Category: observations

After struggling mightily with some slow drains and being unwilling to pay a plumber for so trivial a task, I decided to employ the advice embodied here (Boing Boing: Explosive sink and toilet plunger is a gift from the gods).

I can testify that yes, this is effective. But.

You may as well grab a second set of the CO2 cartridges on your way out. If you have luck like mine, they won’t all be used effectively. First piece of advice, if you’re working with a tub drain, buy a hydraulic/drain bladder (about US$10). You want to use it to plug the overflow completely and in many cases, you may be able to just use that and a lot of plunging. After all, a plunger makes use of the incompressible nature of water: where it fails to work is when there a pocket of compressible air or an outlet that isn’t plugged.

The bladder resembles a thick-skinned rubber balloon, with a hose coupling on one end and a small hole on the other. The principle is that you slip it into the pipe opening, turn on the hose to make it expand and block the pipe, and the water from the other end will eventually push the blockage away. Couple this with the blast of CO2 and you’re bound to get stuff moving. I noticed that as soon as I turned on the water, the overflow filled and the tub drain started backing up. That made it clear that the clog was pretty close to where they join.

Choosing the right side of the plug to use is something you’ll need to think about. I found the one that fits in the drain rather than over it to be more effective.

If you want to use this is a double sink, you’ll need to get someone strong to plug the one you’re not blasting or kneel on the stopper yourself. That was what I ended up doing, and it worked just fine.

But I can say this thing is worth having around. Seven cartridges later, used on two sinks and a bathtub, and things are running smoothly. The cartridges, at US$6 for 4, are not as expensive as a plumbing call. And the addition of the hydraulic bladder to my toolbelt will make old-fashioned plunging a more useful option.

As a side-benefit you can demonstrate the properties of gases to your young learners. Let them feel an intact CO2 cart and a freshly discharged one and marvel at the temperature difference. A bicycle pump would complete the lesson, I suppose.

Will Rogers’ old joke about not being part of any organized party, that he was a Democrat, was funny in it’s day, but they’re beyond disorganized now. Dysfunctional is more like it.

Think Progress » BREAKING: Feingold Accuses Senate Democrats of “Cowering” To Bush:

Sen. Feingold said the following to Fox News’ Trish Turner:
I’m amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president’s numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide. … Too many Democrats are going to do the same thing they did in 2000 and 2004. In the face of this, they’ll say we’d better just focus on domestic issues. … [Democrats shouldn’t] cower to the argument, that whatever you do, if you question the administration, you’re helping the terrorists.

There was some hope that Howard Dean would breathe some life into its moribund carcass, but it might not be possible.

And true to form, a Republican colleague of Senator Feingold has accused him of aiding the enemy by introducing a censure resolution.

This isn’t your father’s democratically-elected republic.

We just lost one of our Anna’s Hummingbirds to a window: can’t figure out why he flew into it but fly into it he did, and his little frame wasn’t meant to take the shock.

Funeral services are scheduled for later this afternoon.

Continue reading “hummingbird + window = tragedy”

They don’t give up, these fraudsters.

I’m sure they snag some people, but it doesn’t take much to work out that it’s bogus.

firedoglake: Action Steps for the Feingold “Censure Bush” Proposal:

Your action steps: call both your Senators first thing in the morning and ask if they support Russ Feingold’s censure proposal. If they don’t, ask what their position is on the issue — and why.

The more people we have calling, the more staffers in the offices start to realize that Feingold struck a political chord with a bunch of us in America. And then the more we continue to call, the more that message starts to sink in…and then some. Plus, it forces Senators to go on the record one way or the other, which is useful information for all of us to have.

I’ll call mine: will you call yours? You don’t have to agree (though for Pete’s sake I hope you do), but whether you do or not, you should be sure you know where your Senator stands on this.

Will Senator Cantwell find her principles on this vote?

You might find yourself part of a DDoS attack, on the attacking side.

Stopping Open Recursion Name Server Attacks:
something worth knowing about: I closed the hole myself just now.

This wikipedia page needs work.

Science fiction – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Science fiction is a genre of fiction in which advances in science, or contact with more scientifically advanced civilizations, create situations different from those of both the present day and the known past. Although science fiction is often written primarily to entertain, many authors use the genre to provide insight into science, society, or the human condition.

I really don’t want to open up the “1984/Brave New World must be SF ’cause it deals with an alternative future” argument. Not because I care one way or another but because my beef here is with genres not a canon or collection of similarly themed books.
I say, “mainstream” the whole mess and let the reader sort it out. Ask a librarian or a friend who is well-read or at least know your tastes if you need something to read. Don’t rely on the marketeers at some publishing house.

Continue reading “I thought I was done with this”

This 6 year old PC that sends you these bits is starting to reach its limits. 700MHz and 256M RAM will only get you so far, it seems, and I think it has been lucky to get this far.

I scored a new motherboard and CPU the other week (FreeCycle: the price is right) but have no idea if it works or how well. It’s a 1.4 GHz CPU so that would be an improvement. 2 RAM slots, with a max of 2Gb. Any recommendations on sources for cheap, reliable 168 pin DIMMs? Seen some on eBay that bear watching, so perhaps that will work out.

I have another case to set it all up in (an old Gateway system that used to run Linux, back in the day). It’s day — 233 MHz — has long been done. There are 2 drives in it — a 2 Gb and a 6 Gb, but I have my doubts how useful they are.

Here’s how this box is currently laid out:

Filesystem    Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ad0s1a    97M    62M    27M    70%    /
/dev/ad0s1f   7.0G   6.1G   302M    95%    /usr
/dev/ad0s1e    19M    15M   3.0M    83%    /var
procfs        4.0K   4.0K     0B   100%    /proc
/dev/ad1s1e    72G    58G   8.4G    87%    /opt
linprocfs     4.0K   4.0K     0B   100%    /usr/compat/linux/proc

Based on that, I could see / and /var fitting on the 6Gb drive, and if I had slots in the various IDE controller channels, I could perhaps use the 20 and 80 Gb drives I have as well. I need a slot for the CD drive, I guess. Or I could just keep it as it is, with two drives.

Not to take a thing away from our troops in the field, but that relatively easy roll up to Baghdad and the later conquest of the capital was largely a result of Saddam’s unprepared and undersupplied forces.

Hussein Saw Iraqi Unrest as Top Threat – New York Times:

¶ The Iraqi dictator was so secretive and kept information so compartmentalized that his top military leaders were stunned when he told them three months before the war that he had no weapons of mass destruction, and they were demoralized because they had counted on hidden stocks of poison gas or germ weapons for the nation’s defense.
¶ He put a general widely viewed as an incompetent drunkard in charge of the Special Republican Guard, entrusted to protect the capital, primarily because he was considered loyal.
¶ Mr. Hussein micromanaged the war, not allowing commanders to move troops without permission from Baghdad and blocking communications among military leaders.

The Fedayeen’s operations were not shared with leaders of conventional forces. Republican Guard divisions were not allowed to communicate with sister units. Commanders could not even get precise maps of terrain near the Baghdad airport because that would identify locations of the Iraqi leader’s palaces.

The articles for a good if depressing read: former Sec’y of State Powell’s presentation to the UN was so persuasive that even some Iraqi diplomats wondered if Saddam had been holding out on them. Alas, no, in this case he told the truth: our leaders have yet to face that challenge.