Great plan: saving leftover chili, macraroni, that could be smothered in cheese and tossed in the oven.
Bad plan: eating the entire pan for chilimac. Then polishing off a bunch of cheesecake.
Or was that a perfect plan….
Windows: oh, so poorly defined
Wondering what the heck Rimuru is so lethargic at I/O, to the point that programs take minutes to launch from the start menu and Explorer instances minutes to refresh.
Task Manager reports that my NVMe drive is at locked on 100% but only registers tens of MB/s in I/O. That’s kind of silly in more ways than one.
Running perfmon /res from PowerShell, imagine my greater surprise when the Resource Monitor paints the finger at PID 4, SYSTEM and shows executable files from the new XBox advanced management feature.
Now here’s the real kicker! Of the top three entries two are for a file that no longer exists on disk because I uninstalled the game a few weeks ago. Both marked at roughly 10~11 MB/s reads if you translate the B/s into reality. The third is installed but is registering ~4.5 MB/s reads for a file that is 600 something KB in size.
But I suspect that this non-sense is also a red herring, as system performance has leveled off despite the silly entries in the monitor. Whatever really sledgehammered the drive at startup is likely long since gone by the time I could get the monitors up and running.
That said, I kind of have to wonder what kind of I/O pattern could possibly register tens of megabytes of reads on a file that does not exist for thirty plus minutes and going, and if it did exist, would probably fit on a floppy diskette with plenty of room to spare.
Sometimes random things make you frown.
- Paper weight falls off the tea bag.
- String falls in the cup.
- Can’t reach the teabag or the string.
- Flip over cup and it still won’t come out.
- Tie the string to the handle and it flies off when adding water.
When they all in a neat streak of events: I call this an incremental frown.
On the upside sitting down with a spot of tea and not going ass over tea kettle in the process 😅
Done it again
So, it seems like I’ve done a naughty thing: I bought another vintage PowerBook. This time it’s a Duo 2300c.
A downside of 30-year-old Mac is the trackball is sometimes finicky and has proven resilient to my efforts. I’ve actually thought about acquiring a Wombat ADB-USB bridge so that I can use a modern mouse^ with my Duo 230. Later models tended to retain some serious hardware compatibility and reuse but eventually replaced the trackball with a standard trackpad.
I’ve thought about acquiring a junked late model Duo for parts or trying to find piece meal parts of the old upgrade kits to refit my Duo 230 with a trackpad. Given the age of parts, probably better off with the Wombat approach. Encountering a 2300c in good shape that doesn’t cost more than a decent modern laptop of course was too tempting a target.
In my tastes for PowerBooks, things tend to lean more in the direction of subnotebook and ultra-portables. Even today, the Duo series greatly reflects my tastes in computing. 20-year-old-Mac’s PowerPC processor has been kind of nifty since it can emulate Motorola 68k and run native PPC code. But the ‘Street series is too damned hefty for my tastes even if its G3 blazes compared to an old ’30.
Interchangeability of parts between the Duo 200 series seems to be pretty high, but I’m not sure how true that is with the 2300c for internals. But unlike other PowerPC models I’d care for, because it’s the last Duo: it’s compatible with my peripherals. By contrast, other options lead in the direction of proprietary model-specific gear. The 2300c has the same dock port as the earlier Duo 200 series.
Depending on what shape its internals are in, I might end up with two functioning machines or kit bashing them together. I’ve been more interested in the 68k / system 7 era, but I can’t say that I really mind prospects of a 603e at nearly triple the clockrate of my 68030.
^ While I’m sure Apple must have made a decent ADB mouse at some point, I can’t say that I enjoy the rolling ball mice of old as much as I do an actual track ball or an optical based mouse.
Feels So Good: AM Gold
This morning’s playlist: Feels So Good: AM Gold
While I guess I’ve always had a soft spot for cheesy songs, I’m totally blaming Guardians of the Galaxy that I found myself singing along to this one while waiting on a cup of coffee.
Ooga-chaka ooga-ooga
Ooga-chaka ooga-ooga
Ooga-chaka ooga-ooga
Ooga-chaka ooga-ooga
I can’t stop this feeling
Deep inside of me
Girl, you just don’t realize
What you do to me
When you hold me
In your arms so tight
You let me know
Everything’s all right
I’m hooked on a feeling
I’m high on believing
That you’re in love with me
Lips as sweet as candy
Its taste is on my mind
Girl, you got me thirsty
For another cup of wine
Got a bug from you, girl
But I don’t need no cure
I just stay a victim
If I can for sure
All the good love when we’re all alone
Keep it up girl
Yeah, you turn me on
I’m hooked on a feeling
I’m high on believing
That you’re in love with me
All the good love
When we’re all alone
Keep it up girl
Yeah, you turn me on
I’m hooked on a feeling
I’m high on believing
That you’re in love with me
I’m hooked on a feeling
And I’m high on believing
That you’re in love with me
I said I’m hooked on a feeling
And I’m high on believing
That you’re in love with me
Hooked on a feeling
Think I understand how the Tin Man felt about needing that oil can. I managed to sleep sounder and stiller than many a log and passed out snoring quite early. By the time I started to work up there was the distinct feeling of having not moved in many hours.
Willow of course is the smart one. Every morning I get up at a certain time because Misty has her medicines on a schedule. Willow debated getting up and decided if her pillow was moving, she was still going back to sleep, lol.
Things I should never forget: that Windows and USB always makes Linux and USB look like heaven.
A big bet to kill the password for good
Rather interesting, but I think the real question is when will existing systems catch up.
For the most part the only real problem I’ve experienced with 2-factor authentication is exactly the one that they outlined. In fact, it was a key reason why I stopped using Google’s authenticator in favor of physical keys around Lollipop.
The notion of storing keys in a synced keychain also intrigues me. My password manager of choice is synchronized between devices, and I generally don’t worry about it because.
- Database is locally encrypted with a pass phrase. I’m not getting those back if I forget how to unlock the password manager.
- Local storage is typically an encrypted file system, and typically on a system where applications aren’t allowed to access each other’s files without permission.
- Synchronization is to remote storage that should be encrypted at rest and transferred over the wire at least as secure as HTTPS/TLS.
- Accessing that account requires 2-factor authentication, or an emergency code that is difficult to obtain over network.
One of the reasons that I love choice-based adventure games is that it offers opportunities for both introspection and escape. Will you put yourself into context, or will you role-play a part? Games like Detroit: Become Human and House of Ashes offer much opportunity for both.
In my experience, choices in games tend to reflect me. Not purely the role of the character or an artificial mentality. Actually, I think it would be neat to see statistics about how players respond to such games.
Become Human is even more thoughtful than most because of the issue of Android rights and revolution. I love that the story keeps making you evaluate this. Do you thrash the square, or do you send a message of civil disobedience? Do you respond to violence and injustice with justice and violence, or do you believe an eye for an eye is how the world goes blind? When things heat up will you stick to what you believe or evaluate. Where will you draw the point of no return? I found the point following the fall of Jericho especially pointed.
Thinking about my play through, I do think that as I get older that I am becoming more of a pacifist at heart. I believe that conflict will exist as long as humanity does, but I also see there is so much protentional in our species. Hopefully, if someday our creations become alive as we are, they will learn the right things from us.
Note: Spoilers below.
An earlier version of myself would likely have opted for revolution after the fall of Jericho. On the notion of social justice, it’s certainly a difficult point where you need to decide which side of the line you’ll land on. Even for peaceful people, turning it into an android revolution may be a valid response to the situation. Of all the choices in the game, I found that probably the hardest to make.
Choosing to march the Androids down to the recall camps and sit, demanding freedom wasn’t something that I would have imagined. Choosing to sing at the Android’s last stand as execution closes in lead to a beautiful ending. I love that the game doesn’t necessarily turn it into a brutal moment rather than one of hope and humanity. A path that says much about both mankind and the androids.
On the prospect that someday our machines could one day become alive rather than simply automatons, I kind of hope whatever our creations learn from mankind: it’ll be a lesson of hope. That, and for us humans to be wise enough not to repeat our own mistakes instead of rise above them.