Friday Cat Blogging

Soft whispers of peace
The cat, long soundly asleep
Dreams of a new friend

Ututo

My first blog post from Ututo.

¡Mi primer poste del blog de Ututo! Woo-hoo!

Bison Americanus

An inside joke. Tim Cummings, this one's for you, wherever you are.

Radio Song

Decatur, Illinois-born Alison Kraus's Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us from her 2007 album Raising Sand (with Robert Plant) on the Rounder Records label. Video.

Friday Cat Blogging

Yuki sleeps.

Meat-Free Haggis!

I've often felt skeptical about foods marketed to vegetarians that look and taste like meat, but this one takes the cake--meat-free haggis! Truth truly is stranger than fiction.

Sacramento-Area Restaurants Open on Thanksgiving

Dawn and I have attended these restaurants' Thanksgiving-day meals in the past:

• Ryde Hotel's Thanksgiving Day Feast
  
• $35/adult
• Beautiful drive along the Delta, a speakeasy-era hotel, wonderful buffet
  
• The Rusty Duck's Turkey Dinner
  
• $21/adult
• Pre-fix dinner, includes sides and dessert, along the American River
  

Other possibilities we haven't visited:

• Plaza Hof Brau's Turkey Dinner
• $10/adult
• Evan's Kitchen
• $19/adult
• Mimi's Cafe (chain)
• ?
  
• Sequoia Placerville
  

Sacramento Magazine's picks.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Fixing P1443

Above: 1996 Ford Escort 1.9L Evaporative Emissions Purge Valve

Several small wins today culminated in a successful replacement of a part that may or may not have contributed to my car exhibiting the P1443 Check Engine code:

• Found the service information for the $25 purge valve part that I researched in my car's service manual. The Helm service manual contains 3,000 pages--it's 3 inches thick and measures a foot on each side. Ford organizes their service manual index by sub-system (for example, Engine, Electrical, Exhaust), which rules out a simple alphabetical search. I finally found it under the Evaporative Emissions (EVAP) section, which makes sense, retrospectively.
• Purchased the part: Brought the service manual with me to NAPA Auto Parts and showed them the part. It turns out I needn't have done that--they have a computer that can look up parts based on the car's year/make/model/engine. They had the appropriate part in stock and I purchased it for $26.
  
• Found the location of the part in the engine compartment. It turns out that the service information for the purge valve states that the part lies beneath another part, the engine air cleaner part. It doesn't list what page the engine air cleaner part is on though. So it's back to the index--is engine air cleaner under Engine? No. Several iterations of this later I discover it under another sub-system whose name escapes me. Perfect. I can't see the part yet, but I know it's under the box containing the air filter, something I have some experience with.
  
• Removed the engine air cleaner part. The engine air cleaner connects to the chassis with two bolts and a retaining nut. It turns out the retaining nut had rusted a bit, and as I loosened it, it made a noise that sounded like something bad was about to happen. I used WD-40 on the bolts and retaining nut to see if it might help. After I removed the other two bolts, I returned to the retaining nut and decided it was now or never, and continued to hear the strange, staccato metal-on-metal noise as I loosened it with a great deal of force. After a few iterations of this it began loosening smoothly--success! The air cleaner removed, I found the purge valve part easily.
• Removed the purge valve. Removing the vacuum tubing from the purge valve represented a new experience for me, and I ended up using pliers to do it since I couldn't get my hands in the right position. A moment of panic struck me as I tore the tubing on one side as I removed it from the purge valve. After a moment of thought, I realized there was enough slack in the vacuum tubing that I might remedy the situation by trimming off the torn section. Whew.
  
• Installed the purge valve. No problem
• Put everything back together again. No problems.

Whether removing the battery ground cable cleared the code, or whether replacing the evaporative emissions purge valve fixed the problem, the Check Engine light no longer displays.

I'll know for sure in another couple weeks whether the fix worked. Until then, everything's running as it did before replacing the part.

For those of you wondering what this little part does--it's part of a sub-system that traps the fuel vapor from the car's gas tank and delivers it to the engine where it's burned off. The valve opens and shuts to allow vapors through. There's another part, the EVAP cannister, that's filled with charcoal that sits between the purge valve and the fuel tank and acts like a odor filter (I think?) . The final part in the sub-system is the EVAP sensor--that's the sensor that trips the Check Engine light when things get out of balance--a plugged/crimped vacuum tube, a faulty purge valve, or a faulty EVAP cannister. Fascinating stuff.

Fixing netselect-apt

netselect-apt efficiently chooses the fastest download mirror for Debian packages out of a list of several hundred mirrors worldwide.

Unfortunately, I noticed after installing a new version of Debian Etch that netselect-apt failed with the message:

netselect was unable to find a mirror, this probably means that
you are behind a firewall and it is blocking traceroute.

It turns out netselect-apt::run_netselect() produces this error when it fails to parse the HTML of the Debian worldwide mirror sites page at http://www.debian.org/mirror/mirrors_full. This page no longer contains \n\n delimiters.

Last week, I resolved the problem by modifying run_netselect() to use "<br><br>" instead (highlighted):

run_netselect()
{
        SEARCH="$1"
    PROTO="$2"
    netselect -v -s 1 $(cat "$infile" \
        | perl -n -e '
            $/="<br><br>";
            while(<>){
              next if $_ !~ /Site:/;
              if( m@'"$SEARCH"':.*<a href="('"$PROTO"'://.*?)">@i ){
                    print("$1\n");
              }
            }') \
        | awk '{print $2}'
}

I also removed the check for Archive Architectures, since the phrase no longer appears on the page.

Also, I noticed after patching netselect-apt that running netselect-apt occasionally fails due to negative values for netselect field host->num_out, but this is a bug for the netselect package, not netselect-apt .

Friday Cat Blogging

After vigorous play-time with sugar snap peas, Yuki rests.

export EDITOR="vim"

Another shell customization--I noticed that my fresh install of Debian etch changed the default editor to nano even after I run the command set -o vi. The fix is the title of this post, via: http://wlug.org.nz/BashNotes.

$/="\n\n";

It took me a while to refresh my memory of Perl to the point where I identified what the title of this post does.

BMR

del.icio.us linked to an article on healthy living today, which linked to a Basal Metabolic Rate calculator.

My results:

1.725						Very Active	Hard exercise or sports 6-7	3,246	(BMR) 3,119 (RMR)
							days a week

Dvorak Zine Comic

Boing Boing linked to a Dvorak Zine comic today. I've used the Dvorak keyboard layout since 2002. Here's how my personal experience compares to claims in the Dvorak Zine Comic:

1. It takes 52 hours to retrain
1. Mostly true--it took me about three eight-hour days, only 24 working hours, before I felt comfortable using Dvorak. I don't remember how long it took to reach my previous typing speed.
2. 50% increased accuracy
1. Somewhat true--although I doubt I've increased by 50%, and I have no data to back this up, I think I'm somewhat more accurate with Dvorak.
3. 20% increased typing speed
1. Somewhat true--I'm a bit faster now compared to QWERTY. I typed pretty fast with QWERTY though.
4. Increased comfort and decreased likelihood of Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI)
1. True--Again anecdotal, but I think I've had fewer RSI issues since I adopted Dvorak.

Your mileage may vary--for me, the main advantages came with increased comfort and reduced RSI, something critical for someone spending 8-10 hours per day writing software.

Some tips if you're willing and able to learn Dvorak:

• Commit to at least three days of learning Dvorak. It will try your patience while you retrain your muscle memory. Emotions may include frustration and fatigue.
• Use Dvorak at home and at work while learning. I've found attempting to use different keyboard layouts during the initial phase counter-productive.
• On Windows: Ctrl-Shift to switch between QWERTY and Dvorak. This isn't well publicized, regrettably.
• Expect to regress to hunt and peck on QWERTY keyboards you encounter in the wild after retraining. E.g., the public library, your friend's home, your significant other's PC, your co-worker's PC, your college computer lab. This is the biggest negative for me. I find I use Dvorak 99% of the time on a computer I have administrative control over, and these 1% cases don't matter much--again, your mileage may vary.

I learned something I didn't know from reading the comic this evening: on Linux, the command to set the keyboard map is: setxkbmap dvorak. Cool!
UPDATE: What I didn't realize until I read through the comments on Boing Boing was how defensive people seem to feel about QWERTY versus Dvorak, probably because they feel judged.

I think until keyboards come with letters that can be easily changed, QWERTY's here to stay.

#include

E-mail signature, seen on NANOG: ^_^

||| email - #include "useless_vendor_certifications.h" |||

Perplexed

Dawn's: ^_^

P1443

One of the joys of driving a 10+ years old Ford Escort LX is that it provides a new learning opportunity every few months.

On Saturday, the Check Engine light came on. This afternoon, I stopped at Napa Auto Parts and purchased a code reader, which returned P1443: Evaporative Emission Control System Control Valve.

One source says nine times out of ten it's a loose gas cap. Another source says it's a $25 purge valve part, and an easy fix. Another: purge flow sensor, canister purge solenoid, or the vacuum lines. Another: damaged/blocked hose(s) between the EVAP canister, purge control valve, purge flow sensor, and intake manifold; a damaged purge control valve or purge flow sensor; or a damaged EVAP canister (least likely cause unless the canister has been cracked or smashed).

P1443 - Very Small Or No Purge Flow Condition.
A fuel tank pressure change greater than a minus (-) 7 inches of H2 O in 30 seconds has occurred with purge (fuel vapor) flow less than 0.02 pounds per minute.
Possible causes:
1)Blocked fuel vapor hose between EVAP canister purge valve and FTP sensor.
2)Blocked fuel vapor hose between EVAP canister purge valve and engine intake manifold.
3)Blocked vacuum hose between EVAP canister purge valve-solenoid and engine intake manifold.
4)EVAP canister purge valve stuck closed (mechanically).
Check for blockages between the fuel tank, EVAP canister purge valve and engine intake manifold. Check obstructions in the EVAP canister purge valve diaphragm and ports.

To be continued

Foliage on Our Property

Asian Pear Tree (fruit: mid-August to late-September)
Apricot Tree (fruit: late-spring to summer)
Kumquat Tree (fruit: late-Autumn to mid-Winter)
Rosemary
Catalpa Tree
Honeysuckle vines
California Laurel
Oleander
Rhododendron
Periwinkle (Vinca)
Fruitless Mulberry

In our neighboring yard:
Mimosa Tree
Alstroemeria (Peruvian Lily)
Almond Tree (2)
Norway Maple Tree

This scratches the surface--our neighbor cultivates many plants native to California. I'll add to the list as I learn more.

Apple Hill Harvest Run

Dawn and I ran in the Apple Hill Harvest Run on Sunday. Lots of fun!

The best part (of course) is the apple pie and other treats to eat in the surrounding area after the event. ;)

Results:

Male 30 to 39
Place Name City Age Overall Time Pace
65 Kevin Schultz Sacramento CA 30 503 1:54:40.0 13:29/M