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.

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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.

I fought networks today.

They won this battle.

I forgot to write.

See you all later today

I ran into this tripe a little more than a year ago. This week it is showing up everywhere.

People are whining on X and Reddit about how hard it is today. How the “boomers” took all the wealth. How they don’t want you to be able to afford a home.

My parents grew up during the Great Depression and WWII. My maternal grandfather tried to volunteer for the army but was not allowed, as he was a critical worker in railroads. My paternal grandfather was busy being a scientist for Goodyear. Family history says that he helped develop the tires that were using synthetic rubber.

My grandparents worked hard to earn what they held. They died owning a houses.

My maternal grandparents bought their house in the 30s or 40s. Grandpa built the garage himself. He did all the work around the house. Before he started working for the railroad, the SooLine, he was a machinist and a carpenter/woodworker. His hands were calloused from working his entire life.

He bought his house for under $2k, it is currently valued at $145k.

My grandfather also worked most of his life. He was a scientist who worked with cotton. His house was worth much more when my grandmother passed because of California. Likely near enough to a million dollars for a little house.

When my parents started, Dad was an ensign in the Navy. It wasn’t until a LT that they could afford their first house.

They purchased an OLD house in Norfolk. Dad took the test to be a certified electrician because he needed to rewire that house. They couldn’t afford to have somebody else do any work. Dad fixed that house up.

When he was transferred, they couldn’t sell the house for what they had in it, so they rented it out until they could. That allowed them to buy another house. A little nicer, a little better.

It wasn’t until I was in 6th grade that I had a room to myself. There was no “spare” bedroom. It wasn’t until high school that the house was big enough for there to be a shared office for Mom and Dad.

That house now lists for $550k. I do not know how much they purchased it for.

When they passed, their house was worth around $360k.

Their houses and their wealth went up as they invested money they had earned and saved.

My first house was a “three”-bedroom, one-bath house. With 870 sq. feet. I could barely afford it with my $35k/year salary. I think we paid around $50k for it. It now sells for $242k. I quote three because it was actually two bedrooms with an extra room tacked on the back, through the second bedroom. So it was three bedrooms and a laundry room, craft room, kids room.

I stuffed 5 kids and a wife into that house, and we made it work.

But here’s the thing: the house I thought I could afford was a $30k fixer-upper. I was going into that house knowing I would have to rip up every floor and put new floors back in. That every wall had to be stripped and painted. And likely, I would have to redo the roof. And I expected to do all the work myself.

I made no money on that house. The bank repossessed it because I was unable to make child support payments AND house payments.

I have a house today because my wife makes good money and I get bursts of money. We were able to afford it only because my parents helped and the house had been foreclosed.

It is worth almost 4 times what we paid for it. Not a bad investment.

It took me 30 years of work to be able to buy this house. I’ve never gone hungry, but I’ve eaten freezer scrapings more than once.

But today I’m told I had it easy. That my parents had it easy. That I’m greedy because I bought this house that could have been used by a large growing family,

One person complained that he couldn’t find a starter home. His definition of a starter home put him at $500K.

My house is not a “starter home.” It is my grow-old home. And it isn’t $500k.

There are 7 houses for sale within 2 miles of my town for less than $150k.

The most significant difference, in my opinion, is what luxuries we “must” have today.

My child dropped her phone in the lake. She has a new phone. My phone bill, for the family, is $250 per month. We shouldn’t be paying that much for phones. But I like having my phone. I like being able to read books in the dark. I like my Google Maps and Android Auto.

So I pay for my kids and family to have cell phones. And good ones.

I think we spend nearly $100/month on streaming services. I have not added it up, but that sounds about right.

There is money for servers, internet, VoIP service, and a dozen other things.

Our electric bill is high. People run heaters when it is cold and fans or AC when it is hot.

All these things add up.

When I was young, going out to eat was a special thing. Today, my kids eat out 4 out of 7 days of the week. The amount of money spent on drinks from Dunkin or McDonald’s blows my mind.

I feel bad for spending $35/month on good coffee. My wife will spend $2 for an iced tea from McDonald’s multiple times per month. It all just adds up.

To put it in perspective, I’ve seen my wife order takeout for us and the kids and spend nearly 10% of a mortgage payment. Taking the entire family out for dinner can easily hit 20%.

Do I feel bad for the people who are struggling to make ends meet? Yes, I do. I’ve been there. I fought through that. I drive a 15 year-old truck so I don’t have to pay $500/month on a car payment. Are they making the same types of sacrifices? Do they make the sacrifices my parents made?

Now they are not.

Stop whining, stop blaming me, get up and go do.

There was a time when I would stand up at a whiteboard and sketch an entire campus network from memory, including every network subnet, router, and switch.

Today, not only can I no longer hold all of that in my head, my whiteboards no longer exist.

In the first office I rented, I installed floor-to-ceiling whiteboards on all walls. I could write or draw on any surface.

I can remember walking into Max’s office with an idea, asking for permission to erase his whiteboard, and then drawing out or describing the idea or project. Maybe 30 minutes of drawing and discussing.

What surprised me was asking to erase my chicken scratches months later and being told, “No,” because they were still using it.

Regardless, today I need to draw serious network maps.

I have multiple routers between multiple subnets. Managed and unmanaged switches. Gateways and VPNs. I have an entire virtual network layered over the top of all of that to make different services appear to be on the same subnet.

Not to mention the virtual private cloud(s) that I run, the internal, non-routing networks.

It is just to much for me to do in my head.

Oh, here’s one that’s currently messing with me. I have a VPC. It has multiple gateways allowing access residing on different chassis in different subnets. I can’t figure out how to make it work today. Even though it was working yesterday.

I’ll be messing with networks for the next week to get things stabalized.

Everyone who wants to survive upcoming emergencies (long or short) needs to have a skills tree. This is a list of skills that are in your household, as well as any that are overlapped. All good prepper families have lots of overlap, because we know that if one person succumbs (to a virus, to a gunshot wound, to dropping a tree on themselves…), someone else has to take up the slack. When you make your skills tree, be sure to list EVERYTHING that people can do, because you never know what’s going to be needed. If you find holes, you need to figure out a way to fill them. That means bringing someone into your plans, training yourself or someone else up in the missing skill, or figuring out ways to not need it. But plans need to be made.

Basic Skills

These are skills everyone should know. If someone in your group doesn’t know these, educate them, and fast.

• cooking over a fire
• gardening (basic, ie you can identify a pea and know how to operate a watering can, etc)
• sewing (basic, ie you can sew on a button or patch something roughly)
• triage (everyone should know how to tell how serious an injury is, even if they can’t treat it)
• shelter building
• filtering water to make it potable
• building a fire
• basic first aid (specifically, treating gunshot wounds, burns, and breaks, because they’re the most likely injuries you’ll encounter)
• self defence (pick your weapon)
• basic strategy
• how to wash clothes with no power
• where to find basic vitamins (ie you can drink pine needle tea to get Vitamin C)
• how to find dry firewood
• how to go to the bathroom when you have no indoor plumbing
• how to care for a newborn and its mother
• how to read maps (both standard ones and topographical)
• how to use a compass
• general problem solving/logic skills
• record keeping (write down what you do and how it’s done, for future generations)

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Can I call Network Support, Please?

I’m in network hell again. The internal network keeps getting better, but I’m a cheap SOB, so I don’t buy Cisco $50 SFP modules. I buy 4 for $50.

This has downsides, one of which is when it breaks, I’m responsible.

So here’s the story in short. Node 3 <=> SW1, Node 4 <-> SW1, S1 <=> R1, R1 <=> N129, R1 <=> N5, R1 <-> GW, GW <-> THE WORLD.

I have measured bandwidth between N3 and N5 at nearly 10G, as expected, both directions. I have measured bandwidth of nearly 2G between N129 and N3 and N5, as expected in both directions. I have measured bandwidth between N4 and N3, N5 and N129 at 1G, bi-directional.

The measured speed from the WORLD to the ONT is 1 Gbit, bi-directional. The measured speed between GW and WORLD is 480 Mbit bi-directional. This is because the GW is CPU starved at that point. It is a router, not a compute engine.

The measured throughput from the GW to N129 and N5 is 1 Gbit, as expected.

The measured throughput from N129 and N5 to the GW is < 30 Mbit. This is messed up. I'm working backwards. ONT to GW replaced ethernet cable. GW to R1 I've replaced the fiber modules on both ends, next step is to replace the fiber itself. That's where I'm stuck. I've even power cycled R1.

Techs vs Tech Support

The Fidium/Consolidated Communications tech was on site yesterday. He quickly found the ONT. Measured its performance, declared it needed to be replaced. Took a look at the equipment he could see and the fiber runs, went and moved the house to a different splitter. We are now on the primary splitter instead of one a few steps down. There are only 4 drops on this splitter instead of 10+.

When he was finished, I ran my speed tests again. 1G down, 0.040G Up. A major improvement, still not good.

Here are some observations. English was his primary and likely his only language. He understood that he was speaking with somebody who knew networks.

After we decided that something else was wrong, we decided to test with his laptop. Before he did any testing, he tested his dongle. He made sure his laptop was capable of 1G testing. That dongle was not. He went back to his truck to get one that did support 1G.

We tested, and he was getting the same numbers I was.

I’ve ordered a USB-C to Ethernet dongle for the laptop so I can connect directly to the GW to do testing. That’s a different question.

He called tech support. Those people, tech support for the techs, could not handle him just plugging in his laptop to test.

I introduced the tech to 8.8.8.8 and showed him how to verify he was online.

Because Tech Support couldn’t figure it out, he had to install a company router for them to be able to test. Tech Support then tried to force me to use their router. Their router has no SFP ports. No, thank you.

New Client

The new client project is winding down. After their people said it couldn’t be done for over a month, I do have the new server running. Management and their customers are happy. Most of the people using the new server are happy.

Their IT people are not happy with me. He managed to make enough visible mistakes that management noticed. Not that they hadn’t noticed before, they just didn’t know what they didn’t know.

Now comes the difficult task for me: turning a one-time project into long-term client support.

TDS

I look at the world of today versus the world of 12 months ago, and my life is better. I might not be pulling as much money as I want, but the economy is moving in the correct direction.

If I see a headline with “Trump!” in it, I know another TDS sufferer is about to tell me why their life is horrible because of Trump.

People being told to buy soda and snacks with their money and not mine? That’s evil.

The federal government not paying for people’s solar systems with my money? That’s evil too.

Removing criminal aliens from our country? Think of the children!

There was a thread on Reddit complaining that solar is going to die in Vermont because the solar subsidy is being stopped.

I’m sorry, solar in the Northeast is not as viable as solar in Florida or other sunny places. If you think it is such a great deal, buy it with your money, not mine.

Go read Dive Medic’s blog over at https://areaocho.com for his personal experience with solar power. It is a win for him. It is a nice concept for me. But it requires doing the math. And using your money.

The National Guard Can Be Used for Law Enforcement IF

It is for a good cause, like protecting President Biden from those horrible, evil, red-hatted people. They should have been called in to stop the most horrific, violent, attack on the government of the United States ever. January 6th, when 10s of thousands of the most heavily armed people in the world, left all their guns at home.

Activating the National Guard to help law enforcement officials in the District of Columbia? That’s forbidden. That’s misuse of the military.

Remember, the Second Amendment only protects the rights of the Militia, which is the National Guard, until Trump uses them, in which case they are the Military and it is a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. (End sarcasm).

There is nothing that the Trump administration can do that the left won’t cry about.

It’s Not Sharp

I think I’ve mastered the art of woodworking with hand tools. All cutting implements are dull, by definition. Sharpen them before you start.

Seriously, almost every time I’ve had issues, it is because I have not done enough sharpening or flattening.

That includes such things as flattening your planes. I have a Stanley #4 that needs more work to make its sole flat. It is almost there, but I got tired of trying to make it flat. I’m in a position to work on it again.

I picked up a wooden fore plane. This is really a jack plane, but it works.

The first step was to examine it. The sole looked ok, until I realized that there were little drips from whatever was used to finish it.

It took a good 30 minutes on 320 grit sandpaper to make the sole flat. It took longer than that to grind a good edge on the iron. It was so bad that the iron got to hot to hold, even with my slow speed grinder.

I need to spend a bit more time, but I believe this will be a real workhorse.

Now all I need is a day that isn’t so hot and muggy.

The same with the 26″ handsaw I found. Once it is properly sharpened, its 8 TPI will just rip through wood. The long length of the panel will make it another workhorse.

All I need to do is finish my Jointer’s Box. OH, I realized I had been staring at a Jointer’s box at the Fort without seeing it. I have to spend the time to examine it more closely.

Question of the week

My standard in interacting with the police is “I don’t answer questions.” Which I fail at, so I work harder at succeeding.

If police were to roll up in my yard, I would be telling them to leave.

With the advent of federal law enforcement hitting the streets of DC, there are reports coming out that LEOs are walking up on people sitting on their stoops to demand ID and justification.

Where do you stand on the idea of the cops demanding ID of people sitting on the steps of their own homes?