Progress in Paradise...

Progress in Paradise...  Debbie keeps getting a little better every day.  Today we had a milestone: she was able to dress herself after washing up and shampooing her hair.  Also, she thinks she may be ready to try the walker in a few days.  That will be a big milestone, because then she'll be able to get around (the first floor, at least) on her own.  In a few minutes Bruce and June N. will be coming over to visit her.  They are the couple who helped us find this house, and they've become friends.  They live just a few miles south of us, in Avon.

This morning the dogs and I took our usual walk, and we ran into the crews moving and starting up the irrigation for the day.  We also passed one of the tractor/baler machines that have been baling up all these fields of alfalfa.  It appears to have just stopped in the middle of its work, probably when the driver knocked off for the day.  There are several common sizes of hay bales used around here, and this baler makes the biggest ones.  These are very highly compressed, much more so than the small bales I'm familiar with.  Each of these bales weighs around two tons.  No throwing them around!  You have to have a fairly large tractor with special hay forks to move these suckers around.  The farmers like them because they are so highly compressed; it makes the hay stacks more compact.

After our walk, I helped my neighbor Tim D. move his irrigation string, and then he volunteered to help me put the finishing touches on the ground leveled out yesterday with the giant loader.  Tim drove all kinds of machines that moved earth for almost 40 years, when he worked for LeGrand Johnson's paving division.  He's an expert.  All he had to work with was an old Massey-Ferguson tractor (he's named it “Betsy” and a simple blade.  With those tools, he turned yesterday's rough work into a piece of finished work.  That's him at right.  He's doing me a huge favor, but I could tell that he was having a lot of fun.  The big grin was a giveaway :)  Afterwards he and I had a big glass of limeade while he visited with Debbie.

I did a bit of the finishing work with the loader on my tractor.  I knocked down a couple of sharp corners, and flattened out a ridge.  To get ready for this work, I had to take my backhoe off.  That's always a tricky thing to do.  It requires futzing around with the hydraulics to get the backhoe positioned perfectly to take the load off the two pins that hold it in place.  It usually takes me about a half hour, but today I did it in just 20 minutes.  I'm thinking that maybe I should just spend a day practicing this until I actually get good at it :)

Now I'm hot and tired, and looking forward to a nice visit with Bruce and June!

Progress in Paradise...

Progress in Paradise...  Lots of happenings today!

Debbie is progressing incrementally, looking and feeling a bit better every day.  She's still essentially bedridden, though, and she's going a little stir crazy because of it.  It's been almost three weeks since her fall, and since she's been imprisoned in her (nice, comfortable, full-service included) bed.

Last night, one of her friends from southern California (Marsha Y.) stopped by for a great visit.  She stayed for several hours of conversations and reminiscences.  We stayed up way past our bedtime!

I took a walk with the dogs in the cool morning, up the farm road on the hill to the east of our house.  In the past few days these fields have dramatically changed in appearance – the three foot tall alfalfa has all been mowed, raked, dried, baled, and removed.  Now there's 4" stubble remaining, and the irrigation is going full blast (see at right).  When we got to the top of the hill, we could see 19 strings of wheel lines (like those in the photograph) going – and some of those strings were close to a mile long.

As we were walking back into our driveway, a gigantic loader drove by us, very slowly.  It was one that our neighbor Tim D. had arranged for us, to do some terraforming down on the southeast part of our property.  This is the same general area where the Mormon horde helped us clean up a few weeks ago.  There was a part there, roughly an acre in extent, that was so weirdly sloped that there was no way I could mow it.  The loader was there to sculpt that weirdness into something more attractive, and more maintainable.

The loader operator, a genial fellow named Alan L., talked with me for about a half hour about exactly what I wanted to accomplish.  Then he (very politely) told me to get the hell out of his way and let him get the job done.  Three hours later, he'd finished – and had created something considerably better than I'd hoped for.  I wish I'd been smart enough to take a “before” photo, but alas, I wasn't.  However, you can see clearly here that we how have an eminently usable piece of ground here!  I'm going to plant some grass here for now, but later in the bottom, flat part we're going to plant something that will make an attractive roadside display.  That's going to take some research on our part, to find something that will do well here without any irrigation (this is one of the few awkward spots on our place to irrigate).  I did have one bizarre thought later, though – it just might be feasible to put a solar powered drip system in that sourced its water in the canal just 20' away.  Another thing to research :)

That was plenty of excitement for one day, but it got even better.  Around 1 pm, I got a call from a trucker – he had a load for me.  I was expecting my air compressor (which I've been trying to buy since January!), so I got my tractor going and met him by the road, expecting to be unloading 650 pounds of air compressor.  Instead, he had a much smaller pallet.  I had to get the bill of lading out to see what it was – and it was the PTO powered pressure washer that I ordered back in March.  It finally came in!  Woo hoo!  I took it into the shed and started to unpack it, and my phone rang again – another trucker with a load – and this time it was the air compressor.  Double woo hoo!

So I spent the next two hours unpacking and inspecting the two shipments.  The pressure washer is a particularly impressive piece of machinery.  It's a pile of parts and a bag of bolts right now, though the pump is fully assembled.  The pump is Italian, and I'd have guessed that even if I didn't already know – there's a certain style to Italian machinery that one rarely sees in machinery made anywhere else.  This is a purely functional, industrial piece of kit – but some engineers spent time making it beautiful anyway.

The air compressor was remarkable for a completely different reason: it was not a kit!  I was shocked – for once, a piece of equipment I ordered came fully assembled.  Wow!  However, the air compressor more than makes up for that by the complexity of its installation.  I have to connect it to both 240 V and 120 V, plus an air intake (to clean outside air), the compressed air output, and two separate water drains (one for the tank, the other for the air dryer).  Another project :)

The word is starting to get out around town that Debbie is injured again.  This evening, one of the members of the Relief Society for the ward we live in stopped by to check on us.  As with all their visits, she just wanted to make sure we got any help we needed.  She looked disappointed that we really didn't need any :)  She chatted with Debbie for a while, very friendly and neighborly.  She's good friends with Michelle H., the woman who cleans our house.  Small towns are nice that way.  When she left, she left Debbie wearing a smile and feeling very good indeed about the area we retired to.

We love living here!

Climate alarmists converging on reality...

Climate alarmists converging on reality...  What a pleasant thought that is!  Jo Nova re-published the lovely graphic at right...

Are you still depending on major media for your news?

Are you still depending on major media for your news?  By that, I mean outlets like the New York Times, CNN, the Los Angeles Times, or Fox News.  Here's an excellent example illustrating why your trust is most seriously misplaced.  There are some slightly better outlets: the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, etc.  But the difference is more like that between Coke and Pepsi, not Yugo and Mercedes.  In my own experience, bloggers and independent journalists (like Michael Totten, or Michael Yon) are far more reliable and insightful sources.

Before you start condemning the major media, you should reflect upon why they are so bad.  The reason is simple.  The kind of “news” they're spewing is manifestly what consumers want.  It's what draws the viewers and readers.  It's not their fault that we're (collectively) a bunch of moronic thrill seekers.  It's ours...

Why are the Baltic states nervous about Russia?

Why are the Baltic states nervous about Russia?  Here's why...

Cheaper batteries...

Cheaper batteries ... through better manufacturing.  Fascinating story about the startup 24M...

Best Fourier series graphic evah!

Best Fourier series graphic evah!  I could watch this for hours...

This is the real promise of manufacturing by 3D printers...

This is the real promise of manufacturing by 3D printers ... making things that would be impossible with conventional manufacturing techniques.  Gotta work on the cost part, though :)

3D printing has a place with prototyping and very low volume manufacturing, but for anything needed in quantities above a few dozen, conventional manufacturing techniques are inherently less expensive.  That doesn't look likely to change anytime in the foreseeable future.  But ... 3D printing does let you make some things that you couldn't practicably make by any other means...

Solid-state drives to reach price parity with hard disks next year?

Solid-state drives to reach price parity with hard disks next year?  So says this fellow, and quite a few others.  My favorite sentence in the article:

“If you were told that a BMW and a golf-cart were the same price, which would you buy?”

I'm already buying the BMW (only), even though it still costs a bit more.  I haven't purchased a hard disk in about four years...

Making a Celtic stone axe...

Making a Celtic stone axe ... using only primitive materials and tools.  This is impressive.  I'm in awe of this maker.  But ... I do like my power tools :)

It's box turtle time...

It's box turtle time...  My sister Holly found one laying eggs in her driveway!  More photos here...

Progress in Paradise...

Progress in Paradise...  Maybe the title today should be “pooped in Paradise” instead :)  Bright and early this morning, the Fellowship of the Mustard Pullers gathered again in our field.  Tim D., myself, and Maria S. and her kids Nicolas, Abby, and Sarah all attacked the remaining quarter acre or so of mustard.  And we emerged victorious!  About three hours after we started, there wasn't a mustard plant anywhere to be seen on the 7.5 acres of alfalfa that Tim D. is running (that's on a combination of 5 acres of his land, and 2.5 acres of ours).  The kids were being paid by Tim, by the hour, and they were eagerly pursuing their mustard-derived riches.  However, when we temporarily ran of mustardly things to do (because we were waiting for Tim to return from dumping a load of mustard so we could load him up with another), they spontaneously started moving some irrigation pipe from the field to its storage location.  Such initiative involving physical labor is not something I'd ever expect a kid in California to do, but here it's pretty much the norm.  When the kids know help is needed (and they know it with Tim), they're on the lookout for things they can do to help.  It's almost enough to give me hope for the future, except that I've met all too many of the California-style kids.

After all that work (the last half or so in the hot sun), I'm not feeling too energetic today :)

Flowers in Paradise...

Flowers in Paradise...  These are all currently in bloom in our yard...

I want to be like this guy when I grow up!

I want to be like this guy when I grow up!  Wooden combination locks.  This would never have occurred to me!

The death of homeopathy?

The death of homeopathy?  Jeez, let's hope so!

“It was a farce.”

“It was a farce.”  You just can't trust anything this administration says!

Utah street names...

Utah street names...  One of the things that took some getting used to here is the street names.  Well, really, the lack of street names!  Very few streets here actually have names at all.  Instead, they're numbered in a uniform system, and sometimes have an additional highway name. 

For instance, our property here is bordered by two roads, each running north/south.  On the east side of our property, the road is mainly known by it's highway name: State 165.  That road is also known as “200 West”, which means it's 2 blocks west of Main Street in Paradise.  Every town has a Main Street and a Center Street, laid out at 90° to each other (forming a cross).  Their intersection is the zero/zero point of a coordinate system that names all other roads in that town.  The road on the west side of our property is “400 West” – which is, of course, 4 blocks west of Main Street in Paradise. 

While all this was confusing at first, now that we've figured it out we're finding it to be very convenient.  If someone gives us an address, we immediately know where it is.  We don't need a map.  There are only a dozen or so towns in all of Cache Valley, and we've learned where all of them are.  If someone gives us an address like, say, “435 N 500 E, Providence” – then we know exactly where that is and how to get there without needing a map at all.  Good trick!

There's a more detailed explanation of the system here...

A peek into the horrors of the progressive mind...

A peek into the horrors of the progressive mind...  Bob Shrum is a well-known Democratic consultant, and politically a progressive.  Here's a quote from him reacting to the recent Charleston church shootings:

“I cannot imagine the horror that could’ve occurred if people were sitting around with concealed weapons, this thing started and you had a full-scale gunfight.  You might not even have three survivors.” 

So his take is that had the victims been able to defend themselves, more people would have died.  That's such an utterly stupid analysis that I am at a loss for words.  My pistol-packing mama wasn't, though: she thinks Mr. Shrum is “missing a few wires up there”.  Quite possibly!

It seems rather obvious to me that if even one person inside that church had had a gun, the results would have been different – and fewer people would have died, Mr. Shrum's moronic views notwithstanding.  In order for that to have happened, though, South Carolina would have to change it's laws.  It's currently illegal there for citizens with concealed carry permits to take a gun into a church.  Obviously that didn't stop Roof – but it would (and did!) stop ordinary citizens from defending themselves.  I won't be a bit surprised if the police discover that one of the reasons Roof targeted a church is that it's a gun-free zone – so he knew that nobody would be defending themselves there...

The zipper...

The zipper...  Via reader Simi L.:

In a crowded city at a busy bus stop, a woman who was waiting for a bus was wearing a tight leather skirt. As the bus stopped and it was her turn to get on, she became aware that her skirt was too tight to allow her leg to come up to the height of the first step of the bus.

Slightly embarrassed and with a quick smile to the bus driver, she reached behind her to unzip her skirt a little, thinking that this would give her enough slack to raise her leg.

Again, she tried to make the step only to discover she still couldn't. So, a little more embarrassed, she once again reached behind her to unzip her skirt a little more. For the second time, she attempted the step, and, once again, much to her chagrin, she could not raise her leg. With a little smile to the driver, she again reached behind to unzip a little more and again was unable to make the step.

About this time, a large Texan who was standing behind her picked her up easily by the waist and placed her gently on the step of the bus.

She went ballistic and turned to the would-be Samaritan and screeched, "How dare you touch my body! I don't even know who you are!'

The Texan smiled and drawled, "Well, ma'am, normally I would agree with you, but after you unzipped my fly three times, I kinda figured we was friends."

Evening in Paradise...

Evening in Paradise...  I took a ride on my ATV, to one of the higher hills in the valley.  It's only about two miles from home, over farm roads.  The photo right is looking to the south, across fields of barley that's nearly ready to harvest.

The dogs and I took a walk just before this.  The temperature was 89°, down from today's high of 93°.  The forecast for tomorrow is for a high of 88°, a tad cooler than today.  The dogs didn't seem to care about the heat, but ... when we walked under an irrigation sprinkler, they were practically dancing in the cool water, obviously reveling in it :)

Pater: a Father's Day memory...

Pater: a Father's Day memory...  Of course my thoughts today kept wandering to memories of my dad.  At one point I tried to remember any Father's Day with him, and I wasn't having much luck.  My dad wasn't the sort to celebrate a “holiday” like that, nor am I for that matter.  But one memory finally did pop up – something I hadn't recalled for many, many years now.

I can't place the year exactly, but it would have been when I was about 13 or 14 years old – so something like '65 or '66.  It was a weekday before Father's Day, I think a Friday (because Father's Day was imminent).  I was working with my dad at the home of a landscaping customer, somewhere in northern New Jersey.  The customer's name was Deer (or maybe Deere), a couple with at least one child, a young girl perhaps 17 or 18 years old.

My dad was working in the front of the house, and I was spreading mulch down in the back yard, near a pool house.  The girl (whose name I've long since forgotten) came down to go swimming.  Before she went in to change, she stopped to talk with me for a few minutes.  I remember that she asked me what we were going to do for Father's Day, and I said “Nothing special.  We’ll all be home on Sunday, as usual.”

“Does your father work on Sunday?”, she asked.

“Usually in his office, or maybe at the nursery.” I said.  “But we’ll probably play some croquet or something in the afternoon.”

We really did play croquet on occasion, and other sorts of games both indoors and outside.

“My father always works at his office in town every day.  We hardly ever see him.” she said.  “You’re really lucky to be with your father all the time!”

That last sentence was accompanied by an expression of the purest envy.

If I remember correctly, her dad was a lawyer.  It was evident from the quality of his home that he made a great deal more money than my dad did.  I'd imagined, in the naive way of a child, that having all that money would make for some very happy kids.  I certainly wouldn't have minded having my own swimming pool!

But there was his daughter, envying me because I had something she couldn't have: what we'd call today quality time with my dad.

I know now that she was right to be envious.  Between work and play, I was with my father for more time in a year than most kids have in their entire childhood.  My dad was extremely accessible to me, as his work was either on the farm I grew up on or at customers' sites, where I was quite likely dragooned to help.  I had many, many hours of time with him driving to and from customers' sites – time we filled with conversation about all sorts of things.  Whether we were on the road or at home on the farm, he'd frequently take a few minutes to show me something interesting, or to explain something I was curious about.  This was my “everyday dad”, and I only realized how unusual that was when I joined the U.S. Navy and met people with very different experiences of their father (or, all to often, no experience at all because they never knew him).

Yup, she was right to be envious.  I was a lucky kid indeed to have the father I did...

I've had the privilege of knowing quite a few children of immigrants...

I've had the privilege of knowing quite a few children of immigrants...  Any one of those people could have been in this video (though none were).  Many of the sentiments expressed by these people are ones I share about my own parents, but these children have an extra poignant element: their parents came to this country as strangers in a strange land, with next to nothing in the way of resources.  That makes everything more difficult – and their successes and sacrifices more admirable...

Must-read piece on the impact climate change is having on science...

Must-read piece on the impact climate change is having on science...  By Matt Ridley, writing at The Quadrant.  A sample from the beginning of the article:

Sure, we occasionally take a swipe at pseudoscience—homeopathy, astrology, claims that genetically modified food causes cancer, and so on. But the great thing about science is that it’s self-correcting. The good drives out the bad, because experiments get replicated and hypotheses put to the test. So a really bad idea cannot survive long in science.

Or so I used to think. Now, thanks largely to climate science, I have changed my mind. It turns out bad ideas can persist in science for decades, and surrounded by myrmidons of furious defenders they can turn into intolerant dogmas.

Someday I won't cry on Father's day...

Someday I won't cry on Father's day...  But today is not that day.  We miss you, dad...

This is what happens when a tech company has $200B in cash...

This is what happens when a tech company has $200B in cash...  They start doing really weird stuff that you'd never expect from a hardware company!

I, for one, welcome our new news overlords.  They couldn't possibly be any worse than the current batch!

Mama, don't let your kids grow up to be...

Mama, don't let your kids grow up to be ... weed-pullers, lest they turn out like the character at right.  That's my neighbor Tim D., recovering in the shade next to my shed after we got done pulling weeds yesterday morning.  All of us looked about like this :)

Took the dogs for a dawn walk...

Took the dogs for a dawn walk ... and that's what it looked like to our east.  We had just enough light to walk up the hill; by the time we walked back we had plenty of light and the sun was just touching the tops of the mountains to our west.  As I write this, the valley (where our home is) is still dark, but sunrise will probably happen in a half hour or so...

The seasons of Saturn...

The seasons of Saturn...  As imaged by the Cassini probe.  Via APOD, of course.  Full resolution version here.

Not long ago, I was talking with one of our local kids about the robotic probes that captured the wonderful images like these.  She had never known a time when high quality imagery of objects in space was unavailable.  Somewhere during the conversation, it dawned on her that the robotic probes were a relatively recent invention, and she asked me how we got images “before”.  When I told her that we simply didn't have them – that, for example, we knew Saturn as a fuzzy blob with fuzzy rings and very little detail – she thought I was pulling her leg.  Yet I can easily remember the wonder of those first probes – Ranger, Mariner, Venera – returning grainy images that were miraculously better than what could be obtained from earth.  I can also remember the amazing advances in adaptive optics making leaps and bounds in improving earth-bound astrophotography.  It wasn't so very long ago, really, that images like the one above could be found only in science fiction illustrations made by painters with vivid imaginations.  Now they're routine, and rather taken for granted...

Morning in Paradise...

Morning in Paradise...  I woke up at 3:30 this morning, and I could tell that I wasn't going to be able to go back to sleep.  So I got up, took a shower, and then walked outside with Mo'i.  The sky was moonless and slightly overcast, so it was dark but I couldn't really see the stars very well.  The night was

quiet except for a few birds peeping occasionally, and the sounds of hundreds upon hundreds of sprinkler heads irrigating the fields all around us.  These sprinkler heads come in all manner of shapes and sizes, from the bog-standard Rainbird impact sprinkler at right to the monster “guns” like the one at left, with nozzles as large as 1" in diameter.  Not only does each model of sprinkler have its own unique sound, but various accessories also do.  For instance, many sprinklers alongside a road have “shields” that stop the sprinkler from spraying the road; these have a very noticeable sibilant sound.  Then there are many sprinklers that have the ability to reverse direction, so they sweep back-and-forth over an area; these make different sounds depending on which direction they're rotating.

The most complex sounds of all come from some of the big guns that have computers controlling the water pattern so that it makes even coverage over a rectangular field.  The computer moves several controls on the gun to make the water shoot exactly the right distance to hit the corners of a field without over-spraying the sides.  They even compensate for wind drift!  A few weeks ago, I stopped to talk with a farmer setting one of these up.  He looked like an IT guy, with a laptop plugged into his “gun”, a wind direction and speed sensor, and a GPS surveying system to plot out the fields geometry.  He told me that his “gun” cost a little over $3,000, but would pay for itself in the first year by evenly sprinkling his whole field without over-spraying.  He figures he'll save around $1,000 in fuel alone (the sprinkler is powered by a diesel pump). 

I could hear all these sprinklers as we walked.  Some of the sprinklers I heard were likely over a mile away.  It's quiet at 4 am in Paradise :)

Today is mowing day.  I haven't mowed for over a week, and I irrigated this week.  The fertilizer I put down a few weeks ago has kicked in, and the warm sunny days have done their thing.  My lawn will have to be reclassified as a forest if I don't mow it down soon.  I'm going to generate enough clippings that you'd think I could bale it and sell it as hay :)

Usually when I finish mowing, our driveway is covered with lots and lots of grass clippings.  Today I'm going to blow them all off with the wheeled blower I got last week.  Should look very nice when I get done!

Progress in Paradise...

Progress in Paradise...  Did you ever have one of those projects that you thought was going to be a trivial thing turn into the project from hell?  That happened to me today.  The project?  Installing drip irrigation for the five pots of color that we have on our second floor balcony.  What inspired me to do this was discovering a spigot immediately below the balcony.  No particular part of this project was hard – the only real problem was that I kept forgetting one part or another for the system.  Since this was the first drip irrigation I've installed at our home in Paradise, I didn't have the box of all the miscellaneous parts and tools you need for this job.  There's the filter, the faucet adapter, the pressure reducer, the back-flow preventer, the timer, the 1/2" tubing, the 1/4" tubing, the barbed flow emitters, the bug stoppers, the stakes, the emitter installation tool, and 25 or so other things.  I made a lot of trips to Ridley's.  Had to fill up on gas.  I'm thinking about new tires.  And I definitely am now overdue for maintenance on my truck.  My wallet is overstuffed with Ridley's receipts, most of them for under $5.  Sheesh.

Well, now I have that box of miscellaneous drip irrigation parts and tools!

And the drip irrigation is working fine.

I also finished installing three swinging bird feeder arms on our balcony.  I started the installation a couple days ago, with that effort ending with a couple coats of black paint.  Now that the paint was dry, I could install the actual arm and hang some feeders out: two hummingbird feeders and one oriole feeder.  We've seen quite a few of both around here, including a nesting pair of Bullock's Orioles near the southeast corner of our property, in a black willow along the irrigation canal.  I like these swinging arms, though I wish they were made of a bit heavier gauge steel.  Still, they're strong, mounted easily to the balcony rail columns, and the swinging action is perfect for getting the feeders out over the yard (instead of the nice, clean balcony floor).  The hardware that comes with them assumes you're mounting them to wooden beams, but all I had to do to make them work was to buy some good sheet metal screws and an “L” bracket to hold up the bottom.  This was both inexpensive and easy.  The black paint was a choice of mine, to make the swinging arms match (and blend in with) the balcony railing.  That worked great!

The dogs and I just got back from a roughly one mile walk, which we made very slowly because it's hot outside.  Our thermometer reads 90°, and I believe it.  The weather site says it's 23% relative humidity right now – not bad.  Except that I know that's wrong, because we have irrigation running upwind of us – it's probably more like 80% at our house.  When we had walked about a quarter mile away, the humidity dropped sharply; the difference was easily perceptible.  The dogs had one exciting moment along the walk today.  They all stayed on leash, but at one point they all three (even the ancient and venerable Mo'i!) zeroed in on a dead robin about 4 feet off the road.  Suddenly I had three dogs pulling me with about 500 pounds of force.  It was simply not possible for me to hold them back – until it occurred to me to grab onto my neighbor's fence post.  For a good minute or so, those damned dogs did their level best to separate my left arm (holding their leashes) from my body.  If they could have mustered just a few more pounds of force, they'd have succeeded.  When I hold my two arms straight out in front of me now, my left arm is now about a half inch longer than the right.  If it's still that way in the morning, I'm going to be a little worried about it!

His very own Harrier...

His very own Harrier...

Language distribution...

Language distribution...  Here's a simple graphic showing how many people speak each of the world's major languages.  There were definitely some big surprises here for me!  High resolution version here...

Progress in Paradise...

Progress in Paradise...  Debbie's still getting a little better each day.  Her appetite (which has been suppressed by the pain meds) is starting to kick back in.  We had pizza yesterday afternoon, which is by far the most substantial food she's had in two weeks.  Swelling and bruising is slowly getting better, but not fast enough for her :)

Yesterday morning a gaggle of neighbors (Tim D., Maria S., and a bunch of little S.'s) came out, and we all pulled mustard from our field.  Tim is running alfalfa and barley on our field, and one section – about a half acre – is more mustard than crop.  There's no way to get rid of that other than pulling it, all 10 bazillion plants.  We worked on that for a couple of hours yesterday, and about three hours this morning, and now its about 75% gone.  We've made giant piles of the pulled mustard, which we'll be hauling up to an old quarry a half mile away, to dry and be burned.  Monday morning we'll finish up the last of it.  Pulling mustard is pretty low on my list of fun things to do, but ... doing it in a group like this, in soil softened by irrigation, with lots of joshing and good conversation ... that makes it a lot more interesting.  I walked back in this morning with a stiff back, a serious thirst, and a big smile.  I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Yesterday morning, right after we finished pulling mustard, Ryan O. (our heating and air conditioning guy) showed up to reconnect our air conditioning compressor.  He had disconnected it last fall for us, so that I could dig a trench under it for water, network, and gas connections to the shed.  When he lit it off, there was the most lovely burst of cool, crisp air on our second floor.  It's been sweltering up there with our outdoor temperatures in the high 80s and low 90s.  Now it's just sitting there at 72°, and feeling ever so nice when I come in from outside.  Yay Ryan!

Not long after Ryan left, my new brush mower showed up.  This is a 20 HP beast that will chop through 6' tall brush and 2" diameter saplings.  I hook it to my ATV, which gives me a combo that I can get into just about anywhere.  The thing was a kit, naturally.  It took me about 3 hours to uncrate it, assemble it, fill it with oil and gas, and light it off.  The engine is electric start, and the thing lit off the very first time I cranked it.

There's a lot about a quarter mile north of our place that just sold early this year.  The new owners haven't built on it yet, so it's just two and a half acres of weeds.  Those weeds were taller than me – 6 or 7 feet tall in places – and some of them had 1" “trunks”.  I called the new owners and got permission to mow it down, and that's what I used to test out my new mower.  It worked like a champ!  I only managed to stall the mower once, in a particularly tall thicket of something that looks a bit like tumbleweeds.  The rest of it all went down effortlessly.  It was hot, dusty work, but otherwise not physically demanding.  Ninety minutes and the field was down.  Yay!

I'm not sure what I'm going to do today.  For now, I'm just going to sit and enjoy my apple juice and chair :)

Debbie update...

Debbie update...  Well, we're back – and with unexpected news.  Good news, mainly.

When we checked in for her appointment, we were surprised by a request to take more X-rays.  This request came before we'd even finished the check-in paperwork.  Though we'd brought our iPads so we could read while waiting, we never even got a chance to crack them open.  The MRI from last week was full of artifacts from the metal in Debbie's knee (we knew this already), so the surgeon wanted X-rays to get a good picture of her knee's current status.  These X-rays went quickly and easily, in no small part because of the kind and attentive work of the X-ray tech, a young lady named Brook.

As soon as we were done with the X-rays, we were scooted into the exam room, where we waited for about 10 seconds for the surgeon (Dr. Tom Higginbotham) to come in.  We'd not met him before, so we didn't know what to expect, though he was highly recommended to us by two friends in Paradise.  Within a few minutes, we knew we had a good 'un – he was cheerful, considerate of Debbie, full of information, and happily answered all our questions.

But what he had to say quite surprised us!  While he acknowledged that the MRI shows a “slightly ratty” meniscus, he's not at all sure that's a problem.  And, more importantly, it's not the worst problem in her knee.  He said that the MRI also shows a fracture of her medial condyle (the knobby “knuckle” of the knee, one of two attached to each femur, or upper leg bone).  The fracture was just a hairline crack, and the X-rays confirmed that there was no displacement (bones shifting) at all.  The treatment for this is very simple: wait.  Wait for about six weeks post-injury, or about four weeks from now, before putting any weight on that leg.  No surgery required.

The way this fracture was diagnosed was interesting.  The MRI clearly shows the edema in her knee.  “Edema” is just a fancy word for swelling, in this case in her knee.  It was very evident indeed at the time the MRI was taken, and indeed it still is.  The MRI also shows that there were two kinds of liquid causing the edema.  One was liquid that was mostly water, but the other was a liquid that was mostly fat or oil, and it floated on top of the water (much like separated salad dressing).  The water-based liquid is mainly from blood or plasma, but what's the fatty liquid from?  Well, it turns out that the presence of such a fatty liquid is a signature of a fracture.  It's caused by bone marrow leaking out of the broken bone.  It was the presence of that fatty liquid that lead Dr. Higginbotham to search for the fracture, which was quite a subtle feature on the MRI (and didn't show up at all on the X-ray).

So now we have a follow-up appointment in mid-July, and between now and then she's going to be basically bedridden and helplessly dependent on me.  Which she hates, of course.  After she's all healed from this fracture, then we'll have another discussion with Dr. Higginbotham about whether to clean up that meniscus (and remove all the hardware)...

There are many ways...

There are many ways ... that people can demonstrate their craziness.  These two decided to do it by flying tandem through a hangar at 185 MPH.  I'll call that an effective demonstration!  Full screen it...

A big step in browser-as-a-platform...

A big step in browser-as-a-platform...  It's extraordinary to see such broad cooperation amongst browser makers.  It's almost like they understand the value of standards :)  Even Microsoft is participating, which makes me wonder if the end days are nigh.  In any case, if this standard is actually widely deployed, it means that soon the browser environment will not be strictly a JavaScript world – any programming language could be supported in a cross-browser way.  Watch out, operating systems!  Browsers will be the new applications platform...

Biological compass located...

Biological compass located...  It will be interesting to see if this same sensor can be found in higher animals...

An online plant identification service...

An online plant identification service...  This is an amazing concept, a mix of automation and botanists identifying any plant from photographs, at a cost of about a dollar per identification.  I haven't tried it yet, but I am most definitely going to – I must have 50 plant species around here that I'd like to ID...

M64: the black eye nebula...

M64: the black eye nebula...  Via APOD, of course.  Full resolution version here.

Progress in Paradise...

Progress in Paradise...  Today's the big day for Debbie.  We're off to see the surgeon today; it's the evaluation for her torn meniscus repair surgery.

I went walking with the dogs early this morning.  Our routine walk (past the barley field at right) turned into something very non-routine, though, when Race decided to take off chasing voles through a just-mowed alfalfa field.  He ran about a mile north of me; I could hardly even make him out.  I tied Mo'i and Miki to a fence post and took off after Race.  Only by jogging about 3/4 of a mile could I get close enough for him to hear me, and even then he was reluctant to come to me.  I finally wrassled him into a leash – which is where he's going to stay.  Forever.

Our neighbor's 11 year old boy (Nicolas S.) and I helped our mutual neighbor Tim D. move his irrigation pipes this morning.  The pressure has been low for a couple days, but this morning it's back up, so Tim was eager to get his four strings of pipe up and running on his alfalfa.  He's also wetting down some mustard so that Nicolas and his siblings can pull it out later today.

Yesterday afternoon we took delivery of some carpet stair treads.  They're quite nicely made, and Debbie is very happy with the color and design.  I'll be installing them today and tomorrow...

Sandra and Lizzy...

Sandra and Lizzy...  Via reader Simi L.  Awesome!

I can't even imagine our dogs doing this!

Progress in Paradise...

Progress in Paradise...  Debbie's still on the mend.  Tomorrow's the big day: surgical evaluation.

I started my day with a walk, at about 5 am, with all three dogs (some photos below).  The weather was lovely, and we all watched the rising sun playing on the hills across the valley, to the west.  Race was bounding through the tall alfalfa like a mad dog – in the space of five minutes, I'm sure he traveled at least two miles.  At one point he was a half mile or so away from me.  All I could see was the madly waving white tip of his tail, except for when he made a great leap onto a (possibly imaginary) vole.  He did this about every ten seconds.  He's going to be very disappointed on our next walk, though – the alfalfa field was mowed today.  They'll probably bale it on Friday, then start watering to start the next cutting off growing quickly...

I had a good day today; got a lot done. I started by making a long-overdue cleanup of the shed's first floor.  I loaded the tractor's forklift up three times: once with plastic and other packing trash, again with cardboard and pallets, and finally with two giant trash containers.  You can actually see the floor in the garage section now :)  Then I installed three swinging hummingbird feeder holders on our balcony rail.  This, of course, involved several trips to the hardware store for screws, paint, etc.  But it's done now! 

Toward the end of the day my Billy Goat blower arrived (mine is similar to the one pictured at right).  I had to meet the truck in Providence (about 8 miles away) and we transferred the 165 pound box to my pickup.  Naturally it was a kit, and it took me about an hour to assemble it.  The Honda motor started on the third pull (after being shipped without either gas or oil) and roared to life with no hassles at all.  My test run down the driveway was a spectacular success – one pass each way and every last foreign object is blown off the pavement.  Awesome!  I never knew such a device existed until the crew came to seal my driveway two weeks ago.  They used one of these to clean my driveway before spraying the sealant.  After watching them work with theirs, I said “I gotta get me one of those!”  So I did :)

Now I've got some laundry going, and I'm about to go wash the dishes, tend the cats, walk the dogs, and then crash.  Hard!

They don't even try...

They don't even try ... to hide their contempt for the American people.  Hillary's star seems to be fading a bit, but all available data suggests that she's still the most likely candidate to win in 2016.  That's ... damned hard to accept...

Proof that Finland is the land of the bored...

Proof that Finland is the land of the bored...  Across the Baltic Sea in Estonia, they would have automated this...

My brain has not fully evolved...

My brain has not fully evolved...  Says so right here!

I hate it when that happens...

The doom...

The doom ... is stalking me...

Progress in Paradise...

Progress in Paradise...  Debbie continues to improve every day, though that dang knee still can't hold any weight.  Just two days until her surgical evaluation.  She's backed way off on the pain medication, which I'll take as a very good sign!

Lots of little things got done the past couple of days.  I finished mounting my shaper to its mobile base.  This was a little complicated by the fact that I needed to raise it a couple inches.  I used 4 x 6 lumber, resawn (on the band saw) down to an actual 2" x 5.25".  I cut it to the right length and mounted it in the bottom of the mobile base, and the shaper is attached to the wood from the top.  Works great!  Then I assembled and tested my new log splitter; it worked just fine. 

I've been waiting for several months now for a ballast box to go on the three point hitch of my tractor.  This counterbalances a load in the front loader when I don't have the backhoe attached.  My workaround was to leave the backhoe attached all the time :)  Yesterday evening Lawrence W. from Agri-Service delivered it, finally.  It's basically just a big steel box with the right bits on it to mount onto my tractor's three point hitch.  I fill it with something heavy (dirt or stones will do fine) and I'm good to go.  I'll be taking the backhoe off shortly to test this out.

I've set up all the 3" aluminum hand line in our yard now, so we're ready for the irrigation season.  We have two lines, with 12 and 7 sprinklers respectively.  Today I bought three more sprinklers and risers so that I can extend that to 14 and 8 sprinklers.  This is so that I can irrigate two areas that we're converting from weed patch to lawn.  Naturally, just as I finished all this setup our Paradise Irrigation pressurized water lost all pressure.  I suspect a filter is clogged badly somewhere...

This morning I walked the dogs before dawn, at about 5 am with the sky just beginning to lighten in the east.  It was a crisp, cool morning and the dogs all reveled in it.  Miki and Race bounded through the alfalfa, which is now about 3' tall.  I'm sure they'll be mowing it very soon now, as it's in full bloom.

My neighbor Tim D. came over around 7 am to move his three strings of hand line.  I gave him a hand (as he's done for me many times), and we had a fun conversation the whole time we were working.  Neighbors driving or walking by stopped to say hello and shoot the breeze for a few minutes.  We found a tequila bottle out in our field (where Tim is running alfalfa), and we both marveled at the unlikeliness of that artifact showing up there!  I noted on one of his hand line strings, Tim has a 15' long section of 3" hose (allowing him to bend at any angle) that was old and full of holes.  I picked up a new piece today and replaced it.  Fitting that new hose up would be hard for him, as he's got pretty bad arthritis in his hands.  It felt good to be able to help a bit.  I haven't told him what I've done (and he doesn't know about this blog), so I'm anticipating him trying to figure out how his old hose magically got renewed :)

Yesterday I heard from LeGrand Johnson company that they're going to have a big loader out our way next Tuesday, and that I can have some of its time.  I'm going to get them to do some cut-and-fill work on the southeast corner of our property, between the irrigation canal and the highway.  There's a section of old irrigation canal there.  I'm going to have them fill that in and make a gentler, consistent slope in that whole area.  The goal is to get a slope that I can mow easily.  Once I have the right slope, I'll start spraying it a few times a year with 2,4-D, and pretty soon I'll have grass there.

Now I'm trying to get myself motivated to clean up the shed.  It's full of packing material and dirt that need to be dealt with.  But it's hot and I'm feeling lazy :)

Paradise people...

Paradise people...  This is one of those days when we can't help but think we're actually living in paradise...

First, this morning I was out moving some irrigation pipes (a routine thing out here).  My neighbor Tim D. put-putted up on his ATV, hops off, and starts helping me move the pipes.  He'd spotted me from his place, a half mile away, and decided that I needed help.  I could easily have done it myself (and did so quite a few times last year), but the job was much more pleasant with a friend helping out.

Second, Michelle H. came today to clean our house.  She's been coming every two weeks since January, and we've come to think of her as a friend.  Always cheerful, her daughter Lizzie often helping, and the house looks great when she's done.  Our dogs love her (an important measure for us :).  This morning when she drove in, I warned her that Debbie had fallen and hurt herself, and talked with her about what we needed done.  An hour or so later, Lizzie rang the doorbell – and she had a beautiful bouquet of flowers for Debbie in her hands.  I got her a vase and she fixed them all up; now they're at Debbie's bedside.

When we were looking at houses up here, we were looking at the properties and the homes to evaluate them.  I did go interview all the neighbors to make sure we weren't going to move next to some raving lunatic, but we weren't consciously using the quality of our neighbors as a selection criterion.  Now that we're here, we think we screwed up: we should have found these Paradise people first, then moved into whatever hovel would allow us to be near them.  Instead we accidentally bought a nice property right in the middle of a whole bunch of the nicest people we've ever met.  The “provincial Mormons”, as one of my friends called them (a Mormon himself!).  He was gently poking a little fun at them, but I think they should wear that label as a badge of honor...

The crazy things progressives believe...

The crazy things progressives believe...  I heard this on NPR (I listen so you don't have to) while on the road to get some tractor parts.  I needed hydraulic couplers for my new log splitter, and I listened to the Diane Rehm show on the way up.

I wasn't on long enough to catch the name of her guest, but I did hear him expound on a notion I'd not heard before.  From Ms. Rehm's responses, I could tell this was something she thought of as obviously true.  The notion: that competition and altruism were in direct opposition.  In other words, that one could not behave in an altruistic manner and still succeed in a competitive environment.

I'd never heard this notion stated baldly like this before.  The ultimate altruistic society would be socialist (or Communist), in the theoretical sense – not how any socialist or Communist state as actually been implemented.  In such states, there would be no competition.  All that is old hat, standard progressive fare.  What's new to me here is the assertion that competition must be eliminated in order to have altruistic behavior.

Ms. Rehm's guest expounded on this at some length.  He believes, for example, that children should be shielded from competitive pressures – and then they would “naturally” grow up to exhibit altruistic behavior.  In other words, perfect little socialists.

This notion is also a wonderful way to demonize capitalists.  If you're a capitalist, you are by definition competitive – and therefore you're a selfish oaf and the enemy of the perfect altruistic state.

These sorts of things leave me speechless.  I cannot imagine the profound naivete and self-ignorance required to actually believe such utter balderdash. 

And these people vote.  And they'll likely vote for either Hillary or Bernie.  And these thoughts make me feel the doom is approaching...

Happy Flag Day!

Happy Flag Day!  Via my lovely bride with the torn meniscus...

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  From Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit:

If I were Romney, I’d run for President again, with bumper stickers that just say “I fucking told you so!”

Oh, yes...

A morning in Paradise...

A morning in Paradise...  Debbie's getting stronger, and having less pain, every day.  This morning she looks like she could get up and go for a walk.  I think it's only the meniscus tear stopping her, and that should get fixed in the next week or so...

My job for this morning was to set up the irrigation for the strip of lawn along the east side of our property.  This is about three weeks later than last year, as we've had so much rain the past month.  But it's time now!  The pipes have been stacked on the ground for the past 8 months, so they're full of dirt, leaves, and dead voles.  After I laid all the pipe out, I left the end plug off and blasted water through the pipes to clean them out.  Then I put the plug in, turned on the water, and discovered that I had four plugged sprinklers (out of 12).  Not too bad.  Fixed them, but then discovered that the last pipe's gasket was gone, so tons of water was leaking around the end plug.  Turned off the water, put in a new gasket, turned the water back on, and voila!  We've got irrigation (photo at right, click to embiggen)!  I'll be using this roughly weekly for the next four months or so.

At the end of this exercise, I was soaking wet from unplugging the sprinkler heads.  To get dry, I rode my ATV up and back a farm road near our house, the same one we go walking on – except I took the road all the way to its end.  I discovered that we've been walking on the worst part of the entire road!  As soon as Debbie's good to go walking again, we're going to change that.  The last 3/4 of a mile of that road are a gorgeous walk through rolling fields, right now planted in a grain I don't recognize and alfalfa.  The alfalfa is in bloom; looks like the farmer's late in cutting it.  The last part of the road (middle photo) is overgrown with alfalfa, but still easily passable.  Along the way I saw two pairs of quail, a species I don't know with prominently rusty brown coloration.  No chicks, dang it!  I also got a closeup view of a meadowlark, plus I flushed a red fox out of that alfalfa field.  I think he was hunting voles :)

Your morning glurge...

Your morning glurge...  More here...

It's lovely...

It's lovely ... when one gets a good night's sleep, isn't it?  And it's a lovely morning here in Paradise.  People all around me are setting up their irrigation lines for the first time this year, and that's exactly what I'll be doing in just a little while myself...

Yes...

Yes...  That phenomenon is completely unknown here.  I haven't seen the saggy pants even once.  I asked my neighbor about that once, and he said “Now why do you think God gave the Mormons shotguns and backhoes?”

Paradise blossoms...

Paradise blossoms...  These are all from our yard, today and yesterday.  The most surprising ones to me are the wild roses, 25 feet in the air, blooming after climbing our choke cherries (last photo)...

Skyrmion memory?

Skyrmion memory?  I know very little about skyrmions; just what I've gleaned from a few articles read over the past year.  I can't help but think of magnetic bubbles (which were also used for computer memories) when I read about them, though they're not at all the same thing.  This morning I read of some recent advances with skyrmions, including some potential mechanisms to use them for computer memory. 

Human ingenuity seems to have no bounds...

Progress in Paradise...

Progress in Paradise...  Debbie is starting to back off on the pain medication.  This took a lot longer than either of us expected, but we're taking that as meaning she's on the mend.  She's got nearly full use of her right (injured) arm back, and all the swelling at various places in it is nearly gone.  She's got a lot of bruising, though, and it continues to “evolve” daily.  Her injured knee is still too painful to bend at all – almost certainly the meniscus tear – and she still can't put any weight on it at all.  Today we're going to try to get her in the shower, for the first time in 9 days.  We're both looking forward to that :)

Yesterday I kept busy with little things.  First thing in the morning, while it was still cool, I leveled a few square yards of soil near the house, where we trenched last year to get water, gas, and network to the shed.  This is the area where our air conditioner's compressor is mounted, and it's getting warm enough that we would like to have that working again.  After leveling, I set four 18" square pavers in place to make a square yard base for the compressor.  Then I set the compressor itself on top of the pavers.  Early next week our HVAC guy (another of the wonderful contractors I found last year) will be here to reconnect it all, and recharge the refrigerant.

After I finished with that, I tackled a window screen and screen door in our bedroom.  These both had falling-apart screen material in them, not at all cat-proof (and Jahar, our Savannah cat, lives in our bedroom).  I replaced all that with pet-proof screen, plus installed new wheels in the screen door.  This took a trip to Home Depot, of course.  If there was anything that I wished was closer to us, it would be Home Depot :)

Just after lunch, a truck driver (with a comically stereotypical Mexican accent) called to warn me he was about to arrive.  He was delivering my new log splitter – a 30 ton model that attaches to my tractor's 3 point hitch, and (more importantly) uses the tractor's hydraulics.  The thing weighs 550 pounds, so we needed my tractor's fork lift to get it out of the truck.  We had another little challenge first, though.  The log splitter was laying sideways on a double-sized pallet, twice as long as it was wide.  It was sitting cross-wise in his truck.  Between the log splitter and the trailer's door was another pallet (not mine) with 1,500 pounds of paper products on it.  The driver wanted me to offload that pallet that was in the way so he could roll my pallet to the back.  My tractor can't lift quite 1,500 pounds, though – it's limit is 1,250.  We tried, but it wouldn't budge.  The driver thought we were stuck until I pointed out that we could rotate my pallet (so it was oriented long ways), then move the little pallet alongside and behind it with his pallet jack.  It took me some talking before he got the idea, then he was smacking himself in the head for missing something so obvious.  The scene was like something out of an implausible Hollywood comedy.  Once we maneuvered the little pallet out of the way, offloading mine was a breeze – and now yet another project sits in my barn.  Why is this another project?  Well, because of course it's a kit – and in addition, I have to get custom hydraulic hoses made up to fit my tractor.  Of course.

All you equipment manufacturers out there: it wouldn't offend me at all if you were to deliver the stuff I buy ready to use.  Not one bit...