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| Greg's diary |
| March 2025 |
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| Saturday, 1 March 2025 | Dereel | Images for 1 March 2025 |
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Birthday dishes
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne's birthday today, and she had asked for sweet and sour fish for dinner. And while we're at it, why not asparagus and prawns?
Sweet and sour fish used to be a really difficult dish for me, but it has got so much easier. So much, in fact, that I underestimated the time it takes, and I started at least 20 minutes too late. I should really give myself an hour for the dish. This time I cut the fish into larger pieces, battered them more than usual and deep fried them. And I used some newly found Chinkiang vinegar, which I thought came from Xinjiang, but in fact comes from Zhenjiang. That, too, seems to have improved it. Yvonne found the dish as a whole better than previously.
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More Android pain
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I've been using computers of some form or another in the kitchen for well over a quarter of a century, but lately I've been using my Android mobile phone. It's not a good substitute. Today I had two recipes, and it was beyond me to switch between the two. And basically a phone is just too small. I should use the TV in the lounge room instead.
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No mail!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Today I managed to cut down the contents of my mail inbox to only 5 messages, probably the least I have had in years.
But it stayed that way for hours on end. Before going to bed, checked what was going on on the external server, and found:
Feb 28 18:33:12 lax named[13618]: DNS format error from 189.36.144.19#53 resolving corvus.UNITELECOM.COM.BR/AAAA: empty question section
Feb 28 18:33:26 lax named[13618]: resolver.c:1958: INSIST(((fctx->validators).head == ((void *)0))) failed, back trace
Feb 28 18:33:26 lax named[13618]: #0 0x2bc830 in ??
Feb 28 18:33:26 lax named[13618]: #1 0x498aea in ??
Feb 28 18:33:26 lax named[13618]: #2 0x3ef8da in ??
Feb 28 18:33:26 lax named[13618]: #3 0x3ed71b in ??
Feb 28 18:33:26 lax named[13618]: #4 0x3eef55 in ??
Feb 28 18:33:26 lax named[13618]: #5 0x4b54ad in ??
Feb 28 18:33:26 lax named[13618]: #6 0x800a61776 in ??
Feb 28 18:33:26 lax named[13618]: exiting (due to assertion failure)
Feb 28 18:33:26 lax kernel: pid 13618 (named), uid 53: exited on signal 6
The name server had died! I've never seen that before. And it had taken me nearly 18 hours to find out! After I restarted it, things came back to normal again, but why did it die?
| Sunday, 2 March 2025 | Dereel | Images for 2 March 2025 |
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Mona
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Topic: animals | Link here |
For reasons I don't understand, Mona likes to chew on towels:
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That one has been destroyed, so we're leaving it for her for further use.
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Another dead named!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
named on www.lemis.com has crashed again! The backtrace is the same, but this time I noticed lots of this:
Mar 2 01:16:32 lax named[58441]: DNS format error from 189.36.144.18#53 resolving ORION.UNITELECOM.COM.BR/AAAA: empty question section
Mar 2 01:16:34 lax named[58441]: DNS format error from 189.36.144.18#53 resolving corvus.unitelecom.com.br/AAAA: empty question section
Mar 2 01:16:36 lax named[58441]: DNS format error from 189.36.144.18#53 resolving orion.unitelecom.com.br/AAAA: empty question section
They were there yesterday too. Is this some kind of attack? It's always from 189.36.144.18 or 189.36.144.19, and the request is also always one of very few invalid requests. What should I do? Block them? Fix my named?
Sometimes I wonder if it's worth the trouble running my own server.
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A historic moment?
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Topic: politics, opinion | Link here |
What's going on in the world? The USA and Israel are destroying what's left of Gaza, Donald Trump is trying to buy what's left of Ukraine, and his naive vice-president tries to lecture Zelensky about diplomacy. It seems that they're not listening to each other:
More and more conspiracy theories are popping up about Trump being a Soviet or Russian “asset”. That's not surprising, though if there's anything of that nature, my money would be on Putain having compromising material about Trump. But what's the truth? And where do we go from here?
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The right roast chicken?
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Roast chicken for dinner tonight, something that I've found difficult to do right. Today it seemed to work: 1.6 kg chicken at room temperature (18°), oven at 180°, start with foil on the breast. At 50° (after 46 minutes) remove the foil. At 60° (after 55 minutes) spread oil and paprika powder on the skin. Finished after 75 minutes (47 minutes per kilogram):
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| Monday, 3 March 2025 | Dereel → Melbourne → Dereel | Images for 3 March 2025 |
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Melbourne again
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Topic: health, general, food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Off to Melbourne this morning to take Yvonne for her next ablation. How I hate Melbourne, especially the traffic. Finally got there—it looks very different from the Melbourne Private Hospital, a real entrance, including drop-off parking spaces.
From there I had planned to go on to the Jade Kingdom for some KL Hokkien Mee. But Google Maps told me that they “may” be closed today. And so they are. They only open from Thursday to Sunday, and only for a total of 6 hours a day. I've never seen a restaurant that was open for such a short period of time. So I turned around and went back home.
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More Google Maps fun
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
How long does it take to get from here to Cabrini Health in Malvern to arrive at 11:15? That depends on whom you ask. Ask Google Maps and it will tell you 2 hours. Or ask the mobile phone version and it will tell you something else.
In the end we left at 8:53, mainly because we were ready. and were rewarded with an estimated arrival time of 10:53. But that gradually changed as we went through some of the worst traffic I've been in in a while, and finally we arrived at 10:03, a total of 2 hours, 10 minutes, still a couple of minutes ahead of Google's final estimate.
Going back home was almost exactly the reverse. Suddenly the traffic had cleared up, and where we had crawled on the way to the hospital, I was able to drive at up to 40 km/h. In the end I got back at 13:55, only 1 hours and 40 minutes, and only 4 hours and 2 minutes after leaving.
Part of this might have been due to another re-routing on the way home. Instead of going through the outskirts of Geelong, I was taken cross country, just like last time. Why only on the way home? The route appeared to be the same, but this time I was given an alternative route with “about the same arrival time”. Took that, and to my surprise arrived on the Midland Highway just south of Bannockburn. Last time I had recognized the road without thinking about it. This time I was surprised to find where I was after having driven several kilometres down the well-known road south of Bannockburn.
Of course, things might have been even faster if I hadn't ended up behind somebody moving house:
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No hope of getting past that, and I followed him from Teesdale to Shelford, after which he mercifully turned off the main road.
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After the “procedure”
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
For some reason I was filled with dread this afternoon about the possibility that Yvonne would not survive her ablation. Fortunately she did, and she called me at 19:18 after what appeared to have been a particularly gruelling operation. The positive impression that Cabrini Health had made didn't last long. They had not arranged for a room for her, and she ended up in a 4 patient room with people who didn't stop talking the whole time she was there, a nurse tried four times to put in a catheter before getting a head nurse to do it, and somebody had cut her lip during the operation. But the operation was a success, so she'll be back tomorrow.
| Tuesday, 4 March 2025 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 4 March 2025 |
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Power outage
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Topic: general | Link here |
Another planned grid power outage today, from 9:04 to 14:38. The warning made it almost a non-event: I had prepared by charging the battery, and the sun was shining. The computers all managed to survive the power transition, and the battery state of charge didn't drop below 92%.
Only two devices failed: the bedside clocks in our bedrooms. Why? I've seen this again and again.
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Yvonne returns
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Topic: health | Link here |
Yvonne was discharged from hospital this morning and returned
at midday. The taxi to Spencer Street
Southern Cross Station cost $50! And that after Google Gemini had estimated $25, going to some detail.
Bad Gemini!
She was dismissed by Professor Peter Kistler, who didn't have time to talk to me on the phone, but promised a summary by email. It seems that he had found two further trigger sources for atrial fibrillation, but had only ablated one. Under those circumstances I would have asked why, but Yvonne didn't. He is relatively confident that it won't flare up, but she is to take 25 mg of flecainide twice a day at least until her next appointment in June. Somehow I have a lot of questions that need answering.
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Bank Australia pain
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
It's hay time again, and Yvonne wants to collect a large sum (far too large!) of cash to pay for it. We're in the process of moving all our local banking to Bank Australia, so I called up to ask if they would have that much money available at the branch. So, once I finally found the number, I called up the phone enquiries at +61-3-9854-4666 and asked.
Simple question, right? And nothing that would raise any security concerns (it wasn't that much money, so there's no concern that I might be planning a bank robbery). It took me 30 minutes! They wanted my account number (why?) and password (how? It's designed to be pasted into a web form).
That was bad enough, but there was no way past it. Read it out, and on the third attempt Daniel (a woman, I think) got it almost right. But it contains special characters, and she wasn't able to enter them (why not?). No way past it, perform a full identity check. Full name, date of birth, address, the usual things. And then driver license number. But not just the number, the tiny, illegible number on the back that I didn't even know about. And it was really illegible. Instead I had to give her the Medicare card number, the one that ends in a 6 or maybe a b. And after I gave all that, she called me back on my mobile phone, refusing to tell me the number of the one they had recorded (which proved to be correct).
Then she did a thing that she called Equifax to establish my identity by asking me multiple choice questions:
So: four questions, two of each had the same answer. One of them was ambiguous. All could be answered from my web site.
So, finally I was able to get my phone password, which reflected my feeling after going through this ordeal. They also stored a voice imprint, which might make more sense. And yes, the Ballarat branch could arrange the money.
“Arrange”? What does that mean? I go into the branch, and they tell me to come back in a week? No, after pointed asking, she confirmed that I could pick up the cash when I went there. I just needed to tell her what I needed the money for (why?).
What a pain! Did I make a mistake by choosing Bank Australia? At the very least we have these problems:
On the positive side, I gave them a password to use with phone calls, and she registered it without surprise.
So: do I stay with Bank Australia? I have had pain with the other two banks I have had. How could they could improve things?
| Wednesday, 5 March 2025 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 5 March 2025 |
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Thai Basil!
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Topic: gardening, food and drink | Link here |
The Thai basil that I planted in mid-December didn't exactly flourish:
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So last week I planted some more. The results are already visible:
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That's more like what I had expected, but clearly I had planted too many seeds. I'll have to see if I can separate them. But it's interesting to look more carefully: there are seedlings on the left and the top right, but not bottom right. Why? Three different kinds of seeds. The ones on the left are a new packet that I received a couple of weeks ago, and on the right there are the remains of the packet that I received in December, and also of some which are about 5 years old. Only one of these batches has germinated. But which?
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Shopping
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Topic: general | Link here |
Yvonne is recovering well from her latest ablation, but she's not allowed to drive a car for a few days, so I had to do the shopping today. Surprisingly, everything seemed to work, and I was done relatively quickly.
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Bank Australia: the other shoe
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Topic: general, technology, multimedia, opinion | Link here |
Into Bank Australia branch to pick up my cash, as painfully prepared yesterday. The preparation had one good thing: I was asked for my password! If I hadn't done it yesterday, I would have had to go through the whole rigmarole in the branch. And if it's necessary, why didn't they set one up when I signed up? Interestingly, the person at the other teller was being subjected to the same silly Equifax questions. I wonder if this is some new measure that they have imposed on their customers.
Amanda, the teller, also asked me—again!—about the purpose of the withdrawal. When asked, she explained that it was to help prevent scams. I suppose that's a good intention, though I don't know how successful it would be. Just by chance last night we watched “A little faith”, an episode of “Blue Heelers”, about a scam. While it was fiction, it gave cause for thought. People being scammed seldom admit it even to friends.
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In a BIND
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
For a couple of days I've been trying to get rid of these broken DNS requests on www.lemis.com:
Mar 2 01:16:32 lax named[58441]: DNS format error from 189.36.144.18#53 resolving ORION.UNITELECOM.COM.BR/AAAA: empty question section
Mar 2 01:16:34 lax named[58441]: DNS format error from 189.36.144.18#53 resolving corvus.unitelecom.com.br/AAAA: empty question section
Asking Google Gemini came up with an overly complicated update to named.conf, and it also didn't work: it blocked all requests. Later John Marshall on IRC came up with what seems to be correct:
--- named.conf 2021/12/14 04:01:45 1.8
+++ named.conf 2025/03/05 00:56:06
@@ -7,15 +7,22 @@
unix "/var/run/ndc" perm 0600 owner 0 group 0; // the default
};
+acl blocked_ips {
+ 189.36.144.18;
+ 189.36.144.19;
+};
+
options {
directory "/usr/local/etc/namedb";
resolver-query-timeout 30;
+ allow-query { !blocked_ips; any; };
};
The difference was the keyword any. But somehow it didn't work, at least not at first. Set logging? By that time it had stopped, though I suspect it had just gone into hiding. Mañana.
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