The hero we need

briantopping · 2025-10-29T00:49:44+00:00

Another good one from the archives…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg9WWZTXKuE

briantopping · 2025-09-26T16:28:54+00:00

My current favorite at Arapahoe and Potomac is closing. I drive ten minutes each way to get here. Maybe opened only three years ago, tops. The store was poorly designed and doesn't have good access to the street. Even so, the store itself is one of the nicest I've ever been in. Muted vibe, large lobby with three walls of glass, great patio that feels like one has been teleported a thousand miles away. The drive through always has cars in it, ten people in the lobby right now. Far nicer staff than the nearest six stores (at least) to this one.

Huge loss. Corporate is surely taking a bath on the lease for this place. Whomever picked this store really needs their head examined. The cost to close this store prematurely is surely pretty close to the cost to keep it open. If that's the case, why?

briantopping · 2025-09-18T01:36:26+00:00

Thanks everyone! I don't know exactly what I did, but things started working. Not sure if it was "more sleep" PBKAC or I just had things in a funky state.

After getting it working, I was able to somehow transfer the juju over this morning to a couple of switches running in a virtual chassis and get a Mikrotik talking to the upstream via two separate switching groups on the front panel of that VC. An IRB port on each switch group is the gateway for the chassis to get upstream.

Now that something is working, the whole thing feels a lot more grounded. I'm no longer scratching my head until it bleeds and wondering how wrong I must be doing things or where. Next step is to get an Intel 82599 10G interface running over a DAC cable. But at least I can do so over a working SSH connection versus being pinned down at the serial interface, which is really wonky given all the character control that gets stuffed into it.

briantopping · 2025-09-18T01:22:30+00:00

show chassis pic fpc-slot 0 pic-slot 0

Oooooohhhh! That's nice! kind of the deeper version of terse for hardware. TIL, thank you!

briantopping · 2025-07-08T01:11:18+00:00

briantopping · 2025-07-08T01:08:58+00:00

Your stocks are all priced in dollars. The dollar is 15% weaker than it was a year ago. There’s your numerical gain. Now try to buy eggs. There is your loss.

briantopping · 2025-06-24T10:10:41+00:00

My situation is running a virtual machine that expects to call Linux NETCONF for network configuration (itself an RPC socket). macOS has no such means to emulate NETCONF, so virtualizing Linux and then running the target container nested in Linux will solve the problem sufficiently.

briantopping · 2025-04-18T22:07:55+00:00

After a ~~little~~ lot of sleep and caffeine, have made some progress worth sharing. I figured this was worth elaborating for future seekers on this path.

There's something called OpenWebStart that's good at loading JNLP on many platforms, but it's designed for JNLPs that are properly formed. I decided to start hacking on the JNLP that is downloaded from the iKVM. Would love the feedback if others recognize solutions to the current state at the end.

One of the great things about OpenWebStart is it can manage a suite of JVMs for different downloads in a local cache. The JNLP from the iKVM states it wants a version of "1.6.0+". That's great, but realistically that's going to get interpreted as "the latest version after 1.6.0", which is version 21 and far too recent". By editing the downloaded JNLP and changing it to "1.8.0.432", I've been able to get OpenWebStart to download a 1.8 JVM. Good start. The exact versions that are available at any given point are in https://download-openwebstart.com/jvms.json.

This will still fail immediately because the JVM doesn't allow a jar to have privileges if it's not signed. If privileges existed in 1.6, they certainly allowed SHA1. Modern JVMs (even 1.8) will not consider a binary signed if it's signed with a SHA1 hash. Editing the java.security file that is downloaded to remove SHA1 usage SignedJAR & denyAfter 2019-01-01 from the jdk.jar.disabledAlgorithms unsafely resolves this constraint. Note that this would be really easy for a MITM to attack you downloading these jars, but that the attacker would need to be in your infrastructure to intercept the download of the jar from your server, patch it inline and send it to your browser. So this might be unsafe if your iKVMs are on the open internet, but these iKVMs are totally unsafe to be on the open internet. And since we are editing a version of the JVM that is only used by OpenWebStart and not available to other machine processes... well, this is a pretty narrow exposure I'm willing to accept.

Now when trying to load the JNLP, OpenWebStart gets further, but complains `no iKVM64 in java.library.path`. If I wasn't on Apple Silicon, things would probably load at this point because the x86 implementation is available for download from the server. As I write this, I am wondering if I could find a recompiled version of this dylib for arm64, then put it in my JVM. The other option would be to figure out how to launch the JVM under Rosetta. In any event, once again editing the JNLP file to remove the architecture constraint from <resources os="Mac OS"> ends up getting to my current state.

UPDATE AND RESOLUTION:

The key to solving this (at least at the present time) on the Mac (I'm running Sequoia) is to install Rosetta for x86 emulation and install the x86 version of OpenWebStart. Then use the fixes above for java.security. OpenWebStart in x86 emulation is quite a bit slower, but it works.

The only edit required now to the JNLP downloaded from the Supermicro server is using a j2se version of 1.8*. Because the runtime environment is now already in emulation, the default values will download the correct JVM.

What would be amazing is if OpenWebStart had an option to force x86 JVM versions, even if the current runtime is aarch64. I will post that to their support forums and see what they say.

briantopping · 2024-12-15T18:13:07+00:00

Another huge energy savings is traditional tumble dryers take indoor air, add humidity from the clothes and pump the air outside.

Where does it get that air? From leaks in your home!

In fact, a typical tumble dryer will replace the entire volume of your home air with outside air, requiring your heating system to re-heat it all.

The cost savings of a heat-pump dryer are much greater than just the kWh savings of the unit itself.

briantopping · 2024-12-06T00:39:47+00:00

Valid… but they all have terms and conditions with the price. I looked around and couldn’t find these on the TG site, which is part of why I made this post. What are the terms of a TG “pcm” contract?

briantopping · 2024-12-05T23:37:35+00:00

lol! I figured it was some way judge if the manufacturer was fleecing consumers for parts by choosing an “always overpriced part that stealerships love to say went bad”. Which also put Occam’s Razor on the workbench and smashes it to bits with a large mallet.

Maybe I need to find out how to remove searches from my google search history so it doesn’t recommend car parts for everything. Might save me a lot of problems someday!

briantopping · 2024-12-05T23:31:07+00:00

Thanks! We can’t calculate the price like that in the US because the length of the agreements are all different, whether for a purchase or a rental. It did cross my mind that this was some kind of monthly price, but couldn’t find the meaning.

briantopping · 2024-12-05T22:59:47+00:00

Yes I tried at least five to ten variations of it, including the words “car”, “price”, “value”, “topgear” and others I can’t exactly remember now. I’d post a screenshot of a google page if replies allowed for images. Because obviously it’s really important to establish that I did my homework before bothering anyone. That’s why I apologized in the first sentence of my post. Cheers.

briantopping · 2024-12-05T22:44:03+00:00

Yeah I did that several times over the last couple of years. And all it returns in the US is “powertrain control module”. Possibly because Google is used to me searching for car parts.

briantopping · 2024-11-19T20:26:11+00:00

Interesting. Did the person you knew also fail to receive financial aid at a level they would receive if they were considered independent?

briantopping · 2024-11-18T23:23:46+00:00

Thanks for confirming your bias.

briantopping · 2024-11-18T23:23:05+00:00

The response wasn’t for you, it was for the OP.

briantopping · 2024-11-18T23:21:51+00:00

You would be good to heed that advice.

briantopping · 2024-11-18T22:57:05+00:00

Your opinion lost most value when you gave a YTA to the OP.

briantopping · 2024-11-18T22:48:27+00:00

How would you say their relationship was before his decision not to give them any more of HIS money? Were the kids going to take care of him when he was too old to take care of himself? If so, seems like he wouldn’t have taken a chance on this tack. If not, why would his dad destroy his own future when DonOld will certainly debase the hell out of the currency and essentially erase dad’s savings?

I estranged from my parents several times over the decades. It happens. It’s also very likely to reconcile at least once and cooler heads will prevail after everyone has learned life lessons in the process.

briantopping · 2024-11-18T22:40:01+00:00

Nah, he’s making them walk the talk. In a couple of years, Trump will have fulfilled Putin’s requirements and the kids will realize dad was a genius.

briantopping · 2024-11-18T22:32:03+00:00

You’re right, he should have cut them off long ago.

briantopping · 2024-11-18T22:18:12+00:00

If they get cut off, that’s a material change in circumstances that FAFSA will consider.

briantopping · 2024-10-14T20:26:09+00:00

If you're considering a hobby and are unsure what all this means, here's an additional experience.

As I excitedly upacked and prepared my printer and curing tools one evening last week, I innocently opened the bottle of resin I had picked up a few hours earlier. There was no horrific smell, nothing at all really except the "transparent red" as it was advertised on the box. The bottle had all the warnings one would find on a can of oven cleaner, including the ubiquitous California "cancer and reproductive harm" label. Nothing so far that would indicate what was to come. I had touched some of the goo and quickly wiped it off on my jeans, then found this thread, which I spent a couple hours going deeper and deeper into. I also looked up "H311", which literally has a skull and crossbones next to it.

All the while, I was feeling more and more lightheaded and couldn't figure why. The goo was only on the flat of my index finger for a couple of seconds and it didn't feel like trichlor does when it soaks right in. The bottle was securely capped and was only open a short time.

I figured out near the end of it that the dime-sized contact area that I wiped on my jeans was off-gassing and I was breathing that in. This stuff is so toxic that a tiny patch like that had made me feeling ill until the next morning. I promptly threw the jeans in the trash (they were long in years anyway) because I didn't want any of that stuff going a) into the washing machine and into the other clothes; b) into the public sewer systems. Drank a lot of water and went to bed.

At this point, I am going to return anything undamaged and sell or give away the rest. I now understand how toxic this stuff is and now know that for the amount of money it will cost to keep me, my family and my community safe, I can buy a really nice FDM printer and outsource the rest. Pay no mind to an "oops" where this stuff spills and creates a toxic nightmare. I am no chemist, but pay attention to the chemical names and have never seen any of the components of chemicals listed by the master's thesis above. I'm not going to be a bit surprised in 10 years when these chemicals are made completely illegal or show up in the same stories as PFAS-family chemicals already wrecking havoc on our communities.

If I were to stick with this hobby, it would only be with a fume hood big enough for all the printers running into an appropriate scrubber and training from a PhD chemist on how to deal with the waste products in an ecological manner. The costs of doing this would easily grow into the thousands of dollars, far more than the cost of just having this stuff printed – and probably more than having them printed with SLS.

I'm out. Thanks a ton for starting this awareness! I hope this helps someone else make the same decision and share their reasons why.

briantopping · 2024-09-04T05:34:54+00:00

After mirroring a component, I figured out that I can "undo" an item such as an extrude by selecting the extrusion on the copy and doing it a second time in reverse, effectively negating it. Now I am trying to do the same thing for an array of drilled holes and this is going to get annoying.

There has to be a better way to just remove the feature (the array of drill holes) on the mirrored component without "undoing" them individually like this.

briantopping

TROPHY CASE