Linux - Getting an AMD APU to work

One of my machines is mostly a spare, loaded with disks.  I just run stable Debian on it, and it never fails.  When I last rejuvenated it, I just wanted 4 cpu's and an integrated graphics, since I wasn't playing with it.  So I got the recommended simple board with an AMD apu processor.  This has all the graphics in it, and the board allows the outputs.  I had a very old monitor, and just used VGA, and it worked.

Now we had a monitor shuffle, where the kids get the new ones, and I get the last one in line.  This had a DVI input, and so I wanted to use it on this machine.  Didn't work.  Drove me nuts since I also had a bad dvi cable, and another flaky monitor to compare with.  Took me forever to find the good cable, and a good monitor, to prove that the board was not putting out on dvi.  Blah.

Turns out there is something you have to do in the kernel, and it's all here.

Compile the radeon as a module, since I couldn't get the hard-kernel method to work.  That happens lots of times.  All working now.  The fun of Linux.

On another note, I had a lot of old computers to get rid of, and I wanted to clean the hard drives.  On the old-old machines I took a hammer to the disk, and threw out in the garbage-garbage.  Now we have electronic recycling and I want to put these out.  I assume they something useful with them.  I found that my Tails Linux live usb worked great.  I just ran 'shred' on the main disk.  Supposed to be garbage man proof!

Replace all your mechanical old clocks with quartz

We, who love old clocks, have waited for this moment.  Who can remember to wind at the exact same time every day?  Even if you do, the time varies wildly with the weather.  The mechanisms are beautiful and I started my path to engineering fixing these things when I was a kid.

That's why you carefully preserve the mechanism for your grandkids to put it back if they want.  They'll soon take it out again.  The new quartz guts have a perfect tone, choice of chimes, volume control and night silence.  All the things you wanted when you first brought one of these things home.

In Canada, choose Craftime Clockery for your quartz mechanism.  All you really have to choose is the shaft length.  For example, this clock was 3/4 inch, and another one was 1/4 inch.  I chose the speaker version, instead of actual striking chimes.  The sound is beautiful.  And you can rely on the time!  And free hands.

ps.  not a penny from these guys -- darn.  I never get anything.  :(

Another Texas earthquake whack-a-mole

As we recall in our continuing saga, Texas allows saltwater injection, and has never had earthquakes with this.  But, greed being what it is, the injectors are tempted by the Fruits of Satan, which in this case means gas-frack waste.  They mix it in and are shocked, shocked to get earthquakes.  Then it takes forever for them to secretly own up, and you get a big mess, like up in Dallas.

I'm calling this one to be the next Irving, but the odds are low.  We need a few more earthquakes to be sure.

Update:  Nothing more, just like OK.  Oh well, all these latest micro-hypotheses are going into the can.  :(

Oklahoma earthquake storm breaks a new record

Wow, 16 heavy events, and I'm going to bed.  Nothing like that before.

I'm fairly convinced that as a major event starts to homogenize a large fault area, it slides to a critical displacement.  This activates earthquakes all over the zone.  However, the storm earthquakes may actually be activated by the stress relief of the pre-slide.  The large regional stress relief, however, of the major event somehow shuts everything down for a while.  It's sort of a complex anti-process that I can't figure out.

Anyway, tomorrow or the next day we'll have a doozy of an earthquake, and everything will go quiet.  I don't have hard physics on this, but it has been the general pattern.  I still give it 50/50 that it could break out of this pattern and do something else.  Oh well.....

Update:  nothing big to wake up to.  The storm continues.

Update2:  I've decided this is the old concept of dilation, which was really big 30 years ago.  Basically, the rupture plane must yield slowly and homogenize to a uniform small critical displacement.  Then it is ready for a super-rupture.  It is the same with landslides.  With a rough and strong surface, there must be an expansion of the fault surface, which allows in more water.  This can generate electrical signals and tremor, which makes the animals go crazy, or all these storm earthquakes.  Then pow!

Update3:  Dilation was an MIT concept before that whole area died, and the smart people went to Stanford.

Update4:  Wed. has proven to be generally quiet without a large earthquake.  The pattern is breaking, and if there isn't a large earthquake tomorrow, it is six feet under.

An Oklahoma Earthquake 2-4

In Canada we know what a 2-4 is.  It's a case of beer to watch the hockey game!  Good times.

Not so good down there.

These 4's aren't even a penultimate quenching event, they are part of the chatter.  At some point we can have a runaway reaction, but this probably isn't it.

A chatter that includes 4's means that something bigger is coming.  I sure wish they would have sprung for some accelerometers.  Those puny seismometers are just going to bounce out of their cases.

Anyway these events seem to be deep, so nobody should be worried.

Update:  both events are oblique-normal (tension), so not much of a PGV (Intensity).

Update2: Intense chatter close to 4.  Wouldn't want to be around there.

Update3:  Difficult to know the exact physics here.  If I were a young spring chicken with a big computer, I would model it as discrete elements.  Then I would figure out what is the more likely mechanism - that of a large event starting to give a difficult birth and stimulating the storm, or the inverse of the storm giving rise to a big bouncing baby...

Deep M4.0 Oklahoma earthquake

Nothing to see here, really.  But, I always look on the bright side.  This was a directed strike-slip and I'm calling it deep.  In fact, all the latest significant earthquakes have been deep, ushering in the new phase of depth extension.  This was too small to produce regional stress relief, and an M2.9 happened shortly afterwards.

I've been saying that this mechanism is exactly what happened when New Madrid was a baby.  As long as the earthquakes stay in the upper 5 km, we can only go as high as an M6.  When the events go down to 30 km, then we can get a New Madrid style M7.  Such an event would destroy cheap high-rise condos on swamps all over ENA.  You should live, though.  :)

Update:  Back to a heavy chatter.  The tremor worms are eating away the rock.  :)

Update2:  Yeah, the usgus is back to the beach for M4's.  Somebody must have been surfing.  :)

Almost pure thrust.  At least 10 km deep to spread out the PGV so much.  They don't go below 5 on their very rough calculations.  We're into M6.2 territory now.

The Physics of Oklahoma Earthquake Suppression - Part 6

Everything is California

Now I go to the large scale to totally shatter the usgus physics hypothesis.  Note that if you cornered them on Dr. Phil, they would say that they made no such hypothesis.  That's like a teenager saying "I didn't totally wreck the car, here's the steering wheel."  I am putting forward their implied hypothesis, but all politically-muzzled science is run this way now.  :(

The usgus puts forward that the faults themselves are stress wave generators, and have the storage of energy.  Thus, when a faults goes, it sends out increased stress, and may trigger other earthquakes that are near to rupture.

So, they are fault-centric, and I am bulk-centric.  That is, the bulk carries the energy, and the faults react to that, mainly through stress relief.  In 'Everything is California' (eic), stress slowly accumulates on the faults, and then they release, in a manner called the 'Elastic rebound theory', not changed since 1900.  EIC can be proven true or false by a simple observation in OK (I'm cheating since I already know the answer, but bear with me).

EIC is rendered false by the observation that a large event totally stops all minor activity for at least a day.

Now for what really happens.  The whole OK zone acts as a single organism because it is composed of discrete elements near failure.  Discrete element modelling is most fun ever!  Once you have it set up, the tiniest movement on one element can have far-reaching effects on the whole zone.  The best physical analogue is that of a pile of sand that is being slowly fed from the top.  You could watch that forever!

So, the behaviour of the whole OK is a pile of sand.  You get all the little activity, then one big one.  The big one relieves the stress for the whole zone, and everything stops, just like the sand after a big slip.

In summary, for this whole long series is that usgus physics is proven wrong and I'm right.  :)  None of this matters since the usgus denies having a hypothesis.  They will go on being supreme gods.  But all the local authorities that follow them will have their noses burnt.  They will reduce the rate of injection and it will have no effect if the injectors secretly change the mix.  Big earthquakes are in the future, but I'm not predicting nothing.  

Now, this is final!  Phew!

The Physics of Oklahoma Earthquake Suppression - Part 5

Final Section (not)

Stress Corrosion

So we run with our model of earthquakes, which are quartz points pressed together, pickled in water, and then sheared.  This could be an imaginary physical model in a testing machine, or an imaginary computer model.  They both cost me the same.  :)

I'd draw a picture of it, but that would be silly.  So we want to cause an earthquake, what do we do?  An earthquake is defined as the model going into dynamic friction, and if we have a floppy testing machine, that's a big boom.

If the fracture were double-sealed with rubber, we could increase the water pressure and get it to go boom.  This is the usgus model (but they don't use quartz).  Unfortunately that is too difficult, and does not reflect reality.  In order for pressure to work, there has to be a severe pressure gradient, which means that the fracture is pressurized, and nothing else is.  Our sample is immersed in a water tank, you can pressurize it all you want and nothing happens, there is no gradient.  Deep down in fractured rock, it is exactly the same.

This usgus physics runs from their idea that the fault exists as an entity.  Does not!  Pressure has nothing to do with it, and the pressure gradient is near zero in the deep rock where the earthquakes happen.  (again, against usgus physics).  They can do what they want, they ignore me, I ignore them.  :)

Stress corrosion is the mechanism that attacks the quartz points when they are under shear stress, and in water.  Basically, any shear stress causes tiny tension cracks, and water attacks the quartz bond.  We could pour in a powerful acid, and we'd get our machine to go boom.  But, amazingly enough distilled water is the universal solvent, and it quite corrosive at this scale.  It plucks a quartz molecule, and the whole thing goes boom.

Now, Texas is the holder of a big secret, and they won't tell anybody.  It's that they have big wells that have been injecting deep saltwater for years, and never caused an earthquake.  Then somebody starts mixing in surface water from gas fracking all hell breaks loose.  If only they would come clean on this, we'd all be better off.  I'm assuming that they are lying bastards, and this is what happened.  :)

So, that's the only way we cause earthquakes.  We inject water that can pluck quartz molecules.  The deep water is saturated in silica (quartz) and can't do anything.  So even if Kansas reduces the volume of injection, they'll just change the mix to more lucrative frack waste.  And with natural gas prices through the roof this winter, we know what will happen.

I had proposed a simple fix to stop all these earthquakes, but it ain't gonna happen.  What will happen is that both sides are going to be more and more belligerent until there is a really big earthquake that kills people.  Then all injection will be shut down, and never restart.  The Saudis will be ecstatic!

Thus endeth the tome.

-wait a second!  I forgot about the stupid title.  One more section on discrete element modelling.

The Physics of Oklahoma Earthquake Suppression - Part 4

Complexity of the Precambrian

The wonderful Precambrian runs under the whole eastern half of North America, yet the usgus knows nothing about it.  That's because it only outcrops in Canada.  There's a bit on the East Coast, but that's weird stuff, sliced up and over-thrusted in the Appalachian mountain building.

The pc (nothing to do with Harper) contains the only quartz in the region, and thus is the source of earthquakes.  This is the same in California, where the deep quartz is involved in earthquakes, and not the mapped surface slop.  They only figured this out recently with deep San Andreas drilling.

I've written tons on this complex structure.  Just visualize huge mountain ranges like the Rockies, and rock underneath.  Unfortunately, the hidden model for the usgus and nuclear waste disposal is that the whole thing is a slab of featureless tombstone granite.  For earthquakes, the important features are a series of parallel megathrusts running down in a NE-SW direction, and associated NW (perpendicular) adjustment faults.

According to all the deep seismic tomography, NA has spread and settled into a cold basin (cold roots).  This scrunches everything up like putting your thumb on a beachball.  We should have uniform high horizontal stress, but proof that the megathrusts have reactivated is the fact that our deep horizontal stress is highly polarized in the NE direction.  I remember that our deep hole at Darlington was so polarized that the fracking stress measurements were suspect.  Suffice to say that deep mining has encountered these stresses and they are magnificent.

The usgus thinks the stresses dominating OK are E-W.  That's fine.

-to be continued with the final section on stress corrosion.

The Physics of Oklahoma Earthquake Suppression - Part 3

This whole thing is quite relevant today, since the usgus has got everybody convinced that it is shallow faults and injection volume that is driving this whole thing.  Thus, Kansas and OK are reducing volumes.  The next big earthquakes will blow that out of the 'water'.

So, we look in detail at my 'straw dog' principles, or working hypothesis.  I've almost promoted all this to a theory, but that's just me.  :)

1.   All the earthquakes are reduced to quartz and water.

That's right, two quartz points and water.  When a Precambrian (granitic) fault slides, it hangs up on the quartz points, no matter what the other minerals.  This gives us an 'initial state'.  Further motion (critical displacement) shears these points.  If you baked a sample dry, and put it in outer space, you could not create an earthquake, since further shearing would cause further adhesions.  Unfortunately, this is what most people do when they are studying rock in a testing machine.

In the real world we have water.  Even pieces of rock on your desk have a thin film of water.  On the small scale, these are little ball-bearings all over the quartz.  When you shove two quartz points together with enough force, the ball-bearings move away, but this takes some time.  Think of a kid sinking into the ball pit.

All of this causes the drop to dynamic friction.  Earthquakes are caused when the quartz points are under shear stress, move a little bit (dc) to break the adhesion, and can't reform bonds quick enough.  This is called stick-slip.  The exact same mechanism gives you a bump on the head when you slip on an old-fashioned enamel bathtub.  Once second you have firm footing, and the next .... whoops!

With this model set up, we can have fun with changing the water properties, for the last bit on stress corrosion.

-to be continued.

The Physics of Oklahoma Earthquake Suppression - Part 2

When dealing with political organizations like usgus or the deep waste disposal you have to infer their working basis for their physics.  They never lay it out, because a political animal can never admit he is wrong.  Can you imagine Putin saying "Sorry about that Crimea thing, it was a mistake and we're going home."  Nope, will never happen.  Same with the climate-teests.

The essence of the Scientific Method is that you put up Straw Man hypothesis and you try to knock it down with experiments.  That means, to be effective, you'll have to admit you were wrong lots of times.  My hero was J. Tuzo Wilson, who was proud of how many times he was wrong.  Would never find him in the usgus!

The usgus secret Straw Dog is:

Elastic Rebound is demonstrated in the horrible muck of the surface, instead of just being slopped.

Surface Mapping is the be-all end-all, and all new earthquakes are on 'hidden faults'.

Everything is California


These three things are carved into their collective foreheads and have the strength of religious beliefs.  To attack them would mean the destruction of their universe.

My Working Hypothesis

All earthquakes are caused by the weird properties of quartz and water.

When thinking about the Precambrian --
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. 
- Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

Certain properties of water lead to Stress Corrosion


Now, I am always trying to shoot these down, but I can't.  Every new discovery confirms, and I haven't altered them for years.  :)  Don't forget that if you don't scrawl a line in the sand, you can shift it for every single new observation.  The political people are experts in this.  

- to be continued (getting harder to write, I need some clapping, and "I believe in fairies."

End of Series - Nobody's reading it, so I'm going on another sabbatical.  :(   usgus remains undisputed.

Update:  One person reads this, so I go on.

The Physics of Oklahoma Earthquake Suppression - Part 1

You can see we were getting over a dozen earthquakes a day, in the mid-three range before the M4.2 earthquake, then it all stopped for a while.  It's just starting now with an M2.8.  Over the next few days it will increase until the next frenzy, and finally a large event or events.

This last earthquake was unusual in it's very small felt area.  Even the few higher intensities are probably brick houses that are falling apart from all the other earthquakes.  This earthquake didn't even get any press, smaller earthquakes have made much more of an 'impact'.  For this reason, I can't decide whether it was shallow or deep.  Right now I'm leaning towards deep.  Remember that the 'official' depths are meaningless, with large error bands.  You really need top-notch equipment right on top of the earthquake to get depths.  I also suspect they are installing single-channel, high-frequency garbage.

Although the usgus has made a big deal about Paleozoic faults, the physics must concentrate on the Precambrian fault system which is a completely different animal.  Those poor Californians wouldn't recognize physics if it hit them in the face.  

California is a land of weak rock and stress accumulation from plate motion.  The Deluded refer to faults as 'storing energy'.  They don't, they just move with the tiniest amount of stress.  The OK mechanism is completely opposite - strong faults in high stress, and is a mechanism of stress relief.


-to be continued (maybe).  The dog wants a walk, and I have the attention span of a two-year old.

Made it to 6 parts!  Biggest ever!

Blog Banner Changed

Let's protest this while we can.  I know it will get overturned by either the courts or the next government, but he is scum for pushing it.  I like Rick Mercer's little skit on it.

Oklahoma earthquake - both USGS and OGS agree over M4

USGS has it as M4.2 and OGS has M4.1.  This is a hard one to call for me, but I would say it is a shallow strike-slip.  An Intensity of 6 makes sure the magnitudes will stick.

Very small felt area, but intense.  The elongation makes it shear.  Had this been a M4.2 shallow thrust, I think we would have reached an new intensity.  This event seems to bring to an end the intense chatter that's been going on for the last few days, although there could be some more larger events.

This earthquake now makes the area a 'red light'.  Can't wait to see what that means!

Update:  Looks like this event has stopped everything cold.  Don't forget that the usgus model "Everything is California" would predict that such an event would trigger a burst of activity - the exact opposite.

Oklahoma earthquakes - incredible density of events

From Friday, I've never seen so many events, from about mid-3 and down.  This type of sequence always culminates in some large ones, and then it settles for a while.  There are some indications that the sequence is gaining some depth which is required for larger quakes.  Anyway, no predictions, we'll have to see.

Update:  Just in, the St. Paddy's M4.2.  Another 'invisible' earthquake, this one looks strike-slip.  Will probably be discounted.

Somebody still injecting in Texas for earthquakes

Normally if they get the injection to stop, then the earthquakes stop dead.  But these earthquakes are migrating up NE megathrust.  Somebody is injecting there and we can expect more and larger earthquakes.

Oklahoma M4.1 earthquake - world's lowest PGV

In 8 minutes, they got 5 responses, barely felt.  If this holds up, this will the weakest M4.1 in the history of shakies.  On the other hand, the sucker must be deep, which is amazing for injection earthquakes.  I'll wait.  This will get the usgus discount before the okie discount.

Update:  Still holding up as the invisible M4.1.  They even have a beachball, which they never do for this size.

Completely normal, which accounts for a lowering of Intensity, but not by this much.  This has to be very deep, which means things are activating down to the Moho.  A 7 anyone?

Update2:  Remember we must compare it to a recent M4.0 earthquake at the same spot.

Update3:  OGS puts it at M3.7, so maybe its the usgus that is looney.

Update4:  usgus discounts it to 3.9

Bruce Black Hole a Done Deal

Reference

Yeah, I'm so happy!  Now we can go on to digging the Impossible Pit.  They will pump out the equivalent of Lake Huron, and inject a mountain of grout, and still, the thing will blow up on them.

You will recall my useless efforts to get a mention of grout and pumping, and/or the fact that they are right on the Grenville Front, the fuel behind the Oklahoma earthquakes.  Now the rubber meets the road.

In the old days we just threw the contaminated rock water back into the lake.  Although highly illegal, I assume they intend to do the same thing, since it was never mentioned.  If that is stopped by a whistle-blower, then I recommend deep injection.  :)

Canadian Business

So, I had my day with my Designated Old Guy.  Everybody should adopt an old guy.  Anyway, we went to his favourite fancy restaurant, and we were beside the table of some businessmen.  Two of the guys were veterans of the energy fads, they just sold their big solar business, had been into waste energy, and now were into something new.  The third guy was a bag man or arranger for government grants.  The businessmen seemed to live off these grants and that's why they were into all this stuff.  They were negotiating for a minimal cut from the bagman.  My friend and I were fascinated, but once they got into details, we tuned out.  After all, we're old.

This is classic Canadian business.  It's what destroyed Blackberry, Nortel and SNC.  The new stuff is Kickstarter.  I just loved it!

ps. for any legal person, please be informed that I just had my snooze and have forgotten everything about this.  :)

Great Britain - Hadrian's Firewall

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Pirate Bay

I'm putting this in so my site will be blocked over in the Land of Bad Food.  I don't like those people, anyway.  They never comment.  :)

I'm sorry that has to include you, Mr. (Ms.) Intelligent Reader, but you are judged by the company you keep.  You can just do what I do, put up a Tor relay, and use the Tor browser for a Duckduckgo search.  You'll find things right away.  Always use Linux, and always use full encryption on Deluge.  Of course, I only use that for software updates....

Columbia M6.2 earthquake - complexity abounds

This would be the rinkiest of any earthquake expected in the area -- an M6.2 normal (tension) earthquake far from any big city.  As with all cities these days, they empty the office buildings and flood the streets with people.  Some day that common practice will have a lot killed.

I just love the picture.  You couldn't get any messier!  The Caribbean Plate is pushing, locked with South America, and Panama is getting stretched.  And there is subduction.

Linux - The Boss Part 2

I got up enough courage to go on.  My biggest worry would be Windows corruption, where people depended on the pitiful performance.  As well, there is the issue with laptops, where every important person takes theirs home to have the kids play with it.  Or they go on trips and do everything wrong.

We start with the assumption that we have enough money, and the family owners aren't being cheap.  In fact, I would want to go in after a big failure, and people are clamouring to move up from XP.  All these companies run win7 or xp, and the move to win10 would be just as severe.

My big push would be to go to Google Apps with Chromebooks, and put in some heavy servers to handle legacy win applications.  I suspect there would be some pretty horrible ones.  I would assume that all existing win machines are owned (pawned, intruded), and cross-over day would be fun.  I would only allow contact with the win servers through a filtering proxy server.  Everything internal would be encrypted and 2 factor.

For internal communication I would go to Slack, you need some heavy contact between sales and product development.  Naturally, all of these would allow some excellent contact with the outside world through top-notch web development.

I would contract everything out, since I want to leave.  This could be taken over by a young person without too much risk.  :)  I would also include internal mouse traps, such as files labelled "Celebrity Nude Shots".

**The old company had massive IT corruption, first the mainframes, then windows.  IT dept. became outsourced, and its life depended on picking the most miserable system that required the most servers, and the most labour to keep running.  They were very good at it.  :)

Global Warming Continues

This is the blackbody measurement of the average global temperature.  It's how we would measure the temperature of a distant planet.  Despite my freezing to death with almost 3 months of unrelenting cold, it shows we went up a bit in February.  Go figure.

Reference

Oklahoma earthquake M4.0

Ha, here is the big fight between the muzzled OK seismologists, and the usgus!  This earthquake is right on the nose at 4.0.  If the okies believe this, then a lot of wells have to be closed, especially those huge dewatering wells.  Of course they'll call it an M3.9.

But this is in the zone of mixed thrust and shear.  The shape of the felt area suggests an oblique thrust, but with a very high intensity in the potential hammer zone.  I doubt that the usgus will discount this, but who knows?

If the earthquakes are rising again, then we'll soon get something that is so over m4 that there is no dispute.  :)

Update:  Yeah, OGS M3.9!

Update2:  Deep breath, I'm getting nasty again.  Good thing nobody is reading this.

Linux - Being the boss Part 1

I have a zotac, which I had used as a media machine.  It has 4 processors, and a good Intel graphics system, but I could never get it to work at full speed with Linux.  Finally, with the Linux 3.19 kernel, it is zooming.  But now I just use it for experiments.  I use a dedicated wd-live for the tv, which is embedded Linux.

A funny thing happened.  An old buddy did not retire, but got a big job at a medium industrial company.  I dreamt that they had a standard Sony-type windows system, and there was enough intelligence to get me to stop the bad guys.

First of all I would have to take my "Total Insanity" pills to do this, then the Big Guy would also need the same pills to have me do it.  I would have to severely oscillate my serotonin levels -- high to deal with vendors and stupid people, and low to do anything intelligent.

It would start with the CFO making a reasonable estimate of the cost of a Sony attack, which is probably a million bucks, and the probability which might be 1 in 50 per year.  That should leave a lot of money to play with.

-to be continued  (maybe)

Update:  Actually, I decided this is too insane to continue.  I think all these companies are happy to have competent parasites in their gut (intruders).  If you made a move to cure them, then the intruders would go nuts.  :)

Oklahoma earthquake - M3.7 mid-depth thrust

I don't go by anything the discounters say, but I just look at the felt area.  Shear earthquakes always show a narrow band, and shallow thrusts have a small felt area.  This is a nice mid-depth thrust, which gives an intensity 5.  OK is enjoying a little earthquake holiday now because of the Big Freeze.

Update:  Followed by an M3.5 right on my thrust fault.  It's been so long that I thought this thing was dead.  Anyway, one of the highest Intensity to magnitude ratios.  If they actually put in strong ground motion, it would be the highest PGV to M ratio.

Obviously, we have a very shallow thrust fault here.

Calming Down

I've been on a frenetic tear lately.  I signed up on Disqus and have made snarky comments left and right.  This is not good for my serotonin.  I find when my snark index is way up, I have a tendency to be totally addicted to more and more nastiness.

Leave that to the stand-up comedians.  Also, when we get a good wash of mass stupidity, I get hyper.

So, rather than just disappear, as I have a tendency to do, I shall sit very firmly on my hands.

1.  Nothing can happen in OK that is any stupider  --- off my list.

2.  Radioactive waste never does anything.

3. I've done everything in Linux that my brain can handle right now.

4. The snow keeps coming.


I'm going back to painting the house.  That's lots of fun.....

Update:  I hate painting!

US now going to inject radioactive waste

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Oh Thank God!  We Canadians don't have the stupidity monopoly for nuclear waste.

I'm sure the usgus just loves this idea!  They don't know a thing about the earthquake-causing Precambrian basement, so let's shove down some very hot waste.

In their Great Ignorance, they visualize the basement as a big slab of grave-stone granite.  This is the exact same stupidity as the Bruce Waste site.  I guess both those guys didn't vaccinate.  :)

Let's put this waste right into a megathrust.  Can't wait to see what it'll do....

Moderating thoughts:  I really can't tear into the usgus for their blind monkey act.  Same as Canada.  Some time ago, I developed the only rational way to deal with this waste, but it is politically unacceptable.  In such cases, the only thing to do is to spend billions on a solution that won't work.  Always happened, always will.

My work:  We Canadians had a silly idea of using boreholes from a deep underground cavern.  My stress studies put paid to that quickly.  It's a sad truth that you either have a huge fault nearby, or the stresses are so high you can't even drill a borehole.  But let the usgus find that out for themselves!  :)

Nuclear waste suddenly gets fussy

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"These latest studies show there is limited potential in the areas of Creighton or Schreiber to find a repository site that would meet the safety requirements of the project."

These are the same people that love the horrible Bruce site.  This geology is typical of anything in Northern Ontario.  I'm fond of Elliot Lake, and I'm sure it's the same.  A dog's breakfast.  Maybe not enough Olympic-style effort here.  :)  **

**Note how carefully I have to say that, and, no, I'm not going to explain it.

Linux is better

Just came back from a local fancy medical office.  Like everybody, they run win7 but want to have full Internet, with on-line booking and everything.  Tough luck, they've been down 3 days, and their IT people are wallowing.

Just another sob story.  You can't keep the old cruft, and be out in the world.  Those guys will rip you to shreds with their outlook exploits.  They should take a lesson from this and go to Linux, but they won't, probably because their scheduling application (which probably caused this with a buffer overflow), is tied to the old stuff.

Take this as a warning, if you are like this, you will will be hit next.

Further thought:  20 years ago, I wanted out of the old company and become a sys admin (would have been Unix, though).  I'm just thinking of the conversation from above (same as Sony).  Dr. Big comes to me (he doesn't pay me full time) and says:  "I want all the Internet doodads that my nephew told me about."  I reply:  "You're a cheap bastard, and your miserable system can't take this."  Out the virtual door!

More:  For some reason, I am intensely aware of medical systems and they maintain security by being totally blind to intrusions (Monkey Method).  When the first intruder comes in, he actually tries to improve security so that others can't do it.  A big system failure like above comes when there are many intruders and they fight.  :)

More earthquake muck from Oklahoma

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I can't make this stuff up!  This has all the makings of a great movie:  'Quake Jaws'.

Seismologists have humour:

“I have been asked to have ‘coffee’ with President Boren and Harold Hamm Wednesday,” states an email Holland wrote to a coworker on Nov. 18, 2013.
“Gosh. I guess that’s better than having Kool Aid with them … I guess,” the co-worker replied.

I honestly think they did drink the Kool-Aid, perhaps only a little sip.  :)

Update:  More detail here.  And another great quote.

"Myself and a few other geologists that know of the Hunton dewatering oil operations in the affected areas and subsequent re-injection into the Arbuckle [are] the culprit," wrote Andrews, who is now the interim director of OGS. "I am dismayed at our seismic people about this issue and believe they couldn't track a bunny through fresh snow!"

Update2:  Newsweek now carrying this.  Soon it will reputable places like Wash Post, and Times.  :)

Oklahoma earthquakes - M3.8 thrusts are back

Not OK, so it can't be given the old okie discount.  This was a shallow thrust, and will certainly give that Anthony courthouse another shot.

Intensity 5 for an M3.8.  One of the very high ratios.

It's been so quiet here, that I've been writing about everything else under the Sun.  It still should be generally quiet since most of that good frack waste is probably frozen.

I'd really red-card that courthouse.

Linux - Mediawiki on Apache

I am continuing trying to set up a Tor web site.  As you recall, I run a Tor relay on my Linux machine for all those Russians who want to talk about the latest p-killing.  The advantage of having a 'dark' Tor web site is that you don't need a static IP address, and you don't need to register a domain.  Right now, I'm running it stand-alone, since I worry about security.  Until there are millions of Tor relays, running one puts you 'On the List'.

I decided that the best thing to do was to run a wiki, maybe WikiDogea, or WikiQuakea, whatever.  That required some work.  First thing is to get Apache2 running, which is easy with Debian, just install it.  Then test it by going to localhost on your browser.

The mediawiki should be the same, but it isn't.  Installing mediawiki seems to give you nothing.  You have to dig up detailed instructions on getting mysql running, then the instructions on linking the mediawiki files under /var/www/html for the Apache connection.  Then you just go to localhost/mediawiki and you get to install it.

It works great.  A fun family project.  :)

Not so easy:  I did all this on my main Linux machine, but when I went to transfer my knowledge to my little Zotac, I stepped in the pig-pile.  Suffice to say I got it working, but I really went up in my Linux qualifications.  :)

Earthquake Corruption in Oklahoma

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This will divert my Russian readers.  Saying there is corruption in OK is like saying Poutine bags another one.

Local seismic monitoring units cannot make up magnitudes willy-nilly.  The local guy has questionable qualifications.  I would call him more of a Oklahoma-seismologist, rather than a seismologist.  :)

Anyway, the big freeze combined with low oil prices has settled things a bit.  Nothing has reached the all-powerful tipping point of M4.0000000   The true accuracy here is probably plus or minus 0.5