• Returning to Normal

    I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and new year. Here, we are slowly returning to normal. Once child has returned to school and the other is scheduled to head back on Sunday.

    We haven’t gotten the tree down and put away, but it is on to-do list.

    Almost all the junk food is gone. Which is good for me. Meals are back to normal.

    You get what you pay for

    I needed to solder a header onto a GPS board. No problem, I just dig out the Weller 921ZX. Oops, sometime in the past 10 years since I used it, it was dropped and the iron broke.

    No problem, this is a serious brand, they will have replacement parts.

    Except they don’t. This was a lower cost product when I purchased it. It has been discontinued. There are no replacement parts available.

    So I bought a cheap version. And I got exactly what I paid for. The indicator light doesn’t indicate very well. When it was reporting 500F, it wouldn’t even tin the tip. I had to crank the thing to 800F before it started to perform reasonably.

    It will do for now. I’ve put the project on hold until finances get a bit better.

    Wow, this is spectacular, and bad

    Years ago, my client was unhappy with the Wi-Fi in the office. He went to one of my co-workers, a programmer, not a system admin, not a network admin, a programmer, and asked if it was ok to buy a particular, expensive, router.

    It arrived, he plugged it in, in place of the access point I had in place and the network died. They couldn’t get Wi-Fi to their MacBooks. The world was pretty bad.

    Of course, this didn’t set off any alarms for me because I monitor the hardwired servers and such.

    When I arrived the next day, they told me in a panic what was happening. I retrieved the login credentials for the new access point, discovered it was an “all in one” router, switch, access point. I got it mostly configured to work.

    Boss complains about the Wi-Fi. I explain that they are in a building with multiple networks, all competing for the same frequencies. That I could fix it if he gave me the budget to do so. Having just spent all this money on a home gamer’s super router, he wasn’t interested.

    He stumbles on somebody doing network mapping in the building. He pays this random dude to do network mapping for him.

    Next time I’m in, he shows me the report that he paid for and explains that we are in a very crowded network area and that we had to fix it.

    His answer was “more power”. I again offered to fix it.

    He finally gave in, I installed Ubiquiti UFOs. These are their PoE Wi-Fi access points. Not routers, access points. They have a central management software. I installed 4 of them in the office. Told them to play nice with each other. Our Wi-Fi network issues went away.

    These devices could overpower most routers, but they didn’t have to. They handled hand-offs seamlessly so they could use lower power and only cover the areas they were assigned to.

    In other words, fantastic equipment at a reasonable cost.

    I was also using their routers. Again, good quality at a good price.

    Over the years, that love for Ubiquiti has faded. I still love their UFOs. It is their routers that are the issue.

    The cost of their higher – end routers is a bit much for what you get. And their configuration method is based on VyOS.

    It is time to replace those routers. I’ve done it twice with upgrading in the same product line. It is time to step away from their routers.

    pfSense

    pfSense is a firewall router that runs on FreeBSD on almost any equipment. The hardware requirements are trivial. Two network ports, that’s all.

    This became viable because I found a dirt cheap “miniPC”. It uses an Intel n100, which is fast enough for what I need.

    But what makes it truly remarkable is that it comes with 2 10G SFP+ ports, 2 2.5G Ethernet ports, 2 USB 3, 2 USB 2, 1 USB-C, another USB port, two HDMI ports, and more.

    It has two comm ports on headers, and a large set of GPIO pins. It has an internal SATA port as well. 2 M.2 ports for SSD and 1 M.2 port for Wi-Fi. The entire thing comes in an extruded aluminum case with a fan. So far, I’ve been happy with it.

    So what’s the issue? It’s made in China and there is no datasheet for the motherboard. This means I require a new skill, decoding pinouts.

    Moreover, FreeBSD (the base OS of pfSense) doesn’t seem to expose the GPIO ports the same way as Linux would. This means I can’t use the GPIO for the PPS.

    Convicted Felon

    The saga continues. Trump has been certified as the winner of the 2024 election. A county judge out of New York wants to brand him a felon in an attempt to keep him from taking office.

    To that end, he intends to sentence Trump before the inauguration.

    What a crock.

    The Excitement Builds

    If you are reading this on Friday the 10th, the Supreme Court is or was in conference discussing cases they will accept. Three of those cases are Second Amendment Cases.

    Orders will be released on Monday or Tuesday. As long as we do not see “denied”, we are looking good.

    Question of the Week

    Do you think that the Democrats are going to try anything on inauguration day? Either at the mob end of things or in the halls of Congress?

            

  • This is the type of case we want the Supreme Court to slap down.

    The district judge’s analysis is based on a twisted view of Heller as affirmed by Bruen.

    In Heller, the Court said that weapons that are most useful in military service, or at least that’s how the district court quoted it.

    It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M–16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the concep­tion of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. …
    —District of Columbia v. Heller, 467 U.S. 837, 627 (2008)

    Ok, a bit more context, but how did the district court interpret this?

    Heller specifically contemplated that weapons most useful in military service fall outside of Second Amendment protection.

    This is good wordsmithing. That word “contemplated” doesn’t say that weapons most useful to military services are outside or inside the protections of the Second Amendment. It just means they discussed it. Factually, this is the only place they mention “useful” to the military or in military service.

    In other words, the court gave far too much weight to what was not said.

    But why is this even a question?

    It is because the inferior courts can’t stop messing things up. Of going rogue.

    The question is if the plain text of the Second Amendment is implicated. The district court even agrees that it is.

    The district court slaps down the state for claiming that magazines are not arms as defined for purposes of the Second Amendment.

    Having equivalently answered the question “Is the plain text of the Second Amendment implicated?”, the district court then goes on to claim that is not the first part of Heller.

    Instead, the district court argues that the plaintiffs (good guys) have to prove that they are in common use for lawful purposes of self-defense AND that they are not most useful for military service.

    If the Supreme Court issues an opinion in Ocean State Tactical, then this is a done deal. Magazine bans are gone. This case will evaporate.

    If the Supreme Court doesn’t issue an opinion in Ocean State Tactical, then we can hope they strike down Maryland’s “assault weapon” ban in Snope.

    Regardless, I still get upset when I read the twisted arguments of these rogue inferior courts.

            


  • Call for submissions!

    The Turning Leaf Tavern is a way-station for people traveling throughout the fantasy realms. Here, you can find Hobbits and Elves, Humans, Dwarves, Half-feet, and representatives of a hundred different races and fictional worlds. They find themselves at the tavern’s door when need calls, and within its walls they find succor and good cheer. The tavern itself is in its own universe, designed by M. Allyson Szabo, and has its own stories to tell.

    Tales from the Turning Leaf Tavern will not be just about the tavern, though. The stories within its pages will come from you, the writers of the world. The anthology will be comprised of somewhere between 15 and 25 stories, each with a recipe or four at the end, so that readers may share in the glory of the story’s victuals. That said, Allyson has decided to provide some preliminary tales about the tavern and its denizens for writers to riff off of. You, the authors, have permission to use the Turning Leaf Tavern and its people in your writing, though M. Allyson Szabo retains the copyright to the tavern itself and the characters she created to go with it. Your stories, even the ones with Turning Leaf and the folk within, belong to you, the original authors.

    This anthology will be comprised of fantasy stories that are original and unique, paired with recipes that go along with the tales that are told. If you have a story that is set in a fantasy world, is between 2500 and 6000 words, and that involves a tavern and its food in some way, then we would love to read it!

    Submissions opened on January 1st, 2025, and will close on March 31, 2025. The exact number of stories has not been set, and will depend upon the submissions made to the anthology. Please note that submission does not equal acceptance. We will contact everyone who has submitted a story and recipe by April 30, 2025 to inform them of the status of their submission.

    For full information about the proposed anthology and the world of the Turning Leaf Tavern, you can read here: https://mallysonszabo.weebly.com/turning-leaf-tavern.html

            

  • As you know, I attempt to keep abreast of the Left media so that I can report things here, and also to help those on the Right understand things that might require some translation. Even though I’ve moved more Right (or the Left has moved more left, whatever), I intend to continue doing this. It is important to me to not have an echo chamber, and to listen to news from a variety of sources. This leads me to today’s article.

    Kamala Harris Swears In Senate Members from Times of India

    You’re welcome to read the article. It’s a confusing bit of media. The heading would lead you to believe that the article is talking about Harris swearing in the new Senate members. It really has little to do with that. Instead, they talk about how J. D. Vance was laughing during the swearing in (the video just repeats itself a few times btw), and a video went viral of him doing so. It’s reported like this is a Big Deal. It’s not. He was smiling through the entire thing, pleased as punch to see so many of his friends being sworn in. As he should. He wasn’t laughing. I’ve watched the thing.

    One of the quotes from the article gives you a feel for what they’re aiming for (and missing, imo, but that’s another story): “Many of the Republicans Kamala Harris swore in today could not pronounce her name, the Time Magazine headlined its article…” They later suggest that those Republicans could pronounce her name but chose not to. The bottom line is, they’re more worried about the name than the people being sworn in. I will tell you, I only remember how to pronounce her name because Kamala rhymes with mommala, which was part of a SNL skit, I believe. I have to say it over in my mind to remind myself! It’s an unusual name. Now, should they have made the attempt? Yes. It’s a statement of respect, and while I don’t expect any of them to respect her, they should respect the office, and they should treat her as if they respect her for ceremonial things like this. That they didn’t says stuff to me, but it’s still pretty minor.

    The article also talks about how the “smiling people” coming to her to be sworn in were her bitter enemies only weeks ago, as if this is two-faced in some way. Why would they not be smiling? They won. We all won. They said she was a threat to the American way of life, and I believe that she was, and may continue to be if she stays in politics. They also make some claims about the claims made by Republicans about Harris, claims of “her wanting to ban Christmas from the calendar” and “bringing dog meat to immigrants’ stoves.” It’s asinine and silly. The only part they sort of got right was the claim that she tried to skew the election results by flooding the polls with illegal immigrants. I’m still struggling to understand who in their right mind would vote against a law that protects our voting places.

    (more…)

            

  • John of www.GunsSaveLife.com was kind enough to post a link back to us and to quote The Game is On! SCOTUS update

    He expressed a bit of skepticism.

    John is skeptical because nobody knows what is going to happen in Supreme Court conferences.
    It is all “reading the tea leaves”.

    The black box which is Supreme Court conferences has visible inputs. Status of the case, briefings on the case, circuit split, time after the last Supreme Court opinion on the subject and a few others.

    For output, we have “Denied”, “Denied with statement”, “Granted”, “relisted” and “rescheduled”.

    Why the justices decide on which output is a guess. Some people are good at those guesses. Mark Smith has a good record. I don’t have a record to stand on. We know historically that “rescheduling” happens when the justices want to see multiple cases at the same time. We know that under Roberts, cases that are relisted are almost always granted cert. and those that are not have some procedural issue with them, not merits issues.

    Cases that are denied Cert generally have nothing said about them. Think of it as spending 30 minutes trying to convince your parents to do something, and at the end of that they say “no”. That’s how most denial of cert goes. Nobody cares when cert is granted. It is going to happen.

    When one or more justices feels strongly that cert should have been granted, they will write a statement to go along with the order list. Occasionally, a justice will write a statement explaining to the petitioner why cert was denied so that they can address the issue.

    We saw several statements from Justice Thomas on why they were not granting cert on Second Amendment challenges that were in an interlocutory state.

            

  • There is a light at the end of this tunnel. I think that I might have the new router up and running tomorrow. I’ll be turning down two servers. Many good things happening.

            

  • As of January 6th, we are on deck for THREE Second Amendment cases to be evaluated by the Supreme Court.

    On January 10th, the justices will discuss all three cases, Ocean State Tactical, Snope, and Gray.

    On the following Monday, or Tuesday, they will issue their orders.

    The Court can:

    • Grant Cert.
    • Deny Cert.
    • Relist the case

      • .

    While it would be wonderful to have them just grant cert in all three cases, the more likely event will be that the cases will be relisted.

    In the Roberts’ court, this is the standard for cases where the justices have agreed to hear the case, but Roberts wants to make sure there are no issues hiding in the case history.

    We can expect two to four relisting before they finally decide yes or no.

    At that time, we will know what the schedule will be. If the cases will be combined, or if they will all be heard on the same day.

    We are on track to have a major Second Amendment opinion issued by the Supreme Court around the end of June.

            

  • My father taught me this recipe just before I moved out of the house, and he learned it from his mother, my Nagymama (Hungarian for grandmother). It’s one of those stick to your ribs recipes, and can be made with a variety of ingredients. This is the base recipe, and I’ve included some additions at the end, for inspiration. This is the perfect thing to make when you know you’re going to be shoveling snow for hours, or you have to do other outdoor work in cold or damp and chilly environs.

    Ingredients:

    • 16 oz kielbasa sausage, coined
    • 6 to 8 potatoes, cubed
    • 4 cups broth
    • 3 to 6 tbsp sweet paprika (Szeged brand, please)
    • 2 tbsp vegetable oil
    • 1/4 package of bacon, diced
    • 1 large onion, diced
    • 3 to 6 cloves of garlic, minced

    In a large soup pot, add the oil and heat on medium. Add onions, and cook until softened. Stir in half of the paprika. Add bacon and sausage, and cook until they are thoroughly browned and bacon is beginning to crisp. If necessary, pour off some oil (though it will lend a lot of flavor if you leave it in).

    Add the potatoes to the pot (do NOT stir). Pour in the broth until it is just barely above the top layer. Add more paprika, to make everything quite red. Bring everything to a boil, and then lower the heat to lowest setting and simmer for about an hour. Please note, this may stick a bit to the bottom of your pot. Don’t stress. As long as it doesn’t burn or char, it’s perfect that way.

    After an hour, check on your stew. The potatoes should be soft and beginning to fall apart. Stir well, and add some salt and pepper to taste. The end result should be a stew thickened by the potatoes, and filled with tasty sausage.

    Notes:

    You can make this with any sausage, or technically any protein. Kielbasa was my Nagymama’s way of making this meal, but it can also be made with Andouille, Polish sausage, and even breakfast sausage or hot dogs if you’re in a pinch. When stirring, use a wooden spoon or spatula. Bits of potato will stick to the bottom a bit, but they can be scraped up gently and will make the stew taste even better! Also, if you like a bit of spice, you can also use some or all HOT paprika, as opposed to sweet. Beware… good quality Hungarian paprika is very flavorful, and the hot stuff is quite hot. I recommend “Szeged” brand, which is available in Market Basket, Shaw’s, and most other big box grocery stores.

    I’ve made this with pretty much every kind of cheap meat out there. You can use any protein at all, but if you’re using a raw meat, cook it first. I prefer to use sausages and pre-cooked meat because it makes this trivial to pull together quickly. You can also make this in the crock pot by cooking up the onions and meat, then tossing everything into the crock pot and cooking on low for 8 hours, or high for 4. This freezes well, too, so if you have leftovers you can make up single serving packages and toss them in the freezer.

    I serve this up with dill pickles and bread, because it’s what Nagymama always did. It goes well with just about everything, though.

    Paprikás Krumpli is almost always served with pickles.
            

  • I have hundreds of dollars worth of GPS equipment. Not counting the cell phones we all carry with us.

    I wanted to try to create a Stratum 0 NTP clock.

    The last time I attempted this, I used a Garmin handheld GPS. Time to sync was in minutes and while the power draw as trivial, by the standards of the day, it would still burn through AA batteries.

    Because you, kind readers, told me that there were cheap options, I went looking.

    What I found was a GPS module that is about an inch square. For $15 I could have one delivered. It comes with a header containing VCC, GND, TXD, RXD, and PPS. I figured I could solder in the provided header then run them to a GPIO that has an attached UART.

    Well, the darn things showed up a day early, and I didn’t really want to do any soldering. I plugged it in via the USB port, put it in the window. A few minutes later, it had a hard lock.

    After installing gpsd and configuring, chrony I now have a system that is locked at less than 1ms accuracy, NOT using the PPS option.

    That will be next week’s project. Getting that PPS signal to the motherboard.

    If I had a Raspberry Pi with a good interface, not wifi, I can see that this would make a darn nice little timekeeper.

            

  • For the most part, I’ve stopped writing or reporting on “mass shootings”. They happen. My initial takes are normally wrong. The information that we are fed is designed to tell a story. I hate being a conspiracy guy.

    My biggest error, so far, has been my initial analysis of the Trump shooting.

    Having said that, it is difficult not to have questions when something stinks.

    Part of critical thinking is to ask questions. To verify answers. To put answers to the test.

    Example: We had a breaker pop on Friday. I knew what the cause was instantly, the wife was running her space heater.

    When I got to the living room, she’s sitting on the sofa. Within seconds, I determined that she had left the heater on, even after she left the room.

    Wife and Ally are telling me that it couldn’t be the fault of the heater because it had been running for a while and hadn’t blown the circuit.

    Yeah, that was before we had that extra bit of draw on the circuit from the wife turning on the TV and side table light and other loads.

    They used critical thinking to eliminate the heater. I used more knowledge to rule the heater in.

    That circuit is rated at 1650 watts. The heater, in low mode, draws 750 watts. The lights left on, the misc. stuff plugged into the walls, the bathroom light and fan easily reaches 300 watts. My computer has a 750 watt power supply in it. The switch and other “stuff” plugged into the same circuit. All of that is a significant load. Thus, popped breaker.

    While rated at 1650 watts, those circuits will actually run for a bit over that limit until they pop.

    When you look at a fact set, you have to evaluate all the parts to be able to reach a logical conclusion. Upon reaching that conclusion, you still need to have an open mind for more data that might change your analysis.

    Security Analysis

    Doing a security analysis of a location or situation has risk. I’m reminded of a sales analysis I did and provided to our sales manager for Cray.

    The short of the analysis was that they were asking for millions of dollars from the client for a drive system which they could buy from other sources for under $100 thousand. I gave him this analysis so that he would have the ability to answer these types of questions before they were asked of him.

    The sales manager reported me for “attempting to sabotage the sale”. I listened and reported back to my chain of command. The customer didn’t need me to tell them what their options were, they already knew.

    Security analyses are like that. Telling a potential target of an observed weakness is more likely to get you in trouble and harassed than it is to get the institution to budge.

    I’ve gamed out some options against institutional targets. I don’t ever talk about those analyses because I do not want something to happen to those targets and me becoming a person of interest.

    Even the language I use would get me in trouble. I learned it from working for the military. Everything we analyzed was a “target”. It didn’t matter whether it was a T-90 from Russia or a Leopard II from Germany or an XM-1 from the US. They are all targets.

    Most people don’t get it. So I don’t use those terms.

    Questions

    A veteran from the US Special Forces has decided to do “bad things.” He is going to detonate a bomb to cause damage to a Trump Hotel.

    For some reason, he decides to take his passport with him on this mission.

    The heat from the detonation is so intense, his weapons melt. Likely just the plastic furniture, but his passport and IDs survive.

    What protected those IDs from the heat?

    He rented a Tesla truck to do this in. What advantages does a Tesla truck have over an Econvan?

    With extensive training on IEDs and making explosives, his device was pretty much a dud. What was the explosive used? Why didn’t he use a real explosive?

    See TM 31–210 (HQ Department of the Army, 1969) pages 7 through 72 contains extensive information on primary and secondary explosives from field expedient sources.

    Pages 194 through 223 cover making Fuses, detonators, and delay mechanisms.

    A revised version was released in 2007.

    So SF dude, who has been trained in all of this, messes up a simple bomb?

    This man was likely highly trained in how to perform one man operations that were extremely successful. Why did he forget so much of his training?

    Finally, why did he choose to use a Desert Eagle in 50 cal to off himself?