Sunset 10-23-26
06:20 Saturday, 24 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 34.99°F Pressure: 1032hPa Humidity: 88% Wind: 4.14mphWords: 805
Early voting begins today, so that's what we'll do.
I'm down about 11 pounds since I began using Zepbound. The rate of weight loss has decreased, but I think that's normal as my body adapts to the medication. I still "feel" the effect though. Decreased appetite, feeling "full" sooner. No cravings, though I will eat cookies and cake when they're in front of me, and I still enjoy them.
So I think part of the effort for the next couple of months will be to avoid cookies and cake. (We had a book club meeting on Thursday and there was a plate of cookies right in front of me! And yesterday Mitzi baked a cake for one of the guys who's been working on the house.) More importantly I'm trying to use this opportunity to try and re-train myself in how I approach meals.
When Mitzi and I went out to dinner for our anniversary, we split a steak entree. Since I can't eat as much, I tried to focus on the experience, mainly the one that was going on in my mouth, paying more attention to the flavors and the textures. This had the effect of slowing my intake. Normally, I eat pretty quickly. I don't know why, or how I developed that habit. Mitzi has often remarked about it.
I'm trying to carry that forward with each meal now, with the hope that when I eventually, perhaps, go off this medication, I will be accustomed to enjoying my food and not eating such large portions.
The house is making progress, but HVAC remains the bane of my existence. We had difficulty finding a contractor to install the system we designed with Energy Vanguard, eventually getting one who appeared willing to take on the work.
In anticipation of them doing the work, I had all the equipment I ordered delivered to their shop because the shipper would not deliver to a residential address. They needed a loading dock to offload it. I suppose I could have told them we have a skid-steer that has pallet forks and we could probably pick it up off the truck ourselves.
At any rate, the contractor finally got around to giving us a quote for the install and I nearly had a stroke. $50K just to do the install. We've already paid about $22K for the equipment. I expected the install to come in somewhere around $20-25K.
I was shocked. I sent the quote to our engineer in Atlanta and asked him if he thought it was high, and while he wasn't familiar with labor rates in our area, he said it did seem unreasonably high. The guy who owns the timber frame company was here the other day, looking over the assembly work. He builds homes in the area, and I asked him if he thought it was unreasonable, and he agreed. I asked him for a recommendation of an HVAC company, and without missing a beat he recommended a company we had already approached.
I'd called them on Wednesday after I'd sent them some documentation about the design and the scope of work and asked for a quote. The last time I'd emailed them the Manual J calculations in July, I never heard back from them. Yesterday I called and left a voicemail, asking if they're received the email. They replied last night that they weren't interested in the job.
I don't know if it's because we'd already had the system designed and purchased, and they didn't want to be on the hook for servicing an install they didn't design or what. They didn't say in their email. Just, "Sorry, not interested."
There was another company that we'd spoken to back in June, and I reached out to them as well. Again, no response.
I'd asked both of those companies to use the Manual J calculations and design a system around an air-to-water heat pump, and neither replied, not even to say they weren't interested, after telling us they were interested.
So now I've got to go collect all of our equipment, which has been delivered to the company that's trying to rape us, and I've got to find another installer.
The only genuinely bad experience we've had with this project has been with finding an HVAC contractor. We had some difficulties with the design firm and the architect, but they were resolved quickly and we didn't have to continue working with them once their work was completed. And it's been a little frustrating deciding on materials and colors and so on for roofing and siding. But this HVAC thing has been a pain in my ass that has cost me sleep.
Eventually we'll figure something out, but I did not anticipate this level of difficulty.
Anyway, the beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailView From the Next Hill
Current Wx: Temp: 51.98°F Pressure: 1030hPa Humidity: 61% Wind: 3mphWords: 9
Still so much to do.
But we're getting there.
✍️ Reply by emailTimber Framing
10:06 Thursday, 22 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 47.48°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 74% Wind: 6.93mphWords: 219
It was such a pain in the ass to write this post. I have it fairly well automated, and it's worked reliably for a few years now, but today Mac OS Golden Gate says that my script can't send events to Photos.
What the fuck, Apple?
I added FastScripts to Automation in Privacy and Security, though it hasn't been there before, and I toggled everything in that pane off and then back on again.
No change.
Tried running the script from the FastScripts menu item, it worked.
Tried it again using the keyboard shortcut.
It worked. Finally
Why?
I have no idea.
Anyway, making progress on the porch and deck. The porch is essentially done. The decking and stairs are temporary while we're still in construction, but the timber frames and finished tongue and groove ceiling are in, the roof decking is on and the membrane is down. We hope to have the deck roof finished today. Maybe not with the high-temp membrane, but hopefully the roof decking will all be down. It's a lot of work.
I now know what those high gable windows are for. They're there so you can see the timber frames from inside. It's very cool.
In other news, I returned the CPAP. It's not for me. I can breathe better without it.
✍️ Reply by emailLooking Up
07:05 Tuesday, 20 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 42.15°F Pressure: 1028hPa Humidity: 91% Wind: 4.85mphWords: 36
So this happened yesterday.
Today they're going to do the big assembly for the deck. A lot more work to do, and I'm unsure how it's all going to get done.
But the beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailPartly Cloudy
08:20 Saturday, 17 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 37.72°F Pressure: 1023hPa Humidity: 88% Wind: 15.32mphWords: 217
Shot this with the new OM PEN which arrived the other day. SOOC jpeg. Pretty sweet little rig. It's basically an E-M1 MK3 in a rangefinder format, which is often leveled as a criticism.
It does have some new features, mainly a subset of subject detection autofocus that had previously only been available on the E-M1X and the OM-1 and OM-3 cameras.
It's lighter and more discreet than the OM-3, which often sports large lenses like the 12-100mm/f4. I put the little Lumix 14mm/f2.5 pancake on the PEN.
But I didn't mean to talk about the camera. It's a good camera, a good value, and I welcome an EVF in a PEN camera. I just used it this morning to capture one of the kind of magical moments that happen with some frequency here.
And in that vein, here is a recent piece in the NY Times that mentions many of the places we frequent. (Link is to an article that is free to read, but I think the Times recently began requiring registration but not a subscription. Sucks.) Graft Wine & Cider Bar is mentioned and Mitzi and I had dinner there on Thursday night, for our anniversary. We've been there before and it's one of Mitzi's favorite places.
✍️ Reply by emailTear-Jerker
15:57 Wednesday, 14 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 62.19°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 81% Wind: 10.74mph
Words: 42
This is one of the scenes in the season finale of Ted Lasso that really got me in the feels. I watched the finale again yesterday with Mitzi and it had lost none of its effect on me.
✍️ Reply by emailA Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood
14:34 Wednesday, 14 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 63.95°F Pressure: 1013hPa Humidity: 84% Wind: 9.42mphWords: 66
I wandered up the new house to see what they were up to. I looked out over the landscape from what will be our front window and decided I needed to go back down and come back with a camera.
Put a few up on Flickr. Thanks for the fave and the comment, Jack!
It can be pretty cloudy sometimes, but when the sun's shining...
Wow.
✍️ Reply by emailWherein I Bitch About Stuff
08:17 Wednesday, 14 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 61.32°F Pressure: 1012hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 4.23mph
Words: 848
Why is it so friggin' hot in October! 80° yesterday, forecast nearly that today. I just put away all my summer clothes! So, of course. Why am I even asking?
The CPAP adventure continues. I gave it another try last night and ripped it off my face about 90 minutes after I put it on. I think I may have actually fallen asleep at some point, but I'm not sure. I never have trouble falling asleep at bedtime. I lie down, think about something I like and I'm out. Minutes. With that face-hugger wrapped around my nose, all I can think about is how much I hate this thing, so of course I can't fall asleep.
The machine keeps nagging me to install the My Air app, another piece of corporate spyware to intrude into my life. Trying to give this thing a good-faith shot, I figured I'd install the app and see what tips it had.
NOPE!
First you must create an account!
Because of course.
So I start trying to create an account and I get to the part where they want my date of birth. How do you enter that data? But using a date picker. Can't just type it in. So how is the date picker configured? Well, it starts at a month in like 1997, and the only thing you can do is swipe one month at a time! I was born in 1957! You want me to sit there and swipe my thumb 480 times??!! I tried swiping fast thinking it'd develop some acceleration in the UI. Nope.
Exasperated, I closed the date picker thinking I must have missed something in the date field...
Nope. Can't do anything but disclose the date picker.
Which I did.
And it reopens to 1997 again!
I deleted the app.
How much contempt must you have for your users to deploy an app like that? Fuck Res Med.
Moving on...
Apple apologists, and you know who you are, please explain to me this Homeview device and it's price structure. Let's see, I can get the one with the woofer that I can set on a table somewhere for $299, or, I can get one that mounts on a wall without a woofer for the same $299! Oh, and you can't just mount it to the wall, you have to spend at least another $79 for the mounting hardware!
Make it make sense.
Fuck Apple.
Moving on...
Last night's insomnia was inspired by HVAC, again. Mitzi got home yesterday and a lot has changed in the house since she left, with the roof on, it really alters your perspective of the space, actually making it feel larger. That's a good thing.
We were looking at the little laundry area we have on the main floor. It was originally intended to hold a stacked washer and dryer and a deep sink. Then we realized we had to route the ducting from the ERV down to the mechanical room somehow.
No problem, plenty of room for a soffit overhead, and we can just route it to the stairwell wall and down through laundry floor.
Except that pretty much eliminates any option for a deep sink or even a cabinet with a top for folding laundry. That's if the stairwell wall lands where we can get the ducts between two trusses. And looking at the trusses at that wall, that's probably not feasible.
I came up with the idea of making a false wall at the back of the stairwell, so the ducting can go right through the laundry room through the original stairwell wall in an overhead soffit, and then down below the trusses, making another 90° turn into the mechanical room.
I can't believe how lucky we got with that extra course of ICF block giving us 9'-4" ceilings in the basement, because we're going to need some of that in the stairwell to get below the trusses without bumping our heads.
I'm still not sure it'll work, because I'm just visualizing it in my head, and I'm sure I'm missing something. (As I'm sitting here, I realize a false wall is going to intrude on the landing at the bottom of the basement, so it's got to end somehow below the trusses and it has to somewhat not look stupid in the process.)
In all my research about building high-performance homes, nobody mentioned how critical your HVAC design is, not just from a performance standpoint but from a ductwork design standpoint.
Fuckers.
Moving on...
On the brighter side, my OM System PEN camera is supposed to arrive today, according to FedEx who is informing me that I must be here to sign for it. Luckily, I have nothing else to do today but sit around and wait for FedEx again, like I did last week when I had to wait for a >$100K check from the credit union because criminals have made it nearly impossible to move money electronically. FedEx is faster than fiber in that instance.
Fucking criminals.
The beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailSunset 10-12-26
Current Wx: Temp: 62.19°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 89% Wind: 2.82mphWords: 58
Ran into the farmer up the road again this morning. Chatted with her a bit about her cows, and thanked her for the gallon of cider she gave us a couple of weeks ago. She asked me if I wanted another one, and said of course.
She said she thought this batch was better.
She may be right...
✍️ Reply by emailA Quarter of a Billion Dollars
15:46 Monday, 12 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 66.96°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 80% Wind: 5.35mph
Words: 33
Musk has flooded Republican campaigns with more than a quarter of a billion dollars.
But it's ok, because Gruber doesn't see any politics in his timeline.
File this under "Surmounting our problems"?
FML
✍️ Reply by emailFurther to the foregoing...
15:04 Monday, 12 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 64.56°F Pressure: 1012hPa Humidity: 83% Wind: 6.82mph
Words: 13
I wonder if Gruber ever watched The Good Place?
Life imitating art much?
✍️ Reply by emailSituational Ethics
14:53 Monday, 12 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 63.88°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 84% Wind: 6.82mph
Words: 317
That is to say, little or no ethics.
Since Apple has returned to Twitter, er, I mean, X, and has taken some heat for doing so, John Gruber has decided that Twitter, er, I mean, X, is a benign environment. Just a wonderful place for people to gather. And by "gather," I mean, "support."
The culture on X today is remarkably friendly and inclusive. It is a cheerful place. That cheerfulness is another differentiator. If you believe the world is falling apart and doomed only to get worse, that our obvious and real problems cannot be surmounted, X is not the platform for you. If you think the world is full of fun and amazing people and things, that humanity’s defining feature is our collective ability to solve any problem, that the only time better to be alive than today is tomorrow, it might be.
Well, gosh.
You know why our problems cannot be surmounted, John?
It's because people like you always find a way to look away, and in doing so you become a part of the problem.
But hey, as long as you're comfortable.
Never mind the damage, the suffering, the deaths that Musk caused with his performative "DOGE" vandalism. All water under the bridge. What's past is past, right?
X is not the platform for me, because I see the problems, and X is one of them. Only one of many, to be sure. But it most assuredly is one of the problems. And we are doing nothing to "surmount" our problems.
Gotta get those eyeballs, attract those sponsors, harvest that attention. And the best place to do that is a shit-hole that's been painted and papered over to look like, I don't know, "the happiest place on Earth?"
The meaning of our lives is found in the sum of our choices.
And the only power we have is the power to choose.
✍️ Reply by emailThe Tyranny of Choice
09:21 Sunday, 11 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 52.61°F Pressure: 1025hPa Humidity: 89% Wind: 12.1mph
Words: 314
Mitzi will be back Tuesday, and I've made enough of a mess that Monday is going to be spent mostly putting things back to normal.
I have yet to check out the Apple IIgs, it's just sitting on the table. I have yet to play with any of the sound cards I have for the IIe.
I tried playing with Star Fleet 1: The War Begins! last night, but side 2 of both copies I have resulted in I/O errors. Using a disk utility, I was able to read the directory of one of them, so I'm somewhat optimistic. When the Applesauce Floppy Disk Controller arrives, I can make a magnetic flux image (essentially a copy) of both of them, and then do some further exploration.
I have three Apple IIc computers near me, each of which has some appealing thing I want to try or use.
I think what I need to do is just begin putting everything away, and then I can focus on one of the three IIcs at a time.
It's frustrating, because I feel as though I have so little time and so little space to "play with my toys." And that's not going to change until April or May, depending on how quickly we get at least the Dave Cave finished. Then I can have three machines completely set up and move from one to the other as it suits me. (I should probably also begin figuring out how I want the cave configured. I have some ideas, but the sooner I get them refined, the sooner I can begin preparing to implement them.)
But if I start putting everything away now, then maybe I can have some time on Monday, unstressed by the clutter and the call of unexplored boxes, to just enjoy mucking around in one of the IIcs.
I guess that's what I'll do.
✍️ Reply by emailMuscle Memory
09:07 Sunday, 11 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 53.01°F Pressure: 1025hPa Humidity: 86% Wind: 12.1mph
Words: 70
The Control key on the Apple II keyboard is where the Caps Lock key is on the Apple Magic Keyboard. (I have no idea what's "magic" about it.)
When I'm playing with some Applesoft BASIC code in Virtual II, I'm firing AppleScripts based on Caps Lock as the "hyper" key.
I think I'm going to have to remap this keyboard if I'm going to keep playing with the Apple II.
✍️ Reply by emailRationalization
08:36 Sunday, 11 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 52.66°F Pressure: 1025hPa Humidity: 85% Wind: 11.74mph
Words: 283
We're all kind of working our way through the changes AI brings. This morning's Espresso Shots, pointed to this piece by Lex Friedman, which I think captures Michael Becker's view about using AI to "author" his app.
Friedman is replying to what seemed to him to be implied criticism of his use of AI in reconstructing game apps, and his perception seemed to be that it was a criticism of his skill or ability as a "programmer" or "developer."
What matters to me is that the app was built with humanity. It’s me. Hi. I’m the human.
No, it's not "you." It's all of the humanity whose work was confiscated by private corporations without compensation in order to "train" the LLM to provide a for-profit service, which you are using to create something you could not do absent this confiscatory effort, this extraction industry.
Friedman sees himself, and likely Becker does as well, as being the "creative force," the authorial source of the idea, the LLM is merely "tooling."
Settler farmers apparently thought indigenous people were "wasting" their lands. That European farming methods would be so much more "productive." (There's the whole notion of ownership of land as a form of wealth that gets overlooked in that construction.)
The American North supposedly rejected the notion of chattel slavery, yet they were only too happy to do the banking and insuring and financing and shipping and warehousing of cotton produced with slave labor.
The fact remains, LLMs are here, as the cotton was here, as the land was here, and somebody is going to make money from it.
Why not you?
The meaning of our lives lies in the sum of our choices.
✍️ Reply by emailTed Lasso Season 4
07:08 Sunday, 11 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 54.1°F Pressure: 1026hPa Humidity: 78% Wind: 10.96mph
Words: 100
I watched the season finale the other night and I'm ready to say that after an unsteady start, the team found its rhythm and finished the season strong. And I'm not just talking about the Lady Greyhounds.
Everything I love about the show was there at the end, and Mae's voiceover reciting Mary Oliver's When Death Comes had me bawling my eyes out, silly sentimentalist that I am.
I figured somebody had already put it up on YouTube, and they had.
Same effect.
I guess there'll be a season 5? I don't know, but I'm glad we had season 4.
✍️ Reply by emailI'd Much Rather Talk About the Apple II
07:06 Sunday, 11 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 54.1°F Pressure: 1026hPa Humidity: 78% Wind: 10.96mph
Words: 742
AI came up again in the Tinderbox meetup, because of course. Again, Dr. Michael Becker dazzled us all with his creation, showing its growing utility.
Again, some mention was made of ultimately monetizing this artifact of artificial intelligence.
Allow me to record scratch here, and mention that at the beginning of the meetup, Michael noted the return of Jacob Evans, who hadn't been in recent attendance. He asked him if he'd seen his tool he'd been developing.
Jacob allowed that he had, and then made some comment about my remarks at the end of that meetup.
I hadn't gone into this meetup planning to offer my views again, but I suppose Jacob's comment probably primed me, and Michael's mention about possibly monetizing it kind of stimulated my imagination.
As Michael was demonstrating his very elaborate and potentially powerful browser extension (Chrome only, for the moment), I remembered that Michael had said he was on the $200 per month plan. And it occurred to me that this was likely a "business expense," that he could use to reduce his personal income tax.
I don't know what Michael's business structure is, or anything about current tax law, so maybe he can't. But if he can, this acts as a sort of subsidy for his use of AI.
Which is what prompted me to think about the inequities of the current AI marketplace.
How many bright people can't afford $200 a month to produce something wonderful? Sucks to be them, I suppose. Life has always been unfair.
I mentioned AI as Exploitation Colonialism last month. Colonialism has been on my mind because I'm in this reading group that is studying the dispossession of the Haudenosaunee by colonists and settlers in this region, 250 years ago.
I can't link to a reference, but at one point during the discussions, someone mentioned that the colonists often viewed indigenous people's use of land as "wasteful," not as "productive" as European methods, and that this was part of their rationalization for relieving them of their lands.
Our intellectual resources have been governed by a system that is at least a couple of centuries old. We have established institutions around the notion of "intellectual property." Laws and practices governing things like "fair use." This has often been at odds with the thoughts and beliefs of our technological betters. Those enlightened souls who believe that "information wants to be free."
Perhaps the fathers of AI viewed our use of our intellectual resources as "wasteful." It would be so much more efficient to just strip-mine the landscape and "refine" the product and sell it in the form of "services" through "artificial intelligence."
I mentioned that perhaps things might have been different if the AI/LLM effort had been undertaken as an effort by the national government, and that whatever resulted would be offered as a public benefit, not as a service for private profit.
Perhaps we might have had a discussion about the rights of living authors, creators and the heirs who still hold some claim on the intellectual property of the deceased.
But no, the broligarchs, our technological superiors knew better than that. It was all just "out there," ripe for the taking! And it was all just being wasted!
And so now there's this incredibly powerful service that can be exploited by anyone with the means to afford a monthly subscription. And perhaps the government can be persuaded to offer a "treaty" to the dispossessed, wherein they are offered annual payments of beads and blankets in return for the seizure of their work for the profit of others.
It's complicated. The genie is out of the bottle and someone is going to use it. Why not you? And I guess it kind of matters how you use it.
If you're creating something you would otherwise be incapable of creating absent the labor of your software slaves, you should probably not try to make money from it. But these sorts of ethical quandaries take a back seat to the potential for immediate profit.
Life has always been unfair.
Living affords an opportunity to make it less so.
It all comes down to a choice.
[Editor's Note: This was originally posted on Saturday, 10 October 2026. I lost the text of the note in Tinderbox, but after I had exported it, so I was able to recover the original text from the web. Because Time Machine and Versions are a nightmare.]
✍️ Reply by emailThe Beep Goes On
08:18 Wednesday, 7 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 44.42°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 77% Wind: 10.69mph
Words: 896
Yesterday was a productive day of peripheral card testing. Some frustrations, but that has always been the case when you're playing with >40-year-old hardware and modern devices.
The first challenge was to get video out of the IIe. I have three cards that will output HDMI. The most inexpensive is an A2DVI card. The problem with that card is that the HDMI connection faces the backplane of the Apple II, and there is no way to get a thick HDMI cable to bend 90 degrees to make the connection. When I was down at the storage unit, I found a small plastic container that had spare rubber feet, backplane cutout covers, and an HDMI right-angle adapter. I thought I took that with me, but I can't seem to find it.
So, Plan B was to use the A2FPGA, a modern device that simulates a number of old peripheral cards, like the Mockingboard sound card, a sprite video board, and a Super Serial card. It also outputs HDMI with the connector facing the keyboard, so there's plenty of room to route the cable.
I started with that. It connected up just fine and I got good video. Well, the colors are wrong, but it's clear. The first thing I did was run the self-test on the IIe, and that came up sat. Next I connected the Floppy Emu to the Disk II controller and mounted a 5.25" floppy disk image. I have a number of system maintenance programs and I ran a bunch of those and everything came up solid. Good so far!
I plugged Disk 1 of the two Disk II drives that came with the IIe into the Disk 2 port on the controller card so I could run some disk tests on that, and they all came up sat. I used a disk utility image on the Floppy Emu to make a physical copy with the Disk II. Then I unplugged the Floppy Emu, swapped over Disk 1 and connected Disk 2 to its port and ran the tests on that drive. Also sat. Amazing.
Next I plugged in an AST SprintDisk, a 1MB RAM-disk I purchased recently. I wanted to see if it worked. So I tried to boot my "ABIDE" disk (Apple/Beagle Integrated Development Environment), which is formatted to boot ProDOS 2.4.2, the modern version of ProDOS.
It crashed.
I spent most of the rest of the day troubleshooting. To make a long story short, the A2FPGA card conflicts somehow with ProDOS 2.4.2. This should be a known conflict, but I haven't seen anything about it. I will investigate in the various forums later.
In the course of that troubleshooting, I also installed the Transwarp CPU accelerator and verified that it works (3.6MHz). Then I installed an A2 Turbo I got from Ian Kim in Korea. It's a small accelerator card that'll run at 16MHz. (The Apple II's native clock speed is 1MHz.) It's presently configured for 8MHz, but it also runs well.
I got some early versions of ProDOS to boot, but I couldn't see the SprintDisk as /RAM4. When I went to bed last night, I figured it might be dead. And I couldn't figure out why ProDOS 2.4.2 wouldn't run, but early versions would. I suspected there might be some bad RAM in the "Language Card" area, the upper 16K of RAM in the Apple II that's switched out when ROM code is running. I wasn't sure if my diagnostic programs were checking all of that RAM. But the self-test came up good, so it was a head-scratcher.
During a bout of insomnia last night, I realized that the A2FPGA simulates slot access for the peripherals it's simulating. Which means that it was "using" slot 4 for the Mockingboard card, which probably precluded the SprintDisk from being recognized. So the first thing I did when I got up this morning was to pull out the A2FPGA and insert the VidHD card, which exclusively does video and has the HDMI connection facing the "right" way.
Booted a ProDOS 1.1.1 version of Apple's Apple II System Utilities disk and had it look for /RAM4. Sure enough, it was there and all 2048 blocks were accounted for! Now, I haven't tested all that RAM, but the firmware is running so I'm pretty confident it's all good.
That's when I got the idea to try to boot the ABIDE disk, and it booted up just fine, and now I know the A2FPGA is problematic in some way. It may need a firmware update or something. I'll investigate further later.
I have some more cards to "test" today, but I need to find an external speaker I can plug into a couple of audio cards I want to test.
My goal here is to, first, have some fun with an Apple II and, second, to get all this stuff checked out and then organized so I know where everything is. I want to make setting up the Dave Cave a relatively smooth operation. I'm going to have to box nearly all of this stuff up before Mitzi gets home and get it back into storage. I probably won't have an opportunity to play with it again until next Spring or early Summer, depending on how long it takes to get the basement finished enough to occupy.
✍️ Reply by emailRoof Trusses
Current Wx: Temp: 53.42°F Pressure: 1021hPa Humidity: 49% Wind: 6.13mphWords: 326
The Rifa cap has been removed, the motherboard cleaned and everything put back together. Had a brief scare when I plugged in the power supply and turned it on and the computer gave me a low note tone rather than a cheerful beep! Recalled that the IIe will go into a diagnostic routine when starting up without the keyboard attached.
Plugged in the keyboard and got my cheerful beep!
Did my banking this morning. Criminals are why we can't have nice things. It's basically very difficult to transfer large sums of money to third parties electronically. So, Fedex!
Didn't have breakfast this morning, and didn't really feel hungry even around noon. Figured I'd better eat something, so I had a banana, a bowl of tomato soup and a handful of nuts. This tirzepatide really does kill your appetite, and it somehow keeps me from even really thinking about food. I did have "intrusive thoughts" about food, mainly cookies and ice cream, but also subs and pizza. Whenever I had to go run an errand, I thought about what food place I liked was nearby. I wouldn't necessarily make a special trip to get a sub from Jerlando's, but if I was in the neighborhood...
Except cookies. For some reason, I thought it was ok to drive three miles into town to spend $3 on a cookie! Did that once or twice a week, which wasn't too bad. It's not like I did it every day. But I would make a slice of toast and put some raspberry jam on it! (Nearly every day.)
I don't even think about it now. Except to notice that I'm not thinking about out it.
Pretty amazing. And very welcome.
Roof decking still hasn't arrived, but the crew is busy doing other stuff.
Now to clean off the table again and set up the IIe and begin "testing." (Because "testing" sounds so much more responsible than "playing.")
The beep goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailEnshitification, Nostalgia and Sentimentality
08:07 Tuesday, 6 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 39.31°F Pressure: 1023hPa Humidity: 87% Wind: 6.24mph
Words: 786
What is the appeal of "retro"-anything? It's not just nostalgia, because I don't think young people would be embracing film imagery the way they are today.
I shot film when I got into photography, because I had to. Mainly slides, because who could afford prints? I loved photography, but I think the Apple II came along and stole my heart. I've probably mentioned before that what drew me to personal computing at first was you could put text on a television!
I guess I'm kind of a "visual" person. I have that hyper-whatever thing where I can visualize things in detail in my head, and I like looking at things, and TV was one of the first things I ever looked at. In black and white, naturally. (You'd think that might translate to some artistic ability. Alas, no. Maybe I never tried hard enough.)
But I don't hold any sentimental, nostalgic feelings for film photography. I'm mostly happy with digital, though I'm disappointed with the culture around it. Which is, almost by definition these days, "online culture."
I think young people are jaded with digital imagery because they grew up with it, it's everywhere around them, and now it's often generated by automated means. I can see why they feel that film is more "authentic," and that photography as a creative experience is richer using analog means, at least at first.
My daughter shoots weddings as a side hustle, and all her clients want digital and film, and she shoots 8mm movies and edits them together into a kind of montage.
Retro-computing is mostly old (white) guys like me, though I'm not sure that's always going to be the case, at least for people who genuinely enjoy computers.
The Apple II was the prototypical "personal computer," the "hacker's choice," at least at first, because of the slots. In that way, the II was kind of a blank canvas, not only for software, but hardware as well. Today, computers are becoming just like the old corporate mainframe. You have to be a member of the "priesthood" to really do anything with them that isn't printed on the label.
Yes, I know about Linux and the Raspberry Pi and micro-controllers and all that, and if a person is sufficiently motivated, they can use all that with the help of AI and accomplish some pretty amazing things. Of course, I wonder how long it'll be before that'll become like digital photography? The only "authentic" experience is writing "on the metal."
Apple was once two guys in a garage. (Ok, it was never really just two guys in a garage, but let's enjoy our myths while we can.) Today it's a gigantic corporation with a global supply chain, shareholders, a board of directors, and whose customers are just suckers ripe for the picking (metaphor fail) who must be protected from bad actors (and competitors).
I guess that's why I love the old Apple II. I noticed that it was two years ago today that I was investigating one of my Apple IIes that I'd recently purchased. Here I am again, two years later, doing the same thing.
I don't think it's nostalgia, it's more like self-care. "An elegant weapon from a more civilized age." Or words to that effect.
More and more each day, I feel unhappy, uneasy, using my Mac. It's not exciting anymore. Hasn't been for a long time. I feel as though I'm complicit in something wrong. Not just wrong for all the social media ills, or for the attention-robbing digital platforms, or the privacy invasions. It's all of that and something else I don't think I can put my finger on.
But I'm not going to switch to Linux.
Screw that. I'm too old to learn a bunch of new stuff that isn't rewarding in its own right just to do mundane stuff I can do now, albeit shedding bits of my soul in the process.
We fuck everything up. It's money that does it. Greed. Gotta have it though.
Until the wheels fall off, that is. Which is probably sooner than anyone expects.
Anyway, gotta go shower. I'm waiting for 84 Lumber to deliver the roof decking. Brad's off with his guy buying other stuff. I'm to let them know where to put it. I asked Brad where he wanted it, and it turns out there's actually no place where it'll be convenient. Ken's coming back today to get rid of a couple more mounds of dirt, and he's going to dig the hole to set the septic tank, so pretty much anywhere is going to be in the way.
I'll go to the bank when Brad gets back.
✍️ Reply by emailMoon & Jupiter 10-6-26
Current Wx: Temp: 36.43°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 88% Wind: 5.53mphWords: 29
It's chilly out there. Saw the Moon and Jupiter and thought it deserved a shot.
Banking this morning, then maybe I'll get the power supply out of the IIe.
✍️ Reply by emailClear Skies
Current Wx: Temp: 47.68°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 59% Wind: 8.63mphWords: 10
All the trusses are up. Roof decking should begin tomorrow.
✍️ Reply by emailThis Morning's Walk 10-5-26
Current Wx: Temp: 51.44°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 86% Wind: 8.75mphWords: 81
Pretty nice day today. Did my walk and then did the 70-pound farmer's carry. Oof. Did three trips down and back, got my heart rate over 150 bpm at the end of each one. Felt a lot like when I started out with the 60-pound effort, so it's not too discouraging.
Put a few pics up at Flickr. Fall foliage isn't anywhere near peak yet, but it's looking pretty good for some reds this year.
The beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailSunshine and Rainbows
Current Wx: Temp: 58.01°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 89% Wind: 9.64mphWords: 988
Interesting afternoon after the weekly Tinderbox (AI) meetup.
As regular readers may know, I have a couple of Apple IIcs here in the house. The main machine I use is the IIc Plus, because it doesn't require a power brick, it's 3 times faster than the normal IIc, and I've installed the MegaFlash internal virtual SmartPort HD mod in it. The only downside to using the IIc Plus exclusively is that I can't use 5.25" floppy disks with it, as my IIc external drive is in storage somewhere.
My normal IIc also has a MegaFlash mod, but it's not currently installed because I broke a pin on the riser socket that the board plugs into. I've since received a replacement, but I hadn't gotten around to installing it yet.
When I bought that machine, it came with a 1MB RAMdisk card installed, which was an unexpected bonus. It's a RAMExpress II+ from Plamen at A2.Heaven. Unlike Apple's original RAM expansion card, this one includes a battery backup. In an ideal world, you should be able to boot the computer from the stored operating system on the RAMdisk. But since Apple's developers didn't anticipate a battery-backed card (unlikely in those days with large cards holding 32 256k RAM chips), they made no provision for it and, as a result, the Apple IIc's ROM code actually stomps on the memory locations the card uses to make it bootable when powering on. You could soft-boot the card, once you had the OS and a startup system file installed, but when the computer powered on again those memory locations weren't preserved.
Which kind of makes the whole idea of a battery-backed RAMdisk sort of foolish.
Except, we live in an age of wonders, and people have modified the IIc's ROM so that you can boot from the RAMdisk at power-on. You can buy ROMs or EPROMs with that modified code installed for very little money.
Or you can do what I did, and use Piers Finlayson's OneRom.
I've never tried this before, and I spent some time yesterday and today reading about how the ROM 4x was developed and trying to find a "binary" file. Most of the stuff at the Github repo suggests you have to find the source and apply the patches and build it yourself. That would be beyond my ability.
I needed a binary.
Well, fortunately, I found one.
Then it was off to the OneROM web interface, with a brief pit stop to install Chrome. (I don't trust Google, so I've never had Chrome on this machine. Who knows what that application is doing?) Because you need Chrome to do whatever is necessary to program the OneROM. I could download and use the command line interface, but that looked trickier.
Anyway, I followed the instructions, programmed one of the five OneROMs I'd recently purchased, and then trepidatiously installed it in the IIc.
I didn't want to button the whole thing back up, only to discover it didn't work. So I plugged in the power and turned it on and got the normal *beep* that assured me it worked!
Now to go find that RAMExpress card. I knew I'd seen it recently.
To make a long story shorter, I couldn't find it right away, but in the process of looking for it, I found the ROMXc product that I purchased some time ago. Long ago enough that I'd forgotten I'd ever purchase it, because I recently ordered another one from Reactive Micro, and it's on backorder. So now I've got to cancel that order.
The ROMXc offers the ability to use a number of different ROM images in a IIc, including the ROM 4x, along with some other nifty features that will likely come along to the OneROM in the relatively near future.
Excited to find the ROMXc, I decided to go ahead and install that, because of the additional features over the ROM 4x. So I pulled the OneROM and stuck it back in its 3d-printed little coffin (very cool). I used my label-maker to label it ROM 4x so I wouldn't get it confused with the other four.
Following the instructions carefully, I got it successfully installed. I'd done it once before in one of my Apple IIes, which is, of course, in storage. Not that I could use it here if I could get it.
So then it was back to searching for the RAMExpress. Finally found it in a dark corner in a box next to my nightstand. Yeesh.
Back to the IIc and installed it.
I'll spare you the additional trials and tribulations, suffice to say I can now boot the IIc from the RAMdisk after powering down. Very cool.
Both the RAMExpress and the ROMXc offer battery-backed real-time clock/calendars. I set the one on the ROMXc, and I pretty much quit at that point, which is when I saw the image above.
Seldom do I undertake a project like this without encountering some difficulty that prevents me from successfully achieving my goal. It's usually not permanent, but it often means I have to put it aside for awhile in some frustration, and try again later.
Apart from going somewhat crazy trying to find the RAMExpress, all of this went remarkably smoothly, and I was feeling pretty happy and excited, and so the rainbow was just a welcome sight.
Tomorrow I'll play with the clock(s), and see if I have to modify ProDOS to get it to recognize it. I've also got a FujiNet network adapter/SmartPort drive connected to that IIc and I need to figure it out with the RAMExpress installed.
Then I think I'll take a look inside the IIgs' and IIe's power supplies and deal with any potential "magic smoke" issues before I power those on and begin testing peripheral cards.
Keeps me off the streets! (And YouTube.)
✍️ Reply by emailSunset 8-2-26
Current Wx: Temp: 56.28°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 78% Wind: 12.55mphWords: 54
Figured this would be a quick post.
Wrong!
MacOS ridiculous security policy broke all my automations again. The permissions were all properly set in Privacy and Security, but of course they weren't being acknowledged. Usually just toggling the switch is enough to get things working again. Not this time.
Had to reboot.
Fuckin' Apple.
✍️ Reply by emailSo many toys, so little time...
08:58 Sunday, 4 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 48.58°F Pressure: 1023hPa Humidity: 89% Wind: 8.66mph
Words: 883
Mitzi's in Montreal, so I've got the table cleaned off and I'm playing with one of my Apple IIc computers. (Siri tells me the plural of "Apple IIc" is "Apple IIc's" without the apostrophe, inserted by autocorrect, which I suppose actually reports to Siri, so I don't know what's up with that.)
There was an interesting thread at the Retro Computing Forum, discussing the chronology of Star Trek gameplay and code. Apple Trek, by Apple III creator Wendell Sanders, was one of the programs included with the Apple II+ I bought in 1982. So I chimed in and pointed to Star Fleet 1: The War Begins!, which Apple II version does not appear to be preserved on Archive.org. (I shall endeavor to correct that. Eventually.)
Anyway, that prompted me to go looking for a copy of Star Fleet 1: The War Begins! I ended up ordering two, because I placed low offers on two "Make offer" listings, thinking only one of them would be accepted.
And, as these things inevitably go, I decided I needed a copy of Reach For The Stars. I used to play that game on my Apple IIc on deployment. Loved it. I ordered a copy of Version 3 for the IIgs, and Version 2 for the 8-bit Apple II. The GS version arrived yesterday.
The auction site helpfully (not) offered other titles I "might be interested in," and a very nice copy of Elite came up, with all of the box contents and the box in very good shape. That arrived yesterday as well.
An embarrassment of riches.
I spent some time in the storage unit yesterday, hoping to find my other IIc, but the space is so filled that it'd take me the better part of an afternoon to dig out enough stuff to find the box it's in. I did manage to unearth the big plastic box with my two Apple IIes in it. (Now, why didn't auto-correct change that?) I didn't want the IIes, I wanted the 12" LCD I knew was in there. That's what's sitting on the table, connected to the IIc.
My IIgs is out on the table as well. I don't recall if I removed the Rifa capacitors on that power supply, so I have two power supplies to check out before I can play with the IIgs and the IIe. I need to get those up and running so I can check out a bunch of peripheral cards I've purchased over the last year or so.
In between starting this post and finishing it, while I was visiting the DECWAR site to see if it had been updated to include Star Fleet 1: The War Begins! (It had not.), I noticed Star Trek ]I[.
You can display the Applesoft listing on the page, but you can't copy the text with the line numbers. I've never seen or heard of Star Trek ]I[, so I wanted a copy of it. I decided to see if ChatGPT could help me out.
It seems it could. I now have a listing in BBEdit. I haven't tried to load it into Virtual II yet to see if it'll run, but I checked a few of the line numbers and it seems like it's complete. It involved a lot of pasting Javascript commands into Safari's Web Inspector Console, the last one capturing all of the text (including line numbers) and placing it on the clipboard, which allowed me to create a new BBEdit text file.
But that was was several minutes of not writing this post.
I may get back here again later today. (Probably not.) But the house is coming along. Rain set us back a few days. HVAC redesign is complete and equipment is ordered. Main floor framing is nearly complete, sufficient to permit landing the remaining attic trusses, which will hopefully occur tomorrow or Tuesday. Patio pour is looking like Friday. Then we'll be bumping up against the timber frame delivery and assembly, followed by roof decking, windows and doors, roofing and siding, and what do you know? We're dried in. Probably by the first part of November, realistically.
I started Zepbound (Terzepatide) a week ago yesterday. Weighed myself yesterday and I'm down four pounds, which seems almost unbelievable. No real adverse side-effects. Mostly heartburn if I don't carefully watch how much I eat. Mitzi made some birthday cake for Brad the Builder and it was pretty good. So good that I decided to have two pieces. Well, I won't make that mistake again. No nausea or vomiting, just a lot of discomfort.
I've been doing my "farmer's walks" with 30-pound dumbbells, and yesterday I bought two 35-pound dumbbells. When I started doing them, I could only do one trip down and back, and I wasn't sure I was going to make it all the way back. Now I do three, and it's not hard, so I figured I'd up the weight. It's the walk back up that gets my heart rate going, but not so much lately.
I figure I may be up to 40 pounds in each hand by the end of the year. I really do need to get back into the gym though.
Anyway, gotta call Mom soon.
The beat goes on...
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