Alternative Fact: Constitutional Amendments Are Easy

Avatar
by Lisa

Alternative Fact: Courtesy of Mnuchin on Fox News Sunday:

MNUCHIN: Well, it doesn’t need to be reality. And I’m not going to comment on what the president will do. But as you heard him say, he’s not planning on doing this again. I think — I think they should give the president a line item veto. These things should be looked at —

WALLACE: But that’s been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, sir.

MNUCHIN: Well, again, Congress could pass a rule, OK, that allows them to do it. But —

WALLACE: No, no, sir, it would be a constitutional amendment.

MNUCHIN: Chris, we don’t — we don’t need to get into a debate in terms of — there’s different ways of doing this.

Real Fact: It actually is a Constitutional amendment, and while there may well be many ways of “doing this” … they shouldn’t fare any better. That’s the basic principal of the three branches of government. Sadly, I suspect many in Trump’s administration could use a civics refresher. While the principal of a line-item veto could be rewritten in an altered form, the decision in Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417 (1998) wasn’t quibbling details. They found that the Executive branch altering legislation violates the Presentment Clause.

Green Springtime Muffins

Avatar
by Lisa

Makes 18 muffins in standard sized cupcake liners

DRY INGREDIENTS:

  • 2 cup flour, whole wheat
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt

WET INGREDIENTS:

  • 3/4 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup honey (I use a combo of maple syrup and honey)
  • 1 large banana
  • 6 ounce spinach
  • 1/2 cup butter, unsalted
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 F, and line a muffin pan with paper liners (or use silicone muffin cups sprayed with cooking spray).
  2. Combine all dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
  3. Melt butter. Blend the wet ingredients in a blender or food processor until completely pureed.
  4. Pour the puree into the dry ingredient bowl, and fold together gently until just combined. (Do not over-mix.)
  5. Spoon the batter into the muffin pan, and bake for 18-22 minutes, or until the muffins are firm to the touch on top, but not quite browning.
  6. Cool most or all of the way before serving.

What, me worry?

Avatar
by Lisa

Steven Mnuchin, one of Trump’s best people, is not worried about mass worker displacement due to automation. Said so at an event hosted by Axios. I’d love some of whatever he’s been toking.

In the near term (and evidently that’s all business execs or government types care about these days), sure automation and AI will drastically increase profitability. But I foresee the trend following a similar path as off shoring … great for individual businesses, but at some point capitalism mandates people have some money to buy the stuff and neither offshoring or wide-scale automation is sustainable. Offshoring at least provided alternate jobs for enough people to float enough debt to sustain the market near-term. We’ve got “knowledge workers”. But what percentage of those can be turned into AI programs? A significant number. I automate 80% of IT work. Chat bots could provide at least half of legal and medical consultations — the routine stuff. Robots make products, load the truck/train/drone that drives itself. Right to your door, or even inside if you have the Amazon lock. There aren’t a lot of jobs where some portion couldn’t be automated today. And budget cuts and productivity demands essentially require it. Some lucky few own doomed companies and profit for some time, another really lucky few are AI programmers and electronics engineers (although self-building AI/robots are totally a thing too). Maybe automation will beget a whole new industry that will provide good jobs for billions of people. Maybe the capitalist system will collapse and everyone will have more than they need (the Star Trek series, I guess). But I don’t know that I wouldn’t worry about the impact automation has on employment and the economy.

Enable OUD Changelog Without Replication Partner

Avatar
by Lisa

Since the Sun Directory Server Enterprise Edition went the way of, well, Sun, we’ve migrated to the Oracle Unified Directory 11g platform for the company’s pure LDAP directory. There is an Oracle Identity Management application that reads the LDAP changelog to ingest user lockout events. In production, our servers replicate with a couple of partners to provide capacity and high availability. In development / sandbox, environments … not so much. But the IDM platform still needs to read the changelog.

Oracle’s documentation tells me to enable replication … which, great, I’ve got to bring up a second, off-port, directory instance and monitor for replication failures just to get a changelog. The site does say “By using this method, you can conceivably set up replication on a standalone server, which will enable you to have access to an ECL on a standalone server.” … conceivably, but it would be nice if they’d mention how. Since all of their documentation for using the dsreplication binary includes a partner server and valid credentials over yonder … that’s a bit of a bust.

But I’ve finally worked out a technique for enabling replication just enough to get the changelog created without having to provide valid credentials on a foreign host with which replication will be established.

./dsconfig -h localhost -p 4444 -D "cn=directory manager" -j ~/pwd.txt -X -n create-replication-server --provider-name 'Multimaster Synchronization' --set replication-port:8989 --set replication-server-id:1 --type generic
 
 
./dsconfig -h localhost -p 4444 -D "cn=directory manager" -j ~/pwd.txt -X -n create-replication-domain --provider-name 'Multimaster Synchronization' --set base-dn:o=windstream --set replication-server:localhost:8989 --set server-id:1 --type generic --domain-name o=windstream
Volia, make changes and we’ve got stuff under cn=changelog.

On Cambridge Analytica

Avatar
by Lisa

A friend of a friend said she doesn’t mind her personality profile being tracked so FB can suggest things she likes. Why does everyone think it is so bad when she’s stumbled upon many gems from web series, shopping sites, particular products that she highly enjoys. Well, I have two reasons.

Firstly, some people are making a tactical decision to trade personal information for access to technology platforms they enjoy. There are a handful of people I knew in Uni who I thought were wonderful people, but just lost track of over the years. And it’s nice to meet them. There are special-interest groups for vegans, 3d printers, sewists, soap makers, and chicken owners that provide a lot of useful information to me. As an informed decision to share some basic demographic information & whatever FB can glean from my random musings in exchange for communicating with old friends and interest-based communities … I *don’t* think it is a bad deal (or I would not have an account). Heap-o people making something other than an informed tactical decision, though, isn’t exactly in my “good” column. And some third party having information about me because, although I have the platform ‘stuff’ disabled on my FB account, a friend downloaded an app … that contravenes my specifically selected privacy settings. And feels like a violation of my trust.

More generally, I don’t care for psyops tactics trying to separate me from my money (or, in this case, my vote serving my real interests). That’s what all these data analytics seem like to me. I opt out of interest based ads on my computer and cell phone. New companies come online and things I’ve thought about buying and decided against once again start stalking me across the Internet. And, yeah, I’ve discovered products that actually INTERESTED me (not always, advertising steaks to a vegetarian is a major profiling fail). But I don’t need, nor I particularly WANT, to spend more money on ‘stuff’. If I have an obvious need for something in my life, I either make something myself or research product options.

I’m not a huge fan of Pinterest for a similar reason – I have a large backlog of projects I want to make. I *really* don’t need an algorithm to look at my projects and suggest additional ones I may like. Yeah, I *do* like them. Until my time machine comes online, I’ve only got so many hours to spread out between family, work, friends, caped crusading, hobbies, research. And I’m quite adept at finding *new* projects when I’ve got some spare time or have a particular need.

I see interest based advertising – online, mailing, any source – the same way I think about toys in the cereal aisle at the supermarket. I don’t object to toys on principal. I object to placing them in a location my kid is going to see because young kids (the target demo, based on toys available) are prone to public screaming fits when they don’t get their way. And 2$ to avoid an unpleasant and stressful situation doesn’t seem too awful when you’re already tired and just want to GET HOME. When the yarn I already decided wasn’t worth it (or decided against the whole project) … being asked to continually reassess this decision is an attempt to reach me at a time when I’m less prone to make rational decisions.

So while “bad” isn’t the word I’d elect to use … it’s the same kind of underhanded as piping O2 into intentionally windowless casino to keep gamblers playing longer. Or maybe it is bad, because the other example I think of is chemically engineering cigarettes and processed food to be more addictive.

Fedora 26 => 27 & PHP

Avatar
by Lisa

Since I like to discover major changes by upgrading my server and then realizing something doesn’t work (well “like” might be too strong a word … but I certainly do it) … I randomly upgraded to Fedora 27 without reading any documentation on changes. Aaaand we have PHP! Evidently mod_php has gone away and I’m going to have to figure out how to use FastCGI (php-fpm). Luckily there’s a quick way to switch back to mod_php in the interim:

/etc/httpd/conf.modules.d/00-mpm.conf

# Uncomment this line to use mod_php
LoadModule mpm_prefork_module modules/mod_mpm_prefork.so

# worker MPM: Multi-Processing Module implementing a hybrid
# multi-threaded multi-process web server
# See: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/worker.html
#
#LoadModule mpm_worker_module modules/mod_mpm_worker.so

# event MPM: A variant of the worker MPM with the goal of consuming
# threads only for connections with active processing
# See: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/event.html
#
# Commend out this line to use mod_php
#LoadModule mpm_event_module modules/mod_mpm_event.so

/etc/httpd/conf.modules.d/15-php.conf

<IfModule !mod_php5.c>
<IfModule prefork.c>
LoadModule php7_module modules/libphp7.so
</IfModule>
</IfModule>

<IfModule !mod_php5.c>
<IfModule !prefork.c>
# ZTS module is not supported, so FPM is preferred
LoadModule php7_module modules/libphp7-zts.so
</IfModule>
</IfModule>

 

Pencil Pouch, Part 3

Avatar
by Lisa

I finished Anya’s pencil pouch last night – she loves it!

 

With a special surprise:

 

She put her little toy cat into it to bring to kindergarten. A move that is especially goofy because I used to bring a toy cat to school with me (not my teacher’s favourite thing I did!) too.

When attaching the lining fabric, I left my 5″ gap along one of the hidden gussets. This means the generally visible interior seam is beautifully finished.

 

 

While the side gusset hides the hand-stitching in the gap:

 

Just like Anya’s backpack, I think the piping gives the pouch a finished look.

 

 

There’s *ALWAYS* A Worse

Avatar
by Lisa

I thought James Comey was fired in about the worst way imaginable – giving a speech at a remote office, he sees a TV with a banner announcing her termination and thinks it’s a joke. Which … I know a lot of people with that sense of humor. I remember putting an etc\hosts record to direct someone’s company home page to an internal sandbox web server, cloning over the internal home page project, and editing it to announce the company’s merger with some big competitor and the immediate closing of the HQ office. Screen grabbing CNN, throwing on a new banner, then playing the video back isn’t a stretch.

Then Rex Tillerson, who set out to prove experience negotiating mineral rights contracts is the same as negotiating international political situations where everyone isn’t getting what they want, read his boss’s tweet and learned he was terminated. This is what you get when 48% of voters want a guy whose fame, really, was firing people (in new and dramatic ways) on TV.

Pencil Pouch, Part 2

Avatar
by Lisa

I finished quilting the pencil case exterior with a light blue thread. This thread from Missouri Star Quilt Company is fantastic. My machine is finicky, and some types of thread result in an ugly snarl on the bobbin thread side. There are a few tricks that help — proper thread tensions, realizing the bobbin thread comes off the right-hand side of the bobbin when it is inserted into the machine — but some threads are basically unusable. These stitches, however, are beautiful on both sides.

 

Next up – making the piping! If you have bias strips left over from other projects, homemade piping is easy and super cheap. I had about a yard and a half of blue checked double-fold bias tape from a quilt. I unfolded the tape to make a bias strip folded in half length-wise. I then took white 550 paracord (also on-hand from another project, otherwise you can find cotton cord that’s meant to be used in piping) and encased it in the bias strip. I pinned through the top of the cord to secure it to the fabric then used the edging/zipper foot to stitch along the cord, creating a loose piping. I hand-stitched the cord ends (paranoia, mostly … but it would really suck if the cord started to come out of the fabric casing!). The piping fabric shouldn’t be super taut at this point, but there shouldn’t be wrinkles or puckers. When the piping is inserted, the stitching will be closer to the paracord and make a nice firm piping.

Finished in part 3.

Pencil Pouch

Avatar
by Lisa

We got Anya’s first school list, and it’s got the expected dozen glue sticks and half dozen boxes of crayons. But it also has a pencil pouch for art class. Seems like an opportunity to make something cute and practical. Perusing the Internet for pencil cases, I happened across a pattern for a zippered pencil pouch.

I wanted to use the flower presser foot to stitch flowers around the pouch, but mine doesn’t work! The throw on the sewing machine arm isn’t long enough to advance the ring. I quickly drew out a diamond pattern.

And am stitching it with a blue thread to match the piping fabric.

Continued in part 2.