Random Notes

The Heat Is On

It's worth mentioning that I damn near started a wildfire today. Luckily, we got the thing under control quickly. But, you know, damn that was fast.

 

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Whine, Cheese, and a Sunny Day

So the 20v drill went on the fritz; this, in retrospect, was inevitable. If an M-16 can jam in the desert, a cheap, battery powered drill can easily get this overfine, nearly water-resistant, sandy soil into its works.

Big deal. Figure it out later. Use the other drill.

Turns out when I grabbed the power cable for an air compressor, yesterday, I cut power to the saw table, which is where the battery chargers were plugged in.

18v drill has no power.

Switch projects; all I need here is a hammer and my wire cutters to remove braces from foundation forms. Can't find the cutters. No big deal, the tie-wire can be levered into either breaking or pulling its fastener from the brace.

Except ...

... when these braces were put on, instead of short nails someone used long screws to fasten the tie wire; pull the nails from the form, and it turns out the brace is still lodged into the concrete by multiple three-inch screws.

Which brings me back to the drills ....

And on top of it all, it's not excruciatingly hot today, only about eighty Fahrenheit (27° C), so why the hell do I feel like I'm on the verge of stroking out?

Sad thing is that I got a decent start to the day; first time all week I could go out and just start working instead of standing around wondering why reality so disagrees with the intended work schedule. And now my afternoon is shot. Just once this week I would like to have a productive day that equals something more than less than half the work schedule.

Not gonna happen.

(/whine)

 

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“The octopus loves a voracious student, and will serve up profound lessons to those who seek them from her.”

“The octopus is extremely intelligent with the ability to reason, strategize, and recall information. The octopus reminds us to use our logic to our highest advantage. She urges us to be the master of our intelligence, not the slave. By using our reasoning skills the way the octopus does we are utilizing a tool.”

Another tool worth mentioning is the octopus' use of camouflage. She is the master of disguises, further emphasizing her animal symbolism of mystery, secretiveness, and esoteric knowledge. She can disappear and reappear before our wondering eyes as is evident in this video:

Source: http://www.whats-your-sign.com/octopus-animal-symbolism.html

 

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Superstition

You know, I had a great week on a job, with very little, if anything, going wrong. Sure, I forgot to pack a power cable for my laptop, but was able to work around with another; sure, the Windows machine I tried to fix is intractable. But, you know, my legendary temper, moved to action by absurd inconvenience and stupidity, never showed.

Naturally, my car decided to break this morning, so I have no idea when I get to go home.

I think the problem is twofold.

(1) I was in too good a mood.

(2) I actually had a schedule for when I got home.​

People ask me why I worry about certain things, this is why. People ask me why I don't like actually making a schedule for anything, this is why.

And, sure, it sounds like a superstition, because it is.

But here's the thing: It happens with such striking regularity that I cannot ignore the unusual outcome.

Think of a process: Drive to the job, do the job, go home.

It's not just that little things will go wrong, because nothing in life is perfect. But these major disruptions are insane; it's getting to the point that my reason for not leaving the house is that I am uncertain how I will be coming back.

So I'm not doing this again. I'm not driving eighty-five miles to a job with no reasonable assurance that I can get home.

One thing is for certain, though; after I get this fucking piece of shit car out of here, I will never drive it again. And I don't really care what problems that causes for the job. I'm not going through this again.

 

Customary Respect

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​

Look, I don't believe in assigned household roles and all that sort of thing, but, at the same time: If you are going to "help" me cook by changing what I'm cooking to something else, then it's yours to finish, and I won't bother starting a goddamn thing ever again.

I really, really, really don't know why people do this to me, but I've fucking had it. I don't even like to eat the food after people do that to me. And here's the fucking thing about that: Whatever, you know, but don't stand there and tell me you just did what I always do because you have never, ever, ever in the history of the Universe seen me do that in a kitchen.

So, yeah, I don't think it's too much to ask. If you like my cooking, great, by all means eat your fill. If, however, you want me to cook your cooking, do it your fucking self.

 

“Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.” - William James

 

Do End Times believers ever get pissed off that the world hasn't ended?

 

Why? Why do people do things that not only are just flat stupid, but wreck the benefits of something?

I mean, look, I'm not going to tell anyone how to run their systems, and all, but, really, if the reason you don't look stuff up online is because it takes too long, how about just sleeping your laptop instead of shutting it down completely when it's just sitting there, plugged in, waiting to be used?

It's a curious thing because it keeps happening. And if people didn't lament that how long it takes to look something up, I probably wouldn't notice. I mean, I'm hardly a techie by any measure, so maybe I'm wrong; it always seemed intuitive to me that I should keep the computer in a status according to my need. I'll shut it down, sure, but even if I'm just hauling it with me for a while, knowing I'm going to need it ... er ... never mind. It just came up in a series of unfortunate something or other that has me really, really annoyed.

Because it's the password hole that is driving me nuts at this time.

Over the years, I have disregarded most of the password advice coming to us through the vine. There's an xkcd (#936↱) that makes the point. Indeed, the only two password violations I have suffered in the nineteen and a half years since I got my first home internet connection have not been actual password hacks, but, rather, one software company database being hacked, and another software company "accidentally" giving away millions of account passwords, which in the end drives people into the password hole.

How does an adult never know their password?

Seriously, if what should take five minutes takes an hour because the user can't remember the password, and keeps filing lost passwords, and then forgets the password to the registration email account, and needs to file a lost password for that, in order to get back to the one account with a remembered password, honestly, why are you using so many goddamn passwords?

I can't fucking help you if I can't access the fucking software. Not that I can be much help on a Windows system in the first place. Honestly, there is a difference between being able to use my computer and being a technical hand. (My first-level software solution for any Windows user is Linux migration.)

But, seriously, how many passwords? And why can you never remember them?

 

Science and shame ― I wonder how many times we end up not pursuing some useful but otherwise small piece of information because nobody would want to admit where they got the idea.

 

The Hummingbird Story

It really isn't so much of a story; many people have Assisi moments in their lifetimes.

Lately, the weather has really sucked if you're a hummingbird. The wind alone is potentially mortal; I have no idea where they hide when the air pushes forty knots.

And at our house there is seed out back for the birds in general; a sugarwater hummingbird feeder hangs off the front. Sometime I'll have to tell you about the mouse, and my seventeen year-old cat going all Garfield. Absolutely hilarious.

The thing about feeding the hummingbirds is that it becomes a responsibility; they're here for the season, and have learned to look here for food. Indeed, one of the first things learned when thinking about how to feed the hummingbirds because one wants them around because they're fun to look at―which, yes, seems a bit exploitative, or at the very least arrogant; nor could I rule out prejudice potentially to the point of bigotry―is that you must keep feeding them. While it helps to have more people in any given particular area feeding hummingbirds once someone starts feeding them at all, they come to depend not only on the food, but also the routines.

Thus it was, the other day, I happened to notice a red-throated male repeatedly buzzing the feeder; it was empty. He damn near followed me into the house when I took it down. It was probably the heat flow out from the house as he approached the threshold behind me; I heard him peel away and circle around.

With the feeder warm and full, I came back outside. It's a ridiculous effort, some days; the feeder hangs from a hook under the eve, and the trick is to get a small loop of wire over the hook, which is harder than you might think. True, it would probably be easier to engineer an attachment at the feeder itself, instead of simply running the wire through and then twisting back onto itself, which is a pain to undo and redo over and over. Still, though, it isn't so annoying to hang the far end of the wire that I've bothered to figure the changes.

Redthroat returned immediately, and let me say his color is foil red, with even a hint of magenta, but still unquestionably red. It is a gorgeous color; I would wear it in a second.

And he was hungry as fuck all.

And he wasn't waiting.

The hanger portion is a bit over two feet of coated 12-gauge hanger wire; it's wobbly, and some days I can set the loop just so, and it will fall right over the hook.

And every once in a while it just won't happen, and in the end I feel lucky to have caught the damn nail we mounted the hook with.

We get along, me and Red. Or, at least, we did.

He got tired of waiting and buzzed my face, falling back immediately and waiting, and if he was s fucking cartoon he would have been staring at me and saying, "Well, dude? What's the fuckin' problem?" It's easy enough to anthropomorphize anything, but there seemed no question under sun and sky about how he was looking at me.

So I took a deep breath, put on my stoner aura, and just stood there, arm raised, like Sugar Columbia, the Statue of Feeder, the Beacon of Sweetness.

And Red lit, and drank, deep and long.

And he probably would have stayed longer except my arm was tired at the outset, but his alarm threshold seemed tolerant as the quiver started running through. In the end it was a noise that startled him away.

I lowered my arm and immediately made another desperate swipe at the hook, and caught the nail. Good enough.

But, yeah, it was just one of those things.

Except there was a question of how he was looking at me.

After I went inside, Red did not return right away. I looked again a couple minutes later, and saw a hummingbird sitting in the young, denuded tree outside, wondering why it wasn't feeding.

Why she wasn't feeding.

Honestly, I don't have a name for her. Hulk?

She sat stock-still for a minute, and then started looking around.

Then she pounced; Red was trying to return, and she was having none of it.

When the feeder was empty, she didn't care what he did.

When the feeder was full, it was her feeder.

It wasn't just what's the fuckin' problem. It was, "Come on, dude! Please?"

She had been there the whole time.

She wouldn't approach me. So he did.

Something about smelling the roses. Or the sugar. Or, you know, something about watching the hummingbirds. I just don't recall ever having actually paid that much attention before.

And when we watch the hummingbirds, we usually see them darting around flowers and feeders. It's easy to miss the fact that they are as graceful as they are high strung. She flew a couple of crazy arcs, just slicing the air like I'd never really noticed, not even watching the ones my stepmother feeds at their place fly back and forth from the hawthorn.

But Red. Yeah. That was bold.

 

I will never understand why people will go behind you in the kitchen in order to "help" by randomly changing the temperatures on foods because the way you cook isn't the way they cook.

Fucking-A, if someone else wants to cook, let them. Honestly, once you fuck up the food I'm making, I don't care if it ever gets finished. Stop fucking with my cooking, or else cook it your fucking self.

Merry fucking Christmas.

 

As a lad, i desired to know if I could start a fire with a magnifying glass. The answer was yes, followed by a wild fire spreading out over the swamp.

 

There will always be at the minimum two groups, classes, or categories of people even in the afterlife.

 

The password hole↑ strikes again, so let me please just reiterate:

• I cannot help you track a wire fraud concern if you cannot remember the passwords that allow you access to that information.​

All too often, helping someone with a tech issue means standing around for ten minutes until they file for yet another new password, which is sent to another email box, and they forget the password to that one, too.

This is pretty intuitive; if you need my help, then I need to be able to access what I am supposed to help you with.

Why is this concept so goddamn mysterious?

 

Lana Lokteff:

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Sinead McCarthy:

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So ... on Monday―the tweet disappeared from my timeline, or, more likely, I failed to actually post it―I chided an American university for a spelling error on their admissions page, when they noted the school offered "fourty-seven" degree programs.

You know, typos happen, but on your admissions web page? Yeah, there's some irony there.

I'm reading a preprint on gender bias in student evaluations of teachers, and not only did they make the same error, it was coincidentally the same number; "fourty-seven" of the students in a course filled out SETs.

And, you know, sure, it's a preprint. And it's kind of ironic, of course, that this is a paper on education.

But how is it the same number? Just ... you know. Bonus irony?