Book Club 2025: Ice Blues by Richard Stevenson

I was going to read something more substantial next, but I found myself in the mood for a mystery again, so here we are.

Speaking of substantial, the previous Book Club post went viral, which came as a complete surprise to me, because I wasn’t really expecting anybody to read these posts. I mean, it’s a book log. On a blog. About reading books.

But there you go. I guess it’s because it’s a series of books most people have read (and like), so it’s fun to be reminded of them.

On the other hand:

My, I’m impressed! Gravity’s Rainbow! *slow clap*

But also:

Anyway, I was talking about today’s reading…

… which is totally fine. As with the previous book in the series, it’s a half comedy/half hard boiled crime, and it’s really entertaining. The plot is satisfyingly convoluted, and while Stevenson enjoys dropping in a joke every third sentence, it flows quite well.

Ice Blues (1986) by Richard Stevenson (buy new, buy used, 3.89 on Goodreads)

Are there counterfeit Pop Sockets‽‽

I bought some glue-on Pop Sockets from Amazon (yes, I know, one shouldn’t do that) for my Kobo ebook reader.

(Speaking of which, this is my third one. The first one had buttons that were so hard to push that I had to push them with my nail. The second one had buttons that worked fine… 90% of the time. Which is maddening! You click the button, and move your eyes up to the top of the page, and during the saccade you don’t really see anything so you start reading at the top of the page… and 10% of the time it’s the same page again. So I got this Kobo Libra 2, and the buttons are finally usable: Not too hard, and they work 100% of the time. I know, I know, I could just tap the screen instead, but moving the thumb just isn’t optimal.)

Errr… what’s this picture about… OH YEA! I was talking about that Pop Socket! Because I glued it to the back of the Kobo so that I wouldn’t actually have to grip it, but that ridge (in the first picture up there *points*) left me horribly scarred! For life! Or at least a couple of minutes.

(Picture of Pop Socket on the back of the Kobo.)

So today I went to, like, a physical store, and like, physically bought a new Pop Socket. Physically. And behold! No ridges!!!

Did Amazon sell me a counterfeit (and life-threatening, I mean, finger-destroying) Pop Socket!? I have no idea, but I’m going to assume they did, because they’re Amazon.

April Music

Music I’ve bought in April.

Hey, it’s been a slow month.

The Wolf That Lives in Lindsey (Mingus Session Outtake)

The Joni Mitchell Archive series has reached the Hejira/Mingus era, and this is probably my favourite box (er so far). I mean, the first box was extremely entertaining, with lots of early very folky songs, many of which I hadn’t heard before.

But this box just has so many excellent versions of some really fabulous songs, like The Wolf That Lives in Lindsey.

THE EX 2025 - GREAT! From the new album 'If Your Mirror Breaks'

The new album from The Ex is, well, it’s a new album from The Ex. Lots of fun.

I started following GRRL on Twitter, and I’ve been listening to some of the recommended albums (always posted with Bandcamp links; that’s much appreciated). This album by Weiss is an old glitch thing, and I think it’s kinda fab.

Does anybody have an LSI MegaRAID SAS 9280-8e with old firmware?

(Different card depicted for illustrative purposes.)

[Edit: Oops! I originally called the card 2108-8e, but it’s really called 9280-8e — 2108 is apparently what it’s called in BIOS, but not the actual model name.]

Some months back, my MegaRAID card (used for this) died, and I bought a new old one. But it came with a too-new firmware — I want to spin down the disks (because I’m using this to watch movies, and 98% of the time they’re idle), and that stopped working in some firmware version or other.

That is, if you try to spin down the “logical drives”, it says this:

/opt/MegaRAID/MegaCli/MegaCli64 -LDSetPowerPolicy -Maximum -L0 -a0                                     
Adapter does not support Power savings on logical drives.

Exit Code: 0x01

Now, LSI was bought by some other company, who was then bought by somebody, and they’re now owned by (*shiver*) Broadcom. They helpfully have older firmware versions on ftp, but none of those are old enough.

That is, the oldest one there is 12.9.0-0038, and that is too new (it’s from March 2010). So I need either a card with an even earlier firmware where that command works? I’ll pay! Lots of money!

Or if somebody has squirreled away earlier firmware versions, I would love to get get a copy and test it to see if it’s old enough.

For reference, the files are called things like 12.9.0-0038_SAS_FW_Image_APP-2.90.03-0933_9280-4i4e-8e.zip.

And the card I’m looking for identifies itself as 03:00.0 RAID bus controller: Broadcom / LSI MegaRAID SAS 2108 [Liberator] (rev 03)
.

*crosses fingers*

If I can’t find old firmware, I think I have to start looking at a brand new solution for all of this, and I really don’t want to.