::::: : the wood : davidrobins.net

My name is David Robins: Christian, lead developer (resume), writer, photographer, runner, libertarian (voluntaryist), and student.

This is also my son David Geoffrey Robins' site.

Last looks at Duvall

News ·Tuesday September 1, 2009 @ 23:03 EDT (link)

We finished packing everything out of our house in Duvall tonight, and cleaning (vacuuming and some scrubbing; the bed had a lot of fluff from our blue heated blanked under it… Honey was rolling it into balls). Although the house had some annoyances—having to mow the lawn and take care of weeds and bamboo, for example—it was a peaceful and spacious place to live in a nice neighborhood and we had a good three years there.

We closed on the house in December 2005, but didn't move in until February 2006: we rented the place back to the sellers, James and Heather Morris (and family) for a few months. Moving in took a single small Penske truck, and we were helped by LukeWill, WillBr, and MRScott (none of whom work in Word any more), ordering pizza to the house afterwards. We were moving from apartments near Microsoft (4850 156th Avenue NE; I think they're now Onyx, although they used to be Ravenswood at the Park). Leaving took a couple trucks and several car trips; most of what we picked up came from the damage we suffered in the 2006 windstorm, since damage items were replaced by insurance but we kept most of them anyway (just recently getting rid of a damaged wardrobe and some bedside tables).

We closed on the sale September 2, without losing too much in this down market (although closing costs are killer… why should the state get any percentage of a house, or any other good, when it's sold?). We moved to an apartment on Avondale Way, cutting down the commute considerably (no more Novelty Hill, and Avondale isn't so bad). We've shuffled things around so that we have room to move now, too. Change happens; this change is a good stepping-stone.

Farewell, 27303 NE 155th Place, Duvall, WA 98019.

Books finished: Danny, the Champion of the World.

DVDs finished: Sliders: The First and Second Seasons, M*A*S*H: Season Nine.

Setting up the new place

News, Technical ·Monday August 31, 2009 @ 21:05 EDT (link)

It's been a long weekend, even without taking Monday off.

Almost everything is moved out of our spacious house in Duvall now, with only a few items remaining in the freezer that we'll collect tomorrow.

On Saturday we got a Penske truck (same as the week before, but a 16-footer this time, 10' shorter and perhaps 2' lower, and gas, not diesel) and packed it with the remainder of the "big but I can lift by myself" things: the TV, its stand, some old side tables that we're selling, boxes of kitchen items, clothes, chairs, desks, etc. We picked up the truck at 1000, started packing at 1040, and finished at 1530. We drove to our new place on Avondale in Redmond and unpacked from about 1630-1900. We dropped the truck off at 1945; since it was after hours we stopped in Sunday to get our receipt, and ended up talking with the owner for a while, about guns, training, storage, etc.: he used to be a federal police officer in California.

Even with the hand cart, that was a lot of packing and lifting. And afterward, there was even less space to move around than before, if that was possible. Sunday was spent trying to move things to their place, putting our bed together, setting up a desk in the spare bedroom (it was a bit like solving one of those sliding block puzzles, except to start with we didn't have the empty space). Mattresses were moved, desks were assembled, etc. I also put the TV up, with all the cables that entailed. Since we ended up being up until about 0630, I decided to take Monday off. The cable guy came at 0830, so we couldn't sleep until after he left. We ended up sleeping until 1430. There was still plenty to do in the kitchen (mostly Honey), and setting up computers (me). The TV and computer both have a perfect rat's nest of cables behind them.

The place still has pretty tight corners, but we can move around in the kitchen; we both have computers set up, and I'm able to RAS into work; the TV works, and the Wii is set up. As we put things away/sell or give things away/downsize/pack or throw away boxes, the place will become more a normal apartment and less a crammed warehouse.

The new Internet (Comcast business, instead of Broadstripe) seems faster, but the setup is massively braindead. Instead of giving me the static IP, I was given a local (10.1.10.1) address, but it required JavaScript and frames, so I couldn't see it from the server machine and had to temporarily configure a machine with a GUI (liberty) to connect to view the settings: completely braindead. They should realize that not everyone using their service is going to be a twit with a sole Windows box. Nor do people want to be forced into using their NAT, but fortunately it and DHCP can be turned off; there's a good article about how to fix it up so a machine (or router) can be configured to run on the static IP without interference.

Books finished: The Politically Incorrect Guide To the South.

DVDs finished: Coupling: The Complete 1st Season.

Downsizing and optimizing

Technical, Media ·Wednesday August 26, 2009 @ 20:12 EDT (link)

Going from a (fully furnished) four bedroom house into a two bedroom apartment is like trying to fit quarts into pint bottles. Right now the living room is full of couches and a few stacked coffee/end tables, and there are piles of books, DVDs, and boxes everywhere.

Minimalism has been one of my goals for a while (ideas from herbalcell): yet we still have more furniture than when we arrived in Duvall. Part of it was due to the tree falling, and insurance only covering actual replacement goods: although I still could have considered a store with more separable (disassemblable?) items such as Ikea. It's somewhat academic when there's plenty of space—do it for the clean look, do it to know you only have things you need and use—but shifting to a small apartment as we are, downsizing is vital. It's also important if we ever pack a truck again for a longer distance move: far more important than this move, where we took advantage of the ability to make multiple trips, since we only moved nine miles.

We always take the opportunity of moving to go through our stuff and see if we still need everything. A few things we've done to help with the clutter: I'm sure I'll think of more things to give us more livable space, and maybe even give us enough room to throw a party or two (or at least have guests).

Windows retrieves data from crufty old disk

News, Technical ·Wednesday August 26, 2009 @ 14:16 EDT (link)

I was unable to access my old SyQuest SyJet 1.5Gb removable cartridge drive using Linux (the drivers are no longer maintained) but my Windows machine at work (no parallel port at home except on one Linux machine) was able to access it, after I followed a suggestion about enabling the parallel port interrupt (I didn't need to switch from ECP to EPP, and Device Manager detected it as an ECP port, whatever that is). Far be it from me not to give credit where due: in this case Windows proved superior to Linux.

I actually had two of the removable disks: one was apparently given to me by Gerian Sloetjes, since it contained some of his assignments such as a biography of Agatha Christie, some book journal entries, and a few POD and Skillet MP3s. The other is mine, and contained some old games, MP3s, and a backup of my old BBS, Death's Vortex, and a few issues of the Christian newsletter I used to produce and edit, The Firm Foundation. I copied it all over to my USB drive (to be backed up at home to my external USB drive and to DVD), and plan to sell or give away the SyJet drive.

BVTs: infrastructure from the stone age

News, Technical, Work ·Tuesday August 25, 2009 @ 19:18 EDT (link)

Whenever I get assigned a "BVT Blocking" bug (BVT is some sort of test—maybe Basic Validation Test?), I assume I'm going to lose a day of work. The infrastructure for investigating is so baroque and poorly coordinated that even if test is kind enough to hand over a held machine (or two, in the case of co-authoring client-server tests), if it's not possible to verify the problem on that machine, the window is gone, and it'll take another few hours to hold another one. Of course these bugs never repro deterministically on a regular machine (or at least test doesn't attempt to do so without encouragement).

So it was unfortunate that I got assigned two BVT bugs today (one of which I passed on to EB; he was in later than usual), plus another "half" bug which involved a memory leak that another group whose name looks a lot like UEX was trying to pin on us (nice try; investigate your own object leaks, until you can show Word's leaking it; this object had a reference count in the 300s under normal use, so finding a missing Release is a needle-in-a-haystack exercise; I had AddRef and Release dump callstacks whenever they were called, and it didn't seem like co-authoring was doing anything untoward so I passed it back with my compliments). Anyway, back to the original bug: it did at least have symbols, but no sources. And apparently they can't hold crash bugs. So it was just sitting in WinDbg with a "trace" file, whatever that is. I can certainly understand using gdb or dbx in a Unix command-line environment (I'm familiar with both), but in an environment where most developers' standard environment is Visual Studio, for the !@#%ing love of all that is holy, provide a Visual Studio remote debug connection at the crash or assertion point, with the correct sources and symbols: that's all I ask. For now. Later on, they can work on making a "scenario" a less inscrutable pile of opaque excretions and make it easier to run and debug on a local machine.

I do hear interesting things about something called iDNA, though, and plan to see what I can learn about that. (There doesn't seem to be much else about it on the web, so I won't go into detail about what it is in case it's proprietary.)

Since I'm ranting, a certain project area with which I am involved (mentioned once already in this note) has turned into a real pig's breakfast. Word is a cranky old application to begin with, but it doesn't help to add to it a horrible mess that rhymes with Smirkspaces. I pray this whole kit and caboodle doesn't go the way of past attempts at collaborative authoring.

I was happy this morning. I was envisioning plowing through a stack of bugs, since finally the broken servers started to work better (than last miserable week); I had a decent build on both machines; things were looking up, bugs were to be slain, progress was to be made, and… a BVT bug landed on my plate and I lost a day.

All pigs saddled and ready to fly. May tomorrow be a better one.

Duvall to Redmond with a truck

News, Bad Drivers ·Sunday August 23, 2009 @ 11:09 EDT (link)

WA-203 at Big Rock Road, at 2020. WA 496 YPK, small black car (Geo?) Sahara Pizza deliveryperson stops for a while, sees no cops, drives through the red light. It doesn't go green for another 30 seconds. They're RTB, not trying to get someone's pizza out (not that that would excuse it). Pretty silly.

Saturday was the day of the big move, that is, I wanted to get all the items I couldn't move by myself from our house in Duvall over to the Redmond apartment. We were up fairly late disassembling our bed, taking drawers out, and ensuring there was a clear path to move everything out. I'd also offered our old wardrobe on the Microsoft free stuff alias, and someone picked it up Friday evening around 2000; I helped carry it out.

We left 0830 Saturday morning: Honey dropped me to the Redmond Penske pick-up (at Willows and 87th), and then went to pick up Tim at his place in Bellevue (at 0915) and Ali at the Redmond library (at 0930). I got the truck back by about 0930—it wasn't too hard to drive; I may have even had a 26' truck on the Memphis to Boston move. Honey arrived at about 1000 as expected, and Amani and Thomas showed up about 1030.

Loading went pretty much as planned (I'd worked out the larger items in a scale diagram in Word). The hand truck was very helpful for items such as the washer, dryer, and treadmill. Tim rode in the truck with me to Redmond, Honey took Ali, and Amani and Thomas drove themselves. Unloading went faster than loading: no steps (ground floor apartment), plus a few of Tim's friends lived at the same complex and came by to help. All told we finished by 1400, a total of four hours, which is what I had estimated. It's a huge amount of work and I appreciate those that helped very much. And next time, I expect I'll hire people, even if I do have to pay for their truck to sit around (since I'll be loading a long-distance Penske truck and most movers charge for their truck).

We hung out for a while—Amani and Thomas left since they were fasting and I'm sure they were very tired: they couldn't even have water. Then we went over to Tim's place, parked the truck in a side street, and Katt returned from jogging. We watched a few episodes of the BBC show Coupling and then headed to All Purpose Pizza for dinner (it opens at 1600). We got a large sourdough pizza with caramelized onions, basil, garlic, and bruschetta, and a smaller regular pepperoni pizza.

I had a small headache at Tim and Katt's; after we got home, it was worse and I was also feeling nauseous. I lay down for a bit but eventually had to throw up, and then slept several hours and felt much better. I'm not sure if I got some sort of food poisoning (I hadn't last time); I don't seem to have the stomach virus; perhaps I just ate too much (5 slices of pizza). That put the kibosh on plans for making one or two more runs with the truck.

I got up at 0715, swept out the truck, folded and stacked the furniture pads, wrapped the straps around the hand truck, and filled the tank with diesel on Avondale. Being mindful of the warnings posted at the Penske office about getting stuck in narrow turning areas and $300 towing fees, I made sure I had plenty of space to turn around, using the Arco down the street and parking the truck where I picked it up. It's the mileage charges that get you ($0.99/mile, we went 82 miles); the truck itself was $79.99, 12 furniture pads $10, hand truck $10, came about $210 overall. Perhaps hiring a truck and movers wouldn't have been much worse. I plan to get a 16' truck Friday to move everything else, and will probably take the day off work.

Books finished: Who Killed the Constitution?.

Holes in the "Anti-libertarian FAQ"

Political ·Thursday August 20, 2009 @ 22:16 EDT (link)

I happened across this "anti-libertarian FAQ" and noticed where the main problems lie, so thought I'd make a note. They're fairly early on: most of what follows derives from the first, and the picking apart of quotes is just a red herring.

#5 "Taxation is theft" contains the core of the error, although it has one escape hatch: no property (his "property is theft"). If people want to go in that direction, that'd be fun (the anarcho-capitalists might be in favor of it too), but I doubt that many people do. But it is an out.

If we can agree that people can validly hold property, then we could start a libertarian society with property ownership as it is now (if you want to use something other than the status quo as a basis, you'd need to justify it, like libertarianism does for its precepts; for example, you could argue that inheritance is an unfair way to get anything, so anything inherited, and any gains thereby, should be returned to a common pool; there would be practical issues with that step of course).

The next attempt to justify taxation is as a "social contract" which later points (#6-20) attempt to uphold. The video "The Social Contract Defined and Destroyed in Under 5 Minutes" is very helpful to debunk the validity of said "social contract" in most ways. The remaining excuse is that parents have accepted it for their children, who can leave when they reach the age of majority (who gave parents that right, if it exists?… yeah, the government), or that naturalized citizens (or military) have sworn to uphold the Constitution, and, well, the government is the Constitution so you must serve them until end of days. No, no, not really. The Constitution is accepted, not a particular statist interpretation thereof. Certain things are axiomatic (e.g. property ownership can be derived from ownership of self in various ways, e.g. Rand's 'A=A' formation).

Without a voluntary contract, the whole rest of the "FAQ" unravels like a cut-through ball of string. (For example, if the government then has no contract, they have no right to taxes, or at least redistributionist taxes—if they provide services that you use or have contracted for, they should be paid fair value—so they are then initiating force to take them—not retaliating by enforcing a contract, etc.)

Giving stuff away

News ·Monday August 17, 2009 @ 21:01 EDT (link)

I've given away the following items found while organizing to move:


Box of 9mm brass
Picture frame
Wardrobe
GRE preparation
15" CRT monitor


The brass was collected over more than a year of range trips and went to a reloader. The frame has some dings, from when it fell off the wall due to a percussive event; we replaced it. The wardrobe was in the house when the tree fell in the big storm; we'd been using it as shelves (one drawer broke and the doors are off, but I have them). The GRE books are a few years old, but I got pretty decent scores using them and they got me into the UW PMP program. Nobody wanted the monitor (for obvious reasons… someone was giving away an old 21" the same day: too old, too small), so it's being returned to its maker. I advertised them all on the "Free Stuff" discussion list at work. So far only the brass has been picked up; I'll go to second requesters if they aren't picked up. I also gave away a small container of hazelnut-flavored instant coffee (left it outside my office marked "free"). I also have a couple cameras that I want to sell (Nikon F90X, film, and Sony DSC-F707, digital). I also have a couple of end tables (with cabinets on top) for or old bed set, one a little damaged by the storm, that I may also give away. At least at moving time, stuff is a pain in the ass.

Books finished: Meltdown.

DVDs finished: Indiana Jones: The Adventure Collection.

Apartment hunting in Redmond #2

News ·Wednesday August 12, 2009 @ 20:55 EDT (link)

We went looking for apartments today: Honey had made a list, although we only ended up looking a three of them: The Lodge at Redmond Ridge, Avalon at Bear Creek, and the Onyx (on 156th, close to main campus—used to be Ravenswood at the Park). We got a good price on a two bedroom, two bath ground floor (makes moving easier and keeps cooler) unit at Avalon at Bear Creek, on Avondale Road, since the last tenant had left early and opted to pay out the lease, giving us two free months which we opted to amortize.

It is a first step. We plan to move with a big Penske truck on the 22nd (help is of course appreciated; pizza and beer and other food and drink are in the offing).

I had planned to take the day off, but we ended up finding a place so quickly I just went in a little later, and stayed late (but it was workaholics anyway).

(This is #2 because we were looking for apartments in Redmond in 2005 after arriving, too.)

Books finished: The Politically Incorrect Guide To the Civil War.

Visiting the Pollocks in eastern Washington

News ·Sunday August 9, 2009 @ 23:37 EDT (link)

We left here around 1600 Friday (I worked from home and started early), and got to their place around 2200. They go to sleep early, so we talked to Uncle Dave for a while and then read a little and went to sleep ourselves.

On Saturday we got up at 0630 and went to a garage sale, and then after we got back showered etc. and had breakfast, heading out again at 0930 to their land (40 acres) in Idaho, about an hour away, meeting up with some other families. A neighbor had had some free gravel dumped on the entry road, so it was impassable except by truck (they have a Ford F350). The plan was to pick huckleberries, but after an extensive hike through the woods we found the huckleberries that had been so plentiful the week before were all but gone. So, we turned around and headed back on a U.S. Forestry Service road near their property (their land backs onto National Forest land). There are two gates (wire fence and wood poles) and a narrow bridge (made of an old railroad car; it's narrow enough that someone has to get out to direct the truck over it, although they have plans to eventually widen it).

The other people with us had planned to go on and hike nearby, but we headed home, where cousin Will was waiting for us: he hadn't been able to come due to a sprained ankle from playing ultimate Frisbee.


We played a lot of Euchre: Will and I won a best of three against Honey and Sarah 2-1; Sarah and I won against Uncle Dave and Will; then I sat out for one; then Will and I came back and beat Sarah and Uncle Dave… IIRC.


Terrible driver; 2105-2115, I-90W near mile 50; WA 890 SVX, powder blue Toyota Sienna minivan. We watched him recklessly change lanes almost right into another vehicle, traveling at over 70 mph, and he was driving dangerously and unpredictably in general, and not really getting ahead by doing it.

On Sunday we went to their church, the Pullman Evangelical Free Church, for a show and a sermon. After lunch we played some more games, and left at 1650. We got home just before 2200, due to wretchedly horrible I-90 traffic. In future I'll know to go in the right lane: it seems that all the fools that can't drive automatically get into the left lane when traffic slows, no matter how ill-equipped they are for driving anything but a go-kart.

Books finished: The Anti-Federalist, Big Enough To Be Inconsistent.

DVDs finished: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Ring, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

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