Farm Bankruptcy
09:30 Tuesday, 28 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 37.09°F Pressure: 1029hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 3.8mph
Words: 59
This is an excellent, if not exactly well produced, explainer about farm bankruptcies. I learned a great deal, and it's probably useful to have this perspective as you consider the effects of Trump's tariffs on U.S. farmers.
I've subscribed to her channel, because it's helpful to me, especially since I'm in a much more agricultural setting these days.
✍️ Reply by emailSolo
07:47 Tuesday, 28 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 31.1°F Pressure: 1029hPa Humidity: 94% Wind: 2.48mph
Words: 191
Mitzi's headed to DC for about a week. Her daughter is currently furloughed because of our dysfunctional government and Republican intransigence. She's looking forward to spending time with her daughter and her grandson.
I'll be up here doing whatever it is I do. I've got some work to do in the garage, putting up shelves and getting things squared away.
My son and daughter-in-law are supposed to be here next week. She's entered in the New York City marathon, but now we have to keep our fingers crossed that their flights aren't cancelled. Another consequence of an electorate that feels as though chaos is a legitimate form of governance. Other folks are dealing with more serious consequences, of course.
I bit the bullet and went ahead and installed Tahoe. I've turned off all the transparency bullshit. It's usable, but I must say it makes those really round control outlines look like pills. To no discernible purpose, I must add. I am interested in any updates and improvements to Shortcuts though. There are some automations I want to explore for the marmot and Captain's Log.
And the beat goes on…
✍️ Reply by emailBe Careful What You Wish For
07:24 Tuesday, 28 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 31.41°F Pressure: 1029hPa Humidity: 94% Wind: 1.83mph
Words: 115
We had another showing with a younger (over-55) couple last week. They were very enthusiastic, gave positive feedback and then… Crickets.
I'm beginning to feel as though the universe reads the marmot. All those posts warning people not to move to Florida. Why doesn't it listen to me about Trump? Or climate change?
Whatever.
Central Florida got drenched over the weekend. 15" of rain in some places. Videos of people saying, "It's never been like this before." Yeah. No kidding.
Interesting post over at This Is Not Cool. Click through and read the amusing anecdote about economists. RTWT and the quote at the end (not especially well called-out) from RFK Sr. in 1968.
✍️ Reply by emailRTWT
20:01 Monday, 27 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 37.58°F Pressure: 1029hPa Humidity: 82% Wind: 5.23mph
Words: 362
If you believe in this whole hypertext thing, then you gotta click on the links right? And if that effort is to mean anything, then you probably have to, you know, "read the whole thing," as we used to say back in the day.
Do your own clicking, but I'll give you the punchline:
DFW: If you go back to Hobbes, and why we ended up begging, why people in a state of nature end up begging for a ruler who has the power of life and death over them? We absolutely have to give our power away. The Internet is going to be exactly the same way. Unless there are walls and sites and gatekeepers that say, “All right, you want fairly good fiction on the Web? Let us pick it for you.” Because it’s gonna take you four days to find something any good, through all the shit that’s gonna come, right? We’re going to beg for it. We are literally gonna pay for it. But once we do that, then all these democratic hoo-hah dreams of the Internet will of course have gone down the pipes. And we’re back again to three or four Hollywood studios, or four or five publishing houses, being the … right? And all of us who grouse, all the anarchists who grouse about power being localized in these media elites, are gonna realize that the actual system dictates that. The same way—I’m absolutely convinced—that the despot in Hobbes is a logical extension of what the State of Nature is.
Except we didn't quite get the gatekeepers Wallace described. We got prison walls, and guards, that feed us shit and we beg for more, even as we're paying for it with our attention.
I guess the streamers approach what Wallace envisioned. Netflix, Prime, AppleTV, Disney, Hulu. But that's an experience that is not of the web. Facebook and Instagram and X and Truth Social are the "concentrated animal feeding operations," that mire us in our own shit and consume our time and attention.
It is "the system," though.
You'd think we'd figure it out.
Well, enough of us anyway.
In another life maybe...
✍️ Reply by emailJack's Back
19:54 Monday, 27 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 38.52°F Pressure: 1029hPa Humidity: 80% Wind: 5.23mph
Words: 12
And quoting David Foster Wallace.
Nice to see you back, my friend.
✍️ Reply by emailTonight's Effort
Current Wx: Temp: 39.18°F Pressure: 1029hPa Humidity: 78% Wind: 5.23mphWords: 101
Tonight I went with a 45mm/f1.2 prime. Still a lot of skyglow. This is a tripod mounted handheld hi-res shot. I discovered that these will fail if there is an aircraft in the frame at any time during the exposure. Space Nazi's satellites are cluttering up the sky, but they don't seem to cause the alignment to fail.
A bit colder tonight.
I looked for SWAN, but it's high overhead and I didn't have much luck scanning for it. Finding Lemmon was pretty easy, though it took me some time to get the camera pointed in the right direction.
✍️ Reply by emailEnemies
11:56 Monday, 27 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 42.19°F Pressure: 1030hPa Humidity: 81% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 205
"Smartphones are not the enemy," is making the rounds in the RSS feeds I follow.
It's the typical, periodic contrarian take that garners attention.
The predicate post cites a post about a table saw to make a point:
We should not stop making powerful tools because they are dangerous. Rather, we should empower people to use powerful tools safely.
Which poses an interesting question. Is a table saw in any way comparable to a smartphone in terms of a tool and its potential for harm?
I'll leave that for the interested reader to sort out for themselves. Bear in mind that a table saw has a limited use case, and isn't on or near your person 24/7.
For that matter, are they in any way comparable in terms of "power"?
Why do we need a "supercomputer in your pocket?"
We don't. Capitalists need us to buy them.
It's bullshit. It's an emergent property of a non-linear dynamic system that we are "empowered" to blather on fecklessly about "enemies," missing digits and how or why we should soothe our troubled consciousness.
It's a problem that's going to solve itself in the next thirty to fifty years.
Maybe sooner if you watched House of Dynamite.
✍️ Reply by emailYelling At Clouds
08:03 Monday, 27 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 29.07°F Pressure: 1032hPa Humidity: 96% Wind: 1.23mph
Words: 991
Meant to do some more blogging here yesterday, ended up going down a retro-computing rabbit hole.
Ever since I was a kid, technology has held some fascination for me. It still does, but today it is tempered by an almost oppressive awareness of the unintended consequences.
A car slammed into a horse-drawn buggy here yesterday, sending the three occupants to the hospital in a helicopter. There's a metaphor in there, somewhere.
As an adult, my interest has tended toward history. I've made a casual, though rather deep, study of the history of radio. Likewise, electricity. They overlap, of course, in the discovery of electro-magnetic waves.
But electricity has a special attraction as history, because of its ubiquitous nature and foundational role as the infrastructure of this civilization. The Rural Electrification Act is a remarkable example of the role of government as a positive force in people's lives, along with the regulation of utility companies seeking monopoly status. Did you know that Wendell Willkie was a lobbyist for the electricity industry? I didn't know that until I studied the deployment of electric power in the United States. I thought he was just some random politician who held no special interest for me as a losing presidential candidate.
Of course, computers have been a particular subject of interest. Mostly, I think, because of screens. I was a TV child. I understand why tablets hold such fascination for small children. I was introduced to computers, well, programming really, on teletypes. Hot, claustrophobic and loud in tiny booths beneath the library at the Naval Academy. I got two five credit hour Ds in Calculus with Computers my plebe year at the academy. Try getting your QPR to recover from that! All because I scored 640 on the math portion of the SAT. I hated computers.
I didn't get really into computers until the personal computer came along, specifically the Apple II. Because you could interact with a screen. That seemed pretty powerful.
That seemed like the future.
For the last several years I've been reading about the history of computing. It's kind of exciting, at least in terms of the technological hurdles the early builders had to overcome. That held far more interest for me than the particulars of programming. Today, the hardware holds little interest for me. I stopped being excited about each new iteration of chipsets and bus bandwidth many years ago.
What was interesting to me was the problem computing was intended to solve. Mostly calculations, related to physical processes. Simulation and modeling. A tool used by trained and intelligent people to solve problems. The personal computer felt like an empowering tool. But mostly we just played games on them.
There were some non-gaming uses. Keeping track of the soccer team. Printing out greeting cards. Maintaining a household budget, if you were the kind of person who used a budget that is. Doing your taxes, maybe.
But once that technology became "democratized," then capitalism and the profit-motive did its thing.
Today, almost none of the computing power deployed in the world is used to solve problems. The overwhelming, vast majority of it is used for people interact with one another. And not necessarily in positive or healthy ways. In fact, it's probably mostly unhealthy.
I mean when we have a networked computing infrastructure that allows the President of the United States to discover and share an "AI-generated" video of himself as a fighter pilot literally shitting on protestors, well... We've lost the plot.
This is what "computing" has brought us.
What we ought to be studying, besides mental health and human relations, are system dynamics. Our climate, which has been altered chiefly by greenhouse gases released in the production of electricity, is a complex, non-linear dynamic system. Most of the people responsible for producing, and nearly all of the people consuming electricity, have no idea what that means.
Need more electricity? Build more walls. Electricity comes from walls, right?
Our economy is a complex non-linear dynamic system. One that is literally out of control. It proceeds from a false premise, that "growth" is intrinsically "good," and that it can continue without bounds. There is this magical place called "away," where all of our used-up products can go. And capitalism is an accelerant for that kind of thinking.
We get more of things we don't need, at lower cost, and the rich get richer.
We pride ourselves on this notion that we have "agency" in our lives. If we do, it's a tiny thing. Mostly, we don't. Our behaviors are habituated and influenced by the environment that surrounds us. And we have been on a systematic program of degrading that environment for centuries.
And here we are.
Anyway, all of this was prompted by me buying an original copy of AppleWorks. I got one when I bought my //e in 1984. I sold my Apple ][+ to one of my co-workers, and bought a complete //e package from one of my neighbors who worked in a computer store.
I ended up using AppleWorks for several years, until about 1992 I think, which was remarkable back then. Of course AppleWorks evolved over that time. I think the 8-bit version made it up to version 4, maybe 5. It was a pretty remarkable piece of software.
But I also watched a video that attempts to measure, in some way, the performance hit of Apple's "Liquid Glass" interface. And that juxtaposition prompted the present meditation (rant).
We have all this compute power, and we use it to make things harder to see for old people.
Why? Because we have to offer something new every year, to retain mind-share in order to compete.
Our experience in this life is all just an emergent property of a complex non-linear dynamic system, and we're all just along for the ride.
Buckle up and try to enjoy it.
✍️ Reply by emailComet Lemmon 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 29.05°F Pressure: 1031hPa Humidity: 96% Wind: 1.63mphWords: 17
By no means a good shot, but I'm happy I got something. It's pretty visible in binoculars.
✍️ Reply by emailBlast From the Past
08:23 Sunday, 26 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 38.53°F Pressure: 1031hPa Humidity: 94% Wind: 2.77mph
Words: 278
One of the features I enjoy in NetNewsWire is the "starred" item. I often find things I want to point to or comment on, but by the time I get back to the marmot, it's slipped my mind. My short-term memory ain't what it used to be.
So I starred this post from Dave Winer the other day. If you click the link on what weblogs.com looked like back in June 2000, you'll see the first blog beneath the 1am update is View From the Heart, Alwin Hawkins' blog. And right beneath that is Blivet, which was Hal Rager's blog. They were among the first crew that got started blogging using Dave Winer's edithispage.com service. (Don't click, that link doesn't work. I don't know how to "escape" automatically making anything with a TLD suffix not clickable.)
Anyway, clicking on Al's blog takes you to this page, where you'll find yours truly down there under "Lest We Forget." That link doesn't go to the relevant post, but it does take you to the ghost of Time's Shadow. Clicking around in there, I find I was much better at titles back then. Mostly non-sequiturs, which probably helps.
Click through to Hal's blog too. You'll get a sense of what the very earliest "blogosphere" was like. I kind of miss those days, but I don't think they're ever coming back. Today a blog is more of a platform than a presence. A brand, more than a person. A design, more than a personality. C'est la vie.
Feel like doin' some bloggin' today. More to follow.
Until then, the beat that can be counted is not the beat...
✍️ Reply by emailGood Friday
07:05 Saturday, 25 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 42.31°F Pressure: 1028hPa Humidity: 88% Wind: 0.83mphWords: 292
Shot this from the passenger window of the RAV4 as we were headed out to dinner last night. I mentioned the other day that the rainbow I shot was something new to us. I was mistaken. We have seen rainbows here before, but they're usually behind us, to the east, as this one was.
But I can say that this was one of the most intense in terms of visibility and saturation. This is from the iPhone 16, and is unedited apart from being straightened and cropped. Pretty amazing.
Seemed like a fitting end for the week here.
Got Caitie to the airport and she had no significant delays getting back to LA. She enjoyed her stay with us, though she was disappointed that she didn't get any closeups with a cow. The neighbor's cows all appeared again yesterday after she left. But on the drive out, we passed a herd in a field just down the road and a bull was just beginning to mount a heifer. That seemed to amaze her.
She did get some cow pictures, but they were all in the distance. On Thursday, at a local farm with a creamery, she walked out to the field and got a few shots. When one of the cows began walking toward her, she said she got scared and came back to the store. She said there wasn't much of a fence between her and the cow, just a wire. I had to explain that the wire was electrified and the cow wouldn't have touched it. (I'm glad she didn't.)
It wasn't solidly overcast the whole time she was here, there were periods of sunshine. We did get rain, which was welcome, but it wasn't torrential.
Worked out pretty well.
✍️ Reply by emailTaughannock
08:18 Thursday, 23 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 44.35°F Pressure: 1010hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 13.11mphWords: 259
Brief update. Caitie's "manifesting" seemed to have worked, sort of. After a sunny drive from Albany back to Winterfell, the clouds rolled in. But it wasn't threatening rain, so after we got unloaded from the Mav, we collected Mitzi and headed off to Watkins Glen and hiked the gorge. The sun came out intermittently, so it was a pretty hike.
Yesterday we did Taughannock Falls. Easy hike with lots of intermittent sun. This is at the falls, looking back down the gorge toward Cayuga Lake. Shot with the little XZ-1 and edited in Photos.
We had a full day yesterday. After hiking, we went into Ithaca and had lunch at Moosewood, a well-known vegetarian restaurant. Then we spent the afternoon walking around the Ithaca Commons, stopping into various shops. From there we stopped by Home Depot to pick up the generator before heading off to Trumansburg and the Farmer's Market. Bought some baked goods and produce and then headed home.
Another fairly full day today, but less hiking. Mitzi has developed a case of plantar fasciitis, just as my achilles tendonitis is finally beginning to resolve itself. I thought I'd be hurting today, but it feels fine. There was some discomfort on the hikes, especially on the stairs in Watkins Glen. It still stiffens when I've been sitting for a while, but it loosens up fairly quickly. I don't think I'll be doing any Nordic walking anytime soon, but it seems like I'm finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
The beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailTravel
07:26 Monday, 20 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 52.12°F Pressure: 1003hPa Humidity: 96% Wind: 7.56mph
Words: 451
I'm going to head out for the Albany area later this morning. Meeting Caitie at Mom's and spending the night there. Of course, despite Caitie's best efforts at "manifesting" good weather, it's cold and raining.
I'm disappointed, because we really are reaching peak colors here. Yesterday was very windy, so a lot of leaves have been blown down, but the wooded areas are still colorful. Power went out around the area as well, though not here. Over 10% of NYSEG's customers in Schuyler County were without power this morning. While not the largest number of people without power, it was the largest percentage by far. So I'm happy the lights are still on. (Knock wood.)
It's also supposed to be almost the best time to view Comet Lemmon 2025, so of course it's supposed to be cloudy all week. Disappointing.
We rented the most recent Jurassic Park movie last night, I don't even recall the name. It's utterly forgettable, but I always like the inevitable consumption of humans by dinosaurs. Mitzi and I were making bets which one would get eaten next.
I did enjoy getting Beagle Compiler to work from the 32MB hard disk image I created. The documentation focuses mostly on making bootable floppies, and doesn't address running it from a HD. My disk image boots into BASIC.SYSTEM, which allows you to noodle around with Applesoft, save, load and run programs and a few other housekeeping things.
The version of BASIC.SYSTEM that boots from the HD image is 1.7. To get Beagle Compiler to run, I exit BASIC.SYSTEM with a BYE command, which dumps to BITSY.BYE, a tiny program launcher for PRODOS. It presents a list of files from each of the volumes online. You tab between volumes and arrow down the list of programs. Launching AUX.SLOT.SYSTEM installs a version of Beagle Compiler for an Apple //e with an Aux Slot memory card. What is interesting is that doing so also installs BASIC.SYSTEM v1.1, which is not on the HD image. So AUX.SLOT.SYSTEM contains a copy of BASIC.SYSTEM. I wonder what the licensing arrangement was with Apple for that configuration.
That alone will run compiled programs, but if you need to compile them then you have to install COMPILER. Together, they occupy a lot of the Apple II's 64K of RAM, but AUX.SLOT.SYSTEM stores variables in bank-switched auxiliary memory, which alleviates a lot of the memory constraints. And once you save a compiled version of a program, you don't need to install COMPILER, which returns about 6K of RAM.
Anyway, it's just for fun.
Better get ready to hit the road.
The beat, well, you know...
✍️ Reply by emailThe Need For Speed
17:21 Sunday, 19 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 68.36°F Pressure: 1002hPa Humidity: 65% Wind: 21.59mph
Words: 71
Got Beagle Compiler working. More to follow (maybe), but this will only take about three minutes out of your life.
This is recorded running in Virtual ][ at normal Apple II speed (1MHz).
✍️ Reply by emailShowing Up
15:35 Saturday, 18 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 65.01°F Pressure: 1012hPa Humidity: 58% Wind: 9.35mphWords: 123
Mitzi and I showed up along with what I would estimate well over a thousand of our neighbors.
Drivers were overwhelmingly positive. There were some who stared straight ahead and scowled. A few who flipped us the bird or held a thumbs-down out the window. One old guy wearing a MAGA hat in a green pickup kept orbiting, slowing down and laying on his horn as he passed through. I counted at least six orbits.
A lot of great signs, some wonderful inflatable costumes and a guy dressed up as The Dude with a sign that said, "This aggression will not stand, man." Wish I had thought to take a picture.
We waved the American flag and showed up.
Hope it matters.
✍️ Reply by emailView From the Porch
07:42 Saturday, 18 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 46.99°F Pressure: 1016hPa Humidity: 84% Wind: 5.5mphWords: 108
This is a new one for us. Haven't seen a rainbow here before.
I figured out how to run Beagle Compiler (again).
With Virtual ][, I can run the emulator at ludicrous speed, which is handy for some of the very slow graphics programs. But when I'm playing with the //c, any little bit of extra performance is welcome. It doesn't speed up anything to do with calculations, but even so it shaved about 25% off the running time of a graphics demo written in Applesoft BASIC.
Something like the Sierpinski curve program runs a lot faster, which is pretty cool.
Anyway, looking forward to the protest this afternoon.
✍️ Reply by emailJust a Walk On a Fall Day
Current Wx: Temp: 44.4°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 4.21mphWords: 520
Took a walk with Mitzi yesterday morning. Beautiful day, but kind of chilly. Temps in the 40s.
One of our neighbors was out loading his truck. I'd met him before, but he hadn't met Mitzi yet, so we stopped by to say hi. Nice guy, in his 70s. He's an electrician and actually wired the house we live in. We talked to him about getting a generator connection.
The EcoFlow 3 Pro battery/inverter power station and spare battery arrived. Very heavy. Charged them both to 85% since they're mostly going to sit idle unless they're needed. I need to put a load on it to make sure the inverter works, but haven't done that yet.
The news has me kind of in a funk. Spent some time yesterday playing around with Virtual ][, figuring out how to get Beagle Compiler working. I use a disk image that I can transfer to a micro-SD card and use in the Floppy Emu with the //c (or the //e when I get one up here). I want to get the programs configured so I can switch efficiently between Program Writer, an Applesoft BASIC editor, and the compiler.
Everything works if I boot from a 5.25" disk image of Beagle Compiler, but I'd like to be able to run it from a 32mb virtual HD image. When I try that, it fails for some reason. Research continues.
Kottke linked to a Kickstarter effort for a book about the Sphere personal computer. I'd corresponded with Ben Zotto a couple of years ago when I encountered his web site about the Sphere. I backed the project because it's a pretty remarkable story that I think deserves a book, not just a web site.
Caitie is in NYC as of this morning, visiting a friend. On Monday she'll take a train up to Albany and I'll meet her at my Mom's where we'll visit and spend the night. Then we'll head out here to Winterfell for a couple of days. I'm hopeful that the weather cooperates, but you never know.
It turns out that the house the OM-3 grip was delivered to is next door to the house with the Trump sign. I drove up there a couple of days ago, but no one was home. Tried again yesterday, but brought a note to leave in case no one was home. This time there was someone home. Tillie (Tilly?), a charming woman and her dog Obie (golden-doodle). She said she did get the package, didn't make the connection with our place down the road and stuck it back in the mailbox.
I enjoyed meeting Tilly and invited her to drop by anytime.
So I checked with the Post Office, and they recalled the package and thought I'd refused delivery, so they returned it! So now I need to reach out to SmallRig and see if I can get it shipped back to the proper address.
I'll be down in Watkins Glen tomorrow for the No Kings protest. I love America and I hate what Trump is doing to it.
And the beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailStill Here
06:31 Wednesday, 15 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 51.3°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 89% Wind: 8.68mph
Words: 509
Can't say it was a memorable weekend, as I have little memory of it. Sat in on a Tinderbox meetup, talked to Mom on FaceTime. Probably did some more work in the garage.
Monday rained, which is welcome, but kept me from going to Home Depot.
Mitzi's sister-in-law arrived Monday and has spent the past couple of days with us. The weather has been gray and wet most of that time. The sun came out late yesterday afternoon, so I'm glad she got at least that look at what it's like here in more favorable weather. She leaves today, which is also supposed to be gray and wet.
The trees we planted seem to like it though. We think we can see some new growth already. The grass I planted is doing well.
I looked at updating to Tahoe, but reports of memory leaks everywhere put me off. I'll wait for the .1 release, hopefully they'll have that resolved by then. I'm mostly interested in the additions to Shortcuts. It sounds as though Spotlight has finally Sherlocked LaunchBar, and so that holds little appeal for me.
I did pull my good Apple //c out of storage and connected it to this 27" Benq monitor with the Tangy video adapter. It works well. It's not something I can leave out all the time, but I can use it from time to time for a little reminder of when computers were exciting and the future looked amazing. Good times.
How do folks feel about 3D printing in a world already drowning in plastic? Are they that gosh-darn useful? Or is it just the illusion of power and control in an out-of-control world that leaves us feeling powerless that holds the attraction?
I ordered a grip for the OM-3 from SmallRig. It was a pre-order thing and I'd kind of forgotten about it. Well, I got an email that it had shipped, but hadn't seen it yet. So I checked the tracking and discovered I'd transposed two digits of my address, so it was delivered to 3470 instead of 3740. It's a house up the road with that sells eggs for $3 a dozen. We'd stopped there once, but nobody answered the door. There's a big Trump sign in the yard, and the place is in a state of some disrepair. When Mitzi and I were out walking one morning, a large dog came out from the house after we'd passed by it, following and barking at us for some time. It didn't sound friendly.
All of which is to say, I'm not looking forward to knocking on the door and asking if they received a package for Dave Rogers last Thursday. We'll see how it goes.
We watched The Lost Bus on Monday night. It'll hold your attention. Pretty gripping. We started watching All of You, but lost interest about 15 minutes into it. Give me some reason to care about these characters, other than one of them used to be in Ted Lasso.
✍️ Reply by emailObserved Sunset
Current Wx: Temp: 54.27°F Pressure: 1024hPa Humidity: 56% Wind: 9.42mphWords: 103
Hung some artwork on the wall. Got the garage cleared out enough to park the RAV4 in it. Learned we are not going to make back everything we put into the house. Not even close. And even $525K is probably aspirational at this point. Looking at probably something closer $515K. Assuming we can get any interest.
But we think it's important to get what cash we can out of it now, given the risk of greater uncertainty and instability in the months to come. We need to break ground in the spring.
Tautology time:
It is what it is.
The beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailOh, I Should Explain
09:52 Friday, 10 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 44.22°F Pressure: 1030hPa Humidity: 64% Wind: 10.96mph
Words: 49
The photo in the preceding post was from yesterday morning in the early morning twilight. Sun isn't even hitting the far hills, the illumination is the full moon and sky glow.
Speaking of the far hills, Kottke linked to a cool web site.
Also, it's getting seasonably cool here.
✍️ Reply by emailYesterday Morning
Current Wx: Temp: 36.66°F Pressure: 1032hPa Humidity: 75% Wind: 6.49mphWords: 474
It's been beautiful here. Crisp fall days. The air so so clear, it's amazing.
The pod was collected yesterday. I'm still organizing the garage. I need to get to Home Depot for some "dimensional lumber" (1x12 boards) to make some more shelves. I meant to go on Tuesday, but rain was forecast and I didn't want to be driving home in the rain with boards in the bed.
It didn't rain.
I won't go this weekend, because I'd rather not deal with the weekend madness. So maybe Monday.
I checked the power cord under the couch and, sure enough, it was getting pinched. So I had to figure out how to get the cord under the section frames. The individual sections are heavy and awkward to grasp. You can't just push them up from the bottom.
Fortunately, what remain of my failing synapses fired enough to flicker a lightbulb over my head. I have one, well, several actually, of those pry-bar tools. I don't recall which particular model or manufacturer this one is, but it has this curved bend in it so you can step on it and lift something up an inch or two, like a sheet of drywall or something. Off to the garage!
Had to get Mitzi to step on it while I was on the floor trying to get the plug under the frames. Took a while, but we got it done. The "hook" portion of the velcro at the bottom of the backs abraded the skin on my arms until it bled. I'd been wearing a sweatshirt, but took it off because doing all that crawling around had me working up a sweat. Another fun feature of aging is thinning skin.
Yay.
I've been enjoying the new season of Slow Horses. I like how this season doesn't have River Cartwright at the center of things. At least not yet anyway.
I had been enjoying The Morning Show, but wow, there's just too much drama, and no relief. I get enough of that in real life.
Slow Horses is perhaps darker, but it's funnier. It's easier to see it as farce. TMS seems like it wants to be more realistic. It's harder to have some emotional distance, and I'm really looking for distraction rather than distress.
This season of Only Murders seems to be the weakest of the series so far. I think it's played out. I'm disappointed because I love the characters.
Regarding the sale of our Florida house (not, "home"), we're going to plug some numbers into a spreadsheet and see just how much we have invested in the place, and then see how low we can go on the price and not be genuinely losing money. I'm going to insist we include the interest I've paid on the mortgage. I suspect we're already near that number.
✍️ Reply by emailFrom the Front Door
08:01 Wednesday, 8 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 51.12°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 96% Wind: 8.3mphWords: 352
Photo doesn't do it justice. Sun's breaking behind the hill out back, illuminating the hill in front of us, while the hills on the other side of the lake are shaded by broken clouds.
It's about the only thing that's keeping me sane.
It feels, I don't know, callous maybe, blogging about UIs and text fetishes with all the crap going down in Washington and Chicago.
I follow The Bulwark on YouTube, I'm a paying member. I can't watch every video because who has the time? And it often makes me sick. But I watched Tim Miller's video from last night's Nicole Wallace hit. He says that he thinks that someday, some of these people (ICE) will be ashamed.
Well, not really. Defensive, yes. In denial, yes. Rationalization and justification will make up a lot of their internal monologue, and external dialogue if they're ever confronted about it.
But feeling shame? Many people, mostly men, can't name their feelings. They have them, and they often act out from them, but they don't really know what they are. They lack the tools of introspection. So, they may feel shame, but they won't know that's what they're feeling. It'll be an uncomfortable feeling, and all those usually lead to a feeling they do know: Anger.
Which usually compels them to lean in on whatever is causing the discomfort.
There was a documentary, not too long ago, interviewing former Nazis, some former SS officers. Some of them were self-aware. But some were still committed. I don't know if the commitment was due to the cause (National Socialism), or just a self-protective action to rationalize their history.
But I don't think that very many of these ICE thugs will ever feel shame for what they're doing. If you're the kind of person that can do these things, then you're probably not very self-aware in the first place. They're probably just really happy to have a job that allows them to act out their anger and their fear while getting paid for it.
In America.
It's sad and frightening.
We're a very sick society.
✍️ Reply by emailUI Means "User Interface"
06:25 Wednesday, 8 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 51.4°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 96% Wind: 6.53mph
Words: 263
Except at Apple, where it means "Palette for prima donna esthetes to manifest their superior taste and sophistication to the poor, benighted masses."
Unlike Manuel, I do complain just because things are different.
Because whenever it's different, then all the habits of use I've developed get fouled up. I stumble and waste time. The interface gets in the way of whatever it was I was trying to accomplish with no thought given to the interface because it's so familiar, it's habituated.
I used to read all the Apple corporate bloggers, Gruber, Snell, Sparky, Hackett, et al regularly. Partly because I was interested in Apple and what they were doing.
These days, I'm afraid of what Apple is doing. And I don't really want to know, because I've got enough shit to worry about.
It's a horrible company that has lost sight of what made it "different."
Most of the changes I've seen in iOS have not made anything better for the user. I can't tell how I'm doing against my brother in Quartiles anymore. The giant checkmark still seems way too large. This bullshit with the tabs Manuel mentions is spot-on and I've stumbled over that time and time again.
I may have been unfair characterizing the kinds of people who come up with these changes that don't help the user. They may not be self-superior esthetes, they may just be corporate drones struggling to justify their existence in a job increasingly at risk to replacement by AI. But if the AI respected the "U" in UI, that'd be an improvement.
✍️ Reply by emailPlainer Than Plain
06:19 Wednesday, 8 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 51.42°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 96% Wind: 6.53mph
Words: 34
The other day I mentioned clay tablets as an alternative to "plain text" (Unicode or ASCII?).
Turns out, you can learn to write in Cuneiform.
Make a note of that.
(I crack myself up.)
✍️ Reply by emailBullshit
10:35 Tuesday, 7 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 65.95°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 80% Wind: 8.3mph
Words: 78
For whatever it is worth, which is probably nothing, we need a new science of "public mental health."
We need a new practice of "social hygiene," to complement "personal hygiene."
We need an internet infrastructure that routes sewage away and processes it into something somewhat less toxic.
Social media is the equivalent of hundreds of people crowding into tenements with inadequate ventilation, fresh water, sanitation, and daylight.
Frustrating. It's all right before our eyes.
✍️ Reply by emailGrinding
09:01 Tuesday, 7 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 66.04°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 78% Wind: 9.4mph
Words: 595
We got the pod (Pack-Rat container) unloaded yesterday. Two guys, took them about an hour. They even loaded some stuff in their truck and helped us move stuff down to storage. Nice guys.
They got the 700 pound workbench/toolbox into the garage. It was a bit of an ordeal pushing it over the gravel in the driveway, but they got it done.
The worst ordeal yesterday was assembling the sectional couch. The movers put it all together with no problem, but we had a small section still in storage that we decided would fit in this place. So we brought it back up with us after we dropped a bunch of stuff off at the storage unit.
We've struggled with this couch before. We removed that small piece in Florida in preparation for putting the house up for sale, and getting it apart and back together was a bear. Same problem this time, putting it back in. What I think we've learned is that the way the mechanical connections work mandates that it goes together and comes apart in a specific sequence.
Nice to know.
Now.
The second part of the ordeal was figuring out how to connect all the plugs to power. (It's a powered recliner sectional.) Fortunately, the cords are all really long. It seems like it's kind of intended to go against a wall, because it's difficult to conceal the power strip beneath one of the sections. I got it done, but had to route the cord from the strip through the frame of two of the sections, because I couldn't get the plug to fit beneath the frame. Yeesh.
I had Mitzi operate the two sections with the cord running through them to see if they would pinch or cut the cord and they all looked clear. Still bugs me. Should be okay. Probably should inspect it periodically.
Took a long break in the late afternoon. Working on getting all those cords connected had me lying on my side on the tile floor, scooting around threading the cords beneath the sections. Those plugs all fit because they're only two-prong plugs, the power strip's plug is grounded, so it was too thick to fit. Had to use a wire coat hanger to help fish them around the legs. What would we do without wire coat hangers?
Spent some time yesterday evening in the garage after I'd removed all of the framed artwork from the workbench. Took the opportunity to reorganize everything. I'm not certain that I'm finished with that effort, I've got some other tools and devices I need to put in it, but it's better than in was.
We dropped the price of the house another $10K, hoping to get some interest. It's shocking and depressing how inert the Florida real estate market is. Home sales in St Johns County are at the lowest rate since 2017, with the highest inventory ever. People are taking their houses off the market. To do what, I don't know.
I wonder how many people want to leave Florida but are stuck because of this market? We're in a marginally better position because we had a place to move into. We didn't have to sell first. But I'm stuck paying a mortgage and HOA fees on a house we don't live in anymore. It's not putting us into financial straits, but it is very depressing. I'd hoped to be saving that money for the new house, instead of just hemorrhaging it.
But, I guess it could be worse.
The beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailSynchronicity
06:58 Sunday, 5 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 55.24°F Pressure: 1025hPa Humidity: 81% Wind: 6.38mph
Words: 410
Everything is connected.
I've read two blog posts in the past 24 hours that dealt with "failure." The first was by young person, the other by a guy my age.
In between, I responded to Noahie in an email. Then I read John Weiss' post.
Seems like I'm supposed to blog about failure.
With all due respect, sir, I believe this is gonna be our finest hour.
Here's how I started my email to Noahie,
Success and failure are a contingent binary construct created to serve our socio-economic system, and it has intruded into our culture as well. It serves nothing but the system, which has embraced competition as its central organizing principle, rather than collaboration or cooperation.
(Feels kind of weird block-quoting myself.)
This is not a new idea, but for some reason it remains a persistent illusion. Maybe it's a category error.
Materials can "fail." People can't.
That label is assigned by a socio-economic system that we have internalized to represent some model of how the world works.
It doesn't work that way.
John Weiss' "failure," is perhaps one of poor word choice. The choice didn't "fail," it just became clear that it no longer served his needs. And when something no longer serves you, you should probably let it go.
That's not "failure."
"Success" can fail you. You learn nothing from success. Worse, you will probably learn all the wrong lessons.
People said Jimmy Carter had a "failed presidency."
He did not. He just had a presidency.
There are some people today who will tell you that Trump is having a very successful presidency. They are positively delighted to genuinely believe so.
In Buddhism, it's "non-attachment to results." In the groundhog's burrow we say, "Do your best. The rest isn't up to you." And "the rest" is as much responsible for "success" or "failure" as whatever your effort might have been.
In Taoism, I'd leave you with the parable of the Chinese farmer, since success and failure are as much due to "good fortune" and "bad fortune" as anything else.
The Stoics had a lot to say about it as well.
Yet we persist in applying "success" and "failure" labels to people and their lives because that serves "the system." Do this and succeed. Do that and fail.
Control. Influence. Manipulation. Or just lazy thinking.
It's bullshit.
Here endeth the lesson.
The beat that can be counted is not the beat.
✍️ Reply by emailA Blinding Glimpse of The Obvious
14:50 Saturday, 4 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 79.59°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 44% Wind: 3.09mph
Words: 957
I'm getting old(er), so perhaps that's why some things seem to annoy me that other people don't even seem to notice.
One way to deal with annoyances is to simply avoid them. But when they're present within a certain idea-space, or community of practice that I usually enjoy thinking and reading about, they come up constantly.
One of those annoyances is markdown and the precious authenticity and virtue of "plain text." (Unicode or ASCII? Which is "plainer"? Perhaps we should revert to clay tablets. They seem to last a long time.) I pretty much scratched that particular itch back in June.
Today's particular irritant is about note-taking and "knowledge." Specifically, the value or utility of "atomicity," another concept that promises to unlock the secrets of the universe!
"Why should you care about atomicity?"
Understanding Atomicity will help you understand the nature of knowledge. There is a lot to know about knowledge and the various methods to build and work with it. Knowledge work is a craft. You can learn it and you can train it.
Roll those sentences around in your head for a while. Let me know if you can figure out what it means.
"There is a lot to know about knowledge."
Especially the nature of knowledge! Oooh, it's giving me chills just thinking about it!
Better make a note of that!
Oy!
But that's only one of the reasons. Click through for the rest.
"Knowledge" is like "inconceivable."
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I'm not inclined to go into a long thing about epistemology here. I lack the knowledge. I know just enough to be dangerous.
Or confused.
Probably both.
Anyway, here's my beef, apart from the hype.
Show me a particular new insight (knowledge) that came about as a result of a particular a note-taking practice. People like to talk about Niklas Luhmann and his amazing Zettelkasten. Do we remember Luhmann for some particular discovery? Insight?
I don't think so. Maybe some people do. It's possible, I suppose.
Mostly we seem to remember him for his phenomenal productivity. He produced a lot of papers, and there may be reasons for that that are unrelated to his magical Zettels. Like, he had a lot of time on his hands.
Not to pick on Luhmann, though.
If all these note-taking practices were so valuable, so effective, so useful, where are all the testimonies of the new insights, the new knowledge that these practices revealed!
Exposed.
Illuminated.
I don't know. I hang around this space a lot, and I don't recall anyone offering such an endorsement.
I don't think they exist, like rodents of unusual size.
Things like markdown and this fetish for note-taking are products (or "emergent properties") of this economic environment at this point in time. We live in an attention economy, and everyone is competing in it. Some just for the dopamine hit, others are selling something. Sascha is selling something.
Which is fine. We all have to make a living.
But, you know...
Bullshit.
Markdown, links, "the graph," and Zettelkasten. Useful things in certain roles and contexts, but elevated by means of bullshit to offering intellectual superpowers, if only you embrace the faith!
To be clear, some of these things might make you more productive. You can probably write better reports, more quickly, with well-organized notes; and links might help you keep your train of thought, or expose weaknesses in your argument, but is that "knowledge," let alone "new knowledge"?
Are we talking memorization here? Experience and familiarity with the material, the knowledge, that others created?
Sure.
By all means. Take good notes.
But "understanding the nature of knowledge"? Unless your notes are part of a study of epistemology, I don't think so.
It really helps to have a question.
What is the matrix?
I think new insights come from a lot reading and a lot of reflection. Notes might help in recall. But insight takes place somewhere inside the brain, below the level of consciousness, until it emerges, often in the act of writing.
Writing that is the result of reflection, not argument. Not having an opinion and assembling a vast array of references and links that seem to support that opinion. (If such a body of work already exists, you've not uncovered some unique insight.)
Where is the fan club for taking a walk? Why is that not promoted as the secret to "know about knowledge"?
Or taking a shower, for that matter.
It's irritating.
We can't have meaningful discussions about how we might think more productively because someone will inevitably see a business opportunity and try to monetize it, or elevate it to the status of religion, and it will then be buried by bullshit.
Read.
Reflect.
Read some more.
Reflect some more.
Write about what you think. Argue with yourself.
Reflect some more.
Write some more.
Who knows? Maybe you'll come up with an insight you hadn't had before. Something that wasn't articulated in all the material you read.
It's when the knowledge and ideas of others try to find their place in your own interiority, in your experience, that you may find something new.
Notes might help, but they're no substitute for reading, reflection and writing.
And searching for the ideal way to take notes, for the appropriate level of atomicity, for the relevant linkage, all carefully crafted in markdown is almost certainly a distraction at best, or an outright theft of your time and capacity to genuinely think.
But, the standard disclaimer applies: I'm an authority on nothing. I make all this shit up. You're strongly encouraged to do your own thinking.
I'm just a grumpy old man.
✍️ Reply by emailA Walk In The Park
09:05 Saturday, 4 October 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 60.15°F Pressure: 1024hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 3.44mphWords: 1119
It's been a bit busy around here lately.
Charlie came by on Tuesday, as mentioned, and pretty much sold us on getting a Generac whole-home backup system. It would run on propane, and they don't provide the tank. So before we wrote the check for the deposit, we had to try to find a tank. Then we learned they run around $700.
During Charlie's visit, he asked if we were going to have a separate meter for the new house. It turns out that we don't have to. I'm not sure about the advantages or disadvantages of doing so. It didn't click for me right then, or we wouldn't have been so close to pulling the trigger.
If we got a generator for this house, then we'd have to get another one for the new house.
Or, we could get one generator sized to run both houses. That would push it up into the 26kW range, which is liquid-cooled and much more expensive. But probably less expensive than two smaller generators, and obviously not something we can do this year.
Sigh.
So, we're going to try to gut it out this winter. I'm going to look into having an electrician we've worked with before put a generator connection to the power panel in the utility room. These have a mechanical interlock that requires you to open the grid breaker before you close the generator breaker so you can't try to power the whole neighborhood. Bad for your generator or battery.
We're looking at something like an EcoFlow Delta Pro 3, which has 4kWh of storage and a 240v output inverter, so we could connect it to the generator connection and power 220v loads. That would allow us to run the well pump, the mini-split and the stove, along with some 110v loads like the fridge. 4kWh isn't a large amount of storage, but we could add an expansion battery for some additional power before having to recharge.
I'm betting that last year's 30-hour outage will be an outlier. There hadn't been a heavy snowfall like that in some years, so I'm guessing that nearly every weak tree or branch has been taken off the board. Not all of them by any means, but enough that the utility company won't be dealing with so many line problems and therefore power won't be out for so long.
We also had some pretty powerful thunderstorms this summer, which brought down a bunch of other marginal trees and limbs. And I don't think we experienced an outage during that episode, so that kind of reinforces the idea that the vulnerability has been diminished somewhat.
EcoFlow makes a generator that can connect to the battery for automatic recharging. That's nice, but probably not super viable for our situation. What I'm more inclined to do is buy a small generator like a Honda or something and take the battery offline for recharging outside if we need to. We can tolerate a couple of hours without backup power, and I've got some other batteries for 110v loads.
Had a bit of excitement yesterday that kind of relates to the backup power challenge.
I went to change the sediment filter on the water softener because it seemed like we were having less water pressure. Did it once before, knew the basic procedure, should have been no big deal.
Once we removed the old filter and dumped the water from the housing, we could see there was still a lot of sediment in the housing. So I went out to the garage, which has its own well connection, and rinsed out the housing. Came back in the house and put the new filter in and connected it to the system. Turned the water on and water sprayed everywhere!
Doh!
I'll spare you the other failed efforts to address the issue before I called the company that installed it.
They had to give me a call-back when the service desk was free, but it wasn't too long. Long story short, technician says to look in the bucket where we dumped the water from the housing when we removed the filter and see if the o-ring fell out.
O-ring?
Of course! The o-ring!
Nope, not in the bucket.
Kept him on the line while I went out to the garage and looked at where I'd rinsed the housing.
There was the o-ring.
He said not to feel bad, it happens all the time.
So once we got everything back online and not leaking, I wrote down a procedure, printed it and taped it to the wall next to the water softener.
We'll need the same thing for the battery.
Once we open the grid breaker, we need to open every breaker in the panel. Then we can connect the battery and power it on. It should see no load.
Then we'll close the "vital load" breakers in sequence, starting with the well pump since it probably has the highest surge current. Then the mini-split. Then the stove. Then the 110v breaker for the fridge and maybe some lighting.
The battery is only good for 4kW output, but it'll surge to 7kW for a few seconds, which should be adequate for our needs.
Anyway, still thinking about it.
Our "pod" arrived on Friday and showed up at noon, which was a much better experience than the first time. Everything survived, except a detergent container leaked. Didn't get on anything important, but required a bit of clean-up. We've offloaded about a third of it and taken some items down to storage. (No new rats sighted.)
Mitzi has sold the living room set that was in here before, to make room for our sectional couch, so we're not doing much TV-watching in the living room for the time being.
We've got a couple of movers coming on Monday to offload the heavy stuff. We'll stage the things that are going into storage in the garage until Mitzi and I can run them down there. We can do a little at a time, and all the really heavy stuff is going in the house or the garage, so it's just a matter of a lot of boxes of books and such and we can kind of do that at our own pace.
We took a walk down at Taughannock State Park yesterday, to get out of the house for a little while. Color change is well underway, though not spectacular this year. Not quite peak yet, but soon.
I guess we're headed down to a fall festival in Montour Falls this morning, so I'd better wrap this up.
The beat goes on...
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