In preparation for a return to active blogging I have torn down this server to the root and reinstalled everything clean.  I am hoping the errors and problems encountered for a while will go away now.  I think it was some sort of conflict between the ssl code and multiple security plugins, all of which I have simplified.  We will see ..read more

Since a number of folks have asked me via email: yes, I am OK and would someday like to get back to active long-form blogging (I still make a foray into twitter now and again).  However, things have been a bit crazy here.  A number of business owners over the last 2 years have approached me to buy their business and help with their retirement.  In several cases the request was humbling, as they turned down offers from other companies believing my company would best take care of their employees, customers, and partners. The net effect of all this is that, without really intending ..read more

I always enjoy Christmas day with the family.  But no matter how good a day we have together, it can never quite duplicate the sense of wonder when one is 8 or 9 and you come down the stairs to see the Christmas tree surrounded in gifts brought by Santa. This year, my daughter (an illustration student at Art Center in Pasadena, see her work on instagram @meliameyer) spent what must have been weeks creating 72 paper mache penguins as a surprise art installation for the family on Christmas morning.  Never since I was at a single digit age have I had so much fun waking up at Christmas ..read more

If you want a pointer towards the seasonality of the COVID virus, check out the NY Times per capita case map for the US for today:   (hat tip to boriquagato@substack.com) This looks like a weather map, not a map of Trump v. Biden voters or party affiliations or anything else.  COVID is seasonal, just like other respiratory viruses, and waxes and wanes in certain areas due to weather factors and how they affect the behavior of humans (eg how much the weather forces them indoors).  There appears to be no correlation here to mask wearing, lockdowns, quarantines, school closur ..read more

New California rules are set to effectively end the ability of RVers to use generators to produce power in California:   https://rvmiles.com/california-generator-ban/ I am sending this to a number of folks we work with in the USFS and California State Parks.  This generator ban has a potentially high impact on public campgrounds as many public campgrounds have no electrical connections for RV's.  The danger is that with this ban, and without investment on public lands, public campgrounds will lose relevance to a lot of the recreating public.  The recent ..read more

I won't go into all the details (one of many articles on this incident here), but the Yale Law School administration attempted to blackmail and intimidate one of their students over a party invitation he sent out, the main complaint seeming to be the party was sponsored by a right of center legal group (Federalist Society).  The audio, if you have time, is outrageous.  It is a good thing the student recorded it, because I am not sure many people would have believed the b-movie authoritarian dialog coming from the Yale executives. I had two reactions I don't see written very many plac ..read more

After a lot of complicated debugging, of course it was something simple -- the certificate failed to renew automatically.  Hopefully all is working correctly now Update:  Of course then I screwed something else up.  Some sort of problem with php vs. mysql versions.  Anyway, fixed now, hopefully ..read more

I was in Manhattan on a business trip from Seattle.  Ironically, I was running an aviation-related startup and in town to try to convince my investors to fund a new round based on improvements in the commercial aviation business.   Perhaps the least important death that day was of my company. Along with everyone in the country, we watched with horror though via direct line-of-sight from the penthouse hotel balcony of our wealthy investor.  What we did not know, but would learn over the following months, was how many friends we had that died that day, not surprising in r ..read more

This article by Glenn Greenwald on the ACLU's response to COVID is simply remarkable.  I won't even try to excerpt it.  Suffice it to say that barely a decade ago, the ACLU actually was concerned about individual rights being trashed by coercive government pandemic responses.  Their 2008 position paper can only be called "prescient."   They warned that with a state-sponsored coercive intervention program fanned by media fear porn, "People, rather than the disease, become the enemy."  No kidding.   But the ACLU has unfortunately become an operative of the ..read more

Since a number of folks have asked me via email: yes, I am OK and would someday like to get back to active long-form blogging (I still make a foray into twitter now and again).  However, things have been a bit crazy here.  A number of business owners over the last 2 years have approached me to buy their business and help with their retirement.  In several cases the request was humbling, as they turned down offers from other companies believing my company would best take care of their employees, customers, and partners. The net effect of all this is that, without really intending ..read more