We'll know for sure on 1 January 2025. Assuming I'm still around, which is a reasonable assumption at the moment.

In other news, I'd purchased an Epson FastFoto 680W scanner in November of '22. (If you care about when you may have purchased something, if you buy a lot of stuff from Amazon, you really should download your purchase history. So fast to hit CMD-F in Numbers and find something.)

I got it to scan my dad's WW II snapshots, a job which it performed admirably. The upload to Flickr could have gone better, but c'est la vie. One day, maybe, I'll square away the backs and the fronts.

I've still got to scan a rather large box of more contemporary snapshots, again, "one day."

But it came in very handy this morning, and rather impressed me. I used to have a Fujitsu ScanSnap 500M that I used in a half-hearted effort to "go paperless." It worked, but with multi-page scans, it often misfed. The software was temperamental, the OCR hit or miss and it wasn't exactly blazingly fast. (This was on my older intel Macs.) The Epson is the same form-factor, and I had a vague notion that it could do documents as well, but I'd never tried it.

Well, Mitzi needed a rather large stack of documents scanned and wanted to know if I had anything that could do it before she went to Kinko's, er, Fedex Office. I suggested we try the Epson.

It took a little fumbling around, the app wanted to update the software and the scanner's firmware. I had everything already installed on my 13" M1 MBP, so that's what we used. Firmware updates can be a little intimidating, especially since it offered to do everything wirelessly. The guidance for the update was rather lacking, the software update installer didn't automagically launch the firmware updater and I was unsure if I had to do that, or if I should wait. I went ahead and launched it myself, read some scary warnings and told it to proceed.

Surprise! All went well in much less than the "up to 15 minutes" they cautioned me about.

Got the alert that the MBP saw the scanner, stuck in the first sheaf of papers, then had a bit of a debate with Mitzi about which button we needed to push. We consulted the online guide and I was correct. Mashed that button and papers went flying across the room! Mitzi cried out, "They're not numbered!"

Then I figured out how to pull the receiver tray out of the bottom of the scanner.

It was amazing. No misfeeds. OCR'ed. Scanned clearly, put neatly into a pdf and all we had to do was name the file and tell it where to save.

It's wonderful when something "just works."

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 13:00 Wednesday, 1 May 2024

And I don't mean biting flies.

I'm a little reluctant to relate this, because I worry that it feeds into Jack's anxiety about Tinderbox. I shouldn't, I know. It's not Tinderbox, it's me!

Anyway, went to post this morning's moon and I got an AppleScript error. That hasn't happened in a long time. Checking, I discovered that the marmot hadn't created the May 2024 archive.

One of the wonderful things about Tinderbox is that pretty much everything is easily exposed and accessible to the user. My new month edict was refusing to run, and it wasn't clear why. The same code is running in Captain's Log and the Blog Test Platform, which I dusted off to help troubleshoot this problem, and they both had a May 2024 container.

So I exposed all the attributes I was using in the edict to see what their values were, and I immediately saw a problem. The edict begins by checking to make sure that we're still in the same year, so it doesn't, for example, create May 2025 in the 2024 container. So it looks at the date the 2024 container was created, which should have been, you know, 2024.

But it wasn't! It was 2023! Which was before I began to seriously work on automating all of this. I'm certain that I manually created the 2024 container at exactly 11:56 a.m. on Sunday, December 31, 2023, because that's when Tinderbox recorded it. So the first test in the edict was failing right out of the gate!

But I thought it worked at the beginning of April? I can't answer that, because there's no way it could have. The edict relies on $Created for the test, and that's a read-only value, so it simply couldn't work. And I couldn't manually coerce it to be something like 1/1/2024 either.

So, for at least the remainder of 2024, I've created another date-type attribute, ArchiveYear, which is set to 2024 and changed the edict to use that for the test and voila! May 2024 appeared.

But it has prompted me to look at the Archive containers in Captain's Log and Blog Test Platform as well. Their 2024 containers each created May 2024 correctly, but that's only because their 2024 containers were created in 2024, although manually, not by the Archive edict, because that hasn't needed to run yet. And looking at each of them, those edicts are wrong. I still want to rely on the intrinsic values, because they're appropriate for this purpose and there's no real value in creating a new attribute to do the same thing. I'm only doing it for what will be the remainder of 2024 because it's a simple way to patch this bug.

So I'll fix those in a minute, and then I'll wait for the next bug to reveal itself.

I will say, this is a lot easier than working on a water softener.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:51 Wednesday, 1 May 2024

I walked first thing this morning, because the biting flies are back and they're more dormant before sunrise.

The flies are bad, but they're mostly just annoying. The reaction I get to their bite it short-lived, only a few hours, unlike mosquito bites which will itch for days. And, make of this what you will, each year it seems as though there are fewer of them. When we moved here almost five years ago, they were dense. I would wear a bandana sprayed with Deet around my neck and spray my hat and my legs and arms. They'd still harass me. Nowadays you'll get one or two as you pass beneath certain trees. Some of them are very slow, and if you notice them landing on you, you can kill them. I got three the other morning.

But when I'm carrying a camera, I only have my non-dominant hand available, so it's more challenging. Fairer for the flies, I guess.

Anyway, I wanted to get out before they were bad, relative though that may be, so I didn't shoot the last quarter moon first thing this morning.

I was surprised the handheld high-res shot worked as well as it did. I often get failures with this phase of the moon. Perhaps not enough features for the camera to be happy with the alignment. Since it was essentially almost daylight by the time I shot this, I de-saturated the image for a gray-scale result.

Then the fun began.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:39 Wednesday, 1 May 2024

(Thanks, Jason.)

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 11:03 Tuesday, 30 April 2024

Rather than append something to the preceding post, I figured I'd just do another one.

Plus, I'm putting off doing another chore I'm not looking forward to.

But, in case it ever comes in handy, which it probably won't, here's how to get the screws in the second time without the bottom one going tink! (Not that it would have mattered at that point, the brine tank was empty.)

Do the bottom one first. I put the screw through the part, and because it wasn't already married up to the piece it was to be screwed into, there was more light as screw and part approached the black hole in the black plastic. A little more contrast, and an easier target to hit. Having the screw in the part gave me an additional point of control over the shaft of the screw, with the head being controlled by the screwdriver.

It was still fiddly, finding the hole, but the screw didn't go anywhere.

And a reminder, when screwing into plastic parts that are already threaded by what appeared to be a self-tapping screw, turn the driver counter-clockwise until you feel the screw give a little thunk, and settle into the hole, so you know you're married up to the threads.

As always, I'm an authority on nothing. I make all this shit up. (Obviously. As I go along.)

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:40 Tuesday, 30 April 2024

Slept ok last night.

Felt productive yesterday morning and attempted some maintenance on the water softener. The issue, again, is periodic episodes of very salty water. Started last November. Not good. No error codes on the controller. Checked the manual, apparently there's some annual maintenance we're supposed to do on this thing, which we haven't been doing. There's a "salty water" fault, and a few possible causes in the trouble-shooting section. One recommended action is related to the maintenance item we've not been doing. That seemed like the most promising lead.

Plumbing is not my forté. Looked simple enough on YouTube. Of course, my particular model, although allegedly the same, was different.

One unanticipated problem was with the float switch. The bottom of the tube it sits in is filled with salt. Came out easy enough. Trying to put it back in, I couldn't get it down all the way to the bottom to allow a little plastic bolt near the top to get through the hole in the tube to secure it. Tube is too small to get my arm down. How to remove salt?

These little frustrations annoy me, irritate me and make me angry. I have a little spring-loaded grabby-thing for when you drop stuff into relatively inaccessible places. I used it to pull little pellets of salt out, one by one, slowly, tediously, until I'd removed enough to get the float low enough to get the bolt through the hole. I rinsed it with fresh water after, but I suppose I'm going to have to buy a new one soon.

Then I tried to put the part I removed back on the control valve. As it happened, it wasn't clogged, so it's not the source of our issue.

Of course.

Two screws, one above, very accessible, the other below, nearly inaccessible. The video warned to be careful as a screw might enter the brine tank and then you'd have to go "fishing for it." I thought I'd be smart and use a magnetic bit.

It's not a ferrous screw.

Of course.

Despite my best efforts to be exceedingly careful in getting this screw into a black hole in black plastic beneath a block of black plastic with a flashlight in my mouth...

Tink!

Into the brine tank.

So, by hand, I remove nearly all the salt and most of the water. I'm looking for the screw as I remove salt and water, but no joy. I'm placing the removed salt and water into two buckets. Mitzi gets home and we find another bucket. We start removing salt from one bucket and putting it in the new bucket, again looking for the screw. She found it on the third or fourth handful of salt.

God bless her.

I get the thing put back together, but by now I'm exhausted and my hands are scraped and burning, especially my fingertips and finger nails.

I should know better by now.

Anyway, before this I tested the water from the street and again after the "maintenance." Very little difference. I suspect the resin bed is fouled somehow. I'm going to run some extra recharge cycles and see if it recovers, but I'll do that at night. Failing that, at the next episode of "salty water," I guess we're calling a plumber.

Such is life.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:10 Tuesday, 30 April 2024

One of the astonishing things about the rise of fascist dictatorships is that they tell you what they're going to do. And then it happens.

It works because about a third of the population welcomes autocratic rule, if the ruler looks and sounds like them. They don't like democracy.

About a third of the population doesn't believe the rhetoric, "It's just politics." Or they feel as though the "other side" is somehow worse. These are the fools.

Between the fascists and the fools, they can get a majority and then democracy is over.

It's kind of amazing we didn't get here before. I suspect it may have had something to do with the relatively limited amount of media we had before, and the role it played in kind of enforcing norms. Now, with a diverse, fragmented media with an intense competition for eyeballs, anything goes. No norms. Just "Grab 'em by the pussy," all day long, every day.

And here we are.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:35 Monday, 29 April 2024

While much of yesterday felt like wading through molasses, we did manage to make it to the garden to check on the plants. Probably 10 tomatoes coming in, a few beans starting and the peas are still struggling.

Because I was running at about half speed, I didn't bring a camera with me, but I did have the phone. These weren't our sunflowers, but I enjoyed looking at them.

Slept fairly well last night, but I'm still feeling pretty far from "refreshed."

We started watching some Japanese series on Prime last night, I can't recall the name just now, but it's about a U.S. nuclear sub crewed by the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force. At first I was put off by the way they depicted the Americans, then I recalled reading in the credits it was based on a manga series and then it made sense. They're remaining pretty faithful to the manga style(?) (tropes?). Not that I'm intimately familiar with manga, but I have seen some. We watched two episodes and felt, meh. But it did put me in the mood to watch a movie about submarines with subtitles.

So we (started) watching Das Boot (The Director's Cut). "Started," because it's more than three hours long, if I recall how much time we had remaining when I stopped it.

It seems hard to believe that movie is over 40 years old now. We are farther from when that movie was made than the movie was from the events it depicted when it was made.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 05:53 Monday, 29 April 2024

It's interesting how the modern home begins to resemble something as complex as a ship. In our case, perhaps more so because of the solar array and batteries. But also the water softener, hot water heater, the heat pump/HVAC system, the air cleaner, sensors for CO2, PM2.5, humidity. There's the automation system, the network connection, the in-home wireless network, the golf cart is like the captain's gig, chargers for the golf cart and the RAV4 Prime.

It all requires maintenance, and documentation. As I'm discovering. It's warming up and the AC is running more frequently. I deferred replacing the air filter last month because it was hardly running at all. I went ahead and put a new one in this morning and discovered that the semi-annual maintenance guy, who was otherwise simply outstanding, forgot to secure the cover, so air was blowing by every time it ran! Fortunately, it wasn't running much. Not like it will be shortly.

Anyway, I feel like I'm the EOOW, engineering officer of the watch here is USS SAUL (DWPV-849). Except the duty rotation is port and re-port, 24/7. The qualification system is OJT, and there's no one here to sign my qual card.

It's not for me, but I sense a "training and education" entrepreneurial opportunity here for some enterprising ex-sailor.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:59 Sunday, 28 April 2024

...an old Jewish saying.

Mitzi was supposed to arrive about 1900 yesterday, but she didn't get in until nearly midnight, which got us home after 0100.

It's kind of interesting. I fly very early in the morning, mostly because it's cheaper, but also because I generally seem to have fewer difficulties with delays and cancellations. Unless the plane didn't get in at all the night before, it's generally already at the gate by the time I'm there.

I learned when I was a working stiff that you didn't want to be trying to get out of Atlanta anytime after noon in the spring and summer because of thunderstorms. The company was paying for travel then, but I chose early flights to avoid the hassle of having to hang around the airport for hours. (I also learned to never have less than a one-hour layover in Atlanta. You may land on time, but you can spend 20 minutes just taxiing to the gate, and then it may be clobbered. I'm too old to be sprinting between terminals.)

In any event, it's a real bear getting up at oh-dark-thirty at my age, but traffic to the airport is very light and the TSA line is usually not crazy. Though I was glad for pre✅ last time, because it was insanely long in Albany even at 0430!

For all the hassle, I usually get to where I'm going on time and I don't spend a lot of time waiting in terminals or trying to rebook flights.

It may also have something to do with 22 years in uniform where, "Early is on time. On time is late."

This has been the third time Mitzi has been delayed coming in from the west coast. She books her flights at "reasonable" hours, like 0900. Her problems started yesterday before she ever got to the airport, with her 0900 flight being delayed to 1030, which meant she couldn't make her connection in Dallas. She booked another connection and by the time she landed in Dallas, that fight had been cancelled. So then she found another flight that was supposed to get in at 2315. Before she left, they updated the arrival time to 2330.

They landed at 2334. And then it took them half an hour to unload the bags. We left the airport a little after midnight.

It's been a sleep deprivation kind of week. Let's hope this one will be better.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:27 Sunday, 28 April 2024

We've been having some kind of issue with our water softener since November. I suspected the water softener, but Mitzi insisted it couldn't be. She'd had this model before in her townhome and never had any problems with it. But the water was salty and the only source of salt is the water softener.

I don't think I've got it resolved yet, but I think I know what I'm looking for now.

At any rate, I put it in bypass last night and then ran the water for a while to test the unsoftened utility water for total dissolved solids (TDS). They were lower than what I was getting out of the softener. Then I put the softener into recharge (wash the resin with brine), but forgot to take it out of bypass. I remembered that about 0430 this morning, for reasons I will never understand.

Anyway, it was pointless to lie in bed anymore thinking about it, so I got up to go check. Sure enough, it was in bypass. So I put it in service, and ran a recharge cycle.

At which point the drain hose blew off!

Hilarity ensued.

I vaguely recall "thinking" what do I do now? Well, I grabbed the hose and shoved it on the discharge fitting and held it there. Problem solved.

It now has a hose clamp. (Hurray for "junk" drawers.)

Cleaned everything up and let it do its thing. Went back into the office and watched a few YouTube videos on water softener maintenance. Read the manual some more, then decided to go for a walk.

I didn't see much in the weather forecast last night about rain. Sky was cloudy with an eerie red glow in the east. I carried the E-P7 with a Lumix 12-32mm/f3.5-5.6 compact zoom mounted. Neither camera nor lens is weather sealed.

I also made sure to pick the outdoor walk on the watch. More about that later. Maybe.

Anyway, it was warm, 70°F, so just a t-shirt and a ball cap and I was on my way.

A little over a mile in, I started feeling a light rain, very light. Didn't worry too much about it. Kept the camera cupped in my right hand.

About a mile and a half in, at roughly the halfway point, it was no longer "light," it was raining.

Seemed like my morning for getting wet.

Fortunately, it didn't last long. Did the best I could to shield the E-P7 with my hand and after it stopped raining I let it swing freely from the strap to perhaps "air dry." Got home, looked it over and it was dry everywhere I could see. Seems to be fine. Time will tell.

Made breakfast, watched a few more YouTube videos on water softener maintenance. Figured I'd attend to the marmot, and now I'm going to go take a shower and think about running to Home Depot for some more salt before I take this thing apart. I may take a nap first.

May not be my day for taking apart the water softener, but I think I have a pretty good idea of what to look at.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:32 Saturday, 27 April 2024

I didn't walk yesterday. I did bike to the garden and look in on the plants. We have some tomatoes coming in, but the peas look like they're struggling. The pole bean plant is climbing, but no beans yet.

Slept fairly well last night. At least, I didn't wake up at 0300 and struggle to fall back asleep. So I was able to get up shortly before the alarm feeling fairly refreshed. Shot this morning's moon and put that on Flickr. Browsed some of the activity feeds there.

Went through the RSS feeds, read Heather Cox Richardson's post and got exercised, which resulted in a blog post.

Then I took a walk. It was warm, so no vest with a pocket. I put the E-P7 (not the PL7) on my wrist with a Meitu 14-42 compact electronic zoom mounted. It's essentially the Lumix 14-42PZ (power zoom), re-badged for a short-lived brand. Got it for a song, but it's white so it looks kind of odd. I got rid of all my white cameras, though Mitzi has a white E-P5. I figured since the silver mZuiko 14-42EZ had died, I might as well use the Meitu.

The image above is one of the shots. It's a nothing shot, but it made me think.

The lens did draw the eye of the folks I passed.

When I rode my bike yesterday, I recorded it as my workout. When I was in New York, I got on the treadmill at the hotel once and recorded an indoor walk. (Incredibly boring, even with a podcast.) I recall looking for an indoor walk, because I know there are two, outdoor being the other. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I recorded outdoor walks. No problems. Rode my bike yesterday, and this morning I brought my watch up and touched the workout complication and selected what I thought was an outdoor walk.

For some reason, which I can't figure out at all, about a minute after I'd taken this picture, my watch asked me if I was finished with my workout. Now, it'll do this on an outdoor walk if I stop and spend some time taking pictures, offering me the opportunity to "Pause" or to "Dismiss" the query. But I hadn't stopped very long to take the shot, and I was moving pretty quickly when it interrupted me with this question.

Then I noticed that it wasn't recording my pace. It was recording distance, but not my pace. I didn't figure it out right then, I thought something must be wrong with GPS.

Well, when I got home I learned I had somehow selected indoor walk as my workout. As I recall, but can't swear to, the most recent workout is the default choice when selecting the workout complication. So it was probably outdoor bike, but I selected the first "walk" icon I saw. Apparently that was "indoor." Why? I'd done three outdoor walks previously.

I don't know why this happened. I'm so tired of Apple. Stuff works. Then it doesn't. I'm pretty sure it's no better on Android or Windows, and I'm pretty embedded in this ecosystem, but Apple is just disappointing. Size and success have spoiled it. I didn't welcome the interruption on my walk. I didn't want to wonder why it wasn't reporting my pace. I did want to know what my pace was. In hindsight it all makes sense, except why it would offer me an indoor walk at all. I've never done an indoor walk at this location. So much for all that "machine learning" bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.

Old men bitching about newfangled stuff. A tale as old as time.

I have no interest in whatever it is Apple plans to announce on May 7th. I'm reading rumors that MacOS is up for a major UI overhaul soon. I'm like, "Please, no. Just don't."

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:24 Friday, 26 April 2024

An antonym of "supreme" is "subordinate," according to the American thesaurus in MacOS.

The conservative majority on this court is "supreme" only in the sense that they warm seats on the highest court in the land. With the possible exception of Roberts, simply because he hasn't made as much news as the others, we have observed their character and they are as deeply flawed, conflicted and compromised as any American.

That isn't a virtue.

We don't want "ordinary" Americans sitting on the bench at the highest court in the land. We want extraordinary ones. These are very mediocre people, extraordinary only in the sense that the politics that put them there was so partisan and petty.

Subordinate to the process that placed them.

One of the disappointments amidst the myriad of tragedies that will accompany the collapse of this civilization is that there will be no history to record the mediocrity and mendacity of these minds. There will be no "judgement of history." Their infidelity and inferiority will be buried in the rubble they helped to create.

Perhaps in a thousand years, when humanity has regained the cognitive surplus to make a serious effort at understanding its past, some glimmer of their corruption may emerge, some record of their names and the decisions they made that hastened the collapse that buried their record for centuries may see the light of history.

“The evil that men do lives after them," until it buries all of us.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 05:49 Friday, 26 April 2024

I'm not, but, yeah. It's relevant.

I was pleased to read this piece and the comments in Protons for Breakfast. Flying is one of the most carbon-intensive things we can do. And, although flying is much more accessible today, it remains something of mode of transport for the privileged. More so since the airlines have figured out how to stratify the cabin space to maximize the revenue.

I won't go to Europe again. Or any other continent for that matter. I can't "enjoy" travel that I know has consequences for others that I will never have to bear. I don't judge people who do. Mitzi went to Greece with her daughter. I've been to Greece (over 40 years ago). I'm not going to begrudge them the opportunity to do so.

Now, I do fly in North America to see family or friends. If I had family or friends on another continent, I'd probably fly for that too. I believe it's important to maintain those relationships. I wish we had high-speed rail in North America, I'd be all over it. But we don't. I looked at going to Los Angeles by train. It'd take me a week and cost a fortune.

I don't think we'll see trans-continental high-speed rail in this country in my lifetime. We lack the political will to achieve anything great. Our elected officials are focused on each other and not the country they serve.

But I was happy to read about others who may be thinking the same.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 19:28 Thursday, 25 April 2024

For whatever reason, I'm skipping my walk this morning. I'll probably bike to the garden later.

D-cells aren't used in very many devices these days, but I have a few old radios that use them, and the iPod HiFi and a huge MagLite flashlight ("What it can't blind, it can bludgeon.") So I wanted to get some rechargeables a couple of years ago. At the time, I hadn't learned quite as much about batteries, and Panasonic doesn't offer an Eneloop in the D cell size. EBL seemed to get good reviews on Amazon, so I ordered a bunch of those.

They work, but I wasn't impressed with their longevity. At first I thought it was because NiMH native cell voltage is only ~1.2v, and so they were "dying" in the radio simply because the voltage was too low.

After watching a lot of battery tests on YouTube, I noticed that EBL batteries consistently underperformed their rated capacity in tests. So I ordered some Amazon Basics in the D-cell size, hoping they'll last a bit longer in a radio. I immediately noticed a difference when I took them out of the (very sensible, sustainable, plain brown cardboard) package. They were heavy.

Put one of each on the scale and this is the result.

So if you're shopping for NiMH rechargeables, I'd stay away from EBL and stick with Eneloop or Amazon Basics.

Hurricane season is just around the corner.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:28 Thursday, 25 April 2024

Haven't done one of these this month.

Thinking about riding my bike to the garden and then walking from there. Change of scenery.

Mowing the lawn yesterday has me feeling it in my knees. Not painful like Lyme, just like from exertion.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:19 Thursday, 25 April 2024

Started watching it last night. Finished it tonight. I'll watch it all in one sitting after Mitzi gets home.

It's impressive. Part of me wishes it might have been longer, a series, maybe two seasons? Feels like the climax was a bit rushed?

I'll have to find a day and watch both movies back to back. After I get the 4K Blu-Ray.

Probably the best SF movie I've seen in a very long time. It's not "profound," but it is an epic bit of storytelling.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 21:16 Wednesday, 24 April 2024

The mZuiko 14-42/f3.5-5.6 EZ lens died shortly after this shot. Pretty sure it's a ribbon cable issue. I have three of them. Well, two now.

Started late this morning. Got back, had breakfast and then I mowed the lawn.

I don't usually mow the lawn. But Mitzi's been gone for over a week and doesn't get back until Saturday and someone will write us a ticket if we don't keep our useless patch of grass neat and tidy. So I mowed.

Now I've got to call someone about VA Aid and Attendance assistance. First I need to make sure I write down all my questions. I think she meets all the requirements, but I'm not sure about income. Her net worth is well below the threshold, but her income is relatively "high" even though it's insufficient to meet her present expenses and we're drawing down her savings, which again, are modest.

Anyway, time to get some ducks in a row...

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:31 Wednesday, 24 April 2024

634GB available this morning.

Whatever "available" means anymore on MacOS.

But still...

Cool.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:37 Wednesday, 24 April 2024

I watched this Nathan Macintosh special yesterday...

On my iPhone!

Although some of it felt a little harsh, I thought he delivered a lot of very keen insights as well. Not of the "uplifting" kind either. More like high-velocity lethal darts, expertly aimed that left you laughing even as they killed you.

Irony being the fifth fundamental force of the universe, I'm writing this on a screen, to be read on a screen.

It was text on a tv that really made me fall in love with computers. "Programming," telling it what to do, was a distant second.

It was always the screen.

This is worth watching.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:27 Wednesday, 24 April 2024

This is what it's like living in Florida today. John Candy is the GOP without all the charm and humor. The two trucks are climate change and sea level rise.

While they avoided a collision, you may recall that the car burned up afterward.

Also on point.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 17:54 Tuesday, 23 April 2024

Yesterday was Earth Day, which I mostly ignored.

On Sunday, I got a phone call from the candidate recruitment committee of the Florida Democratic Environmental Caucus. It went to voicemail because I have focus modes turned on all the time. That's an outcome from turning 65 and being inundated with unsolicited calls about Medicare Advantage plans.

I returned their call yesterday and told them I no longer lived in that district (It moved, I didn't.) and no way in hell was I going to run for anything again. Whereupon I then shared much of my frustration with politics in Florida with the poor woman. I did say I was available to offer any guidance or insight I could if they manage to find a candidate. She was quite patient and understanding.

I mentioned that I thought they were going about this the wrong way. They shouldn't be looking for people to run in this year's election, this year. They should recruit someone to run two years from now, help them form a committee and raise money.

Not sure the message got through.

Also pretty sure it wouldn't matter. Florida is gerrymandered to a permanent Republican majority.

When we get one or two major hurricanes in a season, and the insurance market implodes, then maybe people will be willing to listen to an alternative. For now, we're all trapped in a clown car on a highway to hell.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 16:29 Tuesday, 23 April 2024

I made the external Photos library the System library, re-enabled iCloud for that library and then deleted the library on the iMac's internal SSD. Should have freed up over 400GB of storage.

Nope.

I guess it's all in snapshots because of Time Machine. Eventually, I guess, those will all age out as the backup on the dedicated Time Machine drive will hold whatever the archival version is.

I'll give it a few days and see what happens.

I do like the ability to search for text in images in Photos. I recalled taking pictures with my phone of a lot of my dad's service record. I needed his DD-214 as part of the effort to get Mom some help from the VA. I entered DD-214 in the search field and it was the first image in the result.

It's nice when something works.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 16:13 Tuesday, 23 April 2024

From the old joke about, "What do they call the guy who graduated last in his class in med school?"

Do you suppose the three Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump feel as though they carry some sort of stigma? Appointed by a former game show host. A guy who tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power and incited insurrection and sedition. That was their ticket to the highest court in the nation?

I mean, Clarence Thomas has clearly been nursing a grievance ever since he was confirmed. I can't imagine that he feels as though his career on the court has been deeply personally rewarding to him, made his life meaningful. He got a lot of nice vacations and a Winnebago; but he just seems like such a bitter, angry guy. One who can never be happy because of his experience during confirmation.

I can't imagine Gorsuch is proud of his association with Donald Trump as the president who appointed him. Or the fact that he got the job because Mitch McConnell held it for him, denying Obama his last pick.

But yeah, he's a Justice. In some ways, the least tainted.

Kavanaugh with allegations of sexual assault and his on-air meltdown. In 20 years, who's going to remember or care? Well, he will. That whole sad, sorry, very public episode. "Can you define 'boof,' please?" That will be at least in his memory until he dies. And the memories of anyone who watched those hearings too. Keeping his calendar from his (private) high school days? Not as creepy as Amy Coney Barrett's religious affiliation with People of Praise, but still, pretty weird.

Barrett has that whole "Handmaid's Tale" vibe about her. Her tissue-thin resumé, and the fact that she just straight up lied through her teeth on Roe being "settled law" in her confirmation hearing certainly made her a typical Trump choice.

"Everything Trump touches, dies."

Becoming a Justice of the Supreme Court ought to be the highest achievement in a career in law. It should be a source of pride, and genuine personal reward. But I think for these three Justices, it's nowhere near the kind of achievement or reward it might have been, were it not for being nominated by Donald Trump.

I'm sure they and others explain it away by blaming "the left." But the fact remains that they were appointed by one of the most partisan, divisive and polarizing presidents in American history. One eager to accept partisan nominees who could be certain to tilt the court to the hard right for decades to come.

It's not just that there will forever be this metaphorical asterisk next to their names, it's the fact that they will be forever associated with Donald Trump and the chaos and corruption that surrounds him.

But, "Supreme Court Justice."

That's what we call them.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:46 Tuesday, 23 April 2024

"Productive" may have been optimistic. I've just been sucked into a time-sump figuring out whether or not my two external SSDs are operating as fast as they could be on my 2019 27" iMac. I remain unconvinced, but it's possible that they are. For the moment, further investigation seems futile. Or at least, boring.

I have decided to copy the Photos library over from the iMac to one of the SSDs which has over 3TB free. I can hear the fans spinning over here in the recliner while I leave the iMac to do its thing.

For the moment, I intend to maintain the Photos library on the external drive. I quit Photos before undertaking the copy, and I'll relaunch Photos from the external library. I'll need to ensure that it's the "system" library at that point. Once, which is to say that it's the library sync'ed with iCloud. Once I'm confident that is the case, I'll delete the library from the iMac's internal SSD and stop worrying about disk space.

Shot the title pic this morning on the walk. Nice, crisp morning. I dialed my pace back a bit because I went fairly aggressively yesterday and my achilles tendons feel tight, which has historically been a precursor to a bout of tendonitis. I'd like to avoid that. May also be due to switching from a pair of worn Columbia "hiking" shoes to a pair of New Balance "walking" shoes. My gait is jacked up anyway, my shoes wear grossly unevenly with the right sole wearing out at the heel and ball areas long before either part on the left sole.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:27 Tuesday, 23 April 2024