This is a story about the old vs the new. In my case, it was about an Amazon Echo Dot generation 2 vs an iPhone 16 Pro Max. Let me explain…

I’ve been going around and cleaning out old items around my home, especially unmarked boxes that for whatever reason got stuffed into various corners, where they remained for many a year. When I say many, I’m talking about going back to when I was still fully employed. One day while going through one of those mystery boxes I found an Amazon Echo Dot generation 2 unopened in its box. I have no idea when I purchased it, although it had to be after October 2016 when this model was released. I do have an idea how it was placed into the box I found it in. Back then I was traveling a bit and and was very busy in my job, so we reached out to a cleaning company to get someone into our house to help my wife keep the place clean. One of the cleaning people had a bad habit of “temporarily” placing items into boxes in order to clear an area to clean. That cleaning person had a very bad habit of not telling us she’d done that, and it was but one reason she was eventually sent on her way. I thought I’d found everything she’d stashed away, but I was wrong with this particular item in that box.

We already have a number of Alexa/Amazon items in the house, although we barely use them except to play the occasional tune or to verbally ask Alexa to turn off the lights in one room of our house. We have three advanced models that can display the time, so I have those scattered around as heavily over-engineered digital clocks (and we’ll occasionally set a wakeup alarm with them). I decided to plug in this old/new stock Echo Dot and get it integrated our home network. That’s when my problems stated.

I have the latest Alexa app installed on my iPhone, and have had it on all my iPhones going back at least to Christmas 2016, which is when I believe I purchased this one. I use the Alexa app to bring these Echo devices up and integrated into our home network. Usually when I get a new Echo Dot it gets almost immediately powered on and set up, but apparently not this time. Now I was faced with using the latest iPhone with the latest Alexa app trying to integrate an Echo Dot from late 2016, nearly nine long years ago. A lot of technical advancement happens in a nine year period. And that might have been my problem.

With Alexa up and running on my iPhone and this Echo Dot up and waiting for integration, I found I couldn’t add it to my Alexa network using my iPhone 16, no matter how many times I tried. The iPhone with Alexa would not detect this Echo Dot. I wasted a week of evenings trying one solution after another, discovering yet again during this process that the Internet is full of useless advice. I gave up with the iPhone and was seriously considering tearing the Echo Dot open just to see if I could repurpose the electronics.

And then I reached into my collection of old Pixel Android phones and pulled out a Pixel 4a. I purchased a Pixel 2, a Pixel 3x, and two Pixel 4as back in 2020 for a project because they’d been heavily discounted by Amazon of all places. I’m talking half price or less. I picked the 4a because I like its small compact design. It was running Android 13, which is where Google stopped updating the device (which I can thank my luck stars). I could still install from Google Play so I installed the same version of Alexa on the Pixel 4a as I had on my iPhone 16. I then sat down and tried to bring the Echo Dot up using that Pixel 4a. Low and behold it worked the first time. That Echo Dot is now fully integrated in with the rest of my Amazon Echo devices.

So here’s the question. How is that that an “obsolete” Pixel 4a running Android 13 but the same version of Alexa that my latest and greatest iPhone 16 Pro Max, running the latest and greatest iOS version, and with the same version of Alexa as found on Google Play, can properly communicate with the Echo Dot generation 2 when my iPhone 16 can’t?

I have never regretted an Apple device purchase until now. I still wish I had my old iPhone 11 Pro Max, and I would still have it except the 11’s mobile radio was beginning to fail with dropped calls and an inability to be cleared unless the handset was power cycled. I couldn’t have that. The 16’s mobile radio is reliable (so far), so I should be thankful for that. But there have been enough aggravating quirks while operating the 16 that I wish I could trade it in for something completely different. But then I read the horror stories of Android handset problems, especially after an Android software update, and I just have to shake my head. I think it’s all been enshitified now. I need to start looking for much older Pixel handsets, such as perhaps the Pixel 5, or maybe the Pixel 6. Something old but reliable, like the 4as.

Today’s handsets and mobile operating systems are a classic Hobson’s choice.

Late Saturday night (1 February 2025) while I was out walking Annie, I happened to look up and noticed the planet Venus next to a new crescent Moon. It’s hard seeing anything like this where I live because of the humidity and haziness of he surrounding air as well as the light pollution created by neighborhood street lights and the near-by Universal Studios Orlando theme park. Nevertheless I was thrilled to see it, and when I got back home I selected my Panasonic Lumix G9.2 and put the Olympus Zuiko 2.8/40-150 PRO zoom on the front with the 1.4 teleconverter, opened the zoom up to f/2.8, zoomed out to 150mm, or 225mm with the teleconverter, for an effective focal length of 450mm. And then I hand held the assembly to take the photo.

Not bad for an amateur to be sure. And another photo of the wonders of the skies above my head.

Annie is living the absolute best time of her life right now. That’s not to say she wasn’t living well before, but there’s nothing like being the only dog in the family. She gets all the attention. She gets two healthy walks per day when I’m not sick or the weather is good. She goes out into the back yard to watch while I work, then comes back into the house when I come back in. She is a living garden gnome.

She is a sweet little creature.

These past few weeks have been something of a downer for me. Since at least 8 January, I’ve been battling a upper respiratory virus that has pretty much knocked me for a loop; tired, week, nose running like an open faucet, coughs, chills, etc. I went to an after hours clinic ten minutes away from where I live, and they were able to determine I had neither COVID (again) nor strep. So they gave me a prescription for something to take care of the sinuses and the cough for about ten days, then when that was gone I started using Dayquil/Nyquil to handle things. Yesterday what was left in my sinuses finally broke up and came out, and I’ve been doing physical work without having to take a break every fifteen minutes.

To make things even worse it’s been very cold here in central Florida. How cold? Mid-50s Fahrenheit during the day down to mid-30s at night. This was all part of the cold wave that came rumbling out of Canada and into the mid-West. We got the edge of it all the way down here, and it was cold enough that snow fell with accumulations of 6 or more inches in the Florida Panhandle.

Needless to say all creatures great and small tried to keep warm while all this was happening. That’s what these two photos are about. Zoë was Velcroed to me for a number of days, while Beau kept stealing my seat every time I got up to go do something, like head to the bathroom. While last night went back down to 38°, today was a balmy 63°. While it was still in the mid-50°s yesterday, it was still warm enough, and I was in decent enough shape, to get some tasks of significance done.

Both of these photos were taken with my iPhone 16 Pro Max using the portrait setting. I did some post-processing with the Apple tools, primarily darkening the corners with the vignetting tool. The engineers spend untold sums of money to make sure corner-to-corner exposure is the same, and I go in and basically ignore that with my tweaks.

And yes, we still have our artificial Christmas tree up. Maybe I’ll have it down and stowed by Valentine’s Day.

The following upgrades have been deferred due to phasing:

Followed by a list of packages that won’t be upgraded at that point in time. It aggravated me because I didn’t understand the reasoning behind the message. When I went searching what that message really meant I never got a decent answer until now. Because this answer I found clears everything up, I’m quoting the answer in full as well as providing a link to the original forum source. Note that this answer is for Ubuntu, but because Linux Mint is derived from Ubuntu, the same answer applies to Linux Mint as well. And please, take to heart the warnings about trying to circumvent the apt system towards the end of the quote. Leave well enough alone.

What are phased updates?

Phased updates are software updates that are gradually rolled out to users rather than all users getting the updates at the same time. In an update system that doesn’t use phased updates, all users are immediately offered an update as soon as it is made available. When phased updates are used, only some users get an update when it is first released. As time passes, more and more users get the update, until the update is finally “fully phased” and everyone is offered the update.

Ubuntu has been using a phased update system for Ubuntu Desktop since Ubuntu 13.04 (almost ten years ago!), however, up until now, only the GUI updater for Ubuntu was able to handle phased updates. Updating via apt would ignore update phasing. However, starting with Ubuntu 21.04, apt also uses phased updates, allowing phased updates to apply to all versions of Ubuntu, including Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu running in containers. Incidentally, this change also resulted in the now-infamous “The following packages have been kept back” message from apt during many system updates. While phased updates in apt have been a thing since Ubuntu 21.04, they have come to light most clearly in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

Why does Ubuntu use them?

Occasionally, just like anyone else, Ubuntu developers make mistakes. While updates are tested before they are released, sometimes unexpected corner cases aren’t properly taken into account. And if those unexpected corner cases turn out to be somewhat common, they can start causing users problems on their systems.

In the past, before phased updates were used with Apt, any time an update was pushed out, all Ubuntu users would immediately be able to install the update. And if that update happened to be wonky, it could mess up a lot of people’s systems all at once. Phased updates make it so that, in the event an update is bad, it gets caught early before everyone gets the update. Once an update is pushed out, some users get it sooner than others. And if those users’ systems start reporting back crashes (or if severe problems with a package come to light), the phasing process can be stopped, making it so that the update stops being sent to users by default. This improves the safety and stability of Ubuntu.

The phasing system makes it so that different sets of users are chosen to be the first to get the updates so that there isn’t one group of unlucky people who always get the updates soon after release.

How do they benefit me?

If you’ve encountered times when an update broke your system in the past, you shouldn’t be as likely to experience that problem in the future. Update phasing makes it so that breakage is more likely to be detected early on, avoiding causing problems to users’ desktops, servers, and other Ubuntu-powered devices. This directly benefits Ubuntu users by increasing the stability and reliability of Ubuntu.

Can I (and should I) turn them off or work around them?

That depends on how stable you need your system to be. If you just want to avoid any notices about packages being held back during apt updates, and you’re willing to be one of the first people to get updates whenever they’re released, you can turn off phased updates. This is somewhat of a risk since it means if an update is bad, you will pretty much always be the first person to get the update (essentially you’re making yourself a guinea pig for the early update releases!). But it will get rid of the notices about held-back packages in apt.

If that sounds like a bad idea, leave phased updates on.

Working around phased updates by running apt install on held-back packages is probably always a bad idea – it won’t permanently “fix” the held-back package notice (which doesn’t actually need fixing in the first place), and it will make you install packages early. If you’ve already done it, it probably won’t mess up your system (unless the update has a problem), but it’s likely not something you want to make a habit of doing.

If you are absolutely sure that you want to disable phased updates, you can change apt’s configuration by creating a file in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d, containing the following lines:

Update-Manager::Always-Include-Phased-Updates true;
APT::Get::Always-Include-Phased-Updates true;

You can name the file 99-Phased-Updates if /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99-Phased-Updates doesn’t already exist. Again, only do this if you really know what you’re doing and are absolutely sure you need to do this (for instance, if you intentionally are installing all the latest packages since you want to help test them and can afford it if your system breaks). If you’re doing this for almost any other reason than this example, there’s probably a better way.

Why are apt’s messages regarding phased updates so unclear?

UPDATE: As of Ubuntu 24.04, apt now clearly shows packages that The following upgrades have been deferred due to phasing rather than simply showing that the packages are held back.

It’s actually somewhat difficult to get apt to recognize phased updates as being held back because they’re phased updates, due to how dependencies work. However, we do recognize that this is an annoying problem, and it’s on our radar. There’s a bug report about it here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/1988819 If you have an Ubuntu SSO account and can log into Launchpad, you can click on the “This bug affects X people. Does this bug affect you?” link near the top of the page, and then click “Yes, it affects me” to increase the bug heat rating, making it more significant.

(Note: Please don’t leave mean and nasty comments at the bottom of the bug report – all it does is make us annoyed or upset and doesn’t actually push us to fix the bug any faster.)

It should be pointed out that Microsoft has used phased updates since at least Windows 8 was released, due to the all the trauma that Windows patches would cause to Windows XP when released all at once. And Microsoft still can’t get it right, as observed in how Microsoft has been rolling out updates to Windows 11. And there was an Ubuntu update to a release in the 2000s that killed the graphical desktop, compounded by the fact that the only way to get the instructions to fix the machine was to read the web instructions on another working computer, usually a Windows XP machine. Much irony was generated and quite a few Ubuntu users switched back to Windows XP. Needless to say, if you’re going to have a problem introduced by a dodgy update at least try to minimize the damage as much as possible.

Links

What are phased updates, and why does Ubuntu use them? — https://askubuntu.com/questions/1431940/what-are-phased-updates-and-why-does-ubuntu-use-them

Too often I read that cats are somehow nocturnal creatures, choosing to be most active at night, especially if hunting is involved. I’ve noticed, however, that all my cats are crepuscular in their behavior, being most active in the twilight periods of evening and morning. These two photos were taken during the late afternoon/early evening before we all went off to sleep. They love to sit in my gaming chair and contemplate their world in my house, especially in the early evening. If something of interest becomes interesting enough, then there follows the quick leap onto the floor and a rapid chase of the target, meaning one of their clowdermates.

The chair is also a favorite sleeping spot, which can result in one of the clowder challenging the current occupant all through the early evening, leading to a lot of rotation between the cats. By the time of lights out, the challenges have come to an end and there’s just one cat curled up and sleeping, usually Zoë. Seeing Nicholas in the chair is a bit of a surprise, but something I would expect as he’ll be four come later this year. All of my cats are full adults or senior cats. How time always flies. The youngest four cats (Joan, Danï, Zoë, and Nicholas) are all COVID lockdown adoptions. Just as that period from 2020 to 2022 has faded in our memories, so have the memories of three of the four as little kittens. Joan came in as a young adult, the mom of Danï and Zoë.

I mentioned that cats being crepuscular and only speaking to their evening activities. For the early morning I’m serenaded by Luke who stands in the main hallway (the part of the house with the best acoustics for what he does) and bellows out like a little foghorn. He’ll also stand on his hind legs and bang on the closed bedroom door. I know he stands because when I get sick I sleep out in the TV room on a lounger. When I got up very early one morning to hit the bathroom I just happened to catch Luke in the door banging act. If I’m physically available, the other cats will walk across me and pick a spot to settle down on top of me, to nap a little more. Then they’ll get up and move to another spot on me. They’ll keep this up until I decide I’ve had enough, and then get up and feed them. That’s how the day gets started around here. It’s been decades since I slept past 6 am.

I’ve been gravitating to using the Pen F for the majority of my photos, usually with a small prime mounted on the front. This post is no different. The top photo was taken with the Olympus 45mm, the bottom with the original PanLeica 25mm. Everybody keeps encouraging me to get an equivalent Fuji camera (the X100 or the XE-4). The problem there is either it’s unavailable or outrageously priced. And it’s not just the body, for the XE-4 it also requires the purchase of at least one lens for the body. And then I hear the very occasional recommendation to get a Leica. Financially that’s even more drastic. I’m quite happy with all I have, and I’m so thankful I purchased them when I did, when I could afford them.

A selection of feline photos. From top to bottom, Luke, Danï, and Zoë. All the animals continue to be my anchor with reality. The make no demands except for attention, and they’re always reciprocating attention towards me.

Annie continues to blossom. She now expects to go with me or my wife and I when we head out to the car. We take her with us, and she’s calm and quiet the entire time we’re out. When we take my wife to see one of her doctors, Annie and I wait in the car. Annie no longer barks as the other patients going into or out of the offices. Weather allowing, we’re still doing at least two walks per day, more if needed. She’s a sweet little creature.

I’m making some changes for 2025 with regards to reporting about my menagerie of animals. I’ve always had a mix of cats and dogs, and before the cats, it was two (and rarely, three) dogs in this household. So instead of writing about caturdays, I’m now just calling it an animal day, and writing about every little creature that has a story to tell for that particular day. In this case, it’s Zoë and Annie.

Zoë decided to claim yet another cardboard box as her own. I’m always dropping empty boxes on the floor for the cats to explore and play in, and almost always it’s Zoë who leaps in (yes, leaps) and starts to make a racket playing in “her” box. That, of course, is a siren call to all the other cats within earshot, and they come over to watch Zoë or, in the case of Danï, drive her out for their own amusement. Never a dull moment with cardboard boxes in this household.

Annie and I chauffeured mom to an orthopedic clinic on Friday. We waited in the car (they don’t allow Doodles in the premises). After a time I began to sense someone looking at me. I turned around to look and sure enough Annie was giving me that side-eyed look. After a few moments of silent communication, dumb dad finally figured out she needed to go outside of the car and do her business. So we both got out and walked around a bit, during which she sniffed and tinkled in a few spots to leave her calling card. After a time we moseyed on back to the car to climb back in and continued to wait. Eventually mom exited the facility and we all drove home to lunch. Annie loves going on car rides with her people, even if she sits and waits in the car when we stop at places. She knows she’ll eventually get to check out the surroundings.

I chauffeured my wife to a walk-in orthopedic clinic today, where I stayed out in the car while she went in. There was no need for me to sit in the waiting room and the temperatures here in central Florida were in the chilly mid-60°s. While she was inside I went on a quick walk-about with my camera and happened to photograph this odd item bolted to the side of the building. What caught my eye was the text on the sign stating “Possible unplanned release of hazardous gas.” Unplanned I might understand, but what kind(s) of hazardous gas would a health facility release in an unplanned manner?

We sent Ruby yesterday to join her companion Max. Max had left us back in July 2015. She could no longer stand, let alone walk, and slept nearly the entire time over the weekend and Monday. Yet she still recognized when Annie was getting fed and would raise her head, letting us know she wanted some food as well. We lavished her with peanut butter laced with her final medications, as well as little treats. And lots of rubs and kisses.

And she still smiled that sweet Ruby smile when she was awake.

Ruby leaves behind her companion Annie, who it shocks me to realize is nine years old, and will be ten next Valentine’s Day.

No tribute to little Ruby would be complete without a photo of her with her companion Max. Ruby was always friendly with her companions, both canine and feline, but Max was her first, and a bit more special to her than all the others I think. She always remembered Max, and if I made the mistake of mentioning his name in her presence, she would always look up as if expecting him to re-appear. Dogs never forget, especially female Labs. I saw the same behavior with Katie when Rhett left us.

While we still have a vibrant Annie, and six healthy cats, there is a Ruby-sized hole in the household at the moment. She will be missed, as they have all been.

For this post I’ve written my devices listing application in Go, which I’ve previously written in Python, C++, and Rust. Here’s the Go listing.

package mainimport (  "errors"  "fmt"  "log"  "os"  "path/filepath"  "strings"  "encoding/json")func main() {  executable, error := os.Executable()  if error != nil {log.Fatal(error)  }  var annotations = make(map[string]string)  jsonPath := filepath.Dir(executable) + "/devices.json"  rawJSON, error := os.ReadFile(jsonPath)  if errors.Is(error, os.ErrNotExist) {fmt.Println("Annotations JSON file not found at:", jsonPath)  } else {json.Unmarshal(rawJSON, &annotations)  }  deviceById := "/dev/serial/by-id/"  files, error := os.ReadDir(deviceById)  if error != nil {log.Fatal(error)  }  for _, file := range files {symlink, _ := filepath.EvalSymlinks(deviceById + file.Name())device := filepath.Base(symlink)suffix := file.Name()[strings.LastIndex(file.Name(), "_")+1:]hexid := strings.Split(suffix, "-")[0]annotation, found := annotations[hexid]if found == true {  fmt.Println(device, "  ", annotation)} else {  fmt.Println(device, "  ", hexid)}  }}

Here’s a typical output. In this example I have three boards plugged into my Linux system, an ESP32-S3, an ESP32-C3, and a Raspberry Pi Pico 2:

ttyACM0Raspberry Pi Pico 2 - MicroPython 1.24.0 - RP2-EC93ttyUSB1ESP32-C3-DevKitC-1-N4 - ESP-IDF 5.3.1 DisplaysttyUSB0ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1.1-N32R8 - MicroPython-1.25.0-preview-xtensa-IDFv5.2.2 2024-11-08 - ESP32S3-7814

You can see the application’s found them all and their associated TTY port. This is quite useful when using command-line tools to communicated with them individually.

And finally, here’s a section of the JSON file the application reads in in order to match annotations with devices I have plugged in:

{  ...  "7a1c74c68740ec93": "Raspberry Pi Pico 2 - MicroPython 1.24.0 - RP2-EC93",  "7eab1642dbfaeb1198773ca4c6d924ec": "ESP32-C3-DevKitC-1-N4 - ESP-IDF 5.3.1 Displays",  "cc2ba0cbe2cfec11973d262686bdcd52": "ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1.1-N32R8 - MicroPython-1.25.0-preview-xtensa-IDFv5.2.2 2024-11-08 - ESP32S3-7814",  ...}

Quick Operational Description.

Here’s a bulleted list of what I’m trying to accomplish with the Go code.

1. When started, determine where in the file system we were started (lines 14 and 18).
2. With that file path, append our annotations file name to it so we can open it (lines 20 through 28). Note that the annotations file is in JSON.
3. If the annotations file exists, read it in and unmarshal it as a map. If the file doesn’t exist, emit a message saying it couldn’t be found and where it is supposed to be located.
4. Look for any devices plugged into the Linux system (line 31).
5. Assuming you find any devices, extract the hex ID from each device name found (lines 38 through 42). Those hex IDs are unique.
6. Try to look up the hex ID in the dictionary you loaded in step 3. If you find an entry, that’s your annotation. Print it out with the device you found in line 41. If there is no entry then print the device with the raw hex ID.

That’s basically it.

Final Thoughts

Life is way too short for me these days. I still like to write software, but now I want a language and supporting tools that make my efforts far more efficient. Go gives me all of that, and more. I started with Go over ten years ago (you can search for my entries in this blog) on very early Raspberry Pis, specifically the 3 and 4. Then I just sort of let it fade away while chasing other new and shiny languages like Rust. Now I’ve come back to Go for good, and will continue to use it for my purposes until I can no longer think in code, let alone write it.

The pills seem to be helping her, like the steroid shot did. However, she’s having difficulty getting up off the tile floors. I now have to bend down and lift her rear so she can stand. If she’s outdoors she doesn’t have any issues standing up from a prone position, such as in the photo above.

She’s also going to her pads, both the outdoor variety and the indoor variety. As long as she stays on her pads she’s able to get up and move around the inside. She does that quite a bit now to go out into the kitchen and drink a fair amount of water. The vet said she’d get thirstier on the steroids, so I’m not surprised by that.

We still do out daily walks, but they’re slower and a lot shorter than even a month ago. Still, she wants to go out and it would appear she enjoys her perambulations.

We take this day by day. Each extra day is a blessing.

While the drama of the presidential election was occurring, an even bigger drama was taking place that Tuesday at my vet’s with Ruby. Ruby has developed something of an intermittent dry cough, a chuffing kind of cough. The vet examined her and came by with sobering news. First, he had a hard time listening to her heartbeat; it was muffled as if there was fluid in the thoracic region of the heart. He took an X-ray and saw the area was indeed filled with something. One of our thoughts turned to cancer. My wife was with us at the time and the three of us discussed what it might be and possible treatment plans. In the end they gave Ruby a shot of steroids and some pills I’m supposed to start giving her this coming Sunday. Ruby has improved and sleeps a lot easier.

Ruby is now 16 years and three months. Labrador retrievers are supposed to live an average of ten and twelve years. Ruby has beat those statistics by a good amount. She’s been remarkably healthy the entire time. Even now she goes on her walks (slowly) and waits for her treats, and comes over for rubs and scratches. She likes to sit next to me and look up while I’m working on something around the house.

Ruby’s having greater and greater difficulty standing. I can help her up so she can go outside and go to the bathroom. Once outside on the concrete or the yard proper she has no difficulty going down to rest or getting back up. But in the house on the tile floors she no longer has the strength in her hips and back legs to simply stand. As a consequence I’ve ordered a set of dog boots for each paw to give her added foot traction, for as long as she needs them.

I know that Ruby will leave soon. I am prepared. I’ve lived through Lab end states since 1994, when our first Lab, Rhett, left us. After Rhett I bid farewell to Katie, Babe, and Max. Very soon I’ll bid farewell to lovely Ruby.

Links

sweet 16

Excellent turn around on my wife’s and my 2024 general election ballots. The completed ballots were dropped off on Saturday (26 October) at an early polling place. When I checked on Monday, ballot status was at step 2, having been sent out. Early this morning I found that both had been counted.

I should note that early voting this year is exactly two weeks, having started 21 October and ending 3 November. This is shorter than in the past. I should also note that when I went to drop off our ballets that the early voting location, a library, was packed, and required several people to coordinate parking in the parking lot, which was full. Interest in this year’s general election, at least in my corner of Orange County, is extremely high.

Please vote, vote early, vote legally, and vote Blue all up and down the ballet. We did.

Links

Orange County Florida (Only!) Check Your Ballot Status — https://www.voterfocus.com/VoterInformationLookup/voterSearch?county=FL-ORA

I turned in my mail-in ballot, along with my wife’s, Saturday. Our vote process started before the pandemic; receive a vote-by-mail ballot, fill it out, then drop it off at an early voting station. Before 2020 we only applied once for mail ballots, and they arrived in plenty of time for us to fill them out and return them. Then sometime in the early 2020s the Republicans changed the rules (voter suppression) so that we have to regularly re-apply for a mail ballot. Why? No practical explanation was every given.

We both voted straight Democratic:

• Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for President
• Debbie Mucarsel-Powell for Senate to replace Rick Scott
• Maxwell A. Frost (District 10)
• as well as a full slate of state and local candidates, all Democratic.

And then there were the state constitution amendments and questions (note that the questions apply only to Orange County Florida so they won’t be listed):

• Amendment 1 — partisan school board elections — NO
• Amendment 2 — right to hunt and fish — NO
• Amendment 3 — adult personal use of marijuana — YES
• Amendment 4 — right to abortion — YES
• Amendment 5 — homestead property tax exemption — NO
• Amendment 6 — repeal of public campaign financing — NO

Note that every amendment with a ‘NO’ was the Maga Republicans trying to game the system for their benefit alone. The rich trying to get richer.

While everyone is saying that this election is the most important election ever because of Trump, we’re at this uncomfortable spot because we’ve been lackadaisical about voting for decades, with the Republicans hollowing out state legislatures around the country using gerrymandering in particular to gain a political power lock far in excess of their numbers. Florida is different in that a lot of retirees with money have moved into Florida and skewed the political base towards the Republicans. That wouldn’t be so bad if Florida’s governor wasn’t so Maga and so incredibly incompetent.

That might be changing soon. Reports are coming out that a lot of people who have been suffering from the effects of hurricanes since Ian, and in particular the back-to-back hurricanes of Helene and Milton, are getting fed up with the real effects of climate change/global warming, to whit the increased ferocity and frequency of hurricanes hitting the state. Even when a hurricane such as Helene only goes past the state, the damage is horrific, especially to coastal communities.

Now all I have to do is sit back, track my ballot within the system, and ignore all the trolling and mis-information both foreign and domestic.

WEATHER UPDATE

All hurricane and tropical storm watches and warnings have ended for Orange County. Weather totals from Hurricane Milton:

• Highest wind gusts measured at 87 mph
• More than 10 inches of rain in parts of Orange County (I record 12 inches)
• Over 42 tornado warnings issued across Central Florida

SHELTERS

Orange County sheltered more than 2600 people from Hurricane Milton. As of 3 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024, the following shelters are closed:

• Carver Middle School
• Colonial High School
• Lake Buena Vista High School
• Lake Nona High School
• Ocoee High School
• Odyssey Middle School
• Timber Springs Middle School
• Union Park Middle School
• Wedgefield K-8 School

…
POWER OUTAGES

Utility crews are currently assessing outages and working to restore power to customers as quickly and safely as possible.

Duke: 110,000 customers in Orange County are currently affected by power outages.

OUC: 61,125 customers in Orange County are currently affected by power outages.

Report outages to your electric provider in Orange County.
…

Everything government related is closed until Monday of next week. We might get some garbage pickup tomorrow or Saturday, otherwise we’re going to have to wait until next week.

As far as my household, we never lost power and no trees were blown down that I can see. There may be others further into our neighborhood, but around my immediate section nothing horrible.

We sat up the entire night waiting and listening, napping when we could. Milton charged across central Florida so fast the worst parts were over us and gone in about four hours. We were pretty much wiped out after sunrise, and I took a long two hour nap around mid-afternoon. My wife was doing the same. Even the little animals seemed tired and napped pretty much the entire day, more-so than usual.

But here we are 24 hours later. I am so thankful we got through this.

That original post where I said I wasn’t going to post for the month of October looks pretty much trash at this point.

I’m sitting here waiting for Milton to hit Tampa/St. Pete and then come roaring up I-4 and across central Florida, including Orlando and my neighborhood. I’ve prepared as much as I can, probably the best I’ve ever done in the 40 years I’ve been living here. But this latest storm has raised my anxiety to the highest level it’s ever been before a storm. Just about the entirety of the west coast of Florida, along with a few counties on the east coast, have been ordered to evacuate.

Part of my anxiety is the vacuum of leadership at the level of governor. We have a little man who has a bobble head, and who has been refusing calls from the sitting Vice President Harris because he thought it too political. What a complete and utter ass.

Anyway…

A week before all of this I purchased and built a new kitchen cart on wheels, complete with built-in drawers and cabinets so that I could get pots and small electric appliances off the other cabinets and uncover the existing cabinet tops for a better cooking experience in the kitchen. I thought it was for the kitchen. The cats have decided it makes a great extension for playing, a second level to traverse through the kitchen.

If I didn’t have all the little creatures I don’t know what I’d be doing right now. Their presence gives me comfort.

I’ve already written elsewhere about my full left knee replacement as well as my COVID infection.

So far the left knee is doing great. I’m walking again with my normal gait, I don’t have intermittent “weakness” pangs that hit my left leg, and the overall feeling is one of no feeling at all. I can do a lot more work, both in length of time as well as more work in a given amount of time. I’m back to doing a lot of gardening again, trying to catch up with pulling weeds, trimming growth, and putting down all the mulch I purchased six months ago that’s been sitting in a pile of bags. The front yard doesn’t look like quite the jungle it was several weeks ago. And I’m now moving through the backyard as well. I had to cut back one of my sea grape plants because it’s now grown into a small tree. I took some of those branches and put then in rooting pots with rooting compound. That was weeks ago, and so far they haven’t completely died on me. I did the same with eight or so trimmings from my many hibiscus plants, and all of those are rooted now, several of them blooming. They will go out into the front later this year. I have yews in the front, and I pulled out my ladder and trimmed them back into a square (ish) shape, keeping seven of the best trimmings for rooting as well. They’re now in a rooting pot and look to be surviving as well. We’ll give them another month to see how well they do.

The common thread to all these little plant stories is rooting from already growing plants. I want to grow more of them around the house, and I’m now propagating cuttings to help the gardening budget. I also like the thrill of actually giving more life to the cuttings.

Surprisingly, I’ve lost a bit more weight. I’m down to 245 lbs. Consider that my weight was 285 in December 2019, right before I retired. I’ve lost 40 lbs since retiring, or about 10 pounds/year. And it appears to be staying off. I could stand to loose another fifteen or so. It’s been decades since the last time I saw a weight of 245 lbs, and it was back in the late 1980s when I saw 230 lbs. I attribute the weight loss to a much more healthy diet that includes complex vegetables (legumes, brown rice, quinoa, carrots, beets, spinach, etc), as little sugar as possible, and no red meat. I’ve also cut out all heavily processed foods (such as chips and other snacks) and I’ve even stopped drinking diet soda. All I drink now is my own brewed coffee, teas, and water. Speaking of snacks I’ve broken the habit of late night snacking before bed. My wife is on me to eat our supper as early as possible, and then I don’t eat another bite before bedtime. If I feel the need to snack I just drink some more ice water.

I could carry on about my decreasing use of technology, but all I’ll say for now is that I’ve completely gone back to my Citizen Eco-Drive WR 100 watch. The single greatest reason for this switch is that I don’t have to charge the Citizen watch every evening. All I have to do is wear it out in the sun, outdoors, and it will pick up enough sunlight to stay charged for 30 days. Every day I’m outside for even five minutes, the Citizen watch tops out over and over. I don’t care if it doesn’t sync with my smartphone or communicate with it. All I need is an accurate device to keep track of time. I’ve had an Apple Watch since its initial release ten years ago (original, Series 1, Series 3, Series 7). After ten years, I find it’s a complete waste of money. I’ll never purchase another.

Rust Background

Rust came into existence in 2006 as a Mozilla internal project. As the years went by it evolved to the point where it was self hosting and picked up a lot of features that are found in other languages. Because Rust was initially a part of Mozilla, that meant it was a victim of Mozilla’s various vicissitudes, include a big layoff at Mozilla in 2020 that had a negative impact on Rust. As a consequence the Rust Foundation was created in February 2021. One of the founding members of the Rust Foundation was Google, who announced at the time that Rust would be an alternative language for writing Android applications. The Rust Foundation itself went through some bumps as well, which you can read about elsewhere. All I can say at this point is that I hope that drama has passed.

Rust has been described as a C-style language targeted at “frustrated C++ developers,” that emphasizes features such as safety, control of memory layout, and concurrency. Because Rust started out as being written in OCaml, a functional programming language, there is a lot of that kind of influence in the design of the language. I have worked with ‘pure’ functional languages in decades past, so I can see some of that influence.

Personal Background

Let me take a moment to talk about “frustrated C++ developers.” I count myself as one of them; I know all too well what many of those issues are. I’ve had to deal with them since I learned C in 1982 with Lifeboat C on an IBM XT, through C++ (C with classes) via cfront on a DEC MicroVAX II and DEC Ultrix in 1986. I then switched to Borland C++ in 1990, and I’ve been heavily invested in that language ever since across multiple operating systems. That’s over 40 years of C and C++ development, many hundreds of thousands of lines of code scattered across dozens and dozens of for-pay application development as well as personal work. That didn’t stop me from learning other languages, such as Java (1995) and Python (1993). I’ve tinkered with additional C-style languages, most significantly Google Go, but I’ve always dropped back to C++ for my heavy coding lifting needs, regardless of the warts on C++. As they say, better the devil you know.

Through the years and decades I’ve tried to adhere to best C++ coding standards, and I’ve tried various code analysis tools to ferret out “code smells” that code reviews would miss (no human code review is ever perfect, and turns out to be a waste of human’s time; use automation and tools for consistency). I’ve tried to keep up with the latest official C++ coding standards, such as C++23, and use those compilers (such as g++ and clang) that implement those official coding standards. But it’s tough, and as the standards have been released, the language has just grown more complex.

The Application

First, an important warning to the reader: DO NOT take this as idiomatic Rust source code. Regardless, it does work.

I wrote a non-trivial (to me anyway) Rust-based utility on my Raspberry Pi 5 running Ubuntu 24.04.1 for the express purpose of producing a limited set of statistics about the running system. There’s plenty of utilities for that already, but they produce too much information for my needs and/or have too many bells and whistles I can do without. What follows is an example of the statistics output I wanted.

 Raspberry Pi model:   Raspberry Pi 5 Model B Rev 1.0 Core model / count:   Cortex-A76 / 4 Kernel version:   6.8.0-1010-raspi Operating system: Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS Memory total / free:  7.75 Gi / 3.28 Gi Swap total / free:1.00 Gi / 1.00 Gi Filesystem capacity:  468.9 Gi Filesystem available: 432.1 Gi Uptime:   8 days, 8 hours

And here’s the listing that produced that output. There’s a lot of little (and some big) differences between Rust source code and equivalent C++. For example, there’s very little up-front boilerplate code. Note the lack of any #include statements or any using statements to shorten the use of C++ namespace prefixes. Note also how functions are defined, and how the return types are defined and returned from each function. There is no explicit return statement. If you’ve defined a return type, then the last statement in a Rust function is an implied value return, without the return statement or even a semicolon at the end of the statement.

extern crate fs4;use std::fs::File;use std::io::BufReader;use std::io::prelude::*;fn translate_uptime(line: String) -> String {let uptime_seconds_str = line.split(' ').collect::<Vec<_>>()[0].trim();let mut uptime_in_seconds:f64 = uptime_seconds_str.parse::<f64>().unwrap();let seconds_in_a_day = 86400f64;let seconds_in_an_hour = 3600f64;let days_uptime = (uptime_in_seconds / seconds_in_a_day).floor();uptime_in_seconds -= days_uptime * seconds_in_a_day;let hours_uptime = (uptime_in_seconds / seconds_in_an_hour).round();if days_uptime > 0f64 {format!("{days_uptime:} days, {hours_uptime:} hours")}else {format!("{hours_uptime:} hours")}}fn translate_meminfo(line: &str) -> f64 {let substring = line.split(':').collect::<Vec<_>>()[1].trim();let number = substring.split(' ').collect::<Vec<_>>()[0].trim();let value: f64 = number.parse::<f64>().unwrap();value / (1024.0f64 * 1024.0f64)}fn decode_cpu_part_number(line: &str) -> &str {let part_number = line.split(':').collect::<Vec<_>>()[1].trim();// Partial matching of ARMv8-A part numbers.// See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ARM_processors#ARMv8-A//match part_number.to_uppercase().as_str() {"0XD01" => "Cortex-A32","0XD02" => "Cortex-A34","0XD03" => "Cortex-A53","0XD04" => "Cortex-A35","0XD05" => "Cortex-A55","0XD06" => "Cortex-A65","0XD07" => "Cortex-A57","0XD08" => "Cortex-A72","0XD09" => "Cortex-A73","0XD0A" => "Cortex-A75","0XD0B" => "Cortex-A76","0XD0D" => "Cortex-A77","0XD0E" => "Cortex-A76AE",_ => "NO MATCH",}}fn get_filesystem_metrics() -> (f64, f64) {let mut total_space = fs4::total_space("/").unwrap() as f64;let mut available_space = fs4::available_space("/").unwrap() as f64;let devisor = 1024f64 * 1024f64 * 1024f64;total_space = total_space / devisor;available_space = available_space / devisor;(total_space, available_space)}fn main() -> std::io::Result<()> {let cpuinfo_file = File::open("/proc/cpuinfo")?;let mut buf_reader = BufReader::new(cpuinfo_file);let mut cpuinfo = String::new();buf_reader.read_to_string(&mut cpuinfo);let mut core_count = 0;let mut cpu_part = "";let mut model = "";for line in cpuinfo.lines() {if line.contains("CPU part") && cpu_part.is_empty() {cpu_part = decode_cpu_part_number(line);}if line.contains("processor") { core_count += 1; }if line.contains("Model") && model.is_empty() {model = line.split(':').collect::<Vec<_>>()[1].trim();}}let meminfo_file = File::open("/proc/meminfo")?;buf_reader = BufReader::new(meminfo_file);let mut meminfo = String::new();buf_reader.read_to_string(&mut meminfo);let mut memory_total = 0.0f64;let mut memory_free = 0.0f64;let mut swap_total = 0.0f64;let mut swap_free = 0.0f64;for line in meminfo.lines() {if line.contains("MemTotal:") {memory_total = translate_meminfo(line);}if line.contains("MemAvailable:") {memory_free = translate_meminfo(line);}if line.contains("SwapTotal:") {swap_total = translate_meminfo(line);}if line.contains("SwapFree:") {swap_free = translate_meminfo(line);}}let uptime_file = File::open("/proc/uptime")?;buf_reader = BufReader::new(uptime_file);let mut uptime = String::new();buf_reader.read_to_string(&mut uptime);let system_uptime = translate_uptime(uptime);let version_file = File::open("/proc/version")?;buf_reader = BufReader::new(version_file);let mut version = String::new();buf_reader.read_to_string(&mut version);let kernel_version = version.split(' ').collect::<Vec<_>>()[2].trim();let os_release_file = File::open("/etc/os-release")?;buf_reader = BufReader::new(os_release_file);let mut os_release = String::new();buf_reader.read_to_string(&mut os_release);let mut pretty_name = "";for line in os_release.lines() {if line.contains("PRETTY_NAME=") {let pretty_name_quoted = line.split('=').collect::<Vec<_>>()[1];pretty_name = &pretty_name_quoted[1..pretty_name_quoted.len()-1];}}let (total_space, available_space) = get_filesystem_metrics();println!(" Raspberry Pi model:   {}", model);println!(" Core model / count:   {} / {}", cpu_part, core_count);println!(" Kernel version:   {}", kernel_version);println!(" Operating system: {}", pretty_name);println!(" Memory total / free:  {:.2} Gi / {:.2} Gi", memory_total, memory_free);println!(" Swap total / free:{:.2} Gi / {:.2} Gi", swap_total, swap_free);println!(" Filesystem capacity:  {:.1} Gi", total_space);println!(" Filesystem available: {:.1} Gi", available_space);println!(" Uptime:   {}", system_uptime);Ok(())}

One of my favorite Rust discoveries has been the match expression in the function decode_cpu_part_number starting on line 31. There is no switch in Rust, only match, and from what I’ve been able to ascertain match is far superior. My biggest complaint about the C++ switch statement is that it will only work with native types, such as int. Match will work with anything. In the function decode_cpu_part_number starting on line 37 I lay out clearly and cleanly the match between a given CPU value and what CPU type that value maps to, without having to go through the extra step of creating an explicit map. Rust allows me to implement a clean and easily readable decoder. I say easily readable because I have no doubt that sometime in the future I might have to go back in and add something, so it’s nice there is no ambiguity in that function.

Another Rust code feature I appreciate is println! and format!. They behave an awful lot like how Python’s print and string formatting features work. Once again C++ came up with std::cout and all its supporting functions, and while I learned it well enough to do sophisticated work, it would produce a long line of code I just didn’t care for. And it goes on.

At a total of 138 lines, I don’t consider the total source code length to be too long. It’s more than reasonable. I’d also like to point out that I know this is very specific to Linux, and in particular Linux on the Raspberry Pi 5, and at this point I don’t really care. I’m working to make it operate correctly in this environment rather than think about optimizations or portability to other systems. To quote Donald Knuth:

The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.

Or as a wizened software engineer once told me decades ago, make it right before you make it fancy.

And before I forget, here’s the Cargo.toml file for the source:

[package]name = "pistats"version = "0.5.0"edition = "2021"# See more keys and their definitions at# https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/manifest.html[lints.rust]#non_snake_case = "allow"#unused_imports = "allow"unused_must_use = "allow"#unused_variables = "allow"[dependencies]fs4 = "0.9.1"

The toml file sets up the build environment. I also like the linting section, and I use that to turn off build warnings. The lint settings are counter-intuitive. For example, the one uncommented line (line 12) is telling rustc (the Rust compiler) to not emit any lines of code that isn’t doing anything with the return types from function calls. For example, I’m ignoring all returns from buf_reader.read_to_string(…) (source lines 68, 87, 194, 110, and 116). If that line were commented out, then I’d get five very verbose warnings about my ignoring those returns when I built the application with cargo. There are a lot more lint controls, which I strongly recommend you read about.

Links

Rust — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(programming_language)

Go — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language)

Ultrix — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrix

Cfront — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cfront

I’ve had to create a Red Hat 9.4 virtual machine on my M1 Max MacBook using UTM ( https://mac.getutm.app ). Because this is an ARM architecture machine, I used UTM because it would use Apple Silicon’s native virtualization support, and I installed the aarch64 version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4 so that it would be truly virtualized, not emulated.

So far the virtualization works flawlessly. Unfortunately for me and my work, the reason for installing it, to provide a RHEL environment for some work I’m doing, is a failure because the software I need to run under RHEL is only available for x86-64, not aarch64. Not everyone is rushing to embrace the future, especially with regards to processor architectures. It now appears that far too many vendors are refusing to support ARM systems, which is a sad state of affairs considering everyone is trying to install as much ARM-based silicon in their clouds; consider for example that AWS released Graviton 4, a 96 core beast that consumes far less power than Intel or AMD for the same workloads.

Anyway, this modest post documents how to set up UTM to install and then run aarch64 RHEL 9.4  on Apple Silicon M1 Max and a MacBook Pro. I’m going to leave the acquisition and installation of UTM as an exercise to the reader. It is open source, so you can either download a free copy from UTM’s website, or else use the App Store to purchase a permanent copy for $9.99. Using the App Store helps the UTM developers to help keep the lights on, and provides you, the user, a way to get automatic updates through the App Store.

After acquiring and installing UTM, you also need to get a copy of Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux to install. You can also do that for free by registering as a developer. You can download and install up to six copies for personal use. I’ve installed three so far, one under UTM and the other two using Parallels on another MacBook Pro running with an Intel i9. I wrote about that machine earlier, and called it the Beast.

With all the bits in place, it’s time to configure UTM and get RHEL installed on it. Again, installing the RHEL ISO isn’t that difficult, but the configuration can be somewhat perplexing. These settings work fine for me, and might work fine for you. But at least they’re a starting point.

I enabled everything on the virtualization tab except Rosetta on Linux. Remember this RHEL is aarch64. I have no idea how RHEL under x86_64 emulation might operate, and I don’t ever intend to find out. Also note that keyboard and pointer support are Mac keyboard and trackpad. The defaults are generic, and they don’t quite work as well.

I had absolutely no idea where to start with the display, so I had to play around with this for awhile before I found the value shown above. I can now shut down the VM window, and when I start it back up it will be at the correct size and resolution. Getting to this point was aggravating.

Finally we come to the networking. I found these settings on a forum posting, and discovered they work well for my setup. For one thing network traffic between my native MacBook Pro and the RHEL VM stay on my machine.

One nice note: power consumption at idle, especially inside the RHEL VM, is at an absolute minimum.

I’m still amazed at the power of Apple Silicon. With UTM installed I will probably start looking at other versions of Linux compiled natively for aarch64 under UTM.