jc blog - tales of a modern-day nomadic hunter-gatherer

Follow jcomeau_ictx on Twitter This is the weblog of Intrepid Wanderer. You never know what you might find here; graphic descriptions of bodily functions, computer programming secrets, proselytizing for the antichrist, miscellaneous ranting and kvetching, valuable information on living off the land... if you don't share my rather weird interests you may want to try slashdot instead.

You can consider my Del.icio.us links an extension to my blog, as are my LifeTango goals and my other to-do items. My to-buy list is also public, but only for sharing any useful ideas that might be there; I'm not requesting charity, neither do I offer it.

You can find me easily in google searches, as jcomeau, jcomeau_ictx, or jcomeauictx. There are lots of other jcomeaus, but AFAIK I'm the only jcomeau_ictx out there so far.

If you want to comment on anything you see here, try the new Facebook comments, reachable by clicking the "[comment]" link at the end of each post. If for some reason that isn't working, go ahead and email me, jc.unternet.net. You know what to do with the first dot. Make the 'subject' line something reasonably intelligent-looking or it goes plunk! into the spambasket unread.

This RSS feed may or may not work. Haven't fiddled with it in forever. RSS Feed


2018-06-30-0004Z

so today I finally asked a Grocery Outlet employee if the "Last Chance" shelves were only for employees (since they are located at the entrance to the employee break room), and she said "no". great! I went to investigate. some good Russian and Eastern European beers for $1.00 to $1.25, no CRV, and not even any tax (at least with some cashiers). great deals! I got two lagers and a weissbier, 1.33L in all, for $3.25. [comment]

2018-06-21-1315Z

someone has finally designed and commercially built a dual-valved snorkel, something I've been contemplating for years but haven't come up with a prototype. now someone needs to take it to the next level and extend it with long hoses to a surface unit with a dive flag, and people will be able to snorkel to any arbitrary depth. [comment]

2018-06-21-0208Z

got my first Social Security retirement payout on schedule today. hallelujah. first time I've had steady income since 2010. it feels really good. I've doubled my food allowance to $6/day, which hopefully means I won't be eating so much crap.

I tried a redbud seed pod today, off a tree across the street from the Whole Foods parking lot. it tasted something like an apple. [comment]

2018-06-19-2052Z

over the weekend, while camping out at the Bluegrass Festival in Grass Valley where I volunteered as security, I experimented with two innovations in camp stoves.

the first was a replacement for the potstand that finally fell apart last year after too many abuses with heavy pots and pans. I realized the other day that 1-1/4" fender washers held by 1/4" nuts and bolts would hold the pan above the fire at just about the right height. I used 3, all stainless hardware, which cost over $14, but it could have been a lot cheaper. these are adjustable, so they fit not only my stick stove, but just about any steel or aluminum can.

the other thing was using kerosene or cooking oil for fuel, especially the latter for close-quarters camping and urban bivouacking because it makes very little smoke and the odor isn't unpleasant. my stick stove, on the other hand, hasn't made me a lot of friends due to the pungent and copious smoke, at least until the fire gets burning really hot. I found that a piece of an old cotton shirt made a passable wick. get enough to fill the whole container (I used both my stick stove and an old tuna tin I found on the roadside), and you won't have to worry about something to hold the wick upright. plus you have the maximum amount of fire for the size can you use.

photo of the tuna-tin stove at Instagram. I cooked a 4-egg omelet on it today, but the charred wick became more and more useless towards the end. I read that you can make it last longer by soaking in salt water then drying before use. you can also use things like fiberglass or fine steel wool as a wick. [comment]

2018-06-15-1909Z

right before awakening, a girl in my dream was riding a half-skateboard: 2 wheels in front and a footstrap in back. she kicked off with the other foot and skidded a few feet.

pondering it later, I added a wheelie on the skateboard foot, and used several other contraptions for the half-skateboard, including rolling luggage and my homemade bike trailer. this could be the answer I was looking for. [comment]

2018-06-12-2029Z

had forgotten about sound. I install alsa-utils, pulseaudio, and sox, ran pulseaudio --start, and now play works. [comment]

2018-06-12-0308Z

it worked! I have a functional touchpad now. what an ordeal! [comment]

2018-06-12-0250Z

so I decided, after reading this forum post, to rebuild the kernel. copied /boot/config-4.16.0-2-amd64 to /usr/src/linux-source-4.16/, set CONFIG_PINCTRL_AMD=y, and CONFIG_SYSTEM_TRUSTED_KEYS="", and ran make deb-pkg LOCALVERSION=-ideapad320. hours later, it's still running. [comment]

2018-06-11-1903Z

got it working! had to install rfkill, and issue the command rfkill unblock all, then could iwconfig wlp1s0 essid linksys key guessme followed by ip link set wlp1s0 up and dhclient wlp1s0. now to get Xwindows working... [comment]

2018-06-11-1840Z

fixed some of the remaining problems by installing the firmware-linux-nonfree package. it now boots all the way up, despite the same errors showing as before. but I can't yet connect to the Internet with it. [comment]

2018-06-11-1435Z

didn't help. same errors, still locks up, but now only after an additional couple of messages about kvm being disabled by the BIOS. [comment]

2018-06-11-1423Z

yesterday I got rid of the AMD-Vi error messages by editing the bootflags with grub and adding iommv=soft, but stretch still locked up after a message something like tpm_crb MSFT0101:00 can't request region for resource [mem 0xddd21000 - 0xddd24fff. so this morning I used the rescue mode of the netinst disk to dist-upgrade to buster. I'm blogging this right now from rescue mode... about to reboot and see if it works. [comment]

2018-06-11-0216Z

partially installed Debian 9.4 on the new laptop. I just ignored the warning about firmware files ath10k/pre-cal-pci-0000:01.00.0.bin and ath10k/cal-pci-0000:01.00.0.bin and it was able to bring the network up anyway. problem is that /lib/systemd/systemd doesn't exist, and I don't know how to fix it. luckily grub didn't screw up and make it impossible to boot into Windows.

horrendous lower back pain today, and I don't know what I could have done to strain it. but I first starting feeling it after eating some raw broccoli (conventional, not organic) from Safeway, so I guess it could be kidney pain. [comment]

2018-06-09-0419Z

oh, I put some of the milk from one of those fractalweed plants on my largest wart today. let's see what happens if anything. [comment]

2018-06-09-0359Z

might be making somewhat longer blog posts for a while; one of my long-term clients bought me a new laptop. I left the old netbook in Mexico thinking eventually I'd buy something used up here, and not have to lug computers back and forth any more, but I was basically gifted this so I'll be using it.

I've forgotten many of the things I wanted to post about the trip up the coast, and the Kinetic Grand Championship. it's just too painful typing on the little Android phones. but I remember the time I fell crossing Iris Avenue, on the far side of the street, failing to notice the difference in elevation in the sidewalk. I remember finding LimeBikes in the street starting as early as San Ysidro and being curious about them, then finally taking one for a free ride for about 7 miles between Chula Vista and downtown San Diego. and I have a vivid memory of some loquats I found on Nimitz Blvd. approaching Ocean Beach, not quite at the perfect stage of ripeness but still sweet and delicious. I hit the beach in La Jolla Shores a little later than I'd wanted to, but I kept a good pace and easily reached Torrey Pines State Beach before the rising tide made that stretch impassable. then I got some sleep, so it was probably too late to continue on the coast all the way to 29th street in Del Mar; so I walked along the tracks to 11th or so and then got back on the highway. no nosy cops encountered this trip.

then I only had about two weeks to prepare for the KGC, and little money. I only managed to jog the race again this year. lost a bunch of stuff in Humboldt Bay, thanks to my bags which were open on top, and had to exit the water early because the tide was turning against me. anyway I had fun and didn't sustain any injuries worth mentioning.

counting down the days to my first Social Security retirement "check". hoping the direct deposit just works and I don't have to spend hours on the phone trying to figure out what went wrong. [comment]

2018-06-04-1751Z

that plant I've been calling fractalweed is a Euphorbia, probably E. peplus, a spurge. it has cancer-fighting properties. [comment]

2018-06-02-0408Z

when your VX-7R says "OUT RANGE" and nothing is working right, press MONF then ARTS. you're welcome. [comment]

2018-06-01-2020Z

got to make small stoves that burn things like kerosene, cooking oil, and waste oil. [comment]

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