18:01 Friday, 17 January 2025

Words: 118

So with the cold weather, I guess we won't have to look forward to Sean Spicer explaining the size of the Orange One's "crowd" because it was cold.

I know Spicer won't be the Press Secretary, but I can't help thinking of him as George Costanza.

"There was shrinkage!"

"Turtled on ya?"

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Countless Reasons

14:28 Friday, 17 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 61.54°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 48% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 166

I gather the vast right-wing conspiracy has some plan for the Supreme Court to overturn all state gun control laws in the near future. Gosh, that sounds great.

But check out this report from a local news outlet. Take a look at that graph? I wonder what happened in 2008 that precipitated that sudden skyrocketing?

Oh, I remember... Obama, America's first Black president was going to take all our guns.

Oh, and the drop there in 2024? As the article makes clear, Floridians no longer need a concealed-carry permit.

What they should have done at Jax Today was show the crime rate in each county. Now, that's a double-edged sword, because the firearm fetishists would claim that low crime rates were because of high gun ownership rates. I would maintain that they are incredibly safe counties to begin with, and the only reason people feel the need to own guns is because they watch Fox News.

So looking forward to leaving this insanity.

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Kevin Drum On the NY Times

14:16 Friday, 17 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 61.41°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 48% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 53

I stopped subscribing years ago. That decision has been affirmed again and again.

And again.

The Times may have been "the paper of record," once upon a time; but now it's just another competitor in an attention economy, and the only thing they seem to feel they have a responsibility to is themselves.

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Gym Rat

14:00 Friday, 17 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 60.66°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 51% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 292

Just got back from a workout with our personal trainer. Stop me if you've heard this before:

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

Same thing with going to the gym. I mean, it can't work miracles. I'm still fat and flabby, but boy do I feel better!

I loved running. It was meditative in a way. It got the day off to a great start. I wish I could run again, but I've got a bout of achilles tendonitis going on in my left foot right now for God only knows why. Once I get walking, it recedes into the background; but come home and sit for five minutes and, ow! Anyway, it is what it is.

But going to the gym and lifting weights and using the machines, even using rubber bands, it keeps my heart rate up. It's as good as running, I think, at least for me in my current condition. And when I'm done, I feel spent, I feel a bit weak, but I feel alive. Woo-hoo! Not ten years younger, but maybe five?

Mitzi's going up to Winterfell in March to work on countertop, sink and cabinet installations and she's going to sign us up for a gym membership while she's there, so we can roll right into it when we get there in June. Taking a break is a risky proposition.

It really helps to have a trainer. Keeps me from finding ways to slack off, keeps the variety up and makes it interesting. Gives you feedback on your form. So we'll be looking for another one of those too up there.

Anyway, "Feeling good, Billy-Ray!" and so forth.

The beat goes on...

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She's Moody

05:58 Friday, 17 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 41.94°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 63% Wind: 5.01mph
Words: 75

Wish I could give you some insight into Florida's new senator. She's been AG for about six years now. Culture warrior. Carries water for Governor Dumbass. Hasn't made much of an impression apart from the usual Florida Republican lack of empathy and inclination toward cruelty and performative bullshit. Makes Marco look like a statesman and a humanitarian.

She'll probably get elected too.

Every day, there are more reasons to look forward to leaving this state.

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This Morning's Moon 1-17-24

05:50 Friday, 17 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 41.94°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 63% Wind: 5.01mph
Words: 147

Watched the SpaceX Starship test yesterday. Pretty cool Super-Heavy booster landing, but wow, what happened to Starship, or "'Ship," as the cool kids call it?

Capturing that booster is just amazing. But I can't imagine anyone is going to tolerate launching those things with any kind of frequency greater than monthly, if that. Were those flocks of migratory birds I saw flying through the frame after recovery? Are they nesting there? Yeesh.

It's an astonishing technological achievement. I just don't see how it's compatible with any habitat on earth. They're sure as hell not going to be able to launch those things from KSC on the regular.

But what do I know? King Elon will issue a royal decree and it'll be game on! We're all going to Mars!

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Strikes and Gutters

07:28 Wednesday, 15 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 44.13°F Pressure: 1029hPa Humidity: 64% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 140

Jack worries he's lost interest in photography.

I'd say not to worry. I've been kind of going through a dry spell myself. Partly it's lack of inspiration. I'm not enamored of my visual surroundings. There's little of interest, apart from the birds.

I took a bunch of pics in New York, but none of them were especially "creative." Most of them were just capturing personal memories. (Snow!) I wasn't thinking about the camera and how to use it to "make" a photograph. A couple of shots, maybe. And I wasn't especially happy with the results.

And it's been cold lately. (Relative term.) When it warms up a little, I'll toddle on back into the preserve and look for something that captures my attention.

I think you just need a change of scenery, Jack. Or a change of perspective. It'll happen.

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Test Copy Link With Highlight

06:28 Wednesday, 15 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 43.57°F Pressure: 1028hPa Humidity: 67% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 80

Let's give this a try again...

Ok, that worked. It's not Wikipedia. Maybe I should try it there again...

Dad took a slow boat to war...

That works too. Perhaps because it's not a heading? Let's try that...

Aha! It will not create a link to a highlight if the highlighted text is a heading.

It will link to this text...

But not to the heading above.

Investigation concluded. Now I need a PopClip action for Copy Link With Highlight.

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This Mourning Dove

06:01 Wednesday, 15 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 44.04°F Pressure: 1028hPa Humidity: 67% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 23

Also shot yesterday afternoon. JPEG SOOC.

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Disappointed by Apple

15:55 Tuesday, 14 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 58.12°F Pressure: 1025hPa Humidity: 55% Wind: 13.8mph
Words: 94

So I double-checked how to use Copy Link to Highlight, which does appear in my version of Safari on MacOS 15.2, and I'm not "holding it wrong."

When I paste what is copied to the clipboard into any other app, all I get is the basic URL.

I don't know if it's a conflict with some extension, or a clipboard manager or what, but it doesn't work.

This is kind of the opposite of "surprise and delight." Well, more like "surprise and piss off."

Nice feature, I just don't get to use it.

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Times Change

15:47 Tuesday, 14 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 58.84°F Pressure: 1025hPa Humidity: 54% Wind: 13.8mph
Words: 111

I'm old enough to remember when drinking and womanizing meant you didn't get to be Secretary of Defense.

(Also discovering that I apparently don't know how to use "Copy link with highlight in Safari".)

Update: I guess I ought to catch up on my recent U.S. history. While I knew Tower was rejected for character defects, I didn't realize, or remember, that that's what gave Dick Cheney the job. Oy.

Also just learned that Tower served in a similar class of ship that my dad served in, the LCS(L3).

And he died in a plane crash just north of here near Brunswick Georgia at the age of 66.

Wild.

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Twofer

15:43 Tuesday, 14 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 59.16°F Pressure: 1024hPa Humidity: 52% Wind: 13.8mph
Words: 38

Around the same time, a snowy egret perched on the remaining trunk of a broken tree.

So you get two today!

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This Afternoon's Bird 1-14-24

15:36 Tuesday, 14 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 59.16°F Pressure: 1024hPa Humidity: 52% Wind: 13.8mph
Words: 134

Kevin Drum often posts a Lunchtime Photo. It's way past lunch here, but when I was in the kitchen, I spotted a white spot on a limb in the swamp. I've since learned that means it's probably a kingfisher. Again, I'm really too far away to get a great shot, but it's still nice to document the variety of birds I can see from my back window.

I edited this one from the RAW in Photos. I'm usually happy with jpegs, but I wanted to see if I could tease out a better result from the RAW file. I did, though it wouldn't be visible in the size posted on the marmot. Still, you deserve the best.

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This Morning's Bird 1-14-24

08:35 Tuesday, 14 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 42.76°F Pressure: 1025hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 132

Yesterday was cloudy and rainy all day. I wanted to get a shot of the Wolf Moon with Mars in close proximity last night, but it was solidly overcast. It was better this morning and I got a few shots, but nothing remarkable.

While I was making breakfast, however, I spotted this guy back in the preserve. So I collected the E-M1X and took several images. This was about the best. Cropped in Photos to 3:2, added some definition and sharpening and denoised in Topaz PhotoAI. (ISO 6400. Noise wasn't offensive, but I'm playing with PhotoAI.) Oh, this is an anhinga. They've been perching back there a lot for the last few weeks.

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Culling Continues

07:30 Tuesday, 14 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 41.79°F Pressure: 1024hPa Humidity: 91% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 250

I went to cancel ancestry.com yesterday. It's $25 a month and I've been paying it seemingly forever. But I hesitated.

I think I'm going to just make an annual payment. Mom is still alive, and she's interested in her family history. She asks me about it from time to time. I don't want to tell her, "I cancelled that." I'm sure she'd be ok with it, but part of me thinks she'd be a little disappointed too. So I'll try to save a couple bucks and just pay for a year or six months or whatever the big chunk is and forget about it until it comes due again.

The non-profits make it really hard to cancel. I'll have to call my local public radio and television station. That's going to kind of hurt, because I do value the work they do. But I've been paying them $100 a month for quite some time, so maybe I've done "enough" for now.

Likewise with the St Johns Riverkeeper and the Matanzas Riverkeeper, $100 and $40 a month, respectively. They're fingers in the dike, but they're still worthwhile.

When we get to New York, I'll be supporting public media and environmental groups up there as I find them.

There are a couple of other annual subscriptions that sneak up on me. IFTT, which I never use.

Feels like decoupling. There was a moment, not so long ago, when I believed in Florida and wanted to fight for it.

Not anymore.

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PSA

06:28 Tuesday, 14 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 43.09°F Pressure: 1024hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 461

Got a reply from Manton on how to cancel my subscription to micro.blog. This is a screenshot of about a vertical quarter of the page in Safari on a 27" iMac. See that white-on-white "View Subscriptions" button? You click that button to go to the billing page.

There's a cancel button on that page. It's one of two buttons on that page, one of which is to "Upgrade" to yearly billing. Right next to that button, there's a button that says "Cancel."

Hmmmm...

Two buttons adjacent to each other. The one on the left performs an action. The one on the right says "Cancel." Where I have I seen that before?

Well boys and girls, that's the button you click to cancel your subscription!

Somehow I could find a way to cancel all the other subscriptions I mentioned yesterday. Couldn't find this one.

Should I feel stupid? Don't answer that question. I feel frustrated.

Why not "View Billing?"

"Billing" is money. So is "Subscription." But when you're on what is essentially a "social media" page, and "subscribing" is an ordinary feature akin to "following," perhaps it didn't leap out to me as the billing page. Why isn't "Cancel" a first-class citizen on the "Account" page? As in "Cancel my account." Why is the UI to cancel your subscription kind of ambiguous? Why isn't "How do I cancel my account on the FAQ page?

Don't answer those questions either. I know why.

Micro.blog is a fine service.

This part of it isn't up to the standards of all the rest.

If you want to get off "social media" micro.blog is kind of an intermediate stage. You can maintain a presence on things like X, Bluesky, Threads or Mastodon, without having to live in their apps, or view the products of any algorithmic timelines.

I think anyone staying on social media just to keep up with friends would be better served doing so on micro.blog, than scrolling the native social media apps; and $5 a month is a fair price for a much healthier way of doing that.

I used micro.blog as a link to Mastodon, and then I found that the Mastodon experience was not that much different from the X experience. "Social media" is toxic, I don't care how it's moderated, federated, calculated or masticated. It shouldn't be so easy to share every little fleeting thought or emotion that crosses your distracted, outraged mind. That's not mindfulness. Meditation is about letting thoughts go. Not chasing the rabbit. Not seeking constant validation. Not feeding the monster.

Feelings pass.

As will my frustration.

And my micro.blog account.

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Florida Times-Union Cancelled

14:19 Monday, 13 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 49.17°F Pressure: 1021hPa Humidity: 94% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 5

Another $11.33 in the bank!

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Tampa Bay Times Cancelled

14:14 Monday, 13 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 49.23°F Pressure: 1021hPa Humidity: 94% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 17

Another $19 a month not going out the door. Might get up to a car payment yet!

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Kindle Unlimited Cancelled

13:48 Monday, 13 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 48.81°F Pressure: 1021hPa Humidity: 94% Wind: 3.44mph
Words: 36

Another $11.99 a month staying in my bank account. A bunch of books I thought I bought are going to disappear too. Guess I'll have to decide which ones I want to keep and buy them.

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Tributary Cancelled

13:42 Monday, 13 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 48.78°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 94% Wind: 4.61mph
Words: 41

Another $9.00 a month. Timely, as I just received an email this morning, just as I was searching for my account information, that the founding editor, and the reason why I subscribed to begin with, has resigned.

There are no coincidences...

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Patreon Made It Easy

13:37 Monday, 13 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 48.78°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 94% Wind: 4.61mph
Words: 16

Patreon made it easy to cancel subscriptions. Only $11 a month, but it all adds up.

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Cancellation

13:31 Monday, 13 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 48.78°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 94% Wind: 4.61mph
Words: 65

A reminder that I'm cancelling my micro.blog account. If you're subscribed to the RSS feed from that service and want to keep up with the marmot, you should subscribe from nice-marmot.net.

A little bit of friction here, because micro.blog doesn't make it easy to figure out how to cancel your account. As soon as I figure that out, it'll be cancelled.

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Smart Cookie

07:07 Sunday, 12 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 32.52°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 91% Wind: 3.44mph
Words: 64

Watching Jimmy Carter's state funeral, Mitzi and I wondered where Michelle Obama was. Then I noticed that spouses were seated to the left of the elected official. Official protocol, I guess. Doug was to the left of Kamala.

That would have put Michelle right next to the Orange One.

I could imagine hearing the "Oh, hell no!" all the way from Hawaii.

Mad respect.

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Welcome Return

06:19 Sunday, 12 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 32.72°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 91% Wind: 4.61mph
Words: 410

Got a note this morning about the Listen to the Quiet video from one of our original cohort of bloggers, Loren Webster. Back in the day, about 25 years ago, a number of us found each other on the web through blogging. Not many are still blogging, some only intermittently. But I have warm memories of all of them.

Loren had a health issue, but he's back now. He's 83 and he inspires me, a comparative youth at 67, with his blogging, hiking, photography, reading and writing. I was surprised and delighted to hear from him, and felt a pang of guilt for not having checked in on him.

I commend Loren to your attention because he is an inspiration.

And I'm glad he's still online and sharing it.

Here's kind of the thing... I was lying in bed this morning, awake since 0400. Did the Quartiles puzzle. I never totally complete them, but I usually get down to four words remaining, sometimes fewer, and I'm usually in the top 10% of players. I use this as a kind of gauge of my mental acuity.

When I finished, I thought about getting up. I scrolled through Apple News and felt frustrated. So many pleading and misleading headlines, trying to capture my attention. I thought about getting up and meditating.

"Nothing changes until you change." This thought actually crossed my mind.

I wrestled with it. Frustrated and disappointed with myself, I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.

Mitzi got up to go to the bathroom, and I decided to get up and see if I could see the moon.

I could, reddish, near full and low on the horizon. Or what passes for a horizon in this rabbit warren of high-value hovels. Took two shots, neither worth saving. Checked my RSS feed, then checked my mail and discovered Loren's note.

I'm not sure why I wasn't getting his recent updates in NNW, but I've re-subscribed. And the link in my blogroll is broken somehow, so I need to fix that. Perhaps something changed.

Anyway, here's Loren blogging about meditating and beginning an exploration of taoism. Sharing.

We live in a responsive universe and we must pay attention for clues. The best way to pay attention is to be still.

Listen to the quiet.

I'm looking forward to leaving Florida, but I still need to make some changes.

Because...

"No matter where you go... There you are."

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State Funeral

19:14 Saturday, 11 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 43.45°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 76% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 205

From time to time, Mitzi will go into the living room and turn the TV on to watch something that I have little interest in seeing with her. But every now and then, I'll hear something that piques my curiosity and I'll join her.

I didn't think I had any interest in watching Jimmy Carter's state funeral.

I was wrong about that.

It was equal parts inspiring and moving, and, as a bonus, a ritual public humiliation of the Orange One, whether he was aware of it or not. I loved the arrangement of Eternal Father, I don't think I've ever heard it performed that way. Amazing Grace was also, well, amazing.

And it was humbling to me, too. If you listen to nothing else, listen to his grandson Jason's eulogy. They were all worthwhile, but Jason's was the best. Biden's was diminished by his difficulty with speech, but it was worthwhile as well.

I don't think I could ever live up to Jimmy Carter's example. But I'm glad he's given us all something to shoot for. A humble man who lived a truly remarkable life.

And major props to the flag bearers of the honor guard in that wind and cold. Made me proud.

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Listen to the Quiet

13:38 Saturday, 11 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 46.45°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 81% Wind: 14.97mph
Words: 74

These embedded videos never work in my browser, so I don't know why I do this. Maybe they work for you?

Anyway, 5 minutes out of your life isn't too much to ask.

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2024 Power Stats

12:51 Saturday, 11 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 46.85°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 81% Wind: 12.66mph
Words: 262

We used about 9.6MWh of electricity last year (house + RAV4 Prime). That's down 300kWh (3%) from 2023 45% of that (4.4MWh) came from solar directly (down 2% from 2023). 36% (3.5MWh) came from the Powerwalls (down 3%). 19% (1.7MWh) came from the grid. That's worse than last year when we imported 14% of our electricity from the grid.

We imported 1.7MWh of electricity from FPL. 3% of that (54.8kWh) went to charging the Powerwalls during Storm Watch events, later consumed by the house. We exported 2.7MWh of power to the grid when the Powerwalls were fully charged and we weren't consuming all that we were producing.

We exported more power than we imported, 1MWh to the grid. So we remain a net zero-carbon energy producer.

We were 81% self-sufficient last year. This is with the Powerwalls configured to maintain 20% of their capacity as a whole-house UPS in the event of a power outage.

It's unlikely that discharging the Powerwalls to 5% would significantly alter that, since it's unknowable if that extra capacity would be available when it was needed. That is, there are days in the spring and fall when we don't deplete the batteries to the 20% level anyway. It would offer some improvement, especially in August last year, which was, by far, our highest demand month. We used 1.3MWh in August, higher than in any other month by far. But it would also hasten the degradation of the storage capacity of the Powerwalls.

I remain more than satisfied with the configuration and performance of our system.

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Social

12:36 Saturday, 11 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 46.76°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 81% Wind: 12.66mph
Words: 220

Chris ODonnell, discerning consumer of online content (He reads the marmot.), posted something very interesting today.

Apple has all the pieces in place for a very low barrier to entry social networking stack. Contacts, Messages, Journal and iCloud.

Add a feature to Journal to make entries "public" (Kind of like Flickr, right?), do a notification to your contacts who "subscribe" to your journal through Messages, et voila! A "social network."

The marmot is little more than a public journal. It's the only blog on earth that really cares about what Dave Rogers thinks. I don't post everything here, but I do rely on it as kind of a journal of the experience of my life. Why anyone else should be interested in that is perhaps a mystery, or just a dimension of human nature.

I wouldn't migrate from what I'm doing now to Apple's stack, but if you add RSS to public Journal entries, you could get subscribers that aren't necessarily "contacts" and as long as you could export your content to plain text (or html, or XML, or JSON), it wouldn't necessarily be like being trapped in a hamster cage.

Maybe they do that already. I don't even know.

Interesting post though. No algorithm. No monetization. Apple probably won't do it, but man, all the pieces are right there.

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Maintenance

11:20 Saturday, 11 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 47.97°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 82% Wind: 11.5mph
Words: 473

When I went to upload the preceding post, I noticed that the photo was in the 2024 Images folder and subsequently noticed that the two preceding Moon images were as well.

I'd automated nearly all of the "infrastructure" pieces of maintaining the marmot, but I seemed to recall I may have hard-coded parts of the photo export functionality.

I found the relevant bits of export code in the photo post template, along with some hard-coded paths in the photo post prototype. It was pretty easy to replace those with the right action or export code from Tinderbox. It seems I've actually begun to absorb some of this, though it really amounted to little more than copying and pasting code from elsewhere in the document.

What was more challenging was why the Images were being exported to the 2024 Images folder in the first place.

It turns out that I had two Automator Export Photo applications. One on the desktop and one in the Applications folder. The AppleScript was calling the one in the Applications folder, which had the path to the Images folder hard-coded. I'd stepped through the version on the desktop, and it was creating the path using a shell script, and it was working properly. I thought that was the only one I had, since I think I was relying on it for the MBP as well. (Desktop is in iCloud.) I need to check the MBP now too.

So I deleted the Automator Export Photo app in Applications, and moved the one from the Desktop into Applications. Ran the script again for this post and all was well.

There was a lot of screwing around in between all that, trying to figure out what was going on, but that's the gist of it.

Also got a call from Caitie in the middle of it all. She's doing well, though she's frustrated with a lot of things. I will say it's a tremendous learning experience for her, and she seems to be drawing the right lessons. She's a smart young woman, and I'm very proud of her, even as I worry about her.

She loves her dog, though it makes me worry even more because having a dog, especially one as stubborn and not especially bright as a French Bulldog, complicates everything in a disaster situation. She told me there's an effort to collect all discovered pet remains and have them delivered to an organization that will scan any chips in order to notify owners. I never would have thought of that, but it kind of shows how many ways there are to be of service.

Hard to believe the morning is almost shot. I need to go take a walk.

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Just a Pawn

07:11 Saturday, 11 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 57.07°F Pressure: 1010hPa Humidity: 93% Wind: 11.5mph
Words: 422

Caitie is doing well. She and a friend were out running around LA yesterday, delivering treats to first responders, supplies for displaced pets and hair care products to her clients who'd lost their homes or were otherwise displaced. (She's a stylist.)

I was feeling unmoored. There are things I ought to be doing, but can't seem to summon the necessary motivation. There are rumors of a new camera body from OM Digital Systems (the former camera division of Olympus). Visiting the DP Review micro four-thirds forum was the depressing exercise it always is. But it did "inspire" me grab the old Oly E-PM1 and stick the 35mm/f3.5 macro lens on it and wander around the house.

No flash, and it's not a particularly bright lens and the camera's IBIS is broken, so this wasn't "bad" at ISO 1600, 1/80s. (35mm is 70mm in 35mm "equivalent" focal length.)

When you turn on the "Info" widget in Photos, it places a little icon over each of the pieces. I thought clicking on it would identify the piece. Nope, just does an image search and the results are stupid.

The future is going to suck.

Our friends and former neighbors who also bought property in the Finger Lakes plan to build a log cabin there, and this has put the idea in Mitzi's head. I've watched some videos on YouTube, and I'm quite certain I don't want a log cabin. Hopefully that idea will pass. Log cabins require maintenance, and carpenter bees love them, which means woodpeckers love them. Nope. Not for me. Hardie Plank. But, "Happy wife, happy life." I suppose we can pay people to maintain it for us every year for the rest of our lives.

I guess I'm just struggling to find my footing in a universe of stupidity. (Not the log cabin idea. That's not "stupid," just not ideal.) A convicted felon being President of the United States is stupid. And, though some may say I'm tarring with too broad a brush, everything around him is stupid. An ever-expanding nexus of world-class stupidity that threatens to overtake us all.

What the actual fuck?!

Got sucked into a rabbit whole on YouTube, which contains a seemingly bottomless video chronicle of human stupidity. I don't recommend anyone do the same. It's not healthy.

Not everything needs to be uploaded to YouTube.

Anyway, "Every picture tells a story, don't it?"

Just a pawn.

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The Zen Diary

16:09 Friday, 10 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 57.97°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 73% Wind: 3mph
Words: 97

I saw this on a flight last year. I remember the movie, I don't remember where we were going. We flew to Syracuse in September, so maybe it was then.

Anyway, I loved it, and I've been looking for it ever since. Still not available to stream or purchase as far as I can tell.

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Doing OK

11:28 Friday, 10 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 57.83°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 62% Wind: 12.66mph
Words: 139

Texted with Caitie yesterday and learned she was back in her apartment after the evacuation order was lifted. Couldn't get her to respond much, other than to say she was ok and that the preceding two days had been traumatizing.

I don't think she was being hyperbolic. She had a glimpse of the apocalypse and that probably affects anyone. A friend's parents lost their home in the fire. There is concern that the destruction of housing will place upward pressure on already sky-high rents in LA. I think Caitie's place is rent regulated to some extent.

I pinged her this morning, but haven't heard back from her yet.

There's an insurance crisis in our future.

Not to worry though. We've elected some brilliant leaders who will get on top of that and bring it to a satisfactory resolution.

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Last Night's Moon 1-8-24

07:31 Thursday, 9 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 31.89°F Pressure: 1024hPa Humidity: 68% Wind: 13.8mph
Words: 581

Off to a slow start this morning as I was up rather late last night.

Caitie was in the evacuation zone for the Hollywood fire. I'd made her a go-bag when she moved out there five years ago, expecting she might need to use it in the event of an earthquake. I didn't expect her to need it for a wildfire. Her neighborhood is pretty "urban," at least as LA goes. But I guess stuff can still catch fire.

She called me and asked me what she should do. I had difficulty figuring out whether or not she was actually in the evacuation zone, being unfamiliar with the street names and the maps the TV stations were showing omitted most of them. Her neighbors were leaving, and she was getting invitations from friends to come to their places, but traffic was going to be a problem since she didn't have much gas in the car.

She got an alert on her phone, which made it pretty clear that she was in the evacuation zone so she started packing and I left her to it and told her to text me when she got someplace safe.

It was only a matter of an hour or so between the fire breaking out and the evacuation being ordered.

I recalled that she's on my FindMy list, so I was able to watch her as she travelled. She headed due south on side roads and she moved pretty steadily. It still amazes me that I can follow her progress like that. I could even watch her driving around, seemingly aimlessly, apparently looking for a place to park. She's south of West Adams street now, so hopefully that'll be safe enough.

I read Kevin Drum's blog, and Heather Cox Richardson's, so I'm exposed to more political news than I would seek on my own.

The amount of bullshit coming from social media, specifically X and the Orange One's vanity project, is astonishing. Social media of the hyper-interactive kind with tens of thousands or millions of "followers" is a disease. Believing bullshit and conspiracy theories is one of the symptoms.

9/11 and the subsequent elective wars demonstrated the futility of the internet to prevent a catastrophe by means of "reasoned discourse." Technology magnifies the best and worst aspects of human nature, but it's the worst ones that get us into trouble. It expands what we do in space, and compresses it in time (it can also do the reverse, but it's mostly the first thing).

I've been "ranting into the void to no discernible effect" for more than twenty years now. Iraq, climate change, Trump, fascism in America, social media, ubiquitous surveillance. Nothing matters.

In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is a woke cuck.

There are some reasonable, rational people who believe that they're immune to the illnesses spawned by swimming in the sewage of social media. They're not.

But I no longer have any illusions that I can save anyone.

All I can do is look after myself and try to protect the ones I love, and many of them are addicted to it as well.

Everything is about to get worse.

Consider this an evacuation order.

We're headed for the hills in New York. You should probably figure out where you want to be as this plays out to its tragic and inevitable conclusion.

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Last Night's Moon 1-7-24

06:16 Wednesday, 8 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 34.32°F Pressure: 1025hPa Humidity: 80% Wind: 3.44mph
Words: 132

Tried to shoot this the night before last, but I couldn't get a handheld hi-res shot. Not enough features in the frame to align, I suppose.

Watched a YouTube video from a while back about using an app called Lynkeos to stack frames from a video and supposedly it achieves a better result. Downloaded the app, may give it a try. Supposedly pretty slow and processor intensive. This doesn't require much from the iMac, just cropping, some noise reduction, a little sharpening and some definition. Whole thing is done in minute or two.

The heavy lifting is done in-camera, and that takes probably less than a minute on the E-M1X. Quicker on the OM-1.

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Ultra-Processed

15:07 Tuesday, 7 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 47.46°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 66% Wind: 14.97mph
Words: 94

There's a lawsuit against the manufacturers of ultra-processed foods.

Cool.

Someday, there'll be a lawsuit against Meta, X, and Bluesky for "ultra-processed social media."

Social media is like breakfast cereal.

It's (relatively) cheap, tastes great, easy to obtain, easy to prepare, easy to eat almost anywhere, and absolutely horrible for you.

We didn't evolve to consume hundreds of calories of sugar every day. Likewise with thousands of empty social interactions ("engagement").

If social media, including mastodon, is like breakfast cereal, blogs are like oatmeal.

Eat your oatmeal. Don't add too much sugar.

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Small Pond

12:17 Tuesday, 7 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 43.07°F Pressure: 1023hPa Humidity: 74% Wind: 11.5mph
Words: 306

Just got back from one of our training sessions. I really wasn't "feeling it" this morning, which affirms, once again, the value of at least the dollar commitment, and having a partner to train with and be accountable to.

As I expected, I do feel better mentally and emotionally. Physically, I'm wiped; but I don't feel so down.

Ran into a woman from Long Island at the gym. We chatted a bit and I mentioned we were moving to New York this year. She said she hated it here. I had to move on to the next station, so I wasn't able to discover exactly what she hated about it here, though there are a plethora of potential reasons.

Thinking about life in New York occupies some of my time. One thing I think I'm looking forward to is the opportunity to do more volunteer work. Here, in this retirement community, there is no shortage of people ready, willing and able to volunteer for things. And many, if not most, of these retirees are educated, experienced, motivated and accustomed to positions of responsibility or authority.

Put a bunch of people like that on a committee and watch what happens.

Especially if you have to produce a deliverable, and there's nobody really in charge (and everyone thinks they should be in charge).

Recipe for frustration.

The condo association was a worthwhile volunteer opportunity, mostly because very few people wanted to help at all. And there was enough to do that you could divide responsibilities between people based on their interests or strengths.

I suspect that rural life may be somewhat similar, though I don't know. I'm pretty confident there'll be opportunities to contribute meaningfully, without bumping up against frustrating conflicts.

There's a lot to do between now and then, though. But it's something to look forward to.

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PSA

10:20 Tuesday, 7 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 37.65°F Pressure: 1023hPa Humidity: 65% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 184

Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.

I think it's an illusion, or delusion, that "social media" is a "good." It amplifies our worst impulses, exploits our weaknesses, and wastes our time and our attention. I don't think there's any amount of moderation that can make it a "good."

Twitter is toxic, so tech-triumphalists create mastodon. The business model is irresistible, so Meta creates Threads and a Twitter guy creates Bluesky. And it's all the same thing.

I just don't think it's good for human beings to be able to interact with one another in this way. I don't think there's any technological way to make it good, safe or healthy. For anyone, kids or adults alike.

There is no evolutionary antecedent that prepares us for this level of interactivity, 24/7 with thousands of people, nearly all of whom are perfect strangers.

Anyway, I'm glad I got off Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and mastodon. You can quit. It's difficult at first, and inconvenient always, but I can unequivocally state that my life is better without them.

I think yours would be too.

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Dark Ages

09:42 Tuesday, 7 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 36.07°F Pressure: 1023hPa Humidity: 73% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 159

Today would have been my dad's 97th birthday. As a family, his birthday officially marked the end of the "holiday season." At the Naval Academy, the interval between Christmas break and "spring break," was informally known as the "dark ages." Miserable weather, little in the way of "fun" activities.

Feels kind of that way now. The Orange One's second inaugural feels ominous. The "winter of our discontent" feels appropriate. The extreme winter weather isn't helping.

Anyway, still have to keep putting one foot in front of the other. No sense dwelling on it.

As part of my financial review, I'll be canceling my subscription to micro.blog. For those of you who may be subscribed to that feed, you may wish to subscribe to this one. I originally subscribed to micro.blog as a way of automatically posting from the marmot to mastodon. Since I'm not participating in that anymore, there's little reason to maintain a micro.blog presence.

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Looking Glass

09:15 Sunday, 5 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 51.8°F Pressure: 1026hPa Humidity: 70% Wind: 0mph
Words: 380

We had company yesterday and this morning. Mitzi's sister and brother-in-law stayed with us on their way to Port Canaveral to board a Carnival cruise. They've recently become "cruisers," and Mitzi's sister-in-law in California has organized a family cruise in March for all of Mitzi's siblings and their spouses. We won't be going.

Robin, the organizer, has been fairly persistent in trying to change our minds to get us to come along. Last night, Dave, Mitzi's brother-in-law, wanted to understand why I objected to cruising.

I'd never really interrogated my feelings about it. I have a pretty negative view of the whole business model, visceral even. But in last night's discussion, I think I came to a clearer realization of why I want to have nothing to do with it.

I think I said something like, "I have too much respect for the ocean to treat it that way."

And that wasn't strictly an "environmental" comment, it comes from my experience at sea.

I told David, "To me, the sea is almost like church. It'd be like drinking and partying and gambling in a church." Those may not have been my exact words, but I did draw the analogy with a church.

People used to speak of the "fear of God," of the "glory of God," of "awe and majesty."

Well, God is the sea.

I don't begrudge people having a good time, even on those floating resort casinos. But they don't know what they're fucking around with. They don't respect it.

I won't have anything to do with it. I've been to sea, and I've seen it. I have experienced it.

And I respect it.

I'm not afraid to go to sea. I'll go to sea in a heartbeat if there's some reason for it. Cruising ain't it.

I love the ocean. Love it too much to treat it like some accessory to a good time. Too much to be a party to exploiting it that way. And I know how insignificant we are in its presence.

Anyway, thought that was appropriate on a Sunday.

Thinking about a title for this post brought this to mind. I was a 15 year old male adolescent, probably the target demographic for a tune like this.

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Make All Preparations for Getting Underway

06:37 Saturday, 4 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 42.89°F Pressure: 1026hPa Humidity: 48% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 692

Mitzi's been packing up and getting rid of "stuff" to declutter the house in preparation for putting it on the market. I continue to be amazed at the speed and energy she puts into a project once she's embraced it. It's dizzying.

For my part, I've been trying to empty this enormous desk, and may have developed a fetish for Ridgid Pro Gear 2.0 storage boxes in the process. (Cue George Carlin's "A Place for My Stuff.")

It's astonishing how much crap this desk holds. I bought two 10-compartment organizer boxes with the transparent lids, two of the three-drawer boxes, and a small box.

Not enough. Plus, it's heavy. Tried to figure out the most inexpensive way to get the wheeled dolly, plus some more boxes. Ended up getting the large tool box, and another small tool box, separately, which was cheaper than the combo offering.

I love those boxes. I bought a few to move some "essential" tools to New York back in September. Bought another small box while we were up there. I now have enough to make a YouTube video, showing off my "collection."

They're not "perfect." The interior dimensions are irregular due to the "structure" of the of the molds, which aids their rigidity. (Not a fan of the "Ridgid" name. Why not just "Rigid"? So confusing.) But they're damn near perfect; and they're strong enough to hold all my stuff and get stacked without risking any of the contents being crushed.

The desk is basically empty now. The top is still clobbered, awaiting resolution of the fate of the iMac. We have guests this weekend, so I plan to resolve the issue next week. Probably going to sell it, then regret it later.

Once that's done, Mitzi found some organization that will supposedly come and collect it and put it to some productive use. I'm skeptical, but we'll see. Anyway, it'll get out of here and I'm going to replace it with something like this adjustable height workbench. (I'm not a Home Depot affiliate, I just get a 10% discount for being a veteran.) I'll have enough room to keep the //c off the floor, and I'll probably bring the //e in from the garage. I can use the 14" MBP from the recliner and a lap desk. The work bench will also give me some more floor space in here.

From there, I'll bring some or all of the Ridgid boxes in and begin a more thorough review and reorganization of their contents, with the goal of getting rid of a least a third of it, so I can re-purpose them for camera equipment. I'm somewhat concerned about resin out-gassing, potentially depositing a film of some kind on optical surfaces. I don't know if that's something to genuinely worry about, but when I opened these boxes for the first time there was a strong chemical odor. Maybe some more "research" is in order.

We have a couple of large plastic "totes" in the garage that are our "hurricane boxes." I want to go through their contents and get rid of most of it. Some of them are ordinary cleaning or hygiene consumables that can simply be placed into service. There's a first aid kit (barely worth the name) that can go in the truck when I get it. Anyway, the point is that we no longer need a "hurricane box," that contains supplies we would take to a public shelter. And we do need the box for other "stuff."

I'm going through my credit card statements and identifying all the monthly charges that relate to Florida. Non-profits, newspapers, etc. I pay all my credit cards off each month, so it's not a debt problem. It's just that I'm going to have a car payment soon and moving expenses, so I'm unentangling myself from Florida and its miserable future. A quick review showed about $275/mo in savings. I think it's going to require phone calls to some of these organizations.

Once we get oriented in New York, I'll resume supporting local news and environmental groups.

As always, the beat goes on...

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Total Recall

07:15 Thursday, 2 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 42.67°F Pressure: 1026hPa Humidity: 81% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 828

I thought it was odd that there were so many unsold Mavericks on the lot at my local Ford dealer, while used ones were going for very high prices. And, as it turns out, I should have been able to understand it, as I'd seen a video from a few weeks ago that actually explained the situation. I just wasn't really paying attention. It made sense after he explained it.

The backup camera recall is a "do not deliver" order. It's a safety issue such that, from a liability standpoint, the manufacturer cannot turn the cars over to buyers, knowing that they have this defect. Apparently, they just have to inform the owners who've already taken delivery. And it affects all model years from 22-24, for vehicles that don't have the Sync 3 system, which uses a different camera/infotainment system.

So the ones on the lot were trucks that were ordered by buyers who have moved on to another vehicle (and manufacturer?).

That's good news for me, as someone who isn't in a hurry to get into a vehicle, but looking for a decent value proposition.

I called the dealership yesterday to see if they were open, before I really knew about this issue. They were open, but once a salesperson has you on the phone, you're not getting off until they've tried to hook you.

Which was fine. I wanted to see if the truck I was interested in was still available, because it was still showing on the web site. That's when I learned about the delivery hold. The truck I wanted, a nice blue color, was not "available."

Technically, dealers can sell the cars, they just can't deliver them, and since a fix hasn't been identified yet, they can't promise when they'll be delivered, which is problematic for any number of reasons. So what this dealer is doing, is taking a deposit to hold the vehicle for the potential buyer, and to move them to a point in the queue related to when the deposit was placed. That is, vehicles with deposits will get the software updates first, then unsold vehicles.

Kind of makes you wonder about customers who already own one? But yeah, they'd have to be informed and schedule a service call, so they probably will work their inventory immediately.

Someone had placed a $500 deposit on the blue one the day before.

Well, they were open, and they only had black and white hybrids with Co-Pilot 360, but I wanted to look one over in person anyway, so Mitzi and I went there to check them out.

As it happens, 2024 may be something of a sweet spot in terms of the value proposition in model evolution. While the hybrid drivetrain was no longer standard, and therefore increased the base price by $1500, there are features that are standard on the 2024 base XL which weren't standard on previous models, if I recall correctly, mainly cruise control.

I wasn't worried about cruise control, I don't often drive with it and since this package won't have adaptive cruise control, I'll probably use it even less. But it is nice to have when there's little traffic, which is probably more often the case in New York than in Florida, at least in my experience.

Also, features of the Co-Pilot 360 system changed between model years, wherein the blind spot warning system and the reverse crossing traffic warnings are removed in 2025, which were the two main features I was interested in. The blind spot warning system also gives you power mirrors, so that's another cost savings for Ford.

Finally, the 2025 models are priced higher.

So, all-in-all, I decided I liked the black truck, and put a $500 deposit on one. They promised to give me $500 off sticker for being a veteran. We'll see if that holds come contract time.

Ford is only promising "Q1" for the recall resolution, so anytime between today and the end of March. Since there's plenty of pressure on Ford to resolve the issue, I'm guessing it'll be sooner rather than later, but I'm in no hurry.

Buying a car is still a scuzzy experience. To listen to the sales rep, they're not making any money. There's a $900 "documentation fee," which is bullshit. Our sales rep quoted an enormous $675 for tags and title and said "that's what Florida charges." I can't find that figure anywhere. What I have found is that the dealer can charge a "processing fee," though that has to be disclosed in the sales contract. I haven't signed a sales contract yet, so I'll be looking for that.

At the end of the day, I wanted to spend no more than $30K for this truck, and I will have missed that mark by $443. We'll see what I can do when he calls me and says the truck is ready to be sold.

The deposit is refundable.

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Infrastructure Week

06:26 Wednesday, 1 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 55.58°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 71% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 918

Happy New Year!

To usher in the new year, I seem to have contracted some upper-respiratory crud. Blech.

I'm happy to note that the Tinderbox files that I have open all the time both rolled over to the new year successfully. But now I need to set up an automation to create a new 2025 Images folder for the marmot. I could put a test in the Photos export automation to look for a folder named for the current year, and if it doesn't exist, create one. But it only happens once a year, so why do all that work every time I want to post an image?

This is the year we escape Florida. To that end, Mitzi has secured the use of a small temporary storage facility where we'll stash stuff ("clutter") as we begin the process of making the house presentable for prospective buyers later this spring.

To that end, she also took a bunch of stuff to Goodwill. I threw in a bunch of radios I accumulated on my "radio kick." Do not be misled, I still have lots of radios. I plan to take over the shed next to the garage and finish it inside to make it my "radio shack." Put a couple of solar panels on the roof and a big battery inside. It'll be my office, or hideout, or getaway until we decide on where we're going to live full-time.

She also sold her kayak and accessories yesterday. Guy took it home strapped to the roof of his Toyota Camry, lying on some bathroom rugs with the rubberized bottoms so the kayak wouldn't slide around. It's a lot easier putting a kayak on top of a Camry than a RAV4.

As a couple living in a rural setting, relying on one vehicle will be less practical than it is here in this "planned community," where they planned to not make it walkable; but you can take a golf cart or a bike to damn near anyplace you need to go. So I'm looking at owning a car for the first time in more than a decade.

Not a car, exactly. I'm going to lean-in on the "rural" thing and buy a truck. Trying to be a savvy consumer, I "did my research," and decided that the Ford Maverick hybrid is the one I want. I originally toyed with the idea of an F-150, but they're just too big, too heavy, use too much gas and cost too much, even used.

The Maverick is so popular, high-mileage used ones are going for nearly the original sticker price. So I'm going to buy a new one. Base model, the XL, 2024, with the Ford Co-Pilot 360 package, and that mainly for the rear crossing sensors for backing out of parking places. When I park, I try to look for a spot that I can pull through (no curbstone), so I can pull out rather than back out. There are a few at a local dealer, I'll see if I can get one. Mavericks. Not parking spots.

I know the Maverick has been the subject of many recalls, and one issue remains unresolved at the moment - the backup camera will freeze and you'll be looking at a still image rather than live video if you rely on it to, you know, back up. So don't rely on it. But people genuinely seem to love it, and it seems to regularly exceed its EPA mileage ratings. I won't be a commuter, mostly around-town (or country) driving, so it should be economical to operate.

When family comes to visit (realistically, we're probably only talking her daughter and son-in-law from DC and their son), we'll be able to throw a couple of inflatable kayaks, PFDs, a cooler and some picnic supplies in the bed, and all be able to fit in the cab to go to a park by the lake. That would not all fit in the back of the RAV4, and the lower bed of the Maverick is more accessible than the bed of a conventional body-on-frame pickup, and way more accessible than the roof of the RAV4.

And I foresee making semi-frequent trips out near Albany to visit Mom or my siblings, so the highway mileage being pretty decent is a plus as well.

We're probably going to be living in the large "tiny house" for at least a year, maybe more, so our expenses will be significantly reduced, New York taxes notwithstanding. I'll try to pay down the car loan as fast as I can. If I kick off some time in the next several years, my youngest daughter will get the Maverick if she wants it. Each of my two older kids got a car at some point in their lives. Melissa got hers the earliest, as a teen, a VW bug, 1974 I think. I gave my son and his wife my Outlander Sport when Mitzi moved in with me at the condo. They're still driving it as their second car.

Almost hate to say it, but I'm kind of excited about owning my own car again. I love the RAV4 Prime, but it's Mitzi's car; and there are some things that we do that'll be easier with an open truck bed, even one as short as the Maverick's.

Anyway, new year, new adventure. Almost makes gettin' out of bed in the morning worthwhile.

The beat goes on...

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