| I have gotten tired of our cat Simon waking me up at 6:00 am (or earlier) demanding to be fed, so I have been looking into an automatic cat feeder.
I ran across this review of the CSF-3 Cat Super Feeder on Amazon and it started to give me some ideas:
"The Super Feeder was made for nerds like me. I have mine attached to a network power controller next to my server cabinet. I wrote several UNIX shell and expect scripts to control the feeding behavior. The cats are fed at every even hour of the day (12 times a day). This prevents the cats from getting too excited when food is dispensed and prevents overeating and eating too quickly. I also authored a password protected website that allows me to feed the cats from anywhere in the universe with the click of a button, as well as capturing a photographic image of the cats eating so I know that they are safe and that the feeder is working correctly. Every time the cats are fed I receive a page to my telephone showing me the output of the scripts to verify that everything is working correctly. "
What's even more amusing is that I have a spare network power controller lying around that could be used in a similar way.
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| Recently there has been press about ZigBee on the web, including CNN.* Not necessarily good news, but free publicity nonetheless.
While surfing around retorts to the above article, I came across this amusing quote on the Freaklabs blog:
"However the Zigbee smart energy transceiver market is pretty much dominated by a company called Ember who decided to include the microcontroller and radio inside the same chip..."
This quote makes us sound like some sort of massive chip manufacturer that throws our weight around and pushes out the little guy. Really we are the little guy. We are the ones going up against the big companies like Texas Instruments (yes, the calculator makers).
I suppose it's good to at least get some recognition.
* Technically the stupid article never mentions ZigBee but the Smart Grid technology that has been cracked is running ZigBee. And no it is not a flaw in ZigBee security. It seems like the security research company is spreading FUD to drum up business.
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| I recently got a phising email that evaded Yahoo's filter grids and managed to get into my Inbox. It is your standard Nigerian scammer email promising a cut of a $30,000,000 transfer. This one is rather professional looking email and not the poorly written spams I have seen before. However the amusing thing about it is that it briefly breaks into slang in an otherwise completely formal writing style.
With Due Respect,
I am Cathy Raymond of INDUSTRIAL COMMERCIAL SOLICITORS LTD (ICSL), a financial consultancy firm. This is a Management Placement on behalf of my client, Mr. Peter Leslie Ambrosy. I have contacted you a couple of times but you have not responded. This may look surprising to you 'cos we have never met but I found your contact particulars from an address journal and have summed up the courage to contact you.
Really, you guys totally had me until that. Better luck next time.
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| Last Wednesday we had one of the most karate strenuous classes I have had in quite some time. The class generally focused on moving quickly against serious incoming attacks. While difficult, this was still within what I would consider my comfort zone. It is something we have done in class many times before, the attacks were ones I had seen before and had been prepared for with our training.
But the final exercise we did in class was much more chaotic and challenging. We had two lines setup facing one another with eyes closed. At various points the Sensei would quietly tell one of the group to open their eyes and attack someone else in the one of the lines. As the defender the first thing we would feel might be hands around our neck, a slap in the face, or a punch in the gut. At which point we would open our eyes and explode with the appropriate self-defense.
I have done similar exercises before and the aspect of it that is always the killer is the anticipation. Waiting for that hand, that kick, that grab or whatever makes you tighten up, it makes you tense, and it wears you out. Similar situations I have trained in were more rigidly structured. The Sensei would setup the two lines as pairs of partners. He/she would announce one of the two lines as the attacker, one as the defender with eyes closed. The beginning of the attack would be announced to the whole class, allowing a defender to bound their anticipation and relax. This time it was not so straightforward.
As my eyes were closed I could hear the frantic movement of bodies attacking and defending nearby, and yet I had to keep them closed. It was not clear when or if an attack would occur despite all the commotion surrounding me. When it did happen it was a quick few seconds with a flurry of techniques without any time to truly assess, only react. Afterwards it was back to eyes shut, waiting, feeling the adrenaline continue to pump making it incredibly hard to relax and not waste energy with tense muscles.
One of the principles taught in martial arts is that of zanshin, relaxed alertness. Learning to be aware of what is going on without being unnecessarily paranoid about what might be a threat. I have never quite understood that concept as well as did that night.
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| A recent debate at work (don't ask me how it started) about how the government names U.S. military vessels led me to Wikipedia, where I started looking up the Seawolf-class submarines. That in turn led me to this amusing picture of a polar bear attacking the rudder of a seawolf submarine that had poked up through the surface of the ice.
At least I found it funny.
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| While trolling through Wikipedia, I found this gem in the Terminator (1984 movie) entry under Production:
Cameron originally envisioned the Terminator as a small, unremarkable man, giving it the ability to blend in more easily. As a result, his first choice for the part was Lance Henriksen. O. J. Simpson was on the shortlist but Cameron did not think that "such a nice guy could be a ruthless killer".
This supposedly is a quote by Cameron in one of the DVD booklets.
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| Apparently it was not a just a problem with the washer. This morning the shower caused the water waste pipe for the washer to overflow again. It had done that twice last night when we ran the washer. Looks like we have a main drain clog of some sort that is causing overflow whenever we use large amounts of water at once. I suppose the one nice thing is that it isn't a complete clog, just a slow flow. This means we can at least use the toilet.
So I call up the plumber to send a guy down here to use some sort of super plumber's snake to clear the drain. He shows up quickly, within an hour, and starts inspecting the plumbing in our house. After he looks at everything he comes to this startling conclusion: we are not actually on sewer, as we thought, but we are on a septic system. This of course makes no sense to me.
First, we were told the house is on sewer. Second, we have a pool in the backyard where a septic system would be. From what I understand, it ain't legal or safe to install a pool next to a septic system. (Granted our pool was green at one point last year but that was not due to a septic system.) Thirdly we had the old jacuzzi in our backyard removed and that involved digging right next to where the septic tank would be. Presumably we would have found evidence of it when we did that (like a disgusting black geyser when we struck it). Lastly we have been getting billed for sewer service in our town.
However the evidence was against a sewer hookup. First the street (where the main sewer line would be) is uphill from our house. Second the main sewer pipe in our basement slopes away from the street. Thirdly, we had no evidence in our plot plans of a sewer connection. We had only the original plot (circa 1965) that had a septic system clearly listed on it. Fourthly, the sewer bill means nothing. The town measures only the water coming in and assumes the same amount comes out via the sewer. Lastly, the overflow problem we were seeing could have been caused by recent weather conditions. Lots of snow (20") and then a couple of warm days caused massive melting. The melting would saturate our leech field (if we had one), and when combined with a full septic tank (assumed) it would cause an overflow when we used the shower or washer.
The moral of the story is that our plumber doesn't do septic. Without knowing one way or the other, he didn't want to do the work.
I furiously started calling around to the Town of Billerica Sewer Department and the Assessor's office, and anyone else that I thought could help me sort this silly thing out and determine which was it: sewer or septic? Eventually I was directed to the Waste Treatment Facility Offices, which are located at... you guessed it... the Waste Treatment Facility. After driving down a long road with signs warning that I was trespassing unless I was conducting official waste treatment business, I finally arrived at a small office building nestled alongside a large Aeration Basin. An aeration basin is an open, swimming-pool-like structure where the waste mixes with the air to culminate in the most disgusting smell you will ever smell.
However having previously called ahead the nice woman at the administrative offices already had a photocopy of the proof I needed: A sewer inspection certificate from 2003. Success!
So I called the plumber back and said come on back! And hopefully soon I will get to take a shower.
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