Paradise ponders, beautiful smiles and powder snow edition...

Paradise ponders, beautiful smiles and powder snow edition...  I forgot to mention something fun that happened last Friday, when we took our friend Tim D. to the Red Iguana.  Our waitress was a woman named Marisela, a Hispanic lady about 50 years old whom we've had as our waitress on several occasions.  She's quite ordinary in appearance except when she smiles (which is often!); then she positively glows.  She looked tired and a little stressed on Friday, so when she'd finished taking our order, I got her attention and told her that she had a beautiful smile.  We were rewarded with an extra high-power smile, and the harassed look disappeared for the rest of our visit there.  A few words can make a big difference sometimes! That's the sort of thing my mom used to do quite often, and I'm trying to get there myself...

We got five or six inches of powdery snow last night.  It will be light here shortly, and I'll be out plowing and blowing...

The combination of aging eyes...

The combination of aging eyes ... and modern electronics is not necessarily a good thing, as I'm discovering.  I'm working on a project for our mud room, to turn the lights on and off with a touch of a cabinet handle.  Thankfully most of the parts are available in (now) old-fashioned DIP packages.  Some of the parts, however, are only available in packages intended for surface-mounting.  The part at right is one such; it's the capacitive proximity sensor at the heart of this little project.  It's available only in a SOT-6 package, which is tiny!  I've glued it to a piece of vector board (the green stuff with holes in it).  Those holes are a mere tenth-inch apart, which gives you some idea just how small this part is.  The wires that you see there, with black and red insulation, are 30 gauge wires – not much bigger than a fine hair.  Somehow I've managed to solder them onto their pins, after much trial-and-error.  I could only do this because I have a tip for my soldering iron that ends in a sharp point that you could hurt yourself with.  Also, I'm using a 5x magnifying glass and a nice, bright light.

I'm stopping for the day, as my eyes hurt and I can't hold my hands steady enough to do this any more.  Four more of those wires and I'm done with this one.  But I have another of these surface mount parts to do, too – yikes!  I'm beginning to see why so many guides I've read advise people not to do this.  I'm not sure it would really be any easier even if I had a circuit board, though.  This is the first time I've ever attempted to use a part this small; hopefully it will get easier with some practice.

I hope...

Winter wonderland here today...

Winter wonderland here today...  We must have had some thick fog here last night, because when we woke this morning we discovered that all the trees outside had acquired a thick layer of hoarfrost.  We took a drive around the area within a few miles of our home.  The first part of this trip is recorded on the video at right, which starts out as we were on the road alongside our property and shows you a couple miles of our local roads this morning.  More photos of other areas below:

The last photo above shows a roughly 8 foot high waterfall where an irrigation canal loses some altitude.  The water was still flowing vigorously under that ice; I could hear it from 10 feet away.

I also took a few photos around our place:

Paradise ponders, Model X edition...

Paradise ponders, Model X edition...  Well, it actually happened – our Model X was ready at the promised time on Friday, and we took delivery.  That means we drove down to Salt Lake City (with our friend and neighbor Tim D., at right), had lunch at the Red Iguana (this was Tim's first visit there!), and then went down just south of Salt Lake City to get the car.  We spent an hour or so going through familiarization, very useful as there's so much about this car that's different than any other car we've ever driven.

Then we jumped in and scooted the 90 miles or so home, arriving with about 70% of the battery left.  That was a most interesting drive for me, trying to absorb all the new controls while simultaneously observing this new machine we bought.  The controls are similar enough to a “normal” car that it doesn't actually seem alien – but different enough, in ways both large and small, to be quite confusing.  An example of a small difference: the cruise control stalk is on the left of the steering wheel, instead of on the right like all our other vehicles (all Toyotas).  Also, the actions of the four motions are different.  On the other hand, one big difference: when you take your foot off the accelerator pedal, the car feels like you're applying the brakes – because the motors are reconfigured to be generators, and the car is loosing speed by using the kinetic energy to charge the batteries (regenerative braking).  To coast like you would in a normal car, you have to gently press the accelerator.  That one is going to take me a while to internalize. :)

On Friday night we took a short drive in the Tesla, mainly to see what it was like to drive it at night.  It's got some fancy headlights, and I was curious how the automatic dimming of the giant touch screen and instrument screen would work.  All that stuff worked great, but about a half mile into our little drive, we pulled up next to someone who had a little Toyota, two-wheel drive, and had slid the two right wheels off the pavement.  The car had two young couples in it, all locals (from Hyrum), but somehow they haven't figured out how to drive in snowy weather. :)  They were rather profoundly stuck.  We offered to run back home, get our pickup, then come back and haul them out.  They gratefully agreed, and we did – had them out and back on pavement in a jiffy.  The hardest part of the entire operation was untying the rope I'd used to haul them out.  It felt really good to help someone out on a nasty cold evening like that.

Saturday we drove up to Hardware Ranch for our first real test of the Model X as a touring car.  It was very cold outside – between 7°F and 12°F – but inside it remained a perfect 72°F.  One of the first things we noticed about the Model X was the almost instantaneous effect of the heater (we don't know about the air conditioner yet!).  There are also heated seats, a heated steering wheel, and a few other secondary things – but that instant heater is magic.  It reminds me of a VW Microbus my family had when I was a kid; that thing had a gas-fired heater that worked within a few seconds.  The big overhead window that Tesla likes to brag about is ... not bragged about sufficiently.  The visibility in the car is just stunning .. the only thing in the way of your visibility are the thin pillars between the windshield and the side windows.  Even the bluffs far over our heads were easily seen, just by looking up very naturally.  In our pickup or the FJ Cruiser Debbie and I are constantly running into situations where one of us can see something interesting (usually wildlife) slightly above the vehicle on one side, and the other of us can't see it at all because the darned roof is in the way.  Not happening on the Model X.

When you press on the accelerator in the Model X, you're in for a surprise – the power it has is (far) beyond anything else I've ever experienced.  It's fun, in the same way a roller coaster or similar fair ride can be – subjecting you to acceleration you're simply not used to.  All I've tried so far is pushing the accelerator maybe two-thirds of the way down – and I haven't yet had the intestinal fortitude to try “ludicrous mode”, which substantially adds to the acceleration the Model X is capable of.

Here's a couple photos of our Model X near the dam in Blacksmith Fork Canyon:

As we pulled into Hardware Ranch, we had a magical few moments as we drove through a cloud of sparkly ice crystals.  We were in bright sunlight, and somehow that cloud of microscopic ice crystals got blown right in front of us.  With our all-round visibility in the Model X, it was as if we were in a bubble with these magical sparkling lights all around us.  We had just enough time to say “Wow!” and it was all over.  It didn't seem real, more like a Hollywood special effects scene.  But it surely was beautiful!

Last night we drove the Model X to Maddox Ranch House for dinner, a Christmas gift from a good friend.  Here's what I had: a New York strip steak and a lovely cheddar vegetable soup.  Debbie had a ginormous ribeye that she could only eat about two-thirds of. :)

That was a roughly 60 mile round trip, including a climb and drop through the Wellsville Mountains.  We used slightly more than the estimated 25% of the battery charge to make that trip, which I suspect is because of the climbing we had to do.  It made me a bit nervous to leave the Model X in the parking lot. :)

Some beautiful photos...

Some beautiful photos ... and a little more...  My sister Holly sent me this link to a site called “Bright Side”.  This particular page is a collection of the “100 best photographs ever taken without photoshop”.  The photo at right is one example, and it is (like the others) indeed a gorgeous photo.  But there's a little more to the site than it appears to be...

The first thing that caught my eye was the little notice from my ad blocker, telling me that it had blocked eleven ads on this single page.  That's not a record, but it's close.  It's kind of a “tell” for a click-bait site, and this site sure looks like it might be click-bait.

So I downloaded five of the photos, selected at random, and loaded them up into my image editing software.  Every one of them had had their color profiles heavily photoshopped.  Then I ran a software tool that detects manipulated edges, and one of the photos that I downloaded was definitely created by dropping one image onto another.  So the claim of photoshopping is pure BS.  I don't actually care about that from an artistic perspective – they're beautiful photos, and that's enough.  But the claim is balderdash.

That made me wonder who owns the site.  A quick WHOIS query got me this info:

Domain Name: BRIGHTSIDE.ME
Registry Domain ID: D108500000009857264-AGRS
Registrar WHOIS Server:
Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com
Updated Date: 2016-07-29T14:08:37Z
Creation Date: 2013-10-09T02:35:19Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2025-10-09T02:35:19Z
Registrar: GoDaddy.com, LLC
Registrar IANA ID: 146
Registrar Abuse Contact Email:
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone:
Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientDeleteProhibited
Domain Status: clientRenewProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientRenewProhibited
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited
Domain Status: clientUpdateProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientUpdateProhibited
Registry Registrant ID: CR197958667
Registrant Name: Marat Mukhametov
Registrant Organization:
Registrant Street: Gavrilova 1
Registrant City: Kazan
Registrant State/Province: Tatarstan
Registrant Postal Code: 4200001
Registrant Country: RU
Registrant Phone: +7.8435255456
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: 
Registry Admin ID: CR197958668
Admin Name: Marat Mukhametov
Admin Organization:
Admin Street: Gavrilova 1
Admin City: Kazan
Admin State/Province: Tatarstan
Admin Postal Code: 4200001
Admin Country: RU
Admin Phone: +7.8435255456
Admin Phone Ext:
Admin Fax:
Admin Fax Ext:
Admin Email: 
Registry Tech ID: CR197958670
Tech Name: Marat Mukhametov
Tech Organization:
Tech Street: Gavrilova 1
Tech City: Kazan
Tech State/Province: Tatarstan
Tech Postal Code: 4200001
Tech Country: RU
Tech Phone: +7.8435255456
Tech Phone Ext:
Tech Fax:
Tech Fax Ext:
Tech Email: 
Name Server: NS-515.AWSDNS-00.NET
Name Server: NS-173.AWSDNS-21.COM
Name Server: NS-1983.AWSDNS-55.CO.UK
Name Server: NS-1377.AWSDNS-44.ORG
DNSSEC: unsigned
URL of the ICANN Whois Inaccuracy Complaint Form: https://www.icann.org/wicf/

For more information on Whois status codes, please visit https://icann.org/epp

Interesting! The site is hosted in Germany, and is owned by a Russian guy (from Kazan, about 400 miles east of Moscow) who owns a bunch of other domains, including two others that are quite popular.  A quick look at them shows that they fit the click-bait pattern.  This guy appears to be another in the army of people who see a business opportunity in copying content from other sites, arranging it and marketing it, then harvesting the ad click revenue to make money.  The same sort of thing used to happen with books (and probably still does).  The Internet makes it very easy, though, and most especially for people living in countries where copyright laws are ignored (and Russia is most definitely such a place)...

Paradise ponders, scallops and seam-ripper edition...

Paradise ponders, scallops and seam-ripper edition...  We had a bit of an emergency yesterday, with our cat Jahaer.  He had all the symptoms of an intestinal obstruction, which he's had before.  We got an appointment with a vet we've never seen before, in Logan, a referral from our usual vet (who was on holiday).  We got him down there, he was X-rayed, and sure enough there appeared to be an obstruction.  Downstream of the obstruction his intestines were empty except for gas, and they were very orderly instead of being a big jumble – suspicious to the vet.  Upstream of the obstruction the intestines were full of ... something.  At the junction would be the presumed obstruction, though it wasn't visible on the X-ray (as would be expected if the obstruction were a piece of plastic or wood).  The vet recommended surgery: to remove the obstruction if there was one, or to figure out what was going on if there wasn't.  We said go, and very shortly poor little Jahaer was under the knife.

Well, there was nothing that the vet could find blocking his intestines, but there was definitely some weird things going on.  His omentum had adhered in several places to his intestines, and that was why they were so orderly.  The vet cut all those loose.  Right where the obstruction seen on the X-ray was located, the omentum had adhered in a way that slightly kinked the intestine – so his working theory is that the kink (now removed) was the source of the problem, perhaps combined with something relatively inflexible that he'd ingested.  So the vet never cut into his intestines or stomach, which means that this surgery was relatively low-risk, and now he's recovering just fine.  The vet said the omentum's adhesions were likely the result of the surgery Jahaer had three years ago to save him from the consequences of eating a ribbon.  Hopefully this latest surgery took care of that; we'll know in a week or so.

At one point during the day we stopped at a dry cleaner's in Logan to drop off some stuff.  Debbie has a leather jacket that had big shoulder pads in it, and she was hoping their alterations lady would be able to remove them.  We gave the jacket and right then and there she opened a seam with an Xacto knife, yanked the pads out, and stitched the seam back up.  It was 15 minutes or so of skilled work.  When she was done, we asked what we owed her ... and she said “Merry Christmas!” and that it was a gift.  She refused any money at all.  We love this place!

This morning dawned very cold – just 9°F on the thermometer, and it felt even colder than that.  The morning was sure pretty, though (at right).  I caught that just as the morning sun was illuminating the Wellsville Mountains to our west, but before the first rays touched the valley floor where we live.

Today Macey's had fresh sea scallops again, and I picked up two pounds of them for our dinner.  These things were rather large: just 17 scallops weighed in at 2.2 pounds.  Debbie made her signature broiled scallops dish: butter, lemon, garlic and dill on these luscious scallops.  I'm not sure what magic she uses to get the timing right, but for the last dozen or so times she's gotten it absolutely perfect.  Scallops are tricky: you want them cooked, but not to the point of rubber, and that gives you a window of time that's just seconds long.  There are are no instruments involved in Debbie's method – she just looks and pokes and somehow knows when to take them out.  Man, those were good!

Tomorrow morning I pick up our new Tesla Model X.  The original plan was for Debbie to drive me down in her truck, then we'd drive back separately.  She doesn't want to leave Jahaer for that long, though, so I called my friend and neighbor Tim D., and he's going to give me a ride down.  I suspect he'll enjoy taking a look at the Model X.  :)  I spent a couple hours this morning reviewing the training videos and manual.  Hopefully it won't be hard for me to get used to this fancy new thing, but it's truly very different than the pickups I've been driving for almost 30 years now...

Paradise ponders, possible obstructed cat edition...

Paradise ponders, possible obstructed cat edition...  We're worried about Jahar, our Savannah cat, this morning.  He's behaving in a way that suggests he's got some sort of obstruction in his digestive system (possibly from something he ate).  Debbie's called the vet's office, but the vet is taking a well-deserved holiday today.  The vet tech on duty is calling to find out what to do.  We're getting ready to make a trip...

Blogging may be light to non-existent today...

Salt-lick camera take...

Salt-lick camera take...  I saw deer tracks in the snow a couple days ago, so I put the camera back out.  Here's what we got last night: