eragon and saphira

#1 son wanted me to publish his picture of Eragon and Saphira, so here it is..

what are we playing at ?

The last construction weekend of the year. We're putting up the deck for the yurt near Palisade, five 'professionals' with soft hands labouring manually. One ex-engineer who went careering off to law, and one actual engineer, so at least we have good directions to follow.

In the course of the weekend, the side of the shed in the background blew off. We upgraded the yurt with the wind package.

It's quite soothing to have nothing to do but heave lumber and bang nails, in the cold wind below the mesas.

The children of the yurt lent a hand and a hammer, putting in the spacers for the Trex boards. That palled after an hour or two, so they went off to Crash Valley, the gully where the previous farmer sent all his cars to die.

A few vagrant gleams of sunshine were all we got.

On the drive home even those would have been welcome - Vail pass was closed most of the afternoon and evening. We gave up and checked into a hotel. The boys and I went to sit in the hot tub, under snow, where we learnt that the hotel had just filled up and the Red Cross shelters opened. I hardly ever get that right, usually we're in the miserable cold waiting for the pass to reopen. After dinner we all huddled around the laptop, watching 'The Gods must be Crazy'. I thought the boys would enjoy the slapstick, their parents indulged in a bushveld nostalgia.

Two of the pictures courtesy of Mitch and Linda, thank you.

respectability

Brad DeLong says:
"We can finally have normal politics and policymaking again. That's not a tremendous accomplishment, is it?
It feels like one:
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth... the holy city, new Jerusalem..."

I'm not sure it's possible to return to a normal politics after the last eight years, that well is deeply poisoned: still I agree it's a relief (in the same way that a biopsy for cancer coming back negative, is a relief) to have a respectable President again.

Not much to ask, but it seemed unattainable for so many years. Ezra Klein sums up the Bush legacy:
"He has been worse than a bad president: he has harnessed the power of America to do genuine evil, under his watch."
From the report by the Senate Armed Services Committee (12 R, 12 D, ranking member Sen McCain):
"senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees."
The general counsel for the Department of the Army has declared that what we did to prisoners in Guantanamo was torture. No weaseling, no mealy-mouthed obfuscation by tough-talking bed wetters, just the admission that it is in fact plain old ugly torture. The Red Cross thinks so too. Of course, most of the tortured were innocent as well.

This is the second time I've voted for a black president. I also got to vote for Nelson Mandela, in the first free South African elections. Praise be. Perhaps a Truth and Reconciliation Commission is a good next step, now that we will stop torturing people.

John McCain seemed relieved and happy in his concession speech. Odd. Perhaps he does have a conscience after all ?

Elsewhere I proposed 'Caravan of Love' as the song for the day. It's always worth hoping.

Update on torture: there was no campaign promise and no official statement on this. I had confidence however, and now:
"I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture, and I'm going to make sure that we don't torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world."
Decency in government, what a refreshing change.

dumb humans

California's proposition 2 will allow farmed animals
"to lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs and turn around freely."
You mean they can't do that now ?
Astonishingly enough, there is strong opposition to allowing farmed animals the freedom to lie down.

We are all God's creatures; tormenting our fellow creatures seems to me appalling in any religion's worldview. If we are not God's creatures, instead just East African plains apes with delusions, living under an empty sky: then those of us capable of compassion should show it, for the good of our mortal souls if nothing else. We need to obey the Vonnegutian imperative, "There’s only one rule that I know of, babies - God damn it, you've got to be kind".

Update: looks like it passed quite convincingly, sixty-some percent voting for it. Oh good.
On the other hand, proposition 8 to ban same-sex marriage, passed as well. Cruel to humans but kind to animals, there's another puzzle of the human animal..

bird dogs in Veteran, WY

Off to darkest Wyoming, near the town of Veteran, to take Artie on his first duck hunt. The ducks are coming down the Central Flyway and are susceptible to ambush. Blue-winged teal are still on the ponds: since we broke the weather they stay around a lot longer than what used to be usual.

Ballasbak in the barn, planning a normal distribution of chores and entertainment.

Here's Artie taking a nap with his favorite stuffed toy, a 25c garage-sale cat.

Boy and dogs heading out to the wetlands. Artie thought he'd died and gone to heaven, from the boring suburban green-belt spaces to a whole farm full of smells.

Once the feathers hit the water, the party is reduced to serious hunters only. Artie's dad Spot is point dog.

Artie gets to practice with the downed ducks. Real birds were harmed in the making of this picture, I fear. Very tasty too.

The rest of us needed a bit of shotgun training, making shards out of clay pigeons. Mostly I couldn't hit the doubles, one going R and one going L, because I'm just too slow. Three different guns: a lovely little Beretta over/under 28 gauge, which pointed itself, didn't miss anything with that one; a Winchester 20ga, perfectly competent bit of American craftsmanship but my euro-snob side preferred the pretty Italians; a Beretta 12ga side/side, hardly any heavier than the 28ga. Ken sneaked in a goose load on the 12ga at one point, thing kicked hijus. The last thing I shot with a kick like that was a RPG. The clays would break when hit with 28ga, the goose load basically turned the clay back into silt.

Next day, Artie got to fossick around in the fields, to kick up some pheasant and/or quail. No shooting at these since the season isn't open yet. They tell me Montana is big sky country, but Wy manages a fair old spread too.

a brief excursion

Ken coming downstream, in a satisfied sort of way: took 5o casts and two changes of fly, but he finally got that 16" rainbow that was rising to tricos.







A turbocharged rainbow, he jumped higher than my head. Returned with thanks.



















None of the comforts of home, but many countervailing pleasures.








High country, empty and quiet. Except of course for the cows on welfare, grazing public land to a nubbin. Their outraged moos kept us awake for, oh, nearly five whole minutes.





nothing to say, just gratuitous prettiness.










Next morning on Lost Creek. Nothing much fish-wise, but it could not have been better.

Vista wireless networking

The Windows 2000 and XP machines work fine. The Vista machine drops and re-connects the wireless connection every 3-5 minutes or so, which is very tedious when trying to watch nbcolympics.com videos. These don't play on Win2000, and the XP box has its own problems with overheating in the GPU, so the Vista needs fixing.

After a brief descent into the usual circles of forum hell, where self-styled hacker doodz spread misinformation and the unfortunate ESL guys patiently try to make sense of it all: here's the short list of things to check.

Update Dec 2: I upgraded Vista to XP, but the problem persists. XP gives a few more things to try:
- used the Dell utility for wireless, and disabled the Windows WZC service
- disabled the Dell utility, and used the Windows WZC configuration for wireless
Also tried a static IP address, which improved the time taken for the initial connection, but it failed in the same way.
Dell 1390 WLAN mini-card, Broadcom 44/10x100 integrated controller. I'm beginning to think the problem is in the 1390 card, since that's the only thing that is different between this PC and the others that work.

The PC works fine at the library with an unsecured network. I tried turning off WPA-PSK at home, and now that works fine too. However I'm not prepared to run without security. 

Finally worked around the problem by disabling the 1390 Wlan card, and installing a USB wireless adapter. It's slightly slower, but at least it doesn't crash the entire network on a regular basis. It was a hardware problem, not Vista's fault at all. That hardly ever happens.. 

Update Aug 29: well, it seems the behavior is by design in Vista. It checks automatically every minute or two to see if there's a better wireless connection. That check will cause a lag in the wireless traffic, and in some cases a complete disconnection. Microsoft believes this to be acceptable behaviour. There are some little programs floating around that may work, try WLAN Optimizer or Vista Anti Lag, but neither worked for me. The only workaround is to buy a wireless bridge, aka wireless gaming adapter, and connect it to the laptop Ethernet port. Then disable the WLAN Autoconfig service in Vista.

Or, simply upgrade to Ubuntu Linux. First get the Live CD, which allows Ubuntu to run from the CD, without needing to install. This is a way to make sure the hardware is supported under Ubuntu. If that runs OK, test the wireless connection under Linux with this step-by-step. All being well, make a dual-boot system with Windows and Ubuntu. Follow the instructions here. Then, boot into Windows Vista when you don't have enough pain and suffering in your life: otherwise use Ubuntu.

Here's the list of other things to check in Vista, just in case something helps.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928152/en-us
Change power options.. Start, search for Power Options, then proceed to set it to high performance for everything.

**

Try channel 11 instead of the default 6. This is set on the router configuration, and should be picked up automatically by the clients.
Both channels 1 and 11 do not overlap with the default channel 6; use one of these three channels for best results.

**

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/814123

Turn off the 802.11 authentication.
1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2.Click Network and Internet, click Network and Sharing Center, and then click Manage network connections.
3.Right-click the network that you want to disable 802.1X authentication for, and then click Properties.
4.Click the Security tab, and then, in the Security Type list, click No authentication (Open). Click OK.

**

Turn off network speed auto-detection:

Select Network Settings, either from your Start menu or from within Control Panel.
Right click on the connection that corresponds to your network card, and select Properties.
In the dialog that results, click on the Configure... button immediately below the "Connect using..." item that shows your network card.
In the dialog that results, click on the Advanced tab.
This is where things vary based on your network card. In the left-hand list will be a series of properties that can be adjusted. Look for a setting similar to "Speed", or "Link", or perhaps "Media Type". Click on that, and the right-hand "Value" dropdown list will probably have something similar to "Auto". If you click on that drop-down list and options include entries that look like "10mbs", "100mbs", and so on, you've found the right item. Change the setting from auto by clicking on the specific speed you've determined you want the network card to run at, and press OK (If the setting also includes a full/half duplex selection, full is normally correct.)

**

Update the drivers etcetera.
1. Verify that you are using the latest version of the wireless network adapter driver that is available from Microsoft or the wireless network adapter vendor. To obtain the version of the wireless network adapter driver that is installed, right-click the wireless connection in the Network Connections folder. On the General tab, click Configure. From the wireless network adapter properties dialog box, click the Driver tab. The version of the wireless network adapter driver is displayed next to Driver Version. If your wireless client is connected to the Internet, click Update Driver to launch the Hardware Update Wizard and search Windows Update for a newer version of the driver. Alternately, check the wireless network adapter vendor's Web site for a newer version of the driver.

2. Upgrade the router's firmware. Since our Dlink is way out of support, we have the absolute latest 2004 firmware already installed..

**
From Microsoft's trouble-shooting document, found here:
Wireless Auto Configuration is Enabled and a Third-Party Wireless Configuration Tool is Installed
Windows XP Wireless Auto Configuration provides integrated support for wireless networking and helps automate wireless configuration. Wireless network adapters also provide a wireless network configuration tool. If the wireless network adapter driver supports Wireless Auto Configuration, installation and use of the network adapter vendor's configuration tool is not needed. To test whether your wireless network adapter supports Wireless Auto Configuration, right-click the wireless connection in the Network Connections folder and then click Properties. If there is a Wireless Networks tab, your wireless network adapter supports Wireless Auto Configuration.
Note: there are no third-party configuration tools for Vista. Only the WLAN Autoconfiguration Windows service exists, which is broken as noted above.

**

If the SSID broadcast is disabled on the preferred wireless network, clever old Windoze might be disconnecting from the network in order to use a different network that is broadcasting its SSID. We do broadcast, so that isn't the case here, but just for completeness..