locke baron's New Writeups

November 26, 2012 (log)

2012-11-26T15:29:02Z

I just discovered that a great many devices that claim to support only SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) memory cards will actually also support SDXC (SD Extended Capacity, 64GB and larger) cards. So why do they claim otherwise? Because SDXC cards come formatted with Microsoft's proprietary exFAT filesystem. So, it's sometimes possible to use them anyway, if you first format them with a filesystem that the device understands.

For Android devices - where this problem is most noticeable - there are a few options. FAT32 is the most obvious. Windows won't create FAT32 partitions that are larger than 32GB, but the filesystem itself does support it. There are apparently utilities that will do what you need - I'm not a full-time Windows user, so I'm not sure about them. Under Linux or another Unix, good old mkdosfs will do it. Also, since Android is Linux under the hood, you can format the card with ext4. Of course, you can't use an ext4-formatted SD card…

July 30, 2012 (log)

2012-07-31T14:36:35Z

This year has been a pain in the heinie. It's costing me piles. New car, unexpectedly. Moving house on short notice. Taxes on a retirement plan cash-out that really was the best of several bad alternatives at the time. (Or so I keep telling myself...) Certification exams that absolutely blow goats. Little bitty incidental expenses piling up. The power bill has soared by $200/month due to this damnable heat wave, and food seems to cost more every time I go shopping. On top of that, although I finally have medical insurance and a proper 401k plan again, that's meant that my take-home pay has gone down by about $200 per month. All these little nickel-and-dime items, and pretty soon it's real money... Bah. Just needed to vent somewhere. Things aren't dire just yet, but I'm only one stroke of bad luck away from real trouble.

February 27, 2012 (log)

2012-02-27T13:36:01Z

Well, bugger. 2012 has been the year of peeing in my financial wheaties. First, I come to find out that my landlord has arbitrarily decided to stop paying his mortgage, so the house is being foreclosed, even though I've been paying my rent on time. Awesome.

So, I started looking for new housing. Everything of suitable size and price was either in a nasty part of town, or else in southwest Chesterfield county, adding another 15-30 minutes to my commute. Ultimately, I found a place in northeast Chesterfield county. The price is right, and the size is right (3650 ft^2, much more than I expected). It's a bit of a fixer-upper, which is pesky for a rental, but I can deal. But of course, fate wasn't done whizzing on me.

I was driving to work one morning a few weeks ago in my ratty, but paid for, '03 Kia Spectra, and decided I needed some Pepsi, so I pulled into a 7-11. No indications of trouble, of course. But when I got back in the car, the…

November 30, 2011 (log)

2011-11-30T16:44:56Z

Well. I haven't written in a good long while, and I suppose it's high time I changed this. Since last anyone heard of me (outside of either RL, SL or maybe Facebook), I've semi-voluntarily left the military, spent two months unemployed, and been hired again.

Technically, I had authorization to re-enlist in the Navy, but I opted not to. Thanks to my knees being all munted, I'd just have been given the old heave-ho six months to a year later, as the semi-annual fitness tests rolled around. While I suppose I could have found a way to parlay that into getting a sizable severance payout, I don't think it would have been worth the cost to my sanity. I've been through administrative separation processing before. They spend a lot of time waving nebulous and hard to substantiate threats around, like "if we classify this as a general discharge, you'll be considered a convicted felon despite never having been convicted of a felony". This one is bullshit,…

June 16, 2011 (log)

2011-06-16T13:15:41Z

This is truly, deeply fucked up. I don't really care how bad you think it is to perform a YouTube lip-sync video without obtaining a license first - and yes, a case could be made that this should be unlawful. In fact, it already is. However, right now it's civil copyright infringement - and many argue that even this is too draconian.

This bill proposes to make it a crime under US federal law. Now, there's a big worm in that apple - all federal offenses are felonies. If you don't understand the implications, here's a bit of information: any person convicted of a felony in the US, even if they never pay a cent in fines or spend a second in jail, has a number of rights revoked, suspended or modified. Among them are the right to vote and the right to possess firearms (even if the offense is entirely nonviolent, as this would be). Perhaps more significantly, it is mandatory to disclose…

March 30, 2011 (log)

2011-03-30T20:25:27Z

So, the surgery went decently well. I still don't know precisely what they did, since they rushed me out the door before I was completely coherent. I intend to find out here shortly, though. Too soon to tell if this helped or not, though the snagging sensation that used to happen with every step is gone.

Took me the better part of 24 hours, but I finally feel mostly human again, now that the morphine and midazolam have worn off. The unholy combination of opioids, benzodiazepines and phenothiazines made me utterly zombie-tastic yesterday - though I will say I felt no pain. Not feeling much right now either, despite not having touched the oxycodone they gave me. I don't like how it makes me feel (yay nausea, dizziness and inability to think clearly), so I'm sticking with just the non-narcotic drugs unless I really need it, and so far I haven't.

They warned me about nausea, and went to great lengths to prevent that - Emend, ondansetron, promethazine and dexamethasone. All…