Essays
Comcast Scrooge
Today I received an email from Comcast informing me that we have consumed 90% of our 1 TB data alotment for the month. While I had been vaguely aware that Comcast has data caps, I had not encountered an issue with it until today.
What I find odd is that we have been averaging about 650 GB of data per month, and now mid-month Comcast is saying we have already consumed about 900 GB? What changed? Frankly, it doesn’t make sense.
Coincidentally, I noticed that mid last month our Internet download speed increased from around 70 mbps to 100 mbps. There seems to be a relationship between the increase in our bandwidth and how much Comcast claims we are now using. I didn’t ask for the bandwidth increase. I am wondering whether now that our speed is faster the streaming services we use have flipped over to higher data rate video streaming than we’ve been using previously?
What is frustrating is that the data usage meter Comcast provides is just a total consumption per month, it doesn’t show me a per day or even per week breakdown. In fact, I don’t know how I have any way to confirm that what Comcast is claiming I am consuming is what I am actually using!
Comcast provides 2 months of “free” data overage before they will start charging me $10 for each 50 GB we go over the cap per month, so I don’t have to do anything drastic right now. Right now I don’t even know how to begin to fight this thing, I am going to have to study the topic and see if there is something that I can implement on my end to show how much data we actually do consume per month.
Dictatorship It Is
Today electing a president is not about issues, nor is it about changing minds, nor is it about who looks better and sounds better of TV. The election is not about a personal popularity contest. Electing a president is now simply about opposition. In short, there is no middle ground just as the middle class has grown increasingly small.
If you identify Republican you are likely going to only vote for Republicans because you think all Democrats are crazy and will destroy the country. Likewise, if you identify Democrat you will only vote Democrat. If you really don’t like your candidate you will not vote, or write in Mickey Mouse rather than cast a vote for the opposing party.
The consequence is that the candidates only say what their “base” wants to hear, and it doesn’t even matter of what is said is true. Candidates don’t really try to change people’s minds. In this environment, do we really need debates? Worse, there is little for few remaing, truly “independent” voters to hear, and frankly doing a bunch of research is too much work for the average voter. Increasing numbers of these disenfranchised voters will simply sit out.
Unfortunately, I think Democrats think the lesson learned from 2016 is to focus on their base and ignore the middle because they think there are more liberal/progressives voters than conservative, Republicans, or independents. An extreme shift left is viewed by their opposition as further evidence of crazy Democrats.
The authors of the U.S. Constitution foresaw this type of fanaticism that democracy enables and thus created a structure to prevent it. Unfortunately, over time political idealogies have trumped preservation of the Republic concentrating more power within the Presidency. A party aligned, rubber stamping Congress and Supreme Court is a defacto dictatorship and this is effectly today’s U.S. government.
A New Slice Of Raspberry Pi
I bought the Raspberry Pi4 this past week and I’ve installed it in a Flirc Raspberry Pi4 case. Beside the fact that the Flirc case looks really nice, the case provides passive cooling of the CPU. Reviews of the Pi4 when it first released indicated it ran hot enough under load to hit the 82’C threshold that causes the CPU speed to throttle down. The Raspberry Pi Foundation as released a firmware update that improves cooling and so far with the firmware and the Flirc case the top temp I’ve seen is 44’C.
The reason why the Raspberry Pi4 runs hotter is that it has a faster ARM Cortex-A72 CPU processor, as much as 4 GB of RAM, and a USB-C power supply. I am using daenerys (my name for this computer) to type this post and I am finding it surprisingly useful for web applications. Gmail, with its heavy use of Javascript is unbearable in older models, but is actually usable on the Pi4.
For a little under $100, the Pi4 is defintely worth being a child’s first computer. I think it can also be a very servicable Linux server, running Raspbian Buster Lite, a variant of Debian Buster, for home projects.
Right now I don’t any plans for daenerys but I’ll be keeping my eyes open for any opportunities. Daenerys is my fifth Raspberry Pi. The first model I bought was the Pi2, which I have connected to a seven inch screen and serves a desk clock that shows my schedule, CNN newsfeed, current weather, and four day weather forcase. I have a Pi3 running Tiddlyserver that I am using to for a family wiki, and another running Taiga, which is a project management app. I also have a Pi Zero W that use to host a portable copy of the family wiki.
American Idol
President Trump simply believes that he as president cannot commit a crime. He believes that a president is above the law. Trump’s belief is the logical conclusion of decades of expansion of presidential powers that started with Vietnam.
How far have we fallen? At the beginning of my life President Nixon resigned before he was impeached because he broke the law. Nixon knew he would be impeached because he knew and accepted that Americans did not believe a President was above the law. We now have President Trump who believes that more Americans now accept that a President is above the law and believes that Americans today find loyalty to him and loyalty to party more important than loyalty to the Republic.
All presidents in my life time have desired more power. The real problem has been Congress' abdication of it’s prime constitutional responsibility to be a check on the presidency. At root of this abdication is the transformation of Congress as representative of all U.S. citizens to only representative of the majority party. Rather than upholding and defending the U.S. Constitution, Congress has become all about enabling and implementing a Republican or Democrat ideology.
What I find ironic is that I think the core belief of conservatism is that “abosolute power corrupts absolutely” and yet Republican conservatives have been the prime architects of the expansion of powers to the president. Conservatives should be truly republican but do not act like it, but rather tend to act more as anarchists.
Worst of all is that too many U.S. citizens do not care that this is happening! Too many people do not know the Constitution nor appreciate the fundamental reasons for why the U.S. form of republican democracy was designed and adopted. These people pledge allegiance to a flag as if the flag is the thing rather than a symbol of the real thing, our way of life enabled by the Constitution.
What has been taking place over the course of my life time is the ascendency of a U.S. monarchy or dictatorship under the veneer of the Presidency. If you are truly a U.S. patriot your loyalty should be to the “Republic for which it stands”, which means the Constitution that defines the republic.
Another Goat On The Northside
Joe Maddon will not be the manager of the Chicago Cubs next year and that is not a surprise given they did not meet expectations this year. In a world where people both have too high and too low expectations for professional sport coaches and managers, the common playbook front offices take when teams under-perform is to fire the manager.
Yes, change is needed, and yes, it is easier to fire one person, the manager, and not the team. But, Maddon is not the reason why the Cubs did not make the playoffs. First, and foremost the reason is that Cub players did not do their job. The same players who once ground out at bats in 2016 where doing nothing more than swing for the fences all this year. Second, the Cubs lineup is nothing but the same style hitter, with no diversity on the bench or apparently in the farm system, and the talent, that’s on the Theo Epstein and the front office.
Frankly, up until this point, what Epstein and the front office have done is succeed with the easy decisions and fail at the hard decisions. How hard is it to tank year after year and stock pile on draft picks that every talent scout in America says is a good bet? When Maddon became available, was it really hard to quickly decide to drop Ricky Renteria and sign Maddon?
Be careful for what you ask for, you just might get it. Now Epstein has to make one of the most important decisions of his tenure, who to hire to replace the manager that guided your team to the first World Series in 108 years. David Ross might be a good guy in the clubhouse, but will he have the players attention any more than Maddon? Will Joe Girardi be too hard? Who Epstein hires is crucial towards getting the most out of all the the talented players that are now starting to enter the end of their contracts.
Worse of all, the attention on hiring the next manager redirects attention away from the real heavy lifting of the offseason, which is to make changes to the lineup so that you get more professional at bats. Changing the lineup means moving one of the core players who won the World Series, which is something Epstein has refused to do to date. If you only replace the manager and keep everything else the same, why should we expect a different result?
On Saturday Epstein announced that Maddon will not be returning. If next year is no better, who will be the scapegoat then? You can’t fire the entire team.
The Lovable Losers Of My Youth
The common denominator for all my favorite professional sports teams is that they were losers during my childhood. The Green Bay Packers were the siberia of the NFL during the 70s and 80s until Reggie White started playing for them in 1993 and three years later won the Super Bowl. Ever since 1993 the Packers have been at or near the top of the NFL.
The Chicago Cubs were the epitome of “lovable losers” for a century. Even though the Cubs flirted with chances to make it to the World Series in 1984, 1989, and 2003 but it hasn’t been until the last five years that they have consistently been at or near the top of the league, and you know they won it all in 2016.
Like the Green Bay Packers, the Detroit Red Wings were also once the dominant team in the NHL but during the 70s and 80s they were known as the “dead Wings.” The owners had to give away cars to get people to come to their games. In 1997 the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup, and of my favorite teams they have won more championships in my life time, winning again in 1998, 2002, and 2008. Since the calendar turned to the 2010s the Wings have been in a rebuilding phase.
Finally, the Detroit Pistons where also perenial losers during my childhood but where the first of my faves that I witnessed winning a championship in 1989, and again in 1990 and 2004. Frankly, the championship they won in 2004 is one of the most gratifying because nobody really expected it and they upset the perenial champion Los Angeles Lakers. Like the Red Wings, the Pistons are rebuilding but apppear to be nearing returning to the tops of their league sooner than the Wings.
Over my life time I’ve seen the long road it takes to get from basement to top floor of a professional sports league. I’ve seen how it takes for a team to learn how to be a champion, particularly from the Red Wings who had huge playoff failures after being the best team in their league the entire season.
Of all my favorite teams, the Cubs have the most talent and I expect will have chances to win championships again in the foreseeable future. The MLB’s farm system enables a franchise to have more control over its future if they have the right leadership. The NHL is similar, which is why theirs and the MLB front offices have such a huge influence on their long term success, much more than in the NFL and NBA that seems to depend much more on health and luck.
I am dissappointed that the Chicago Cubs will not make the playoffs this year. I will always love the Cubbies, win or lose, but I much better like where they are now, a very good team that can disappoint than a bad team that surprises.
Definition of Insanity
Home Run hitting is vulnerable to breaking down. Combine that fact with an aging starting rotation and an inconsistent bullpen and you have a summary of the Chicago Cub’s last two seasons.
The Cubs currently have 5 batters with 20 or more home runs, and one more, Jason Heyward at 19. No Cubs hitter has a batting average of .300 or better, Anthony Rizzo is hitting .286. Even if you add Ben Zobrist to the mix, the Cubs lineup is too much the same making it easy to defend.
I understand the resistance in parting ways with the talent that got you the World Series three years ago, but I think it should be clear now that unless there are some diferent players in the lineup next year, you are going to end up with the same result.
Many will put blame on the manager, but he is not the person responsible for the roster, that lies with the front office. You clearly see a bias towards a single style of player that is good but not diverse enough, and that really doesn’t give Madden many options to change things up.
Ownership has some hard decisions to make during the off season. It’s easy to decide whether or not to spend money, it is much harder to decide whether the people running your team know how to change and if you do replace them, with whom?
I expect the Cubs to replace Madden because that is the easy choice that just about every team makes at this point. A different leadership style might spark a different emotional result, but it won’t change how teams pitch to the Cubs.
Chromecast Overheating
I’ve been using Chromecast ever since Google first started selling them, and upgraded to the Ultras when they became available. One is attached to each of our two TVs, however I also have an Apple TV connected to the basement TV. I primarily use the Apple TV because I find the apps are better, for example the MLB app has a catch up feature only available on Apple TV.
I do occasionally stream ball games using the Chromecast on the Living Room TV but it has he annoying behavior of performance degrading after a couple hours of streaming. All of a sudden what I am watching starts stuttering and becomes unwatchable.
I don’t have solid evidence, but I suspect the Chromecast is overheating to the point after a few hours the performance suffers. The OS on the device might be throttling down performance to protect the CPU. The Chromecast is very hot when I touch it. I probably should get an HDMI extension to move it further away from the back of the TV.
Given my experience, if someone is in the market for a streaming video device I recommend the Apple TV unless you find the price prohibitive. I think the UI is good and it has had solid performance.
Go Cubs Go
The Chicago Cubs have one of the best home records and one of the worst road records, and they have the best run differential in their division. People seem to be scratching their head over how the same team can be so good at home and so bad on the road. The problem is not the hitting, although they could be more consistent. To me the problem is the bullpen, they are giving up too many runs in the 6 thru 9th innings. Nobody in the pen is reliable.
Twenty years ago the bullpen wasn’t so important because starting pitchers pitched more innings and more often completed games. Now, starting pitchers are only expected to pitch six innings and that means you got have more pitching than ever before.
The Cubs overall pitching staff is not good enough. You might see an uptick in performance if they make the playoffs because the starters tend to go longer and you tend to narrow the pen down to a handful of pitchers, but I don’t expect the Cubs to get beyond be first round if they do make the playoffs.
I don’t know what specific things the Cubs need to do for next year. I don’t think the problem is with the managing or coaching, it seems to point to the talent in pitching. Lester and Hamel will be a year older and there doesn’t appear to be any replacements coming from the minors. The window on the talent the Cubs do have is getting smaller and it will be a shame if they only make it to one World Series.
On Our Twenty Third Wedding Anniversary
Each year we try to celebrate our wedding anniversary on vacation to spend time together. This year we traveled to Marquette, Michigan, stayed at the Landmark Inn, took a tour of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Munising, and then on our way back spent an evening at Headlands International Dark Sky Park near Mackinaw City.
Here are pictures that we took during the trip:
I defintely recommend all three venues. Pictured Rocks might be the closest thing I’ve seen to the Grand Canyon east of the Mississippi. The Dark Sky Park is a great place for star gazing, just be sure the moon isn’t too bright and you have clear skies.
The Risk Of Identifying As A Platform
In a YouTube video recently posted, Bill Gates said something along the line of his greatest failure was to not lead Microsoft to produce a mobile operating system that would have been as successful as Android.
I had an up front view of Microsoft’s mobile operating systems in the early 2000s and for Microsoft to create an Android would have required something akin to a labotomy. The Microsoft of the early 2000s saw itself as a platform company, that platform being Windows, and as a consequence, its prime objective was to protect the platform because to do so was to protect its existence.
To make something like Android Microsoft would have had to be willing to create a new platform rather than try to extend a desktop platform to mobile, which was doomed for failure. Microsoft could not fathom creating a second platform because to do so, in their mind, was to put Windows at risk. (Microsoft also applied the same thinking to the Internet.)
In my opinion the most important thing Satya Nadella did when we took over Microsoft is return to Microsoft’s roots as a software developer and move away from identifying itself as a platform company. As a software developer Microsoft does not see it’s entire existence depending on Windows, which allows it to embrace other platforms such a making a robust version of Microsoft Office for iOS and Android and even to integrate Linux with Windows.
Had Microsoft not got drunk on the Windows platform, starting with Windows 95, it might have been willing to embrace the Internet and mobile more fully and maintained itself as, in Bill Gate’s words, “the” leading software company rather than “a” leading software company. It’s easy to get drunk on the amount of money successful platforms provide and appear to provide forever.
Platforms are an institution, and most institutions naturally expend tremendous effort on self preservation. In my opinion the only way a platform company can truly exist over time is by being willing to put it’s current platforms at risk of extinction through the creation of more viable future platforms. In my opinion some people in Google know this and that appears to be the reason why they are quiently working on Fuchsia but only time will tell whether this insight is fully embraced by those who are running the company.
For A President, Congress Is The Law
I wonder, if the Republicans controlled the House, whether there would already be an impreachment inquiry open. Mueller served the role as investigator, collecting evidence and documenting his findings. The Constitution gives the House the job of prosecuting attorney (not the Attorney General) in determining whether to charge the President with a crime, which for the President has the unique label of impreachment.
A Republican inquiry would review the evidence, formally declare there is none to bring charges, and then the case is closed. Until the House says it is closed, the case is not closed no matter what Trump or Barr says. That is the Constitution.
To uphold their oath to the Constitution, Democrats in the House must open the impeachment inquiry and determine whether or not to vote articles of impeachment. They must be willing to take the political risk, if that exists, to fulfill their role in our government. It’s not about politics, it’s about the rule of law.
In fact, I think Congress should produce new presidential special consule legislation that states that all presidential special consule investigations require an impeachment inquiry to formalize the conclusions of the investigation.
If the criminal justice system cannot bring charges against a sitting president then Congress has to take serious this responsibility. That is unless Congress thinks the President really is above the law.
A Crostini Meltdown
The Crostini Linux containers on my Google Pixelbook melted down after I upgraded the Pixelbook to the stable release of Chrome OS 74, a reminder that Linux Apps (Crostini) is very much in beta.
I’ve written the details of what occurred, the trigger seems to be that I had two containers. After Chrome OS 74 installs and you launch a container, such as by starting the Terminal app, you see a message telling you that the Linux apps is being upgraded and the app you wish to run will load after the upgrade completes.
I saw the message for the primary container, named penguin, and everything worked as planned. The meltdown began when I started Gnome Terminal, which was in the second container, the one in which I was running Docker. The upgrade message appeared but the upgrade did not seem to complete. After letting it run for an hour, which was much longer than the prior upgrade, I restarted the Pixelbook, and either that or the upgrade rendered the container usable.
From here a few attempts to fix the problem cascaded the meltdown to primary container too. My attempts to re-build and restore the primary container from a backup failed and I am left to re-building from scratch. Not totally awful given that I had no real data in either container, just apps with a bit of data synced to a cloud or github.
I am not entirely sure what happened. I might have been too impatient and the second container may have upgraded had I just let it run. Or, it might be that running Docker in the second container created problems.
The moral of this blog post is that even if you are sticking to the Chrome OS stable channel, Linux Apps (Crostini) is still in beta and thus breakage can and will occur.
Migrating To A New iPad
I got a new iPad Mini for my birthday. It is noticeably faster than the Mini 4 and I am happy to be able to use the Apple Pencil with it. I have found that GoodNotes can be configured for vertical scrolling rather than horizontal so it best approximates the Newton notepad.
The setup process for moving from one iPad to another is pretty neat. It automatically detects the old nearby iPad and establishes a connection to it by scanning a barcode with the camera. All the settings transfer and apps restore from a recent backup. Not all app settings, particularly logins, restore so I am finding that I have to check each app individually.
Breaking And Fixing Things
I have been having fun breaking and fixing my wiki over the last several days, and in the process learned more about wiki. Wiki is written in nodejs and there is a wiki-server and a wiki-client along with several plugins. My adventures began when an update was made to wiki-client that broke the ability to use HTML forms in a wiki page. A fix was made to wiki-client that resolved the problem but my server was not getting the update.
It appears that somewhere along the line I managed to install wiki in two different directories on my server. The install from which I was running wiki was not updating when I ran npm install -g wiki and it took me a while to figure out how to run the global install instance of wiki that I was updating.
Today I removed the “second” installation but now I have to provide the full path to the correct, current, installation of wiki. When I just run wiki it tries to run it from a directory in which it is no longer located. I must have an alias or script pointing it in that direction but for now I haven’t figured it out.
Anyway, I now have the current verison of wiki-client so I can now fill in html forms, one of which is for a search plugin that now appears to be broken. Oy vey! Search works on a older installation on my Pixelbook, but the new version/current version is not working.
At least I did manage to get the graphviz plugin installed (you can see it in action on this page), figuring out how to set up myself as an admin user to do the installation took time to suss out.
Breaking and fixing things is a important part of the learning process when learning software.
Journalism Yes, Media No
I have been reading Dave Winer’s writing for a long time, and a common theme of his writing is journalism. My translation of what he has been saying is that news has become a platform, and as such anyone can do it, and those who are employed as journalists need to shift from being gatekeepers to being participants. True platforms route around gatekeepers.
The reason why this message is not well received by journalists is obvious, it’s because what they hear is that you no longer have a job. Staying employed is important to these people and you cannot blame them because it is how they support their families.
When the constitution was written people like Benjamin Franklin viewed journalism as a vocation because frankly the idea of a “job” didn’t really exist. When vocations became professions, a shift in priorities took place, with maintaining employment moving to the top. When journalism transformed to media thanks to corporate consolidation, the move to journalism being about money became complete.
The honest question that has been avoided ever since is, is what we have, journalism as media to make profits, consistent with the “fourth estate” established by the First Amendment? If the prime objective of the Consitution, of which the First Amendment is a part, is to be the United in the United States of America, then today’s media is not that which the first amendment refers to because there is more profits generated from disunity than unity.
Citizens instinctively know that the profits that corporate ownership demands is corupting, and therefore they do not trust media because they know there is a bias towards making money over telling truth.
Of course Fox News is giving their viewers what they want to hear, that is how they make money! Of course MSNBC is giving their viewers what they want to hear, that is how they make money! Of course the New York Times is giving their readers what they want to red, that is how they make money!
On and on it goes. It is another example of how hyper capitalism is destroying republican democracy and thus destroying our country.
Testing Micro.blog Wordpress Export
In December micro.blog stopped exporting my site to Github, a consequence of their change from jekyll to hugo as the CMS. We do have manual ways to export a site, one is to download an export file as a Wordpress export and the other is to generate an archive in a “blog archive format” that doesn’t appear to be well documented. Manton wrote a post proposing the format in 2017, but I have not found anything else so it doesn’t appear that format is useful to anyone other than programmers.
An export is only as good as the ability to import, so I decided to create a local install of Wordpress on my Pixelbook using Docker and then try importing the Wordpress export. The good news is that the import was successful. The bad news is that the export file retains markdown that is not converted to HTML so none of the links in the posts appear correctly. We either need the micro.blog export process to convert to HTML or some way for the import process to convert markdown to HTML.
Update: I was directed to install the JP Markdown plug in to my site, which I did and then did a wipe and re-import and the good news is that with it installed all the markdown formating is appearing on the local Wordpress site.
Living The Dream
I’ve had the same reaction to Howard Schultz’s comment about the American Dream as Dave. When I was growing up the American Dream was equated to the Middle Class, by which I mean adults aspired to having a comfortable life and dreamt of a better life for their children.
While I do agree with Schultz in that another way to describe the American Dream is to be successful, I think the biggest problem is measuring success by wealth. The focus on wealth in America is allowing us to accept the huge income inequality that exists in our country.
For me, Schultz implying that Elizabeth Warren and others want to punish him and others for being successful is totally wrong. What we want is for the very wealthy people to contribute a share to society commensurate with their ability.
Schultz might want to put on an indepedent label, but his ideology is conservative Republican selling himself as a Democrat Ross Perot.
Progress Requires Wrong AND Right
Progress cannot happen amongst people who are unwilling to accept they could be wrong. The scientific method is based on the truth that ideas, hypothesis, can be wrong and hence requires proof of hypothesis that is peer reviewed and consensed as being right or most likely right. Proofs are not only facts but also consensed arguments of what is most likely right. Built in to science is acceptance that what may be considered a proven correct hypothesis today could be proven incorrect hypothesis tomorrow and that is considered to be progress.
Milestone Achieved
Something momentus has happened. If you click On This Day up above you will see posts that were not written today but on this day, last year, when I flipped the bit and started blogging mostly here rather than over there.
I am excited to have On This Day finally fulfill its purpose.