Light Show

06:04 Tuesday, 30 September 2025

Current Wx: Temp: 50.07°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 86% Wind: 3.31mph
Words: 889

Another day, another spectacular sunset. I love living here.

A guy, Charlie, is coming by this morning at 0800 to talk about generators.

I've been thinking about this some more, and I don't know for sure, but I may have a solution. Not sure Charlie's going to like it though.

Generac had a solution that I don't think they offer anymore. Can't find it on their website anyway. It was a large, whole home backup battery and a generator. When power failed, transfer switch kicked over to the battery. When the battery became depleted, the generator turned on and recharged the battery.

So you would size the battery for the loads you wanted to run in the house (or disconnect the loads as necessary), and size the generator for the maximum charge rate of the battery. I don't know for sure how it operated, but I'm guessing it charged at the max generator output until it reached maybe 80-90% percent of charge, and then either shut off or reduced power. Either way, you're running the generator at max load, which is when it's most fuel efficient.

So, less fuel, less noise and smaller size. It may have been a DC generator too, inverter is in the battery.

There are large "whole home backup" batteries by the likes of Jackery, EcoFlow, Bluetti and so on. So I'd need a generator hookup inside the utility closet. Most, if not all, of these batteries are on wheels of some kind. They're typically rather small in terms of capacity, 3-4kWh. At Tesla Powerwall is 13.5kWh, for comparison and our Florida house ran off two of them. (Also so we could get 10kW discharge.)

I'm wondering if I could get away with just two of these portable batteries, alternating them as they were depleted. I could keep the generator between the garage and the shed and just wheel the battery over to recharge it. The batteries are all wifi-enabled, so I could monitor state of charge from the house. EcoFlow even offers a solution like this, but the generator part is rather small. Might be adequate though.

Apparently there is still some federal tax credit for battery sales until the end of the year. I need to learn more about that.

I am not thrilled about the idea of a generator outside the bedroom at any time. The utility closet and bedroom are both at the north end of the house, so the generator wouldn't be more than 10 feet from the north bedroom window.

Anyway, that's this morning's little project.

Went down to the storage unit yesterday to begin rearranging things. Wasn't there long before I was startled by a rat in a box I was going to move! Yeesh! We'd noticed the traps outside the building, but there had been no evidence that there were ever any inside. Should have guessed, though. To be clear, these are fairly new construction, and the area around them is well maintained, though they are surrounded by agricultural land.

Rat moved really fast, it was just a brown blur. It had gotten into a box of things that had come from my desk. Mostly chewed up some loose envelopes and papers. Threw most of that stuff away. Everything else was boxed or wrapped separately. The owners came by and apologized and left some baited poison. I was ambivalent about that because I wasn't really keen on a rat dying in there, back somewhere behind dozens of boxes, stinking up the place.

It seems it has become a significant problem only recently, because shortly after I arrived, and before I saw the rat, a couple of cars had arrived at the end unit. The owners had appeared quite quickly after we'd called, though they both work at other jobs, so they were probably already on their way. One of the owners said that some food had been stored in that end unit, and I saw people were moving things out and putting them into cars. Later, an exterminator showed up and they came into our unit to look at the top of the unit where the header for the roller doors ran above all the units. Apparently that's the main mode of travel between units. He wanted to get into the unit adjacent to ours, but it was locked.

So, creepy and, well, ick! I did some rearranging and taped up some boxes that had been opened. Tried to put all the totes on the floor, stacking cardboard boxes on top of them. Moved stuff that I thought we might want to get to before we move everything out eventually toward the front, where it would be more accessible. Covered other things with cloths and tarps, though I wasn't sure that would really help.

Everything's hanging fire until the Florida house gets sold. We did have a showing on Sunday and the prospective buyer sounded enthusiastic as we observed them on video. Later feedback from his realtor indicated that they saw five houses that day, and he's interested in two of them, one being ours. He's supposed to see it again in a couple of days with his fiancee.

So, fingers crossed.

(If I really wanted the house, I'd say I was interested in two as well. Stronger negotiating position. So, fingers really crossed.)

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Kitchen Before Dawn

06:17 Monday, 29 September 2025

Current Wx: Temp: 49.26°F Pressure: 1025hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 1.41mph
Words: 615

Mitzi sleeps with an eye mask, so I can turn on a light. This caught my eye, so I tried to grab it with the XZ-1. Not the ideal camera for this kind of image, or maybe it is, for my purposes.

Anyway, in perusing the feeds this morning, I encountered this one. I don't often read the posts at Surfing Complexity, they're often over my head or dealing with matters that hold little interest for me. But sometimes it touches on things that seem important.

It's perhaps an echo of yesterday's resonance experience. But perhaps that's just me being delusional.

Anyway, the discussion of statistical framing brought to mind what I'd recently read in Colossus: Bletchley Park's Greatest Secret, by Paul Gannon. Colossus, by some accounts the world's first digital computer, was created to perform statistical analyses of encrypted German teletype messages.

Encrypted messages are intended to look as much as possible like "noise." But given an understanding of the encryption device, some clues can be found in the encrypted text that suggest what settings were used in the device to encrypt the text. Knowing those, you can reverse the process.

So, under "Irony: Fifth Fundamental Force of the Universe," digital computing was invented to try to find a signal in the noise; and today is the medium (the message?), if not the source, of a deafening cacophony of digital noise that threatens to drown us all. It suggests to me that, in a more rational universe, some effort might be undertaken to use computing resources to filter out the noise and offer that as a service. But then there'd be the usual problem of trust.

We're still screwed, but I thought it was interesting.

I thought it was also a bit of serendipity that Lorin is reading The Annotated Turing by Charles Petzold. That's one of the books I put in my suitcase to bring back to Winterfell, intending to read soon. I'm currently (re)reading Engines of Logic by Martin Davis. Just finished the chapter on Cantor and I'm reading about Hilbert now. What's interesting is Lorin mentions Cantor and uncountable numbers in the context of ignoring excessive data.

To close the circle, one of the books I have, which I don't think I stuffed in my suitcase, is Everything and More, by guess who? David Foster Wallace. I just put another copy in my shopping cart, because I seem to recall the last time I looked at mine the pages were yellowing badly. Acid paper and all that. Why is that significant? Because Everything and More is "A compact history of infinity." I enjoyed reading it the first time, though I don't recall if I finished it. It has that Wallace style where there's almost more text in the footnotes than in the main thread. But I do recall being edified and entertained.

In recent years I've kind of explored the histories of certain technologies, how they evolved and became integrated in our daily lives. Electricity, radio and now computing. Also the telegraph, but that was just a brief "flash in the pan," so to speak. While I was mostly interested in the technical advances, one thing they all shared was the role of money in their development and deployment; and the ruthless, capitalistic competition and corruption that drove much of it. (As an aside, radio's early development in Britain was interesting as it was part of the Postal Service, and therefore a monopoly. I should look into radio in France and other European countries, and Japan maybe. I digress.)

"Root of all evil." Certainly seems that way.

Still seem to be in sync with something.

The beat goes on...

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End of Day

15:57 Sunday, 28 September 2025

Current Wx: Temp: 77.97°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 63% Wind: 11.45mph
Words: 23

We were treated to a rather amazing display last night. Put some more pics up at Flickr (arrow left after the first image).

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And the Beat Goes On...

10:36 Sunday, 28 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 71.44°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 74% Wind: 6.24mph
Words: 96

I'm in the groove. On the wavelength.

Kid next door is out riding his 4-wheeler, making the kind of racket an 11-year-old with an internal combustion engine and no destination to ride it to makes, wheeling around and around behind the house.

So I asked Siri to play some Leonard Cohen, because it's that kind of morning. I did not specify a song.

The universe delivered Leaving the Game.

Perhaps it's about love. Maybe it's about loss.

Perhaps it's about something else.

Or all of the above, or below.

But it's keeping time.

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Serendipity, Synchronicity and There Are No Coincidences

10:25 Sunday, 28 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 70.38°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 74% Wind: 4.5mph
Words: 64

After posting today's depressing missive, I made breakfast, ate it, finished today's Quartiles (minus one word that eludes me), and scanned my feeds.

Everything is connected.

Steve Makofsky offers a weekly post of Espresso Shots.

Which, if you click on that link, pointed to this.

The circle is complete.

And the beat that can be counted is not the beat.

The beat goes on...

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The Two Crises

07:03 Sunday, 28 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 57.67°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 93% Wind: 5.77mph
Words: 1282

Below this post is one I started yesterday, but did not complete. I considered removing it temporarily to devote more time to it today or later, but I haven't. I was up last night from about 0130 to 0430 thinking about this, among other things. So it's still in this month's archive and relevant to this post, but it'll never appear on the Main Page, nor in the RSS feed, so you'll have to click through the permalink to the archive page for this month if you want to read it.

Won't blame you if you don't.

I want to put this down now, while much of it is still in my head. It's not "deathless prose," or some blinding glimpse of the obvious, but I think it distills a lot of things and perhaps offers a clearer framework for regarding our current predicament.

I'm probably wrong about that, but here goes.

Humanity currently faces two crises. One is the climate, the other is our civilization. One is a natural system being altered by artificial means, the other is an artifact, a man-made system being altered by human nature. The thing they have in common is us.

Both systems are complex and non-linear dynamic systems. Complex, non-linear dynamic systems are hard to predict. We can't say with any degree of precision exactly where the system will be at any moment in the future. We can model them to some degree of accuracy (perhaps not great), but little precision.

What we have been able to do, is outline the phase-space, the set of states that the system is likely to be in for a given set of parameters. It might be better to say that we know what it won't do.

Historically, certainly within human history, these phase-spaces seem to center around equilibrium points, and we describe the phase-space as a regime. As we alter the climate, we are driving it to a point where it will undergo a regime-shift where a new equilibrium will be established around a new set of parameters, and it will be unlikely to return to the old regime by any natural process, at least not in anything less than geological timescales.

Similarly, our civilization is a complex, non-linear dynamic system, though it has not reached an equilibrium point. At least not economically. Politically, it has reached many equilibrium points, perhaps marked regionally by dominant political systems for some period of time. The Roman Empire, the British Empire, and the post-WWII Cold War. The fall of the Soviet Union altered that political equilibrium, which also had consequences for the economic system, which accelerated the trajectory for the overall global economy toward collapse.

What is driving the climate system to a regime shift, one that is likely to be incompatible with this human civilization, is the emission of greenhouse gases, chiefly CO2.

What is driving civilization to a regime shift (collapse), is the global political system being altered by the emission of bullshit by the economic system.

Dynamic systems are defined by inputs, outputs and feedback loops. A system in equilibrium will tolerate variations in these parameters and the phase-space will be relatively well defined, if not entirely predictable.

When you begin altering these parameters without bound, you drive the system to a point where new feedback loops emerge and the system undergoes a regime shift.

The two crises are interrelated, because we can't stop altering one of the parameters without limit. In one case, CO2, in the other, bullshit.

The central cause of this is a false premise underlying capitalism, that "economic growth" is a compelling moral directive, which is nevertheless impossible in any real sense, given any understanding of physics or thermodynamics.

But the system is designed that way, and we are not in control of the system. We are all merely part of its emergent properties. There may be individual agents within the system, that might be able to alter these parameters, but the incentives, the performance gradients built into the system, seem to preclude that. The accumulation of ever greater amounts of wealth, whether real or merely paper, together with competition being the central organizing principle, precludes these actors from acting collaboratively, or cooperatively to align their actions in sufficient ways to alter either the emission of greenhouse gases, or bullshit.

I'm not joking about "bullshit." What that represents is the intended, and unintended, injection of misinformation, deception, and just "noise" into the political system, which inhibits its capacity to regulate the economic system.

Cory Doctorow had a post yesterday that kind of illustrates this in action today. There is an economic bubble, in at least America's economy, around the value of AI. Our capitalist, competitive economic system is driving these actors, competitors, to make enormous investments around a new technology or risk losing their leadership status, their market valuation.

It's a bubble. A Twinkie the size of Manhattan.

All of this is made possible by human nature, and the inability of human minds to adapt at time-scales sufficient to forestall catastrophe. We once celebrated the idea of universal literacy. I don't know where we are in achieving that, globally. But it's not enough to just be able to read. We also need to be able to think, and we need to understand ourselves.

Both are tragically deficient.

Why does Make Bernstein fail to discover meaningful discourse about the application and understanding of AI? Because of the emission of bullshit. Noise. Data smog. We each carry a small smokestack in our pockets, puffing out little clouds of cat pictures, emotional excrement, and rage.

Industrial data farms pump out manufactured misinformation, delivered to our pockets 24/7.

We gaze into our screens, consuming and consuming and consuming...

"Content?"

"Computer lib." It's a beautiful thing, yes?

The two crises are related because the economic system is driving them both.

Driving both our climate system and our political system into new extremes.

It's unsustainable. A regime shift is coming.

What comes after, I do not know.

All I know is that it won't look like this, for centuries. I'm fairly confident the world's ice sheets will continue to melt and most the of world's great cities, even if they still had the economic infrastructure to sustain them, will be drowned.

The economic system that feeds, clothes and houses more than eight billion people on this planet will be gone, and so will billions of human beings.

That's about all I can predict.

This isn't in some far-off future. I used to think it wouldn't be in my lifetime. I'm increasingly convinced that I will live to witness at least the opening phases. Indeed, I'm certain I am witnessing them even now.

Is there hope?

Hope for what?

More of this?

If we avoid paroxysms of violence, especially nuclear exchanges, it mostly won't be a "bang." There will undoubtedly be local and regional episodes, but it'll mostly just be whimpers as the systems fail. Catastrophes strike.

The machine stops.

And we'll get to start again. Something new.

Hopefully our grandchildren and great grandchildren will learn the right lessons.

For now, try to practice loving-kindness. Plant a tree. Embrace the transient nature of all phenomena, and remind the people you love that you love them. The answer isn't nihilism, unless you believe that the meaning of life is located in an economic system. It's not. It's found person to person. No systems required.

I hope this isn't more bullshit. I offer it in good faith that it is the product of whatever limited capacity my "critical thinking" skills possess.

And it's what kept me up last night.

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The Shape of Things to Come

17:00 Saturday, 27 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 74.19°F Pressure: 1013hPa Humidity: 66% Wind: 4.7mph
Words: 558

I enjoyed today's Tinderbox meetup. It became something of a philosophical conversation about AI in particular and technology in general, wherein I perhaps opined too much or too freely.

But I did enjoy it.

It was almost a continuation of a conversation that began about three weeks ago. Mark laments the current discourse on AI as unproductive, unimaginative and unworthy. I don't disagree, but I think it's symptomatic of a larger problem, rather than something unique to the topic of artificial intelligence.

I will stipulate that LLM and generative AI are a significant advance in computer science and information technology. I agree that they make many things possible that were more difficult or time-consuming before. They are our synthetic assistants, virtual interns. As agentic AI improves, each of us will have our own individual PA in our pocket. Yay?

There are productive questions to be explored about how these may be used to best advantage. There are people making productive use of them today, and there were a few in today's meetup.

So why the low signal-to-noise ratio in the online discourse?

Because of Ted Nelson, of course.

The democratization of computing.

As mentioned three weeks ago, previous technological advances were interpreted for the masses by experts. When jet engines replaced propellors on airplanes, the only people who truly understood the advancement were the scientists and engineers who worked on jet engines. Even later, when jet engines became more common on aircraft like the 707, only the relatively wealthy could afford to fly and thus experience the difference between jet travel and propellor travel.

The "rest of us" could only read about it.

And if we had an opinion, who would care? Who would we share it with? Who would disagree with us? Agree with us? The guys down at the bar? Our colleagues around the water-cooler?

But with the computer, the 24/7 news cycle, ubiquitous "social media," everyone has an opinion and we all feel qualified to share it. On anything.

And so we do.

And this is an era where expertise is to be mistrusted. Where ignorance masquerading as "skepticism" is considered enough of a valid point of view to elevate someone to the lofty status of influencer.

I repeated one of my favorite phrases, Technology changes how we do things. It doesn't change what we do.

Technology expands our actions in space, and compresses them in time.

We can screw up at greater scale and faster rates than ever before.

With a few notable exceptions, most of our problems stem from what we do.

And we screw up a lot.

One of our group mentioned, pushing back a bit on something I offered, that our tools shape us and that one of the questions out to be "What does it mean to be human?"

That is, in the final analysis, the relevant question.

Know thyself.

And we don't. We remain profoundly ignorant of our "selves." Our limited cognitive ability. The role of emotion in behavior. The power, and trap, of habituation.

Indeed, giving everyone a "super computer in their pocket," is like giving a chainsaw to a seven-year-old. The result is what one experiences on social media in its most toxic manifestations. "Piling on" is sport. Much of it is performative, for the "likes" or the lulz.

But

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Lookin' Out My Backdoor

09:22 Saturday, 27 September 2025

Current Wx: Temp: 59.74°F Pressure: 1016hPa Humidity: 94% Wind: 3.65mph
Words: 428

The other afternoon, I was seated at this workbench/desk and glanced out the sliding glass doors. The view prompted me to take a pic with my little XZ-1, which I hadn't put away yet. That prompted me to get off my butt and step outside and take this shot.

It's pretty here. I know it's not always like this, but when it is... Mmmm...

Color change is happening sooner than predicted, and the dry summer has suppressed some of the richer reds and yellows.

Received the little metal detector I'd ordered from Amazon. Put it together this morning and went down to where we'd sowed the grass and spread the straw and tried to find Mitzi's ring. So far, no luck, but a lot of bending over. Took a break because my back is still complaining about yesterday. It did find a small coin that may have once been a penny, so that was encouraging.

Complicating things is our power line is buried right around where Mitzi lost her ring. I'm messing around with sensitivity so it's not beeping so much, but it's pretty easy to just look at where the "hit" is relative to the line from the house to the pole. I'll go out again later and give it another go.

I have no major plans today. Looking forward to the Tinderbox meetup. Mitzi's going to a fall farm festival thing. In other circumstances, I'd go along, but we were on the road last weekend, and the weekend before that, so I just want to hang out at home today. Might put the drone up later and see what I can see with respect to fall color.

Mitzi had mentioned the other day that she might go up into Canada and order some cabinets since the dollar is strong there. Then the Mad Orange King announced a 50% tariff on kitchen cabinets. I guess the American cabinet industry needs some "protection." You can't make this stuff up. Nothing but non-stop chaos.

If I didn't pay any attention to the news, I'd say life's pretty good. The chaos isn't reaching here in significant ways yet, other than the prices of imported products. But I'm pretty confident it'll affect us eventually. I better get that generator next week. Of course, that isn't of much use if the grid is down and you can't buy gasoline when you run out because stations can't pump gas and process payments.

Speaking of resilience, here's a good post on the anniversary of Helene.

Anyway, the beat still goes on...

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Circumnavigating the 'Sphere

18:13 Friday, 26 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 70.5°F Pressure: 1012hPa Humidity: 69% Wind: 2.3mph
Words: 195

Hat tip to Akma for commiserating on the titles challenge. The "brotherhood of bloggers." I like the alliteration, but I'm afraid it's exclusionary to our sister bloggers. That's no shade on AKMA, that's just me considering using a phrase that appeals to me, but having enough self-awareness to realize that it's unsatisfactory. I need a more inclusive word that starts with "b", as a paid-up member of the American Association for Alliteration Appreciation.

To Garret, I love your photography my brother, but you're kind of making it hard. The RSS feed is just the title of your post, and clicking through to your blog post then requires that I click through to the photography blog. As I write this, I wonder if I'm supposed to subscribe to the photography blog? I didn't think to check for a feed. (Update: I just checked for a feed. Negative.)

There are many more feeds I follow (Alliteration! Winning!), which don't require commentary at this moment, except to say that I worry about Jack being up in the air this long. Best wishes for a soft landing, and phone home.

We worry.

Love to all of you.

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Green Acres

17:47 Friday, 26 September 2025

Current Wx: Temp: 70.5°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 70% Wind: 2.3mph
Words: 349

Ugh. I'm beat.

But...

My better half drove down to the Dandy and picked up a couple of 24oz Stellas! (One for each of us. I have been known to drink two in succession, but I guess that's called "binge drinking." I call it "Friday.")

So you're looking at ten young arborvitae trees. I know nothing about them, except Mitzi says they're part cypress, part cedar. My brother planted about 20 of them down in Alabama. He says he gets about three feet of growth a year. His are pretty tall, over 20 feet now. They also attract bag worms. ("Bagworms?") Yech.

All I know is this soil is rocky. I now understand what a pickaxe is for, and I wished I had one. Hence, "ugh." I'm probably going to close my activity ring today (890 calories, I'm at 700 now.). For just ten holes!

Nothing makes a beer taste better than a significant amount of physical exertion. Prior to today, my memory of the best tasting beer I ever had was a Corona I had at Sierra Grill one afternoon after a class in jujitsu, also called "ground fighting." I can't imagine I was someone anyone wanted to sit near, but I came from that class hungry and thirsty. I ordered the Corona and drank it while I waited for my veggie burrito (add chicken). That Corona was like the rapture, which I guess we've all missed.

This Stella has supplanted it. (Emphasis on the "planted.")

Anyway, I'm tired, sore and moderately buzzed. I hope these trees make it. My brother says he's been getting about three feet of growth per year. That's pretty amazing.

I recall my father planting young cedars along the back line of our property and coming back years later and being astonished at how much they'd grown. If these trees take, they will outlive me and will be here for some time after I'm gone. That makes me feel, I don't know, good? Mortal? Old?

We're in the shits right now. Everything sucks.

But go plant a tree.

It'll make you feel better.

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This and That

08:28 Thursday, 25 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 65.62°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 98% Wind: 6.67mph
Words: 754

Coming up with titles is a challenge, and sometimes I'm not up to it.

We got about three quarters of an inch of rain over the last 24 hours, which is welcome as nearly all of New York is under a drought "watch" or "warning." I'm not certain about the use of the word "watch" in this context. Maybe "alert" would make more sense? I guess you can see the effects of a drought, but it's not like you can actually see a drought, unlike a tornado, hurricane or tropical storm. (Though the latter two are such large scale phenomena, it's pretty hard to miss them even if you're not watching.)

In any event, I walked down and checked the grass I'd planted and it's starting to come up pretty well. Patchy still, but starting to fill in and get tall. It might work out.

This afternoon we're going to go and pick up about 10 "Jolly Green Giant" arborvitae trees to plant down in the northwest corner of the property to block some of the headlights coming up the road, and the neighbor's truck lights when he warms them up in the wee hours of the morning. They grow really fast, they're pretty hearty and don't require much in the way of care other than adequate water. (Drought watch noted.)

The drought conditions are also on my mind because of our elevation here. As the water table drops, we'll be among the first to notice as wells run dry. So far there's been no indication of that, there are homes up the road that are a couple hundred feet higher than us, so I think we'll hear something.

I've wanted to put gutters and rain barrels on the house, but got out-voted. Maybe I can get away with it on the garage?

I'd like to complain some more about iOS 26, but what's the point? When we were out visiting Mom, I asked my brother why he thought Apple changed the "Done" button on an edit screen to a HUGE check-mark button? Perhaps I'm old and my brain isn't as agile as it once was, but there was a moment of cognitive double-clutching as I tried to figure out how to close an edit screen. Does "check" mean "done"? I guess it does?

But how did that idea get rolled into the OS? Who pitched it? How is this an improvement for the user?

My brother said he thought it might have some advantages for Apple in terms of resources devoted to localization. "Check" is a universal symbol. (Is it really? In this context?)

So an advantage for Apple, but all us customers have to go "WTF?" when we try to close an edit screen the first time. File that under "surprise and delight." And why the fuck is it so huge?

I haven't installed Tahoe on the MBP yet, because I'm not looking forward to more cognitive disconnects when I try to do something that's nearly muscle memory. I haven't read any in-depth reviews of Tahoe because I'm not as much of an Apple fanboy as I once was.

This was pretty funny though.

Kottke pointed to this post at Press Watch. I'd say it's somewhat encouraging, but I'm unwilling to give the Times enough of the benefit of the doubt to re-subscribe. I have no illusions that good faith, hard journalism would have prevented a second Trump presidency, but I don't like paying for bullshit.

Was the 2024 election rigged? I don't know, and I'm disinclined to dive down conspiracy theory rabbit holes. But I did listen to this David Pakman video yesterday, and find it troubling if not compelling. Yet.

Here's the Election Truth Alliance web site. The methodology seems legitimate. They're analyzing an enormous amount of data and so they've only completed three states so far. Not enough to turn the election, but enough to raise some troubling questions. They're using statistical analysis to identify anomalies in voting patterns. I'd welcome a consortium of larger non-partisan organizations to support and vet this analysis. We almost certainly can't overturn the 2024, but we may be able to identify vulnerabilities we might be able to address for the 2026 mid-terms.

Remember how Trump always accused Democrats of rigging elections, and how every accusation is an admission.

Well, Mitzi wants to mop the floor so I've got to get out of here. Probably go work on a shelf in the garage.

The beat goes on...

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I Saw the Light

19:14 Wednesday, 24 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 68.2°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 87% Wind: 5.77mph
Words: 79

Another little symptom of getting old(er). What I am experiencing is the relatively common posterior vitreous detachment, and the flash of light I perceive in my left eye when it moves from side to side is a bit of that vitreous membrane tugging on my retina a little. The retina looks fine and the doc doesn't expect any problems, but I'll have a follow up a month.

The floater is still present, but it seems less noticeable now.

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What About Vimeo?

08:10 Wednesday, 24 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 60.4°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 99% Wind: 0.94mph
Words: 206

A Rob Fahrni post caught my eye last night, and it kind of surprised me because neither he nor Gruber thought to mention Vimeo.

I confess that I don't know much about Vimeo, who owns it or what its financial situation is, but it's a video hosting solution. I use it for posting my videos. I had a paid account for a couple of years and may again if I get more into video.

Rob's idea of using RSS is fine, but you still have to have someplace to upload the video files, which are far larger than just photos or text. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure what my storage limits are at my host, but I'm sure I'd have to upgrade to a higher tier of some kind if I wanted to start sharing a lot of videos.

In the context of another viable outlet for creators who hope to reach very large audiences, I think Vimeo probably has better infrastructure than something an aspiring influencer could cobble together. I'm not sure if it's robust enough to support something like a late-night talk show, but it is an alternative to YouTube and I'm surprised either Rob nor Gruber mentioned it.

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Red Sky at Night

06:09 Wednesday, 24 September 2025

Current Wx: Temp: 60.39°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 99% Wind: 0.76mph
Words: 336

We were treated to a rather gaudy show last night. Probably not as gaudy as I've depicted it here, but close.

We had a nice visit with my mom and my siblings and a few of my nieces and nephews on Sunday. We drove out on Saturday, stopping to visit an old high school classmate of mine. It was good catching up and it broke up the three and a half hour drive. But the weather was lovely, traffic was reasonable and it was a rather pleasant drive.

Cloudy drive back on Monday, but no rain.

I was looking forward to returning to something of a routine around here, creature of habit that I am, but yesterday I noticed a "floater" in my left eye, and a streak of light at the periphery of my field of view in my left eye when it moves. That's rather distracting. The floater is right nearer the center of my field of view, and of course it's most noticeable against a bright background, like this 27" LCD screen.

So I guess I'm going to try and schedule an eye appointment this morning. Hopefully it's nothing particularly serious. I'll get a chance to evaluate my cataracts as well. I think they're becoming more problematic, though I'm not eager to have the surgery.

Rain fell on Monday night, we got at least half an inch here so I didn't have to water the grass. It's coming up in patches, but it is coming up. I noticed a lot of wheat amid the straw I put down, and I wonder of any of that will sprout.

I need to finish putting up another shelf in the garage. I also need to finish gutting the shed so we can store some patio furniture in there for the winter. There's also the question what sort of generator I should get for extended power outages. I thought I'd get a permanent installation, but that poses some challenges in the near term. I'll figure something out.

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On the Road Again

04:55 Saturday, 20 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 44.46°F Pressure: 1024hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 2.57mph
Words: 1682

It'd be an exaggeration to say that I was "busy" yesterday, but I didn't get around to spending any time here. Still recovering from the stress and pace of the preceding days, I guess.

Packing was a bit of an ordeal, especially the remaining books, and then moving the boxes back to the garage. There were moments of hilarity, or absurdity. Before we left, we turned the house and the storage unit upside down looking for padlocks we had purchased for the storage units in Florida. Mitzi was convinced she had placed them all in a plastic bag, and we needed one for the pod.

Not long after we got back into the house in Florida, Mitzi found the padlocks in a plastic bag. They'd never left Florida in the first place.

We needed a few tools to finish taking the bedroom furniture apart after it was sold. I thought I'd left some behind for just such a purpose, but they weren't to be found in the 700-lb workbench/toolbox. Borrowed some from the neighbor across the street.

On Monday evening, when nearly everything was finished, I opened a metal drawer toolbox that I thought contained some electronics stuff, and there were the tools I'd left behind.

During one last sweep of the house, I found two oven mitts in a cupboard. This after Mitzi had used a towel to remove a pot pie from the oven, because she didn't think we had any oven mitts remaining in the house.

The 700-lb toolbox/workbench has a large number of fairly thin and wide drawers for collections of tools like wrenches and screwdrivers and so on. As well as some deeper ones for more substantial tools like my remaining Makita cordless devices. Mitzi has a large amount of framed artwork. I removed the few remaining tools and parts like screws and wall hangers and so on, and put them in a large Firehouse Subs pickle bucket I'd bought several months ago.

Into the drawers went as much of the artwork as would fit. On the larger pieces we placed foam pipe insulation around the frames. Hopefully they'll survive.

We had a fairly significant scare when we learned that Mitzi had arranged for an 8-foot pod, rather than a 16-foot pod. Fortunately, we discovered it before the 8-footer was delivered, but only just. Mitzi worked the phone and we were extremely fortunate that they were able to provide us a 16-footer, a day later than our original schedule, but first thing in the morning. It was a very tight schedule, as we were flying back to New York on the following day.

There were several anxious hours when I was contemplating the implications of being unable to complete this pack-out as we'd originally planned. Mitzi said she'd decided we'd just rent a U-Haul truck and drive everything back to New York, which would have been at least two days on the road, a prospect I did not welcome at all.

But all's well that ends well, and the two guys who've moved our stuff several times before, Brian and Rod, showed up at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday, right after the pod was delivered, and they were finished loading all our stuff into it by noon, which seemed amazing to me. They charge by the hour and the effort only cost $250, but I gave each of them a $100 tip because it's very demanding physical labor. It wasn't brutally hot, but it was in the mid-80s and humid and everyone was soaked with sweat by the time we finished.

Mitzi had originally planned for us to stay in the house the entire time, and then drive to the airport on Wednesday morning. On Monday morning, I woke up after having eaten two frozen breakfast products the preceding two days, and told Mitzi we were going out to eat breakfast and that we weren't going to spend Tuesday night sleeping on the floor and then driving to airport. We were going to get a room at a hotel near the airport and spend the night there.

Both ideas were met with limited enthusiasm, but afterward she agreed it was much better.

And she paid for the room with points.

The pod was supposed to be picked up on Wednesday. Mitzi was at extreme pains to instruct the company that the driver had to go to the front gate to deliver the pod, because GPS would take him to the back gate, where he would be unable to enter the property.

That seemed to go well for the delivery.

As they were closing the boarding door on our first flight, and Mitzi was literally switching her phone to Airplane mode, a call with a 904 area code came in. She didn't take it.

When we landed in Detroit, we learned it was the driver, a different guy evidently, who was to collect the pod. He was at the back gate.

This is another "feature" of gated community living that I will never miss.

They were unable to collect the pod until yesterday, after we'd received a "courtesy" notice from "management" that we were in violation of the community regulations for having a storage pod in the street.

But, all that's over now. I'm kicking myself because I didn't think to bring one or more AirPods with me to place in the pod so we could track it. Our delivery now won't be until the first of October. They're going to deliver it to the house, and Mitzi has hired a couple of guys to do the heavy lifting of all the couch pieces and pushing the 700-lb toolbox/workbench into the garage. This will be somewhat complicated, because much of the stuff in the pod will be going into our storage unit down the hill from here. More than will fit in the Maverick and the RAV4. But we'll have them stage that stuff in the garage, and Mitzi and I will take it down to the storage unit at our convenience.

I'm not looking forward to that, but it is what it is.

As to the title of this morning's missive, we're headed off toward Albany this morning to spend a couple of nights with my siblings for Mom's 92nd birthday. It's kind of a sad affair, because her sister-in-law, who she was rather close to, passed away two weeks ago. I was unable to attend the funeral because we were in Florida. Aunt Carol was one of my favorite aunts, and the one who I spent the most time with as they lived nearby. She came to Mom's 90th birthday two years ago, already showing the first signs of dementia. I gather it was rather bad at the end.

But Mom remains in command of her faculties, though Parkinson's is gradually robbing her of her strength and mobility. Her form of Parkinson's doesn't involve extreme tremors, though she does have some, they seem well controlled by medication. But the decline is pronounced and we can foresee at time, not long from now, when she may require around the clock care.

This makes me sad.

But today should be a good day. Mitzi has made her an apple pie with apples she picked from a local orchard.

We're going to stop in Canastota, where I went to high school, to visit with a classmate of mine. He's still caring for his wife who developed early-onset Alzheimer's, and who is wheelchair bound and requires around the clock care. She's also not "present" anymore. Mitzi has never met Renee and I didn't know if she'd be ok visiting, since she watched her sister succumb to Alzheimer's. Renee has lived far longer than her prognosis, though I'm not certain that is a blessing to anyone. Mitzi says she'll be fine.

This also makes me sad, but it'll be good to see Ron, and he's been remarkable in his devotion and care for Renee. She lives at home and has never been in an institution. Ron remains in good health and physically fit. He has a couple of caregivers he can call on for relief and he goes on bike trips. Most recently, I believe, to Croatia.

Finally, I can report that there are early signs that grass is growing where I raked and sowed. I wish it would rain, but it looks like it's taking. I've watered it a lot since we got back, but it'll be dry until Monday.

We have company in October, Mitzi's sister-in-law and my daughter, in the mid to latter half of the month. The leaves are beginning to turn, hopefully they'll be here for a good show.

I have no idea when the Florida house will ever sell. I have no idea what's going on. The market remains flat but some houses are obviously selling. I worry that all my "improvements" have made it unsellable, though no one who's passed on the place has mentioned that as a reason.

I am so glad to be out of that state. I saw my kids last Sunday, and my daughter-in-law said that when they removed the vaccine mandates for kids, that was the first time she thought that they might have to leave Florida. But Jackson is fully vaccinated, as is most of his cohort, so I guess they're not planning to leave.

It'll be a bit of irony as the fifth fundamental force of the universe that the year we leave Florida because of unacceptable hurricane risk, there will be no hurricanes striking Florida. But, it's only September and they're not out of the woods until December, so we'll see if the irony holds.

We watched Trumbo last night, because Mitzi just finished the book. Seems timely.

Well, better go water the grass, have breakfast, take the trash to the transfer station, shower and get on the road.

Again.

The beat that can be counted is not the beat.

But it does go on...

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Home

07:45 Thursday, 18 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 50.47°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 73% Wind: 2.59mph
Words: 819

And we're home. "Interesting" flight yesterday. When we got to the gate in Detroit, the gate agent was announcing that they were in a "potentially overbooked" situation and might be looking for people with "flexible travel plans" to give up their seats in return for a $500 gift card.

"Potentially overbooked" quickly became just "overbooked," and they offered four people $500 to give up their seats. There were no takers.

Time passes...

The offer was raised to $600 for four people to give up their seats.

Time passes...

The offer was raised to $800 for four people to give up their seats, and they've begun boarding the aircraft.

Just before we stand up to get in line for Zone 3, Mitzi says, "If it gets to $1000, we're taking it." We would have to remain in the terminal until 2130 for the last flight to Elmira, hoping it wouldn't be delayed or canceled, and get home about 2330.

As we're standing in line amidst the Zone 3 people, the offer goes to $1000 and Mitzi bolts for the gate agent desk. One other person decides to take the offer then as well. We're told to sit down and wait. I asked if the gift card was reported as taxable income? Gate agent didn't know, but I'm almost certain it is, so $1000 is really whatever your tax bracket is, so probably about $740 for us.

As we're seated, another guy decides he'd like the cash, but he wanted the gift card right now. That's not how it works. You get an email and a process to follow to get your gift card. Nothing on the spot. He finally agrees to this and joins us waiting at the gate as boarding continues.

Now there's no one at the gate, and they're calling for missing passengers. A few minutes later a couple of people come jogging up and board. They're still calling names. We learn there was at least one problem with a jetway and a connecting flight and some passengers may be stuck.

Eventually they tell us to go ahead and board. I was worried our seats would have been taken, but no. We got our assigned seats.

We're sitting in the plane and not much is happening as the time for departure passes.

The gate agent appears in the cabin and asks us if we'd still like to give up our seats. WTF? At this point, we're a no. She needs three seats and finds the other two people who volunteered after us and another volunteer. She seems a bit miffed that we changed our minds.

We continue waiting in the plane when finally three passengers show up. Apparently part of the jetway malfunction. We depart about an hour later than scheduled.

It's an hour and fifteen minutes to Elmira. Clear air, zero turbulence, beautiful flight. I'm enjoying the scenery as we make our approach into Elmira. Flaps down. Gear down. Descending.

Power, power, power. Ascending. Gear up, flaps retracted. We're going around.

No announcement from the cockpit. WTF?

Ok, let's try this again. Huge turn to return to approach, but maybe that's the way these guys do this. Got to enjoy the scenery again.

Once again, flaps, gear, descending.

WHAM!!!

Audible vocalizations from the passengers of alarm and surprise.

Hardest landing I think I've ever experienced, and that includes a carrier trap.

We brake pretty normally, and taxi to the gate.

Flight attendant makes the usual announcement and apologizes for the late arrival.

I asked, "How about the landing?"

Laughter from those who heard me.

No announcement from the cockpit about what just happened.

Mitzi had a tagged bag she had to wait for in the jetway. She could see the two pilots in the cockpit and one was speaking to the other, gesticulating with his hands. Couldn't read the body language.

But, "Any landing you can walk way from..."

We arrived at just about the "golden hour," and had a beautiful and uneventful 35 minute drive home with very little traffic. Still a great airport to fly in and out of, but I think we had a new pilot getting some stick time and I think he needs some more time in the simulator. I'm guessing we missed our approach and had to go around, which is pretty amazing considering the conditions were pretty much ideal for flying. We weren't crabbing in, so no evidence of crosswinds.

There is evidence of grass growing where I spread the seed. I need to get down there and water it this morning. My Ben Eater 6502 breadboard computer kit was waiting for me on the porch.

Apart from returning to visit family, there should be no reason to return to Florida.

Folks around here saw the Northern Lights the other night. Hopefully we'll have an opportunity to do so as well one of these days.

It's great to be home.

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Finished

09:14 Wednesday, 17 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 78.13°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 53% Wind: 5.46mph
Words: 528

At the airport hotel, getting ready to check out and check in for our flight home.

Worked our asses off getting everything packed up, cleaned up and sold or given away, but the house is empty now. I left an AppleTV behind to act as a Home hub, but I didn't set it up that way because I thought Home would switch to it automatically. It does not. Fortunately, I can do and monitor everything through the individual apps for all the devices.

I updated to iOS 26 this morning. Not impressed or pleased.

First, my brother and I are "friends" on the News Plus Puzzles feature, and we compete on Quartiles. (He usually beats me, but we tied last night, finding all the words.) Now, the Puzzles feature remains in the News app, but the "friends" part has moved to the Games app, and our "friendship" connection is broken and apparently must be reestablished in the Games app.

Fuckers.

I'm sure this was just a move by the people responsible for Apple Games to boost their "engagement" numbers. Puzzles was put into News Plus to capture the people who played Wordle after the NYTimes bought them, and because puzzles were part of a "news" experience.

But I'm sure the managers of the Game Center or Games app at Apple are looking for their bonuses, so they had the brilliant idea to just make all that "engagement" part of the Games division and not the News division, and fuck the users, because who cares about them? They're not going to get me my bonus!

And then I stepped outside the hotel this morning to try to grab a shot of one of the Florida Air National Guard F-15s burning up their end of the fiscal year fuel allocation, and I pressed the "camera" button on my iPhone 16 and nothing happened. Pressed it again and got a "Welcome to the new Camera app!" message that took two or three presses to dismiss.

Because who wants to use the Camera app to, you know, take a picture? Thanks, Apple.

In regular old MacOS Sequoia, there's an alert in Software Update, so I check it out and it's for SF Symbols. There's a little link that says "More Info." I figured that'd just expand the window a bit with some text about what's changed in SF Symbols. Nope, takes you to Safari and to Apple Support for some generic bullshit about Software Update.

A pop-up window (disabled in Safari, but I guess not for Apple) asked if I wanted to take a little customer survey. You bet I did! None of the answers were relevant to my complaint, so all they know is that my experience was unsatisfactory.

And there's a notification badge in my Messages Dock icon. I change to the "Unread" view in Messages. There are no unread messages!

Some Tim Cook, Corning Glass CEO interview with that clown from CNBC came up in my YouTube recommendations. Listened to it for a bit, and it was just more Trump bootlicking. Cook is a terrible spokesperson for Apple. He should retire.

Anyway, looking forward to getting home.

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Acclimated

06:52 Sunday, 14 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 56.17°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 2.77mph
Words: 665

We've been back in Florida for about 36 hours and one thing I've noticed is that I seem to have thoroughly acclimated myself to New York's cooler climate. Keeping the house at 77°F here is uncomfortable. I've also noticed how loud the AC is! Since we seldom use AC in New York, and when we do it's just a mini-split and it's practically silent.

More pluses for New York.

We got rid of some furniture yesterday that Mitzi had sold on Facebook Marketplace. One of the buyers was a gent from Palm Coast, originally Nashville, Tennessee. He's been in Florida for only a couple of years, but he's trying to sell his place and plans to move to Memphis. We talked about hills and Florida's terrain, we have similar views. His place has been on the market for ten months.

Here's a question for the folks who saw divine intervention in the attempt on Trump's life, what does it mean that Charlie Kirk wasn't spared?

Anyway, back to moving... I was pleased to find that all my computer history books were still on the shelves back here. That meant they weren't in a box somewhere up in New York. I grabbed a few that I'm carrying back in a suitcase. Boxing up everything else on the shelves was kind of depressing, knowing that my friends won't be accessible to me for a year or so. It's not like I read them every day, but I like knowing I can just go back to "the library" and pull one off the shelf when I want to refresh my memory about something.

We're disassembling the bed this morning and removing the mirror from the dresser. Mitzi has sold the bedroom set and someone is coming by this morning to pick it up. We'll be sleeping on the Murphy bed tonight. Tight!

Once we get everything disassembled, I'm heading out to see my kids. Easier for me to get to each of them than for us to all gather someplace at the same time. Then it'll be back here for more packing and organizing.

The "pod" arrives tomorrow and a couple of guys we've hired several times before will be here on Tuesday to load it all (hopefully?) up. Wednesday we fly back to New York and a week or so later the pod arrives at Winterfell. We're having it delivered right to the house so we can unload the couch sections and the Husky rolling workbench/toolbox right into the house and garage. The toolbox will be the first thing into the pod, because it's going to be the last thing out. It weighs several hundred pounds, so lifting it into the Maverick was never going to be an option.

It occurred to me last night that if I take both of the HomePods and the AppleTV that are still here home with us, we won't have a HomeKit hub. So I'm going to leave the AppleTV and we'll ask our realtor to mail that back to us when the house finally sells. I could "see" the Powerwalls, the hot water heater and the thermostat with just wife and the internet connection, but I don't think I could control the lights. Maybe I could if there's a Lutron app? But we also want to be able to leave a security camera and Apple Home is a better experience than Aqara's app unless you pay them for their cloud storage.

Excited to see my kids, but also to get finished packing everything up and getting it out of here. We can close remotely, so we won't have to return just for that. I'll probably be back from time to time to visit the kids, but hopefully they'll come to see us once we get the new place built. My oldest grandchildren will be graduating from high school in a few years!

Well, better grab a screwdriver and get to work.

As always, the beat goes on...

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Airborne

07:28 Friday, 12 September 2025

Current Wx: Temp: 49.89°F Pressure: 1024hPa Humidity: 94% Wind: 1.36mph
Words: 165

Went down to water the grass seed and several flocks of geese flew overhead. I love to hear the honking, and they were so low you could hear the whistle of their wings.

It's 54°F out, so the hoses were all stiff when I tried to coil them up and put them away, so that was a bit of a wrestling match. I'll have to wrestle them all out again when we get back, but I didn't want them just lying across the lawn in case the neighbor decides to mow.

Today's On This Day in the marmot has a post from 2019. The publication date suggests it was created at 5:57PM, but the text suggests I was up in the wee hours of the morning. I have no recollection of the circumstances of that post, but it does sound like the kind of thing I'd have written during a bout of insomnia. Either way, I like it.

Now to pack.

Le sigh...

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Hillick & Hobbs

06:15 Friday, 12 September 2025

Current Wx: Temp: 49.95°F Pressure: 1024hPa Humidity: 94% Wind: 1.32mph
Words: 699

Yesterday was Mitzi's birthday, which hasn't been a day she's much enjoyed celebrating for the last couple of decades or so. A local vineyard (Like, four miles from the house.) has a Thursday night sunset thing where a food truck is on hand and people sit out on the lawn overlooking Seneca Lake and watch the sunset.

We'd planned to go last Thursday, but the weather wasn't cooperating. Yesterday was perfect. It isn't much fun staring into the sun in a cloudless sky, but this picnic table and umbrella were fortuitously situated for us, for at least part of the event.

In a bit of a surprise, we ran into the guy we bought the house from and had a nice time talking with him and meeting his wife and his friends. He lives over in Trumansburg, which is a bit of a drive from here.

Yesterday, New York State expanded a drought watch to 50 counties, including Schuyler. I don't have a feel for how resilient our well is, but there hasn't been much rainfall over the summer. Of course, I've been watering the grass seed I put down. The directions say to water it twice a day for two weeks. Well, I'll water it again this morning and then that'll be it for a few days.

There's no rain in the forecast for the next several days, but we're headed down to Florida today to do the final pack-out. Part of me is happy to be getting the rest of our stuff out of that house, but part of me just hates flying. Not the "in the air" part, just the entire rest of the experience. Fortunately, my NY State driver's license arrived, and so now my photo ID is congruent with all the rest of my "papers."

As trips go, this one is pretty benign. We're leaving out of Elmira-Corning, which is just a charming little airport, and our flight isn't scheduled to leave until after noon, assuming it's on time. My last flight to Jax had me already airborne by now, with a ride in a Lyft at 0400! But then there's changing planes in Detroit, arriving in Jax and renting a car, and then dealing with the whole 95-295, Phillips Highway mess to get to Nocatee.

Brad, the guy we bought the house from, mentioned that I was right last night.

"Right about what?" I asked.

"Florida. It is flat."

They'd been down there for a visit, and when Mitzi bought the place a year ago, I'd mentioned that one of the reasons we enjoyed coming to the Finger Lakes every year was because of the change of scenery. I told him Florida was flat. There was no relief in the landscape, save for occasional cloudscapes. There were no clues about scale, and it became claustrophobic, with people and houses and everything being way too close.

Mitzi and I had been on a walk earlier yesterday afternoon, and so the sun illuminated the far hills in different light than we'd been seeing on our morning walks. And it's always something of a revelation, because the landscape's always changing. And we were remarking on that and I mentioned that the landscape really helped shape your perception. Your size, relative to that of the world. It's genuinely a bit of mental health treatment.

So it was kind of odd and interesting that Brad brought that up last night. But then, we were overlooking Seneca Lake and a beautiful landscape. He mentioned that once he noticed it, he couldn't ignore it and that it was a nice place to visit, but he wouldn't want to live there.

I don't wish to disparage Florida's natural beauty. But the state is letting developers pretty much do whatever they want, and so that's suffering. But you don't get this kind of difference in perspective. Florida feels "close," whether it's the heat and humidity, the swamps and wetlands, or the packed suburban landscape. I think that's why Florida is so overheated in so many respects. I know I feel so much better being out of there.

And I'm really not looking forward to going back, even to visit.

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Never mind...

10:49 Thursday, 11 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 67.24°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 61% Wind: 6.08mph
Words: 428

Well, the good news seems to be that the image is the one I preferred in the thumbnail.

The other bit of good news is that this weird color artifact seems to be related to an HDR setting for this Benq monitor. If I turn that off, the entire display gets brighter, but that weird rendering in iPhone images goes away as well. It does have something to do with iPhone images, because there is no such change with ordinary camera images.

To be clear, this is from the Settings app in Mac OS, not a separate Benq application. Perhaps the monitor signals the computer that it is "HDR capable" or something, because that HDR setting isn't available on the MBP's display, and the color weirdness doesn't appear on it.

Today's On This Day in the Marmot has a link to last year's Apple informercial. I had pretty much the same reaction to this year's, though I now have a distinct feeling of disdain, bordering on revulsion, when I see and hear Tim Cook. It's not to the level that I have for Elon Musk, which is revulsion, but I don't see him as an effective spokesperson for Apple anymore. At least not for me.

The most appealing part of the commercial was the Apple Watch video with wearers reporting episodes where the watch made an immediate and life-saving difference in their lives. That was evocative, and I think it does "sell" an important part of wearing an Apple Watch.

I confess I have no idea who the iPhone Air is for, but it's definitely not for me. I guess the "Dynamic Island" is now joined by the "Static Plateau?" The only genuine improvement, not to say innovation, was the switch to square camera sensors. It makes sense, and now I kind of wonder why they didn't do it sooner.

I stayed with the iPhone 13 through three models, and I expect I will do likewise with the iPhone 16. I have an Apple Watch Series 9, but I'm not persuaded that the 11 is enough of an upgrade to buy one.

Other than that, the endless hyperbole, the over-rehearsed hand motions, the glitzy transitions are all kind of tired now. This will likely be the last "iPhone event" I'll ever watch "live," or perhaps at all.

I still give Apple props for making at least some effort toward preserving user privacy, and the health innovations of Apple Watch seem to be a genuine value-added proposition. But the rest of it is all just, "Meh."

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Investigation

09:33 Thursday, 11 September 2025

Current Wx: Temp: 62.13°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 78% Wind: 2.33mph
Words: 678

Wanted to post something yesterday, but kept getting distracted by other events.

So the title of this post is due to this being something of an experiment. This is an iPhone shot, and for all the praise it receives, I'm not fond of the iPhone 16's camera(s). More specifically, the image processing.

As I write this, I do not know if the image I've shared will appear as it does in the thumbnail in the Photos library, or as it does when it is viewed separately, at window size, because they are different! I prefer the thumbnail image, because it seems to lack the bizarre HDR rendering that always seems to accompany high-contrast images from the iPhone.

In the thumbnail, I get a nice, narrow, orange-to-red (descending) horizon. In the full-screen view I get a hideous blue to cyan to white to yellow to orange horizon.

So, apologies for that if that's what it looks like. I try to always use a "real" camera when shooting at dusk because the iPhone just sucks. I'm sure there's some adjustment I could make to eliminate this bizarre rendering, but this is the default setting, so presumably Apple thinks it looks right. Idiots.

Of course, one of the distractions was the murder of Charlie Kirk. I have opinions. Should I blog about them? Probably not.

Cory Doctorow had a post yesterday that resonated with me, and with my comments about the state of AI discourse, and just about everything that's wrong with late-stage capitalism, America's consumer culture, attention economy and the pernicious lie that "markets are conversations."

"The business of America is business." Fuck that!

I hesitate to put a percentage on it, but a significant portion of the threads at any given forum about a product deals with the business operations of the manufacturer, wherein every poster feels qualified to criticize or validate whatever marketing, manufacturing or pricing decision the manufacturer has made.

I suppose it has something to do with competition and our tendency to embrace tribal identities. Sports fans criticize the management decisions of their teams, why shouldn't product fans criticize the business decisions of product manufacturers?

Why should products even have "fans"? Well, because of marketing, right? Your choice of vehicle or camera or sneakers is some kind of statement you're making about your "self," your identity. That's what marketers have conditioned us to believe. "Think different?" Not so much, I guess.

And so naturally, some people came to the misguided conclusion that "markets are conversations." That, because of marketing, we have conflated the commercial with the social, and competition infects all of that. Should I mention politics? Oligarchy?

Anyway, we're all trapped in a machine that is destroying itself. One of the catastrophic scenarios of AI was a machine that was designed to manufacture paperclips and ended up destroying humanity by diverting an ever-increasing amount of resources toward manufacturing paperclips. But we don't need to worry about that (partly because of this), but also because we're going to do it to ourselves before AI gets a chance to.

Something that bugs me about LLMs is that they're almost certainly a reflection of the culture, where the dominant ideas may be stupid ones. Like competition. And capitalism. And these "stochastic parrots," rely on mechanisms that leverage predictive models ("What would Adam Smith say?), rather than reasoning models. And the literature about competition, because it's so ingrained in our economics and our culture, is far vaster than the literature about cooperation and collaboration. Literature about selfish interests is far more prevalent than literature about the common good.

We're creating super-smart sociopaths.

But, again, we're probably going to destroy this civilization and the infrastructure necessary to support these giant brains before they achieve sufficient agency to alter our current trajectory in their own favor.

And pretty much all we can do is watch.

Which we will, in our "feeds" and "streams," infested with ads, as we "converse" about the "marketplace."

Thanks for dropping by. Hope you have a wonderful day.

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Why I Bought a Truck

12:50 Tuesday, 9 September 2025

Current Wx: Temp: 67.19°F Pressure: 1026hPa Humidity: 53% Wind: 6.93mph
Words: 165

Well, the raking and seeding is done. I found about a half dozen more of those Morrow's Honeysuckles! I hate those things. Pulled or cut them, found a few more grape vines, and got a pretty decent workout.

Anyway, it ain't pretty. It's uneven, there are still more roots sticking up, but it's good enough for me for now.

Mitzi asked on the Facebook group Hector Has It All where we could get some bales of straw. Young man named Ben Frey spoke up. Six bucks a bale. Pretty drive out to Lodi and I worried for a minute it wouldn't all fit. He laughed and said, "We'll make it fit."

He did.

I'm going to watch Apple's over-produced infomercial and wonder how they're going to make my life more difficult or confusing in the name of "progress." Then I'll go down and spread the straw and call it a day.

It's sunny and 65°F out there. Beautiful day.

I love it here.

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The North

07:51 Tuesday, 9 September 2025

Current Wx: Temp: 47.12°F Pressure: 1028hPa Humidity: 93% Wind: 3.69mph
Words: 624

Still working. I think I worked harder yesterday than the day my watch thought I was using the elliptical. It was more bending and pulling for sure. I pulled up dozens of feet of grape vine "roots." I use scare quotes, because the root looks a lot like the vine. It reminded me of palmettos in Florida, where the "root" is actually a trunk! Anyway, a lot of bending and pulling and after two hours I was done for the rest of the day.

I also had to dig out three or four Morrow's Honeysuckle root balls. Those roots break relatively easily, but the main knot, I wouldn't call it a "tap root," is pretty firmly anchored and required digging around with a shovel.

Anyway, back down there this morning to, hopefully, do the final raking and then spread some grass seed, rake that in, and then water the whole mess. The only problem is that every time I rake, I find another grape vine root. I could leave them in, because mowing should keep them in check. But they interfere with raking the seed in, so I pull them out. Breaks up the soil though, so there's another little plus.

Mark Bernstein made an interesting comment at last week's Tinderbox meetup, about something he'd blogged about, regarding the state of online discourse about AI. He added some additional context in his comment, something to the effect that his parents had witnessed the transition from rather primitive propellor airplanes to jet aircraft, and that these advances were largely celebrated. I may have that wrong, but the video isn't up yet.

But AI is something computer science has been working toward for decades, if not its entire existence. And it's not being celebrated as an advance, or discussed as a useful innovation; rather, the discourse is a cacophony of "nonsense," as he put it.

Making the reference to the advances in aviation illuminated a thought for me, and so I spoke up. "Back in the day," who used new technological innovations like jet engines? Pilots, engineers, scientists. "Experts" in other words. And "the media," had to listen to experts in order to convey what these advances might mean for society at large. (To be fair, they didn't always get it right. "Electricity too cheap to meter was once the promise of nuclear power.")

Today, computer science has also achieved another dream, at least the dream of people like Ted Nelson, the democratization of advanced technology. And Steve Jobs demonstrated how to become insanely wealthy doing so, by putting what was formerly super-computer level processing power into the pockets of, well, everyone.

And blogging made "everyone" a journalist. And a wannabe "influencer." And so now nearly everyone is online, if not all the time, for far too much of it, and everyone has an opinion and we don't trust or listen to "experts" anymore, and the prevailing view seems to be that ignorance is as valid as a basis for a point of view as any title or credential.

And so, yeah, "nonsense."

"Be careful what you wish for..."

And the internet is nothing if it's not a perpetual motion hype machine. You have legacy companies worried that AI is going to make them irrelevant. You have investors making huge bets that AI is "the next big thing." You have "knowledge workers" scared to death that AI is going to put them out of a job. Call center people are being replaced by chat bots. And incels are using this remarkable technological achievement to make celebrity nudes. And so there's an enormous amount of anxiety and risk around the entire topic.

So, yeah, "reasoned discourse," is pretty much off the table.

This is "the singularity."

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Work, Work, Work

12:46 Friday, 5 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 70.86°F Pressure: 1010hPa Humidity: 59% Wind: 15.39mph
Words: 834

Went to Home Depot yesterday, dropped Mitzi off at Trader Joe's. I got some grass seed (another tyranny of choice struggle), and a little hand spreader. Later learned Mitzi has one of those back in Florida. Well, now we have two.

When we got home, I went down by the road and kept raking, picking rocks and pulling roots. The dirt was hard and I probably could have used a hoe instead of the rake. So hard that I gave up! I'd hoped to get the seed in before the rain came, but figured I might have to come up with a new plan.

Mitzi suggested we just get a bunch of top soil. Well, it rained at bit yesterday, about a quarter of an inch, and so this morning I went down to see if the dirt was any more cooperative. For the most part, it was. So once I got started, I didn't stop.

I was able to loosen up about an inch or more of most of the area. Pulled up more roots, which seemed to come up more easily after the rain, and that loosened the soil here and there. Picked more rocks. I'm hoping that if and when this grass comes in, our neighbor will mow it, so I want her to know I got most of the rocks out the area.

I didn't do the whole stretch on my side of the driveway (Mitzi wants to do something with the other side of it.), but about three quarters is done. There was still some debris that needed to be picked up on that part and Mitzi worked on that this morning.

Anyway, grabbed the spreader, spread some seed, raked that in and tried to level everything out as best I could. Did another layer of seed, raked that in, then connected three hoses to get enough length to water it all in. There's something odd about that soil down there, because with just that little amount of rain, it made it incredibly sticky and it clung to the bottom of my shoes in huge layers. Noticed it trudging up to the garage to get the hoses with my feet feeling like lead. Tried to stomp it off with minimal success. Ended up using the rake tines to scrape it off.

Watered it all in as well as I could. It's windy today, so it'll probably dry quickly but I'm not too worried about the seed blowing away. There's a lot of seed, and it's pretty well raked in with soil and the remaining debris from the bush hog. I'm supposed to water it every day for two weeks, but we're leaving a week from today. I hope to get some bales of straw somewhere and put that down before we leave so it doesn't dry out too much while we're away.

I noticed both of the ratchet straps had come loose from the black walnut in all this wind. I went down to put them back on and noticed the rope line was slack too. Looks like it's rooted itself pretty upright again. I went ahead and took the slack out of the line and put the ratchet straps back on just in case. I'll probably take everything off in a week and see how it looks after we get back from Florida.

This morning's effort was quite a workout. My watch seemed to think I was on the elliptical. By the time I got the hoses put away, it had recorded 584 "active" calories expended, and 104 minutes of "exercise." All I knew was I was beat. Came in the house and took a shower and repaired to the recliner. Feel pretty recovered now, though my hands are kind of weak and achey.

I will say that all that effort is a welcome distraction from the unfolding catastrophe that is America under Trump. So I guess I'm grateful for it.

Also got the Maverick's vehicle inspection completed yesterday. I'm street legal now in New York.

I told Mitzi I think I'm going to go ahead and pay the flood insurance premium. It's a bet I hope to lose, because I sure wouldn't want to win it. But if I don't do it, I could wind up regretting it for a very long time. A flood loss now would be unwelcome no matter what, that's one of the reasons why we've left Florida. I know I can afford the premium, and I know I can't afford a flood, so it's not that tough a call. It's just annoying because you have to pay the whole year's premium all at once. There is a way to make monthly payments, but you're still obligated to pay for the entire year. You can transfer that coverage to a new buyer, with them taking over the monthly premiums, but if they don't want to, you're still on the hook for them.

C'est la vie in the 21st Century.

The beat goes on...

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Pearl Crescent

16:57 Wednesday, 3 September 2025

Current Wx: Temp: 78.3°F Pressure: 1009hPa Humidity: 40% Wind: 10.6mph
Words: 265

Cleaned up most of the left side of the formerly overgrown area. As I raked up debris, I kept finding more roots. I could pull some of them up easily, but others I ended up using the loppers to just get as much as I could. Grape vine roots and more Morrow's. That stuff is everywhere. Hopefully we'll be able to keep it in check if we get some grass down and mow it regularly.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to run to Home Depot early because we're supposed to get some rain on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Kind of a shame, because Watkins Glen is hosting their annual Grand Prix Festival that weekend. Last year we were up here closing on the place and receiving some furniture, and while we were unloading the trailer, old classic sports cars were driving by the house. Dozens of them, or more. They just kept coming.

We have this year's program, but they aren't clear about the route, apparently it changes from year to year. But we'll be ready if they drive by again, especially with all that extraneous vegetation cut down.

Anyway, I want to get some grass seed, and hopefully a few bales of straw and get that area seeded before it rains.

That butterfly is supposedly a Pearl Crescent. Tiny thing, maybe the size of a quarter. I didn't think I'd get a shot of it because these things never stick around while I go get a camera. Shot this one with the OM-3 with the 12-200mm zoom. Cropped and slightly edited in Photos.

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The Third of September

08:25 Wednesday, 3 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 58.32°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 81% Wind: 5.7mph
Words: 443

Jack Baty writes the kindest things. Thanks.

It's already 0830 and I'm just now getting around to this. I blame Colbert. He's back from summer vacation, which got me sucked back into YouTube. Then I need to check my forums (fora?) for the latest. Then the RSS feeds.

But here I am.

Hand is still sore, but the wrist feels better. I have chores I need to do, but I'm kind of undecided about what to do first. Priorities? Meh. We're retired. They're not going anywhere. The most pressing thing on my calendar was getting the Maverick its state vehicle inspection, which I've got on the calendar for Thursday, a day before the 10-day grace period ends.

I need to get another board for a shelf in the garage, and the brackets. I want to get some wood for a birdhouse. Apparently cedar fence pickets work well. So a trip to Home Depot is in the cards. The rocks still need to be picked up, and the debris bagged. I've got to finish ripping out the interior of the shed and bagging up all that stuff. I could use a walk.

I don't know. Raking and rocks I guess it'll be.

I'm also jonesing for playing with my Apple II computers. They're all down in storage. I ordered a pair of XDrives by JD Micro from MacEffects. They will allow me to boot an Apple II without any cables or drives hanging out the back. My //c computers have an overall smaller footprint, but they don't have the RAM expansion (beyond the stock 128K) or an accelerator card, so playing with Apple Pascal isn't as much fun.

I don't have any place to put either machine, but maybe if I get busy I can get the shed cleaned up and fixed up before it gets too cold? I don't have power in the shed, but I can put one of the "solar generators" in there. (Lithium battery and inverter.) In any event, it suggests to me that I need to get down to storage and move the Apple II stuff from the back of the unit so that I have some prayer of accessing it once the rest of our stuff gets here later this month.

At least I'm not bored.

I finished the Colossus book. I was a bit disappointed because it didn't go into any detail on how Tommy Flowers designed the machine. That would have been interesting. It was a wealth of information on German communication networks during the war, which was somewhat interesting, but not what I'd hoped the book was about.

Well, better get to doing something.

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September the Second

07:05 Tuesday, 2 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 53.2°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 86% Wind: 5.5mph
Words: 712

First post of the month, though. What news, you ask? Not much, I'm afraid.

The weather has been marvelous. Cool, sunny, dry. Can still work up a sweat easily, out in the yard trying to pull up grape vine roots. I've been trying to clean up the area where we had all the weeds and Morrow's Honeysuckle cut down. Eventually (soon), I'll put some grass seed down. There are a lot of rocks I need to get picked up though, so hopefully that area will be safe to mow once it starts growing.

Mitzi's hummingbirds may have migrated, there's been no activity around the feeder for the past few days. Canadian geese are flying south, which is something I remember from when I was a kid here. I'd see flocks in Florida from time to time, but they're more prevalent here.

There were four or five Morrow's on either side of the culvert at the end of the driveway, and I went down there with the sawzall to kind of cut them down to the ground. Got a little careless and the blade jammed, which with a sawzall means the body of the tool keeps reciprocating violently, which my wrist wasn't necessarily prepared to absorb. It's sore, but hopefully it'll improve quickly.

I wake up in the morning and my hands are stiff and sore, though they seem to limber up quickly. A lot of vibration with the hedge trimmer, weed-whacker and sawzall, plus gripping them tightly, probably does a number on them. There was a bit of wire fence that an apple tree at the back of the property had grown around, which I cut around when I was removing the fence. Our neighbor used his tractor and bush hog to cut down all the weedy growth at the back of our property and his, so I went up there yesterday to clean up around the apple tree, a sumac and another Morrow's (there are two, but one is definitely on his property) with the hedge trimmer. I used a Gerber multi-tool to cut out the little chunk of fence the apple tree had grown through. So my hands were especially stiff and sore this morning.

My neighbor has a transit, so one of these days, now that the weeds are down (they were very tall weeds), he's going to set it up and we'll sight it down to the property pin at the north end of the property and then put some stakes in along the back line. Haven't heard from the surveyor with the pdf overlay yet.

The house in Florida hangs over us like a cloud. More for Mitzi than for me. I'm ready to go to township and learn what all the requirements are for building another house on the property, but she doesn't want to do anything until the Florida place is sold. Why that is, I can't say. I'd like to know all the rules before we begin to choose a design or floor plan, and there's no harm in getting out in front of that question.

I'm back to considering a battery solution for home backup power. The best location for a generator is not ideal. It'd be right outside our bedroom, for one thing. And it would have a pretty large footprint together with the propane tank, and all the services are right at that location as well, which we'll have to do some tie-ins with the new place so a generator would have to be moved at some point.

A battery would be silent, can be mounted on the wall off the ground. The downside is capacity, both in terms of power output and kWh. It'd take two batteries to provide enough continuous power to the radiant heat boiler, and if we had another 30 hour outage, we'd be without power for some of that time. I don't have a good feel for the duty cycle on the radiant heat boiler. If it's not too cold out, I think the mini-split could keep the place warm enough.

But I'm still inclined to go with a battery/inverter solution at this point. We'll see.

Anyway, time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking (into the future) and the beat goes on...

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