This case is being set up for a bases loaded home run.

Consider the Second Amendment legal landscape of 4 years ago. Heller had set the standard. Is the plain text of the Second Amendment implicated? If so, what is this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation?

This was a joyful time. I remember that D.C. became a constitutional carry location for about 5 minutes before they changed the rules.

The problem we had was that there was a footnote in the Heller opinion that the anti-gunners used to pry open the path to gun control.

California was one of the first states to drive through that gap. Chicago, Maryland, New Jersey, and others quickly followed.

These Heller response laws were challenged. The cases made their way up to the circuit courts, where we learned the wonderful world of interest balancing.

Under interest balancing, the courts would first ask the purpose of the law or regulation. If the proposed purpose was deemed to be “important” enough, then a lower standard of scrutiny would be applied. If the proposed purpose wasn’t important enough, then higher levels of scrutiny would be applied.

What this meant was that the courts looked like they were treating the plaintiffs with respect while putting four or five thumbs on the scales of justice.

The 9th, 7th, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th circuit courts all took up the cry of “interest balancing.” The other circuits weren’t ruling on Second Amendment cases, so it didn’t really matter.

All the circuits that took up Second Amendment challenges all decided in the same way. Against The People.

Bruen put an end to levels of scrutiny. The inferior courts are still playing games. The current game playing focuses on “Is it an arm?” and “Can you prove it is in common use for self-defense?” Their goal is to keep Bruen from being applied.

But we have a problem. All the circuit courts that are ruling on Second Amendment cases are ruling the same way. Against The People. They are still the same rogue, inferior courts, thumbing their noses at the Supreme Court.

But something has changed out there in New Jersey and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Trump and other originalist jurists have become a majority in the Third Circuit.

If we can get just one more confirmation, and there is a nominee going through the process right now, it will be an even larger majority.

The People got a shitty draw of judges for the merits panel. Not that surprising. We expected another loss. Judges Shwartz, Freeman, and Smith heard oral arguments on July 1st 4-2450-24-2506_Association of NJ Rifle Pistol Clubs v. Attorney General N. Jetal.

Here is where it gets interesting: on the same day that the case was argued, the court ordered the parties to produce a transcript. Which was entered into the record on July 15th.

Why did they need a written record? Likely because they expected other courts or panels were going to want to read it.

Under the Third Circuit’s internal operating procedures, a merits panel must circulate their opinion(s) before they are published. This gives the rest of the judges on the court an opportunity to comment and provide suggestions.

But something else can happen: if a majority of the active judges are in disagreement with the proposed opinion, they can grant an en banc hearing sua sponte. (Without a request from either party). And this is what happened on August 21st.

We are pretty sure that the opinion by this three-judge merits panel was going to go against us. If the majority of the active judges agreed with that opinion, there is no reason to call for an en banc hearing.

En banc hearings in the Third Circuit are a pain. It is all the judges dealing with the one case. It isn’t common.

In Snope we saw the Fourth Circuit do the same thing; gut in that case, we were expecting a positive opinion.

Oral arguments will be held on October 15th at 0930.

The only wrinkle is that Judge Smith is no longer an active judge, but he has elected to participate as a member of the en banc panel. Smith is currently a senior judge, meaning he only hears cases of interest to him.

If the Third Circuit finds for The People and the Constitution, this will create a major circuit split. This makes the case ripe for the Supreme Court. Matching it with Kavanaugh’s dissent in refusing cert on Snope.

Because I am invested in The Fort at No. 4, I see news articles from the area. Yesterday I read a press release from School Administrative Unit 6 (SAU-6) which covers Claremont, NH.

Claremont is just up the road from the Fort so I read it.

The Business Administrator has been put on paid leave; a school board member with lots of accounting (CPA) was appointed to do the job of BA.

From my weak sources, it seems like this BA wasn’t doing a good job. There are no signed Audits since 2021. They have a budget short fall over around $5 million.

Entirely the fault of this administrator and those supervising her.

This, of course, led to the comments.

We could go into the blame game. Which comes down to Trump and “local taxes.” The local taxes are property taxes. The SAUs are funded from the local property taxes. Residents of the towns that belong to the SAU have to vote on the school budget. Occasionally the proposed budgets are not approved.

The budget for my SAU has failed twice in the past 10 years. The first time I showed up at school board meetings was to find out where the money was being spent. What I did manage to get into the record was that while the teachers salaries were not increased because of the vote, the administrator’s pay still went up.

I pushed for, and I believe they passed, a resolution that says, “If the teachers don’t get a raise, the administration doesn’t get a raise.”

The last time, the school system just overextended itself doing too much non-educational stuff.

Our SAU didn’t have anything looking like abuse of the budget; it just wasn’t restraining itself.

Claremont’s issues are entirely self-inflicted. 19 new teachers to the SAU were canned. They had already signed contracts, so those teachers are well and truly screwed.

And this is the straw man. This person has never listened to a Republican; instead, they have built an image of a “Republican” where they put motives and evil.

If the federal tax rate was a flat 10% and you made $35,000/year, you would pay $3,500 per year in taxes. If you make $350,000/year, your taxes would be $35,000 per year. No leftist screams that going from 10% to 11% will cost the person with the larger income $3,500 more per year but it will only cost the lower earner $350 more.

But if the tax rate drops from 10% to 9%, it is a tax cut for the wealthy.

But I’m ignorant, according to Mr. achy_joints. He believes that everything that PragerU puts out is “bullshit.” Why? He can’t tell you why, but he knows it is BS.

It reminds me of the people claiming Glenn Beck was a horrible person for the things he said. This is a man who was on talk radio for multiple hours per day; he was on a national televised show once a day. With 10 years of history, every single “proof” lead back to the same 5 minute collection of things he said out of context.

Mr. achy_joints thinks that everything will benefit from more regulations more taxes. Taxes he is unlikely to be paying.

I just get sick over reading the straw man arguments. These are people that haven’t had an open mind in years.

Today I was waiting for clients to get back to me. While I waited, I started installing OpenStack.

So far it has been going well. A few typos slowed things down. Errors are not always clear, but I am now at the point of installing neutron

This is the scary part. The terrifying part.

Neutron interfaces with Open Virtual Networking (OVN). This could be magical, or it could break everything.

OVN sits on top of Open vSwitch, providing configuration.

The gist is that you install OVS, then you add configuration options to the OVS database. This configuration instructs OVN how to talk to its databases.

Once OVN starts talking to its databases, it performs changes in the OVS database. Those changes affect how OVS routes packets.

The physical network is broken into subnets. This is a requirement for high-availability networking. As links go up and down, the network routes around the failures.

On the other hand, many of the tools I use prefer to be on a single network; subnets increase the complexity greatly. Because of this, I created overlay networks. One for block storage, one for compute nodes, and one for virtual machines.

Neutron could modify the OVN or OVS that brings my overlay networks down.

So I’m well into this terrifying process, and the power goes out. It was only out for a few minutes, but that was enough.

The network came back to life.

All but two servers came back to life. One needs a BIOS change to make it come up after a power failure.

One decided that the new drive must be a boot drive, so it tried to boot from that, failed, and just stopped.

All of that put me behind in research, so nothing interesting in the 2A front to report, even though there are big things happening.

The number of moving parts in a data center is almost overwhelming.

I don’t know if this is really a “prepping” thing, but it’s situational awareness and so I’m calling it prepping today.

Number One Rule: an armed female is a safe female. I believe with all the breath in my body that if every women carried a firearm and was well trained in its use and care, that sexual assaults would nigh on disappear. SA’ers are sorry, loser types who can’t handle real women, and coming face to face with a firearm would make the worm between their legs crawl away in horror. I continually and constantly encourage my women friends to go out, get trained, and pick a quality firearm that they can carry… and then to carry it always. I also believe that safely arming women is the best way to combat the woke shit going on right now, because while the Constitution says we’re equal, Sam Colt guarantees it.

Number Two Rule: people who sexually assault others have declared themselves dog meat, and will be treated as such. I’m not a “dog person” but if the SHTF for real, I’d be picking myself up a good quality mastiff or bulldog, and you can bet your ass I’d be sicking it on anyone who I caught doing such things (or had incontrovertible truth that they had done such things). If I catch you SA’ing someone, I will fuck you up. No, like really. I’m not good with firearms, but I’m hella good with a cast iron frying pan, and I own a ton of them. I catch you, I’ll start with your head, but I’ll end with your balls.

Number Three Rule: women (or anyone, honestly) who lie about sexual assault have proven themselves to no longer be human. And I mean that. I don’t want liars to be prosecuted for lying. I don’t want them to be prosecuted as if they had committed the assault. I want them to be executed. I am strongly of the opinion that the most dangerous thing to women out there is another woman who lies about sexual assault, because it increases the danger for ALL of us. Men and women alike.

So why are you talking about sexual assault today, Allyson?

There are several people in the ren faire community who have been accused of sexual assault. They’re all men, by the by, not that it matters. I’ve met a woman who sexually assaulted men, and I saw her in exactly the same way I saw the males. She was a cretin and she should have been burned at the stake. But I digress… These people come in three categories: known SA’ers, suspected SA’ers, and people who’ve been falsely accused or accused with no credible facts to back it up.

One of the women who had been sexually assaulted three times by different men recently spoke up in the RF community. She chose to post a picture of one of her assaulters and make the post public. And this is where we get a bit dicey. See, perp numbers one and two HAD assaulted her. She went to the police, took them to court, and they were jailed or fined or whatever, and were legally labeled assaulter. All fine and dandy. Perp number three, the one she posted the picture of? She’s “chosen” not to go to the police. And that makes me concerned.

Read More

DC Clean Up

X has been melting down over the federal government using the Constitution to take control of local law enforcement in D.C.

Wolf Blitzer stepped in it by posting a picture of a HUMVEE at Union Station. He implied it was an affront.

He got ratioed badly. There were many personal comments about how people were feeling safe to be outside at night. One woman talked about how this was the first time in years she’d been able to walk through Union Station without being verbally and sometimes physically harassed.

Another reporter visited a homeless encampment, expecting the standard anti-Trump screeching. Instead, they were told how much better it was now that the criminal element, drug users, and those in need of mental help are gone. One homeless person’s statement was to the effect, “It is the first good sleep I’ve had in months.”

Pushing Back

I do remember Ronald Reagan as our President. He was one of the most skillful orators I’ve had the pleasure to listen to. He was quick-witted and used that skill to zing the media. He did it so well that most of the media laughed at themselves for being zinged.

Trump is not as articulate. He speaks at a 6th grade level, if I recall correctly. I don’t like listening to him speak. What he does is connect with The People.

What is a greater strength is his ability to troll the media and Democrats. He trolls, whereas Reagan cast zingers.

What is most noticeable is just how hard he pushes back on the media and narrative.

What is the massive win, in my opinion, is that his administration uses the same method of pushing back. They don’t get upset with the lies and narratives; they just call it out. And many times make fun of those who have idiotic stances.

According to Reddit, I Live in a Racist State

I don’t engage on Reddit. I have more than enough on my plate as it is. Today’s joy was an “ICE” warning. The top comments all misrepresented facts. “Immigrants,” “neighbors,” “friends” were used to describe the criminal aliens that ICE was looking for.

The kicker for me: “My daily reminder of just how racist this state is.” I live in New Hampshire. There are blacks in this state. There are people of color in the state. The blacks seem to gather in the cities, as per normal. But I can’t find racists anywhere except within the black community.

But they have defined “racist” to mean anybody who doesn’t accept every third world alien that comes into our country.

For them, it is racist that people are upset about the Indian who killed a family of three by making an illegal U-turn. The Florida cops administered a simple test: English proficiency and road signs. He got 2 out of 12 right on the English portion and 1 or none of the road signs.

This monster with a CDL from California killed a family of three, and I’m racist for being upset that he entered my country illegally and was given, given, not earned, a CDL.

OpenStack

I like doing things the old-fashioned way. I like knowing what the hell is going on inside my network. Having software magically do things bothers me.

Unfortunately, none of the documentation for Open Virtual Network (OVN) talks about manually configuring OVN. It all uses OpenStack. In addition, I’ve become unhappy with my Docker Swarm solution. Since I’m not hosting anything locally anymore, it is time to “upgrade” to OpenStack.

What the heck will I break? I’ll know next week.

AI Code Generation

I’ve started using Grok for code generation. There are issues, but I’m working through it.

First, Grok is not a programmer. It is a piece of software that does a particular task. You have to spend the time to define the task.

In this particular case, I’m interested in creating network maps in a cleaner way. Grok gave me that starting point.

No matter how smart it appears, it is stupid. My latest example is that there is an input field for interfaces. There is a example prompt, provided by Grok.

That example prompt leaves out an entire part of the syntax using a different set of symbols.

This reminds me of the discussion about secretaries back when word processors became a thing.

The director of the lab and the directors of the lab divisions all had secretaries. The secretaries did most of the writing. They typed out letters to be sent by snail mail, and they often wrote the email sent over their boss’s signature.

When word processors came out, the directors were expected to write their correspondence. The result was substandard grammar and English. Not because these guys were dumb, but because their skillset didn’t include touch typing at 80 WPM and all the rest that a secretary brings to the mix.

Can the average person use AI to write programs? Maybe. In a year, yes.

Will it be good? No.

Just like we went from having electrical engineering to computer science to information technology, I expect to see classes in creating AI prompts showing up in colleges in the next couple of years.

Until AI makes the next leap, it will take real programmers, coders, and systems people to create fully functional software.

On the plus side, Grok has shown me several patterns that I’m copying.

What Happens When You Use 78% of Your 100 TB of storage?

Alarms start going off. I had a Ceph node die on me. I have the parts to replace it. I haven’t had the time nor incentives to do so.

The nice part was that I was able to physically move most of the drives to different nodes. This led to the great rebalancing.

Ceph uses a layout called a “CRUSH tree” or “CRUSH map.” The idea is to define a set of rules for how data blocks should be distributed to different drives (OSDs).

Ceph provides resilience with two methods: one is via redundancy, and the other is by error codes.

Using redundancy, you specify how many copies of each block of data you want. Three is the smallest safe number. This means that every byte written is duplicated twice. When you retrieve the block, it is pulled from the “closest” node.

A redundancy of 3 means three copies. With error codes, the cost is better. Something closer to 1.6 instead of 3 at the expense of more work calculating the error codes.

If you had all 3 copies of the block on the same drive, if that drive (OSD) fails, you’ve lost that block of data. The CRUSH map tells Ceph how to protect duplicate blocks from single points of failure.

In the simplist configuration, you do OSD isolation. No two copies of the same block are ever stored on the same OSD.

You can expand this to the node/host. You can make the same rule that no one host can hold two copies of the same block.

My CRUSH configuration is attempting data closet isolation. No two copies of the same block can exist in the same data closet.

If I had moved the physical drives to a host in the same data closet, then some rebalancing would happen. I moved the drives to hosts in different closets.

Ceph then proceeded to rebalance 70 TB. Which is why networks had to be reworked. I managed to eliminate most of the bottlenecks.

Unfortunately, it also meant that I had OSDs and Placement Groups go “near full,” slowing down the rebalancing. More drives to the rescue.

Question of the week?

For years, if a Democrat or leftist started yapping about this or that, regurgitating CNN talking points, I kept my mouth shut and just moved on.

Except if it was gun-related, then I spoke up.

Today, I’m much more likely to speak up. To attempt to bring facts and logic to the discussion. I no longer sit silently for their lies.

Do you feel it is safer to speak up about your political stance today?

This is where your right to privacy is protected. This protects you from needing to “show your papers.” There is no place in the United States that I know where you are required to have “your papers.”

If you choose to drive on public roads, if you are stopped for cause, you can be required to identify yourself. Driving on private land? No need for ID.

If you choose to enter a secured, private location, you can be required to show identification. For example, entering a military post/base.

So what happens if the cops show up at your doorstep and “demand” to see ID?

The first thing you need to do is realize that what you hear as a demand might not legally be a demand or order.

Police officers are trained to ask questions in such a way as to give the impression that they are ordering you to do something when they are not authorized to make that demand or give that order. “What’s your name?” is just a question. Under the Fifth Amendment, you are not required to answer that question.

You are not required to answer questions. You can choose to answer questions.

“Hello, we got a report of shots being fired. Were you shooting?” You are not required to answer. It doesn’t matter what they say until they make that magic statement, “You are required to answer.” If they do say you are required to answer, they might end up in a lawsuit.

Here is another magic one: “Do you have ID?” Many people will automatically reach for their ID when they hear this question, even though the cop didn’t even ask to see it. You assumed they took advantage of you.

When I’m presenting to 4th and 5th grade-aged children, I will sometimes ask, “Can I have your name?” or “Will you give me your name?”

When they say their name, I will thank them and then say, “My name is now *the name they gave*. What should we call you?” Many (most) get it. It one of my ways of teaching to listen to the question that is actually asked.

Can A Cop Walk Onto Your Property

The answer is a qualified “yes.” If they have a warrant to search the location, then they absolutely can enter. If they have a warrant to arrest somebody, they can enter under limitations, which I don’t remember. Lacking a warrant, they can only enter as far as the public is allowed.

This means that they can drive into your driveway, park, get out, knock on your door, and ask you questions.

On the other hand, if there is a gate or some other indicator with proper signage to stop the public, then they must stop there as well. They can park in front of your gate and yell at you, but they can’t enter without your permission.

If you are sitting on your doorstep smoking a cigar, they can come up to talk to you. In some areas, Ally says D.C. is one, your doorsteps are considered part of the “public space,” and there are regulations forbidding smoking or drinking in public.

Because you are breaking the law by smoking in a public space, the cops now have a reasonable articulable suspicion of a crime being committed. This broadens their authority to ask questions.

The regulations I found for D.C. indicate that failure to identify yourself is not an arrestable crime. It is a crime, but it cannot be used to justify an arrest nor to escalate the level of suspicion the cop has. I.e. If he suspects you of doing bad things, your refusing to identify yourself cannot be used to justify his suspicion of you doing bad things.

Consentual Contact

If you walk into the police station and ask to talk to a police officer, you are initiating a consensual contact. You are free to end that contact at any time and walk away. Likewise, It is possible that your talking to the police officer has moved this from you having a consensual contact to you being detained.

Consider the situation where a child has gone missing. The police request help from the public. You saw something suspicious, and you called the tip line. A day or so later you get a call from the detectives asking you to come in to speak with them. You do so.

While you are talking to them, you say something that confirms their suspicions that you are the person that done did it. They are not required to tell you when that happens. They are free to let you keep babbling.

You get tired of their stupid questions and accusations, stand, and ask, “Am I free to go?” If the answer is no, you are being detained. If the detention lasts more than a reasonable time, that detention turns into an arrest.

If the cops flashing lights are on behind you when you are pulled over, you are detained. If you are in handcuffs, you are detained. There are times when you should know you are detained even if the cops haven’t told you.

Reasonable articulable suspicion

Reasonable suspicion is a legal standard used to determine if the cops can legally search you.

If an officer stops someone to search them, the courts require that the officer have either a search warrant, probable cause to search, or a reasonable suspicion to search.

Reasonable articulable suspicion is the legal standard that empowers cops to conduct an investigation without a warrant.

This is a balancing act. We are balancing the need of the authorities to perform their police work with the Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections of The People. Without the power to investigate suspicious behavior, cops would not be able to deal with crimes in progress.

Consider the following: the cops are driving by, they hear shots fired, and they see a man wearing a ski mask exit the bank with a gun in his hand and a heavy bag in the other.

If the cops have a reasonable suspicion that this person has just committed a crime. They can articulate that suspicion.

Now consider this version: a call has gone out that the bank two blocks over has just been robbed. The cops see a man running down the road. He’s wearing a ski mask in 90-degree heat. They still have reasonable suspicion.

Or this: The call of a bank robbery has gone out. The cops see a black man walking down the sidewalk. That is not reasonable suspicion.

Once law enforcement has that reasonable suspicion, they can investigate. The articulable requirement means that they have to be able to put that suspicion into words. If they can’t put it into words, it is not good enough.

Police Investigations

If the police are talking to you, they are likely doing an investigation. Anything you say can be held against you in a court of law.

The cops walk up to you as you sit in your front yard; they are investigating something. If they do not have that reasonable suspicion, they can ask questions in an attempt to gain reasonable suspicion.

Consider this scenario: you are driving 60 mph in a 45 mph zone. The flashing blue and whites come on and you pull over. The very polite officer walks up and asks, “Do you know how fast you were going?”

You respond, “I was doing 50 or so.”

You have just admitted to the crime of speeding. The officer now has all the justification needed to continue his investigation.

“Do you know why I pulled you over?” Same thing. You don’t have to answer the question.

They walk up to you in your lawn chair, “How are you doing, sir?” “What’s going on?”

These are questions designed to elicit a response. They hope that the response will lead their investigation someplace. “Did you know smoking in a public space is prohibited?”

Answer that one, and you are answering mens rea questions.

In general, don’t answer questions. Furthermore, don’t be me; don’t be an asshole.

What it really looks like

I’ve seen a couple of videos of DC police (or at least people dressed as police well enough that they appear real to me) challenging people sitting on their own porches, asking for ID and demanding their questions be answered. This is, in my VERY strong opinion, not good. Unless those people are having a rave and offering the cops illegal drugs, or are smashing in windows or beating their wife and kids in front of the cops, the cops should not be bothering them. We’re protected against unreasonable search and/or seizure.

It’s easy to blame this on Trump. That’s what the Left is doing. “Oh look, Trump has weaponized the National Guard!” First and foremost, Trump has not “weaponized” anything other than maybe his ability to tweak leftists. Second, the DC Nat’l Guard is different from the States’ Nat’l Guard. It is the only branch of the NG that directly reports to the President. That’s for good reason. In other words, the Nat’l Guard was already under the President’s control. It wasn’t “wrested away” from the Mayor; she never had control of it to begin with.

But let’s go back to the police and/or NG who are roaming DC’s streets and harassing people on their porches. That is illegal, and those who are bothering people doing nothing suspicious beyond filming the authorities should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I believe that what they’re doing is a form of malicious compliance. I’ve only seen a handful of videos showing authorities badgering people doing nothing wrong, and while the cops in the videos are being excessively polite, they’re making statements I consider to be stupid. They’re asking to see ID, and proof that people live in the homes which they’re sitting in front of. Last I checked, you don’t have to prove that kind of thing. I believe that there are a handful of angry authorities out there, leftist holdouts or whatever, who are not interested in making DC safer. I believe they’re interested in making a scene on camera to make the whole of the NG operation look bad.

The term malicious compliance means that the letter of the law is being followed, to the detriment of the spirit of the law.  Sometimes, this is done because a boss is telling you to do something stupid, and you’ve made several attempts to correct that boss, to no avail. So you follow the boss’s instructions exactly, enabling you to show that you’ve done only what you were told to do, and nothing else. Generally, it can be a good method to winnow out bosses who really don’t understand how to utilize good employees as it’s non-violent and generally not overly harmful. In the hands of leftists in DC, however, it could (and I believe will) undermine what Trump is trying to do.

Read More

There is a social experiment where an employer goes to his employees and hands them each a bonus. Jim gets $500, Bill gets $500, Jill gets $500, and Karen gets $400.

Everybody is talking about how wonderful the boss is for giving them bonuses. Karen is delighted, and so are Jim, Bill, and Jill.

A few days go by, and Karen finds out that Jill got $500 and she only got $400.

Now, a good person says, “Thank you , boss; I wasn’t expecting a bonus.” A normal person might then sulk about not getting the extra $100.

Unfortunately, the most common response was for Karen to bitch to her boss and the world that she got cheated out of $100. She deserved it just as much as the others.

She loses sight of the extra $400 in her pocket and instead focuses on what she didn’t get.

The bosses are unlikely to give out bonuses in the future. Or everybody is going to get the same amount. That amount will be lower.

The actual experiment used amounts ranging from around $100 to around $10,000.

This experiment was done at a place where I was employed. We were all handed envelopes with cash in them as bonuses at the same time. We were told that the amounts might not be the same. We were told not to share how much we got.

When I had seen the amount, I went to my boss and said, “Thank you very much.” After I did, the rest did the same.

Of all the employees, only one, V, tried to find out what the others got. He is the same guy who demanded a pay raise when he found out how rich our boss was.

He was envious of what others got. He lost sight of what he had received and was more focused on what he had not gotten or might not have gotten.

As I said, my boss was wealthy. I was able to listen as he explained to the person selling him a new airplane that he didn’t give a flying f. If the plane wasn’t finished with its repaint and new interior and at the local airport by the end of the week, he was going to cancel.

Canceling would have cost him around $150,000. But he would rather cancel than put up with more shit.

Did my boss being able to buy million-dollar (or more) planes keep me from buying a plane or getting flying lessons? No. Did his owning multiple cars keep me from owning the car I wanted? No. Did his owning and flying a helicopter keep me from owning and flying a helicopter? Absolutely not.

As a matter of fact, him being wealthy allowed me to buy my machine shop. If he had not been wealthy, then I would not have had a job that allowed me to purchase that shop. My boss didn’t own a Bridgeport, South Bend, and all the rest. Was he jealous of me?

Our economy is not a fixed pie. There isn’t a fixed amount of wealth. You can always add to the wealth of our economy and make something and profit from what you make or provide.

Last weekend, the Indian encamped next to Ally was frying up venison steak on a soapstone griddle. It looked incredible, and according to Ally, smelled even better. I wish I could have eaten some of that venison. I love venison.

I could have been envious; instead, I am looking forward to harvesting a deer or two this season.

Why do people feel envious? Because they feel they are not getting what others are.

When wealthy, spoiled man-children descended on Wall Street demanding that they be raised up to the wealth of the traders of Wall Street, they looked like petulant children.

They were complaining about the “1%.” They were part of the “0.1%.”

Americans are the wealthiest people in the world. There are people that live below the poverty line in America who are wealthier than 99% of the rest of the world.

But those spoiled children were more focused on what they didn’t have rather than what they did have. Tweeting about how downtrodden they were from their $1000 cell phones while sipping $10 coffees from Starbucks.

Somebody was talking about the Ponzi scheme that is Social Security. As it was set up, the goal was to never pay out any money.

Retirement age was set to where the government expected most to be dead. Or to only live for a few more years.

My parents lived decades past retirement age.

So the young of today are paying into social security money that goes right back out the door to pay the people who already paid in.

I’ve been watching the market recently. I invested the money they inherited from my parents into money market funds. Both children have earned nearly $3k this summer from that money.

If the money the government took from me during my youth had gone into an investment, rather than lending it to the government, then that investment would measure in the millions, and the interest would easily support me.

That’s correct. The social security fund is only allowed to invest in “special” government bonds, treasury bonds. The “reason” for this is that treasury bonds are “guaranteed” a fixed rate of return.

The problem is that treasury bonds are how the government borrows money. If the government borrows $100 from SS, it promises to pay back $143 in 10 years. The same $100 invested at 4.31% APR compounded monthly over 10 years returns a total of $153.

SS is a scam at all levels. My money went to pay for my parents and grandparents generations. My parents went to their parents.

You might be unhappy that your money is going to pay for the current generation of SS users. I’m part of you in that.

Regardless, when one of these children looks at me and says, “You own a house, you have wealth, you have passive income, you shouldn’t get Social Security,” they are showing their envy and greed.

I have paid into SS my entire working life. My very first paycheck had SS taken out. As a self-employed person, I pay double what you do because I pay for both my personal portion as well as the employer’s portion.

A couple of years ago, I was visiting a friend, and they were telling me about how hard it was to find a house. They then proceeded to tell me how awful it was that this person they knew had purchased a plot of land to keep it from being developed.

Ok, that’s an opinion. If I could buy land around me, I would, because I love to hunt and I love the forest near my home.

But my friend went on. He started complaining about how this person was talking about how much he spent for this plot of land and why he did it. Specifically to stop development. He then says, “He was so clueless. He knew I was looking for a house. He knew how tight things are for me right now. Damn it, just read the fucking room.”

I waited for him to wind down. It took a while, and there were other conversations.

We were standing in a garage with two cars and multiple heavy duty gun safes. His wife was with her car; his truck and sports car were in the driveway. He had been complaining about only having a little left over after paying rent. Yet, his wife and kids were on their second vacation of the year.

I looked him in the eye and said, “What a way to read the room. I’m driving a 12-year-old truck I bought used. I struggle to pay our heating bill in the winter. Often choosing to buck fallen trees and split them by hand. You spend more on your vacations, while I haven’t had a vacation in 15 years. Yet you didn’t even notice.”

“You didn’t notice because my wealth and income aren’t what define me. What defines me is my family and my passions, not envy.”

Today, I have a virtually unlimited selection of music. I use YouTube Music as my tool. Amazon has something similar.

While the ability to find new music blows my mind, I’ve also lost many artists that I used to listen to. The older I get, the more I miss the music of my youth.

That love of music was born of listening to my parents music. Dad made the speakers we used. Dad made the stereo cabinet that held the record player and the “vast” collection of reel-to-reel tapes. And the “vast” collection of records.

The best way to listen was with the Sony headphones, eyes closed, listening.

The reality was that we had about 50 hours of music on those tapes. I am still attempting to find one album where two black jazz/blues artists were competing. Something like Red from The Five Pennies.

We had around 40 hours of music on those LPs. So somewhere between 90 and 120 hours of music.

This means I listened to the same music over and over again. I had my favorites.

One tape contained a group of nuns singing. I could not find the album until one day, the name popped into my head: Joy Is Like the Rain. This allowed me to track down the album.

The name of the group, in my mind, in my parents’ words, was “The Singing Nuns.” That is not the group.

Here is a song from one of their albums. I hope you enjoy it.

We’ll be back to regular postings tomorrow. Tuesday Tunes, then “Envy” and “Show Me Your Papers.”

In the best of all worlds, every server would have two interfaces (NIC) with two ports cross-connected to two switches.

Each switch would be cross-connected to their upstream switch and so forth until you reach your redundant gateways.

The problem with this setup is that you can end up with loops that will take that part of the network down.

This means that switches need to be smart enough to keep that from happening. And you have to configure your network to allow for all those cross connections.

This means that a room will have three subnets. Primary 1, Primary 2, and Management. The switch needs to have routing capability. Then you use a routing protocol like OSPF to make magic happen.

OSPF sends out routing information often. Timers are measured in seconds, not minutes. This allows every router/switch to pick the best path at that instant.

Last week I determined that there was a problem with uplink speeds to the network. I was getting maybe a hundredth of what I should have been observing. This became obvious when I was attempting some bandwidth tests of client configurations.

So we start the process of elimination. The first thing to eliminate is the provider network. They could not provide a remote speed test because I was using my router; therefore, it required a technician to be dispatched.

The goal was to eliminate any questions regarding their side of the “demarc,” or demarcation.

The demarc is the separation of responsibility between the provider and the customer. Everything on their side of the demarc is their responsibility; everything on my side is my responsibility.

In my installation the demarc is the Optical Network Terminator (ONT). The ONT is a fiber modem; it’s not really, but it works for our purposes.

The provider prefers to provide the ONT, the router/access point/switch/VoIP gizmo. If they provide that gizmo, they move the demarc to that gizmo.

My issue is that the gizmo in question is always home quality, never better. My router is just a router. It has two 2.5 Gbit Ethernet ports and two 10 Gbit SFP ports. It has a 60 Gbit internal bus and provides DHCP, DNS, Proxy, port forwarding, and many other professional features. My access points are on a controller that monitors the power usage and adjusts the power of each access point to produce the best coverage. This allows me to have multiple Wireless Access Points (WAP) within the house and grounds that don’t interfere with each other.

Better yet, as you move from place to place, your device will seamlessly transfer to different WAPs as needed, without getting new IP addresses.

Regardless, my equipment is much better than what they provide.

We tested from the ONT and got good upload and download speeds. A step in the correct direction.

The next test was from the router. This gave me acceptable speeds, much better than 0.260 Gbit.

This left SFP modules, SFP sockets, and fiber. Being lazy, I start with SFP modules. Switching modules doesn’t help. Next I swapped the cables. Finally, I swapped the router ports.

Nothing fixed it. I currently believe that the SFP port/slot on the router has an issue.

Since I had a second switch, I could have used that; instead, I decided on a network upgrade.

The new switch was configured. It was attached to the second SFP port on the router. All the management networks and the DMZ network were attached to it. Removed from primary (router1). Then router2 was cross connected with router1 via a Direct Attach Connector (DAC). A DAC is a wire with module connectors on both ends. They are cheaper than fiber plus two modules and will run at very high speeds. They are the connector of choice for SFP to SFP within a meter or so with no sharp bends.

It took way too much time to get everything configured correctly. Mostly because I just didn’t have all the pieces correctly configured.

My network map was wrong. I had 192.168.99.x/24 allocated to P2P connections. It isn’t allocated to P2P. It is allocated to a remote subnet that is part of the local network via a VPN. Oops!

One that was taken care of, I had working connections between the gateway and both routers. But the routers would not talk to each other.

Turns out that I had the DAC plugged into the wrong slot. Once I had it in the correct slot with the correct media type, everything just started working.

I now have a cleaner network, with more options, and better bandwidth than ever before. It is working as I anticipated. It just took way too long to accomplish.