EDID for X

In X Window, when running headless, the resolution can be defaulted to something poor since no monitor's attached.  Apparently one can snag the EDID information for the monitor, save it to a file, and specify it in xorg.conf.  One wiki page describes how to extract the EDID info, but nvidia-settings has a means of extracting the monitor EDID info when it's plugged in.  Of course, that wiki's description of how to set up xorg.conf is useful.  The NVIDIA Tips and Tricks wiki also has a description of setting up the EDID for headless operation.

Monero Mining

Nanopool has support for XMR, but only through Claymore, which doesn't have a Linux version for the CPU miner.  One site uses xmr-stak-cpu and another uses cpu-miner-multi.  Looks like a 1060 does about 470 H/s.

CryptoCompare's guide also has several options.  Gotta wonder how a 12-thread Ryzen would do at reduced load concurrent with Ethereum mining.

OC at Last

Well, the problem was trying to use the onboard video.  Once I shut off the IGA and disabled multiple adapters, gpu-manager quit overwriting my xorg.conf and I was able to follow the rest of the usual steps to overclock the GPUs.  I started off with +100 MHz graphics clock and +500 MHz memory clock, and once I got the EVGA 1060 SC up to +1000 MHz memory, claymore started throwing errors.  Anything over +500 didn't seem to help the hashrate, although I needed to kick the power target on the #3 card up to 80W.  With 100/500 across the board, I'm getting about 21 MH/s rather than 19.5 MH/s, a total of 84 MH/s, up from 79 MH/s.  Not quite a 10% kicker, but it's welcome.

I was reading how ethminer has better optimization for Cuda, so I'm going to have to check out ethminer vs. claymore once I get it compiled.  WhatToMine says I should be getting 90 MH/s for four 1060s.  At least the system power consumption's lower than the 360W they quote; 345W for the whole box.

Mining Mobo

I'd been wondering why no one bothered to make an out-of-form-factor motherboard with slots spaced for multiple GPUs.  One just showed up in my feed!  The manufacturer's page is a bit sparse, information-wise, so it'd be a bit risky to buy.  They're available on eBay for about $232, shipping included, with estimated delivery in 8-10 weeks.

Linux Recovery

Well, this is just a note to myself rather than a bunch of weird links.  So...if you do "prime-select intel" on a hybrid graphics system and everything freezes when the boot sequence gets to X:

1. Hard reboot and wait for the BIOS screen to pass.
2. Hit Esc to bring up the Grub bootloader menu (holding down Shift didn't work on my system).
3. Type 'e' on the first entry to edit the boot commands.
4. On the line with "linux", append " 3" (space, 3).  This will restrict the runlevel to 3, which is multi-user mode.  Alternatively, one could append " single", but single-user mode is perhaps less useful because you can't start X from there, nor do you have network access.
5. Hit F10 to boot with those options.
6. Log in and do your thing.  In multi-user console mode, you can hit Ctrl-Alt-1 through 6 to get tty1-6.  Ctrl-Alt-7 is X, usually.  If you have something to try, like fix the graphics selection: "sudo prime-select nvidia ; systemctl stop lightdm ; systemctl start lightdm".

Of course, that may not completely fix things either, but getting access to the system is better than being locked out.

Installing Nvidia Drivers on Ubuntu

After installing Ubuntu with the Nvidia drivers, nvidia-settings wouldn't display the overclocking options.  Modifying /etc/X11/xorg.conf didn't help, because gpu-manager was overwriting the file.  The Bumblebee module (bbswitch), which is for switching between an integrated GPU and a standalone one, was failing to load, causing gpu-manager to behave badly.  Bumblebee isn't what I need, since I want to run the display on the Intel video and keep the GPUs running for mining.  Apparently this is still a problem with people, since complaints turn up on the BB Git page.

The devs seem to ignore the requests, possibly because it's due to misconfiguration.  Based on my log, it seems that the Nvidia drivers are being loaded prior to gpu-manager invoking modprobe bbswitch.

Two pages turned up with hints on how to resolve the problem.  The first one was easier to follow, but the Nvidia run script failed to build the DKMS module.  There's a second page that may be of help since that first one didn't do the trick....

Incidentally, at one point I'd used nvidia-prime to switch to the Intel driver and upon reboot the login page would freeze.  A page suggested reinstalling ubuntu-desktop, which surprisingly worked.

Follow-up [1/14]: Well, none of that stuff worked.  In fact, using the Nvidia run file, I couldn't even log into X, as it got stuck in a "login loop".  So I ripped out all of that, installed the PPA drivers, and I'm back where I started--what a waste of time.  I guess that's why Linux is free and you have to pay for Windows.  The last thing I have to try is switching off the IGA and using the GPU as the video adapter in the hope that gpu-manager won't screw with xorg.conf.

Cryptocurrency Regulation

FinCEN apparently has a broader definition of a money services business than the state of Minnesota.  From the former:

  (uu) Money services business. Each agent, agency, branch, or office within the United States of any person doing business, whether or not on a regular basis or as an organized business concern, in one or more of the capacities listed in paragraphs (uu)(1) through (uu)(6) of this section. Notwithstanding the preceding sentence, the term ‘‘money services business’’ shall not include a bank, nor shall it include a person registered with, and regulated or examined by, the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
  (1) Currency dealer or exchanger. A currency dealer or exchanger (other than a person who does not exchange currency in an amount greater than $1,000 in currency or monetary or other instruments for any person on any day in one or more transactions).
  (2) Check casher. A person engaged in the business of a check casher (other than a person who does not cash checks in an amount greater than $1,000 in currency or monetary or other instruments for any person on any day in one or more transactions).
  (3) Issuer of traveler’s checks, money orders, or stored value. An issuer of traveler’s checks, money orders, or, stored value (other than a person who does not issue such checks or money orders or stored value in an amount greater than $1,000 in currency or monetary or other instruments to any person on any day in one or more transactions).
  (4) Seller or redeemer of traveler’s checks, money orders, or stored value. A <15>seller or redeemer of traveler’s checks, money orders, or stored value (other than a person who does not sell such checks or money orders or stored value in an amount greater than $1,000 in currency or monetary or other instruments to or redeem such instruments for an amount greater than $1,000 in currency or monetary or other instruments from, any person on any day in one or more transactions).
  (5) Money transmitter—(i) In general. Money transmitter:
  (A) Any person, whether or not licensed or required to be licensed, who engages as a business in accepting currency, or funds denominated in currency, and transmits the currency or funds, or the value of the currency or funds, by any means through a financial agency or institution, a Federal Reserve Bank or other facility of one or more Federal Reserve Banks, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, or both, or an electronic funds transfer network; or
  (B) Any other person engaged as a business in the transfer of funds.
  (ii) Facts and circumstances; Limitation. Whether a person ‘‘engages as a business’’ in the activities described in paragraph (uu)(5)(i) of this section is a matter of facts and circumstances. Generally, the acceptance and transmission of funds as an integral part of the execution and settlement of a transaction other than the funds transmission itself (for example, in connection with a bona fide sale of securities or other property), will not cause a person to be a money transmitter within the meaning of paragraph (uu)(5)(i) of this section.
  (6) United States Postal Service. The United States Postal Service, except with respect to the sale of postage or philatelic products.

From the latter:

The Minnesota Department of Commerce licenses and regulates individuals and businesses that cash checks, transmit money, own and operate ATMs, and provide electronic funds transfers.

The MN license is $4k.  Didn't see a price on the FinCEN one.

Crypto Wikis

• Bitcoin: in particular for the FAQ, technical articles, and protocol documentation
• Ethereum: in particular for the FAQ and info on Ethash, mining, and problems
• Litecoin: wiki currently down (Cloudflare error); mored from GitHub page
• Zcash: in particular for the FAQ as well as the spec info

Side-note: Ripple apparently is being called a cryptocurrency because transactions are signed, but from a cursory view it appears that the consensus algorithm of the ledger requires trusting nodes to not collude:

During consensus, each node evaluates proposals from a specific set of peers, called chosen validators. Chosen validators represent a subset of the network which, when taken collectively, is "trusted" not to collude in an attempt to defraud the node evaluating the proposals. This definition of "trust" does not require that each individual chosen validator is trusted. Rather, validators are chosen based on the expectation they will not collude in a coordinated effort to falsify data relayed to the network.

The lack of this trust requirement is one of BTC's desirable attributes, at least to liberty people.  However, it's easy to see why Ripple is supported by banks: they have a place in the XRP ecosystem.

More Ether

So my phone's browser is filling up with tabs and I need to dump them ASAP!

About using 1060 3GB cards to mine ETH: Well, they're actually still obtainable, since everyone else is buying RX 580s and GTX 1080s.  But also salient is that the power consumption is much lower, as posted previously.  (Actually, without overclocking, 19.8 MH/s is achievable at 70W.)

Even mining with 1060s has taken off: articles from 6 mo ago show prices for the 6GB cards as being sub-$200, and now they're closer to $300.  Even 3GB cards, which may be getting close to outmoded for the increased DAG file size at more recent epochs, are selling for ~$230.

OC'ing Nvidia cards on Linux is a hot mess.  Everyone appears to be using Windows, but I'm too cheap to pay MS, and I don't really want to pirate it.  Going from ~20 to ~23 hashrate would be nice, though.  Some hacking of the xorg.conf file is necessary to enable memory OC; the problem is under Ubuntu, gpu-manager runs and rewrites xorg.conf upon reboot.  When I effectively disabled that using "sudo chattr +i /etc/X11/xorg.conf", the system wouldn't boot into X.  Then I had to figure out how to get into the Grub startup page (old docs say hold down shift, but I found that Esc is necessary these days) and get into single-user mode to restore the attribute.  At least power target can be adjusted down without coolbits.

On my laptop I had another guide open that I realized I hadn't fully tried.  Need to give it a shot.

It was amusing to read about how mining pools calculate "shares": by having the miner submit work and verifying that it meets a standard of difficulty below the network standard for the sole purpose of computing the miner contributions.  Of course, a given share may be the block solution, but the miner doesn't have enough information to know.  Furthermore, at least if we were talking Bitcoin, the coinbase / generation transaction's address would be the mining pool's.  Of course, a malicious miner could return bogus data and cause blocks to be missed....

Don't forget the PPLNS pool algorithm used by nanopool (explanation).  Pay Per Last N Shares introduces randomness in the algorithm; if I understand correctly, the pool pays based on some recent subset of shares submitted by each miner when a block is found, as opposed to all the shares, as in PPS.

CoinWarz's mining profit calculator is more detailed than CryptoCompare's calculator.  The former is more optimistic than the latter, though: 2.928 vs. 2.78 based on the same hashrate, and is still optimistic on the USD profit, even though the former also subtracts out the pool fees.

Regarding hashrate of 1050s, it appears they're 12 MH/s stock, as opposed to 19-20 with 1060s.  The 2GB model is ~$125, the 4GB ~$190.  Of course the 4GB is in greater demand.  2GB is definitely too small for ETH; perhaps it'd be usable for other alts like ZEC?  With one of those miner boards that allows for hooking up >10 cards, that'd potentially be more cost-effective, if not power-effective.

As far as the Ethereum switch to PoS, the FAQ on GitHub describes what that would look like.  Apparently there are two types under consideration: chain-based and BFT-style.  BFT is "Byzantine fault tolerance" that handles consensus-seeking in the presence of malicious actors.  Amusingly enough, the Wikipedia page notes under examples of such failures that this pertains to swarming bees:

A similar problem faces honeybee swarms. They have to find a new home, and the many scouts and wider participants have to reach consensus about which of perhaps several candidate homes to fly to. And then they all have to fly there, with their queen. The bees' approach works reliably, but when researchers offer two hives, equally attractive by all the criteria bees apply, catastrophe ensues, the swarm breaks up, and all the bees die.

My hobbies are commingling! (?!)

As far as using Radeon RX 580s, most of those seem to be sold out at under a $400 price point.  Amusingly, Newegg has an Asus 4GB card for $280 in stock: "limit 1 per customer" (lol).  I'm less enthused about using those because OC'ing them involves tweaking their BIOS.

I'm not sure why I get like this every once in a while, going full-bore into something different.  Hopefully in this case it'll be profitable rather than just another money sink.

のっち

パヒュームののっちについて検索したら、ゴシップのページが出てきた。自分ものっちの顔が若い頃から変わったように思ったから、やはりそうなのかな。まぁ、整形したとしても何だってことに至るけど。

ETH Mining

For reference:

• Tweaks for GeForce 1070 mining: presumably still applicable to 1060
• Silent mining with a GeForce 1060: perfect!--with a hardware list that influenced me to buy an EVGA card

Looking for info on running a miner in a VM with Windows running on Linux, I found the exact opposite.  Well, maybe I'll just run on Linux.

The nanopool miner is Claymore.  I like the name.

Bonus article: how to reduce power consumption of mainstream computing hardware to 5.9W...with a few hacks.

HomeGenie

I'm running HomeGenie, an Italian home automation system, to control my Z-Wave devices.  Well, it's very configurable, but not the easiest to actually configure as a result.

Last weekend I wanted to update to the latest version, but the automatic update was broken, so I manually pulled down the package and installed it.  That killed my setup so I had to regenerate it.  It turned out I had backed up my old setup, which I didn't find until after I'd re-created my setup and backed it up again (of course).  The new version included some additional demo code, which took me a while to figure out how to disable.  There are a few things still running that I don't want to be.

I also had to figure out how to turn on power logging.  What I need to know now is how to export logged data!

One page I found talks about how to set up a program to send a photo from a webcam when a sensor is triggered.  It came up when I was searching for an example of using a motion sensor to turn on a light, which is what I have in mind for the utility room.  Still looking....

Bitcoin Protocol

Stream of browsing, an article on doing a raw Bitcoin transaction came up.  Neat.

The Bitcoin wiki has some useful information about messages on the network.  It might be neat to make a client that just sits and monitors traffic.

EOS and Zcash

An article on Coindesk mentioned EOS in reference to a Wikipedia competitor.  I still need to read their other article on EOS.

Zcash also looks interesting, especially when promoted by Snowden.

Ethereum Mining

It's been a quarter since my last post.  Bitcoin is up over $16k, and other cryptos are up too.  Apparently making regular buys via ACH is destined to not be easy, so mining is looking attractive again.  Well, if it's break-even with zero profit, I'm still interested, for that reason.  (Not interested in "cloud mining contracts" because I don't trust code running on someone else's computer.)

Recently I was looking at mining Ethereum because it's still profitable with GPUs.  Bitcoin and Litecoin both have ASICs available, making it a hardware arms race.  Based on several articles (Cryptocompare on hashrate, TechSpot on hashrate, Tom's Hardware on ETH's effect on card prices) it appears that the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 is the best balance of cost and hashrate.  ~18 MH/s in 120W for $280 times three should pay for the GPUs in under a year's time, especially if the price of ETH keeps going up.  Of course, there's the cost of the mobo, processor, memory, and OS (if I don't use Linux).  I have an NOS Soldam case lying around, although I'll have to check if the power supply is sufficient.

Klug

The local Linux group's website: K-LUG.  Funny, I've been on their mailing list for a couple years, but have never made it to a meeting....

Beekeeping Link Dump

The accumulation of this detritus is getting out of hand!

• Removing hardened latex paint from brushes -- well...it happens, when painting hives....
• Ulster observation hive design
• Funky beehive hardware at Eco Bee Box
• UofM beehive equipment plans
• Handhold jigs: Beesource (Hogan's jig, circular saw), Korschgen (YT video, drill press)
• YT video on how to make your own dado set -- good stuff
• How to start a queen in a 2-frame nuc (HoneyBeeSuite) -- explanation of using a "queen castle"
• Using queen cages to hatch multiple queens in the same hive, thus preventing one from killing the others (Facebook)

So much info, so little time.

Gabees Honey

From several months ago, a discussion at Patrick's cafe regarding a bee-related project.

• The parked site, gabeeshoney.com
• Connecting a domain to the Wix-hosted site
• Generating a QR code for the URL to put on the business card

Apparently the lady's gone to Argentina to look for bulk honey....

Kosciuszko the Abolitionist, and Jefferson's Weakness

This post deserves its own entry, for it shows Thomas Jefferson's weakness, and the unwavering devotion to freedom of one Thadeus Kosciuszko.  From the article:

I beg Mr. Jefferson that in the case I should die without will or testament he should bye out of my money So many Negroes and free them, that the restante [remaining] sums should be Sufficient to give them aducation and provide for thier maintenance, that . . . each should know before, the duty of a Cytyzen in the free Government, that he must defend his country against foreign as well as internal Enemies who would wish to change the Constitution for the worst to inslave them by degree afterwards, to have good and human heart Sensible for the Sufferings of others, each must be married and have 100 Ackres of land, wyth instruments, Cattle for tillage and know how to manage and Gouvern it well as well to know [how to] behave to neyboughs [neighbors], always wyth Kindnes and ready to help them . . . . T. Kościuszko.

Too bad the former President couldn't honor his promise to his friend.

Yet Another Link Dump

Hell, I have too many tabs open on my phone!!

• Mike Longo Trio, Only Time Will Tell -- I don't recall why I had this open....
• Raynor DuraGrille security grille -- I think I was looking for roll-up shutters for house security; or perhaps it was for a shed?
• Joel Anderson's World Coins -- WWII silver
• Isabel Leonard -- operatic beauty
• Setting up a Go-To AR-15 -- for a car gun?
• Odd Squad soundtrack Stop the Music
• Minnesota Judicial Branch Case Records site
• Norah Jones On Piano Jazz -- nice NPR session with Marian McPartland
• For All We Know lyrics -- from the above Norah Jones set

Actually, this is only a third of them, but it gets unwieldy with too many links....

Honey Bee Forage Species

Someone on Facebook (I think it was RJS) had kindly posted this list, from NASA no less, on honey bee forage species.  Minnesota has four main sources, apparently: alfalfa, sweet clover, dutch clover, and basswood.  Apparently some folks at NASA have the beek habit as well.

AudioStation Lyrics Plugin

I have no idea why Synology even bothered with the lyrics plugin for AudioStation when it only displays the first few lines.  Apparently there's an alternate plugin called SynologyLyric that gets around that problem.

Another Dated Link Dump

The terrible thing is, often times I never go back to review the link dump....

• How to Build a Worm Tower
• Retractable PVC Hoop House
• How not to get caught in a mass-surveillance world
• 10 corporations control almost everything you buy
• Lifestyle garage screens
• Ocumetics Bionic Lens
• Building a Tin Can WiFi Waveguide Antenna
• Why Young Men Go to War
• FedBizOpps
• Vanity Fair interview with Ed Snowden

I just have too many tabs open....

Cherry Blossoms

Perhaps I need to get the wife some Yoshino Cherry trees.  The JNTO map says there are some in Hokkaido.  And there's some indication that they'll survive in Minneapolis...?!

Kenneth Minogue

I recently revisited a clipping from the WSJ I had on my desk.

"Most Western governments hate me smoking, or eating the wrong kind of food, or hunting foxes, or drinking too much, and these are merely the surface disapprovals, the ones that provoke legislation or public campaigns. We also borrow too much money for our personal pleasures, and many of us are very bad parents. Ministers of state have been known to instruct us in elementary matters, such as the importance of reading stories to our children. Again, many of us have unsound views about people of other races, cultures, or religions, and the distribution of our friends does not always correspond, as governments think that it ought, to the cultural diversity of our society. We must face up to the grim fact that the rulers we elect are losing patience with us. . . . Some may forgive these intrusions because they are so well intentioned. Who would defend prejudice, debt, or excessive drinking? The point, however, is that our rulers have no business telling us how to live. . . . We might perhaps be more tolerant of rulers turning preachers if they were moral giants. But what citizen looks at the government today thinking how wise and virtuous it is?"

So I looked for the full piece, and found it.  I also learned that Mr. Minogue passed away in 2013.  Impermanence.

Orchid Advisors

I can't recall how I ran into their site, but apparently Orchid Advisors provide help for FFLs on dealing with the ATF.  That could be useful for later.

More Good Advice

Sometimes it seems like good advice is a dime a dozen, but this seems legit.  I came across a useful Quora post that I'm saving here.

1. Decide what’s important because in 5 years, 80% of what you do today will not turn into anything. It’s just busywork, no useful outcome.
2. Sleep, food and exercise can help you triple your outcome, because they increase focus, motivation and energy levels.
3. The 2-minute rule: if you can do something (like replying to an email, or a house chore) in 2 minutes, do it now. Planning it for later, remembering it, doing it in the future will take 5 minutes or more.
4. The 5-minute rule: the biggest cure against procrastination is to set your goal not to finish a scary big hairy task, but to just work 5 minutes on it. You’ll find out that most times it continues well beyond the 5 minutes, as you enter a flow state.
5. Seinfeld’s productivity chain: if you want to be good at something, do it every day. Including on Christmas, Easter and Judgement Day. No exceptions.
6. Tiny habits, highly linked with the 5-minute rule, helps you create good habits quickly. It works, I tested it.
7. Your memory sucks. Get everything out of your head, even if you’re a genius. Write it down in a notebook, put it in your todo-list app, on your phone, talk to Siri, I don’t care.
8. As few tools as possible. I’ve tested most of the todo managers and finally stayed with Cultured Code‘s Things app and Google Calendar (iCal is ok, but Google Calendar integrates well with Gmail, my default client). It doesn’t matter what you use (pen & paper are fine) if you understand the next rule.
9. Routine beats tools. You need discipline, and this means for me two things: I plan my day first thing in the morning, and I write a short daily log every day. This helps me stay sane, prioritize well, scrap useless tasks, and do what matters. This saves me hours.
10. Pomodoros. That’s timeboxing—for 30 minutes do only the task at hand. Nothing else: no phones, email, talking to people, Facebook, running out of the building in case of fire. Nothing else.
11. Always wear your headphones. You don’t have to listen to music, but it will discourage people to approach you.
12. Email scheduling and inbox zero. Don’t read your email first thing in the day, don’t read it in the evening (it ruined many evenings for me), and try to do it only 3 times a day: at 11am, 2pm and 5pm. And your email inbox is not a todo list. Clear it: every message should be an actionable task (link it from the todo app), a reference document (send to Evernote or archive), or should be deleted now.
13. Same thing for phone calls. Don’t be always available. I always keep my phone on silent, and return calls in batches.
14. Batch small tasks. Like mail, phones, Facebook etc.
15. MI3. Most important three tasks (or the alternative 1 must – 3 should – 5 could). Start with the most important first thing in the morning.
16. Willpower is limited. Don’t think that willpower will help you when you get in trouble. Make important decisions in the morning and automate everything possible (delegate, batch etc.). US presidents don’t have to choose their menu or suit color everyday—otherwise their willpower will be depleted at that late hour when they should push (or not push) the red button).
17. The most powerful thing. Always ask yourself what is the most powerful thing you can do right now. Then apply rule #4.
18. Ship often. Don’t polish it too much—as they say in the startup world, “if you’re not ashamed of your product, you’ve launched too late’!
19. Pressure can do wonders. Use rewards or social commitment. We’ve recently done this with the new Grapefruit website. The previous one took 2.5 years to launch. The new one took 2.5 days and we did it over one hackathon weekend (+Monday).
20. Scheduled procrastination. Your brain needs some rest, and sometimes that new episode from Arrow can do wonders that the smartest TED talk won’t.
21. Delete. Say No. Ignore. Don’t commit to schedules. I love the last one, it’s from Marc Andreessen, because it allows him to meet whomever he wants on the spot. A lot of people will hate you for this, but you’ll have time to do relevant stuff. Do you think you’ll regret that in 20 years, or doing something for someone you don’t really care about, just to be superficially appreciated.
22. Fake incompetence. It’s a diplomatic way to apply the previous rule.

Apparently this is from a site called Thought Catalog.

Wood Sealant

So I'm trying to figure out if I should seal the beehive woodenware or not.  The boxes I built and painted seemed to be in pretty sad shape after one winter, despite using two coats of exterior latex paint.  One article I read claimed that the moisture from the bees during the winter migrates through the wood and causes the paint to peel on the outside.  Seems possible.

However, finding something non-toxic / food-grade is an exercise.  One problem is that I want to paint over the sealer, and not all of them are paintable.  I was considering boiled linseed oil--but then I found out that the commercially available stuff uses metal salts to accelerate drying, and it's really raw linseed, not boiled.  No dice.  An article on natural wood sealers and another on non-toxic paints gave me a list of things to check, but the one I found was via a source I don't remember.

AgraLife makes a couple different products, Lumber-Seal and Hive-Seal.  The former is available at Home Depot and is supposedly food-safe.  The MSDS for Lumber-Seal notes that "All Products except Hive-Seal contain 1% Zinc Oxide/Borate for film protection and are not considered hazardous by EPA."  However, the actual composition is noted as a "trade secret," which makes me somewhat suspect.  What I don't know for sure is if the stuff is paintable or not.  Perhaps it'll say on the can.

Perhaps I'll pick up some Lumber-Seal for the pressure-treated base and hive stand, and do the outside of the woodenware for now.  I could always apply Hive-Seal to the interior when I'm able to obtain it.

Another interesting product I found was Seal-Once Marine Waterproofer, which is paintable.  It doesn't show as food-safe, but if I were sealing a deck or something it appears like a good candidate.  Actually, I might try their Concrete Rust Remover on a couple spots on my driveway and garage floor.

There was one more that intrigued me because it's linseed oil, but there wasn't much info about how it was produced: Earthpaint's "Special Linseed Oil."  It's back to where I originally started looking as far as wood sealers go.  On the other hand, it's twice the price of Lumber-Seal ($66/gal vs $35/gal), plus S&H ($22+ for the gallon container).

Do What Contributes

Digging through some of my old public posts on FB, I found a post with Marc Andreessen's tweeted career advice; briefly, "do what contributes" not "do what you love".  The article linked to a Navy SEAL's commencement speech, which gave some interesting life advice.

I put this here, since I'm currently considering, "now what?"

Update [2017.04.06]:
I'm adding the list here in case something happens to the article.

1. Thesis: "Do what you love" / "Follow your passion" is dangerous and destructive career advice.
2. We tend to hear it from (a) Highly successful people who (b) Have become successful doing what they love.
3. The problem is that we do NOT hear from people who have failed to become successful by doing what they love.
4. Particularly pernicious problem in tournament-style fields with a few big winners & lots of losers: media, athletics, startups.
5. Better career advice may be "Do what contributes" -- focus on the beneficial value created for other people vs just one's own ego.
6. People who contribute the most are often the most satisfied with what they do -- and in fields with high renumeration, make the most $.
7. Perhaps difficult advice since requires focus on others vs oneself -- perhaps bad fit with endemic narcissism in modern culture?
8. Requires delayed gratification -- may toil for many years to get the payoff of contributing value to the world, vs short-term happiness.

I do find it amusing that Andreessen misspelled remuneration, though.

40mm (and 20mm)

So I was looking for "sin stocks" to invest in this morning, and came across a link on a website for thematic investing (motif) that had National Presto Industries under "Guns & Ammunition".  Their site is for crockpots.  Well, it turns out from their investor info that one of their subsidiaries, AMTEC, manufactures ammunition for government contracts.  Apparently they also manufacture 20mm cartridge brass!  Information comes from the strangest places.