Copyright Strike Incoming

Spotted in the wild today:

United States Department of Education 'bout to get a copyright strike from Disney.

They do not play around with their IP.

Book Review: The Town, by Shaun Prescott

There’s a part in Groundhog Day where Bill Murray’s Phil Connors is talking with two Punxatawney derelicts in a bar, who knows how long into his confinement in the town, where one of the derelicts says Phil strikes him as a “glass half empty” kind of person.

Phil, lost in the neverending small-town hell, replies: “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?”

The other derelict, soppy in his beer, responds “That pretty much sums it up for me.”

Phil, of course, escapes his exile in small-town hell as he gives up the self-pity and self-loathing and loses himself in service to what he discovers are the delightful characters of this small hamlet in western Pennsylvania that make the town pleasant, appealing, and definitely worth living in.

At the end of his film, having won the heart of his long-long-ed-for Rita, he says, “Let’s live here. We’ll rent to start.”

I’ve just finished reading Shaun Prescott’s “The Town,” set mostly in a dusty kinda central Australian town gradually being lost, footpaths, fibro houses, and listless, useless inhabitants and all, to a mysterious shimmer never really explained.

At first I saw Phil and the two derelicts in the town, in the story, and thought, “Well, maybe there’s redemption somewhere along the way.” I had my doubts – Prescott’s story was compared to Kafta, famous for no redemption whatsoever.

And I went with that feeling – but not with allusions to Kafka, but more with allusions to Jean-Paul Sartre, who famously wrote “Hell is other people.”

The concluding idea to Prescott’s story is similar, but perhaps even more gloomy: Apocalypse, it seems, is other people.

Because Prescott’s town suffers a nameless, formless apocalypse wrapped in the metaphor of holes appearing and causing blocks of the town and its inhabitants to disappear, but the story is really an apocalyptic tale without the apocalypse, as the people his characters encounter are a far worse fate than any mysterious shimmer could ever be.

There’s a lot about belonging to this tale, and at the end, well, nobody really finds it. There’s no surcease from the hell of the small town in the city.

Early on in the novel, we get this:

“People might be wiser to cower in towns. Maybe they wouldn’t be so devastated when the sea water rose. Maybe when everything became desperate, a small town would finally live up to the qualities that everyone believed them to have: Namely, that everyone would help one another out. Maybe the town would have tea parties during the apocalypse, while people in the city tore each other to shreds.”

Of course, people in the town tore each other to shreds, whether through a grudge, a fistfight, or general disdain. When the apocalyptic shimmer arrived and claimed victims, no one seemed too bothered, as it wasn’t them being lost forever.

The protagonist and Ciara, another small-town denizen, flee to the city, and quickly discover this:

“[Ciara] told me that everyone in the city speaks about the city in the same way that people in the town spoke about the town. They say the city is not what it used to be. If she asks what it used to be, they simply reply that it used to be more like a city.”

The apocalypse of people find them in the city, though the shimmer is long left behind. And it not needed, as the apocalypse is there all along.

The Red Herring is Ailing

So this isn't good.

Or maybe it's not all *that* bad, but it might be.

Ignore the airbag light. That's a sensor we should replace, but they're hard to find. More worrying are the check engine and VTM-4 lights. Who knows how much that's going to cost to get fixed.

We'll find out. We've got 264,000 miles on this thing so it has fought the good fight, but if we could squeeze another 50,000 or 75,000 miles out of it' I'd be happy. But it's all going to depend on what's wrong with the thing. It's been very reliable up to this point, so I hate to see it go.

It does have a few other problems: Leaking power steering, and maybe a tie rod that's causing some unusual wear on the front passenger tire. We did get it to our mechanic today, so at least that part is over.

Don't want to break the bank. But Isaac says he wants to use this car when he gets back from his mission in 2028. We'll have to see if that happens.

And for this Honda Pilot, 2005, I do mean reliable. Aside from tires and regular maintenance, we've replaced the starter. Everything else has just been hanging on.

 

If this is Good, I'm Cranky

If this book is good, I'm going to be happy.

And really mad.

Peep the author: Hugh Laurie. Yes, the Hugh Laurie of Jeeves and Wooster, of Blackadder, of House. And the Hugh Laurie the pianist and singer:

He really impresses me with the depth and breadth of his talent.

So if this book is good, I'm going to have to say he's a polymath. And that's blatantly unfair.

Which is stupid to say. He's got the talents, it's a shame not to use them. And if I applied myself, I could do better than what I'm doing now that's for sure.

Still, the little green monster pops up. I almost left the book at the store just because of that. But I brought it home anyway because WHAT IF IT'S GOOD? I want to read it, so it's going to climb to the top of the reading pile.

Because it's important to remember that the talents displayed by others does not denigrate or limit the talent we may have, whether displayed or latent. We should strive to develop our talents and celebrate when others, even irritating polymaths like this, display excellent talent for the rest of us to enjoy. Their talent does not diminish us or ours. We should instead be inspired by that talent to better our own. That's where I am to be.

Whence the Electricity?

Interesting stuff here.

Here we are in the West, where hyrdropower abounds -- the city next door generates more than half of the electricity it needs through hydropower -- yet Rocky Mountain Power generates on. 4.8% of its electricity from hydro. That coal number is a bit unnerving.

Interesting that 10.7% of the energy it uses is unspecified. The legend on the other side of the chart says that the unspecified electric generation comes from renewable resources that the company itself doesn't own. I wonder if that's where customers like us, who have solar on the roof, fit in?

I'd be curious as well to see a breakdown on the sources of the market purchased electricity.

They are toying with nuclear at a spot near Brigham City, Utah, but that's only in the talking stages. While next door in Idaho Falls, they're a little bit beyond talk as they've got a memorandum of understanding for a number of small modular reactors to be built near the city's gas-fired peaking plant.

Rail 2.0

So the rail I built a few weeks ago worked. But not 100 percent. It was at an OK height from the concrete, but when we were using the stairs, it felt a bit short.

So this morning I rebuilt it, raised it a foot, and it's a lot better now.

I might add a third rail at the bottom, but I'm not sure if I'm going to do that yet.

Daisy tested it out and, like the first iteration, is completely indifferent to it.

I'm Not Sure But I Think This Sucks

From Butt-Head's "I'm not sure but I think this sucks" department:

A year ago, we had a pine tree in this spot, but we had it cut down because it was huge and dropping sap everywhere and covering a third of the neighbors' driveway (let this be a lesson to not only recycle more frequently but also to plant new trees further from the property line).

Many years before I placed an attractive array of river rock neath the tree, spreading out in fanciful swirly patterns.

Nature, favoring entropy, used the pine tree to cover said swirls with inch upon inch of pine tree debris, which I am now sorting through to rediscover the rocks so they can be cleaned and reclaim their former glory around the stump of she who covered them o'er.

I've done two hours of this today and only reclaimed two buckets of rocks 

This is going to take forever.

Since I have to redo everything anyway, I'm thinking of changing things. But it's going to take a lot of work. Once I've got the rocks cleared out, I have to finish chopping up the rest of the logs and removing some roots that were interfering with the original project more than a decade ago.

I don't know that I'll dig all of the roots out, but at least the parts that protrude above ground level. There's some in the patch, and one in the yard as well.

I'm sorting rocks out too. Big rocks from the smaller rocks, so I can re-establish the swirly patterns.

I'm using another rock garden that also needs to be cleaned out too as a staging area for the materials I'm moving As I said, this is going to take forever.

That Pretty Much Sums it Up for Me

 

I'm reading "The Town," by Australian author Shaun Prescott.

It's got echoes of Kafka, but in the small-town setting where nothing really happens and nothing that anyone there does matters, I'm getting more of a Groundhog Day vibe. But without the humor.

Not to say I'm giving up on it. I'll keep going. But it really is falling hard for the "small town people are either tragic losers or losers in that they don't realize how much of a bunch of losers they are" trope, and it's not all that entertaining.

Maybe it'll get better.

Leave it to Congress to do the Wrong Thing

News item:

The US House of representatives has passed a bill to make Daylight Saving time permanent in the United States.

Nevermind that their decision, if approved by the Senate, will make for sunrise times as late as 9:05 am in the depth of winter locally. They believe, bless their hearts, that they're doing the right thing.

From a guy who already suffers from seasonal depression, let me say thank you. I don't know what we'd do without them in charge.

Stephen Ambrose: Americans at War

When I opened this book and saw the first essay concerned the Civil War, I wasn't sure I wanted to read it.

But Stephen Ambrose being Stephen Ambrose, and me being a stubborn reader who doesn't like to give up on books, I read. And read. And kept on reading.

Ambrose, in 252 pages, takes the reader from the U.S. Civil War to today's world, accurately predicting pilotless aircraft and conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and shedding light on the events and figures in America's wars from the mid-1800s into the future.

I enjoyed his profiles of Douglas MacArthur and George Patton as a World War II buff.

But his essays on the homefront and later on the My Lai massacre were the best parts of the book.

Ambrose, in only a few dozen pages, took me beyond the rah-rah of a nation united into a nation I vaguely remember reading about in some of the history books we had a home: Fighting a racist war against Japan while maintaining a segregated army and putting Japanese-Americans into prisons for the duration. He took us from Franklin Delano Roosevelt hoping to avoid as many civilian casualties as possible to advocating for firebombing cities in the hopes it would end the war sooner.

Mistakes sown there led to similar mistakes in Vietnam, where racism continued to bubble and mixed signals really fuddled the mission of the US in that nation.

Ambrose, of course, has the advantage of looking back at history to see the rights and wrongs, but also reminds us that we have no control over the past and that the only control we have on the future is remaining aware of what's going on now. He mentioned this quote from humorist James Thurber, and it's really stuck with me:

That's something I'm going to try to remember myself.

Safe Wee

 

I renewed my radiation worker training at work today, so rest assured the world is that much safer.

Of note: There's a flaw in the training, at least in my way of thinking, and I believe I mentioned it the last time I took it. It's still there. And maybe it's just me. But they shouldn't show one way of doing thing and then go on to introduce new steps in the quiz portion of the training. Maybe they don't regard the quiz as a quiz. I guess the important thing is that the training is done.

Not that I use it all that much; not that I use it at all. But as a technical writer, it does help me get a better feel for what operators are required to do, and any bit of understanding of the process can make for better instructions.

And I find myself feeling old-fashioned. In this web-based training is the ghost of the practical exercise I did for the first time in a real-life mockup with a Navy nuke teaching the course. That was better.

Way too Late at the Movies: A Man Could Get Killed

Stumbled across a James Garner move from 1966 on the YouTubes tonight: "A Man Could Get Killed." It's your standard mistaken identity story where Garner, a representative of a New York bank sent to Portugal to pursue joint ventures for hydroelectricity development is mistaken for a spy searching to break an industrial diamond smuggling ring.

It's directed by Ronald Neame, who also directed The Poseidon Adventure. But no swaying camera motion because Irwin Allen wasn't involved.

It was odd to me that the film contained snatches of "Strangers in the Night," a popular song of the time -- and then I read it's the film that introduced the song. So it makes more sense now.

It's an okay film. Typical of the era, where it was meant to be a lot of things -- a comedy, a drama, etc., and never really succeeds fully at anything.

James Garner seems to have come into his befuddled everyman persona pretty early. He's the highlight of the film in my book, though the old European cars, particularly an Opel, Peugeot that would make Columbo happy, and a 2CV, are also worthy of billing.

Sandra Dee is also in this film, though I had to look at the Wikipedia page to learn that. I don't really know a lot of stars from this era.

James Garner pulling the James Garner face.

'Ee's Drinking Sodie Pop!

A photo of our oldest, at scout camp, drinking a can of soda.

Unusual because he NEVER drinks soda.

"I wanted to see what the fuss is all about," he says. He reports he likes the flavor but is still not a fan of the carbonation.

There it Is

This morning, some texts:

Now, I'm already looking at the out of Idaho area code. But as cell numbers are portable and have been for years, it's not uncommon to get calls or texts from numbers that ain't local to Idaho.

Also, we do have dogs. We have neighbors who love to complain about things like lights and imaginary nonsense. So I'm a little sensitive to this situation.

But I'm also skeptical. It's true our dogs are indoor dogs and don't spend the night outside.

So it went on:

They did send a video.

I was hesitant to click on it. but I did.

It certainly did include a dog barking at night. But there was an outdoor fireplace in the video that I did not recognize as belonging to anyone close enough to be bothered by a barking dog. I spend enough time looking at my own property on Google Maps to know. Now, I know the info there isn't 100% up-to-date, but another red flag.

Still, I went on:

Tiburon. I Googled it, and it appears to be a chi-chi suburb of San Francisco, which matches with the out-of-Idaho area code. So another red flag. But the conversation was winding down.

Until: There it is.

Yeah. Softening me up for the kill. I'm sure had the conversation gone on longer, it would have resulted in a scam. Maybe money. Maybe blackmail over naughty photos. You never know.

And I won't either. Immediately blocked and reported as spam.

And I didn't even feel bad about it.

Who's Suing Me?

 

Someone attached a sheaf of papers to our front door this morning. The wind keeps catching them and our Ring camera picks up the motion. I've had like a hundred notifications today on my phone.

Turns out it was a notice from the city on a delayed chip seal project in the neighborhood.

My Facebook friends, of course, are feeding my paranoid nature.

I Miss WordPerfect . . .

So, here's a conundrum maybe someone else in the universe has encountered:

We use Microsoft Word at work for word processing. Nothing unusual there.

Our record documents are Word documents converted to PDF via Adobe. Again, nothing unusual there.

But three times in the last two weeks, we've seen the PDF version of the document mess up something in Word -- and since the PDF is the record version, we have to revise the document so it can be used. Fortunately, two of the three instances I've mentioned got caught at the revision phase, so they haven't gone live yet.

What's odd is that in Word, everything appears hunky-dory. It's only in the rendering that things get messed up. I can't go into the details, but what we see is step numbering and cross references getting messed up.

I've looked on the Internet, of course, for others experiencing the same problem. And as with many things on the Internet, I'm able to find people who are experiencing other Word to PDF problems, but nothing exactly like what we're seeing.

So, anyone within the sound of my voice seeing similar problems? And more importantly, what did you do to fix them?

Don't Push the Red Button or Pull the Dangly Cord

From Stephen Ambrose's essay "Struggle for Vicksburg: The Battles and Siege that Decided the Civil War."

Cocksure no doubt.

The text:

The Indiana and the Illinois units came over the barricade north of the railroad and captured a gun. Private James S. Adkins of the 33rd Illinois, exhilarated by the bloodless victory, leaped astride the gun tube, waved his elbows up and down at his sides, and crowed like a rooster. Then, curious, he tugged at the lanyard. The gun went off, hurling a shell close over the heads of the units coming up in support, and bucking Adkins head over heels into the dirt. Miraculously, no one was hurt.

Gen X/Boomer Tendencies

Presenting a Gen X/Boomer tendency here.

Instagram confuses me. I don't understand the interface. I get notifications on my phone that my friends are posting - even sending me messages - and when I can find the app on my damn phone I open it and I get lost. I can't find the posts or messages my friends are sending me.

Too old, yes. I remember when they invented chocolate. Sweet, sweet chocolate . . .

I should remind my readers: As Gen X, I can adapt to new technology as well as any Millennial, but I reserve the right to be cranky about it like my Boomer ancestors.

90s Maigret Pleased, 2020s Maigret Curious

The last few days I've enjoyed watching an old Grenada Television show from the 1990s on YouTube -- starring Michael Gambon as Chief Inspector Maigret of the Paris police.

This chief inspector is far from the bumbling of Inspector Clouseau. The stories are based on novels written in the 1950s by French author Georges Simenon. I've read a few (in the original French, because that's how I found them in one of the missionary apartments I stayed in). They're wonderfully told, tight mysteries that really capture the feel of old Paris.

I'm intrigued that the stories have been retold more recently with Rowan Atkinson in the titular role; I'd love to see a few of those.

The Bacheloring

So it begins: The Bacheloring.

Michelle has been to camp off and on for a month now, but after a two-week break the whole family sans Lexi are headed to camp, even Isaac, who we thought wouldn't be going this year.

Michelle's up there as Cope and Climbing Director.

Liam is up there working in Nature and helping out with Trail to Eagle and the Astronomy Merit Badge.

Isaac, after a rough go of not really being welcomed back due to reasons, is going back as a commissioner, which thrilled him to no end because he's sick of working at Reed's Dairy and needed one more fling before he starts is mission in mid-August.

That leaves me and the dogs all alone. ALONE.

But I don't want to be alone. I'm no good on my own.

Take today: After church, I made dinner for myself. That's not so bad, because I only have to worry about what I want for dinner. But since then . . . I've taken a nap. I've played a video game. I've watched some YouTube. And that's about all I'll be doing for the next few weeks. At least I don't have to teach Sunday School next weekend.

I have a lot of yard work lined up for the next few weeks, though. Going to finish getting all the sticker weeds out of the garden, going to finish splitting the wood from the chopped down pine tree, and do some general cleanup in that area. Also have to mow lawns. And rebuild the rail I put on the back porch last weekend because the one that's there is a bit too short. But that'll be simpler since I've got the wood for it already and a general path forward on what the rail will look like.

Fun stuff. Whee.

Pardon Me, Google?

So I'm uploading a photo to this blog as I always do, and suddenly Google is asking me to sign into my Google account.

You know, the Google account I was already signed into so I could post something to my blog.

Why ya gotta be this way?

Way too Late at the Movies: The Night Stalker

As a longtime fan of A Christmas Story, I've known for a long time that the Old Man, Darren McGavin, starred in a movie, and then a television series, called The Night Stalker, wherein as a newspaper reporter in either Las Vegas or Chicago or it seems wherever the story called for, he investigates supernatural crimes.

The first film has his pursuing a vampire through Las Vegas' seedy underbelly.

The film is, eh, not exactly well written, but other than the Old Man, did include a surprise or two.

First, the Old Man:

He's looking good. And does a lot of narration in the film which I guess it a choice, but I'm not sure it works for me.

And the coroner. At least we know he has medical experience:

The script is really funny. At the onset of the film, McGavin's character - Kolchack - says he was pulled off the first vacation he's taken in years to write the story of a series of murders for the newspaper. Then his editor at the paper goes on to berate him and thwart him and bend the knee to the officials who want the story suppressed.

Mild spoiler: Just after he tells the police it's likely they're dealing with a vampire and under no circumstances should they approach him at night, he breaks into the vampire's house at night because of course he does. I guess it's less exciting of a movie if he waits until daylight and skewers the guy with a stake.

There are some other actors in the film I can't place. Claude Aiken is there, pre-Sheriff Lobo, I believe. But there's a smarmy dude I can't place, though I'm pretty sure I've seen him before.

Done Smithering

The week is over, and I'm done smithering. And by that, I mean I'm done filling in for the boss, who's been on vacation.

It was a good week to smither. A lot of people were leaving early for an extended Fourth of July vacation, which suited me fine.

But, for the first time, I actually accomplished things as the WIPP Review Coordinator. Actually did things, communicating out information with others in the nuclear waste industrial complex so we can all agree to get along and swap waste and keep everyone happy. Late Thursday I was told that I was part of the process that helped the company earn a $250,000 fee for completing work on time. Not that I get any of that money outside of my pay, of course. But it did feel good to be part of the process and hopefully I didn't screw up too much. We'll find out more during the debrief on Monday when the boss is back. But I don't think I committed any major screw-ups.

We did have one thing non-WIPP related turn up that was interesting: Something went wrong when one of our procedures posted to the company website and step numbering was off. What was odd is that on the surface of the Word copy, everything looked fine, but the render to PDF made it blow up. So we had to revise the procedure. Then I was tasked to work on another procedure from the same group, and I'll be darned if I didn't see the same thing happen. Fortunately we're aware of the problem now and can be more vigilant, just like W. A. Thornhump, VIGILANT AGAINST FURTHER ATTACKS.

He's Got A Knife

 

This reminds me of the time I used a kitchen knife to cut holes in a cardboard box for our then toddler to play in.

His mother spotted him soon after with the knife, going to the box to make more holes.

Good times.

Bill Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods"

I tend to take Bill Bryson with a grain of salt, as I get the feeling he's more of an exaggerator than a truthful reporter of the real.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed this book, though the humor he's often credited for comes off a lot as snark and smarm in this one. When reading Bryson, I always have the feeling he has never met another human being who has met up to his lofty standards, and that's wearing as you read his interactions. Maybe there's less mileage to be had through reporting pleasant interactions, or that we all as flawed humans remember the people we didn't like better than the ones we did.

That's just my take, I guess. I try to have a better view of humanity, though I often fail at is, particularly as I navigate the streets and marvel at the idiots I have to share the road with. There's a little of that Bryson superiority in us all, I suppose.

One caution with this book: Katz, Bryson's hiking companion for portions of the books, swears a bit. Not egregiously, and it does make him feel a bit more human than Bryson ever does. I didn't necessarily want to put up with the language, but at least the character of Katz felt real, and might come close to being the only character in the book that met Bryson's expectations.

I Reject This

If you build your religious and cultural identity on such messages, I want no part of your religion or your culture.

As a descendant of the huddled masses on both sides of the family, I reject this message.

And I reject your use of a symbol of freedom and a poem written to embody that symbol as tools of your hatred.

Go to hell, sit on a hot coal, and rethink your terrible choices. This is all I hear:

And now I'm seeing this picture in other forms.

There she is again!

. . . Stupid Sheep Movie Making Me Cry . . .

So tonight we watched The Sheep Detectives with Hugh Jackman.

Oh my goodness. I knew I was going to laugh, but I didn't expect to cry that much. Not that it takes much to make me cry at a movie anymore, but wow. Niagara Falls, Frankie Angel.

I won't spoil things. But Hugh Jackman hit this one out of the park, and he's dead for 2/3 of the movie. Reminiscient of James Cromwell in Babe for an understated performance.

But this is an ensemble cast, and they shine.

A few familiar faces and voices, but to me mostly unknowns, and I think that made it work. (When I say unknowns, it's really unknown to me, and I'm an out of it fud, so if that hurts your feelings, sorry.)

Location is ambiguous, and maybe so intentionally. Certainly an odd mix of American and European autos, and that village certainly had many more neon signs than you'd expect from something quaintcountrysidesque.

Definitely a movie that made me cry, right to the end, and I was almost robbed of that second happy ending I knew had to come but there it was.

Clong Bong Doyoyoing

I have, of course, been drawn to novelty music since my older brother Jeff introduced me to Weird Al Yankovic and my mother introduced me to Spike Jones.

Since those young days, though, I've gone through several odd sound rabbit holes and found something fun today: A collection of odd noises from the BBC.

Now we Americans have our fair share of odd noises, but to hear the odd noises of a different culture is fun.

The "clong bong doyoyoing" is, if I'm honest, a little disasppointing, but you don't want to miss the "Irish Nightingale."

"Several Men Coughing," however, is downright disturbing.

Porch Rail

When I rebuilt the porch steps a few years ago, I pondered whether I should build a rail. I decided at the time a rail wasn't necessary, though a few people suggested I might want one in the future.

Well, today was the day.

This is mainly in place so when Michelle's Dad comes to let the dogs out when we're gone he has a rail to help get him up and down the stairs. Fair enough; he's approaching 90 and is still mobile, so we should do what we can to keep that mobility going as much as possible.

I used some redwood I had left over from the steps project, but had to go to Ace Hardware to buy $30 worth of fasteners. Eight carriage bolts at just shy of $3 each; not cheap.

And I managed the typical flaw -- one of the nuts I brought home was a fine-thread out of the course-thread bin and wouldn't work with the carriage bolts I had. But luckily enough I found a nut that would work in the garage, so I didn't have to go to the store again.

It does make it a little bit harder for Dottie to go exploring - and pooping - under the stairs, so maybe that's a good thing.

It's sturdier than I dared hope. Behold, as my meaty hand and pimply voice demonstrate:

I hope it passes muster when Michelle gets home, but I feel good about it.

I Have Several Problems with This

Who on God's green earth decided that several means more than one, but even more ludicrously "more than two but fewer than many"?

What does that even mean?

Where, pray tell, is many's lower limit, and while we're at it, where is the upper limit of several?

I'm still grappling with the difference in meaning between will and shall (hint: there is none, and I cannot be convinced otherwise), and now you're shoving this several malarkey in my face?

Terry Pratchett's trolls have a better grip on numbers: One, two, many, lots. At least their system - and that is their nomenclature in total - makes more sense than this "more than two but fewer than many" business.

Anyway, this is what fills my mind as a distraction from my real task of standardising how dates appear in the reference section of a document, my latest effort in protecting the Snake River Plain Aquifer from democracy.

And lest you think I'm not properly anal, I pointed out as I rectified the dates in this particular voldrani that 2025 was not a leap year; thus the date of February 29 had to be an error.

This is what it feels like:

Not Quite 24 Hours Later

 

Critter No More

Critter in the craft room window well tonight. Whether a mole or a vole or a mouse, I can't tell.

But it's chewing into the sill board underneath the window.

Or at least it was. We put in some ramps to see if it would climb out, then thought better of it and started to get a bucket trap set up, but then I saw where he was - I was already in the well - so I stomped him flat.

I'm sorry, little critter. I deliberately took a life, and I feel like an ogre. But maybe that's better than dying - drowning, really - in the bucket trap.

I'm going to bed now. And then probably to hell.

AI Truck? [Chef's Kiss]

Found this in the wild today.

AI, of course, abounds.

But the best part is the truck. In the video linked above, it's backing up.

Behold:

Anything Fun?

My sister came over yesterday so she could print some stuff for her teaching job, and afterward we chatted for a bit. We got to talking, of course, about the fact that most of my family is in Island Park at scout camp, finishing up staff week and preparing for scouts to come in a few weeks.

That talk included her asking what I'd been up to, and I went through the ordinary litany of weekend chores, which this weekend included fixing a leak in the sprinkler system, trimming and burning branches from a few trees, and weeding the raspberries.

She asked the question: So, are you doing anything for you, for fun?

Honestly, I didn't have an answer.

I realized I've turned into Dad. The chores were actually pretty entertaining.

As of now, I've got most of the raspberries done -- I'm running the sprinklers for an hour to give them some water and to soften the ground up where I've got a patch of thistles growing.

I can run the water because I fixed the sprinkler system leak -- it feeds a spigot we use in the garden for watering.

And while I don't have all the tree branches trimmed, I have cut up and torched all of the branches I've felled along with all the old raspberry canes Michelle yoinked out of the garden a few weeks ago.

I have been taking breaks, intermittently working on a lesson for Sunday School tomorrow, and watching a little YouTube and playing a few games. Altogether, a relaxing and productive weekend, which is always good.

Yes, it's work. But it's work I want to do, and work I regard as valuable, So it's relaxing and important to see it done.

A University of Idaho Connection in Idaho Falls

This week I've really enjoyed reading Connie B. Otteson's "Unsung Heroes and Settlers of Bonneville County, Idaho," a local history book published in 2005.

It was a lucky find at a local thrift store, where I've found a good number of local history books. Now around here, we don't have a lot of history at least for whitey, going back if we're lucky only about 150 years.

Today's reading started out with a familiar story of the city's Village Improvement Society (which still exists, I found out) and a drive to import hardwood trees from back east and plant them all over town, notably on the numbered streets and in a park that would come to be known as Kate Curley Park, after one of the VIS' prominent boosters who was really tired of dragging the hems of her dresses in mud and horse doots.

While the VIS imported the trees from Iowa and Illinois, they wanted to find a more local expert to help them arrange and plant things, particularly in the park.

They found Charles Huston Shattuck, late of the University of Idaho's College of Forestry, where he was dean, and where he'd laid the groundwork for the tree cover and landscaping at that campus, including the Shattuck Arboretum, which of course bears his name.

I went to the university of Idaho and spent some time wandering through the arboretum, as it was between my first residence hall (the building in the lower right corner of the photo above) and the campus. It was crisscrossed with trails. Honestly, I thought it was just a bit of forest that the campus had preserved, it looked so natural. Come to find out it was just a weedy patch of bare ground before Shattuck started his work on it.

As much as I don't want to live on the numbered streets in Idaho Falls, I do love that the VIS had the foresight to bring in hardwoods and take the effort to plant trees in what was otherwise a sandy, wind-blown desert. And I'm glad they found an expert who produced the prettiest university campus in the state to help with the effort.

We came close when I was a kid at living in a house kitty-corner to Kate Curley Park, but it never came to fruition. I don't know why. But it's certainly a pretty neighborhood.

FOOD

One of our weenie dogs might be just a tad motivated by food.

Greener Pastries

It pays to self-edit fast in our family group chat, because if you don't, they'll jump on ya.

To be honest, I'm not sure what greener pastries might be either. Maybe something for St. Patrick's Day?