Curiosity is looking at...

Curiosity is looking at ... some weird and wonderful eroded rocks, on Mars...

Morning smile...

Morning smile...  From The Onion, this lead:

ITHACA, NY—In an ambitious attempt to revive a population long considered to be on the brink of extinction, scientists announced Friday they have slowly begun to reintroduce normal, well-adjusted human beings back into society.
According to officials at Cornell University, where for the past 18 years conservation researchers have operated an enclosed sanctuary for humans who are levelheaded and make it a habit to think before they speak, the endangered group is being cautiously reintegrated into select locations nationwide in hopes that they can reestablish permanent communities and one day thrive again.

Read the whole thing!

I expect this attempt to fail :)

California leads the way...

California leads the way ... to lower employment and more automation.  They've struck a deal to raise the minimum wage to $15/hr statewide.  I'm expecting the other usual suspects (Blue America: Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Washington, Oregon, etc.) to follow suit soon.  That's great news for states like Utah whose minimum wage is the same as the federal rate (currently $7.25/hr) – kids who want a job but whose skills aren't worth $15 an hour will move from states like California to states like Utah.  In other words, motivated workers will vote with their feet.  Blue America will lose those good workers and employers will cut jobs or replace unskilled workers with automation – something we're already seeing in those cities that have raised the minimum wage to $15/hr.

I am so glad to be living in fly-over country!

Paradise Ponders...

Paradise Ponders...  I had an extra-long session with the kids I'm tutoring yesterday morning.  One of them (Abby) is really digging into programming, mostly because with just a few examples the key ideas are starting to make sense to her.  She came back over for a second session instead of going to the local Easter egg hunt with the rest of her family.  I gave them a homework problem of a simple bubble-sort (of an array of integers), and she wanted to see what it would take to modify it to work with strings (an array of names).  I showed her how to use the Chrome developer tools and I swear I could see that cartoon light bulb going off in her head.  We spent about an hour going over a number of questions she asked, including one on sort performance that got us into an overview of Big O notation and what that means for performance characterization.  She's picking this stuff up way faster than I did.  Debbie was in the kitchen watching us work, and she tells me that Abby looked very excited as we worked.  It's fun for me when the kids actually want to learn; so very different than my volunteering experience years ago in the Chula Vista “magnet” high school, where not a single student was interested in anything at all about the class...

The rest of my day yesterday somehow got consumed by some shopping and other running around.  I didn't do a darned thing on the trailer – and I thought I would finish the construction yesterday!  The weather turned out to be very nice – blue sky, sunshine, and mild temperatures.  That is, until Debbie and I decided to take a drive out to Porcupine Reservoir.  There we ran into snow flurries – while still under that nice blue sky and in sunshine!  The nearest clouds large enough to produce that snow were miles away, so what must have happened is that winds were blowing that snow a long way from the source cloud.  It was weird!

We chose Porcupine Reservoir because we hoped there would be fewer weekend visitors there, and that worked out just fine.  On the other hand, there wasn't very much wildlife to see.  The most interesting thing we (Debbie, actually) spotted was a group of four Sandhill Cranes foraging in a field about a quarter mile off the road.  We had a great view of those strange birds.  We also got to see some baby goats and lambs in a couple of farmyards.  There were a few deer, too, but that was it for wildlife.  The reservoir itself was looking very spring-like: all the ice is gone, and the level is up to within about 15' of the top.  I don't think we're going to have any water issues this year!  I walked across the entire earthen dam and took the photos below on that walk:

Both were taken near the south end of the dam, the first looking west across the drainage and the second looking east across the reservoir. It's a pretty spot...

My friend and neighbor Tim D. has been gone for a few days to the Green River area for some springtime sightseeing with his family.  He enlisted us to give his dogs (Lexy and Marley) a little attention during the day (in the mornings and evenings his granddaughter Randi was there to take care of them).  This is nothing but fun for us: those are two delightful and cute little dogs, and after being penned up for 4 or 5 hours they are very happy to see us!  They had a grand time playing with each other.  The photo at right was from one of those visits.  Tim and family are back now, so we no longer get to indulge in this dog-sitting :)