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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Author: Karel Kerezman

  • Quick Status Update

    Here we are at March of 2024, heralded this morning in suburban Portland Oregon by… snowfall? Well, kind of. It “slushed” for about an hour. This month I turn 50-something, but I don’t even care about that because the main focus is getting moved out of the apartment and into the house.

    I got the Internet stuff all working, including network drops in the other two places in the house which need them and WiFi coverage for the rest. We’re bringing over stuff one or two bags or armloads at a time, the stuff we don’t want The Movers touching. And they’re due in a bit under two weeks. Yesterday I told the apartment’s management that we’re on our way out (they get the keys back at the end of the lease, mind you).

    We’ve done so much work, and there’s a mountain yet to do, which has left me almost no time for much fun at all. Not even Satisfactory! (Well, not much.)

    I hope this is all worth it in the long run, because woof, I’m exhausted already.

  • Satisfactory: Roundabout Mk2

    So there I was, building a rail line through the jungle, when I reached a point on the map at which it made sense to place a roundabout. As I started in on the build process I’ve used a couple dozen times now (type ’roundabout’ into the search field to see other posts about the development of this process) I realized that the requirements of the approach and exit placement weren’t going to fit the location. I needed an alternative.

    At middle right you can see the connected approach line from the north, but getting that to bear right into the westbound exit was going to be a nightmare. Never mind joining up the northbound exit, the stub for which is shown at lower right.

    At first I thought of doing a criss-cross interchange but I prefer having the option of letting a train loop back around if necessary at every one of these intersections. Still, I figured that an interchange would probably fit this particular location better than a roundabout so I went looking for information on how best to build one.

    I didn’t find that. Instead, I found guidance on how to build a different style of roundabout, approaching it as more of a modified diamond than a rounded square. The difference is largely academic in the long run, but the practice of building it is definitely trickier.

    (more…)

  • Satisfactory: Progress Without Progress

    Here’s a summary of how today’s hours upon hours of Satisfactory went for me, in order to illustrate how sometimes you move forward by moving sideways… a lot.

    Please enjoy this view from hundreds of meters above sea level as I descend from a very, very high drop pod crash site. My hands were sweaty the entire time, yes, thankyouverymuch.

    I can’t progress further in the game without clearing Phase 3, which means I need to make Modular Engines and Automated Wiring to feed to the Space Elevator.

    (more…)

  • Too Tired Can’t Post

    Moving is exhausting. I’m glad I only do it only about once per decade or so now, instead of every few months like in my childhood.

    And that’s why it’s been so quiet around here. If I’m not working, I’m either doing something related to the move (like filling boxes and wrangling utilities) or trying to get some downtime in (gaming, reading, watching shows, “vegging out” in one fashion or another). This week’s move-related activity? Getting the actual movers scheduled, because no way are we hauling beds and bookshelves and a couch and all those boxes of books and shiny platters from apartment to house all on our own. (Even if it is very close by.) Nor is there enough pizza in the world to bribe the local friends we have available to do so. Money is the answer, so money I shall spend.

    We still have weeks yet to go on this stuff, so… bear with me. Hopefully there’ll be more fun on offer once we’re in place and at least somewhat unpacked.

  • Expertise Is No Guarantee

    In June of last year I threw together a monitoring solution for a very weird problem. This afternoon I fixed a glaring hole in my solution which prevented the value comparison script from ever, ever working properly.

    The problem: Agents (managed computers) are wandering from client to client in ConnectWise Automate. Techs claim not to be moving agents around, and I believe them because this isn’t the sort of thing you can “oops!” and screw up with one wrong mouse click. It takes deliberate effort… and none of us are that bored. This might be merely a nuisance except that it’s also causing billing errors, with clients looking at their detailed invoice and asking, “What’s ComputerXYZ doing here? That’s not mine!”

    The solution: A new custom data field on each computer logging the current Location identification number of that computer, populated initially by a one-time script. Every Client (customer) in the system contains one or more Locations (organizational units). Locations have display names but also identification numbers, which is good because most clients’ Locations are some variant of “Main Office.” Every night, a script runs which compares the computer’s current Location ID to the one “on file,” and emails me if there’s a discrepancy.

    Easy peasy. It took me all of maybe 90 minutes to throw this together. And yet. It didn’t work, because I overlooked a value field in an “IF” check in the comparison script.

    The lesson, here? Test everything, even if you’re doing something you’ve done dozens of times before, even if you think “I can do this in my sleep.” Had I checked the results just a bit more thoroughly after the solution went “live” I’d have caught the problem. Instead, I found out after months of frustration, wondering why the monitoring hadn’t ever caught anything. (And the “anything” is still definitely happening so it should have been caught!)

  • Satisfactory: Oilands Ho!

    As previously noted, this new save sees me starting out where most brand new players start (yet I never have): The southwestern grassy starting field. It has upsides and drawbacks, all of which I took into account before making my fateful, game-changing decision.

    (Okay, there’s one upside I didn’t think entirely through beforehand. I’ll get to that.)

    Along the west coast of the game map (Satisfactory uses a fixed game map, it’s the same for everyone for every play through) one finds the second best concentration of crude oil in the game. I know there’s an official, agreed-upon term for the site but I’ve always called it The Oilands.

    I have built a plastic-and-rubber factory on that particular crude oil node at least three times before. I think I have the hang of it by this point.

    Islands, with oil, get it? Of course you do, and you wish you’d thought of it first.

    (more…)

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