Done Since 2021-09-05

[mdlbear]

I have no damned idea how to characterize this last week, so I won't try. My sleep time has bounced around between 6.5 and 8.5 hours; normal for me used to be closer to 6. And those aren't real numbers anyway -- they come off the CPAP so they include the (mostly unknown) time spent trying to sleep. Blarg.

I spent altogether too much time this week fiddling with the Windows 10 that came with the new Thinkpad X230. I had wanted to move it to the old X230, which will be renamed Panther -- it was a lot easier to move Sable's disk and keep the name associated with its SSH host keys and IP address. All that I needed to do was change the MAC address in its static DHCP lease on the router. But the W$ digital license is tied to the motherboard ID. We'll see. Not too important at the moment because I want to use Windows only on dark nights when the stars are aligned and the moon is gibbous. Or something like that.

I also finished what I hope was the last bit of $writing-gig-2, which involved getting screenshots of how VS Code and GitHub Desktop present merge conflicts. I'm not impressed by GH Desktop. VS Code seems pretty solid, but I probably won't ever use it again. And realized that I should really have been calling it writing-project-2; it's the second of three (as currently planned) projects in my second gig. But anyway, the first one was Use GNU Make to Automate Tasks. The first gig was Introduction to version control with Git, a couple of years ago. Both work-for-hire, but I was pleased to note that Linode gives its writers credit.

Along the way, I wrote ssavitzky/conflict-playground: A collection of branches that you can use to explore merge tools and conflict-resolution strategies, and this really trivial screenshot utility (partly because I needed one that I could call from a commamd line, and partly because I was too lazy to grovel through the menus and find either of the two that were there). And started putting together a set list for next Saturday.

Notes & links:
0905Su
  & 4:25 awake;  down 5:10
    % infected little toe left foot -> hot water; using a washbasin because apparently no
      longer agile enough to put it under the sink tap. Also heat for back
  * up 8:45; S=8:24, BP=122/69, P=60; shower
    % infected toe feels much better;  o nail wants clipping
  * pack:  * charger tips etc for white (innergie), * SAD light
  @ Earthquake-resistant school built from recycled plastic in Indonesia - ABC News 
    Block solutions
  * create recovery drive on Panther  For some reason it refuses to read uSD cards, even
    when in a USB dongle.  Weird.  Now trying with a 32G thumb drive (appears to have been
    empty when I started).  One of the 32G uSD cards was empty; the other has a backup
    of /home/steve from a linux box onto an FAT filesystem, from 2019.  Also weird.
    Almost certainly from cygnus while I was setting up Sable.
  * (Mostly) successful brain exchange between Sable and Panther.  Mostly, because of UEFI
    boot nonsense that currently hides -Sable- _Panther_'s Mint partition.  Hoping that
    updating grub from the LMDE partition will fix it. -> and it did.
    -> the name Sable should stay with the disk, because that has sable's host keys.
       much easier to change the MAC address in the router
  * pack:  12v drill, charger, some bits;
  * singing: Eyes Like the Morning

0906Mo Labor Day (US)
  % dream involving telling someone about Kerwin based on seeing them with a book(?) on go
    with the same black-on-yellow color scheme as something (CD?) I was carrying.  Odd.
  * Up 5:35ish; BP=125/74, P=63, S=5:35;
  : sable renewed its DHCP lease and got the correct address. (tries to renew lease at
    TTL/2, which is 12h around here)
  * (on the way down) Bagels - 4 salt (2 for N), 1 sweet, 1 every, 6 plain, +1 every
  : pretty sure I saw a label tape cartridge around somewhere; can't find it
  % 3:48 sleepy?  Drifty, anyway.
  : V recovering from surgery to drain a subdural hematoma.  Yipe!  Called while I was
    getting bagels on the way down.
  : Growf.  Win10 wants a product key; presumably that's back on the new machine.
    How to get your Windows 10 product key from Command Prompt 
    wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey -> not found on Panther
    May end up having to put the drive back in (new) sable for long enough to snag the key
    and attach it to/create a M$ account.  Possibly doable from the recovery drive, which
    is back at the North End.
  @ Reset Lost Windows 10 Password with Sticky Keys Method | Password Recovery
    used on Delta to get at the old Win7 install -- need to do on Sherman sometime
    -> download GitHub Desktop.  The system is unbelievably slow.
  * 15min: loaded the dishwasher -- more or less between 9 and 9:30.
    % somewhat listless.

0907Tu
  * up 7am; S=8:32, BP=117/65, P=60; heat + reading 1h, exercises
  * Singing:  Ship of Stone, Eyes Like the Morning (tears; not complaining).  Both
    off-book; some trouble with chords but on the whole not too bad.
  @ shiftkey/desktop: Fork of GitHub Desktop to support various Linux distributions
    How to Install and Use GitHub Desktop on Ubuntu?
    Pulling to your local branch from the remote
    " if you run into conflicts, we will show you this modal, which lists the conflicted
      files, and sends you to your editor of choice. "
    GitHub Desktop Improves Merge Conflict Resolution
    GitHub Desktop 1.5 makes it easy to resolve frustrating merge conflicts
    Git rebase and resolve conflicts through the GitHub Desktop – Learn tech systems
    ... looks like the main way is to open an editor, e.g. VSCode.  Will have to try.
    Merge conflicts cause confusion and aren't handled well #5400
    " if you run into conflicts, we will show you this modal, which lists the conflicted
      files, and sends you to your editor of choice. "
    GitHub Desktop 2.0 expands to support stashing and rebasing | The GitHub Blog
    but nothing about conflict resolution
  @ VS Code on Linux
    " ... is a small download (< 200 MB) and has a disk footprint of < 500 MB. "
    nor is it surprising that there are extensions for emacs keybindings
    -> Linux officially supported; installed trivially from M$'s .deb file.
    VS Code: Merge conflicts
  : Removed users/steve/{Honu,Mathilda} symlinks.  Near as I can tell the only thing that
    depended on users/steve/Mathilda (an obsolete symlink to prj/Mathilda) was the
    bookmark for h.home.  I did have to re-link ~/Honu; everything else goes through that
  @ pbatard/rufus: The Reliable USB Formatting Utility
  * make M$ online account
  % forgot to bring buzzer out with me.  Forgot flashlight in the morning.  Evens out?
  % 10:38 sleepy, don't feel like moving.  But still need to do nose and teeth
  * singing:  The River.  could maybe have done it off-book if I'd gotten the key right

0908We
  & awake 3:50; S=4:49; back down 5:10; gave up 6:50
  * up 6:50; S=6:29, BP=124/74, P=60; exercises.
    Reading. to the house a little after 8am  -> SAD light on 15m timer during coffee
    % ... and left my phone in the Lair anyway.
    * After coffee go get it and do a little singing
  * singing: Ship of Stone, The River, Eyes Like the Morning
  @ The 100-year-old fiction that predicted today - BBC Culture RUR and We
  * writing:  make git merge/rebase "conflict-playground" repo in vv/prj.  mirror push.
    -> add github and gitlab remotes.
    -> got screenshots from VScode.  More difficult than it needed to be, in part because
       there doesn't appear to be a keybinding for making screenshots, nor an obvious
       program for it, so I wrote a minimal bash script called `sshot`.  It will get
       options eventually, e.g. for root or with WM frame.
       (I think screenshots were in one of my `ctwm` menus or key bindings)
       -> (there are, in fact, two of them in the menu, but they pop up a dialog box)
    -> VScode is not particularly easy to figure out.  I couldn't find an obvious way to
       abort a merge, but you can shell out to a terminal and do it the easy way.
    -> GitHub Desktop is trivial to figure out, but when you click to resolve a conflict
       it defaults to invoking VScode as a mergetool
  : GH Desktop also tacks some stuff onto one's .gitconfig file, including a [user]
    block.  My [user] info is in an include file.

0909Th
  * up 6:35; S=7:34, BP=119/78, P=56; exercises
  * ($writing-gig2) crop images; if over 650px wide, include original and scaled versions
  @ alex/what-happens-when: An attempt to answer the age old interview question "What
    happens when you type google.com into your browser and press enter?"
  * ($writing-gig2) write text
  @ India jewellery ad starring trans model wins hearts - BBC News
    Bhima Jewellery's moving 'Pure As Love' ad featuring a trans Woman - YouTube
  * aim for dinner (chicken stir-fry) at 7pm
    -> came off "okay"; I really need to find a good sauce recipe or two, on the order of
       broccoli beef.  Colleen's lemon chicken would go over well, too.  Maybe that paired
       with snow peas and mushrooms.
  * work on setlist.  Make sure that both lgf and solo versions of songs are in lgf/Lyrics
  * guitar:  QV, Wheelin',

0910Fr
  & awake 4:30ish; only stayed up for a few minutes
  % some fairly serious shaking/dry sobbing/whatever the hell it is.  I have no idea.
  * up 7am; S=7:39; exercises
    % very dry mouth -- I'll have to start using the humidifier again
    ! when N asked me how I was doing I had a lot of trouble responding.  Unknown.
  @ Research on beards, wads of gum wins 2021 Ig Nobel prizes
  @ From 9/11's ashes, a new world took shape. It did not last.
    " For the U.S., the zero hour of Sept. 11, 2001, meant a chance to reshape its place
      in the post-Cold War world from a high perch of influence and goodwill as it entered
      the new millennium. This was only a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union
      left America with both the moral authority and the financial and military muscle to
      be unquestionably the lone superpower. 
        Those advantages were soon squandered. Instead of a new order, 9/11 fueled 20
      years of war abroad. In the U.S., it gave rise to the angry, aggrieved,
      self-proclaimed patriot, and heightened surveillance and suspicion in the name of
      common defense. "
  * attached Sable's SSD to sled.  The rails, which detach, seem to work well with a bare
    drive.  Verified that Panther's $W10 is still activated when the drive is in
    (new)Sable (the machine it came in), but forgot to write down the incantation that
    shows the product key, so won't be able to re-activate it in Panther (old sable) yet.
  : the drive rails in Panther don't appear to accommodate the sled.
  : git config reads from both ~/.config/git/config and ~.gitconfig in that order, will
    write to .gitconfig if it exists.  Can use this to manage things like GHdesktop that
    want to edit config -> A similar trick could be figured out for emacs.
  % 1pm headache, right side at or near temple
  ~ see whether Panther's drive will boot from an external case. -> maybe.
    stop code INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE but offers to repair? WTF and don't trust.
    appears to be due to different driver than the one installed with.
  * work on $writing-git-3
  @ High-Speed, Secure & Anonymous VPN Service | ExpressVPN

0911Sa
  & awake 4:35; S=5:56;  % back pain mostly left QL -> heat
    % hurts where the mask rubs on my nasal septum.  ended sleeping on L side, which is
      not surprising considering how my bed is positioned everywhere else
  * up 8:25; S=8:28;
    shaking, finally got some sleep;  dreams. one ending with a black guy finding me
    crying in the car and going to get ???.  Suburban downtown street with trees; had the
    impression I was in front of a ??store?? and there was a church to the right.
  * before leaving RS collect  * night guard  * drugs  * CPAP
  * Back on Whidbey (about 11:30):  x Lobster roll.  * let N know that I'm home.
    * water orchids,  * sort mail,  o write a check or do other paperwork
  @ Clickspring - YouTube Antikithera mechanism, via Hackaday
  * add AX Platinum to (large)wallet
  * select Start > Settings > Update & Security > Activation to check activation status.
    @ You can still upgrade Windows 7 and 8.1 systems to Windows 10 for free - gHacks
    @ Windows 8.1 Free Download Full Version in 2021 (Full Guide)
    @ Windows 10 privacy guide: How to take control | ZDNet
  * fired up W$10, linked to M$ account, created local admin user steve with usual p/w
    -> apparently I have a digital license; Sable DOES NOT HAVE a product key.  :P
       sudo strings /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM  -> file not found
  : ... and the recovery drive I made last week is unreadable
  * pack:  a bag of honey/ginger tea crystals
  * pack:  bed shawl - to keep shoulders warm.  * scarf?  * sweatshirt? purple cape?

Comments

[acelightning73]

Be careful with Win10. MicroSludge is in the process of upgrading it to Win11, and some of the "routine" updates have done unpleasant things to my computer (this one that I'm typing on right now).

[mdlbear]

Yeah --lots of reasons to stay away from 11. Pretty sure my machine won't support it anyway.

I don't expect to get much use out of 10, either.

[acelightning73]

When I bought this machine, it had Windows 8 on it. MicroSlug just kept trying to update it, and I kept refusing permission. Somehow that got overriden, and one day I got up and found that Win10 had been installed without consulting me. Over the years, I managed to pummel Win10 into something approximating a usuable O/S.

[mdlbear]

Apparently there's no free way to upgrade from Win7 to Win8.1, or I'd do that on some of my Windows partitions. Upgrading (downgrading?) to 10 is still free. Useful to have in the toolbox, but it's never going to be what I use day-to-day.

[acelightning73]

What do you use day-to-day? Linux?

[mdlbear]

Yes; mostly Ubuntu these days, with an increasing amount of Mint. My blogging and web toolchains involve Emacs, GNU Make, and Git.

My desktop environment is, admittedly, strange even for Linux; it's based on Xmonad, which is a tiling window manager.

I should write more about that stuff, shouldn't I? (Except that that path tends to run past some very deep rabbit-holes along the way.)

I wouldn't have looked at Windows 10 at all except that my newest laptop came with it installed.

[acelightning73]

I don't really want to try to teach myself Linux. A few years back someone traded me a tiny laptop with Ubuntu on it in exchange for a thumb drive full of recipes. It demanded that I upgrade Ubuntu, but it didn't work.

[mdlbear]

Sorry to hear it. Was that an ASUS Eeee? I had one; it was a really cute little machine but way underpowered.

[acelightning73]

That's exactly the one, and I liked the idea of a computer that would fit in my purse. (This was before smartphones took over.) It really was a cute little machine, but it didn't perform quite as advertised.