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  • The Mains Problem

    One night a few weeks ago, we lost power briefly. And then apparently again that night, but while we were asleep. A couple of weeks after that, we had a strange occurrence during the day which I first noticed because I heard some relays click like when power is turned off on some appliances. I was sitting in the family room, and tried turning on the TV, but it wouldn’t go on. I looked at the power strip it was plugged into, and there was no light. Tried resetting that, but nothing improved. I then noticed that some other things lacked power as well. So I went to the circuit breaker sub-panel upstairs. Nothing looked tripped, but sometimes those things are subtle. So I tried resetting the likely candidates. Then the unlikely ones. Then I went to the basement to reset the breaker that feeds the upstairs sub-panel. Still no improvement. At this point, I realized that other things were without power as well. The only thing that all this stuff seemed to have in common was the main circuit breaker. While I didn’t trace everything out, it seemed likely that one of our phases had become disconnected within that main breaker. At least I can’t think of another explanation consistent with the observed fact of a subset of circuits being dead. As much as I dislike doing so, I reset that breaker, and then all was well.

    I assumed it was a one-time bizarre event. Then about a week later it happened again. It still took me a bit to realize it was a recurrence of the same thing. After that, I began to make the possible connection to the power outage, and suspected that something had damaged our main breaker. I called an electrician, and left a message describing the symptom and my diagnosis. They never called back. Then this past Friday, it happened again. Then Saturday morning.

    At that point, my annoyance outweighed my rational fear, and after some research into circuit breaker compatibility, I headed to Home Depot and bought a replacement breaker. Shortly after I got home, it happened again, which made for a fine opportunity to swap out the breaker. So I did my best to take all the precautions I could, like standing on a wooden platform, wearing rubber gloves, using a plastic handled screwdriver, I opened up the breaker box and pulled out the main breaker and replaced it.

    That’s very easy to type, but in fact, after telling people it should be about 10 minutes, and that our internet connection should survive because all the essential equipment is backed up by UPS’s, two unexpected things happened. There was a weird bar blocking the breaker slot across from the main that was interfering with my removal, and about 3 minutes into the procedure, the UPS that protects the Verizon ONT gave out. In the end, it was about 20 minutes of sweaty, shaking hands work, but it seems to have been successful. Power has been stable for almost 72 hours now, which is a new record for the past week.

    So that adventure, while apparently successful, has no photographic documentation, due to my anxiety level. But a couple of weeks earlier, I was busy taking pictures of another home repair adventure in anticipation of writing up a blog post about it. Our kitchen drain had, seemingly all of a sudden (or nearly so) was completely clogged. This was Thursday night, and I arranged to take the day off to deal with it. I had purchased a drain auger a couple of years earlier, and used it successfully on another occasion. So I tackled the problem with a certain confidence, documenting the cluttered under-sink cabinet, its subsequent cleared out state, my careful prep work to minimize any mess (drain cleaning is yucky business), first view inside the clean-out, etc. But then after a couple of hours with the auger, and another attempt in the basement, where the kitchen drain has a long, nearly horizontal run, things hadn’t improved. And of course, to check, you have to put everything back together, and run water through to see if it drains.

    That took us to about noon time, and Susan and I had a planned lunch date. So I cleaned myself up, and we went to lunch. Then after lunch, I had to run an errand with Clara, and besides, I was tired and discouraged. So I gave Susan the number of our regular plumber and asked her to call. They came pretty quickly, and by the time I got home from my errand, the plumber had solved the problem, and was nearly packed up and ready to leave. I don’t believe he did anything fundamentally differently than I did, but he had a couple of advantages. Mainly, I think, is his experience with the feel of the auger, and knowing what’s likely a blockage vs. an elbow, etc. And persistence. Perhaps if I’d just kept at it a bit more, I’d have been successful. Anyway, the failure discouraged me from posting what was intended to be photos of my glorious success. But here, sans photos, perhaps that failure can be a footnote to my other, more successful endeavor.

  • North Adams

    North Adams

    This past weekend, Susan and I drove to the northwest corner of Massachusetts, to a town named North Adams,

    as a last chance vacation before school begins. This year, only one of us is actually going back to school, Susan, to teach eighth grade science again. Even Clara, who is still in school at NU, is on co-op this semester. And Susan will in fact be teaching from home. But before things begin in earnest (classes don’t begin until 21 September!) there is all kinds of teacher training and stuff to prepare everyone for the most bizarre fall in living memory. So we wanted to get away, even if it was only for two days, and still in state (to follow quarantine guidelines!)

    We drove out late Saturday morning, stopping at Herrick’s Tavern for a nice, outdoor lunch. Herrick’s has been one of our favorite stops on the way home from frisbee tournaments, back when that was a thing.

    See? I told you it was Herrick’s

    When we arrived in North Adams, our AirBnB host greeted us warmly, and over the next half hour we learned most of his life story, some interesting tidbits about the town (where almost all his story took place), and precious little about the apartment. We unpacked the van, and then went walking around the center of town, and did a bit of grocery shopping. After putting away groceries, we headed out to the local brewery, Bright Ideas, for some beer and BBQ from A-OK Barbecue. Good beer and tasty food!

    On Sunday, after a home breakfast, we ventured out on our bikes! First, we headed back east, and rode out to Natural Bridge State Park, where we enjoyed learning about and seeing the after effects of marble mining. The marble from there is not terribly fine, and apparently much of it, especially in later years, was simply ground up into calcium carbonate powder for all kinds of uses. But the park was lovely, and the natural bridge was certainly something to see. Most importantly, Susan got to scratch her geological itch a bit, and hug a rock.

    I love you. You are my rock.

    We rode back home, and had a home lunch, and then got right back on our saddles and headed west to hike the Cascade Trail. It is a modest trail, mostly following alongside a brook, and leading up to a lovely waterfall. It being the dry season, the falls were hardly dramatic, but still picturesque:

    Not much water, but enough to cause falls

    After hiking back down to the elementary school where we parked our bikes, and riding back to our AirBnB, we cleaned up and headed out for dinner. We had planned to walk over to the nice Italian restaurant in town, but they are apparently only open Wednesday through Saturday, so we had to find an alternative. OpenTable suggested the Freight Yard Pub, and we called and made a quick reservation, as we were uncertain how crowded it might be. When we arrived (by car, and the only use of the car in town until then) about 15 minutes later, we were able to get a table on the patio right away (would have been fine even without a reservation). Susan’s steak tips were very good, and even the mixed vegetables accompanying the tips were notably flavorful. I enjoyed the fajitas I ordered, though something disagreed with my tummy later in the evening.

    The next morning, Monday, we went out for breakfast to Renee’s, which Scott had recommended. It was a lovely restaurant, with recently expanded outdoor seating, and we enjoyed a nice relaxed breakfast, before packing up and heading home. Really home.

    North Adams was a lovely, scenic little town in the Berkshires. We enjoyed the two days we spent there. The downtown area was rather depressed though. A non-scientific survey suggests about half the storefronts are closed. How much of that is due to the Covid-19 pandemic I don’t know. I only know it can’t have helped.

  • A Shard of the Truth

    Have you ever caught some bright spot of light out of the corner of your eye? You move your head around to try and catch another glimpse; to find its source, but it’s gone. Maybe you forget about it, or ignore it, then all of a sudden it’s there again. It’s elusive, like a rabbit sitting perfectly still in a leafy yard, which you can’t see until it moves. You can’t locate it by force of will, but every so often, you are given a glimpse.

    Maybe you’ve had such an experience, and through some persistence and/or luck, you were able to find the source. Or in truth, what had seemed to be the source, only now you are holding a sharp splinter of glass, one edge of which would occasionally catch the sunlight — when the wind moved the leaves just so and you were gifted with that elusive glimmer. This sharp piece of glass, while it seemed so incredibly bright, was never the actual source of that light, only a tiny reflector. And yet, a moment prior, it seemed like it must have been.

    For those of us who are religious, whose belief in a higher power defies explanation and logic, I think that is what our relationship to the Truth of God is ultimately like. Many of us have been taught, from an early age, how deeply unfathomable God is. And as children, we accept this, in part because as children there’s lots we don’t understand. But I think as we grow older, and believe ourselves to be wiser, we lose sight of that truth. We lose that innocence and begin to fool ourselves into thinking that we do have some real insight into the nature of God.

    The pinnacle (or nadir, if you will) of such thinking is what leads to religious wars. When we have convinced ourselves deeply enough that we understand God, and those “others” don’t; that God is on our side and not theirs; it permits, or some believe demands, unspeakable acts against those we choose to label “other.” While certainly not an inevitable outcome of organized religion, it is an ever-present danger of those human constructs.

    More subtle, but far more insidious, are the myriad ways in which we judge others because of our own religious beliefs and traditions. Perhaps ultimately this is, in sum, the greater evil — that in the name of God, whose Truth we can only dimly perceive, we can so easily condemn others, when in fact all that any of us can possibly lay claim to is the merest glimpse of that Truth. We would be wise to be extremely cautious about doing so. Creation has been around for billions of years; human civilization only a few thousand. We still have so much to learn.

    Certainly there are some beliefs that civil society in general, and essentially all major religions, share. Killing is wrong. Taking things that belong to someone else is wrong. But even these crimes, which at first appear to be very black and white, turn grey when you scratch at them even a bit. Killing someone who intends to drive a car bomb into a crowded mall is probably less sinful than killing someone because you don’t like their haircut. A wealthy tax collector pocketing some of the money they collected from someone poor is probably more sinful than someone stealing a loaf of bread from a store so their family doesn’t starve. Once you get beyond that and into issues of who is allowed to love whom and how, for instance, you’re no longer even standing on shaky ground, but rapidly sinking in quicksand.

    There is a song, Cathedral by Crosby, Stills & Nash, with the lyric,

    Too many people have lied in the name of Christ
    For anyone to heed the call
    Too many people have died in the name of Christ
    That I can’t believe it all

    And while I certainly don’t feel the same way, and in fact consider myself a Christian, I find myself sympathetic to the sentiment all the same.

    I believe that a sincere belief in a God that is powerful enough to have created the universe demands of us a great degree of humility. If one truly believes in such a God, then by definition one cannot “know” such a God, or even the will of such a God. My father explained to me long ago the difference between praying for something with the words “if it is Your will” vs. “if it is according to Your will” because in the former case, one could afterwards claim to know the will of God, whereas the latter is at least a degree removed. He had much finer language to describe the difference, of course. Still, fundamentally, it is about having the requisite humility in the sight of an awesome God. Human language, like human understanding, is woefully inadequate for dealing with God, but sincere believers must do the best we can.

    None of this is to say that I find no value in organized religion. On the contrary, I find great value in it, and participate enthusiastically. As humans, with all our inherent limitations, we must work within the confines of those limitations to come to know God to the extent we are able. If people were capable of fully knowing God, we would all agree on things, and there could be one True Religion. But if that were true, then we would be equal to God, rather than created in God’s image.

    Given these limitations, the fact that there are so many different religions in this world makes sense. Different people are given different facets of understanding about God. People’s minds work differently; the cultures that we were brought up in are different; people’s needs are different. In a world that is populated with a host of imperfect and unique beings, we cannot expect there to be a single True religion. At best, we each are given a tiny piece of the Truth. And occasionally, when we faithfully and humbly work and worship together, we might temporarily assemble those pieces into a larger artifact, and use that to perceive some representation of a larger piece of the truth.

    I take great comfort from Paul’s statement to the early Christians in Corinth,

    For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

    1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV)

    Which brings me back to my shard of glass. At best it reflects a bit of the True light; it is not the source. But once we pick it up and pocket it, and claim it as our own, it ceases to even reflect that light, and reverts to being a weapon, just as likely to hurt us as others.

  • Lead Blanket

    There is a heaviness.

    It’s always there.
    When I awake in the morning, I am still weary.
    I go about my day, I can make it.
    This isn’t so different
    I’ve worked from home for years, and yet
    It is … so very different.

    I go out with the dog for just a minute.
    When I return, I wash my hands like a madman,
    though I’ve. touched. nothing.
    Where is the virus? I don’t know. It’s
    probably not floating in the air.
    It could be on a surface!
    It can live for days on hard surfaces, you know!
    Maybe it’s lurking in that child next door.

    In fact it’s not pervasive.

    The uncertainty; the anxiety; the fear.
    that’s what’s pervasive.

    And it weighs me down.

  • The Sameness

    Today it is Monday, I leap from my bed,
    I bathroom and shower, wash the dirt from my head.
    I walk with the dog, and I survey our town,
    I brew some fresh coffee and then settle down.

    It’s a work day of course, that’s easy to know,
    I sit on the couch and log in, sip some joe.
    It’s quiet for now, the family still sleeping
    Just me and the dog, up the stairs she comes creeping.

    A little bit later, I break my night’s fast,
    The rest of my crew awakens at last.
    A videoconference to break up the morn,
    By noon I am feeling exhausted and worn.

    Some lunch then to nourish and get me to move,
    The dog needs some air, then it’s back to my groove
    By that I don’t mean my routine oh so sweet!
    But rather the one I’ve worn into my seat.

    The rest of the day soon evaporates too,
    The sky remains gray, leaving me feeling blue.
    We eat dinner together, and I clean up the mess,
    Sanitize best we can, then comes evening’s rest.

    Today it is Tuesday, I jump from my bed,
    I tinkle and shower, wash the dirt from my head.
    I march with the dog, and I survey our town,
    I brew some fresh coffee and then settle down.

    It’s a work day of course, that’s easy to know,
    I sit at the desk and log in, sip some joe.
    It’s quiet for now, the family still slumbers
    Just me and the dog, up the stairs she now lumbers.

    A little while later, I break the night’s fast,
    The rest of my family stirs at long last.
    A quick Google hangout to break up the morn,
    By ten I am feeling exhausted and worn.

    Some lunch then to nourish and get me to move,
    The dog needs to pee, then it’s back to my groove
    By that I don’t mean my endeavors so fair!
    But rather the one I’ve worn into my chair.

    The rest of the day soon dissipates too,
    The sky remains dull, leaving me feeling blue.
    We sup then together, and I clean up the mess,
    Sanitize best we can, then comes evening’s rest.

    Today it is Wednesday, which ends in a ‘y,’
    I sit on the pot and then shower and dry.
    I take out the dog, I look over my town,
    I make a pot of coffee and then settle down.

    It’s a work day of course, how could you not have seen?
    Back to the couch to ingest some caffeine.
    The moment is silent, the family still slumbers
    Just me and the dog, in the bed she encumbers.

    Sooner or later I must break the night’s fast,
    The rest of the household wakes at long last.
    Our team zooms together to break up the morn,
    By mid-day I am apoplectic and torn.

    I quickly assemble a lunch and then eat,
    The dog must go out, then it’s back to my seat.
    There’s still half a day of my work to be done,
    It’s hard to believe but I’m not having fun.

    The rest of the day is then shrouded in fog,
    The sky looks like rain, best bring in the poor dog.
    Our dinner we share, and I clean up the slop,
    Sanitize best we can, then it’s time for a stop.

    The pattern repeats, one day follows the last,
    Happy times it may seem exist just in the past.
    We took them for granted, those old carefree days,
    And now they recede to our past in a haze.

    Tenaciously keeping us tied to our homes,
    Which have been transformed into live catacombs,
    This COVID pandemic that keeps us apart,
    Can’t keep the love of our God from our heart!

    Easter is coming! 🙂

  • Pandemic Polemic

    May you live in interesting times. Not, it seems, an “old Chinese curse,” but a curse no less. The article linked above has a good quote from an 1898 speech delivered by Joseph Chamberlain, father of Neville Chamberlain:

    I think that you will all agree that we are living in most interesting times. (Hear, hear.) I never remember myself a time in which our history was so full, in which day by day brought us new objects of interest, and, let me say also, new objects for anxiety. (Hear, hear.)

    Seems fairly apropos today. We are dealing with a polarized electorate, due at least in part (I mean, it’s always been somewhat polarized) to the intentional creation of right-wing media outlets, purportedly to counter a “liberal bias” in the media at large. We are living under a presidency that is the natural outcome of that. A surprisingly substantial percentage of the population of the U.S. has been brainwashed to believe that the sole sources of truth are Fox News and the president himself. Woe to those who’ve bought into that fallacy, as it’s exceedingly difficult to extract people from cults. Common sense should tell you that a single source of news is dangerous, especially when that news source is in league with the government, but you know what they (Voltaire) say about common sense.

    While I consider myself liberal and progressive, I do not believe in a “my way or the highway” approach to governing, as the Tea Party movement of the GOP does, who advocate for a no compromise approach to governing — all conservative, all the time. I believe that governing necessarily requires compromise. America is a large and diverse country, and to believe that either party, which earns the sympathy of about half the population, should rule over the nation in the way they see fit just seems wrong.

    So add to this our current COVID-19 pandemic. Even given a (hypothetical) thoughtful and organized response to this challenge, it would have been difficult. But this president and his “news” network chose to minimize the danger, chose to politicize this struggle that does and will affect Americans of all stripes, and given the choice would opt for hypothetical short term economic gains over American lives. If you previously thought the president’s mendacity and ignorance were somehow harmless, it should be abundantly clear by now that they are quite literally harmful.

    I’m not at all sure I can claim to be hopeful, but I do believe there are opportunities for some positive things to come out of this terrible time. If people could take the following to heart, then something positive could come out of the coronavirus pandemic.

    1 People should realize that facts are supremely important. We need to be able to agree on facts. Not alternative facts, not Liberal facts or Conservative facts. Without that, we are adrift in a stormy sea of opinion and feelings. There is a place for both of those things, but they don’t take the place of facts.

    2 The news must be a place for facts. There cannot be be Right Wing news or Left Wing news. Having a Free Press has been vital to this country. The press cannot be an extension of the government, as Fox News is with the current administration. You don’t have to look far to see the evils that state sponsored media allow.

    3 Science is the rigorous process of seeking truth and facts. While it is not perfect, it is the best way that humans have come up with to discover fundamental truth. Science must not be politicized, and scientists must not be silenced to further any particular political agenda. The truth must come first; politics only comes after the truth is known. But again, science is a process for getting to the truth. Our understanding of truth improves over time by the use of science. Pointing out the errors of science only proves that the process works.

  • We’re an American Pant!

    As I started to write this, I searched for my previous post on the topic, and turns out I’ve not only written twice before but I already used a variant of the pun in the title. Sigh. Old habits…

    Anyway, what brought me back to the writing desk is that my two current pairs of black jeans are no longer black but gray, and lighter every year. While I almost always wear jeans, I do like some variety, so having both blue and black fills that little void quite nicely, thank you very much. Variety is the spice of life, after all. When I last purchased black jeans, they were from my perennial favorite, All American Clothing, but they were on clearance because they had chosen to discontinue them. That was four years ago.

    I did double check to see if All American had by some miracle decided to offer black jeans again, but alas, it seems not. So I searched once again for American made jeans. I certainly don’t make a point of buying everything American made, or even all my clothing, but as I wrote back in my first post on the topic, there was just something irksome about my previous favorite brand, Levis, building their brand image as uber-American, but then making their clothes overseas in the interest of greater profits. I guess that is ultimately the most American thing of all, but their greed made me want to find true American jeans.

    My searching led me to an article where someone claimed to have surveyed the landscape of American made jeans, and found the Best Jeans. It’s pretty clear that this was a paper survey, and no pants were harmed in their “research.”

    Here are the thirteen pairs of jeans they talk about. Note that if you purchased one pair of each of these, as you might for a true comparison review, you would have shelled out about $2500.

    BrandStyleCost
    American GiantDakota Straight148
    Bluer DenimMen’s Classic Straight178
    Bullet BluesRebel Indigo Tapered150
    Dearborn DenimTailored Fit65
    Freenote ClothRios250
    Imogene + WillieRigid235
    Jean Shop NYCRocker260
    Left Field NYCChelsea Cone Mills200
    Raleigh Denim WorkshopJones250
    Stovall & YoungThe Martin Copper185
    TellasonLadbroke Grove Slim Tapered230
    Texas JeansMen’s Original30
    Rising Sun Mfg. Co.New Rocker195

    I don’t know how one can make claims about “fit” without buying the jeans, or “value” in jeans over $200. They may be good jeans (or not), but unless they are going to last more that four times as long as my $50 (ok, now $55) All American Clothing jeans, they’re not that great a value. And who exactly has the money to spend on $200-300 per pair of jeans?! That can’t, or oughtn’t to be, a big market. Some of these companies offer payment plans for their pants. For any rational person, needing to finance your pants ought to send up lots of red flags.

    Happily, there were two brands that I learned about that are selling jeans for under $100 per pair. But why All American Clothing was excluded from this roundup, I don’t know. In the end, the only non-stretch black jeans I found were (ironically…) at Bluer Denim for $178, Bullet Blues for $160, and +$300 from Raleigh Denim.

    In my searching, there were a couple of interesting articles I came across that document the demise of American denim. I gather that the biggest mill that was producing selvage/selvedge denim was Cone Mills in North Carolina, and their mill was closed down at the end of 2017. But some brands apparently still have some stock, which may to a degree explain some of the outrageous costs. But not all of them, because some of these “American” made jeans are made with Japanese denim.

    TL;DR — no black jeans for me.

  • The Bug Hunt

    A few years ago, someone’s project came up on my Twitter Feed (or elsewhere — it’s been a while, and I don’t remember with certainty) that caught my interest. This happens with an alarming frequency, but most of the time I can stifle the interest sufficiently to avoid ordering all the parts. Our house is littered with projects that I have bought the parts for, but never completed. Projects that are born of my own fevered brain, especially those whose inspiration is a really nifty part or gizmo I’ve come across, are especially susceptible to this fate. And the Classroom Clock started out like many — I purchased the necessary parts, and then they sat there for a couple of years.

    But unlike so many others, this one did eventually come together. Probably at least in part because it was given as a Christmas gift to my wife, Susan, a middle school science teacher. It took some work to get it all together, but then the problem was that the kind of schedule it was originally programmed for didn’t really mesh well with the schedule at Susan’s school. Once I began to get familiar with the code, I realized I didn’t like it very well, so I rewrote most of it from scratch, in a somewhat more generalized way. This past year, I made some more minor updates to it, basically to make it easier to update the schedule and calendar from year to year. The official school clock seems to drift more than the Chronodot that’s at the heart of the Classroom Clock, so periodically I have to re-program the time. The original project didn’t have any means for user input, so there is no way to manually change the time on the clock. In fact, the only way to change the time is to reprogram the clock, and the only way to “synchronize” the time is to calculate exactly how long it takes to upload the code to the clock, and hard-code an appropriate time in the program. Argh!

    My contribution in this area was to write a completely separate program that can be uploaded to the clock, with which you can interactively set the time. Then, you reload the normal clock firmware which no longer attempts to set the clock at all, and everything is good.

    So one time in the fall, Susan’s students apparently wanted the clock to display in 24 hour time. This is of course an easy change. The Chronodot tracks time in 24 hour mode, so it was just a matter of not subtracting 12 from the hours.

    Recently, the delta between the official school clock and the Classroom Clock got to be large enough to be annoying, so Susan asked me to come adjust it. We ended up bringing the clock home, and it was approaching 9 p.m. when I got around to looking at it. I wasn’t paying attention to the actual time, but when I powered up the clock, it said something like 10:43! It had always been completely reliable, so I was mystified as to why it would display a completely random time like that. After a few minutes, I realized that the minutes were correct, but why were the hours off by 2? That was a bizarre mystery.

    A little while later, it finally dawned on me what the problem was. The clock might have read 10:43, but that’s only because it was in fact not designed for 24 hour time. The digit for tens of hours was not a full seven segment digit, but rather just the two rightmost vertical segments — an engineering shortcut if ever there was one! The code in the clock, when deciding what to display there, would turn both segments OFF if the hours were less than 10, and both segments ON otherwise. So, it was doing its darnedest to display 20:43, but couldn’t. And of course I was not thinking about the fact that it ought to be in 24 hour mode — I just saw 10:43 and eventually decided it was off by 2 hours somehow.

    I asked Susan if she’d ever noticed it being wrong like that before, and she recalled that perhaps she had. When pressed, she remember that it was during parent-teacher conferences, in the evening. One of the only other times anyone would have been looking at the clock after 19:59.

    It’s easy to see how a bug like this could cause lots of head scratching, because it would be easy to report the problem as “sometimes the clock is off by 2 hours” and leave it at that. And you’d be left poring over the code, trying to figure out how a simple math error could occur occasionally and seemingly randomly.

    In the end, we decided to set the clock back to 12 hour mode.

    I’ve long had a Version 2 of the clock in my brain. I’ve constructed it so that the “brains” of the clock can be transplanted while leaving the display parts intact. The brains for V2 will run on a chip that provides WiFi connectivity and runs microPython. It will therefore be able to:

    • query a timeserver on the internet for the actual time
    • periodically download a configuration file, which can have the calendar, schedule, and an offset to apply to the real time, so the clock can match the official school clocks

    The hope is to write the code in a flexible enough manner that the config file can provide lots of different ways of arranging schedules and using the “extra” digit to denote the period, or day, or whatever.

    And now I realize there ought to be a V2 of the display hardware as well, which would have a full digit for tens-of-hours to allow for 24 hour time, and also some form of explict PM indicator for 12 hour mode.

    Some day…

  • Geneva Wrapup

    All in all, we had a great trip to Geneva. This is (for us) a once-in-a-lifetime type of family vacation. We were immensely grateful to have Emma there as our guide and interpreter. It’s very clear that it’s possible to get around without any knowledge of French (or German or Italian, the two other common official languages of Switzerland, but Geneva is very much the French speaking part), but I always felt a bit on edge knowing I couldn’t readily communicate with anyone who couldn’t speak English.

    Geneva is a wonderful city, small enough to be manageable, but big enough to have all kinds of things to see and do. We only scratched the surface in that respect, but were beginning to have a feel for the geography of the city. Public transportation is great there, with buses and trams covering everywhere we needed to get to, but given its size, a lot of it is very walkable. We did not regret doing without a car.

    The weather might have been more pleasant, but it was winter after all, and it never really stopped us from doing anything. Our two trips to the flea market were disappointing to Emma, who wanted to show us its full glory, but rain and cold kept most vendors away. I might have preferred a warmer jacket, but we intentionally packed light. I was glad to have brought an umbrella.

    We got to try many of Switzerland’s famous dishes, among them Fondue, Raclette, and Rösti. We tasted the unique Rivella, and had many (but never enough) chocolates.

    AirBNB served us well, finding us an apartment that cost less than most of the hotels we were finding, and which provided us with a much better home base than a hotel. Most days we had a simple breakfast at home, ate a larger lunch, and came back to the apartment for a simple dinner. Money was fairly simple — we brought some Swiss francs with us, ordered through our local bank, and then used ATMs there when we needed more. There is a fee, of course. Both our Discover card, and one of our Visa cards, offered currency conversion with no fee, so we were able to use those for most purchases.

  • Travel Day 2

    Travel Day 2 means time to go home, of course, which is sad in a way, but in other ways we were ready. We woke early, finished packing and cleaning, then headed off to a local boulangerie for breakfast, something we hadn’t done on the trip previously. Emma met us there, and we had a nice meal, then went back to the apartment to grab our luggage and head to Gare Cornavin where we got on a train to take us to the airport. We checked our bags, and said goodbye to Emma. We had a noon flight out of Geneva, which was scheduled to get us to Montreal at 2:20 in the afternoon, after 8 hours of flying. We ended up leaving a little late, but arrived on time, and after a quick pass through customs, were ready and waiting for the final flight home. This too was a little late, but not enough to be bothersome. It was also overbooked, so they offered $400 to people willing to take the next flight. Thankfully, they only announced once, and we got to Boston around 5:20. We took the Silver Line to the Red Line, and Alexx was once again willing to help get us home. 30 hour days are long days.