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Keith Patrick's BlogJanuary 22 Home automation tribulationsAs part of my New Year's initiative to wrap up some unfinished projects around my house, I started working on my custom home automation software between literally waiting for paint to dry. Since I am determined to use the latest/greatest of .Net, I'm doing this all in C# 3.5, which - due to the need to interface with video cards, UPB (Universal Powerline Bus) controllers over either USB or serial port, and a mystery card that I hope is standard I/O...all native Win32 operations - is a royal pain in the neck.There was a decent amount of forum posts about the same issues I was hitting, and P/Invoke has generally been good for getting most Win32 function signatures (and it helped me pick up a general set of marshalling equivalents that will work for reads and writes), but I still spent several hours more than I wanted getting my USB-based UPB controller recognized by my top-end Win Presentation Foundation interface for this functionality. I'm currently at the point where I've got the UPB command sit in front of me and what I think is the correct format for talking to the device, but I need to order a light switch to have something for the controller to talk to.
In the interim, I started building the housing for my primary pan/tilt/zoom security camera for my house (neighborhood's fine, but it was a gift & it fits perfectly with the software I'm writing for Taint Mansion. I was going to just make some measurements, but over the last year and a half in the house, I've accumulated everything I need (minus the damn topcoat...thought I had a little left over) to build the housing, which is somewhat complex to to my desire to have it somewhat hidden and integrated with the slanted architecture of the house. The housing is primered, but experience has taught me that if I can avoid painting against the ceiling, do so, so I'm waiting until tomorrow to get some more paint to get the primary coats down. Once the camera is in, I'm going to temporarily run it to my desktop PC for software authoring/testing (.Net-to-DirectShow is supposedly a nightmare, and I avoid using non-core libraries like DirectShow.Net (nothing against the quality, but I prefer having to think at all about licensing and integration issus)); once I get my hardware rack bolted in and a server in, I'll migrate over to the final centralized server (with the additional security cameras to cover all points of entry). March 31 Health kickSo after a pretty horrible 2006 (high blood pressure brought on by kidney inflamation, a couple of biopsies, an MRI...all bookending the sudden death of my mother), I decided it's about time to start getting back into a decent state of health. I'm going the usual route - filling my pantry with healthy foods that I happen to like such as seaweed, eating more vegetables, et al.
Sometime in the last couple of months, I also tried a bottle of some Kombucha tea that I found at HEB Central Market. A total impulse buy, as I didn't even have an idea what Kombucha was. That's what Wikipedia is for. Turns out, it's a pancake-looking culture of bacteria and yeast that floats on top of sweet tea. The yeast breaks the sucrose down to fructose and glucose, which in turn are broken down by the yeast & bacteria into all kinds of healthy substances, like acetic acid & gluconic acid (and a touch of ethanol gets produced as well). One of the bacteria also uses the glucose to make the cellulose base of the "mushroom". The acid environment inhibits growth of mold, and a cloth over the brewing container keeps out fruit flies (they LOVE the kombucha by the 4th day)...kinda like sourdough, except instead of inhibiting mold with acid, you're adding fresh flour & water daily. Every week, the sweet tea gets converted into kombucha tea, and a new layer forms on the top of the tea (and the layer looks pretty damn gross as it forms, like a giant loogie). The stuff multiplies like crazy, so using all the culture is difficult, but it makes a great plant fertilizer, too :) And it also doubles as an ant farm substitute; over the course of a few hours, I watched a yeast colony under the culture move to the top, middle, bottom of the tea, feeding wherever there's sugar. How does it smell? Smells like fermenting liquid with a very strong vinegar smell and the nasal burn of a whiff of alcohol. Doesn't sound like it'd taste too good - unless like me, you like fermented foods - but it tastes like a tangy, refreshing citrus drink (a friend of mine compared it to honey mead).
Anyway, as part of my kombucha experments, I've been getting into tea. I've never liked tea, to be honest. There's something about the caffeine in green tea that makes me start vomiting after 5-10 minutes, although the kombucha doesn't cause that problem. The "standard" tea combo is a 3/2 ratio of black/green teas, so I bought some of that. Not really interesting, so I also bought a bunch of silver needle white tea. This stuff looks beautiful, and has a really nice, delicate flavor, and the kombucha it makes is absolutely delicious. Supposedly, fields are only picked for 3 days when the leaf shoots just start. I've already run out, but this is going to be my primary kombucha recipe, methinks (although since I bought a bunch of bottles, I envision having several kinds going).
The most interesting tea I got, however, is one called pu-erh tea. This is a compressed, aged tea that's supposed to drop cholesterol, among other things (and while the doctors found my cholesterol to initially be too high - 240/180 or something like that - my next visit saw it drop down to 130/88, so that stuff doesn't worry me). My brick doesn't have a date stamp, but they are typically 4 years old or so, but I've seen some 30-50 year old bricks for sale (they get better and more expensive with age). It's a fascinating tea...very dark but mellow, barely even tasting of tea. I'm really interested in making some kombucha out of this (and the multiplying nature of the stuff means I could just peel off a piece of kombucha culture and throw it in some room temp pu-erh and come back in a week), but I'm actually more interested now in collecting the stuff. Apparently, the value increases 80% by simply keeping it wrapped for a year. I've seen some bricks that run $1000 (pressed in 1973...my current block doesn't have a vintage on it and ran for $30), and I've heard claims that there are bricks from the Qing dynasty. What's scary is that this ancient tea is probably perfectly drinkable, even though it's cost would rival Louis XIII cognac. I can see myself buying several different vintages and just storing them in my pantry and only use maybe half for kombucha.
Only thing left for me to do is to get back to exercising, which I haven't really done in 2 years...taking a year off to be fat n lazy and then another year to deal with house, health, Mom. I find it disheartening that my shins cramp up just sitting in rush hour traffic, so things need to change. Thing is, I'm tired of my stationary bike, so I need to replace it with an elliptical machine. Plus I need a new weight set, and frankly, I have other spending priorities. But in the meantime, I'll just count on diet and the magic of kombucha.
March 27 My Microsoft Xbox 360 nightmareOn the heels of 3 days of hell with Vista (turns out Safe Mode doesn't know that my hidden Media Center Extender account - put there by the Xbox 360 - prevented from getting emergency access to the built-in admin account), I decide to start reconnecting my Xboxes to my Vista system. I just got back my first 360 from repair (the 2nd time I've had to send that piece of crap in, this time for the 3 flashing lights of death). Well, I connect it up to my TV and turn it on to see...3 flashing lights of death. WTF?!?!?!?? Who in the hell (besides Microsoft, apparently) repairs something and then doesn't bother to check if the repair worked? It's suddenly becoming clear what MS' problem is: lack of quality control. They've got a Chief Security Officer, Chief Architect, et al, but do they have a Chief Quality Control Officer? If they do, s/he needs to open up a blog so I can openly mock this person. I swear, like Vista, Microsoft has managed to take a great idea that can potentially be incredibly user-friendly and fun to use, and screw it up by making it shoddy and wasting customer time (I literally spent over 6 hours on the phone dealing with the Vista issue, and with this single Xbox console, I've had to sit on the phone, walking through the same inane troubleshooting steps ("Did you unplug the power supply?" "Ma'am, I just pulled the thing out of the packing THAT YOU SENT TO ME SO YES, THE PSU WAS UNPLUGGED!!!"), and then spend lunch hours driving around to UPS stores to drop off this thing to be sent to the McAllen, TX repair center, where apparently supervisors do not exist.
While I'm hard-pressed to say "don't buy an Xbox" because the thing itself is a joy to use, but I will say this (because I also got burned on the Xbox 1 the same way): do not buy a new console before Easter. They rush out the electronics for x-mas, trickle out the same crap line of chips/hardware, and it isn't until Easter until the next batch of consoles come out with the better manufacturing. March 26 The Microsoft Vista nightmareLet me preface this by saying I've been a Microsoft apologist for a loooong time. I've used all their operating systems and have developed on their platforms for years. When Vista came out, I was among those who wanted to get it on his machine ASAP. ASAP wound up being an extra month, but I eventually dove in.
At first, everything was peachy. Things fly around, colors are vivid, no paint wipes when I move windows around. Then I start noticing some UI quirks. Now these tend to dishearten me a bit because a) they're right in front of you as part of the UI, and b) MS never fixes these things in service packs (seriously, XP's focus and window sizing upon maximize features have been broken since NT5 beta 2 at least). No biggie, though (except for Windows Mail, which seemed to make Outlook Express pretty while making it act like it sends Usenet posts without actually doing so (buggy Windows Live integration)
Then, I decided to make my main user account a Standard User. KABOOM! I've heard all the complaints about User Access Control (UAC), and how it's annoying & gives the Mac guy even more of a smug attitude. But what do I care? I write security software, so I know where MS is coming from. Well, take a company that no longer takes UI bugs seriously and cross it with a company that takes security so seriously that it makes things obtrusive, and you have my problem. In a nutshell, the UAC prompt can't seem to find my built-in Administrator account. So I get a UAC prompt to enter a password (and it tells me to enter a password, but there ain't none there!...here's what I'm talking about. I've spent over 3 hours on the phone with Microsoft tech support, and while they are much much more competent than, say, Best Buy, I lost my tolerance for explaining to them that you can't grant admin rights to yourself if the OS won't accept admin credentials. At one point, they even said they'd escalate my situation and call me between 2am and 4am. So I dutifully stay up all night to wait for the call...nothing! And to make things even better, when I called MS back, I had to start over with the troubleshooting...boom! another hour and a half gone.
It's an interesting scenario, really. MS has a bug in UAC that allows it to display without any admin account, yet they lock the OS down so tight that this buggy feature is the only way short of Safe Mode for gaining admin access to the machine. And that's where things get even better. MS apologist I am, I own Microsoft hardware, namely the ergo 4000 keyboard and the Explorer Trackball. So they tell me to restart Windows and go into safe mode. Well, Microsoft Hardware (key word: synergy) saw fit to make this keyboard default to F-Lock OFF, so while Windows boots, I can't actually hit F8 to get the safe mode menu. I figure, "well, I'll just kill bootup so next time it starts, it forces Safe Mode menu". Well, in addition to no F-Lock, during bootup, Windows disables MY ENTIRE DAMN KEYBOARD! So while I can see the Safe Mode menu, I cannot actually select Safe Mode. MS' response "do you have an OEM keyboard you could try?" Me: "Uhh, no, all I use are Microsoft devices because I figure out of anyone, Microsoft hardware would have the least problems on Microsoft software."
At the end of the day, I'm still on hold with Microsoft, waiting to get an escalation, waiting to find a solution, waiting for anything. EDIT: No longer on hold, but I have a 4 hour wait for the next phone call from MS. My advice to folks out there (and this is coming from a formerly VERY pro-MS person): Do NOT install Windows Vista. It has at least 1 bug that makes it possible to lock users out of their machines altogether, and MS tech support is not very good with brainstorming fixes or elevating to higher levels of support.
August 25 Lulls and more lullsI finally got around to realizing that I haven't made in entry in ages. Looking at my January entry, Jeff Lacy got completely outclassed by Joe Calzaghe to my shock 'n awe. It was like Lennox Lewis vs. Mike Tyson for 12 rounds. Floyd Jr. didn't KO Zab, and a near-riot broke out, but he completely picked Judah apart, so no shock. Jose Luis Castillo didn't make weight again, apparently trying to lose weight in a makeshift bathroom stall & alcohol sauna (and one of his entourage suggested drawing blood), so the fight didn't happen. That makes me 1-1-1.
In the XMODS arena, my brother's silver EVO is finished, although a UPS screwup landed the package in Arizona, so I have a few more days until I get to assemble and tune it. I'm still missing a few parts on mine and am going to have to directly order them while wrapping up some chassis designs/fabrication, new case inserts, polishing, motor assembly & electronics overhaul. As my garage is a sweatlodge, I'm in no hurry to race, so it's really not that much to do over the next few months.
The final season (not including 2 epilogue movies) of Deadwood is almost over. It's been just as good as the prior two seasons, so it's a shame it's ending so soon. In its place, though, The Wire returns, which I'm excited about. It's a great shot that I only got into in season 2. I'm not sure what they've got planned for the comedy block, though. A decent, but over-cameo'ed season of Entourage, and a mostly lame (except for the last couple of pretty good episodes) Lucky Louie premiere are both ending as well.
Some boxing predictions:
James Toney vs. Sam Peter - I can't see Peter landing a good enough punch to KO Toney, who'll frustrate the Nigerian all night. No KO, though. Toney UD.
Carlos Baldomir vs. Floyd Jr. - Floyd wins the linear welterweight title by easy UD over Baldomir. If he KOs Baldomir, it'll be by body shot or cuts, as the Argentinian's chin is too good. I don't see Floyd trading like Gatti or not throwing like Zab Judah.
Barrera vs. Juarez 2 - I'm going out on a limb and predicting Barrera is even more shopworn this time around and gets TKO'ed, setting up Manny Pacquiao vs. Rocky Juarez, in which Rocky Juarez gets his head knocked off.
Corrales vs. Casamayor 3 - I can't believe this fight is actually happening. Very nice matchmaking in light of Castillo's unprofessional conduct. Gotta go with Corrales by TKO. Casamayor has gotta be 40-ish by now.
On the programming side, my base library is getting ever closer to completion. My XML object serializer is done with a nice, simple, flexible format that has a simple, clean code path that took me wayyyyyy too long to write. I'm back rewriting the grammar parser, and it's almost done but I'm dumbounded by a single inner loop that I can't quite figure out. Once it's done, my command line tool can start being used, but I still need to add threading capabilities to both that can integrate (hopefully as the low-level mechanism) with the threading executive. Once that's tweaked and working, I can start testing the grammar parser with extremely large bits of text (I'll probably use massive XML files probably composed of a deserialized (in my format since the .Net one doesn't like interfaces) object in the runtime, like new Url("foo"); I'm interested in how it performs with different numbers of worker threads to a) see how well parsing can be parallelized (and I think given it's recursive nature, it's very), and b) how conducive to automatic threading my method structure is, as I would rather not rewrite the xml serializer yet again since I think the class is finally perfect.
Oh, yeah, since my last entry, I moved into a house, changed cars, and changed jobs twice. January 05 Boxing EntryThe promised boxing entry. Thoughts on upcoming fights:
That is all. XMODS Painting EntryAfter intending to only let my clear-coated XMODS remote handle and generation 1 ESC covers cure for a month (less risks post-polishing orange peel), I let it lapse to six months as I got burned out on inhaling carcinogenic solvent fumes. I reordered sanding materials in addition to some extra sanding pads from the always-great MicroMark and hardcore smoothed out all my clearcoated parts + the primered stuff (spare remote & EVO ESC covers). It became apparent given how much of the super-thick clearcoat I was sanding away, I needed more pigment coats. I had some dark mica blue I special ordered during the Tamiya customs issues that I hit on my primary remote; it was nearly black, not deep blue like the deep blue with mica & its glaze effect I hoped for, so I just added mica blue over the original. I went to the wet layer on deep blue (1 can left) and the same for blue mica, so now I have 3 gen 1 ESC covers, 2 EVO ESC covers, and 2 remote handles. I have 3 cans of clearcoat, and I'm layering that on from Friday thru Saturday to make sure it's plenty thick for sanding (and it will cure for a full month before sanding). By then I should have most of my EVO aluminum parts and maaaaybe my new case inserts. 15 cans of paint really does come out in the finish, I'll give it that, and I haven't even clearcoated/sanded/polished yet, and that whole ordeal makes the thing look unreal.
I'm still 3 months maybe from being "done" with my XMODS project (got a McLaren F1 body that's quite nice and am getting an NSX and maybe a blank body for one last custom paint job), though, and there's plenty to do, mainly nagging machinists to cut custom parts for me.
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