Evening walk in Paradise...

Evening walk in Paradise...  Just Miki, Race, and I tonight.  I let Mo'i wander about in our back yard at his own pace, stopping when he needs to.  The three of us marched at a quick pace a little over a mile (with 300' elevation gain) to an abandoned quarry, and back.  Normally on these walks, paced by Mo'i, my muscles don't even notice it.  Tonight I can feel a little burn in my quads and calves.  It's a good thing!  Or at least that's what I'm told...

The photos below are from that walk.  The first one is looking to the southeast from right near that quarry.  In the foreground is the corner garden I took photos of earlier.  In the background is the home of the gardener, about 3/4 mile away.  That family owns a couple thousand acres of prime hay fields in this area, and they plunked their home right down in the middle of it.  I haven't met them yet, but I can tell they're probably my kind of people :)  The second photo is a panorama looking due west.  I was trying to capture the 22 visible strings of irrigation lines all running right now.  Most of the alfalfa fields have now had their first cutting, so sunshine and water are the farmer's primary objectives.  They want a nice growth burst for the second cutting – and this year, they're getting it in spades.  The last photo is take slightly north of west, showing part of what's in that panorama – but bigger.  You can't see all 22 strings in that photo, but you can pick out 17 if you try really hard.  There's a lot of water being squirted around right now!  Click to embiggen.

One of my readers had the gall to email, complaining that he couldn't understand the diagram I published earlier.  He wanted a photo.  Ok, here's your photo (at right).  I took this photo before I had the brilliant idea of taping the wires together in the correct orientation; at this point I was orienting them by hand, very tediously.

I finished wiring up the air compressor today, both the 240 volt circuit and the 120 volt circuit.  I also capped off the output so we can test the pressure tank when the technicians go through the startup testing (hopefully later this week).

I have an appointment for this Thursday to have my tooth root-rootered, or possibly yanked if it's damaged beyond repair.  If they do yank it, it will be the first tooth (not counting my deliberately removed wisdom teeth) that I've ever actually lost.  I'm hoping that's not required...

Another set of neighbors (Gary and Elaine S.) came by today to see Debbie.  This community is kind of amazing this way.  We just barely know Gary and Elaine.  They live on the other side of the highway from us and probably because of that we don't have much contact with them.  Our previous contacts with them have mostly been waving and saying “hi”.  Today they came over and stayed with Debbie for an hour, and Elaine promised to come by a few times a week – and to bring us a dinner tomorrow night.  They came by because they'd heard from another neighbor (Tim D.) that Debbie was ailing, and that was all the nudging it took for them to take the initiative to see if we needed any help.  They behaved exactly the way you'd expect a good friend to behave.  What a place we landed it!

Asphodelus aestivus...

Asphodelus aestivus...  Common name: summer asphodel.  The bee ain't bad, either!  Via BPOD, of course...

Morning in Paradise, in the shadow of the mountain edition...

Morning in Paradise, in the shadow of the mountain edition...  Took the two younger dogs (Miki and Race) out for our morning perambulation.  Mo'i isn't feeling too well after pooping all over the kitchen; he's resting up for his next adventure.

I took the first photo below as we were walking to the east, away from home.  The sun is just below that minor peak in shadow.  The sky is lit up brightly because technically it's after dawn.  The official dawn starts when the sun peeks above the theoretical horizon – where the horizon would be if there were no mountains.  This almost never occurs in the real world on land, but on the sea it happens all the time.

The second photo was taken about 10 minutes later, as we were headed downhill and west, toward home.  The sun is at our back, but we're deep in the shadow of that silhouetted peak.  To the right of the dirt road you can (barely) make out the alfalfa field that was mowed 11 days ago.  It's now around 15" high, so that alfalfa is growing at just over 1" per day.  In the distance you can see the Wellsville Mountains all lit up, and below them the nearby foothills – they're about a mile and a half from where I was standing.  They're all lit up as well, and you can see very nicely how all the fields with their different kinds of grass, forage, or grain have changed in appearance from the similar photo I took about a month ago.  Many of the fields have been mowed now, and a few have even been plowed and replanted.

The rainstorm yesterday delivered 0.55" of rain, according to my rain gauge.  That's a bit more that forecast, and very welcome.  We have three more days with roughly a 50% chance of rain in the forecast, so we might get even more.  That sound you hear is all the local farmers cheering.  Except, of course, for those who just mowed their fields.  They've now got soppy windrows that will have to dry for several days before they can bale...

Floating point follies...

Floating point follies...  I ran across this blog post in my morning reading, and as I was reading it I thought “Jeez — this is like a litany of all the floating point problems I’ve seen programmers stumble into!”  Two memorable occasions:

1. While working at a firm that provided hedge fund IT infrastructure as a service, I worked with a team implementing an algorithmic trading server.  This was implementing a relatively simple algorithm called “pairs trading”.  Part of the calculation involved raising a pair of fixed numbers to a series of powers, looking for a particular relationship between the results.  The powers were 1.00 to 1.99, in increments of 0.01.  The programmer's initial approach was to calculate the two fixed numbers raised to the 0.01 power, then accumulate as he iterated through the increments.  The programmer did this in the belief that he'd speed up the calculation by avoiding the power computation (which wasn't actually true on the server the code executed on, though it was true on his laptop).  However, much to his surprise and consternation there was a considerable error in his computation by the time he got to the end.  He sought my help on this, and we changed a few lines of code to eliminate the accumulated additions by doing the power raising for each iteration, and the error disappeared (of course).  I was tempted to tell the programmer that the problem was caused by his choice of Visual Basic as the programming language, but that didn't seem fair :)
2. While working at a different electronic trading firm, we had a problem wherein the cost we computed for a trade didn't match what NASDAQ computed and charged us.  Usually the difference was a few cents and we just ignored it, but one day a trader bought a huge number of shares of a very low cost stock, and the difference was over $100 – enough for my boss to tell me “Go figure that out, damn it!”  When I dug into our calculations, I could find no errors, so I called my peer at NASDAQ, a pleasant fellow named Gary.  He told me he'd run into this a few times before, but had never figured it out.  He sent me the block of code that did the calculations on his end.  Our code was Java; theirs was C++, but in both cases the code used the underlying x86 machine's floating point processor.  After staring at the two pieces of code side-by-side for a while, I realized that we were doing a particular multiplication with the operands in a different order.  We were multiplying shares x price, and they were multiplying price x shares.  When I swapped the order of our multiplication, the difference suddenly disappeared.  I called Gary back and told him what the problem was, and he told me I was crazy – multiplication was associative and that was that!  An hour or so later he called me back and said he'd duplicated my results.  That was one very disillusioned programmer!  After that, he and I had several phone calls (at his request) so I could educate him a bit about floating point numbers.  Despite having a very responsible position on staff in a large exchange, he knew next to nothing about them – most especially about the sorts of things outlined in the blog post linked above.
   

Bullwinkle...

Bullwinkle...  Our neighbors have named the moose who visited us a couple days ago.  Here's a photo Alan L. took with an actual camera, showing Bullwinkle in our alfalfa/grass field:

To the voters of America...

To the voters of America...

Evening in Paradise...

Evening in Paradise...  Took the dogs for their evening walk, but we didn't go very far as Mo'i wasn't feeling like it.  At one point he backed out of his choke collar, turned around, and started trotting for home.  We had to jog to catch up with him!  I guess he really just wanted his nice, soft doggie bed :)

There's an impressive line of storms to our west, heading for us, as I write.  The photo at right was taken to the northwest, where it's very dark right now.  You can't see it, but our house is behind the trees at the left edge of the photo.  I think we're about to get rained on, and the radar (at left, click to embiggen) shows that.  Paradise is where that little circle with a plus sign is, and just to the left (west) of it you can see the yellows, oranges, and reds of an intense rain cell...

This guy set a new record...

This guy set a new record ... for being completely insane.  I don't know how you can top this one!

Progress in Paradise...

Progress in Paradise...  We actually had some progress today, on wiring up my new air compressor.  I ran most of the 240 volt circuit today, about 60' of the total of 85' that I have to run it.  I did the hard parts today, through two walls and into the main circuit breaker panel.  All that's left is the final 25' across a wall, and terminating in a junction box.  Should be a piece of cake to get that done tomorrow.  Then all I have left (for the air compressor) is a short run of 120 volt line for the air dryer that's built into the compressor.

The 240 volt line I was running today is comprised of three 8 gauge copper wires, colored red, black, and green.  I'm running them inside a 1/2" PVC conduit, so in cross-section it looks something like the diagram at right (the scale is approximately correct).  As you can see from the diagram, the three wires fit inside the conduit with plenty of room to spare – and yet, running those wires through the conduit proved to be quite a challenge!

Why would this be challenging?  Well, imagine moving that red wire over to the other side of the green wire.  At one point in that process, all three wires would have to fit side-by-side inside the conduit – and the conduit just isn't big enough for that to happen.  In practice what this meant is that I had to “comb out” the three wires and tape around them every foot or so, to make sure they stayed in the same orientation.  Otherwise I could never have gotten them through the conduit!  Also, I had to do this one piece of conduit at a time, so that at most I had just a single bend to navigate.  This made the process quite tedious.  Of course, if I had been bright enough to buy 3/4" conduit...

These heavy wires are needed only because the start-up current for the air compressor is unusually high.  Under full load that motor (5HP) will draw about 21 amps – but during startup, according to the documentation, it will spike as high as 35 amps.  Yikes!  So I have to have a 40 amp breaker, and that means 8 gauge wire is the smallest safe size.  That's a whole lot of copper when you're talking about an 85' run, which is what I have...

Pictures from Paradise...

Pictures from Paradise...  The first photo below is attempting to show the beautiful droplets hanging from green berries on a tree I haven't identified in my back yard.  The second is a local “corner garden”.  These are pretty common around here, in the corners of fields where the turning radius prevents the mowers, balers, and other equipment from getting into.  Rather than waste the space, people grow little gardens in them.  This on is drip irrigated, and is growing very quickly.  It's far enough from any waterway that it's not likely to have racoons stealing everything from it.  Skunks and magpies will be there, though.  The rest of the photos are from a barley field a half mile east of our house...

It's no longer spritzing...

It's no longer spritzing ... it's raining.  We've already had a tenth inch, in just the past 10 minutes or so.  Go, rain!

Morning in Paradise...

Morning in Paradise...  For some reason I've slept particularly well the past couple of nights.  Generally speaking, a solid night's sleep is a rarity for me – something that happens maybe once a month.  In a good month.  To have two such nights sequentially is most unusual.  If this is a change brought about by ancientness, then I may embrace my ancientness more!

At 5 am, before dawn, the dogs and I took off on a morning walk.  Our heat wave appears to have broken last night – it was cool and humid this morning, and it even spritzed on us a bit.  The forecast is calling for a high of just 78° today, which (assuming that pans out) will feel downright chilly compared with the high 90s we've been experiencing.  The forecast for today also has a good chance of rain, with 4/10ths predicted.  That will be welcome here, especially for all the hay farmers around me.

We only saw one exciting thing on our walk.  Our first sighting was from about 150' away, an animal the size of a small dog scampering through alfalfa that had been mowed 10 days ago.  It was too dark to see it clearly, but it was headed right for us.  It was too big to be a skunk, so I just stopped.  The dogs went on full alert, staring intently at the moving shape.  It was downwind of us, so they had no odor cue, and didn't know what it was.  Finally it emerged from the field onto the road, just 6' or so in front of us – and then we could see that it was a gigantic house cat!  It was an orange tabby (I think – the light was very dim), and had the look of an intact male.  It's attitude was all cat: it glanced at us disdainfully, dismissively, and continued on its way at its own pace.  This despite the fact that all three dogs were slavering, barking, bouncing at the end of their leash trying to get at it.  The cat saw no threat at all, which really tweaked the dogs; they renewed their efforts to seem fearsome.  They failed.  Cat: 1, dogs: 0.  Human?  Laughing :)

As I write this post, it's just starting to get light outside my window.  The sky is deeply overcast, and it's sprinkling just a little.  I just got out my binoculars and looked at my rain gauge; it shows 3/100ths" last night.  That's about right if it spritzed most of the night, which I suspect it did, as everything is damp outside.

My mom and I have started playing a Scrabble-like game (called Lexulous) over the Internet.  So far I am clobbering her in an embarrassing fashion.  She claims its my good letters.  I did something to make her laugh (no idea what!), so it's a good morning :)

Oh, noz!

Oh, noz!  New Horizons is having problems.  I sure hope they get this resolved before the flyby, which is only 9 days away!

Curiosity...

Curiosity ... is looking at odd rocks on Mars...

Zeta Ophiuchi...

Zeta Ophiuchi...  Gorgeous false-color photograph taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope in infrared wavelengths.  Via APOD, of course.  Full resolution version here...

Intuition...

Intuition...  I ran across this blog post in my reading this morning.  It caught my attention mainly because it has a Feynman story in it; one that I was familiar with, but hadn't thought about in a while.  In it, Feynman talks about the importance of developing an “intuition” about physics problems, in addition to understanding the mathematics describing them.  Sometimes that intuition will get you to an answer long before you can prove it with the math.

I think that same observation applies across many kinds of science, and even some math itself.  I've noted the same phenomenon with arithmetic many times.  In particular, developing the skill to do arithmetic mentally or on slide rules (which actually involves quite a bit of mental arithmetic) helps you develop an intuition for the general value of a solution to an arithmetic problem.  Almost any problem in more advanced mathematics (say, a differentiation problem) involves, in the end, simple arithmetic, then having such an intuitive grasp on arithmetic helps you avoid errors in the more complex math.  I've used a variation of this to argue for the value of slide rules over calculators or spreadsheets.  As I read this blog post, it occurred to me that what I was really arguing for was developing an intuition for arithmetic, as Feynman argues for physics.

Several other fields I'm familiar with demonstrate the same value of an intuition.  Analog electronics, for example – having an intuitive understanding of how the basic components (resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, transistors) work is an incredibly powerful base to build an understanding of electronics on.  As Feynman might have said, you could analyze any circuit with mathematical tools, but it's far easier if you have a good intuition for how the parts work.  I think the same thing could be said for programming, or mechanical engineering, or concrete mix design...

A reader...

A reader ... who requested anonymity! ... wants to know what I think of the #FreeTheNipple “movement”.  Being an unabashed lover of all things booby, I am – of course! – 100% supportive of anything that causes the Internet to produce things like this, this, or this.

Did you really need to ask?

I haven't asked my (Mormon) neighbors what they think of this movement, but somehow I doubt they are as supportive :)

I'm a plugger...

I'm a plugger ... and there are a lot of pluggers in this part of the world.  Friend and reader Doug W. turned me on to this cartoon series...

He speaks for me...

He speaks for me...  Charles C. W. Cooke, writing at The National Review.  His conclusion:

That matters, especially for the liberty-minded man, for if he hopes to be free; if he hopes to see his natural rights protected and respected; if he hopes to agglutinate himself to the most beautiful set of ideas in the history of mankind — well, he has no choice but to stick around and fight. Today, I shall raise a glass to the last great hope of mankind. Tomorrow I shall go back to griping about all and sundry. 

 

For America, of course.

Do read the whole thing...

Doom.

Doom.  I feel the doom approaching...

Celebrating Independence Day...

Celebrating Independence Day ... in the nanny state.  Remy, of course...

ObamaCare premiums set to soar...

ObamaCare premiums set to soar...  More details here. 

While I was at the dentist the other day, we were talking about the impact of ObamaCare.  They've seen a precipitous drop in insured patients, as when local employers switched to ObamaCare-compliant insurance policies, they all dropped dental insurance.  Why?  Cost, of course.  That got me to thinking about our health insurance, and what it would be like if (as projected) our premiums rise by 30 to 35%.

Right now – before any projected rise – our healthcare insurance is by far the largest monthly expense we have.  Our home is not mortgaged, but even if it were the mortgage payment would be smaller than our monthly health insurance bill. 

If the premium rises by 30%, our healthcare insurance payment will be greater than all our other monthly payments combined.  In other words, more than half of our minimum monthly living expense.  More than groceries, gas, home and car insurance, power, phone, TV, and Internet combined.  And this is for a health insurance policy with such high deductibles and co-payments that we are out of pocket more than $10,000 for the year (mainly because of Debbie's two injuries) on top of the insurance premiums.

What a crazy world we live in...

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  Mark Steyn:

“And there, in a nutshell, is the story of the modern western world: not enough wild independent spirit, just more paperwork.”

Hah!

Odd sightings in Paradise...

Odd sightings in Paradise...  Last night, as Debbie and I were settling down to go to sleep, our phone rang.  It was our neighbor Alan, sounding very excited, telling me that a moose was headed straight for our front yard!

He wasn't kidding.  When I poked my head out our front door, there was indeed a moose standing right next to my pickup truck.  I managed to get a couple photos of it (below) with my iPhone.  Alan showed up shortly thereafter, carrying his Nikon with a telephoto lens attached; he told me he got some good photos (and maybe he'll share).  Click to embiggen:

Shortly after I took these photos, Alan approached trailing a gaggle of excited kids.  They clambered all over the back of my pickup, looking for a safe place to watch the moose.  The moose wasn't excited about all this attention, and wandered off into the irrigation canal, about 200' from where I took these photos.  Alan and the kids left, and then a milk delivery man drove in – and was quite startled to find a moose standing in front of his truck!  He and I walked around behind the moose to encourage it to head to the west, away from the highway.  That worked very well – the moose ran completely around our house, and into my neighbor Tim's alfalfa field.  Eventually it ran into Tim's yard and toward his garden (which I hope survived intact), then back out of his yard and into the irrigation canal.  Last I saw, it was in that canal, hiding from the nasty cars and people, and with a 5 strand barbed wire fence between it and the highway.  I haven't heard anything about what happened after that.

You just never know what you're going to see in Paradise :)

Now here's something that's nowhere near as exciting, but I liked it anyway.  It's what happened two days after I watered a piece of ground that had some sweet peas growing on it:

This is very old-fashioned of me.

This is very old-fashioned of me.  Deal with it.

Progress in Paradise...

Progress in Paradise...  I visited a dentist yesterday, for the first time since moving up here.  Like just about every other “first” experience, this was a good one.  My appointment was for 1 pm, with Dr. Lance Gunnell.  Figuring there would be paperwork, I showed up at 12:30.  In fact, there was a thick wad of paperwork to fill out, and I sat down with a clipboard loaded with forms with tiny little boxes to fill out.  Partway through the first of these pages, a young lady came out and called my name – and at 12:40 I was seated in the examining chair.  Just before I finished the paperwork (between a tech's taking X-rays), at 12:46, Dr. Gunnell showed up. 

He'd already reviewed my X-rays, and launched into a detailed explanation (complete with diagrams he drew as he was talking) of exactly what was wrong with my tooth – an infected root, on a tooth with a porcelain crown.  There's also the possibility of a different root on the same tooth being cracked.  Recommendation: he'd drill through my crown, trying to preserve it, then clean out the accessible infection in my tooth.  He'd then pack it with antibiotics, stuff it with gutta-percha, put a temporary plug in the hole, and send me to an endodontics specialist for the actual root canal.  By 1:20 pm he had actually completed all this (with the aid of two assistants and impressive organization) and I was out the door.  Next stop: Reed's Pharmacy, for the antibiotics and pain meds that would sustain me until my appointment next week.  Dr. Gunnell told me there was a 50/50 chance that the antibiotic would knock the infection down to the point where there was no pain, and it looks like I won the bet: I haven't needed any pain medication since last night.  Woo hoo!

This morning I mowed our lawn and blew the driveway clean, at which point the heat plus my mostly sleepless night caused me to call it a day...

City governments are worried...

City governments are worried...  Because driverless (automated) cars will not run stop signs or red lights, or speed – and city revenues from ticket sales fines will plummet.  The progressive reflex will be to ban driverless cars.  Then after deeper thought, they'll realize it's a new tax opportunity...

Just put this country out of its misery, huh? Part III...

Just put this country out of its misery, huh?  Part III...  This is not The Onion – it's an official Health and Human Services Administration web page:

You should be prepared when Aunt Janine says something like, “Obamacare hasn’t helped anyone!” So here are a few points to remember during this long holiday weekend:

Situation: Uncle Ted claims Obamacare is a train wreck and has cost jobs.

You say: Uncle Ted, you’ve gotten ahold of some old talking points. With greater access to affordable, quality health insurance, the Affordable Care Act is helping individuals and strengthening our economy!

Since the main components of the law went into effect, we’ve reduced the number of uninsured by 16.4 million, the largest increase in the insured in decades. Before the ACA, the U.S. economy faced rapidly growing health costs that put enormous pressure on businesses and consumers. We paid more than any country without better health results, and millions of Americans were one illness away from bankruptcy. Today, we’ve seen the slowest growth in health costs in half a century, improved patient safety has saved an estimated 50,000 lives and $12 billion, and employer premiums for family coverage grew just 3 percent in 2014, tied with 2010 for the lowest on record back to 1999.

Meanwhile, since the ACA was signed, the private sector has added 12.8 million jobs over 64 straight months of job growth, extending the longest streak on record. The increase in employment over that period is due almost entirely to higher full-time employment. The number of people working part-time who would prefer to be full-time has fallen by 2.6 million from March 2010 through May 2015, including a decline of 1.1 million since December 2013.

Now, would you like more corn?

Speechless, I am, at the squandering of even more of my tax dollars.  I'm afraid to know how much of my money was spent creating this garbage...

Just put this country out of its misery, huh? Part II...

Just put this country out of its misery, huh?  Part II...  Crying, I am...

“Just put this country out of its misery now, huh?”

“Just put this country out of its misery now, huh?”  So says Ace, and it's easy to see why...

Unemployment is down...

Unemployment is down...  At least, the official number is.  But if you look at labor force participation (a much more useful measure, in my view), it's down to 62.6% – a number last seen in 1977.  For those of you who are less ancient than I am, let me remind you that 1977 was Jimmy Carter's first year in office.  The country was suffering from a terrible recession, partly driven by skyrocketing oil prices.  In that context, consider that our labor force participation rate has just declined to a level matching those parlous economic times.  Yeah, that's how good our economy is doing!

For the government to claim that unemployment is falling sounds like Orwellian doublethink, no?

Race vs. violent crime in the U.S...

Race vs. violent crime in the U.S...  Some interesting data here, with more confirmations than surprises.  Violent crime is disproportionately committed by blacks, including (perhaps especially) blacks on blacks.  Black on white crime, as I'd expect, is far lower than perceived by whites...

Lunch for a hot summer day...

Lunch for a hot summer day...  I just cubed a tomato, an avocado, a roasted red pepper, and a thick slice of ham.  Tossed it all with a tablespoon or so of Duke's mayonnaise.  Ate it with a glass of ice cold apple juice.  Oh, yum!

With two numbers and a single arithmetic operation...

With two numbers and a single arithmetic operation ... generate the Fibonacci sequence up to 24 digit results.  How could you possibly do this?  Here's how: divide 1 by 999,999,999,999,999,999,999,998,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999!

Who thinks of these things?!?!

Is this really funny?

Is this really funny?  A “joke” sent along by my brother Scott:

Hillary Clinton goes to a gifted-student primary school in New York to talk about the world. After her talk she offers question time. One little boy puts up his hand.  Hillary asks him what his name is.
"Kenneth," he answers.

"And what is your question, Kenneth?"

"I have three questions: First - whatever happened in Benghazi? Second - why would you run for President after your husband shamed the office? And, Third - “whatever happened to the missing 6 billion dollars while you were Secretary of State?"

Just then the bell rings for recess. Hillary Clinton informs the kiddies they will continue after recess.

When they resume Hillary says, "Okay where were we? Oh, that's right, question time. Who has a question?"

A different boy puts his hand up; Hillary points to him and asks him what his name is.

"Johnny," he answers.

"And what is your question, Johnny?"

"I have five questions: First - whatever happened in Benghazi? Second - why would you run for President after your husband shamed the office? Third- whatever happened to the missing 6 billion dollars while you were Secretary of State? Fourth - why did the recess bell go off 20 minutes early? And, Fifth - where's Kenneth?"

This reminds me, strongly, of the dark Russian humor of the Soviet era.  My first reaction was ... that it wouldn't surprise me at all to find that this was a true story.  My second reaction was ... the story actually is implausible – but only because Hillary doesn't answer unscripted questions.  My last reaction was ... this isn't funny, though I know it's supposed to be a joke.

Sad about my country, I am...

Ricochet's Daily Shot...

Ricochet's Daily Shot...  I've blogged about Ricochet on several occasions.  It's one of my favorite sites, and it's part of my morning reading routine.  I love their commenting Code of Conduct, which keeps the comment threads civil.  The writers and commenters are top drawer.  One of the features of that web site is a daily email called the Daily Shot, and it's something I look forward to reading every morning.  It's a free subscription even if you don't join Ricochet; just go to their home page, look on the upper right, and sign up.  Highly recommended!  I'd pay for Ricochet membership just to get that email :)

Here's a sample from this morning's Daily Shot:

Want to Understand Greece? Take This and Extrapolate it Across a Whole Economy

Greece is in quite a pickle. It has defaulted on its debt payments to the IMF, it’s cut off (for the time being) from a European bailout, and its prime minister ... is a piece of work. Alexis Tsipras seems to be in over his head.

First, he left bailout negotiations, insisting on a public referendum on the conditions Greece’s creditors were demanding. Then he let his nation go into default on its debt payments. Then, he suddenly realized how bad an idea that was, so he wrote a letter late Tuesday to other European leaders and the IMF, accepting the terms of their bailout. Then he started telling his voters to reject the measure.

On Wednesday, finance ministers from Eurozone countries held a conference call to collectively facepalm ... and then to talk about Tsipras. They decided that, rather than jump in and help, they’re going to wait for the outcome of Sunday’s referendum. You know, rather than rely on the whims of the prime minister/hormonal teenager. Many of Greece’s creditors also have serious doubts that, even if bailed out, Tsipras’s left-wing government would make the necessary reforms.

So now it’s in the lap of the gods and the hands of Greek voters. (You know, the folks who elected Tsipras to begin with). Well, at least until Tsipras changes his mind six more times tomorrow.

Friends, we should applaud the man. It takes an extra level of ineptness of make even Barack Obama look like a decisive leader.

Love that last paragraph :)

Morning in Paradise...

Morning in Paradise...  Two of the dogs (Miki and Race) and I took a brisk morning walk just after 5 am this morning.  Mo'i can only walk about a half mile before he starts getting tired, but without him we did just over a mile (each way) this morning.

It was a beautiful morning, cool and crisp.  A full moon hung over the Wellsville Mountains to our west, with wispy little clouds occasionally scudding across its orb.  When we set out, the first hints of dawn showed over the Wasatch Mountains to our east.  By the time we came back, we had a gorgeous sunrise behind us, which I kept stopping to spin about and look at.  We passed barley fields that in the space of a single day had their crowns turn from green to brown.  In another day or two, the entire plants will be brown, and it will be time to harvest it.

We also passed a very active striped skunk in a recently mowed alfalfa field just south of the road we were walking on.  Though the skunk got to within about 20' of us, the two dogs never saw it.  It was downwind, so they couldn't smell it either.  That skunk was moving faster than I've ever seen a skunk move before, foraging for bugs and whatever else that skunks eat.  It was headed straight for us, and showed no signs of hesitating – so I hurried the mutts along to get out of its way.  Sure enough, just 30 seconds or so after we zoomed by it, it crossed the road behind us. 

Photos taken along the way:

Doctors on strike...

Doctors on strike...  Via reader Simi L.:

Face-off!

Face-off!  What a cool photo!!

Rosetta looks at...

Rosetta looks at ... Comet 67P, yesterday...

Curiosity is looking...

Curiosity is looking ... at some interesting Martian geology again...

Morning in Paradise...

Morning in Paradise...  The dogs and I went for a walk just before dawn.  It was beautiful...

Eriogonum kennedyi...

Eriogonum kennedyi...  This is a variety of wild buckwheat, one of many that are common in southern California.  Via BPOD, of course...

Bomb-sniffing rats...

Bomb-sniffing rats...  Reader Simi L. sent this along.  When I first started reading, I thought it was some kind of joke – but it's for real!  More detail here...

Progress in Paradise...

Progress in Paradise...  Debbie continues her steady improvement.  She no longer looks like I beat her :)  She still hasn't graduated to the walker yet, though.  I cut her a little bouquet this morning, from flowers around our yard – very cheerful blue, red, and orange!

I didn't have to move pipes this morning, so I spent the (relatively) cool part of the day doing some organizing and cleanup in the barn so that I could move the air compressor into place.  Then I actually moved it, making extensive use of the tractor to do it as the beast weighs 650 pounds.  At right is the beast in all its glory, sitting in the correct spot.  Now all I have to do is hook up 240V, 120V (yes, both!), an air intake, two drains, and the air output (which will be piped all over the shop).  By the time I finished with this, I was drenched in sweat.  The air conditioned house felt might good at that point!

I've got a toothache, I think under a crown that was installed a few years ago.  I called to make an appointment with the dentist I met a couple months ago at Hyrum Tire, Dr. Lance Gunnell.  I'm seeing him on Thursday, when he's in his Hyrum office, just four miles away.

Last year a crew from Questar Gas came out to re-route a gas line that the previous owner of this property had built an outbuilding over.  I mentioned to the crew that I intended to knock that building down, and one of them said he'd like to take it.  He'd saw it into pieces with a sawzall, and then put it back together on posts to make a boathouse for his wife.  Not only would he put it to good use, he'd do all the work of taking it down.  Of course I said “yes” to that!  Well, I lost track of this fellow's name and number, and I wanted to get that process started – as we want to put a backup generator on the slab.  What to do?  I called a different Questar Gas employee, another guy who had been out here.  I explained my dilemma to him, and he said he'd ask around the office for me while I held on the line.  About 30 seconds later, another guy got on the phone and said he knew exactly who I mean, a guy named Steve M., and he'd have Steve call me right away.  Another minute or so, and Steve called me – and now we have arranged for that building to be removed next week.  The people here are so helpful, and the community so small, that things like this happen routinely.  This would almost certainly not have been the case when we were living down in California...

Email I received today...

Email I received today...  From Apple:

Dear iMac owner,

Apple has determined that certain 3TB hard drives used in 27-inch iMac systems may fail. These systems were sold between December 2012 and September 2013.

Our records show that you have an iMac with an affected 3TB hard drive. Apple will replace your hard drive with a new one, free of charge.
 
Please visit the iMac (27-inch) 3TB Hard Drive Replacement Program page to learn more about the replacement process.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

iMac serial number: (redacted)

Sincerely,

Apple Inc.

This is not a response to any complaint we raised.  It is a program just announced by Apple.  According to some news sources, Apple noticed the trend in their service data, and took action unilaterally.

I located an authorized service location 10 miles from our home.  I called them, and they knew all about the program.  They said to just bring the computer in, and they would do the replacement.  No charge.  No hassle.  Twenty four hour turnaround.

I cannot recall the maker of any other computer, peripheral, or component that I've ever owned proactively reaching out to me to offer mitigation for a service trend showing a problem.

My service experience to date with Apple computers (8 years now) is quite limited, simply because very little has ever gone wrong.  I've had two problems that I resolved in just minutes with searches of Apple's knowledge base, one hardware problem (a keyboard with a drink spilled on it) that they fixed under warranty in an Apple store, and now this.  Every time, the problem is solved, quickly, and at no cost to me.  By contrast, I used Dell computers for quite a few years.  Initially their service was quite good, but it deteriorated over the years to the point where I would rather buy a new computer than call their service number.

I'm no Apple fan-boy, but I will happily pay a premium for excellent hardware and software backed by excellent service!

A morning in Paradise...

A morning in Paradise...  The dogs and I got out on our walk well before sunrise this morning.  We walked by a sprinkler on a recently mowed alfalfa field shooting water in front of the red sunrise.  It was cool and pleasant at that hour; as I write this (at 8:30 am) it's already in the high 80s and headed for 98° this afternoon.  The dogs flushed a weasel along the road, which as you might imagine got all three of them very excited – especially when the curious weasel came toward them.  It got to within three feet or so before it decided that fleeing was a better option :)

After sunrise, I went out and gathered up Tim D.'s hand line.  I had some help – as I was carrying the first pipe, two of another neighbor's kids (Nick and Abby S.) came out to help.  We made short work of it!  Then I moved the sprinklers in my yard, and got a picture at left of a flower (unknown to me) in our back yard...

What happens when...

What happens when ... a 7 year old kid is playing in a park, within sight of her mom?  Why, you call the cops, take the kid to the police station, and charge the mom with child endangerment, of course!

I have several reactions...

• My parents were serial child endangerers.  Under these rules, they probably would have been executed.
• This happened Westbrook, Maine (on the outskirts of Portland).  What the hell happened to Maine since the '50s and '60s, when I visited so many times?  
• If the same rules were applied here in Northern Utah, every parent I know would be charged with child endangerment – free range kids are the rule here.

I wonder what country will take over the U.S.'s position as the leader of the free world? At the rate we're going, we're likely to be conquered by Mexico...

White-faced ibis update...

White-faced ibis update...  Yesterday afternoon I got a close, front-lit view of the birds that I had previously speculated were white-faced ibis.  With yesterday's better view, I'm going to call that confirmed: they were white-faced ibis.  The one I saw looked very much like the one at right (not my photo)...

“Not payable.”

“Not payable.”  So says the governor of Puerto Rico, about the island's $72B in debt.  The threat of a default looms.  The governor is actively looking for creditors to accede to restructuring, including deferrals and write-downs.  He's also looking for a (U.S.) taxpayer-funded bailout, which isn't likely.

Puerto Rico – as many have predicted it would – has run out of other people's money.  The socialists have ruined another economy.  There are quite a few parallels to the current Greek crisis, but this one is much closer to home.  Though many Americans don't know it, Puerto Rico is actually part of the United States.  It's a Commonwealth, not a state, though there is rising support in Puerto Rico to become a state.

It will be interesting, and instructive, to see what the Obama administration's reaction to this is...

Regal cat...

Regal cat...  This is Jahar, our Savannah Cat.  We're pretty sure that he believes himself to be a panther, notwithstanding the abundant evidence to the contrary.  He is Debbie's constant companion while she's bedridden.  From his point of view, that's the best thing that could possibly have happened.  He will be very disappointed when Debbie is mobile again!

Falcon 9 failed...

Falcon 9 failed...  Dang it!  Elon Musk is already tweeting about the cause – an “overpressure event” in the second stage liquid oxygen tank.  Commenters were speculating that almost in real time; apparently quite a few observers are familiar with the internal details of the Falcon 9.  Probably the biggest consequence to this is that they lost the payload, which included the docking adapter needed by SpaceX's Dragon crew capsule and other competing launch vehicles.  Hope they have a spare somewhere!

Progress in Paradise...

Progress in Paradise...  Today is “paperwork” day – time for me to catch up on almost two weeks of accumulated paper.  The pile is getting too tall :)

On our dog walk last night, I spotted a flock of birds I don't know.  There were about a dozen of them, poking around in the sopping soil underneath a sprinkler in an alfalfa field.  When I got back, I searched through our Sibley, and the closest thing I can find is a white-faced ibis (at right, not my photo).  The birds were backlit, and in that lighting they appeared to be completely black.  But color quibbles aside, everything else matches – and nothing else in the book did.  There's another ibis (the glossy ibis) that it might possibly have been, but they're supposedly rare here (and the white-faced ibis is common).  It was interesting watching them poke those long curved beaks deeply into the soil.  Presumably they're looking for either worms or bugs.  Imagine how disconcerting that would be for the victim – one second they're “safely” ensconced in their dirt fortress, the next second they're on their way down a monster's gullet!

I moved sprinklers for my friend and neighbor Tim D. again this morning.  His grand-daughter Taylor came over to help when I was about halfway through.  I was sopping wet by the time I got done, as the pipes I had to move were in waist-high (and very wet!) alfalfa.  In some places the field was so muddy that it threatened to suck the boots right off my feet!  I also set up sprinklers around our house – sixteen sprinkler heads are currently going all around us.

On this morning's dog walk, we left well before sunrise and I caught the sprinklers backlit by the dawn (at right).  The dogs were thrilled by the cold (48°) wet air.  The humidity was high in general, but even more so downwind of the sprinklers.

When we're walking uphill, Miki and Racer are straining at the leash to go faster, and Mo'i (the old man) is straining at the leash to go slower.  I'm stuck in the middle, looking like the dogs had collaborated to try to pull me apart.  Going downhill it's a whole different story: Mo'i is now the one straining at the leash (he's got the green leash in the photo at left).  That photo was taken just before dawn, as we were headed back home this morning, marching down the steepest hill on our path.  From observation, it appears that Mo'i's walking speed can be computed by a constant added to the inverse of the tangent of the slope, adjusted linearly by the inverse of the temperature.  I can guess our pace pretty easily :)  The other two dogs, though, are almost constant speed walkers.  There is perhaps a little derating for temperature, but the slope doesn't seem to affect their pace at all!

It's paperwork time!

Slowly but surely...

Slowly but surely ... I'm weening my immediate family off of the festering sore of an operating system known as Windows.  My mom is the latest to make the leap: she's taken delivery of her new Apple iMac, and I'll be setting it up for her when I visit in August.

All three of my siblings, unfortunately, are still serial victims of the Microsoft empire.  The tech version of the Stockholm syndrome seems to have afflicted them – none of them are inclined to see the light.  I'm afraid that may not change until Chinese hackers hold their data for ransom...

New Horizons faces an unusual challenge...

New Horizons faces an unusual challenge...  The New Horizons spacecraft is on its final approach to the Pluto/Charon system, which it will fly by on July 14th.  The unusual challenge derives from a simple fact: NASA doesn't actually know exactly where Pluto and Charon are!  The margin of error from Earthbound measurements is greater than the accuracy needed to aim New Horizons – so they're depending on frantic last-minute measurements from New Horizons itself (such as the imagery at right) to pin down the exact location of Pluto and Charon.

This is the first interplanetary mission where the aiming wasn't done entirely with Earth-bound metrics.  Unmentioned in the article is another interesting fact: none of this would have been possible until about 7 or 8 years ago, when the computing power required to model complex gravitational systems became routinely available...

Solar spectrum...

Solar spectrum...  This is the best image I've ever seen of the solar spectrum in visible light.  Each of the black bands represents absorption lines for molecules that lie between the sun and the spectrometer.  There are so many of them!  If you expand this spectrum, you'll see that some of the absorption lines look “fuzzy” – these are the absorption lines of molecules at a wide range of temperatures.  I first ran into these absorption lines when reading about the discovery of helium, and I've read much more since then.  Still there was a big surprise for me in here: some of the absorption lines are still unidentified – they're being caused by a molecule (possibly an element) that we don't yet know about.  Via APOD, of course.  Full resolution version here.

Good luck, Falcon 9!

Good luck, Falcon 9!  Everything is looking good for a 10:21 EST launch.  Here's hoping for a successful soft landing on the recovery barge this morning!!

Heinlein would be loving this – a private company leading the way to space...

Progress in Paradise, Hyrum hijinks edition...

Progress in Paradise, Hyrum hijinks edition...  The dogs and I did our normal morning walk; photos at right. There are several barley fields that are nearing maturity, and are consequently being heavily irrigated right now. 

Debbie continues to improve every day.  The bruising and swelling are starting to disappear now.  There's just a small blotch remaining from her epic black eye, and her right arm is beginning to resemble a human arm now.  Yesterday we took delivery of a machine that replaces the old-fashioned ice bag for her knee.  It works by circulating chilled water through a pad that wraps around her knee.  It chills a much larger area than a bag could, and does it more evenly.  It's also got a controllable temperature.  Nice gadget!

This morning I ran up to Ridley's in Hyrum (a small town four miles north of us), and came across a cheerful scene.  In the city park there were dozens and dozens of kids in bathing suits, and several firemen were squirting them all with fire hoses.  There was much kicking and screaming from the delighted kids, and smiling faces of the parents and adult onlookers surrounding them.  I wanted to take some photos of it, but onlookers asked me not to, so I didn't.  I'm not sure why they care, but I'll respect their wishes.  Sure looked like a lot of fun for the kids!

My neighbor Tim D. is on a trip to Philadelphia with his son for the next few days.  I'm handling the irrigation for him.  This morning that means turning off one string of hand line, and moving three others.  I'll have one last move tomorrow, then I'll stack all the pipe for him as we'll be done with this cycle of irrigation.

I'm working on my tractor, getting the log splitter plumbed correctly.  I filled the hydraulic fluid on my tractor.  It was very low because when I attached the log splitter, its cylinder got filled from the tractor's reservoir, taking about 2 gallons of the 3 gallons in the reservoir.  This is what happens when you attach a big implement to a little tractor :)

Progress in Paradise...

Progress in Paradise...  Things seemed mighty slow today.  I helped Tim D. (and his granddaughter Randi) move irrigation pipes again this morning.  That's a lot more fun than it likely sounds :)  I also moved the sprinklers I had going on the new grass seed I planted.  It will take one more move to finish the job.  We're going to have some green fuzz there the rest of the day.

The main things I wanted to get done today were to test-mount the log splitter after plumbing it to the backhoe hydraulic coupler, and to move my air compressor into it's intended location.  This didn't go so well, mainly because that hydraulic plumbing took three trips into town to get all the right parts.  By the time I finished all that running around, I was done for the day.  Dang it!

Diamond nights...

Diamond nights...  That's the title of Beth Moon's series of photos of baobab and quiver trees, taken by moonlight and starlight...