Study Hall

If we were to look at my YouTube viewing history from last night, what would we see? 

A curious number of videos devoted to topics of concern to so-called linesmen, the men and women who have to work in high places sometimes, safely out of reach to most people, with dangerously high voltage equipment, such as transformers and so on.

The first topic I got into was ferroresonance. Your transformers may overheat if your capacitive inductance from the underground feeder cables cancels the magnetic field induced resistance in your delta wired bank. Magnetic inductance is a key feature of transformers that we don't want to inadvertently undermine with a compensatory resonance.

The second topic, related to the first, was leaving an open corner when doing a three transformer delta wiring, and measuring the voltage across this corner before closing it. If the circuit is correctly wired, the voltage will be pretty low, not some household number like 120 or 240, or even higher depending on the complication.

Why am I concerning myself with these topics?  Because I'm a "grid nut" -- someone interested in electrical grids rather generally. I admire those brave linesmen who are sometimes tasked with maintaining or constructing high tension lines at high altitude. If you're looking for ways to be brave, there's no shortage of scary jobs. Don't feel you need to become a soldier, if bravery-testing is your deal.

My Hypertext Trek

My story around hypertext starts with my recognizing myself as “a browser” by nature, when it came to open stack libraries and book stores. I’d browse, taking a somewhat wandering but not entirely random path through the collections, the classic bookworm. However as I became more exposed to computer consoles, what later we called monitors, my dreams took a familiar turn: fantasies about hypertext and the internet, ala Vannevar Bush (USG NSF) in the 1940s (As We May Think).

Princeton gave me the opportunity to feed my appetite for browsing big time, a big step up from our tiny yet respectable Media Center at the International School of Manila (IS we called it, usually ISM today). I was learning APL and other computer languages, and thinking how I’d redesign high school. We moved to Jersey City (myself and some friends) and my fantasies about hypertext ticked up a notch, as the internet was becoming a reality, for me in the form of New Jersey Institute of Technology access, to what later became known as PeaceNet and the IGC (Institute for Global Communications).

Around this time is when I first encountered Ted Nelson’s Computer Lib / Dream Machines. I grokked his Project Xanadu, but wasn’t so invested in the details that I felt a need to counter what eventually emerged from CERN and what became W3 i.e. HTTP/HTTPS and all the rest of it. That was all fine with me. The Hypertext Transfer Protocol was born, and was not proprietary in any way that would prevent its viral spread. “Going viral” could be a positive, oddly enough, given viruses are usually best known for being negatively impactful. To this day, post covid’s peak, Gen Z sees the point of “going viral” in that special upbeat way.

Given my predilections, I was quick to find an ISP and start making web pages when this became practical. Chris Fearnley and I were two of the first to publicize the Bucky stuff. He and I both did ray traced polyhedrons, plus he put out his famous FAQ, which quoted me quite a bit. We were off to the races, so to speak (I think of dogs racing, different breeds, as hand drawn or computed anime maybe). I created Synergetics on the Web on the Teleport platform, pdx4d my public facing user account. You will find my old URL under GRUNCH in the Encyclopedia of Conspiracies (RAW). Later I moved Synergetics on the Web to grunch dot net, where it resides to this day.

Retro Futurism

:: stochastically generated (casino math) ::

BridgeSpace: A First Visit

Judy, my sis-in-law, phoned me as I was awaiting the 14, heading home from a location scouting expedition. Would we want to rent BridgeSpace? Definitely maybe! 

We talked through my earbuds as if to an imaginary friend all the way home. October 18 is her late husband Sam's birthday, my late wife's Dawn's brother. Carpenter, poet, writer, thinker. 

We talked about Dawn's high school days after she and Sam moved with their mom to a new life with her new stepdad, Bud, in Satellite Beach, Florida. 

I was fortunate to get to visit with this side of the family while Bud was still alive. I never managed to meet Dawn's mother in person as she had passed away unexpectedly, in the hospital, after a supposedly successful procedure, not long before we met at CUE.

Cascadian Synergetics: Tips for Presenters (School of Tomorrow)

Western Young Friends Gathering

:: internal decorating ::

Regarding my near-beer fasting experiment, remember it's "guinea pig me" that we're talking about and I'm free to fuck up and to be a cautionary tale and yada yada. I'm actually running several experiments at once and have to weigh tradeoffs. Another goal is to sample a huge variety of near beers, so I can't afford to slack off on that front.

I was out testing blazers, as in jackets, at the thrift stores yesterday, more to get a sense of how to calibrate. I didn't study grooming at Princeton and at the Catholic school, my female students offered lots of counseling. When I showed up the first day in a three piece suit (as I recall) they said I was overdressing for the part, and so on.

However, worry not, and allow me my mental model, however misguided, of my insulin-ketone system as like that of a Honda hybrid: it flips back and forth effortlessly between "gas" and "battery" and at a higher frequency than you might think. 

One could say that's BS and the inertia is actually way higher (one near beer will trigger hours of glucose fueling), but I'm working that out proprioceptively, more like a juggler. You can't learn juggling from reading books or watching YouTubes, the problem being you're in your chair and not learning juggling.

Speaking of juggling, some of the finest physical specimens I met in terms of their level of coordination and gracefulness in body movement, were actually Friends, meaning Quakers. One might stereotype that group one way or another. Mine were like circus performers, arriving from Hippie Land California (the way I thought of it) and teaching me all kinds of stuff that I'd missed, living in Rome and then Manila. I also knew stuff they didn't of course. That's why we enjoyed these gatherings of western young friends near Myrtle Point, Oregon, in mid-winter, over the New Year. 

You might wonder why, if I was of that young age, I didn't marry into my clan and find my future wife at this annual winter gathering. I almost did, a couple times. However where I did encounter my wife-to-be was no more off the beaten path: at my place of work, as a new hiree (the bookkeeper) since I'd taken a working break in Bhutan. Dawn and I would then attend the gathering together, I forget how many times. She would also join me in Bhutan, where my parents were then living, on a next visit. 

"Guinea pig me" is of course a play on "Guinea Pig B", Bucky's perspective on his own avatar as well. He was doing a Flowers for Algernon experiment wherein he reached a point of dynamic equilibrium that buoyed him up, as it were. He just needed his "lab rat" to stay healthy, and he managed that with various experiments, exploring the paleo diet, and jogging (loping wolf ganter), before either were mass-adopted.

I've blogged about our Gathering of Western Young Friends previously, as a part of my life's story. The Camp Myrtlewood site has been an influence in my projections of Project Earthala. We had a large well equipped kitchen with a walk in refrigerator and all that. Our logistics team procured food in bulk for the whole group enroute, and "fooding" (a Himalayan term) was a big part of our experience, as we could practice meal prep and cleanup together, team activities that don't preclude social interaction as much as race car driving might. We had some experienced chefs amongst us. This all became a precursor to Food Not Bombs in my case (a later chapter).

Reviewing a Filed Proposal

One could read my originally filed proposal as consistent with what many of the developers want (gentrification, with or without genocide), whereas I was suggesting with the right of return, the same as Israelis have when persuaded their place in Haifa, or wherever, is safe to reoccupy. 

Probably not now as the news keeps signalling more immanent hostilities.

In the meantime, however, the historical precedent is civilians are allowed to leave before hostilities begin in earnest, between militias. That protocol was obeyed in Ukraine and to some extent in Syria. Today I was sharing the above synopsis with a WILPF listserv. More in my blogs and elsewhere. 

That's a joke about Florida although I do recall its governor saying Palestinian refugees were unwelcome. That's before people realized the plan was to keep penning them inside their Gaza ghetto. This was to be more like a Punishment Park scenario.

First World Problems

Given this is a personal journal, kept in public, a chronofile of sorts, or log -- we say blog -- I sometimes bring up the minutiae of daily living. 

For example I joked about losing my credit card (I still had the debit card), during that "trust the universe" experience at OMSI, and having to rely on (as in trust) internet banking infrastructure to lock it.

Earlier, I talked about my eyeglasses breaking, and getting new ones made. Mundane stuff like that, and a window into my life. Some guy in Portland.

In follow-up to that credit card story, I did end up declaring it lost, with the bank issuing a virtual replacement right away, over the web, and following up with a plastic card by snail mail, which I needed to activate, and did last night. 

Well, the next day (meaning today) I was returning two movies to Movie Madness, on foot, and noticed I  couldn't listen to any YouTubes on my iPhone through my connected AirPods. 

I was eager to listen to some of my favorite influencers. Also, I've been indulging in Electro Swing as a genre, sometimes with a spooky Halloween aural seasoning. Listening to music while walking has always been a favorite pastime. No such luck.

I quickly (well, maybe not that quickly) put two and two together and realized I had a first world problem: the new card activation coincided with Verizon attempting to take it's ahead-of-time monthly payment. 

I don't think these two events were tightly connected even though they happened but hours apart. The old lost card was already lost, and Verizon's monthly draw was inevitably going to get stopped, meaning my Verizon account would be as well, until I updated my Verizon account with the new bank card number and paid my bill.

Whereas I might've done this updating task using Verizon app on my mobile (or in my web browser, from home, as my WiFi through CenturyLink was not interfered with), since I live but a short drive away from a Verizon-authorized store near Powell (Hwy 26) and Chavez (SE 39th), in that strip mall with the car wash (a you-wash design), across from Safeway, I decided instead to get some help from a real person, in person. 

So upon returning from my walk to Movie Madness to return the Christian Bale DVDs, and after doing some blogging (I'll blog more than once a day sometimes), I took off in Maxi Taxi (the jalopy muscle car) to address my problem.

As it turned out, I arrived a good forty-five minutes before the Verizon store would open, at 10 am. After walking around for a bit, confirming I was indeed cut off from the internet (my test text messages to Dr. D. wouldn't send), I realized I could wash MaxiTaxi in the me-wash. 

The you-wash slots have all been upgraded to take only credit cards whereas we used to have to use quarters, lots of quarters. I swiped the new "bizplat" (nickname), more than once, my first use of it ever, and the charges went through. I gave the car a much needed high pressure soap 'n water treatment. She'd gotten a bit moldy.

The Verizon guy at first said maybe I'd need to call customer service and/or even get a new SIM card, but I persuaded him that the situation was much simpler: the lost card, backing autopay, needed to be replaced with the new card. 

Again, this was something I probably could of done myself. He did it for me, using my phone and my face. He handed it back to me so it could do the facial recognition step, and I handed it back to him. In a couple minutes, the task was complete, and service to my cell phone was restored.

The other thing going on is I'm trying out a near-beer fast, meaning I'm just sipping fluids and doing a kind of system reset, but allowing myself fluids other than water, including the occasional can of non-alchie beer. I just had two. 

I've had no solid food since Sunday. It's science. I'm the guinea pig, or rat, as the case may be.

Meanwhile, forced food deprivation is the name of the game in depraved dirty wars (the only kind anymore).