Category: FWIW

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2009 Resolution-Per-Day

No, not “2009 ResolutionS per day.” That’d just be silly. Although I do engage in goal setting, I just think that since I’ve not made any “New Year’s Resolutions” in some time, perhaps a little taking stock and goal setting of the “New Year’s resolutions” type might be in order. So, herewith my first “New Year’s Resolution” of 2009.

It occurred to me that stuff temds to multiply to fill whatever space is available, and not just in the “nature abhors a vaccuum” kind of way. For example, I had a new 400GB hard drive about six or so months ago. It’s now about half full. Of what? Just–mostly–stuff. Heck, I regularly scissor out and toss several gigs of stuff, and yet still stuff proliferates.

Take my desk. Please. *heh* I try to clean it off every now and then. The last time was about a month ago. But does that help? Nope. It’s crammed, piled high, stuffed with stuff.

Storage shed. Garage. Store rooms. Stuffed with stuff.

A goal for 2009? For every new piece of stuff brought into twc central, TWO pieces of stuff must go–preferably of like stuff. I’m not talking about increasing twc central’s use of the landfill, necessarily (although it may come to that from time to time). Most of the stuff we are plagued with is useful stuff, but might well find a more useful home elsewhere.

So. Yard sales. Donations. Want ads. Friends, neighbors and relatives: all potential new homes for stuff over the course of 2009. For example, how many CD/Radio/cassette tape “boom boxes” do we really need? The kids have stopped using them. I no longer use them (as I once did for ed purposes–amazing the usefulness of those lil items). Sure, some no longer have full functionality, but…

And then there’s my closet. How many boxes of “five-to-seven ‘gold stripe'” silk ties do I need, anyway?

And my techie hoard. Yes, I can and do use all the teeny lil bits and pieces I’ve stripped off of innumerable discarded computers, but how many of those old cases (still left after discarding more than a dozen computers last summer) and power supplies and CDROM drives and etc., do I really need to hang on to? How many can be made into perfectly serviceable hardware firewalls to give away? Well, it pretty much depends on how many spare 100mbit network cards I find I still have and how many people might find they really need a hardware firewall.

And the sheet music, books, magazines, manuscripts, records (both paper and LP), tapes, tools, materials of all kinds that is gathered in both organized and topsy-turvy, ramshackle disorganization–all still in need of digging into, even after the major cleanup of the BIG store room last summer.

Tons (possibly literally tons) of stuff that has simply bred and multiplied in the dank, dark storage places where it’s been consigned must go.

And the same goes for my digital stuff. Boxes and boxes of old floppies, CDRs, old hard drives: sorted, cleaned, recatalogued and either re-stored (this time with a digital library catalog and perhaps even bar coding) and that which is to be discarded either run through a degausser (for the floppies and other magnetic media) or shredded (for the CDRs) or melted (NOT burned). Some of the old hard drives, suitably and securely erased, could well find new homes in file servers, but this stuff must either be used or it must go.

So, that’s “Resolution Number One”–no more wildly proliferating stuff. LESS.

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Pondering Tomorrows

In the days running up to Christmas, some chest pains brought Gerald Finzi’s remarkable setting of Shakespearean passages to mind, particularly, “Feare no more the heat of the Sun,”

Feare no more the heate o’ th’ Sun,
Nor the furious Winters rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast don,
Home art gon, and tane thy wages.
Golden Lads, and Girles all must,
As Chimney-Sweepers come to dust.

Ah, when I sang this for my senior recital as a lad, I knew the meaning of the words in a shallow ay, but a few decades later, they ring with a calm assurance they did not have… when I had the voice to sing them properly. *heh*

So think, then: what do your tomorrows promise? Today’s as good a time as any to think that through.

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Inertia

So, a week ago today, my Wonder Woman explained the mystery of why she’s stayed with me so long. Inertia. Seems, according to her, that once we got going together, it was just easier to stay on the wagon and keep moving along together.

Maybe that’s because it’s been all downhill for her… *heh*

Whatever; as long as she’s comfortable with it, I’m staying on the wagon too.

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Under the Tree at TWC

Notalotta outrageous gifting going on @twc this year. Biggest deals: My Wonder Woman okayed the purchase of a new (VERY inexpensive–cheaper than WallyWorld 17″-ers; gottalove Amazon.com) 22″ Acer LCD screen for my “old eyes computing,” Son&Heir and I exchanged (used) Xboxes (originals) for conversion to media servers–a fun lil project–and Lovely Daughter got a very nice new coat.

No biggies. Some other lil things.

Oh, one (very inexpensive) “biggie”–for a couple of years now, my Wonder Woman’s been kinda limping along with her otherwise exceptionally nice Toshiba Satellite A105 running on 512MB of memory. It was a compromise at the time of purchase, but memory prices have tumbled since then, so now it’s doing very nicely indeed with 4GB of memory. Which reminds me of a tip for those of y’all running 32-bit Windows with more than 3GB of RAM. Since 32-bit Windows doesn’t really see more than 3GB (oh, M$ claims it can see up to 4, but they can just pull the other one), it has to be tricked into seeing more. And even with (legitimate) trickery, it can still be a tad stinky about the 32-bit limits. But if you are one of those folks who added more RAM to a 32-bit Windows installation than the OS can see, here’s a workaround that at least partially works:

Enable DEP.

Yep. “Data Execution Prevention” is a M$ method of providing at least some OS protection against some malware. It’s not all that effective, so some folks don’t even bother to have it enabled. But the interesting thing about DEP is that enabling it also enables Physical Address Extension (PAE), “a feature of x86 processors that lets 32-bit operating systems overcome the 4GB memory limit.”1

To enable DEP, simply go to Control Panel>System>Performance>Advanced>Settings>DEP and enable it… if it’s available on your hardware.

If PAE is not enabled on your system, you can do a teensy lil hack to enable it using Notepad (or some other PLAIN TEXT editor):

* Step 1. Choose Start, Run.
* Step 2. Type notepad c:\boot.ini and press Enter.
* Step 3. Under the [operating systems] heading, look for a line that contains the /noexecute switch, which turns software DEP. For example, it may be /noexecute=optin, /noexecute=optout, or /noexecute=always on. Place the cursor directly after that switch and type a space followed by /pae.

Save the file and reboot.

This neat lil trick is from Windows Secrets Newsletter. But be warned: if you’re not comfotable editing system files like boot.ini, leave it for your friendly local techie to do, ‘K?

OK, that lil diversion was all in aid of saying simply that my Wonder Woman’s lil Toshiba needed nothing in order to recognize and use the memory but a reboot and wipeout of a bum “System Restore Point” that wanted to insist she still had 512MB. (“System Restore” is a utility whose time has come… for being eliminated. Piece of junk, IMO.)

Looking at our laid back gift giving this year, I must admit it’s little different from other recent years since the kids gained adulthood. As a family, we have MORE than enough “stuff” and need very, very little. It’s nice to simply reflect on the Reason for Christmas apart from all the shopping and wrapping and all the other material effluvia.

But I will admit that it’s nice to see my Wonder Woman taking more pleasure in her computer use, Lovely Daughter dressing warmly (and stylishly) and Son&Heir having fun approaching his XBox/computer hacks. (OK, OK, we’re doing software mods/hacks rather than hardware hacks at this time. If the hardware hacks become necessary to get the performance we want, then we’ll look at that. Well, a couple of small hardware hacks to controller cables, but those’re trivial.)

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Lost Post…

I sat down here a couple of hours ago to do an extemp post on something that flashed through my head. Got a phone call. Off the reservation for a couple of hours and… I have NO idea what it was I was going to post.

It was probably going to be my best post ever. *heh*

Upcoming in the Road Ahead series: “Truth, Justice and The American Way” briefly discussed. Paring it down in bits n pieces of time.

Stealing 15-30 minutes here and there (w/o adversely affecting my schedule), adding up to about 2 hours’ time, I was able to save at least $100 today by doing five lil jobs on my lil econocar instead of having my mechanic do ’em. Of course, I still have to take it off stands tomorrow a.m. (Because I ran out of short bits I could rob from my day before it got too chill for my old bones and my light went. Yeh, I have artificial lighting available, but no I do NOT want to do it in the cold and with artificial lighting. 5 mins in the a.m. should do it.) The $100 savings is a conservative estimate. Glad to pay my mechanic for jobs I don’t have the tools for or can’t steal the time for (or can’t figure out or don’t have good enough wiring diagrams to deal with or… :-)), but why do it if I don’t have to?

Micro-mini-update: took ~15 minutes because…

1. Coffee-deprived brain didn’t reinstall serpentine belt. Almost seven minutes, mainly because I tried to use the wrong 14mm wrench on the tensioner pulley. Picked up the right one and it was a 30-second job. Oh. Well. Putting away ramp(s), jackstands, spacer 2″X8″X3′ board (used to make floor jack easier to use on the rough concrete of the driveway) and sundry tools n accessories (including two perfectly-shaped rocks i regularly use as chocks) < 5 mins. Wheel stuff < 5 mins. Still worth my time and effort, mainly because I KNOW I used the best parts available and paid detailed attention to doing the best possible job. Then there's the inestimable benefit of satisfaction from having done it myself. Always a plus (unless it’s something like balancing four Stromberg-Carlson carbs on a 12-cylinder engine–whatawasteoftime. How often does one need a skill set like that?).

Early sample of the “apple wine” is not bad at all. Nothing to write home about, but then I added two cans of concentrate to the secondary fermenter before I racked the brew into it, so I expect a lil more robust apple flavor in the finished product.

Even as the best revenge is living well, so I believe the best way to deal with the commies now coming into power in D.C. is to rise above their interference in our daily lives. They may steal my wallet, but they’ll have a hard(er) time stealing my ability to barter, build needed items from castoff junk or grow my own food. Just sayin’.

Thanksgiving is approaching. Of course, MY “Thanksgiving” celebration begins in June (6-4), is accented (BIG time) in October (10-4) and celebrated every year on 11-24, regardless what day the national holiday is celebrated. I’ll clarify that a bit more as The Day approaches.

Had an “extra” 12-oz or so (actually a lil more) of the molasses beer to bottle condition the other day, so bottled it in a 12oz bottle (of course). It’s not really had time to condition properly, but chilled it anyway and had a taste. Pretty good stuff. The rest should be ready to start refrigerating in a few days.

Hmmm, my comp isn’t recognizing the memory stick from my camera. Guess I need to see to that. *sigh* My Winder Woman has the one USB cable that works with our cameras (the one that’s left–*heh*) at work, so it’d be nice to transfer straight from the camera’s stick. Ahhh *thumps head* insert properly, deadhead… Works just fine. Hey, Perri, here’re the “kitty litter” fermenters:

Just basic fermenting buckets with different approaches to airlocks.

Time to take an early break for the company of the rack monster, I think.

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I’d say that’s a problem…

Here it is, 9:00 on a Wednesday morning. I’m looking at a full plate of “work” to do (why the scare quotes? Because it’s all “work” I can approach as play… when I finally get off my fat… fundament and do it), and yet here I sit with four browsers open in three machines (one “real” and a couple of VMs hosted in it), with something over 100 tabs open among the four browsers…

Now, that’s a problem. I’m not doing real multi-tasking but semi-background serial semi-multitasking in a major ADHD/schizo fashion. Sure, things from nearly all the tabs are perking in the background while the foreground is being dealt with (as I write this, things from John Ringo’s rants page and thoughts from Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor Musings are mixing it up with Thomas Sowell and John Agresto over at NRO, while some XBox geek is whispering in my third ear about XBox modding and my gripping hand is grappling with the weird pre-emptive sound problem that’s cropped up in Linux again and my first and other hands are juggling a Mercedes Lackey book and a Dean Koontz book and an Ann Coulter book–offline/online, mix n match).

I think I need to take a break from the computer. Except part of the “work” I need to do is right here sitting on my fat fundamental.

I blame it all on the fact that this is the most comfortable chair in the house. Riiiiiight. *heh* (Well, maybe some of it is due to the fact that I seem to have developed the attention span of a gnat with ADHD. NEED MORE COFFEE!!!)

Maybe it’s time once again to look to Wordsworth (open another tab… ;-))

THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, Political Byline, Faultline USA, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, DragonLady’s World, Rosemary’s News and Ideas, The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, CORSARI D’ITALIA, Democrat=Socialist, Dumb Ox Daily News, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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“Time keeps on slippin’… into the future… “

Where has the week gone? Seems like my last post was just yesterday… but it wasn’t; it was Monday. Oh, well.

Semi-randomized thoughts from The Voices in My Head…

File under Life’s Little Disappointments:

So I’m starting another brew season. Thought to myself, “Self, why not pick up a few more swingtop bottles, since you’re going to be making lotsa different kindsa brews?”

Okay, answered I.

So, picked up a few Grolsch swingtop bottles. No, not empties, silly. With beer in them. After all, it’s cheaper buying swingtop bottles with Grolsch beer in them than it is buying empties, for some reason (and not because the beer in them is bad. Usually. I have had skunky Grolsch, just not normally).

Filed under Life’s Little Disappointments: Grolsch has changed their swingtop bottles. Oh, functionally they’re still the same, but I miss the four large “medallions” featuring barley and hops formed into the sides. Now, it’s just couple of itsy-bitsy “almost can’t see it” (3/4″?) substitute cartouches, the name, “Grolsch” on the side and some weird hash marks. What? Somebody wanted change just for change’s sake? Dumb. Oh, well.

Been finding some neat accessories to make modding the lil XBox I got recently a bit more fun (Son & Heir reads here every now and then, so I’ll hold these close to my vest for now *heh*). Pretty soon I’ll have to just block out some time, gather the materials I’ve researched/bought and jump right on just doing/installing the thing as a media server. Get it set up in the etertainment center in the main room and all set to serve up media from the various computers on the network. Cheapo media server; fun lil project. Time.

Right after I TS and repair the weird coolant issue on my car. *sigh* Just got Son & Heir’s car back from the shop. Next day: my lil econochamp loses a ton of coolant. No time/energy to deal with it right away, so parked, did a quick checklist and have just driven another car while mulling over my plan of attack… tentatively scheduled for Saturday. Fun. (Yeh, I could get it to the mechanic, but after what I poured into Son & Heir’s car this week, I’d rather spend my Saturday instead. See: “Tightwad, one of”. *heh*)

Speaking of tightwaddery, I decided that spending $15.39 for The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn was a Good Thing to do. I’d read an earlier edition about a decade ago and found quite a few things I was not already doing to improve my tightwaddery. Yeh, since the price I mention above includes my shipping charge, I may have gotten one of the last really cheap copies, but if you can buy it for $20 or so (including shipping) you’ll likely recoup your cost in your first few pages of reading the thing, unless you’re already a Master Tightwad. Really. Seriousy good stuff.

Bought a buncha beer making supplies. Forgot to get more yeast. Hmmm, think I can revive some from filtrate ff my most recent batch? Could be… We’ll see. Of course, ancient beer makers called beer “liquid bread” because that’s what they made it from: bread soaked in water. The wine I made using bread yeast turned out OK, so maybe… Nah, I’ll try reviving some.

Oh, crap. I just opened my eyes to the mess that is my desktop. *sigh* I thought I had that thing completely cleared off in October?!? This is getting ridiculous. I need room to set up a new printer, build some shelving to stand ON the desktop, etc. Saturday, after the car? Hope so. If I really wanted to put the pressure on myself, I’d take a pic of my desktop and post it, but I’d never. Coward, that’s me. *heh*

*yawn* Can’t keep eyes open. Clocking out, folks.

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Kipling Tuesday Returns

It’s been a couple of years since Kipling Tuesday was a regular feature here at twc. Methinks Election Day is a good time for…

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Be careful what you vote for…

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A Lil Compy Fun

[Note: I wrote about this last night, but it disappeared into the bit bucket somewhere and *poof!* ;-)]

Son&Heir and I took a day off and headed north. Ended up barely avoiding re-enacting a minor subset of The Gift of the Magi by buying each others’ Christmas presents together. *heh*

Soooo… I bought him his “original” XBox (all $60 of it) and he bought me mine. We knew he had his eye on a $75 deal on one to go along with his Wii and XBox 360 and PS3 for whatever reason and thought that would be a reasonable addition to his Xmas list from us. What we didn’t know was that he had planned on buying two, modding them to be used as media servers and giving us one of them.

(Oh, you noticed the disparity between the $75 and the $60? Yep. Price wars. NOTE: not exactly “price wars”–see comments.)

So, I’m modding “his” and he’s modding “ours”.

Works. (He gets the six games that came with the two ‘Boxes.)

As it stands, I’m just getting up to speed on the modding process. Deciding between a strictly softmod or an all-out hard mod. The difference? About $100. For the hard mod, about $40 for a mod chip plus $40 for some peripheral hardware, plus $60 for a new hard drive.

For a softmod, just about $40 for some interface hardware to easily transfer some setup files from my PC to the XBox–the rest of the stuff is either free (all free software) or already in Son&Heir’s possession (lil hardware stuff). Heck, maybe another $10 for a USB-to-PS/2 “Y” adapter for using a nice lil wireless keyboard/mouse combo I semi-retired a while back (the mouse felt a tad klunky in my hand).

Then, yeh, I’d probably change out the hard drive for a larger one. The reason I’d consider chipping the thing is that I could add a MUCH larger hard drive were I to do that. So, I may softmod it and then chip it later. That’d work. Heck, once I figure the best streaming solution from my computer with the TV card, I’d certainly want a larger hard drive to store DVR stuff, but not over 200GiB. If I needed more storage than that, I’d just burn a DVD or three.

Speaking of… Ripped the Jackie Chan/Jet Li “The Forbidden Kingdom” DVD the other day, cos the rental was up and Son&Heir wanted a look at it (yeh, the copy’s destroyed now–I think; that was the plan, at least). I’d just have kept it over and paid the late fee, but… small town, small video rental place, and apparently the vid’s really pouplar, so I took it back on time. Anywho, it’s a DVD I may well buy. The wire-fu scenes with the Monkey King, and the scene with Let Li and Jackie Chan going at each other are really, really good “choreography”. Fun. Heck, the stuff that’s not fly-by-wire-fu in those scenes is even better than the wire fu. The plot’s nothing. Characterization’s so-so (Jackie’s always fun, and Jet Li gets to play some fun parts in this one, but character development? In a Jackie Chan movie? Fuggetaboutit! *heh*). Nah. This is all about the “choreography” and the camera work. Fun movie.

Bad part? No out takes normally found in Jackie Chan movies. Bummer. Oh, well. Can’t have everything. This at least had Jackie Chan and Jet Li in the same flick.

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The World is Too Much With Us

The “fear and trembling” that comes over me at times when I consider the state of our society is not that wholesome awe one feels in the presence of greatness, but a quivering aprehension about what the future holds for my children–a future that does not seem to hold the sort of promise that it held for me when I was their ages.

I ran across a link to this over at Jerry Pournelle’s place. Read more than the snippet below. I believe you’ll find it time well spent.

We live in a society saturated with information. The paradox of this spectacle is that we no longer possess the ability to integrate and evaluate the information which assaults us from every direction. One moment the news ticker at the bottom of the screen shows some mind-numbing drop in the stock market; the next moment, we are enthralled with some bitch queen trying to kick the shins of his lesbian competitor on Project Runway. The news media jumps from the crisis of the second to the latest Hollywood dalliance, and from there to some hopeless hyped hysteria about global warming or the health scare of the week, providing no sense of perspective about which of these might be the more important.

So it behooves us to stand back; to turn off the TV, shut down the browser, put down the paper, turn off talk radio, and truly listen — not to the screeching banshees with their banal hysteria, but rather to that inner source, be it spirit, or soul, or mind, or the wisdom acquired by life’s experiences.

And later, speaking to my own discomfort with the political landscape before ue,

We have elected those politicians who are like us in every way — and we hate them for it. They are, after all, created in our own image.

Go. Read.

Take a deep breath. Slow down. Consider current events in light of your own life’s experience, your (hopefully rich) knowledge of history and the wisdom of the sages of the ages, if you can bring yourself to even consider–as my spirit is wont to avoid doing because my own “wisdom” is such a weak and palid thing by comparison*sigh*–wisdom that has actually stood the test of time.

Stop. Look. Listen. No, really listen. Is that light at the end of the tunnel a train or what?

Just asking.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.