Cycling Merit Badge, Done

So this past weekend, Troop 1010 finished the Cycling Merit Badge.

Unfortunately, I did not get to go on their 22-mile bike ride with them. And fat as I am, I was really looking forward to it. But due to some unexpected bike breakdowns, I got to do only about 3 miles before I handed my bike over to Michelle so she could finish the ride with her girls.

I felt bad, not being able to fix Michelle’s bike, which has a bent rim, and Isaac’s bike, which we brought as a backup. One of his pedals fell off. They are both cheap Walmart bikes, so the question is now do we bother to repair them, or do we put that repair money into getting bike shop bikes that’ll last a while, and be good while they last? The latter is what I favor. But we’ll see where we go, now that Cycling is done and winter approacheth. I may begin moving bikes into the shed for the season, and then worry about it when Christmas rolls around. Michelle may want a new bike. Jury’s out on Isaac. We’ll see.

Pity is the 22-miler they did on the Ashton Rails to Trails, going from Felt to Grainville. Crossing two rather impressive trestle bridges and getting to see a lot of fall foliage. I was looking forward to that. But Liam and I had a good time in the support vehicle, tooling along the roads to meet up with the group, which made excellent time. There was one moment when we thought Bri and Lexie weren’t going to finish; Bri has athsma and Lexie’s back has been hurting her. But they kept each other going through the last seven or so miles, and I think they both felt pretty proud that they’d finished.

The night before we stayed in Felt with Cheryl Seidelmann, camping out on her property. We had lots of rain that night and into the morning, with wind gusts that at 3 am I’m pretty sure were in the 40 mph range. Rather unsettling to sleep in, particularly in a tent that was creaking like an old unanchored swingset. But we all made it through. Heidi, our newest Scout, did not come on the ride with us, and I don’t blame her, after that unsettling night. But she did make it the night through, which was awesome. I think it was the wind and rain that convinced her and her Dad to go home.

And it was probably a good thing, as the emergency backup bike was dragooned into operation before we’d gone 100 yards. We tried to fix Michelle’s rubbing rear brakes, but we final determined the rim was bent, so no matter what we did, the brake was going to be dragging. And then at about Mile Three, the emergency backup bike lost a pedal, putting it out of action. So I loaned Michelle my bike for the rest of the trip, as I explained earlier.

But the good news is this: Of the seven girls we began with merit badge with, five finished it this weekend. Hannah had to bow out, due to shoulder surgery, and Sam decided since she’d already earned the Swimming merit badge, cycling wasn’t necessary (which it isn’t in her case for Eagle).

Me? This is the third time I’ve done this merit badge, though technically I’ve only earned it once. Second round, I was released as Scoutmaster before we could do the 50-miler, and since I couldn’t do the 22-miler, not this round either, though I suppose I could go 22 miles elsewhere and say I did it. I’ve done more Scouting as an adult than I did as a Scout, so I’m hoping we’re giving these girls a good program. I’m hoping we hear from them today, as we put in more time for our Citizenship in the Community merit badge, that they enjoyed their weekend. Just wish I’d been able to go with them.

It's Full of WHAAAAT?!

So I learned this today:

If you sell an e-book, you don’t get paid for it until the buyer reads it. If the buyer buys it and lets it sit idle on his or her device for months, years, you see nothing. Not until the book is read.

Welcome to digital content. At least from Amazon, I’m learning. And if Amazon does it this way, sure as shootin’ this is the industry standard.

I don’t see the reasoning here. Is there someone who can explain it to me?

Because it’s my understanding that with a physical book, as soon as the book is sold, the author gets paid. Even if the book goes to sit on a shelf for years. Or ends up at a book burning, unread.

Why the difference?

And why do authors put up with it?

Forgive me if I sound cynical, but I doubt if the seller waits until the book is read to take its cut of the sale price.

I really want someone to explain this to me.

And, whoa hoss, it makes me not want to sell digital anything.

Biohazard

The Aral Sea is dying.

Its name means "The Sea of Islands."

On one of those islands, according to Ken Alibek's "Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World, Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It," secrets lay.

Rebirth Island, or Tmu Tarakan, was the home of experiments into biological warfare. There they tested all sorts of nasty, bioengineered germs from anthrax to smallpox. It was the scale of the Manhattan Project, also bent on causing suffering.

Whether or not Alibek was consulted in the run up on the Iraq War, I don't know. But maybe there was enough in what he told them, or knew, or intelligence agencies knew, to be worried about what Saddam Hussein was up to.

And maybe I have to take what Alibek and co-author Stephen Handelman write in this book, but if even half of it is true, it's still chilling. All that effort into finding efficient ways to kill or incapacitate lots of people at once. Not what I should be reading, I guess, during "uncertain times."

And while it's a comfort that Alibek says the US hasn't indulged in similar research since the 1960s, I still have to wonder. And hope he's right.

What frightens me most is the Jurassic Park Effect. All of this knowledge, even the material -- the raw powder containing these weaponized germs -- is being bought and sought out by people who didn't have the discipline to attain it. Not that it matters much. Science had the discipline, and knew full well what it was doing.

But maybe we should all read it. And see what the cost of hubris, scientific hubris, is.

Ironically, I make a living off such hubris. The company I work for is cleaning up waste from nuclear weapons production. The Cold War, still paying off in 2020.

The Post that (Almost) Wouldn't Be

So I have some cleanup to do.

Last night, for reasons I forget, I logged out of my Google Account while on YouTube. As I recall, I was trying to find a video that was being blocked in the United States due to copyright purposes (probably for the brief bit of "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard" in it, a silly, silly thing to do in a video meant to educate the masses about the art of Buster Keaton (nevermind that the music fit at the moment). I'm not sure why I thought logging out would fix the problem, but I was problem-solving at the moment. And it doesn't matter, since I found the video at Vimeo.

This morning, I tried to log in again.

My account -- one of many on this computer, since I have teenagers -- was not there.

Not a big deal, I thought. I'll just log in again. I have all my passwords saved independently of any computer.

But Email No. 1 did not work.

Neither did the password for Email No. 2.

Why two emails? Well, because I had one I used to set up this blog back in 2009. Then much later, I wanted to upload a few videos to YouTube, and created an account there using a different email.

Then Google bought both services and brought us all under one ring. To bind us, yes, yes.

I had no idea why neither account was working. I'm scrupulous in recording emails and passwords.

Maybe not scrupulous enough. But we'll get to other interference in a minute.

I at first thought, "Well, this is my fault." I kept putting off two-factor authentication. And one of the email addresses I used was a work address and they might have finally found the connection and cut it off.

But I was hopeful I'd be able to sort things out.

Then less hopeful.

Because Google put me into a do-loop where they'd send me a text verification (to a phone number I later confirmed was connected to my account)  but they said they were unable to determine the account actually belonged to me.

I may have entered answers to security questions long ago when I set this blog up. Or my YouTube account. But all they would ask for is email and password.

Finally -- and I think it was through brute force determination rather than anything else -- I got back in again. And saw my email address had been changed to some cockamamie "temporary" account from one of my employers. I won't reveal which one.

So now I have done the following:

Reset my password.

Set up two-factor authentication.

Tried to change from that cockamamie email address. But that's going to prove difficult. I might have to set up yet another stupid email account in order to get the temporary one off the docket. But I have put in an alternate address in the meantime, in case this happens again.

I'm not sure losing access to the blog or to my YouTube content would have been a great loss, but this is more than a decade of blogging I'm talking about here. Still available online, but possibly compromised and certainly uneditable if I couldn't get access back. Just like the Blogspot account I started a few years before this one. It's out there, somewhere. I don't even remember what I called it. So if you come across a highly obscure blog with drivel that matches what I've got here, drop me a line.

An Amazon Conundrum

So I have a Kindle Fire HD. I use it a lot.

But lately, when I open up the Silk web browser, I get this message:

This seems problematic. I don't really want to use apps that aren't up to meeting current security standards. But the problem is this is an Amazon app; they're warning me that an app they've developed isn't meeting their own security protocols.

And I can't tell if they're aware of the problem, or taking the problem seriously.

A lot of web searching has brought me to this:

They're not even acknowledging here that the problem is tied in with their own app, even though the message from this user is pretty clear.

I have sent a message to Amazon about this error message, and have thusfar received only the perfunctory "we acknowledge you've sent us a message; we'll get back with you."

Further bulletins as events warrant.

Project Progress, and A New Project Found

Made some progress today. Not enough -- we had a pretty good windstorm blow in about 4 pm that meant shoving a lot of the stuff back into the garage without order. Messy, messy, messy, as Professor Hinkle would say. I've got more shelves to put up next to the recycling bins, and more in the corner past the door. That might give me enough room for tools, camp gear, and the stuff Michelle wants to move out of the craft room. We'll see.

Also noted, a leak in the garage roof, revealed by the storm blowing in from the north. A rarity here, but still something that'll have to be dealt with. That'll suck. But it's got to be done.

Domino Effect

So. You know, dear regular readers of this blog, that I've been working on the garage. Generally cleaning things up and putting up new shelves to store the crap we've accumulated.*

You also know how these projects have a tendency to cascade.

Allow me to demonstrate.

Back in March, the pandemic hit and my company sent me home to work. That meant a lot of time in the study in front of the computer. Now, when I work, I like distractions. Music. Videos. Sometimes games while I'm waiting on other people. My wife, who also has a computer in the study, has a very different approach to work. Maybe a little music. But mostly silence and concentration.

She went through a few months of this, then not too long ago moved her computer next door to the craft room. She hung a picture of me on the wall so she wouldn't forget what I look like. But that meant a lot of shuffling things around in both rooms, and the conclusion came that there was too much stuff in the craft room.

So we went to Home Depot, got some insulation and started working in the garage. After relocating shelves in the craft room and making them longer, of course.

Working in the garage meant, as I've already blogged, removing the garage window. Which is fine, since it'll give me a good long wall to practice replacing siding on before I get to the more visible parts of the house.

But doing the shelves meant moving stuff. Which includes my workbench, which will require more shelving, and the freezer, which means removing other shelving and replacing it since the Christmas trees have to live somehwere.

Then today the ping-pong table, conveniently stored in the basement blocking our access to the DVD shelves, collapsed and was threatening to fall on us, crushing us all. Because whoever engineered this thing wanted a sturdy, sturdy table but one that folded in half for easy storage, and supported it with the worst spindly assortment of screwed-together piping ever seen outside of a paper straw factory.

So the debris is now in the garage, in the location where I want to put my tool shelves. Meaning the table has to be fixed and relocated before the shelves can go up.

So I have unilaterally decided the table is going to become an outdoor appliance, once I reconstruct it so it has a sturdy foundation. I'll throw a tarp over it during inclement weather, or figure out a way to make it party dismantleable so it can be stored in the garage. or it'll burn down under mysterious circumstances and I won't know why.

And that still leaves half a house worth of siding in the garage spot meant for my car.

It's never going to get there.

*Yes, I've tried to weed through the crap. I occasionally succeed in passing off some of it to someone else, or sneaking some of it into the trash when no one is looking. But we still have lots and lots and lots of crap.

Exceptional Political Timing

Just curious to see if anyone else notices this.

In case you can't read my henscratches:

The dotted line I call "teh funny," which represents my Facebook friends who primarily use the 'book to joke around. They are early risers,or at least early on social media. They make up the majority of my Facebook friends.

The hash line I call the "political loons." They're the ones who are all SHOUTY politics about 95 percent of the time. They represent all shades of the political spectrum, and are about a quarter of my Facebook friends.

Why is six to ten pm their social media prime time? I don't mind, as it gives me a great excuse to avoid Facebook most evenings. Also, their presence is most heavily felt Saturday through Tuesday, for some reason, but that's for another chart.

Does anyone else see this, or is it just me?

I'll head off some of the most obvious knee-jerks:

1. Most everyone I know on Facebook has a jerb, so don't tell me "teh funny" is the jerbless ones. They may be layabouts and dreamers, but they've obviously convinced someone they're employable.

2. I'll mention this again: The political loons are all over the spectrum, from left to right to Libertarian to a few who are borderline anarcho-communists (you know who you are and I love you). Yet they all appear with striking regularity in their allotted time slots. Maybe that's when they take their tinfoil hats off or something.

3. Don't tell me about Facebook algorithms or other such stuff. I have noticed this pattern for years.

A Venn diagram of these groups would show some overlap. And I don't mind if people occasionally discuss politics. They're the ones who tend to, shall we say, sag in the middle like I do.

Anyhoo, it's just one of those things.

Then ironically this comes up on Facebook just after I posted.

More Home-Wrecking

 A new home wrecking/improvement project: Garage shelves.

Though as is familiar with a lot of projects, there's a lot of stuff that has to happen first before the shelves go up.

What you're seeing here is the end result of removing the single garage window and walling up the space. It maybe looks stupid on the outside, but the good thing is I still have siding to do on the house, so it'll be covered up before winter. (That's my goal, anyway, to finish the siding on the lower part of the house before winter.)

Funny thing is this morning I had convinced myself to leave the window in place. Then I went out to the garage and looked and figured this sixteen square feet of space would be much better used as shelves for storage than as a window. There are plenty of opportunities to introduce natural light, through the doors. And I'm hoping that once we're done with the shelves, I'll be able to use and open the side door to let more light in.

We have, shall we say, accumulated over the years since we moved in. I have moved a bunch of stuff to the crawlspace, but that's not a solution that's going to keep on working. Plus we've got a lot of camping equipment, for us and for Troop 1010, that needs to go somewhere. And I'd like an easier-to-access (and keep clean) work bench. So the work bench is being moved to the back wall of the garage, and floor-to ceiling shelves are going up on the north wall. We've had some shelving there, but it's hodge-podge and not really all that sturdy. Hoping this will lead us into a new era of storage. And probably more work when we look at the south wall with its sagging shelving and decide we need to do something to make that a bit better too.

One of the things I want to do with this current project is to find a space on the north wall to put Christmas trees, so the spot where the trees are now can be reconfigured to become home to the freezer and other tall things, like tables and such. Hoping that happens, but I have to find spots for the trees first or that project won't go anywhere fast.

And while this is again delaying the siding, it's at least getting a bit of exterior remodel done so when it's time for siding, I'm not worried about whether to cover up that window or not. That choice has already been made.

I can't complete the interior yet, though. we need to get some outlets put in before I get too far along. But we can't delay forever because the back porch has become a garage junk staging area.

What I'm undecided on is where my drawers are going to go. I brought a six-drawer dresser that was in our shed in Sugar City, and it's handy beyond all reason for bits from plumbing to painting. I may get rid of the shell and stack the drawers in a custom built-in by the workbench, if I can manage it.

"These Uncertain Times"

So I'm plowing through more than 2,000 emails, finding those I need to keep and deleting the rest. They extend from August through late winter 2019, and it's been an interesting voyage through the covid-19 pandemic.

Going backwards through the emails, I saw conspiracies, delayed returns to church, plans for school to recommence, debates over masks, preaching about social distancing, talk of government stimulus, Zoom meeting links for the Scout meetings we held remotely, temples closing and church being cancelled, defiance of stay-at-home orders, a drive-through high school graduation for our daughter, companies letting me know "We're In this Together" and the initial uncertainties about stay-at-home orders, school being cancelled, working from home and every other little thing you could think of.

I also have emails from a friend who passed on, and link to his obituary.

I'm now into the pre-covid emails, marveling at how much simpler it was only a few short months ago.

And yet it's the message that contained the link to this video that means the most to me.

That "I love you" still pierces my heart. But in a good way.

But I came across a lot of blessings too.

Our son, on a local service mission, has been able to continue, with minimal interruption. Our daughter only had to pay $350 plus books for her first semester at Idaho State, thanks to scholarships that came in when needed. Our youngest has been able to use his budding leadership skills to help guide the Order of the Arrow lodge through covid times. And my wife and I have remained employed the whole time. These are blessings, temporal and spiritual. And for those, I thank God.