Back on the camper tonight.
I ran a lot of water over the corner I fixed and it appears the leak has stopped. So on to the interior:
I still have more to do, but I kinda ran out of gas this afternoon. I have trimmed out most of the ceiling I'm replacing, so I'm hoping I can sneak out tomorrow or after work Monday to get some more up there.
I'm just glad the leak has stopped. Fingers crossed.
Meta's AI, which I guess they're calling Llama4, had some interesting things to tell me -- unsolicited, mind you -- about Phil Hartman. After reading what it had to say about his work on Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons, its batting average was zero, so it tosses the first bits of information it offered about Hartman into the Bin of Suspect AI Gibberish.
I would like to go back in time and ask the people who wired my house a few questions:
1. Why do I have two double gang switch boxes that are each fed by two different breakers?
2. Why does one circuit feed two outlets in the living room and the GFCI for the microwave in the kitchen, yet another circuit feeds two more outlets in the living room?
3. Why is the panel labeling complete gibberish?
I spent much more time today than I should have replacing four outlets in the living room because I couldn't find the breakers that fed them. I have one more outlet to replace out there, and yet again I'll have to play breaker roulette to get it shut off.
I do better with pictures. Here's what I'm dealing with.
We have this gun-shaped room. (We live in Idaho; every house has a gun-shaped room.) Red shows outlets on one circuit, green another, and yellow yet another. The purple represents two outlets for which I have yet to identify a breaker and an overhead light, also whose breaker is unidentified at the moment. I have to find the purple circuit so I can replace one of the outlets, which is so old and worn out it won't hold a plug anymore.
Problem is the other purple outlet I replaced previously, but I didn't mark down which breaker it was. I'm now making a complex diagram, of which this picture will be a part.
Liam had been itching pretty much all morning Monday to get out of the house and go to Craters of the Moon. But Michelle and I had things to do -- until we didn't.
We left the lawns unmowed and went.
I'll admit I wasn't too keen at first. I strained something in my right hip over the weekend (spent a *lot* of time on a ladder working on the camper roof) and didn't feel much like walking. But I was able to do a little, hoping that would stretch things out and make it better. It didn't, but it was still a fun outing.
I had no idea we were living in an Amy Heckerling movie.
The closing scene of the newspaper is the only joke here. We've seen presidents as of late not be so nice on immigrants, legal or not, and that kinda stinks.
I still have repairs to do up there. And the interior to clean up and fix. But I am taking the rest of my Memorial Day weekend off. To mow lawns.
Another roll of that tape is gonna cost me another $36, but if it works, it's worth the money.
I waned to see this movie when it came out. But life happened, and I never went to the theaters to see it.
I was familiar with the Esquire article it's based on, and read it several times for fun, and also in association with an English class I was teaching at the time.
But when I got to watch the film this weekend, it went in a different direction than I was expecting -- and that was a glorious thing.
We often find we need an outside force to help us sort through our own feelings. We live in a world that, especially for males, encourages us to suppress those feelings. But we can see evidenced in the news with alarming effect what happens when people suppress feelings for too long. Feelings need to be felt; the older I get, the more I feel. The more I understand why Dad would sit with Mom on the porch on a quiet Sunday evening, enjoying the breeze and the company but sighing at the thought of going back to work in the morning.
Mr. Rogers reminded us to express those feelings, find positive ways to put them out. To talk about them, to hold them, to share them, to express them in a way that helped us but that did not harm others. That's what this movie is all about.
And serious kudos to Chris Cooper -- I have yet to see him in a move I didn't enjoy him in. He's probably the most charming "bad guy" out there, and embues his characters with a glorious humanity beneath the crust. I loved him in October Sky, and he brings that kind of tender roughness to this film.
Well worth watching.
And, surprisingly, we've established a bit of detente with the birds. They watch us pretty closely when we're out on the porch doing things, including watering the flowers. We don't water their particular basket unless they're temporarily gone. So far, they haven't been too stressed with us there, and we've kept our distance. That may change when the eggs hatch, so we'll have to see. Hopefully by that time the freezing snaps will be done and I can get the sprinkler system started. That will make watering easier, and they might even enjoy the little in-house shower.
But back to the scraping. They used a *lot* of different substances, and I put a layer on myself.
I'm not quite sure how I'm going to do that. There are *many* layers of sealant on this camper, and I'm trying to scrape it down to the original metal. The sealant in this leaking corner came up really easily, which tells me that's why things were leaking so badly in that corner. I had a bit extra of the butyl tape, so every bit of trim I had to remove to work on the interior, I'm putting new butyl tape in.
On the interior, the vent cover doesn't fit as well as I'd like, but it was designed for a new camper, not this hulk from the '70s that we're dealing with. I'll have to do a few things to make it cosmetically appealing, but I think I can get that done and to the point Michelle is happy with it. Good thing I bought that sealing tape, because I'm going to use it all over the place on this thing.
Work continued on the camper today -- as it has to; got to get it done before they head off to camp for the summer.
Where the first day was mostly demolition, today was mostly reconstruction, mainly reconstruction of the rotted-out wood:
My goal tomorrow is to get the vent installed and use some sealing tape I got to replace the goo that was supposed to be sealing the roof. I also have to replace the refrigerator vent cover, which I cracked when I was working on getting this vent out. (Really, if you don't break something else while you're fixing something, are you actually doing anything?)
I also have the cosmetic work to do to restore the interior to something better looking than raw wood and dangling insulation, but I don't want to do that until I know the leak in that corner has stopped, else all the prettying I do will have to be taken out again to fix things for the second time.
The more I look at it, the more I know it wasn't the shower vent leaking. Whoever did the last roof job on this camper made a low spot by the vent, however, and with time and heat and age, the goo sealing the roof deteriorated enough to let that pooled water in. I'm hoping to figure a few things out to make sure that doesn't happen anymore. Getting the vent replaced with something new and functional is a bonus. Last time Michelle turned the vent van on, the blades desinitgrated due to old age.
Finally looking at the shower vent in the camper.
And by looking, I mean taking the old one out and getting ready to replace it, because that corner of the camper has been a source of leaks for the last few years.
As is our tradition with such projects. the more I tear away, the worse the job gets. I keep finding bits of rotten wood that have to be replaced. I don't necessarily want to, but as it's exposed and I've got to replace the ceiling in that section of the camper anyway, I may as well. Besides, it's no fun putting screws into rotten wood, as any carpenter knows:
I have to write this down, because it's good stuff. Maybe.
It's not a big number as retirement savings go. And it's a volatile number, given the instability of markets and such. But it is, for the first time, a number above $500,000, which feels like a landmark to me.
T. Rowe Price says I should have 3.5 to 5.5 times my annual salary saved in retirement at my age. So on paper that feels good. But this retirement money is for my wife and I, and what we've saved is joint, so I don't know exactly where I should be. But I am at least ten years off from retirement, likely more. I hope we can keep squirreling money away and do crazy things like pay off our house.
A robin, in less than 24 hours, has built a nest in one of our hanging baskets.
1. No permit. The city will hear of this.
2. Maybe baby robins soon. That's good.
3. Definitely brooding, territorial robins at the front door. That's bad.
4. The nest contains potassium benzoate.
5. That's bad.
6. Can I go home now?
Difficulty: I have to stow/cover these plants tonight due to a freeze warning. I don't know yet how I'm going to do that.
Irony: As we returned to the house from stake conference, we saw the bird sitting in the basket. We wondered what it was doing there, but it disappeared quickly, so we didn't think about it anymore.
I keep seeing this ad, or facsimiles thereof, on Facebook:
Consider the many things wrong here:
For a very long time, this was the only thing I knew about The Life of Brian:
The rest of the film? Eh.
The premise is fine. I didn't find it particularly blasphemous as many people have reported.
But I didn't need to see Graham Chapman's dong, sorry.
The film took an interesting premise -- one that's often misinterpreted as "What if someone else were mistaken as the Messiah -- and turns in a pretty lackluster movie, in my opinion. Fun set bits, but overall their sketch comedy is better. (The premise, I should mention: A bored dude gets caught up in an anti-Roman rebellion and comic hijinx ensue.)
I continue reading Kai-Fu Lee's AI Superpowers, and continue to find questionable things.
Today's reading included this bit about Enrico Fermi:
Fermi and the Manhattan Project embodied an age of discovery that rewarded quality over quantity in expertise. In nuclear physics, the 1930s and 1940s were an age of fundamental breakthroughs, and when it came to making those breakthroughs, one Enrico Fermi was worth thousands of less brilliant physicists. American leadership in this era was built in large part on attracting geniuses like Fermi: men and women who could singlehandedly tip the scales of scientific power.
At this point, a former reader of this book, who has scrawled copious notes in the margins, poses this question to himself:
My answer to him is the same answer I'd give myself: Probably nowhere, dude. Because the idea of the lone genius is just that, an idea that doesn't really exist.
Particularly on the part of Enrico Fermi.
The following is from an article by David Schwartz:
His student and colleague from his days in Rome, Edoardo Amaldi, described it this way: “I would say that his ability to drag others into work, with great intensity, for many hours, was one of his characteristics. He did it with us in Rome, then he went to Columbia University in New York and created a new group in Columbia; he went to Chicago and created another group for the simple reason that his role was that of general counsel; back in Chicago he created yet another group. Wherever he went he had this great influence on the people around him.”
Later on in the same article, this:
Fermi started collaborating early in life. As a child, he began to develop a passion for science working alongside his brother Giulio, who died unexpectedly when Enrico was just 13 years old. Together they pursued boyhood enthusiasms like making model airplanes and building electric motors. After Giulio’s tragic death, Enrico turned to his friend, Enrico Persico, and continued his exploration of the scientific world.
Fermi may have been the one to have ideas come together, but it was through long exploration which involved flashes of insight amid a lot of cooperation and collaboration.
The idea of the lone genius is something that Silicon Valley loves, and it seems to have infected other silicon areas worldwide. I'm confident that even in places where we suspect there was a lone genius at work, there were others there behind the curtains helping, many in significant ways. The lone genius makes for good storytelling and marketing, but is a lie.
The highlight of my day?
I bought two casters to replace casters I didn't know we had on a couch because one of the old casters broke when we moved the couch so why not replace both so the other one doesn't break soon afterward?
I guess I did get to go with Lexie, who also went to Sam's Club and Walmart with me, in addition to Lowes. She's good company.
But that was the highlight of my day.
Oh, we also put rubber coasters under the casters and legs so they don't dig into the carpet as deeply now. Wild stuff.
Beat out being told I was "impatient" when I asked a follow-up question of my boss at work today. It was a simple question, but it was an affront to ask it, I guess. The older I get, the less I understand people. And the less I want to understand people.
So I did other things, lest I bebother others.
I'm wondering, can I put in for a transfer to the Russian Front? Or at least a transer back to the RWMC come July when work from home ends and I might be in more pleasant company? Or, maybe that job I applied for at ATR will come through this time.
I wonder a lot of things, sitting here in the basement, being impatient apparently.
I'm trying to pay attention to the little words in these big books I read.
One word I'm seeing a lot of in Kai-Fu Lee's "AI Superpowers, China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order," is data. As in calling China the "Saudi Arabia of data."
Dig this:
But this Chinese commitment to grunt work is also what is laying the groundwork for Chinese leadership in the age of AI implementation. By immersing themselves in the messy details of food delivery, car repairs, shared bikes, and purchases at the corner store, these companies are turning China into the Saudi Arabia of data: a country that suddenly finds itself sitting atop stockpiles of the key resource that powers this technological era. China has already vaulted far ahead of the United States as the world's largest producer of digital data, a gap that's widening by the day.
What kind of data is being gathered? He continues:
Silicon Valley juggernauts are amassing data from your activity on their platforms, but the data concentrates heavily in your online behavior, such as searched made, photos uploaded, YouTube videos watched, and post "liked." Chinese companies are instead gathering data from the real world: the what, when, and where of physical purchases, meals, makeovers, and transportation. Deep learning can only optimize what it can "see" by way of data, and China's physically grounded technology ecosystem gives these algorithms many more eyes into the content of our daily lives. As AI begins to "electrify" new industries, China's embrace of the messy details of the real world will give it an edge on Silicon Valley.
In other words, mass surveillance of life aspects both online and offline -- severe invasions of privacy -- will become the future driver as China and Silicon Valley race to the ethical bottom of this AI-influenced competition.
We see this already in the United States. Amazon offers a $10 premium a month to users who'll share receipts of non-Amazon purchases with them. We do this, for the money, so we are part of the problem. We don't quite have the level of China's mysterious "social credit" system, but the foundations are being laid. More data is being gathered on us than we probably want to believe.
And we're supposed to cheer for this, according to Lee. Or, at least Silicon Valley is supposed to be shaking in their boots that they're not collecting enough of this kind of crap.
I'm sure AI will find ways to do magnificent things, from detecting breast cancer earlier and such. But a lot of what I'm seeing is "Hey, use our AI to write or create art, so you can get back to the drudgery of your everyday life and hope some other poor sucker out there buys your AI "creations" so you can make a fast buck. That's not what I want for my future.
Become the Saudia Arabia of data all you want. And continue the metaphor by seeing your data contribute to global warming, snarled traffic, microplastics in the Mariana Trench, and the other pollutants your oil-based metaphor would have us believe. Remember, not everything that came from oil was good for the Earth, and the same will be said of AI.
We have flowers at the Davidson home, particularly petunias and alyssum.
We generally have black thumbs. We'll see how they do. But as for now, they appear to be happy.
More to plant -- including tomatoes -- in the next few days. Once I finish getting the garden cleaned out.
Update to this story of randos calling me about cars.
I did end up calling the dealership. Twice. On two phone numbers.
No response, of course. Which is what I expected. They're not communicating with their customer, so they have no real reason to communicate with me as well.
But because I don't want to be in the middle of this anymore, I did the only thing within my power: I blocked the number of the lady who kept calling. I feel bad for her, but there's no reason for me to be dragged into the drama she's having.
And I don't want to be pulled any further into a possible scam. It's beyond weird.
My guesses:
1. She copied the number down wrong and should in fact be calling someone else.
2. The dealership gave her the wrong number.
3. The dealership is a bunch of shysters who gave her a random number in an attempt to get her off their backs.
I don't want to be involved in this. So I'm not.
