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...

Evening in Paradise...

Evening in Paradise...  Just got back from an evening walk with da boyz (our three dogs).  It's just starting to cool off the tiniest bit, down to 92° from the high of 95°.  I must be getting used to this – I worked outside nearly all day, and didn't really get overheated (though I certainly took things slowly!). 

Walking back toward home on our walk, downhill, we were looking directly into the sun.  The irrigation systems were all nicely backlit, and stood out all the way across the valley.  You can't really see the distant ones in this photo, though I could see them clearly with my Mark I eyeballs. 

The sprinklers next to the road misted us in three separate places, and that felt good to all of us.  Miki (our smart little guy) figured it out after two sprinklers, and planted himself firmly in place on the third.  He stayed there, eyes closed, for four sprinkler rotations.  By that time he was nicely wetted, which would have cooled him nicely.  Meanwhile, Race and Mo'i got as far away from the water as the leash would let them, and looked at Miki as though he had lost his dogly mind :)

Narva...

Narva ... the Estonian city on the border with Russia.  Here's an interesting article about the place, with enough context to help non-Estonians understand just why they find the Russian threat so real.

I've visited Narva several times, and also driven from Narva through Russia to St. Petersburg (once with an Estonian friend, another time by myself).  I've also spent a number of days along the northern Estonian coastline (along the Baltic Sea), in every season.  It's quite a beautiful place, most especially in the spring.  There's a lot of good hiking in the area, which might surprise you if you casually inspected a map.  I can attest to the Narva area being nearly 100% Russian.  The character of the area is far more like Russia itself than the rest of Estonia is.  With apologies to my Russian friends, that's not a good thing.  What you notice immediately upon entering an all-Russian area is the trash along the roadside.  The Russians are the worst litterers I've ever run into.  One summer I hiked for about an hour along a river near Narva, as it approached the Baltic Sea.  When I walked out of the forest and onto the pebble beach, I was surrounded by an awesome display of Russian flesh – a large number of Russian adults were stretched out on the beach, some wore bathing attire; many did not.  The average weight of those people was pushing 300 pounds.  The rotundity was quite impressive.  Bottles of vodka were everywhere.  Snores filled the air.  This is one of my most lasting memories of Narva :)