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newsflash to non-vegan preparers of vegan food
Saturday, April 21 2012
I've taken a number of steps to improve the reliability of the Arduino-based solar controller, but it's still occasionally found itself stuck in reboot loops because of communications difficulty with the ultrasonic rangefinder that checks fuel level in the oil tank. That rangefinder communicates over a ten foot I2C connection, which is well beyond the length an I2C bus is supposed to run, but since it used to be reliable, I assumed it would stay that way. Now that it isn't reliable, I needed a way for the solar controller to give up on reaching the rangefinder. So today I came up with a system whereby an activity code could be stored in non-volatile RAM just before doing something risky (such as checking fuel level). If the system hangs during that activity, it will trigger the hardware watchdog mechanism to reboot the system. When it next comes up, the solar controller will check to see if was doing any activity before it rebooted. If so, it will skip that activity. Next time it reboots it will attempt that activity again, but if it should hang, it will go back to skipping that activity. Thus every other time the system boots while that activity is causing hangs, it will be in a state where it skips that activity. The fact that it hangs with every other reboot isn't much of a problem, because (given the watchdog) whenever there is trouble another reboot is never far away.
Today Gretchen would be hosting a poetry panel at the ongoing Woodstock Writers' Festival, something I was expected to attend. So at a little past 1:00pm, I drove to Woodstock. The day was potentially so sunny that I decided to leave all the dogs behind.
The panel was held at the Kleinert as it had been last year. I snuck in through a back door and sat in the section with all of our friends (as opposed to the people I don't know who show up for these sorts of things). The poetry panel this year had a political theme. I'm not really into these sorts of things, but Gretchen manages to make them about as good as they can be. Still, there were occasions during the actual reading of poetry when I found it all just a bit too precious.
After the panel, I went with KMOCA Michæl over to the nearby hardware store because we both needed hardware: he gloves (but they were too expensive) and me M3 16 mm metric flat-head machine screws (which, unlike the big box stores, they actually had, though they had allen socket heads, which was fine for my purposes).
A group of us ended up at the Garden Café. Our group included Michæl, Deborah, Gretchen, and two of the poets from the panel, as well as one of the poet's girlfriends. I don't remember much of the conversation except that Deborah brought up the fact that I use a brownhouse and then I found myself explaining yet again how foolish the western paradigm of mixing feces with potable water is. While on the subject of mixing things with potable water, I should mention that Deborah and I were sharing two big bowls of soup, which (for my money) is always the best thing to get at the Garden Café.
Later Gretchen and I went across the street to Oriole 9 for the evening's official Writers' Festival meal. The price for this meal was $50, but I got in for free because Gretchen somehow got a plus one for this meal in what was otherwise amounting to a very nickel-and-dimey sort of festival. The price for dinner was $50, you see, but if you wanted drinks, they cost extra. The idea for the meal was that people paying that exorbitant price could then expect to hobnob with writers, but the famous writers at this particular meal (such as Augusten Burroughs) all tended to sit among themselves at their own tables behind human shields who kept the hoi polloi away. Gretchen and I sat with the poet from the panel who had also been with us at the Garden with her girlfriend (who was also with us). In terms of food, Gretchen and I had the vegan option of course, though it seemed like the kind of food that non-vegetarians make for vegans. It was quinoa with roasted vegetables, but those vegetables were mostly hockey-puck-sized chunks of chewy turnip, and eating it was more utilitarian than pleasant. Newsflash to non-vegan preparers of vegan food: we actually appreciate qualities such as flavor and texture. Despite your assumptions, we're not doing this vegan thing just to increase our misery.
At some point Gretchen gave me permission to go, so I ran past the gaggle of slow-moving late-middle-aged women in front of me (one of whom I knew but with whom I was hoping to avoid small talk) and found myself out on Tinker Street in the middle of downpour, the first real rain in over a month. That rain made the drive home somewhat difficult, and at times I had to take it slow. Once home, I plunked down in front of the teevee and watched most of a fascinating Frontline about the real world of crime scene investigation. It turns out that not even fingerprint evidence if foolproof; a fingerprint found on an item connected to the Madrid terrorist bombing was database-matched to an attorney in Portland (Oregon) who had never even been to Spain, and he'd still be rotting in jail if that print weren't later found to also match a sketchy dude from Algeria whose alibi (is that an Arabic word?) was much less airtight.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?120421 feedback
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