Friday, May 17, 2024

DNS Network Slow

 Kind of ridiculous to post on the internet about what to do when you lose access to the internet. I intend this as preemptive. Maybe you can help someone else.

I lost access to the internet with some obscure message about network service. When it breaks, turn it off. The message suggested that as well. Turned the provider gateway on and off, turned my PC on and off. Repeatedly. So, I called my provider and was trapped in the response tree. They even turned my gateway on and off themselves. Eventually I was in a chat text conversation with the providers Dennis who was also trapped in a response tree. It culminated with him sending me an email to confirm my identity. Since I couldn’t receive it on my PC, he was, in effect, instructing me to change providers.

Dennis sent me back to the providers original help phone number. My next-door neighbor had service. She has a different provider.

On reflection, it dawned on me that the problem was on my PC. Something like this once happened to me at work. I’d had to zero out my own IP address. In Windows 11 settings, I was prompted to restore DNS factory settings. That worked. Now I can’t find that prompt. Maybe because I don’t need it. If Windows 11 is that smart, why didn’t it fix itself?

It must have broke because some application got confused and ruined my settings. How many programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb? It’s a hardware problem.

Tuesday, May 7, 2024

ʻOumuamua Boink

 There has been fuss about this interstellar object passing through our solar system. We know it is interstellar because it dropped from above the solar disk. Everything in our solar system is near the disk. This dropped from above then changed direction at the disk near the sun and went skittering off along the path of the disk.

Why did it change direction? The two reasonable explanations are outgassing from the object and solar wind. The sun produces heat and radiation so one of those must have moved the object. But the object doesn’t change direction until it reaches the solar disk. Why wouldn’t heat or radiation move the object earlier? The explanations given are unsatisfying. Aliens are suggested.

It looks like it bounced. It bounced near the sun on the disk. Why did it bounce on the disk? It looks like it hit something and changed direction. What could it have hit?

The man on the stair. Something that isn’t there. Sounds like dark matter to me. Dark matter varies in density. Play with corn starch suspended in water, it bounces your fist when you hit it and lets your fist in when you touch it. Sticky dark matter sings better than modified gravity theory. Particularly with a bounce. Sticky dark matter, composed of neutrinos, neutrons, whatever, varying its characteristic with its density should explain the disk, rings, moons and belts.