Please forgive me. I know it’s a bit late, me being at the very end of the circular ball of time and all, but “better late than never”…
Merry Christmas!
Spouse and I attended Catholic Mass at the Spanish Mission (founded 1777 … yes, the USA has some old bits of history…) I even put on a suit and tie.
Among the gifts was a “dog bone case” for the Pi boards, so I’ve now got the Model 1 B+ and 2 x Model 2 mounted in one nice (small!) stack. I’m now set up to build out that stack as my “computer room” (then add a battery / charger and put it in a briefcase as a ‘computer room on the road’ ;-)
I’m posting this from the Pi Model 3, that will stay a stand alone widget I can play with without disturbing the stack. (On the Birthday List will be more Model 3s and maybe some other interesting boards ;-)
At present, I have 3 x Pi in service. The fourth is not yet powered. Seems that I’m shy one high amps power supply to run all three at once. I’m going to test one of them on the powersupply that charges my bluetooth headset a bit later, and hope ;-)
I suspect that ‘next on the list’ is some kind of 5 VDC battery brick and a charger with multiple USB spigots… Now that the boards are racked, I need a “once unified power brick” approach for that block.
So yes, I’m have a Very Pi Christmas ;-)
That I’ve also got systemD free Devuan running on them is just frosting on the whole thing ;-)
I’m hoping to knock out a few postings in the next day or two. More have stacked up than I care to think about… something about doing 6000 ish miles by road in 3 weeks and then smack into a major holiday takes a bit out of you ;-)
So, with that, hope the holidays and holiday cheer finds you all well and happy. Remember to enjoy life and a few (obvious?) points:
This life is NOT a dress rehearsal. Take BIG bites! (Someone else said it first, not sure who…)
Life is what you make it now, isn’t it? (Said by an Australian clerk at the embassy when I picked up my visa for a trip there about 1982… I’d asked “Do you think I’ll enjoy it?”… dumb in retrospect… it’s a treat to go down under at any time. )
Don’t take life too seriously. Nobody gets out of it alive anyway. (Again, said by someone else and I’ve lost the origin).
In about 30 minutes we sit down to braised lamb and vegetables. A smallish leg of lamb, potatoes, carrots, and onions, a salted and peppered and drizzled with a bit of soy, about 1/2 cup of water, then into the oven at 350 F for a couple (few?) of hours ( about 30 minutes / lb plus some if a lot of vegetables). Esteemed Broccoli … Ah, steamed broccoli? Some broccoli, steamed… ;-) And some nice rose on the side…
With that, for those in Australia who had Christmas yesterday, think of this as a reason for a ‘do over’ and for those on the East Coast USA, well, time to pour the Scotch ;-) (The UK is likely asleep already, so enjoy those dreams of sugar plums… whatever they are ;-)
Merry Christmas, and may God Bless each and every one. (For those not Christian, well, have a Hanukkah bush or a Yule Log or something… take what joy you can from knowing Christ was born in spring and this is really the Pagan Winter Solstice Party and “Y’all come!” rules!!!)
Musings from the Chiefio 
A very merry Christmas to you too E.M. You feel like one of the family. I had virtually no gifts except the most important one of my wife coming out of hospital because the pain meds and radiation seem to be having their desired effect on her cancer. We had a wonderful cold Christmas lunch hosted by my brother, with my children and my grandchildren joining us. Add Air conditioning for the 30 C heat, some good wine, what more could you want.
It just proved to me that Christmas is about people, not things. Mind you, my younger daughter embroidered a monogram on half a dozen fine Egyptian cotton handkerchiefs for me which is pretty wonderful. I am halfway through forging shepherds crook lantern holders for her so fair’s fair.
Have a happy, healthy and prosperous new year. I include all your other contributors in this wish, they are incredibly knowledgeable, generous of spirit and well behaved. It makes your blog one of the best on the net (IMHO).
Andy
Merry Christmas, EM and others, from here on the East Coast of the North Island of New Zealand, about 3000 miles to the left of Australia across the Tasman Sea, approximately the first place to see the sunrise every morning!
This year, after opening our gifts, we dined on Turkey burgers, pork and stuffing balls, cold ham off the bone with salads, followed by the traditional fruit platters, chocolate cake and Pavlova, all due to a brainwave of our daughter who wanted to make this Christmas dinner very different from those her English husband and children were used to. A great success!
To you and yours, Chiefio, and denizens of this fascinating blog, ‘A Happy
New Year,from Down Under. ‘ Been a fascinating year on the open society
front, here’s hoping 2017 brings positive developments in the US and UK
with ripple effects for all of us.
Merry Christmas, E.M. I figured you had much to catch up on after your trip, only to careen straight into the holidays.
Toys! You got toys. I got toys. Most years I feel very blessed that there is nothing I want or need… that anyone can afford to give me. (Santa keeps ignoring my pleas for a new Corvette.)
Anyhow, this year I had something for my list and the wife came through for me. I got a 3′ cast net for catching bait fish. I got an ultralight reel because the 15 year-old reel I had bit the dust and it was some no-name reel where I’d never find parts. And I got a hand gaff so I don’t lose anymore stingrays.
Most years I get nothing and take joy the fact that I’m blessed with no wants or needs, and that I have the wherewithal to give some things to the ‘kids’ in the extended family. This year, it was fun to have a little list of toys that Santa could bring.
And Mrs. H.R. and I visited mom today. She is recovering nicely. The swelling from the infection is gone and she is zipping around the facility using a 4-wheel walker. She had been using a cane but that obviously wasn’t providing enough stability. She was instructed by the staff to use the walker, so she said. “OK” and vroooooom! She was off and running. They took off her fall risk tag since she went to the walker. She is free to move about the facility.
Oh. They gave her a diagnosis of dementia, but my older brother, who was sitting in on the evaluation was P.O.d because some of the questions didn’t apply to the diagnosis as answered by mom. For example, she was asked, “What day of the week is it?” Mom answered, “I don’t know.” The woman said – I guess the tone in the follow-up struck my brother the wrong way – “You don’t know what day of the week it is!?” Mom replied. “I don’t need to know what day of the week it is. When you’re 94, it doesn’t matter what day it is.”
I’m guessing that they asked some questions on current events, but she hasn’t watched TV for probably 50 years She would watch the “Bugs Bunny Show” with us kids when it was on in prime time and Walt Disney’s “Wonderful World of Color” with us on our B&W TV. She hasn’t read a newspaper for about 10 years due to her macular degeneration, and I would be willing to bet she’s not gone to the movies 10 times in her life. She has never been wired in to pop culture and has never cared about it.
Yeah, she’s pretty sharp, but the only thing they should pin on her, IMHO, is her short-term memory isn’t what it used to be, however I could say the same for myself.
So, it was a Merry Christmas for H.R.and family, and I hope it was a good Christmas day for everyone else.
H.R. says “P.O.d because some of the questions didn’t apply”
I’ve known of stuff like that happening. These mind issues are difficult to deal with.
Wish you and yours the very best.
Merry Christmas to all from the high windy plains of Colorado. We are under a high wind warning on the north west side of the Denver Metro area today, forecast was for 40-45 mph winds with gusts to 75 mph after 9:00 am, winds picked up at 11:00 am.
According to the news approximately 50,000 people in the metro area lost power sometime today due to the winds. Gusts reported of 80+ mph near my house, so it has been an interesting day.
(I have seen official gusts of 110 near my home in the past so not a particularly severe wind storm for this area and time of the year as our down slope winter winds often exceed hurricane strength every few years). No snow so far the last couple days so ground is pretty bare this Christmas.
http://www.denverpost.com/2016/12/25/denver-area-residents-without-power/
http://kdvr.com/2016/12/25/strong-wind-cause-damage-power-outages-across-metro-on-christmas-day/
http://www.coloradodaily.com/ci_30684160/thousands-without-power-boulder-area-wind-gusts-top
As far as Christmas toys, I made the mistake of checking out the last minute sales yesterday and ended up carrying home a bunch of neat stuff I don’t really need, but had a fun time shopping.
Just got home from a Christmas dinner with a friend and time to settle in for the night, hopefully with a little less wind and things going bump in the night.
Best wishes for all and your families, and hope this coming year will be easier on everyone than the last.
E.M. says Merry Christmas, and may God Bless each and every one.
… and back at you Sir. I often add — or whatever floats your boat —
“For those not Christian” … I’m not smart enough to guess.
——
Big snow coming to the Cascade Mountains of Washington State, so says the NWS.
Merry Christmas to all from Big Mango. ot- Chief, did you ever get GUI setup on Alpine Pi?
Merry Christmas E.M. and all the other fine folks here at ChiefIO’s
We joined E.M. in having some homegrown lamb with veggies for Christmas dinner.
The day started off with a visit to a guy in Durham who asked his family for a Christmas Pony.
So he got a little white pony dressed in a Santa hat, a big red bow in his mane, a holly wreath around his neck and holly and bows in his tail. The guy spent the next hour leading ‘his Christmas Pony’ around the neighborhood so the neighbors could take pictures and the kids could get a bit of a ride.
It was a unique Christmas experience and I am still smiling. Often the adults have more fun with my ponies than the kids. The Christmas Pony was on his best behavior and climbed right up the stairs onto porches to ‘help’ ring the door bell.
Merry Christmas to all from Wales in the UK.
@Pearce:
Um, once I realized it was a bit sparse as my Daily Driver for things cuddly to me (i.e. some of my favorite commands missing from the shell… ) I decided it was going to be my headless server and kind of dropped the X config issue. “Someday” I’ll come back to it, maybe… but since I’m a login-shell command-line type for configuring servers anyway, I just didn’t see the need.
I guess I’m taking along way to say “Um, no.”… ;-)
It’s been working perfectly as a headless server in my DMZ, and I’m quite happy with it. Even have “top” running in a window (terminal via SSH) on my Desktop Daily Driver… presently 99% idle. Seems that the “usual” infrastructure demands are a bit light on even a Pi Model 1 ;-) Maybe I’ll load it up with some more NFS files and open some internet ports to it for things like VPN and such…
So “my world” divides into “headless servers” that just work, doing mundane things without a screen, keyboard, or mouse; and My Desktop, that has those interface parts. I generally only run a GUI on my desktop. I know, I ought to ‘get with it’ and configure X so I can have a remote GUI on the servers, too. But I just don’t care enough… Almost everything I do is done via a command line on them. IFF I ever need more, it’s about 20 seconds to put the monitor and keyboard on them…
At present, I’ve got it in my new ‘dog bone’ case along with 2 x Pi M2 boards. But only it is doing any real work. The first M2 is powered up and running Devuan, but I’ve not put it into service yet. My desktop daily driver is the M3 (with Chip-Of-The-Day in it ;-). On my Real-Soon-Now list is to get the second M2 working (need a powersupply) and on Devuan. Then set up distcc between them. That comes right after an effective GUI Devuan on the M3… At that point I’m pretty much set with a 12 core distributed build system all on Devuan, and an infrastructure board in the DMZ. Adding some “inside” services to the first M2 can happen “whenever” as the whole thing gets a bit polished over time. With a battery, the whole stack fits in a lunch pail, so “someday” I’ll make it a portable I.T. Shop ;-) and WiFi HotSpot (dongle in a pi and config…)
FWIW, I’ve downloaded the current GIStemp and a GCM that runs on a “PC scale machine” and I hope to get a dedicated chip built that just runs them. IFF it is effective, it would be a nice package for folks wanting to play with climate things. Add a library of old copies of GHCN and it’s a cheap way to have a historical archive too. All ought to fit on a 32 GB ($14) chip and a $35 Pi M2 … but that’s off in January to March I suspect.
But none of that depends on the Alpine having X configured, so I’ve ignored it…
@Gail:
Nice Pony!
@John F:
I’m hoping for a good thick snow about January. IFF that happens, I’m going to poke about the historical temperatures vs now. If they heat is gone, it would be nice to illustrate it…
@Larry:
Golly! Wonder what the take-down speed is for a wind turbine ;-)
@Andy:
We’ve migrated to personalized Christmas gifts as the kids have turned into adults. Things like favored chocolates, a special sweater, etc. The spouse finally finished the Afghan she’s been knitting for 2 years now for my daughter. Bigger and nicer than expected ;-) It’s just a lot more fun to have things more close to the person… And having that person home, not in hospital, can be best of all…
@Alexander:
Yum! Sounds like a nice one! Especially given your hot phase Christmas context ;-)
@Beththesurf:
Nice to see you visiting! Which reminds me… I need to read your stuff more often… it’s good stuff…
https://beththeserf.wordpress.com/
(BTW, it can be very hard to put pajamas on a cat … )
@H.R.:
Don’t let the bastards wear Mom down!
Heck, I’ve had times I don’t know what day it is. (Recently, too… Mid trip and napping irregularly, I’d lost track of just what day it was. Didn’t really matter as “i’ll get home when I get there”, but about Phoenix I realized I didn’t have a clue (sun rising, where am I? is it cold enough to wake up and get out of the back seat?) Christmas Day arrived a day sooner than I was expecting it too…
IMHO, it is all about what interests you. Since I’m not working, I don’t really care at all what day of the week it is. Friday (was it yesterday?…no day before… wait, it’s after midnight… so 2 days ago? or is that three? Something about binge-working and irregular sleep cycles ;-) came as a surprise. I was thinking it a bit more mid-week… but there was Options Action on the TV…
When the spouses Mom was ‘having issues’, they were playing 20 questions with her. First round, she’d not know day of week / date. Second round and on she would… Then some of the current events questions… Well there were some I’d miss ’cause I just was busy doing “lab things” not plugged into whatever was the current things. (like ANYTHING ‘reality’ TV oriented or Star Power related… I look at the magazine covers in the grocery store and don’t know who any of those folks are… or why I’m supposed to care who divorced whom, or why they got pissed at each other…) But ask me about the present offerings of Linux on the Pi and I can rattle off a bit of stuff…
One of my more “Oh Yeah?” moments was when coming out of anesthesia and they asked me “What day is it?”. My response? “You tell me how long I was out, I’ll tell you how long past Tuesday it is…”
Idiots… but I guess it works OK as a gross test.
@Chief. Thanks for the reply. I’m comfortable using the command line. 30 years ago I worked at a company building unix workstations. We used a bash shell so that must have been BSD Unix I guess. I read a lot about Linux many years ago and made it back into it using LFS.
x
@Pearce:
30 years ago it likely was an sh shell as bash is a more recent thing ;-)
But maybe someone else will post a ‘howto’ for Alpine X Config on a Pi… things tend to come to the most patient (and get done by the least patient ;-)
@H.R.:
Oh, another one:
I’ve been known to answer questions like “How many fingers am I holding up?” with an answer of the form:
“The answer you want it 2; but that ignores the question of ‘is the thumb a finger’ and the way you use it to hold down the ring and pinky has it pointed upward too. That also ignores the fact that you have your whole hand held up, so either 4 and a thumb or 5 fingers are being held up with it, though 2 of them are pointed downward.”
Usually after a couple of those they stop… ;-)
Depends on circumstances, as I understand it they have to feather the rotors at about 45 mph to keep from spinning them apart, but obviously properly prepared for high winds they can stand winds gusting to 80-100 mph as the National Wind Technology Center is just a couple miles west of where I live and during these down slope wind events that area routinely gets short period wind speeds above 80 mph and gusts in the neighborhood of 100 mph.
https://www.nrel.gov/wind/facilities.html
https://www.nrel.gov/wind/facilities-research.html
I can see these wind turbines from just a short walk from my home.
On a hill top in central WA State:
The rotor spins clockwise at 16.5 revolutions per
minute; the turbines generate electricity at wind
speeds as low as 9 mph, reach peak generation
at 31 mph, and shut down at constant wind
speeds of 56 mph
Click to access 099_Wind_Power_web.pdf
A few years ago the town of Ellensburg got a grant and put up 5 “experimental” wind turbines. They never got the software to work and have no idea if they produced power (or something). Then 1 of the 5 blew over in a 50 mile per hour gust. City crews then removed everything. The Mayor said it was a good experiment and they learned a lot. “That’s all folks.” End of story.
Merry Christmas to E.M. and his very eclectic group of blog followers. I learn more from all of you than any other group put together.
Guess what Santa brought me this year? Shingles! Yay. I had been feeling like I had been drug through a knothole backwards, thinking that old age and general curmudgeonliness had finally caught up with me. I thought I had a kink in my neck and an allergy to some new shampoo, until it finally hit me what was going on. Since all the grandkids had had their chickenpox shots and I warned everyone else, I had the whole family here for Christmas day. Prime rib and all the fixings for dinner, followed by finger foods and snacks for the Broncos game last night for the die hard fans in the family. The wind blew like crazy most of the afternoon with white out blizzard conditions for a couple of hours. Fortunately we had power all day and the blizzard quit, so everyone was able to get home safely. One grandkid wouldn’t eat all day, another set the alarm clock in the spare bedroom to go off at midnight last night and a third woke up puking this morning. Just a regular Christmas in Northeast Colorado!
Best Wishes to all.
Judy F. says…
Pay attention to Sabretoothed posts in the tips sections.
This one on Selenium esp. Chickenpox is caused by the varicella-zoster virus.
From older offerings:
Three Forms of Selenium Required for Cancer Prevention
http://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2012/ss/selenium-protect-against-cancer/page-01
Presentation serum selenium predicts for overall survival, dose delivery, and first treatment response in aggressive non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. – PubMed – NCBI
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12805335
(Don’t forget vit C) a suggestion is something like Emergeny C, diluted and a little sipped through out the day so you don’t pee it all out.
Selenium has to be taken on an empty stomach BTW. (It is in one of the articles.)
@Judy F:
No idea if this will help (and certainly not with the alarm clock setting pranks ;-) but I’ve had cold sores since at about 5? a lady with one ‘kissed the cute little kid’… I eventually learned they are caused by a virus in the same family as several other illnesses, including shingles (herpes zoster) as they are in the herpetic family. Now why this might matter: After decades of issues and trying things, I’m now able to nearly 100% halt any attempted outbreak at the start and completely reverse one if I’m too slow to start and it achieves breakout. How?
Vit. C, massive quantities.
I take oral C at about the 10 GRAM level (drop back if you get ‘loose stools’ as that’s the first / primary dose limit signal – but I’ve never had it…) starting as soon as you have any indication of symptoms. (For me, it’s a bit of a ‘bump’ feeling and a tender / tingle effect long before any eruption of the sore begins). I also dampen one of the tablets and smear a Vit C film over the skin surface. For a cold sore slightly or somewhat developed, this can have a bit of a burning feeling as the ascorbic acid soaks into the cracks and injury spot. It is worth it to me as the healing begins immediately in my experience.
I’ll do a daily Vit-C smear until the thing is no longer sensitive to the touch.
Doing these two things, I’ve had at least 40 years of never giving a cold sore to anyone else (family included) and of having reduced the frequency of ‘attempted onset’ from two or three per winter and sometimes one or two the rest of the year, to effectively zero. (About once every 3 or 4 years I forget to keep a maintenance dose of Vit C on board – about 500 mg / day – and I’ll get overly run down, and then one tries to sprout. Applying the ‘cure’ causes immediate halt of development, regardless of stage, and reversal to healing shortly.)
FWIW, I’ve passed this on to others, and in at least one case a ‘person I saw on the street’ saw me a year or two later and began profusely thanking me for it, saying it had given her great relief. I “sort of remembered the face” but was caught a bit off guard. Clearly it made more impression on her than she did on me ;-) but in any case, it is a fairly strong confirmation from an effectively blind-study in that the person was a random contact and with zero subsequent contact until confirmation.
Will it work for Zoster as well as for Simplex? I don’t know, but it’s easy to try and the only downside risk seems to be loose stools if you go over the top with the oral Vit-C. I’ve never had a negative side effect. Then again, I tend to eat a western plug you up diet ;-) short on vegies and long on starches and meat…
Best of luck to you.
@Gail:
I’ve not explored the selenium aspect enough. FWIW, I take the 10 grams C in a bolus of pills. I have no idea if the blood level spike has any particular effect. I also don’t care if I pee it out over the next 12 to 24 hours, as more comes the next day. (Sometimes I split the dose to 2 x day 1/2 the dose just to avoid swallowing 20 x 500 mg pills at one sitting ;-) Generally have not needed to do this more than a couple of days. Seems once you get blood normal saturation levels, it doesn’t add much to keep taking it. I’ve sometimes just done it one or two days, then cruised on with the topical C smear to finish.
I did notice in early trials that “not much happened” with a couple of hundred mg of C per day, and that with a big bolus it was faster response. That lead directly to trying a ‘direct paste smear’ that had the most effect. This all leads me to think there is some C depleting process in the infective site and you need to swamp it long enough to deactivate the virus. That would argue for a spike dose. I’ve not done the testing to validate that, having something that works and just wanting to “kill that sucker now!” ;-)
I note in passing the renaming of Herpes Zoster to Vericella Zoster. IIRC it was Herpes as Chickenpox and Vericella as Shingles before they figured out it was the same one ;-)
I suspect that Selenium / C work in tandem, but haven’t looked into it. It would be interesting to look at animals that make their own C and find out if selenium is involved in the metabolic pathway… But I’m working on Linux at the moment, so biochem is on the ‘later’ list until I get tired of beating my head on a computer ;-) Perhaps someone else could “go there”…
E.M.
I heard from an QC engineer I worked with back in 1980 – 1985, that they had found E, C and Selenium helped with cancer (Dad had just died of Cancer and Mom died of Cancer five years before)
Both – vitamin E and vitamin C have antioxidant activity.
The More recent study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16101329
I do know that vit E used topically helps reduce scare tissue. One young Saddlebred mare at a show barn had a massive amount of scar tissue about 3″ X 3″ on a fetlock, the joint above the hoof. It was really ugly so she was then useless as a show horse and sold. The people kept her at the barn and I got to see the results of daily application of vitamin E. The scar went away and the fetlock returned to normal size and the hair even grew back! I can not remember the time frame but I am sure it was less than a year.
@E.M. and Gail,
Thanks for the hints re: Vit C. One of my Grandfather’s professors in College about 1918? was Linus Pauling. My grandfather was also a citrus rancher in Southern California, so as a child I was regularly dosed with Vit C in either pill or juice form. More recently I have found that it causes me a stomach ache if I take too much. But my “spots” are screaming so maybe I will trade a stomach ache for some painful spots. I might try the Vitamin C smear thing, since the pink calamine lotion or the benedryl cream hair thing is not at all attractive.
I have been trying to follow the Selenium bits posted by Sabretoothed, however, my bio-chem background is virtually non-existent and I have had trouble wading through some of the postings. I could use an “Understanding Supplements for Dummies 101” posting should someone want to wade in and help me out.
If all the Vitamin C doesn’t help, I have a bottle of wine left from yesterday that will make me not care…
All readers please note that excess selenium is toxic; don’t overdose, and if you don’t know what the dose is FIND OUT before you experiment.
I haven’t followed this whole business of micronutrients, but I do eat brazil nuts regularly. 2 per day are said to help prevention of prostate cancer. I don’t know if it works but I like brazil nuts.
P.S. It was (officially) 41.3℃ maximum in Adelaide on Christmas Day. (106.3℉ for those who haven’t gone metric yet). A lot of people spent the day at the beach, despite all the hysterical claims this year about ice melting and rising sea levels. Cold meals and airconditioners were popular.
EMS one day you might like to check whether there is an AGW effect (like the Gore effect) where believers in AGW and rising ocean levels buy expensive houses close to the water. Rudd, Gillard and Flannery are australian names for the list.
Regards and may the comiing year bring you more joy.
Graeme No.3,
The papers address toxicity and symptoms.
This overview, though a bit long is probably the best.
http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1997/articles/1997-v12n04-p227.shtml
Judy, I have found that it often helps to copy a section, put spaces between sentences as I did above, and then re-read it. I will also take a rest break between sections to ‘digest’ the information.
In Paris France they told a guy with a street piano he had to get off the street.
This is what happens in the Czech Republic when a cop sees a street piano. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBju7K0NOKg
(We have put out a player piano in Boston MA with a friend)
That YouTube describes a Czech heard passed… cool
(sorry)
Quick tactical lesson watch the partner of the piano player above and then the partner of this piano player.
I want the second guy backing me up if I have to walk armed patrol not the first.
Point taken Larry,
Here is another video as a belated Christmas present.
E.M.
This is for your wife. These children from the Killard House School for special needs kids. The beautiful little girl singing the solo is autistic. What a wonderful voice.
(This is care of the commenters at Conservative Treehouse)
Better late than never. Merry Christmas EM and the rest of your blog travelers!
@Glenn999:
IMHO, the Merry Christmassing can continue until such time as the Happy New Yearing overruns it! ;-)