitive places bans in the same opinion.

Given how the Second Circuit snubbed their noses at the Supreme Court, it would not surprise me if the Court took it up again.

To refresh your memory, this case has been to the Supreme Court three times. Once, cert was denied. Once cert was granted, the Second Circuit court’s opinion was vacated, and the case was remanded to the Second Circuit to do it right, in light of Rahimi.

This Week’s Question

What is your current opinion of AG Pam Bondi? How is it different from when she was nominated for AG?

Nerd Babble, the good

git is a source code control system. It is the most powerful or one of the most powerful SCS’s I’ve used.

Like all powerful things, you can break it in hundreds of different ways.

One of its most powerful features is the concept of a remote repository. While other SCS were able to have remote repositories, git takes it a step further. A remote repository is just the bare part of a normal git repository.

This meant that if you had access to a remote server, you could have a remote repository on that server. The issue came when you wanted to restrict what a user could do on that remote server.

The answer came in the form of small applications that allowed you to configure remote access via a git repo. That access, in turn, allowed users to access other repos. By combining SSH keys with this simple software package, you could have multiple users accessing the remote repositories through a single “user” on the remote server.

This simple tool grew into a monstrosity called gitlab. If you purchase a GitLab seat, you get all the tools and do not have to worry about the resources used. Unfortunately, this can be expensive if you have more than a few members of on your team.

There was an option to self-host, but the self-hosted version was missing some very useful features as compared to the paid version. And the thing is a resource hog.

GitHub went a slightly different route. It offers almost all the features of GitLab, maybe more. It has a free tier. But if you want private repos, again, you have to pay per seat.

Enter gitea, as they say, “Git, with a cup of tea.” This thing is fast enough in a low resource environment. It has the remote repos. It allows forking and pull requests.

It has organizations and teams, allow easy control of collaborations. It has everything we need for remote git repos.

And then the extras. First, it has a good issue tracking system. It is not jira but it is good enough. It has projects with Kanban capabilities. It has a wiki.

And it looks like all the “extras” are handled as repos. I’m very impressed.

I feel like we won this round.

Nerd Babble, the bad

Computer motherboards are supposed to be standardized. Yes, some manufacturers make custom boards for their custom cases, but in general, standard is better.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve discovered a small form factor motherboard that is small enough and light enough to attach to the back of a monitor. We have three of these at the house. Thank you to my son for discovering these.

When looking for NAS enclosures, I discovered 4 bay NAS enclosures that were designed to hold a Mini-ITX motherboard.

A Mini-ITX motherboard is 170×170 mm.

This size allows for exactly one expansion slot to the right of the back i/o ports.

Unfortunately, there is another motherboard that isn’t a Mini-ITX which gets sold as a Mini-ITX. It is 170x190mm. This gives enough space for 2 expansion slots.

The NAS enclosures only accept the 170×170 motherboards.

I now have a 170×190 MB that I will have to home.

Snope and Ocean State Tactile

My frustration with the Snope case knows no bounds. This case is old.

It started as a challenge to Kolbe. Kolbe was a challenge to Maryland’s assault weapon ban. It went before the Fourth Circuit court where they assumed that assault weapons were arms under the Second Amendment, and then proceeded to say that they were not protected arms because of “interest balancing”.

This was appealed and cert was denied.

A few years later, Bianchi v. Frosh was started. This was a challenge to Kolbe. The district court followed the Fourth Circuit’s opinion in Kolbe and found for the state. The case was appealed. The three judge merits panel found for the state because they could not override an enbanc panel. A motion was made to have the case heard enbanc.

Regardless, the Fourth found for the state and Bianchi filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court.

Somewhere around that time, Frosh was replaced with Brown. Thus, the case became known as Bianchi v. Brown.

The Supreme Court sat on the case until after Bruen.

After Bruen the Supreme Court granted certiorari, vacated the Fourth Circuit’s finding, and remanded the case back down for a do-over. This is a GVR.

The Fourth Circuit then had the case briefed in light of Bruen and then heard oral arguments before a three judge merits panel. They were the first circuit to hear a Second Amendment case after Bruen.

The merits panel split 2-1 in favor of Bianchi. The sore loser refused to write and submit his dissent on the case. This kept the case in limbo for almost a year. At the end of the year, it looked like the merits panel was going to publish their pro-Second Amendment opinion without the dissent.

At which point the Fourth Circuit decided to take the case enbanc. They required the parties to submit another set of briefs. They then held oral arguments again.

Around this time, Mr. Bianchi left the state of Maryland. This would have mooted the case, but David Snope was also a plaintiff and thus the case was renamed Snope v. Brown. The Fourth circuit then found for the state, again.

This case is now before the Supreme Court seeking certiorari, again.

The court has discussed this case in conference six times. It was distributed for conference seven times, with the first conference being rescheduled.

Which takes us to Ocean State Tactical. This is a magazine ban out of Rhode Island. It is in the same posture as Snope

And now we have Antonyuk v. James. This is a sensitive places case. This case has been to the Supreme Court multiple times. Has been GVRed once. It was denied certiorari once, but with a statement by Thomas telling the inferior courts to do it right.

With all three of these cases before the Supreme Court, seeking certiorari, we might get a trifecta. Here’s hoping.

The Continuing Lawfare against Trump

It is difficult to express just how fast these cases are moving. It is my opinion that the people engaging in lawfare had an expectation of stopping this administration dead in its tracks.

Even when the administration appears to have lost, they are winning. The only case that I’ve noticed that is moving at “regular” speeds is the DoJ v. State of New York. Note, that is not the actual case name.

We’ve had cases move from district court through the circuit courts to the Supreme Court and back down in a weeks time.

In the case of Mahmoud, the administration moved so fast that the lawyers filed in the wrong court. Now they are arguing that it was the right court because at that instant of time, M.K. was in a particular location. This does not seem to be the case.

The left is claiming that Trump is being forced to pay $2 billion dollars. He’s not. The new order says that they have to pay what is actually owed. Not “all billed”. This is another win. That judge was slapped down hard.

Question of the Week

Which of the lawfare cases is most concerning to you?

What’s a few electrons between friends?

We had a power hit Thursday morning. Almost everything recovered fine. Two machines needed to be kicked in the pants and one needed a BIOS configuration change.

All in all, a good test of stability and reliability.

Just how slow is that box?

I’m embarrassed to say.

I’ve been using AMD chipsets since the days of the Pentium. When they found the divide error and Intel refused to acknowledge the bug, requiring OS modifications to resolve, I switched to AMD.

I do not regret it.

I recently moved into the Intel chipsets and bluntly, I didn’t get it.

What is Core-i3? How is that different from Core-i5 and Core-i7? Which of the Core families is older?

Well, it turns out that i3 means “small”, i5 is “medium” and i7 is “large.” They just took a lesson from Starbucks, just how big is a vente?

Instead, they have “generations. The higher the generation, the higher the speed. A 4th gen i7 will be slower than a 12th gen i3. Nice to know.

They also have CPU sockets that have different names, but I’m not sure if they are compatible. An LGA1150, LGA1151, and an LGA1155 all seem to be compatible. So far, I’ve been lucky.

There is one server that is older than the rest. I benchmarked it. There is a 25x difference between it and my workhorses. It was already slated to be retired. It is just happening sooner.

I actually have 2 machines that must be retired and one machine that should be retired. 2 more machines that can be upgraded.

The world moves forward.

Networks

Well, I finally found the small switch I was looking for. 4 10Gbit SFP+ ports and less than $60. I’m waiting for it to arrive from China.

Constitutional Crisis!

I’ve looked at a number of the cases filed to stop Trump’s policies. So far, Trump is winning.

In the case of “You can’t fire me!” the circuit court said, “Well, for the moment you are fired.” and the plaintiff folded. Win for The People.

In the case of the inferior district court ordering the government to payout nearly $2billion, The People won again.

The Supreme Court stayed the TRO. The TRO expired. The Supreme Court said, “Well, it is moot now. Inferior court, don’t do dumb things.”

The DoJ is suing New York. Nothing is going to happen there because they are slow walking it.

The State of New York is suing President Trump.

The big takeaway from these cases is that this is not going well for the enemy. These are not cases that are being tied up in court for months and months. These things are moving rapidly.

In the normal course of a court case, I can check on the case once or twice a week and see nothing happening. In these cases, once or twice an hour might not be often enough.

Is that a Mermaid you have?

xychart-beta
    title "Sales Revenue"
    x-axis [jan, feb, mar, apr, may, jun, jul, aug, sep, oct, nov, dec]
    y-axis "Revenue (in $)" 4000 --> 11000
    bar [5000, 6000, 7500, 8200, 9500, 10500, 11000, 10200, 9200, 8500, 7000, 6000]
    line [5000, 6000, 7500, 8200, 9500, 10500, 11000, 10200, 9200, 8500, 7000, 6000]

This is a five line Mermaid diagram. For me, it is more useful for things like state diagrams and other computer stuff. But it is neat to have graph capabilities here and in my git documentation.

Why is it so big? It doesn’t fit!

Most people use GitHub, Bitbucket or GitLab for hosting their projects. These are nice, but some features require monthly payments. GitLab has a community version that can be self-hosted. It is a monster. It is a massive resource hog. I hated using it, but it gave me what I needed. With all of its features, it felt bloated. On the new infrastructure, it just would not run. This was causing significant stress. I tried using Emacs org-mode for tracking bugs, but that wasn’t working. So I installed Bugzilla. Nice, free, Perl. And it was too big for what I required, and I still required my “GitHub” like tool. Enter Gitea, “Git with a cup of tea.” It is lightweight, comes with issue tracking. Simplified port access. All in all, a good replacement.

Teaching Classes

I have been having fun teaching English as a second language. I wrote a program that integrates a text reader with a dictionary and the ability to play pronunciations. It has been fun. What has been more fun is teaching Use Cases. With some of my students we’ve moved from reading books to having developer conversations or having them do presentations. With one of them, we’ve been discussing Use Cases. I’ve never forgotten how useful they are. They are so useful I’ve started using them for own projects.

Question of the Week

For you, what was the best part of Trump’s address to congress?

That would be me.

Everything finally came together with the new system. Then I went and messed it all up.

The motherboard has a weak Ethernet. It is a 10/100 Ethernet, which is NOT a problem for a management interface. When I upgrade the box to have full redundancy, it will get a dual port fiber card.

What it does mean is that my Wi-Fi to it via a USB dongle is faster than if I were to plug it in.

Once the box was in position, I connected via Wi-Fi and finished configuration. I tested all the connectivity, and it all just worked.

At that point, I told it to join the cluster. It did with pleasure, and brought the cluster to a stop.

Did you catch my mistake? Yeah, I left that dongle in.

At the bottom of the barrel, we have 10base-T. I have some old switches in boxes that might support that. Above that is 100base-T, which is a good management speed. We can move data for upgrades and restores, but not the fastest. Some of my switches and routers do not support 100baseT.

Above that is where we start to get into “real” speeds. Gigabit Ethernet, or GigE. I’ve now moved to the next step, which is ports supporting 10G over fiber or cable, depending on the module I use. The next step-up would be 25Gbit. I’m not ready for that leap of cost.

Wi-Fi sits at around 200Mbit/s. Faster than “fast Ethernet” also known as 100base-T, but not at “real” speeds. Additionally, Wi-Fi is shared space, which means that it doesn’t always give that much.

So what happened? The Ceph(NAS) cluster is configured over an OVN logical network on 10.1.0.0/24. All Ceph nodes live on this network. Clients that consume Ceph services will also attach to this network. No issues.

When you configure an OVN node, you tell the cluster what IP address to use for tunnels back to the new node. All well and good.

The 10G network connection goes to the primary router and from there to the rest of the ceph nodes. One of the subnets holds my work server. My work server provides 20Tb to the ceph cluster.

On that subnet are also the wireless access points.

So the new node correctly sent packets to all the ceph nodes via the 10G interface, EXCEPT for traffic to my work server. Why? Because the 10G had a 1 hop cost, while the Wi-Fi had a 0 hop cost. By routing standards, the 200Mbit Wi-Fi was the closer, faster, connection than the 1 hop 10G connections.

When I found the connection problem and recognized the issue, I unplugged the Wi-Fi dongle from the new node and all my issues cleaned up, almost instantly.

Four Steps Forward

Yesterday was supposed to be the end of a long battle with hardware. I had used the tools at hand to modify the case to hold the motherboard correctly. All that remained was to plug it in.

Yeah, not so much.

Access to the lower basement is via bulkhead doors. In case you didn’t know, we had about a foot of snow with ice over the top. When I went to access the basement, it was obvious I would have to dig it out first. No big deal.

Except the snow shovels are plastic, and they don’t bite into the ice covered snow. Plus it was freezing.

On Thursday, I remembered I had an entrenching tool which would be perfect. Thursday, I also learned that I had a cheap knock-off of an entrenching tool. You are supposed to be able to use an entrenching tool as a pick or hoe. The metal of the pivot plates deformed under pressure.

I got everything open. I pulled cable, ran the cable to the primary router, hooked up everything. All good.

Having done that, it was just a question of configuring the router and turning on the new box.

Which failed to bring up the fiber connection.

After three hours of work, it finally came down to a bad network card. Today I’ll be putting in a new card, and we’ll see if everything “just works”.

Kash is King

That is one of the headlines I just read. I am extremely interested in what happens today.

Judges Over Stepping

There are now judges threatening the President of the United States with contempt if he doesn’t bend to their unelected will. It appears that they feel that, as a district judge, they have the authority to usurp the powers of the President.

But Congress!

So here’s the low down. Congress can pass whatever bills they want. The President can sign or veto those bills, creating laws.

Those laws are in effect until they are repealed or stopped by court order.

Consider Congress passing a bill making it illegal to misgender mentally ill people. The previous puppet signed that bill into law.

This makes it the law of the land that you cannot say what you wish to in regard to that class of mentally ill people.

Is this law constitutional? No, it is not. Yet, that law can be enforced until it is enjoined. There is another legal term which might be “vacator”.

The process to remove an unconstitutional law starts with finding somebody with standing to challenge the law. From there, the case works its way through the legal system until someone wins.

The law in question violates the First Amendment. It will be struck down. How long it takes, what the inferior courts decided, and what games the state plays are all delaying tactics. The law would be struck down.

Now consider a different bill. One that requires the President to get congressional approval to fire someone in the executive branch. The bill sounds good. It passes both houses and is signed into law by an idiot.

You and I look at each other and yell, “That’s unconstitutional! Article II! The investment clause!”

You rush over to the courthouse to file a suit challenging the new law. I don’t because I’m broke. You just committed to a multi-year lawyer bill.

Once the court takes up the case, the state will step in to defend the law. The very first thing that will happen is that they will point out that you have no standing. The only person who would have standing is the President of the United States.

This is what was done. Congress has passed several laws infringing on the authority of the President to fire people in the executive branch. Every one of those infringements is unconstitutional.

Until Trump 1.0, this wasn’t an issue. It wasn’t an issue because the courtesy of the appointed heads of the different departments within the Executive branch submit their resignations to the new president before he takes office.

In 2017, there were many people that should have been fired who were not. And some fought back against being fired. It made a considerable splash in the media.

This time, Trump’s team was ready. They are fighting back. These cases are going to the Supreme Court. The only question is when the Court will rule.

Question of the Week

Two, actually.

The first is what types of articles make you click off the site?

The second is what types of articles make you want to read more or want more of?