Behold! The Power of Sharing!

11:54 Thursday, 11 December 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 22.08°F Pressure: 1007hPa Humidity: 71% Wind: 14.36mph
Words: 475

Found something else interesting in the feed-reader this morning. ldstephens shared a link to David Sparks' update to his AppleScript, um, script, that copies the URL of an email message to the clipboard. That's the core element to the email entry script in my Tinderbox file, Captain's Log.

I wondered what might have changed, so I clicked through to MacSparky and read the script. At first, I didn't think it really added much to what I was already doing; but further reflection suggested some improvements.

As the script was previously written, I had two dialogs to respond to after launching the script. The first created the $Name of the entry, and the second created the $Text. So I had two cognitive tasks to dispose of before logging an email, one of which was creating a title, and that's often a challenge for me. Certainly it's a pause in the workflow.

Using David's script, I made the subject line of the email the $Name of the note, which eliminated one dialog. Then I added a few lines to add the sender to the $DisplayedAttributes. In Tinderbox, I created a new $Prototype, "p_Email" for recording email log entries. That's where I created $Sender as a $DisplayedAttribute in that $Prototype.

Up until now, all entries shared the same $Prototype, "p_Entry" with the same $DisplayedAttributes. But an email entry is unique enough to merit its own $Prototype.

As it works now, I select the Mail to Log script from the FastScripts menu. I'm presented with one dialog, which is a note to myself about why I want to remember this email, then AppleScript and Tinderbox do all the rest.

This was also worthwhile from the standpoint that I needed something to kind of renew my interest in noodling around in Tinderbox. Last month I volunteered to kind of shepherd a community effort to develop a Tinderbox file for users of some level of experience that would identify ideas that might be called "best practices."

Well that got derailed by someone who objects to the superlative "best," because there are any number of "practices" one might use profitably in Tinderbox, and who am I to name this or that one "best"? Which then prompted some commentary about users and the next thing you know, it's like, What's the point?

Well, this, is kind of the point.

So we're (I'm?) going to re-brand the effort to something more along the lines of "Tips and Tricks," or "Secrets of the Tinderbox Obsessives." I just needed something to get the sour taste out of my mouth.

And I need something to distract me from the way this faithless, immoral leadership is abusing our armed forces in a dishonorable program of murder, and the fact that the retired leadership of the armed forces seems incapable of rousing itself to object.

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12-11-25

08:28 Thursday, 11 December 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 17.87°F Pressure: 1006hPa Humidity: 76% Wind: 13.42mph
Words: 841

Because I can't think of a title. Rather, I think of too many of them, and they all sound like bullshit.

Anyway, here I am.

I've been thinking about the guys who've been deployed in the Caribbean since at least September, missing Halloween, Thanksgiving, football season, and probably Christmas and New Year's soon. All to blow up some small boats and kill about 80-some little men, without any authority from Congress. There's undoubtedly a "legal" justification from Trump's "lawyers" who will rationalize anything the Mad Orange King wants to do, in the context of a Supreme Court that has ruled that the "Unitary Executive" is the de-facto King of the United States. Awesome. So proud of their service.

I guess we've seized a tanker now too. Winning!

But that's "service to your nation" in 2025. Killing people as spectacle. Posting the murders on social media, except when we think it might be a little embarrassing. I'm sure that video of the two guys being murdered in the re-strike was shared by that adolescent Hegseth on Signal with his "lethality"-porn homies. But he won't share it with the American people.

I can't believe more people aren't pissed off about it, but that's 2025 too. We all just shrug our shoulders and say, "Well, what can you do?"

Pretty chilly up here in Winterfell. Thought we were done with the Florida house, but our real estate agent mistakenly packed up the rotisserie equipment for the outdoor grill to ship up to us, along with a couple of pictures we somehow left hanging on the wall, the security camera and an AppleTV that was intended to act as the HomeKit hub, except I never set it up that way before we moved (almost) everything out in September. Now we have to ship the rotisserie stuff back to the new owners. All we wanted the agent to do was leave it on the island so the new owners could find it. It was tucked away pretty well in the pantry.

"No good deed..." and so on.

I've got to go to Home Depot and get some wood to make some window frame inserts we can attach that plastic sheeting that shrinks when you heat it with a blow-dryer. Creates another insulating layer between the interior of the house and the glass. We put some up with tape in front of the sliding glass door this morning. It's not pretty, but it should help make a difference.

It's interesting. We left Florida partly because of the insanity, but also because of the extreme weather events. And my early investigation into what the climate was like up here these days showed that snow and cold weren't the ever-present feature they once were. We arrived in June at the beginning of hurricane season, and Florida didn't have any hurricanes this year! And, of course, we've been getting polar'ed in the vortex up here all this month.

It's ok. It won't always be like this. The snow has made everything very pretty. I'm just disinclined to be outside as much, and working in the garage is pretty much a non-starter. I'll look into installing a mini-split in the garage soon.

Not much going on in the blogosphere that seems noteworthy, but this is a nice piece that captures some of what we hope to be about up here. It's early days, so we're kind of light on the "community" piece, but we enjoy shopping locally. There's a little place in Burdett called the Burdett Exchange, or just BEX for short, and it carries local goods. It's pricey, but we think of it as investing in community and we're privileged enough to be able to afford that investment.

We went to the Ithaca Farmers' Market on Saturday and bought some ham hocks, bacon, collards, kale and spinach and a huge glass jar of buckwheat honey. It was supposedly only in the 30s, but it felt colder than that! They'll be closing at the end of the month, but BEX is open year round. And there's Crosswinds Farm and Creamery, not far from here.

When we're not buying locally (EcoFlow batteries and so on), the FedEx guy now calls me "captain". He's a navy veteran and we chatted a bit one day when he saw me wearing my Naval Academy sweatshirt. (I pretty much live in that thing these days.)

The watershed protection guy will be here this Tuesday to look at the property and give us some insight into where we can build on this piece of land. Apparently our current septic tank is sized for a two-bedroom home, which would be inadequate if we build a two-bedroom home on the property.

We need to understand this constraint to know how to site the new place, and what kind of footprint/floor plan might work within those constraints. Another septic system is a significant expense we'd hoped to avoid, but that's how these things go.

And the beat goes on...

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