Southwest 1380...

Southwest 1380...  I'm sure you've heard the story by now – if not, just search for the flight number and you can read all about it (and try to stay more in touch with the world, would you?).  Here I'm posting the audio of the communications between the aircraft and the air traffic controllers as the pilots flew the damaged aircraft to the Philadelphia airport.  They made a safe landing there.  Several passengers were injured when the left engine disintegrated, one of them died later.

It is remarkable to me just how calm the pilots (especially the captain) are as they flew this damaged plane down.   Lots of people are making comparisons to the “Miracle on the Hudson” a few years ago, and I think they're fair.  BTW, the captain on this flight happens to be a woman, 56 years old, and a former Navy FA-18 pilot.  Her husband is also a captain at Southwest Airlines.  I'll close with an excerpt from this morning's Wall Street Journal piece (The Right Stuff at Southwest Airlines):

At the outset, the pilot calmly announces, “Southwest 1380 has an engine fire. Descending.”

A short time later she reports, “Actually no fire now, but we are single-engine.” At one point she informs controllers, “We have part of the aircraft missing, so we’re going to need to slow down a bit.” Each report from the cockpit is delivered in the same even and reassuring tone.

“If you would, have them roll the trucks,” she asks politely, hoping for emergency vehicles on the runway given that her engine has exploded, passengers have been injured and perhaps killed, there’s a hole in the aircraft and shrapnel has been sprayed around the wing and fuselage.

Readers may be wondering, just as this column does, how one could not only maintain composure but even exhibit impeccable manners in such a situation. After landing the airplane, Ms. Shults says to the controllers, “Thanks, guys, for the help.”

Where do airlines find people like this? The U.S. military, of course.

The right stuff, indeed...

Apparently not all dogs like banana slices...

Apparently not all dogs like banana slices...  Idaho mogul-of-everything Doug S. wrote yesterday; first time I've heard from him in months.  Amongst a lot of catch-up stuff was this little gem:

I tried to get my dogs to enjoy bananas, but the slices just hit the floor as I get questionable looks as if they are saying what's this crap... ha ha

This led me to do some investigation on the Intertubes, and what I found was lots of dogs that love bananas, lots of dogs that hate bananas, some dogs that are actually afraid of bananas, and a few that are allergic to them.  It's clear that our five banana-loving dogs are not especially unusual, nor are Doug's dogs doing the WTF?  I'm not sure why, but I'm surprised at the variation.  Generally foods that appeal to dogs seem to appeal to all dogs.  For example, I've yet to run into a dog that doesn't love Milk Bones.

Anyway, I'm sad for Doug.  The banana-slice ritual is a big part of our mornings, every day.  I'm well-known at our local grocery for buying bananas (we go through 14 a week), and many of the clerks know I'm buying them for my dogs. :)

More weird weather...

More weird weather...  It's April, or so the calendar tells me.  Yesterday was beautiful, sunny, and warm: 70°F.  This morning when I got up at 1:30 am to let the dogs out, the back yard was covered with ... snow!  This morning that danged white stuff is still out there, about an inch and a half.  Thankfully it didn't stick to the driveway or our walkways; they were too warm.  But the grass and the trees are covered.  I'm going to ignore it, and hope that our 40°F high today is enough to melt it all...

Windy!

Windy!  We've got a fairly steady 25 mph wind, with gusts considerably faster – about 35 mph, I think.  My barn is shaking!

Since we've been back...

Since we've been back...  Yesterday morning we woke to something we didn't expect at all: snow.  The forecast had called for rain, but we got heavy, gloppy snow instead.  In the photos below (of our back yard) you can see just how hard it was snowing, as I capture quite a bit of it in the air.  You can also see that the “snowflakes” were actually more like little snowballs.  We got just over an inch of this stuff before it warmed up enough to actually rain.  By the end of the day yesterday it was nearly all gone – but we do still have a bit hanging around at the end of the day today...

We didn't do all that much yesterday; made a grocery run and picked up our mail.  In the mail I got the “reward” from one of the Kickstarter projects I backed: Wood Trick.  The actual reward is a (very complex, hundreds of parts) big rig model, but they sent along two much smaller models with it.  I built both of them yesterday afternoon; somehow it was the perfect thing to occupy me – very relaxing after our trip.  Photos of these two below.  The first one is a cute little animated frog – by moving a lever in the back of him, his four legs all wiggle and his eyes goggle.  It uses rubber bands as a return spring, and wooden gears to provide the animation.  The second two photos show an amazingly realistic jeep, made entirely from laser-cut pieces of plywood.  This entire model was cut out of a sheet of plywood roughly 8" by 12".  It's all assembled with friction-fit connections – no glue or fasteners are used in the model.  The wheels turn on axles that work quite well, despite being made of square pieces of wood!  Wood Trick is a Ukrainian company, trying to break into the world's biggest toy market: the U.S.  I hope they succeed, because their products are very cool indeed, and quite reasonably priced (the little frog kit, for example, is $4 at retail)...

Today the highlight was the Lily fashion show in our living room.  Little Lily, you might remember, is the little girl that Debbie bought some outfits for while on our trip.  Well, today Michelle (the grandmom), Lizzy (the mom), and Lilly all came over to try out Lilly's new outfits.  Afterwards we all went out for lunch at Jack's pizza.  A grand time was had by all.  Below are the photos I took during Lily's fashion show (which Lily appeared to thoroughly enjoy!).  You can see Michelle at left in the second photo.  I'm partial to that yellow dress myself; everyone else seemed to like the outfit in the second photo the best....

Hanging around Kalispell...

Hanging around Kalispell...  After we arrived in Whitefish (just north of Kalispell) and checked into our lodging on Monday night, we were exhausted.  Debbie had the brilliant idea (especially in hindsight) of eating at the hotel's restaurant instead of driving into town as had been our plan.  The restaurant got good reviews on Yelp, so we thought we'd be ok.  Well, we were ok and then some!  Our delightful waitress Natalie strongly recommended the grilled elk tenderloin, so we tried it – and man, were we glad we did!  That was hands-down the best elk dish we have ever had.  So on Tuesday morning, we went there for breakfast – and it was just as wonderful as the dinner.  I had a special, pulled-pork and eggs with a mild verde sauce; Debbie had the stuffed French toast.  Both were outstanding.

After breakfast, we visited Lazy K and Advanced Powder Coatings to take care of our actual business up there.  After that, we had some time to just hang around the Kalispell area.  The first thing we did was to visit the Hockaday Museum of Art, in a former Carnegie library (my photo at right), right downtown.  We'd read about an exhibit of bison engravings they had going on, which sounded interesting to both of us.  It was even more interesting than we'd expected.  Most of these engravings were woodblock prints, but there was one exquisite engraving that was perhaps the best example of a steel engraving print I've ever seen.  The detail was such that you'd need a magnifying glass to see it.  It's hard to even imagine the patience it took to make that engraving with nothing but a block of steel, scratch awls, and an idea.  The exhibit including engravings from every phase of European's encounters with bison, and the commentary that accompanied the exhibits ended up giving us a nice history lesson – much of which is quite sad.  It treated the American Indian's involvement quite objectively, which I was glad to see.  “White men” and American Indians both carried out the near-extinction of the bison, a fact which all too many history books ignore in their efforts to blame Europeans...

After our enjoyable visit to the museum, we headed up to Whitefish to search out a pottery store that we'd read good things about.  Here we were a bit disappointed.  There was some stuff there that we found attractive, but the majority of the pieces were of the imaginary category Debbie and I call “modern art”, which is really our catch-all term for art that we don't understand, don't find beautiful, and really don't understand why anyone does.  That store was full of it. :)  However, on our walk toward the pottery store, we happened by Sprouts, a store selling children's clothing.  Now you might well wonder why we might be interested in such a store.  It's all because of our friend Michelle H., whose daughter Lizzy is also a friend.  Well, six months ago Lizzy had her first child (and Michelle's first grandchild): Lily, a beautiful little red-headed girl.  Debbie was hoping to find a store with locally-made clothing for Lily, and at Sprouts she hit the jackpot.  We came home with a complete wardrobe for Lily!  :)

We were ready to pack it in for the day at that point, and we headed back to our hotel.  After a bit of discussion about where to eat dinner, we decided ... to eat at the hotel again.  It was so good!  This time Debbie had an all-appetizer meal, with a nice salad, a bowl of excellent parsnip and cauliflower soup, and luscious elk meatballs (below).   I had the soup as well, along with crispy roast duck.  I love roast duck, and have had it many times; this was among the best I've ever had.  I especially enjoyed the contrasting flavors of the Brussels sprouts and apple slices along with the rare duck.  Most delicious, that was!  We had no room for dessert, though we suspect it's just as wonderful as the rest of the food there...

Back in our room the lake fogged over in a light rain.  That made the beautiful scene at right, from the balcony of our room.  We left at 4:30 am on Wednesday, and drove back home without incident.  I did cut the battery management a bit close on the Missoula-to-Butte segment: we pulled into the Butte supercharger with a mere 6 miles estimated remaining in the battery.  That's the closest call I ever made on that!  I have no idea how accurate that gauge is, or whether there's any reserve built in (as there is on gasoline-powered cars), so I'm not entirely sure just how close I really cut it, but still...

We pulled into our driveway at about 6:30 pm, and both of us were very tired.  After greeting the animals, we were snoring in short order...

The actual purpose of our trip to Montana...

The actual purpose of our trip to Montana ... you may remember, was to pick up a bunch of metal work we had done for us by the folks at Lazy K Wrought Iron.  We arrived at Advanced Powder Coatings (they do the powder coating for everything Lazy K does, and our stuff was still there) on Tuesday morning, per plan, and got to see the work for the first time.  As usual, it was gorgeous!  But ... there was a huge pile of metal there.  Larry (APC's owner), a couple of his employees, Debbie, and I all looked at the pile and said to each other that there's no way in hell that whole thing would fit in our Tesla.  I made a mental note to talk with Abigail (at Lazy K) about either shipping the part we couldn't take, or maybe making another trip up here.  

But we were wrong.

It all fit.  I'm still astonished at this!  The photos below show the back of our Model X after we packed it all up.  Larry and I worked for nearly an hour to achieve this, and some of it was advanced puzzle fitting.  Also, there were parts that we could only get into place by angling them in a side door, rotating them (very carefully!), and then nestling them in place.  We used every packing blanket we brought.  About 50' of paracord plus a ratcheting cargo strap strategically placed, and the entire load behaved as if it was a single piece of steel.  In that pile are about 30 pieces of formed steel, some of them quite oddly shaped, all locked together as if they were pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.  Kevin (at Lazy K) did not design that feature – that was Larry and I carefully packing.  Note how close to the ceiling of the car we got!

For the entire trip home, there was not a single rattle, and I never needed to retie the load down.  Larry and I did well. :)  We did have one minor casualty on the trip home, though.  Before we even got out of the Advanced Powder Coatings parking lot, we heard a couple of alarming “thunks!”m, quite loud.  It took me a while to figure out what they were, but I should have known right away.  The back floor of the cargo compartment is a false bottom, covering a small luggage compartment.  That false bottom is held up by a couple of fairly flimsy plastic brackets, one of which has broken before.  This time, they both broke.  That means another call to Tesla, and probably their tech will be back out here to fix them...

If you love dogs...

If you love dogs ... then you'll know what I mean when I say that I just love hearing the sounds of dogs happily eating their morning kibble, in five-part harmony (because we have five dogs).  In the case of our dogs, this comes right after our morning banana-slice ritual, which already had me grinning from ear-to-ear.  My favorite thing about being back home is being back with my dogs...

And I know, I know ... I missed my promised posting yesterday.  You shall have it soon...

And we're back!

And we're back!  We got home around 6 pm last night, more-or-less right on schedule.  The trip went without a hitch, though with one mechanical issue I'll talk more about in a later post.  My original plan was to unload our (very loaded!) car this morning, but ... Mother Nature decided to innundate us with snow (photos later).  I think I'll wait until tomorrow. :)

While on our trip we found out that one of our neighbors (Elayne S.) is in the hospital for treatment of some issue with her pancreas.  She's been there two weeks and we never knew it!  We'll be visiting her today...

I'll fill in some details and post some photos later on today...

And we're off (well, close to it)!

And we're off (well, close to it)!  We're aiming for a 5:00 am departure, and as I write this (at 4:20 am) it looks like we'll easily make that.  Our first stop is at the Tesla Supercharger at Idaho Falls, Idaho – we should get there around 7:30 am.  There's a nice little coffee shop there where we'll get some caffeine and eats, then we'll hit the road again.  Then we hop to the next supercharger, at Lima, Montana – another hour and a half up the road.  After that, we head to the supercharger at Butte, Montana, about 2 hours away.  The last supercharger we'll hit is in Missoula, Montana, another two hours up the road.  Then we've got the last push to Whitefish, Montana (where we're staying), right near Kalispell – that's about two and a half hours.  If you add it all up, we've got about ten and a half hours of driving, and probably an hour and a half of charging – so with any luck at all, we should pull into Whitefish around 5 pm.  We'll check into our lodging and then head for a dinner at a restaurant we know there: the Tupelo Grille, where we've had several outstanding meals.

If you're wondering about how our animals (14 cats and 5 dogs) are cared for while we're gone, we've got the most wonderful setup here you can imagine.  Our good friend Michelle H. takes care of them when we're on a trip.  Our animals already know her well – many of our cats like her better than they like me! :)  She lives 3 minutes from our house, and she (or one of her very responsible children) will come over at least three times a day to care for everybody.  Michelle is very experienced in animal care, having quite the menagerie at her own house.  Our vets (3 minutes from our house in the other direction) know us and our animals very well, and they've go no problem accepting Michelle's intervention as needed, and then letting us pay for it on our return.  This is so much nicer that the arrangements we had available to us in California.  Even if Michelle couldn't help us on some particular occasions, we've got several other friends in the area who could pinch hit.   Care of our animals while we're on a trip was a concern of ours before we moved here; like so many other things, we're now wondering how on earth we ever put up with the miserable equivalent in California...

Road trip!

Road trip!  We'll be on the road from early Monday morning to late Wednesday evening, heading up to Kalispell, Montana to the Lazy K Wrought Iron shop to pick up the latest things they've made for us.  That includes beautiful wildlife silhouette railings for our front porch, plain railings for the entrance to our sun room, and all the metal parts for two stairs and railings for our deck (the latter matching the deck railings they built for us last year). 

We've got a nearly 600 mile long drive ahead of us tomorrow, the majority of it (sadly) on I-15.  However, the last 20% or so will be on surface roads, including a nice long drive alongside the gorgeous Flathead Lake.  We'll spend Tuesday in the Kalispell area, picking up our stuff and doing some sightseeing (including more time around Flathead Lake).  Then on Wednesday we'll head back, basically retracing our steps.

This trip illustrates one of the things we like the least about long-distance drives in the Tesla: our routes are limited to those which take us near the supercharger locations – and those are, of course, mostly near freeways.  In the future we hope to change that, by two means.  First, Tesla is aggressively expanding their supercharger network – even by the end of this year there will be many more locations, including the first wave of “off freeway” locations.  Second, we'll be putting together a trailer that includes a diesel generator.  That trailer-with-generator will have two purposes.  First, it will house not only the generator, but also our Nikola electric off-road vehicle, due to arrive in early 2019.  The generator can then charge both the Tesla and the Nikola.  This will allow us to travel in the Tesla to out-of-the-way four-wheeling destinations, such as the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado, Alaska, or the Canadian Rockies.

But meanwhile: road trip!  Blogging may be light-to-nonexistent for a few days...

If you're a bird watcher...

If you're a bird watcher ... and you're older than about 45 or so, you almost certainly know this book.  Peterson's book used to have roughly the same standing as Sibley's books do today.  This particular copy was printed in 1958, when I was but 6 years old.  My mother bought it new, and I remember that for years she kept the slip cover on it, to use as a bookmark.  I spent many hours at the big “picture window” in our living room, often with her, watching the birds that we fed in our back yard.  We'd look up birds in Peterson's book, and she showed me how to use the identifying features that Peterson marked, and how to look up the text on each bird.  Refilling those feeders was often my job, and in my teenage years so was repair and construction of the platform feeders (my dad wasn't very good at this sort of thing).  This poor, worn volume lived through most of that period.  Before she bought this then-new volume, my mom had an older edition, purchased used, and very beat up.  I remember that she gave that older edition away, but I can't remember to whom.  When my parents moved to southern New Jersey, she fed the birds there, too – and this little book, her birding bible, went with her.  It went with her when my parents later moved to Virginia, where again she fed the birds.  Finally, when she moved to Utah she hoped to feed the birds here as well, though she never did, and she brought this little book with her.

Now I have it.  There are better references available today, and I mainly rely (like the younger bird watchers) on Sibley's excellent books.  But I keep this volume on my office bookshelf as a piece of memorabilia.  This morning I picked it up and paged through it.  It fell open naturally on certain well-used pages, and on one of those (page 214 and the facing plate) are the “Winter Finches”, including the Eastern Cardinal – the female of which species was perhaps the bird my mom thought most beautiful.  I was surprised that I remembered that plate.  I went to it many times as a kid, but I haven't looked at Peterson's book for probably 50 years – and yet that plate was still quite familiar.  Paging through, I found a few other plates that were similarly familiar – especially the plates with chickadees and wrens.  Funny how memory works.  I'd never have suspected that I'd still remember individual pages in this book...

Well, that big-eye tuna...

Well, that big-eye tuna ... was every bit as wonderful as we'd anticipated, in the poke we had on Thursday.  That poke had a bit more avocado than usual, because our grocery store had them for less than half the usual price – and they were big, luscious, and I found five perfectly ripe ones.  That was one delicious bowl of poke...

Yesterday we had a bit of rain, and I ended up working in my office most of today.  We're expecting even more rain today.  Debbie wanted to go to The Grille in Tremonton for lunch, so round about 2 pm we headed out that way.  I had their clam chowder as an appetizer, and I'm sorry to say that I regretted it.  I had two main problems with it.  First, it was (as is all too typical in American restaurants) way too salty.  Second, the broth was (as is, sadly, nearly universal these days) a cornstarch-thickened, sad imitation of what the milky broth of a good clam chowder should be.  Oh, well.  That failing, however, was more than made up for by the excellence of our other selections.  Debbie had a pulled pork salad, made of very fresh, crisp lettuce, the usual veggies, and a generous portion of cold pulled pork on top.  Watching Debbie pour the homemade ranch dressing on makes me suspect she thinks of the salad as primarily a substrate for the dressing. :)  She also had a side of sweet potato fries, which we've had before, and which have been outstanding each time.  I ordered the baby-back pork ribs – smoked and barbecued.   They were tender and full of flavor, the barbecue sauce was mildly spicy and (thankfully!) not overly sweet, and the combination was ... delicious.   Now I'm going to have trouble ordering anything else when I go there, because it was so good that my brain will be screaming at me to order it whenever I have the menu in my hands. :)

On the way home we stopped at Walmart to pick up a few things.  On the way out of the store we witnessed something that drove home just how much differently people here behave, in general, than what we were used to back in San Diego.  We saw something that wouldn't have raised an eyebrow back in San Diego – but which here is so unusual that we were quite shocked.  As we were pushing our cart full of stuff out of the store, we saw a woman with two toddlers running out of the store, weaving around us.  Her cart was full of various things, none of them in bags – when I first saw her, I immediately suspected she'd bypassed the registers.  Then as she went through the door, we heard the shoplifting alarm go off.  She kept running.  Nobody came out of the store after her.  As we proceeded to our car, we saw her running through the parking lot, hollering at her kids to hurry up, going in the general direction of our car.  Turns out she was parked three cars away from us, in an old beater of a sedan, full of rust, holes, and junk inside.  She hurriedly dumped her purchases in the car, threw the kids in (hollering at them the entire time).  We arrived at our car just then, and I started to unload our cart.  Next thing I know, that woman's shopping cart was rolling through the parking lot behind me, where cars turned into parking spaces – the woman had simply pushed the cart away from her and let it roll!  It was headed directly into a car behind us, so I ran over and captured it, and pushed it into the little enclosure where you're supposed to put your carts.  As I turned around after that, this woman backed at reckless speed out of her space, then screeched in a tight turn to head out of the parking lot, right past me.  I watched her, astonished, as she sped by – cigarette dangling from her lips, still hollering at her kids, and cackling madly with apparent delight (I'm guessing because it looked like she'd gotten clean away).  I didn't have the presence of mind to look at her plates, much less take a photo of her car.  Nobody from the store came out to investigate.

As I mentioned earlier, such behavior in, say, the El Cajon Walmart wouldn't have seemed unusual at all (though I suspect the store employees might have been a bit more on the ball than they seemed to be here).  Here, however, that sort of thing is most unusual.  It's not that there's no shoplifting problem here – I know from talking with store personnel that the big-box retailers here all have problems with shoplifting.  No, the part that's unusual is the blatantly criminal behavior – someone doing this without apparent shame, and without concern about being observed.  That's the part that reminded us of California...

I just finished...

I just finished ... cutting up about 20 ounces of beautiful, fresh big-eye tuna, center cut.  I also cut up some green onions.  Debbie made the marinade and cut up several avocados.  That all got mixed up and put in the fridge to marinate for about an hour and a half.  Meanwhile, the rice maker is smelling up the kitchen with the lovely aroma of cooking brown rice.  And in a couple hours, we're going to be eating the most wonderful poke.  I don't think I'll soon get over my astonishment that we can get this kind of quality fresh seafood out here in the boonies.  I've never seen big-eye tuna for sale in San Diego's fish markets.  Ahi was available there (as it is here), but not the big-eye – which we like even better than the ahi!

Ah, eating well in Paradise, we are!

We're planning to visit Canada this summer...

We're planning to visit Canada this summer ... and these days, that means we need a passport.  It's still hard for me to believe that's so, but I've made several business trips there since 9/11, so I know it is.  So a couple of weeks ago, I did some research online to find out what we needed to do, and I made an appointment for this morning at the big post office in Logan, Utah to meet with an “acceptance agent”.

There was some preparatory work, of course.  Debbie and I have both had passports before.  Mine were almost entirely for business travel, which I did far too much of.  It expired four years ago.  Debbie had a passport for the one international trip we've ever made together, in the mid-'90s, to Costa Rica.  That was a memorable trip, indeed.  But ... her passport expired in 2004.  It turns out there are two different processes for renewing one's passport: one for passports expired within the past five years (so, mine) and one for those expired longer ago (so, Debbie's).   That meant two different forms, each six pages long, needed to be filled out.  Both of us would need new photos, but the post office offers that as a service.  It wasn't clear what documentation Debbie would need, so we brought driver's license, birth certificate, and marriage license.  I didn't need anything beyond my expired passport. 

So after having filled out those monster forms, and gathered all the supporting documents, this morning we headed to the post office.  It was relatively painless, no long waits, no insurmountable problems.  We did have one funny incident, which the post office acceptance agent (a nice local lady with a great sense of humor) had never seen happen before.  She took Debbie's photo, electronically transferred it to a special “face printer”, and printed out a pair of photos for her.  Then she took mine ... and the printer refused to print.  “Huh!” said she, and she had me come back to try again.  Once again, the printer refused – but this time, she got an error message: “Face not found”.  That's what she had never seen before.  My face broke her printer. :)  On the third try, though, the printer finally agreed to print my photo.  Sheesh!

The biggest surprise for me was the cost.  Each of our passport renewals cost $110, and then there were almost $60 worth of post office expenses (photos and postage, mainly).  By the time we walked out of there, our bank account was close to $300 lighter.  That I did not expect!

Yaupon tea...

Yaupon tea...  My yaupon tea arrived yesterday, and I had a nice big cup of it this morning.  When I took the dry tea out of the bag to put it in my cup, the aroma instantly brought back memories of my childhood, working with cut American holly (Ilex opaca).  That's a different species than yaupon, but a relative – and the smell of it confirms it.  Holly leaves have a pleasant and distinctive odor, like many other trees do.  They don't smell much like black tea, though, so it felt a bit odd to be steeping them in hot water.

The tea, when finished, is distinctly green – it looks much like Japanese green tea in the cup.  I made it my usual way, in a 16 ounce cup with a level teaspoon of sugar and a few tablespoons of milk.  The sugar, it turns out, is much more than needed to offset any bitterness.  Tomorrow I think I'll try it sans sugar; it may not need any at all to suit my tastes.  The flavor is light and quite nice – surprisingly it didn't taste at all like holly leaves smell.  Within a few minutes of finishing the cup it was evident that the caffeine was there in sufficient quantity to get me going, though perhaps not as much as my usual Darjeeling.

Overall, I liked the yaupon tea.  I only bought two ounces of it, and I will definitely finish that off.  When I'm done with that little bit, I'll decide whether to get some more.  At the moment I like it well enough to say that I likely will do so...

Just got back...

Just got back ... from a very nice wildlife-viewing drive up Blacksmith Fork Canyon.  We saw lots of deer on the north side of the steep hill just south of the Hardware Ranch visitor center, 35 to 40 of them in quite a small area.  Most exciting to me: we saw our first Northern Harrier of the year, in their classic low-and-slow hunting pattern over the big meadow about a half mile west of Hardware Ranch visitor center.  A bit further west we got a great view of two Sandhill Cranes, browsing along the edge of a meadow about 100' away from us.  All three of those viewings were high quality: as much time as we wanted, relatively close, and unobstructed sight lines.  We watched the harrier for about 15 minutes – it's not easy for me to tire of watching that effortless stunt flying.  That's not my photo at right, but I wanted to show the light coloration.  Later in the year the Northern Harriers are distinctly darker; this one surprised us with how pale it was.

I can see how some might think this was boring...

I can see how some might think this was boring...  SpaceX just did it again: a “nominal” launch of a Dragon resupply ship from Cape Canaveral.  As I write this, the Dragon is in its intended orbit, has tested its maneuvering systems, and has unfurled its solar panels.  Now it will have a two-day journey until it docks at the ISS.  Awesome, SpaceX.  And I'm not bored at all...

A confession...

A confession...  If you had asked me a month ago what the chances were that I'd pay $100 to subscribe to the Washington Post for a year, I'd have confidently asserted that the chances were exactly zero.  I'd also have asserted that there was nothing conceivable that would change my mind.  I'd read enough of their articles to know that their commentary was overwhelmingly in the “uninformed liberal” category, and that liberal bias spilled over, well, liberally, into their allegedly straight news stories.  If I wanted liberal bias like that (and actually, I do for the purposes of informing myself), I can get all I want for free from National Public Radio (including their online material).

But now I've gone and done it.  A couple of weeks ago I plunked down my $100, and I was definitely not happy about it.  So why'd I do it?  Because the Post found a way to entice me: they hired one of my two favorite columnists in the world, and now her work is behind the Post's paywall.  The Post got Megan McArdle.  Damn them!

Also, good for them.  It's an interesting choice they made to hire a writer who can be depended on to bash liberals whenever they deserve it (and conservatives, too).  And, I sincerely hope, it's also a good move for Megan.  I don't think it matters much, from her perspective, what bias the platform hosting her has – her work transcends and ignores that, which is precisely what I cherish about it.  I hope she got a nice jump in compensation for this move (away from Bloomberg).  In these politically polarized days, the tendency is for everyone to be categorized as “liberal” or “conservative”, with some relatively crazy minority identifying as “libertarian” or some other group.  I don't fit into any of these categories, and so far as I can discern neither does Megan (though it's often said of her that she “leans right” .  I think she has her own category to herself, which I'll call “sober and rational”.  This country could use a few more Megans.  Actually, a lot more Megans.

But, dammit, I hate forking over my money to such a biased platform!

Who's my other favorite columnist?  The reliably conservative (in an old-fashioned sense) Jonah Goldberg, who shares an ample portion of Megan's sobriety and rationality.  Plus he loves dogs (as does Megan)...

Just found this online, by accident...

Just found this online, by accident...  But it (and an appropriate frame) are now on their way to me.  Reagan riding a velociraptor – how does anyone even think of these things?  Totally awesome...

Feeling much better today...

Feeling much better today...  I'm not real happy about how long it's taking me to get over this bug, but still ... getting to the end is a good thing.  My fever is almost gone this morning (99.1°F, where my normal temperature is about 98.4°F), and noticeably more brain cells are functioning. :)  Better yet, I made it to 4:30 pm still feeling pretty good.  It sure will be good to see the back side of this bug!

This afternoon Debbie made us a spectacular meal, real brains-fall-out-onto-the-table sort of fare.  The entree was fresh halibut (from our local Macey's!), the first of the Alaskan season.  Debbie found a recipe she liked, then tweaked it, and produced a masterpiece.  The fish was baked sans sauce first, then slathered with the sauce and broiled for a few minutes.  That sauce, oh that sauce!  It contains (amongst other things) mayonnaise, butter, Parmesan cheese, green onions, and Peppadew peppers.  The combined flavors were just wonderful.  The broiled asparagus and steamed sushi rice are standard fare for us, but a delicious accompaniment to the halibut nonetheless.  It was just stunningly good...

This meal got us to pondering (once again) just how much better we're eating here than we were in San Diego.  I still don't really understand why, but the fact is that our ordinary grocery store here (Macey's) has more and better fresh fish, at quite reasonable prices, than we could get in San Diego at any price (and you can pay a lot for fresh fish down there).  The variety isn't quite as large, and certain things are harder to find (lobsters, for instance) – but that's more than made up for by the frequent availability of things we love but could rarely (if ever!) get in San Diego.  Probably the best example of that is fresh giant sea scallops, 5 to 8 to the pound, available here two or three times a month.  It's not just seafood, either – the same store routinely carries several cuts of prime beef.  We're practically addicted to the prime ribeye steaks, which are every bit as good as the best we've ever had in a restaurant.  The produce is abundant, fresh, and (in season) locally sourced.  I can't say the tomatoes are New Jersey quality, but just about everything else (today's asparagus, for instance) is first rate.  We've mentioned our milk before, but it's worth repeating: we get our milk delivered weekly, and it is the best commercial milk we've ever had.  It's high butterfat (9%) whole milk, not homogenized, and low temperature pasteurized.  We each had a glass with our dinner tonight.  And then there's the ice cream, from Aggie's Creamery, part of Utah State University's agricultural department.  I'll be having some chocolate tonight, as an ice cream soda made with plain Pelligrino sparkling water (I like my ice cream sodas unsweetened – no syrup!).   It's the best ice cream I've ever had out of a store, and it's everywhere here.  It's so good that the incentive to make our own ice cream is much reduced.  Why is the food so much better here than it was in San Diego?  I'd love to really understand that, but surely it has something to do with choosier customers.  It doesn't really matter, though –  it's more than enough just to be able to enjoy it...

SpaceX...

SpaceX...  Just watched the latest SpaceX launch, this time with 10 IridiumNext satellites on board, launching from Vandenburg AFB in California.  Once again, a totally routine event, with everything (up through the first second stage burn, anyway) working “nominally” (space-speak for exactly as expected).

This one commercial, profit-seeking company has completely transformed space travel already, and they have many ambitious goals yet unmet.  They've done what NASA called (in testimony to Congress) “impossible”.  They've dramatically reduced the cost of putting things in orbit.  They've increased the reliability of putting things in orbit by a large factor.  Finally, they have a greater capacity to launch (more rockets, in other words) than any other institution, private or public.  It's a wonderful example of the power of capitalism and its associated incentive structures.

It amuses me when I see appalled leftists and statists bleating about the supposed “taxpayer subsidies” leveraged by SpaceX, as though they were a horrible problem.  NASA is 100% “subsidized” (paid for) by the U.S. taxpayer.  NASA uses SpaceX because they're cheaper, more reliable, and more available to launch than any other source of launchers. They get development contracts from NASA and other government entities because they're producing more results with less money.  About the only legitimate ding on SpaceX, in my opinion, is the assertion that they cost jobs at NASA – and that's a ding that I applaud them for, as NASA is a huge sinkhole for wasted taxpayer dollars.  It's a boondoggle that should have been reined in a long time ago...

Ilex vomitoria...

Ilex vomitoria...  Many years ago, when I was a young lad, my father used to regale us kids with tales of American Indians drinking tea made from holly leaves.  They'd drink it, he told us with some envy in his voice, so that they'd vomit after a feast – thus allowing them to go back and enjoy another round at the feast.  At the time, our farm was raising American holly (Ilex opaca), so this meant that we were raising close relatives of a tree the Indians used.  That it was used for puke induction only made the story more attractive to a young boy. :)

Now to say that my dad was a teller of tall tales would be a considerable understatement of the actual facts.  He reveled in telling tales that were far-fetched, yet believable to a kid – such as his assertion to us that chocolate milk came from brown cows, or that buttermilk came from cows that liked to jump around.  When I was quite young, he'd tell several of these tall tales every day.  We believed those tales, for a while.  What made him particularly good at these tall tales was that he'd mix in a few actual facts to them, and even occasionally tell a tall tale that was actually true.  And he had one promise to us: that if we asked him if one of his tales were true, he'd tell us whether it was.  I did ask him, one day, if the tale of the holly tea was true – and he said that it was, though there was some disagreement amongst historians on exactly how it was used.

Fast forward to something like 35 years ago, when I decided one day to read up on this “holly tea”.  I quickly found a reference to it (this is back before the Internet, so I was in a library researching this): my dad was talking about a tea called yaupon, made from the native-to-America holly Ilex vomitoria.  An article I read this morning got me looking again, this time on the Internet.  I found many references online, including this one from 1917 referencing the caffeine content of the plant's leaves, and this one talking about one drink (“black drink”) made with Ilex vomitoria and other herbs that was in fact an emetic (vomit-inducer).

My interest was piqued by the article I read this morning, where I learned (for the first time) that the emetic effects were not actually caused by Ilex vomitoria, but in fact by other herbs.  Also interesting in that article was some speculation about how the name came about.  Apparently Ilex vomitoria is relatively rich in caffeine, and is quite tasty as a tea (according to a considerable number of comments I found online).  That got me to look on Amazon, and sure enough, yaupon tea is readily available!  So I ordered two ounces of it to try out.  I'll report back after I try it, in particular on whether it has any chance of displacing my beloved Darjeeling.  One thing that occurred to me is that here is a tea that (I believe) my Mormon friends could drink without violating their health laws.  A little online research tells me that is very uncertain.

I think my dad would have enjoyed this discovery, and would also have enjoyed trying out the yaupon tea.  His reaction, I'm sure, would have been most entertaining...

Still haven't quite shaken this bug...

Still haven't quite shaken this bug...  My fever is gone this morning (yay!), but some of the other symptoms are still with me.  The most noticeable, for me, is a near-complete absence of my ability to smell or taste.  I had tea and orange rolls (from Kneaders) this morning, and just about all I could taste was the sweetness.  Debbie tells me that both the scent and the taste of those rolls is very strongly orange, but I couldn't detect that at all...

In the morning our friend Lizzy H. and her 6 month old baby Lilly came over for a visit.  We've seen Lilly fairly often since her birth last September, and it's been a lot of fun to watch her developing.  She's now on the verge of crawling, and starting to babble and make noises in reaction to her environment.  Her vision has developed to the point where she can track and watch faces, and she seems to react to your expression and vocal tonality.  Yesterday, while her mom or grand mom was holding her, she was very curious about our old field spaniel Miki – who was also curious about her (unusual for him, as normally he doesn't want anything to do with kids).  It was fun to watch Lilly interacting with Miki, from both perspectives.

We had a doctor's appointment for Debbie yesterday, way up in North Logan.  She was there for two reasons: one was an occasional sharp pain she gets in her knee as she's recovering from her fall early this month, and the other was to see if anything could be done about the large bump on the outside of her left knee (the one most recently operated on).  On the pain, her doctor wants to wait a month to see if it just goes away, as it would if it was not any particular injury but just part of the recovery process.  On the bump, the doctor had not much good news.  He thinks it is likely a bursa caused by irritation of the IT band (a major ligament in the knee) from the two relatively recent surgeries on that knee.  It's a common side-effect of such surgery, he tells us, though it's most commonly seen on a different ligament in the knee.  There are two possible ways to get rid of it.  The first, which would be the one he'd recommend doing first, is a shot of cortisone straight into the bursa.  He doesn't want to do this, however, until the sharp pain problem is resolved.  The second way to get rid of the bursa is surgical removal, but he doesn't want to do that.  He didn't flat out refuse, but I suspect he might have if pressed.  I asked him why the reluctance, and got an explanation that I really liked: he doesn't do surgeries that don't have a functional goal.  This surgery would not increase her knee's ability, and would not resolve any pain – it would be purely cosmetic.  He doesn't believe taking the risk of a surgery for such a thing is a good idea.  Clearly he is ill-suited for a career in plastic surgery!  But I like that attitude in a surgeon...

After the doctor's appointment we headed to a nearby restaurant that we like: La Unica, with great Mexican food.  The owner of the restaurant has been running a few Mexican food trucks in Cache Valley for years, and they also have outstanding fare.  We've been visiting their trucks for three years now, and have gotten to know some of the family members in the process (the owner works with at least two daughters and two sons in the business).  As usual, we had a great meal (carnitas burrito for me, fish tacos for Debbie, mango drink for both).  As we were eating, the owner came over and asked if the red car in front was ours (we drove my Tesla Model X).  When I said yes, out came a stream of questions.  We learned that one of his sons (working there yesterday) had spotted it and was all excited about it.  One thing led to another, and on our way out all the family members working there came out to look at our car.  The first thing they wanted to see: the falcon wing doors, of course. :)  Four of them were ooohing and aaaahing at everything they saw, from the leathery smell of the interior to the giant screen on the center console.  One of the daughters, it turns out, loves her pickup truck – and when I told her of Telsla's plans for a pickup, she got real interested.  A lot of fun, that was. :)

A bit better this morning...

A bit better this morning...  The magic infrared thermometer says my temperature is 99.8°F, and my brain feels like it's at least firing on all cylinders, though at an idle.  I'm beginning to cough up foul things, always a sign that the end is near.  I may survive this after all!

Yesterday afternoon we watched a movie we first saw something like 30 years ago: Karate Kid.  We both had fond memories of it, but really didn't remember very much.  We quite enjoyed it this second time around...

After the movie, it was just before dark and I let the dogs out to play.  As I stood on our deck in the deep twilight, I heard an owl hooting nearby – and when I turned toward the sound, I saw the owl sitting in our leafless weeping willow tree.  Debbie and I watched the owl silhouette for several minutes.  Would have been a great view had there been even the tiniest hint of daylight!  It was pretty good even with the silhouette, though...

My brother Scott told me yesterday of a plant sale nearby, where bare-root trees and shrubs were being offered at fantastically low prices.  The form at right (with my personal information whited out) shows what we're ordering: 140 trees and shrubs for $330.  That works out to $2.36 per tree or shrub – quite a bargain, that!  I wouldn't have to have many of these survive for me to be happy with the deal.  Better yet, my brother – crazy guy that he is – volunteered to plant all of these for me.  Woo hoo!  In a few weeks we're going to have a lot of new starts around here!  It will be interesting to see which ones thrive...

This morning it's wall-to-wall blue sky, with no precipitation in the forecast.  Yay!  I took the photos below from our yard, just before dawn.  The first photo is looking westward, toward the Wellsville Mountains.  The other is looking eastward, towards the Wasatch Mountains...

When you're sick...

When you're sick ... you want Debbie to make your meals.  Trust me on this!  At right is the soup she whipped up for me yesterday: a creamy chicken soup, not salty at all, stuffed with yummy roast chicken and vegetables.  Jealous, y'all should be...

She made this by modifying a cheesy sausage soup recipe she's used for years.  Substituted chicken for the sausage, and queso quesadilla cheese for the cheddar.   If you love to cook and you don't know about queso quesadilla, it's well worth learning about.  It's a very mild cheese, lower in salt than almost any other, with a soft texture and very meltable.  It adds a nice cheese note to just about anything.  Our grocery stores here all have a Mexican cheese section (because there are several really good Mexican cheeses!), and that's where we find it...

I've still got a fever this morning.  And it wasn't helped a bit by the inch of fresh snow that fell and stuck last night.  I've decided not to plow the driveway, as the layer is thin enough to drive over and I don't much like the idea of 90 minutes outside while I have a 100.5°F fever...

A problem we have...

A problem we have...  Debbie and I have different tastes in movies, mostly overlapping.  In music our tastes are nearly two disjoint sets. :)  That's just background for the problem we have, though: we can't rely on reviews to help us choose a movie to watch.

The latest case in point is Pan's Labyrinth.  On Rotten Tomatoes, we saw that both viewers and critics loved it.  We watched the trailer and thought it had possibilities.  So a couple of nights ago, we streamed it from Amazon, and ... we were disgusted with it.  One big surprise for us: it was full of gratuitous, cartoonish violence.  There were many scenes that we just couldn't stand to watch, and several violent scenes that happened by surprise, so we had no chance to turn away.  We thought the characters, even the main characters, were very poorly developed.  The plot was full of things that just made no sense to us as we were watching, though some we managed to puzzle out afterwards.  It was definitely surreal, but not in any way that we found interesting, intriguing, or entertaining.  I had a similar reaction to it that I have to much modern art: I just don't get it.  I don't understand what could possess anyone to say “I like this!”

And that, in short, is our problem.  This one you could summarize as “lots of false positives” on movie reviews, meaning that many movies that are positively reviewed – either by critics or viewers – we think are awful.  It is quite possibly over half of positive reviews are “false” from our perspective.  Even worse: we also get a lot of “false negatives” – many movies are are negatively reviewed we think are great.  The rate of false negatives isn't quite as high as the false positives, but it's far from zero.  So the end result is that we basically can't use reviews as guidance for movies we've never seen.

What we need is “movie reviews for weirdos like us.”  Rotten Loonies, maybe?  Anybody know of such a thing?

Felt like hell yesterday...

Felt like hell yesterday ... and about the same this morning.  Whatever damned virus has got a hold on me is really annoying.  Because of the fever associated with the virus, my brain feels like it's running at a tiny fraction of its normal power, and that's the part I hate the most.  Yesterday I was playing my usual Scrabble games over the Internet (with my sister and her friend, and with a friend in Poland), and it was really, really hard for me – trying to think of words to fit my letters felt like I was wading through mental quicksand, where normally it's a breezy sprint for me.

I didn't do much of anything yesterday (see previously mentioned virus), but a few things did stick out.

First, I ran to our little local grocery store (Ridley's) in Hyrum to get some hamburger.  Debbie was making her patented chili comfort food, figuring (correctly!) that I would like it when I was feeling awful.  On the way into the store I was confronted (very politely, and with humor) by an adult woman dressed in a cookie costume and waving a sign around.  I soon figured out that she was guiding victims customers to the table in front of the store where several cute Girl Scouts and an adult woman were selling Girl Scout cookies.  On my way out of the store, I bought two boxes of them.  The Girl Scout who helped me choose the cookies, when we were done, asked me “What happened to your hair?”  My hair is pretty short at the moment, and it's getting sparser by the day.  This was not long after my morning shower, and my hair was all frizzy and pointing in every which way.  I don't blame her at all for being curious about it! :)  The adult woman behind her, though, sucked in her breath and called out the girl's name admonishingly.  I laughed and told her it was fine, and told the little girl that my hair is what happens to men who are older than dirt.  She just looked confused, but the mom behind her got a laugh. 

When I went to pay for my cookies, I had an experience of quite the different kind.  I was directed to another Girl Scout, a little older, to take my money.  She told me the cookies were $4 a box.  I didn't have correct change, so I handed her a $20 bill.  She looked up at me, apologetically, and said “I’m really bad at math, and I’m in high school.  I don’t know how much change you’re supposed to get.”  I found out, through a bit more conversation, that she was in 10th grade.  If we were still in California, where the poor Girl Scouts (where and when we lived) had to compute a 8.67% sales tax, I could forgive the inability to compute the correct change in her head.  But here in Utah there is no sales tax on Girl Scout cookies, and the price ($4 a box) is about as easy to compute as you can get.  I talked it out with the girl, mom behind her watching closely, and determined that she could figure the price for the two boxes (though only after great mental labor), but figuring the change I was due was completely beyond her.  Even in my mentally incapacitated (see fever mentioned earlier), this was a trivial exercise for me.  In the end I had to tell this high school girl that $20 - (2 x $4) = $12.  With relief evident in her face, she handed me the change. 

In most countries I've traveled in (and that's quite a few), such an encounter would be unthinkable unless that little girl actually had a mental deficiency.  Here, even in Utah, it is all too common an occurrence.  It's this sort of thing that makes me feel the doom coming on – and makes me confident that there will be a successor to the U.S. hegemony in the world.  I'm not sure which country it will be.  China and India are the two likeliest looking ones to me at the moment...

Last night we watched an old (1963) movie: The Three Lives of Thomasina.  I had never seen it before, but it was a favorite of Debbie's childhood.  I had read the book (Thomasina by Paul Gallico); it was a Christmas present from my parents in the late '50s, one of the first books my parents bought for me (as opposed to the books my dad inherited, and the many books they bought for themselves).  I remember getting it not long before they surprised me with a complete encyclopedia (that one purchased from a yard sale).  Both are vivid memories for me, along with three or four other books that were early and special to me.  Anyway, the movie's plot at least resembles the book, enough that I could easily follow along.  I quite enjoyed it.  Debbie did too, through her sobbing and sniffling (she gets quite emotional about stories involving animals).

It's snowing this morning.  Dang it!  I thought we were likely done with this white stuff, but apparently not quite yet...

Some random things...

Some random things...  I felt lousy most of yesterday, and I woke up feeling about the same this morning – some kind of virus that's giving me a low-grade fever and a general feeling of unperkiness.  The part I hate the most about these sorts of illnesses is what the fever does to the working of my brain: it feels like all my thinking is proceeding through some thick fluid that makes everything happen soooooo slowly.  Mental activity that's normally effortless for me (say, adding a couple of numbers in my head) is so hard I can just barely force myself to do it. 

Despite that, some nice things happened yesterday and this morning.

For starters, we got some rain last night – something like a half inch, maybe a little more.  Apparently it got cold enough so that we also got a little snow, but I'm sure that will be gone in short order.  The rain cleared most of the snow piles that had been remaining, and it also woke up some of the plants around our place.  At right is some sedum my brother Scott gave me a couple of years ago, planted in a big piece of driftwood.  Sometime overnight it turned from a dull brown into this red gloriousness.  Gorgeous, it is!  If you look carefully, you'll see that there is still a bit of snow stuck in it.  I'm pretty sure that's old, unmelted snow, as this is sheltered under a willow that otherwise has no snow under it.

A few days ago I saw an old friend's posting in Facebook after I logged in for the first time in five or six years (I hate Facebook): Vera S., whom I met at work in FutureTrade in 2002.  I messaged her, and yesterday she messaged back to invite me to call.  Last evening we (she, Debbie, and I) had a wonderful conversation, just reconnecting after our last conversation back in 2011.   Now we have her new email address and her phone number, so we can stay in touch.  We also have her commitment for a visit up here (she and her husband Konstantin live in Huntington Beach, California).  We're so looking forward to that!

After talking with Vera, Debbie and I finished a game of Mexican Train.  Debbie loves this game, at least partially because she beats me about 99% of the time.  Somehow yesterday, despite my mental fogginess, I eked out a win (score sheet at right, low score wins).  That was startling enough that I had to take a picture of that score sheet to preserve it for posterity! :)

This morning Debbie shocked me to my core.  After I took my shower and wandered out into the kitchen, I discovered a bowl of creamy chicken noodle soup on the table for me, and shortly after I sat down she delivered two pieces of buttered toast and a cup of heavenly Darjeeling tea.  This sort of thing is quite rare these days! :)  To be fair, this is largely because for most of the past four years she's been limited in her ability to move around due to her multiple knee and back injuries.  I cannot even remember the last time she made breakfast like this.  Her explanation: I'm feeling yucky, so she wanted to take care of me.  Maybe feeling yucky isn't so bad after all!

Feeling yucky again...

Feeling yucky again...  Dang it!

A nice afternoon drive...

A nice afternoon drive...  We went up to Hardware Ranch again, and saw a lot more wildlife than we've been seeing recently.  Hundreds of elk were wandering around within view from the visitor center parking lot.  Dozens of deer were also there, and we saw lots of deer both on the way in and on the way out.  Debbie spotted a couple of Sandhill Cranes out in the ranch's pastures, mingling with the elk.  We've been seeing them in Cache Valley for the past four or five days as well.  I don't know whether these are migratory cranes just passing through on the way south, or if they're amongst those who summer here.  It could easily be the former, because our recently uncovered pastures are full of things for them to eat (perhaps most especially voles, whose under-snow passages are now fully exposed).

The first photo below shows a group of three deer who stopped about 100' away from us as we drove by.  Deer seem to be quite unafraid of our Tesla Model X, we presume because it's so quiet.  That was taken with my iPhone, on the 2X optical telephoto, handheld.  The second photo we took right near Hardware Ranch.  That's a flock of turkeys – enough meat to feed half of Cache Valley right there!  :)

More morning bananas...

More morning bananas...  Here's another attempt to capture the morning banana ritual.  It's surprisingly hard to capture this wide-angle event in our narrow-angle kitchen!

The last photo...

The last photo...  I'm still working my way through my mom's belongings.  This afternoon I came across the little point-and-shoot digital camera she had for the last couple of years she was alive.  I'll be giving that camera away, but inside it I found the memory card, with about 400 photos on it.  I'm pretty sure those are all the photos she took during those few years; I don't think she ever figured out how to copy them to her computer.  Every time I visited her, helping her send photos to her friends was high on her list of things for me to do.  :)

My mom was a remarkably bad photographer, which given her artistic sense was a bit of a surprise to me.  It's the mechanics of the camera she never seemed to understand, from the zoom lens to the focus.  I'd guess that of the 400 or so photos, less than a dozen of them are properly exposed and in focus.  Probably 90% of the photos are of flowers; the remainder are split between people, bugs, and dead bats.

There was a surprise for me near the end of the photos, though.  Unbeknownst to me, she had taken a dozen or so photos after she arrived here in Utah.  Most of these were of people: some friends of ours who visited her to welcome her to Utah, the staff at the assisted care facility (she loved those folks), and so on.  One, however, was the photo above.  From it's placement in the camera's sequence, I'm pretty sure one of our friends took that photo, almost certainly at mom's request.  What you see there is how she looked during her happiest time here, just after she arrived.  It gave me a real start to see that.  In a good way, though.

Miss you every day, mom...

Do I still use...

Do I still use ... DEVONthink and my Fujitsu ScanSnap IX500 for scanning receipts and other documents?  So asks Ron L., by email. 

The answer: hell, yes! 

At this point I've been using this for over three years, and I've got just over 4,000 documents scanned.  The process of scanning and transferring numbers to my bookkeeping (for which I use Moneydance) has long since been burned into my “muscle memory” – I no longer have to think about it at all.  All those 4,000 documents are just electrons, and not occupying file cabinets and boxes like they used to.  Since I got my iMac Pro in December, the OCR time has dropped to something insignificant – a second or two unless I scan something like a 20 page legal document in fine print.

Best of all, finding a document is now just a matter of a Google-style search, with effectively instantaneous results.  This took a couple of years to become a reflexive habit, much like it took me a while to think of the camera on my smartphone as a way to remember or record things.  Just recently I've started yet another use of DEVONthink: I create .pdf files containing notes (and optionally drawings or photos) and import them.  DEVONthink is happy to accept .pdf files from anywhere, and indexes them just like it does scanned documents.  Being able to do Google-style searches on these is very useful, and basically infinitely faster than the file search built into OSX.

At this point I consider all this part of my minimally-acceptable computing environment.  If one of them dies, I will have to find a replacement...

A feverish Saturday...

A feverish Saturday...  Yesterday I was operating on intellectual fumes for most of the day, the victim of a fever that reached 102.7°F at its peak, just before I went to bed.  Most of the day I spent playing simple games with Debbie (and losing!) and reading; anything more mentally challenging would have been impossible.  At around 4 am I woke shivering, and realized that my fever was breaking.  By 4:30 am my brain was operating on all cylinders again, and now this morning I feel fine.  I can't remember ever having such a short, intense illness before.  But it's gone now – yay!

The two videos below are of our dogs.  The first one shows all five dogs enjoying their morning bananas.  I'm going to try re-shooting this one with a wider field of view, as this attempt doesn't show them actually catching the banana slices, except for Ipo.  The second video is showing off a skill that Ipo has acquired.  All three of our young field spaniels have thoroughly learned that when they come in from outside, they're to run directly to their crates and wait for a treat.  We trained this behavior in the possibly forlorn hope that when they come into the house during mud season (just started) we won't have pounds of mud to clean up in the kitchen – it will all be contained in their crates.  This all works great unless the crate doors are pushed to the closed position.  Even unlatched, this stops the dogs cold – except Ipo.  All on her own she learned how to grab the wire of the door with a front claw and whip the door open, so she can run in and make preparations for Milk Bone consumption.  In this video it happens so quickly you really can't see how she's doing it...

Do we still like our iPhone Model Xs?

Do we still like our iPhone Model Xs?  A question I received this morning from reader (and all around crazy person) Dick M.  Answer: why, yes, we do.  The large screen in a small form factor is great for our ancient eyes.  The brandy-new biometric feature (face ID) works amazingly well, and it's been integrated with nearly all of the apps I use on the iPhone that require identification.  I love the resulting ease of use.  There's a security tradeoff there, obviously: someone who wanted something on my phone badly enough could tie me down and hold the phone up to my face to get access.  On the other hand, someone who wants access to my phone that badly is probably going to get access anyway. :)  The one situation I can imagine where there's a risk I don't like is border crossings, and if I ever take my phone across a border I will be disabling face ID for the crossing.  It's not the foreign countries I worry about, it's the U.S. border agents with their freedom to examine (and even confiscate!) my electronics.

And I left the best for last.  The iPhone X's camera is superb.  My videos are notably less shaky, and I find myself using the 2X optical telephoto very frequently.  The camera is enough better that I'd be happy with the iPhone X even if the camera was the only new feature.  But it's not!

A few mornings out of the year ...

A few mornings out of the year ... several things line up just right such that the morning sun angles into one of my office windows and strikes the “Tuscan yellow” wall.  The result is a bright, cheerful glow that lasts just a few minutes until the sun climbs high enough that the lit spot is on the floor.  This morning was such a morning...

So what has to line up, and why does it happen only rarely?  For starters, to our east are the Wasatch Mountains.  Generally by the time the sun climbs over the mountains in the morning, the angle is already high enough that my wall won't be lit up.  The point where the sun comes up varies over the course of the year, as the seasons change.  Within the range of sunrise points there are two “notches” from the perspective of our property.  This morning the sun rose in the bottom (lowest point) of one of those notches.  The other notch (which the sun comes up through in the summer) is so far north that the patches lit up in my office on those mornings don't strike any walls.  The sun rises through the other notch in late November and mid March.  Then there's another bit that needs lining up: the patch of sun has to strike the wall where nothing is hanging.  That's about half the possible time.  Finally, it has to be a nicely clear day – even haze will diminish the brightness enough to ruin the effect.

A good start to my morning!

A reader asks...

A reader asks...  Mary L. wrote to ask me if I use an ad blocker for my web browser, and if so, which one?  The answer is “Hell, yes!” I use an ad blocker!  I hate seeing those ads, and even more I hate the delayed visual “pop” when they populate after the text I want to read renders.  I have to say, though, that because I read so much on an iPad (with no ad blockers, dang it) I am getting to the point where tuning out the ads is nearly automatic.  I consciously (almost) never click on an ad, though, as I know that information will be collected and used to target more ads to me.  As things are right now, the ads I see are almost entirely comprised of three categories: things that I've looked at on Amazon, things that Debbie has looked at on Amazon (we share an account), and things related to electronics.  The latter, I presume, is because some vendor I've dealt with has sold my name to a list (I'm betting it's Newark, where I bought my 'scope). 

As for which ad blocker: at the moment I'm using Ublock.  I'm happy with its performance, it eliminates virtually all ads, and it's available for both Chrome and Firefox (I still use both browsers about equally).  It's also available for Safari, but I can't speak to its performance there as I almost never use Safari (because of compatibility issues on several sites I visit daily).