Things you find when cleaning up...

Things you find when cleaning up...  My office has been a complete disaster ever since my mom died, just over a year and a half ago.  That's because her stuff is strewn everywhere in it, and I've been procrastinating – waiting, really, until it wasn't too awful while going through her things, trying to decide what goes where or to whom.  It's still an emotional roller coaster for me, but at this point I'm not sure it's ever going to get any better.  So I've begun the great office cleanup.

I've just barely started, and already I've found some things that were surprising, and some other things that brought me a nice big smile.

The biggest surprises so far came from skimming through my mom's voluminous medical records – hundreds of X-rays and a couple thousand pages.  Before I shredded these things I wanted to make sure no other papers I'd want to keep were embedded in them (as I have found things I've kept in some very odd places).  This time I haven't yet found any other papers – but I did discover two medical issues my mom had that I had never known about.  The first was from 1998: the detection of a tumor in her brain, 1.5 cm across (so roughly walnut-sized).  I found the X-rays, radiology reports, and a written recommendation from her GP to have surgery, despite it being (as he put it) “quite risky with a relatively high expected mortality”.  So far as I know she never had any such surgery, and I can't imagine how she could have had it in secret – so she must have declined (not all that surprising for her).  The second issue was from 2007, the detection of a lump in her breast and the diagnosis of benign but with a recommendation to have it removed.  Again, I don't know of any such surgery – but that kind of surgery could, I imagine, be done without my ever knowing about it.  On the other hand, it wouldn't surprise me to find out she'd declined that surgery as well!  In any event, neither of these contributed in any way to her death, so if she did decline them, in hindsight it wasn't a bad decision.

In another box I sorted through, there were some of our personal papers.  One of them was a note from November 1990, from the owner of a motel in Trinidad, Colorado.  If you click the little photo at right, you can read it.  She's thanking Debbie and I for some things we left behind for her, her husband, and their dog.  Neither Debbie nor I remember the incident at all, though it does sound like something we'd do.  We remember the trip very well, though: we were taking a friend from San Diego to Colorado for surgery, and then back home.  We stayed in Trinidad for a couple of days waiting for our friend to be ready, and we must have stayed at Hannah's motel.  We have lots of nice memories of that trip, so this brought lots of smiles.

Also in that box was something very meaningful to me, personally.  I've removed identifying information because so far as I know the author of this letter is still around, and I didn't get his permission to use his name.  Friends of mine from the late '90s or early '00s will probably be able to figure it out, though. :)  This is a letter of recommendation written to help me find a job after I fired myself as the CEO of Previo in 2002, because we were winding the company down.  The author knew me better than any other Board member did, so his kind words were something I cherish.  I haven't looked at this letter for over 15 years now, so reading it this morning was almost like reading it for the first time.  I never did use the letter to help find a job, but I did lean on the author a couple of times as a reference.  Both times the prospective employer commented about that reference call being amongst the most positive they'd ever done.  Both times they hired me. :) 

Winter in Paradise...

Winter in Paradise...  I walked outside this morning into sunshine, most welcome after a week or so of being socked in (that's a shot to our southwest taken this morning; as usual click on it to embiggen).  The temperature is hovering around 20°F, though it's supposed to get above freezing today.  We'll see – the weatherman's track record is pretty dismal recently.  I wheeled our garbage can to the highway, as today is pickup day.  I'm surprised every week by just how much garbage we generate; on average that garbage can weighs about 50 pounds.  We're just trashy folks, I guess!  :)  After that I did my morning rounds of the bird feeders.  It's cold, so they're very active.  The whole time I was doing these chores I was looking around at the mountains that surround us – so beautiful this time of year!

I spotted a couple of strange things on our driveway that I cannot as yet explain (see the two photos below).  Those two photos were taken a few feet and a few seconds apart.  They're both on a stretch of driveway with identical exposure to sunshine.  Last night it looks like some meteorological phenomenon sprinkled ice crystals all over the driveway, which then partially melted together to form a rough, thin sheet of ice over the entire thing.  But in these two places (and only these two places), these two blobs appeared.  The one on the left seems to have thicker ice there; my theory is that there was water (from the day's melt) on the driveway that froze solid before whatever it was dropped the ice crystals.  The one on the right seems to have no ice crystals – it's as if they all melted.  One might suspect salt, but I haven't used salt even 100' from there.  I have no other theory at the moment.

As I walked toward our barn, there was a commotion in our back yard.  It seems there were three spaniels who badly wanted my attention.  That handsome fellow staring me down and demanding a scritch is Mako.  Bored with the proceedings is Ipo, the furthest one in the photo.  And curious Cabo is carefully smelling all the vegetation at the bottom of the fence.  Sure doesn't take much to make them happy.  If you need to be loved, and needed, get a dog...

Turning around after taking that photo, I was standing under the flag that my mom made a few years ago.  It's hanging about 12' high, above my barn's big garage door on its east side.  I especially cherish the sight of that flag on mornings like this, lit by the low sun in the east.  Of course it always brings my mom to mind.  Often, as it did this morning, it also gets me to pondering just how much our country's government has changed since that flag was last the official American flag.  And that got me to thinking, once again, how fortunate we are to live in a part of the country where the general feeling is that our freedoms are being eroded and that they must be defended.  So, so different than California...

Just before I went in to start working on cleaning up my office, I took this photo to our northeast.  I stood on our property when I took this, but the field in the photo belongs to our friend and neighbor Tim D.  You can see part of our backyard fence at right.  On the left side are some deer tracks, and on the right a small dog or a fox (the latter is quite likely).  I love these winter scenes, and I especially enjoy trying to figure out what wildlife have visited us by identifying their tracks.  This morning as I took out the trash and fed the birds I was able to spot quite a few: deer (lots!), a large dog, that fox/small dog, several house cats, a muskrat and a weasel (in our irrigation canal), some small rodent (most likely a vole), and I think a raccoon.  There are also, as you might expect, about ten bazillion bird tracks in the snow, especially around our feeders.  I can't identify any of them. :)

The number of curses per minute...

The number of curses per minute ... has declined to its normal level (hear zero) around my office, because I finished doing our 2017 income taxes.  Yesterday the level was quite high. :)  Our taxes were complicated by the sale of my mother's home (and the empty lot next to it) last year.

This is the earliest (in the year) I remember ever getting my taxes done.  Just two days after I received the last bit of tax documentation.  Woo hoo!

Except for the two rather large checks I have to write, I'd be a pretty happy guy right now. 

But I sure wish I had the simple flat tax that my friends in Estonia have...

I just...

I just ... walked back into my office after running some errands.  It's time for me to get back to work on our taxes, not exactly my favorite chore. :)  As I poked the woodstove fire back to life, there was a loud rumbling (and I knew what was coming!) and then an enormous whoompa! as a ton or so of wet snow slid off the second story roof of my barn and down onto the first story.  The entire barn shakes when that happens, including (to my surprise) the concrete floor of the first story.  The trusses are holding, though, much to my relief.  I'm a bit surprised that there aren't visible “dents” in the first story roof from these falls!

Solution implemented!

Solution implemented!  The freezing UPS problem I devised a solution for is now fixed.  Yay!  And I did it exactly the way I had planned.  That hardly ever happens.  :)

The first photo below shows the shelf I installed, with the bottom of it being 10.5 feet above the garage floor.  The hangers that the 2x6s are sitting on were that leftover garage storage kit that I had.  In that first photo, between the two boards and a bit to the left you can see the 4" hole I sawed through the garage ceiling.  There's a matching hole in the second floor's floor.  The second photo shows the UPS all wired up and running.  I'm writing this post on a computer powered by that UPS.  It works!

The primary purpose of this project was to locate the UPS in a space that is temperature controlled – a sort of Goldilocks temperature, neither too hot nor too cold.  The barn's garage suits that bill perfectly.  In the winter it's heated, never getting colder than 65°F.  In the summer the excellent insulation in my barn plus the thermal mass of the 8" thick concrete floor keeps the temperature below 80°F most of the time, and the highest it's ever been is 84°F.  That's well within the UPS's operating temperature range.  My freezing UPS problem should be gone, and hopefully I didn't introduce any new problems while doing that.

There's a secondary benefit though, one that I hadn't even considered.  The UPS has rather loud fans, and now they're running down in the garage where a bit of extra noise will mean nothing (as there are many noisy things down there already).  That means my second floor is now back to it's basically noiseless state: nice and quiet for working, no noise to mess with my music.

Win!

Solution devised...

Solution devised...  A solution for my frozen UPS problem, that is.  Immediately below my UPS's current location is the 12 foot high ceiling in the barn's “garage” (where I keep my tractor, ATV, and some other equipment).  There's no wall anywhere near there.  I remembered that I had one of these ceiling storage kits left over from another project.  After a little investigation, I figured out that this would work very nicely to make a little “under the ceiling” shelf of sorts high above my “garage” floor, well out of the way and safe from anything stupid I might do with the tractor.  Installing that shouldn't be very difficult, other than having to do the work at the top of a tall ladder.  Once that shelf is in place, then all I need is a roughly 4" diameter hole in the ceiling (and floor above) to route the power input and output cables through.  I think the biggest challenge will be simply putting the UPS up there – the thing is a monster; weighs about 60 or 70 pounds.  I have to do some thinking about how to (safely) hoist that thing up there.

So now I have yet another project, this one with a bit of urgency as we have some cold weather in the forecast!

The cat...

The cat ... soon to be formerly known as “Tigger”.  This is the cat we adopted yesterday.  She seems reasonably content with her lot, but definitely not pleased about the presence of all our other cats.  At the moment only two of our other cats can actually come into contact with her, but they can all watch each other ... which they are. :)

Morning, deer...

Morning, deer, and a few other things...  When there was just barely enough light to see this morning, I looked out to our bird feeders to see if they were empty.  I spotted this deer scrounging the seed that birds had kicked off the feeders and not yet cleaned up (eventually they get everything edible).  I couldn't see well enough to tell if it was a buck or a doe – the bucks have lost their antlers by now, so the only way to tell is by getting a good view of their nether regions, or the back of their head (where you can see scars on a buck).  From its behavior (feeding alone), I'd guess this is a buck, but that's just a guess.  This one is being relatively polite and not knocking down my feeder.  Good deer!

The photo looks like broad daylight only because I've manipulated the exposure to make the deer more visible, and corrected the white balance to eliminate the blue twilight cast.  This is actually a good demonstration of the iPhone X's low-light capabilities, stabilizer, and telephoto – this was very low light, long exposure (1/15th), no flash, hand-held, on 2x optical telephoto.  Pretty amazing for something that weighs a few ounces and is the size of a thick postcard...

We got an email from an old friend last night, a woman I worked with through the '90s and up to '02.  She's 70, her husband a little older, and they're just now retiring.  They sold their small farm for cash, only to discover that the buyer was a gang-connected drug and gun dealer.  They went through a series of physical and legal adventures, including flying bullets, when finally this bad actor was arrested, arraigned, agreed to a plea deal for 15 years in federal prison.  Her (long) email reads like a précis of a script for a Hollywood production.  Holy cow!  And this sweet lady is someone who, if you were to meet her, you would think was primarily occupied with crafts and homemade shortbread.  I'm going to reply to her shortly, but right at the moment about the only thing I can think to say is “Holy shit, woman!”

Thursday we dropped off our little Munchkin (the male kitten who fell into our casement window a few months ago) and Ipo (the sweet female field spaniel whose owner didn't want her, and we adopted) at the veterinarian's to be neutered.  We picked them up in the afternoon.  Munchkin was back to his normal self within an hour or so of getting home.  One of the vet techs brought Ipo out to us, and while she was waiting for us to finish the paperwork she sat down in the lobby with Ipo – who was wiggling her butt to beat the band, and just loving all the attention from the vet tech.  I'm not sure she really wanted to go back home with us. :)

Yesterday afternoon we were relaxing at our kitchen table after a very filling meal at La Unica.  Debbie was reading about the animals up for adoption at the Cache Valley Humane Society (she does this almost daily).  She spotted a cat named “Tigger” that reminded us both of our beloved Maine coon Halala Pala, who died of cancer a few years ago.  Then we read the description and discovered that Tigger was 12 years old – and we knew that cats of that age are nearly impossible for organizations like the Humane Society to adopt out.  So we talked it over for a minute and then decided to go get her.  Which we did!  The staff at the Humane Society was delighted that someone came in specifically to get Tigger.  They tested her for FeLV (negative!) and in an amazingly short time we walked out with Tigger in a carrier.  She's now ensconced in her own little queendom carved out of our cattery, where she'll get as much time as she needs to get used to us and the other cats.  We found out that she was an indoor-only cat, the only pet of an elderly lady who has become unable to care for Tigger.  I'll post some photos when she's willing to come out of hiding...

A wintry drive...

A wintry drive...  Our neighbors Gary and Elayne S. own a gigantic 4WD pickup, and yesterday after lunch together we went on a drive around the north side of Porcupine reservoir with them.  It was just stunningly beautiful along the whole drive.  The scene at right is looking west over the reservoir, toward the dam.  We saw some deer, rabbit tracks, some chickadees, and an eagle.  Gary did a few Brodies along the way on the icy road, scaring the bejeezus out of Elayne – and I think he was a bit disappointed that he didn't manage to frighten Debbie. :)

Gary and I took note of the water level in the reservoir: it's only about 10' below full.  I don't think we'll have any problem with a water shortage for irrigation this year, which is great news.

They took us to a new (to us) eatery: Sabores.  It's tucked away off the main drag in Logan, behind the Beehive Grill.  We were both astonished to find another great place to eat in this little town.  Debbie and I have been missing good Thai food, and when we spotted Pad Thai on the menu we both ordered it.  It was excellent!  Debbie ordered dessert, and when they brought it out we were a bit shocked.  It was tres leches (three milks) cake (a common South American dessert), and it was a huge chunk.  Also delicious!  Between the four of us we managed to put it all away.  We'll be back to Sabores – that was a real treat, especially with friends for company...

Well, this I didn't expect!

Well, this I didn't expect!  When I went out to my barn office this morning, I was surprised to find that my iMac Pro was powered down.  After I powered it back up, I noticed that the Ubiqiti WiFi node in my office had also powered down over night, though it came back up on its own.  Then I discovered that my little Mac Server (a Mac Mini) also had powered down and come back up – as had all my networking gear.  It looked exactly as though I'd had a power outage – but I have a (really nice) UPS running all of it.  WTF?

My UPS isn't actually in my office – it's just outside my office, in the storage area part of the second floor of my barn.  That part of my barn is unheated.  Looking the the UPS logs, I discovered an event around 3:30 am this morning: temperature too low, at 9°F.  The thing shut down because it got too cold!  This is a new experience for me – all the temperature problems I remember seeing in electronics was because it was too hot, not too cold.

So now I have a new project: to move my UPS down into the heated part of my barn.  That's just 2 feet below where it is right now. :)  This will mostly involve drilling a couple of holes (for the input and output power) and building a shelf for the UPS, high on the wall of my workshop.  Not a project I was expecting!!

Another titanium artifact...

Another titanium artifact...  This is made by the same folks who made the titanium dice.  This is a key-chain clip, 6 cm (about 2 1/4") long.  It's made from a solid titanium blank, laser-cut.  The jagged-looking cuts form a spring, and it works beautifully.  The angled end prevents the sprung part from moving outward, and the force to move it inward is perfect, a few ounces.  Once again, I marvel that it's possible for an ordinary person to buy something like this...

Scenes from winter in Paradise...

Scenes from winter in Paradise...  By request, at right is my snow plowing rig: my Kubota B26 with a 400 lb. weight on the back and the hydraulic tilt blade in front.  I had it out again this morning, scraping off the two new inches that fell last night.  The forecast for last night? Zero inches.  It's still snowing intermittently this morning; it won't surprise me a bit if I need to go out again later today.

After I get back from my visit to the dentist. :(  Just a routine cleaning, but still ... not my favorite activity.

I took this yesterday to give you an idea just how much snow we got.  That trash can has the salt we use to keep our sidewalk and porch free of ice.  It sits under the stand of pine trees in our front yard – and it still accumulated that much snow!

When I went out this morning to fill our bird feeders, several species went right on feeding despite my presence: chickadees, juncos, house finches, and goldfinches.  I take that as a sign of hunger.  Our nearby honey locust had a swarm of birds perching in it: magpies, pigeons, grackles, and about a dozen red-winged blackbirds.  As soon as I left the area of the feeders, those red-winged blackbirds flew down in a group and started browsing on the cracked corn I'd scattered, as well as picking through the sunflower seeds smaller birds had pulled out of the feeders.  I sure hope they're ok through this snow and cold – they look very much out of place.

Yesterday afternoon we took a drive up Blacksmith Fork Canyon to Hardware Ranch.  For me, the scenes of snow-on-rock were quite beautiful (below).  But darned near everything on that drive was beautiful: the stream, the contrast of red osier dogwood against the snow, the snow in the trees, and the broad vistas of snowy mountains.  Up near Hardware Ranch we saw several groups of deer, including one with about 40 members.  We also saw a few isolated deer, most likely bucks who have lost their antlers.  At Hardware Ranch itself there were hundreds of elk, picking through the night's snowfall to get to the hay beneath...

Red-winged blackbirds are here...

Red-winged blackbirds are here...  This is a couple of months early for them.  It must have been our warm spell that brought them, and they arrived to 18" of snow.  Not exactly blackbird happiness!  They're swarming our feeders; I suspect they'd be starving if not for what we're putting out...

A very German case...

A very German case...  The little aluminum “suitcase” at right holds a pair of binoculars that we just bought.  The case cracked me up – I'd be able to identify it as German even without seeing the logo. :)

We've been looking for stabilized binoculars with high magnification and big objectives, to give our ancient eyeballs the best wildlife viewing we possibly could.  We already own a pair of stabilized Canon 18x50s – great magnification, fairly bright, so-so optics, so-so stabilization.  We also have a pair of stabilized Fujinon 14x40s – so-so magnification, so-so brightness, very good optics, fantastic stabilization.

I finally located something that promised to be a combination of the features we prized the most: these stabilized Zeiss 20x60s.  We've only had them out on one outing so far, but our impression so far is that we have a winner.  The magnification beats the Canon by a little.  The objectives collect 44% more light than the Canon; they are super-bright.  The optics are simply magnificent; the best I've ever looked through.  The stabilization is great, but very, very different than our other stabilized binoculars.  For starters, the Zeiss stabilizer is totally mechanical – no electronics, no battery, and (we quickly noticed) totally silent.  Unlike the electronic stabilizers, the Zeiss stabilizer doesn't seem to interact with panning or tilting the binoculars at all.  In that sense, they act just like unstabilized binoculars.  On the other hand, for the small tremors and vibrations that plague us when using unstabilized binoculars, the Zeiss stabilizer works perfectly.  On the other other than, for large perturbations, the Fujinon's stabilizer works better – which makes perfectly good sense for their target market: mariners.  On the whole I find the Zeiss stabilizer perfectly adequate for our needs – and I really like the absence of batteries and noise.  Zeiss' target market (for these binoculars) seems to be hunters and military, and those with deep pockets – these are damned expensive binoculars.  We had to think long and hard before plunking down our cash, and what tilted us toward it was that wildlife and bird watching is such a big part of our enjoyment of Utah.

Lazy Susan shelves...

Lazy Susan shelves...  In our kitchen cabinetry there are two corner cabinets in the same corner: one below the counter-top, the other above.  When we bought the house, there were plastic Lazy Susan rotating shelves in both of them.  These worked, but not all that well.  For starters they weren't quite level.  The white plastic the shelves were made of looked cheesy and were quite flimsy.  Another thing we didn't like is that all the shelves rotated at once (the supporting rod had rotating joints at the top and bottom, and the shelves were all fixed to the rod).  The worst problem, though, was that the lowest shelf scraped against the cabinet bottom as you rotated it.  So one day last week when I looked at them for the umpteenth time, it occurred to me that something better might be available, if the sizes happened to be standardized.  Maybe even something made from wood.

So I did what I always do in such circumstances: I went to Amazon and searched.   In no time at all I found two made from wood, one 30" in diameter and one 18" in diameter.  Could our shelves be that size?  They were!  I ordered them, and a couple days later they were in my hands.  It took just a couple hours to install both of them, including removing the old ones.  The biggest challenge I had was cleaning – because the back corners of those cabinets hadn't been cleaned in probably 15 years.  Maybe even more. :) Much scrubbing was required!

You can see the result in the photo above right.  They're great!  The shelves rotate independently, they're perfectly level, they don't scrape the cabinet, and they're wood.  That was a quick win of a project!

Something probably only an old fart like me would marvel at...

Something probably only an old fart like me would marvel at...  I have no interest in dice or anything generally done with them.  But these dice, which I purchased recently, are absolutely fascinating to me – because of what they're made from and how they were made.  The material is titanium, pure titanium.  They are machined from a rough block – with the machining done on a CNC milling machine with accuracy in the 0.0005" range.

When I was a kid, such an artifact would not have been possible to make at any price, much less the $39 I paid for this pair.  Pure titanium was available, but in a very limited number of shapes, in small quantities, and very expensive.  Machining titanium was just barely possible, with the most expensive of tools, a very high running cost (because of the need to replace bits), and of course it would be done manually.  Titanium parts were used only for the most exotic needs where no other material could possibly do the job.  The intricate engraving on these dice would have challenged the very best machinists – and it would have taken many, many hours.

But today, for the price of a nice meal out, I can hold these in my hand.

These are silly, useless objects – but – I marvel, I do...

Weather forecasters have the best job...

Weather forecasters have the best job...  They never have to be right!  Two days ago, our forecast called for 1 to 3 inches of snow yesterday and last night.  As of this writing, we're at 18 inches – and it's still snowing.

Now mind you, this is actually a good thing – we need the precipitation, especially for snow pack up in the mountains around us.  We're fervently hoping they got a similarly unexpectedly great amount.

Yesterday morning when it started snowing, the temperature was in the high '40s, and the ground hadn't been frozen for a week.  Consequently the first 3 or 4 inches that fell turned into a thick layer of slush, especially on our driveway where it was about 2 inches thick.  The forecast called for a hard freeze last night, around 20°F (which it did) – so I decided to plow the driveway even though it was still snowing hard, in the hopes of getting that layer of slush off before it froze into solid ice.  Checking this morning, it appears that I succeed in that: we've got about 4 inches of powdery snow sitting on the driveway.  That should plow off very nicely.  I'll be out plowing in an hour or so, and tonight the forecast calls for another 1 to 3 inches – so I expect to be out plowing tomorrow as well.  If I'm to believe the forecast, we won't see above-freezing temperatures until next Sunday – a huge change from the warm spell of the past two weeks or so...

The two photos below are from yesterday afternoon, about halfway through the snowfall.  We have quite a few branches so heavily loaded now that they're at risk of breaking...

Blogiversary today...

Blogiversary today...  On this day thirteen years ago I made the first post on this blog.  I haven't posted every single day, but I'm close to that.  This post will be the 13,914th post since I started this thing.  When I started, way back in 2005, blogs were “the next big thing.” That hasn't worked out quite as many people thought it would, but it's worked fine for me.

If you're a regular reader (as about five of you are! :) then you already know this blog is mainly aimed at friends and family.  But, you might say, that's what Facebook is for!  And I say: a pox on Facebook!  I can't stand the damned thing.  I have an account there, but it is almost completely unused.  These days all I use it for is to see posts that people ask me to look at (generally by sending me an email link).

Nevertheless, it's hard for me to accept that I've been doing this for thirteen years, and that I've written almost 14 thousand posts.  Crazy!

Not all news is bad...

Not all news is bad...  This is the name of a daily email newsletter that I signed up for a year ago.  I look forward to getting it every day – it never fails to cheer me up after reading the news each morning.  It's free, and I've never been spammed from the site.  You can sign up here...

Sisyphus tracks...

Sisyphus tracks ... a couple new ones:

Mystery solved...

Mystery solved...  For a couple of years now, we've had a problem with three different digital clocks.  All of them mysteriously ran too fast, but intermittently.  Over the course of a month, they might gain a half hour or so.  The thing that's really weird about this is that three completely different digital clocks – different brands, different circuitry, different chips at the core – all did the same thing.  Also, the problem happened whether the clock was in our house or in my barn office – and those two places have different electrical supplies (even different transformers!).  I still suspected something amiss with our AC power supply, but then when I ran one from my UPS (a model that is continuously supplying inverted power) it still had the same behavior.  I gave up, and started to think of explanations that included Harry Potter and divine intervention.

But then a few weeks ago, the problem suddenly stopped.  WTF?  Three separate clocks having a problem, and all of a sudden they all work?  How could this be??

A few days ago I had the first thought of a possible explanation.  The clocks all started working about the same time that the power company fixed the top part of our power pole (blogged here) – could that be what fixed my clocks?  I didn't know exactly what they did beyond replacing the top crossbar.  So I called the power company, hoping I might get some answers.  And I did!  Turns out they keep good records of what was found and what was done – and one of the notes they'd made on that day said “heavily corroded HV connection”.  The “HV” means “high voltage”, the input into the transformers for my house and my barn – and those two transformers shared that same HV connection.  Ah ha!  Now there was a possibility!  A heavily corroded connection might exhibit intermittent connections when, for example, the wind shook the power pole a bit. 

So I rigged up a bit of an experiment with one of the clocks.  I wired up an outlet whose power came through a wire that I cut, stripped, and then bound together with a rubber band.  Then I tried wiggling that joint.  Lo and behold, I was able to replicate the peculiar behavior.  The clock didn't lose power, but it did pick up the intermittent connection as though it was additional cycles to be counted – and the result was the clock gained time, just as we used to observe.

I'm left with the mystery of why the problem still happened with a clock connected to my UPS.  I think the most likely explanation is that the intermittent connection issue was transmitted through the UPS as coupled noise – which is certainly disappointing.  The UPS works fine if I switch off its primary power, so I know the inverter it contains is working properly.  I see no glitches on its output (using a 'scope) if I flip its primary power on and off.  Nonetheless, the clocks malfunctioned when running on it prior to January 11. 

I have to conclude that for our entire time in this house, up until the repairs on January 11, we've had flaky power and didn't even know it!  The clocks have been rock-solid now for over a month.  I'm very glad to have the problem fixed, but I'm still amazed that we didn't even know we had a problem!

Pies...

Pies...  A few days ago Debbie made these two (delicious) coconut custard pies.  With just a little help from her, I'm halfway through one of these. :)  The other went to our neighbors and friends Tim and Jeannie...

So yummy they are!

Trailer trials and tribulations...

Trailer trials and tribulations...  Yesterday I visited a local trailer dealer to look at aluminum utility trailers, similar to the one at right.  I was surprised at how reasonable the price was, and how nicely the trailer was made – so we quickly came to agreement and I decided to buy it.  I want a trailer for towing behind our Model X – something big enough to carry 12' long lumber and 8x4 sheets of plywood, and this one is just about perfect for that sort of use.  It weighs just 420 pounds, a spec with more impact than just being good for towing behind an electric car: at that weight, this trailer doesn't require registration or licensing in Utah.  Hooray!

The towing capability was one of the things that attracted me to the Model X in the first place, but we have never tried to tow before.  The hitch receiver in the Model X is removable, and I've been carrying it in the car's “frunk” ever since I bought it, over a year ago.  Yesterday the trailer folks helped me install it – except that we couldn't!  We thought at first that we were doing something wrong, but then we found a YouTube video demonstrating how to do it – and it became clear that there was something wrong with my hitch receiver.  Dang it!  So I ended up just putting a deposit on the trailer to secure it, then I contacted Tesla with a request for assistance.  A few minutes later, I had a service appointment for the next day (this morning) – both for the hitch issue and for my annual maintenance.

So this morning Debbie and I headed down to SLC and the service center.  We got there in plenty of time.  We were given a loaner car, but sadly it wasn't a Tesla – it was a Cadillac SUV and since I can't say anything good about it, I won't say anything at all.  We were given an estimate of half a day for the service, so we went to lunch at the Red Iguana (spectacular, as usual), and then spent three hours at the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium, 15 miles south of SLC in Draper.  This turned out to be a lovely surprise – it's an incredibly great aquarium, though I think that name is a misnomer.  It's more like a zoo with an aquarium attached.  In addition to all the things you'd expect an aquarium to have, they also had two otter exhibits (with different species), a clouded leopard exhibit (with a breeding pair), great bird exhibits, and even some plants (palms, mostly).  There's lots more there, too.  We thoroughly enjoyed our time there, and we'll be back for sure.

Then we headed back to the Tesla Service Center, where we got some good news and some bad news.   The good news: they found the problem with the hitch receiver - some welding flashing that was preventing the receiver from fully inserting into its socket.  A bit of careful grinding and that was fixed.  The bad news: the estimate we'd been given for the routine service was badly off.  Instead of a half day, it would take a day and a half.  That meant we had to drive the Cadillac back home tonight, and we'll have to drive it back down to SLC tomorrow.  Driving that conventional car 70 miles back home was ... a really downer experience.  I am so completely spoiled by my wonderful Model X!  The Cadillac's two-chipmunk engine got the car to 80MPH, but it took a couple miles to get there, instead of the 200' or so that the Model X takes.  The ride was so mushy that I was afraid there was something badly wrong with the suspension – but apparently that's intentional.  Going uphill in Sardine Canyon required keeping the accelerator to the floor to stay at 65 MPH – and all the while the engine is making alarming noises.  Then the Cadillac's “auto-stop” feature was constantly making me think the car had died.  That feature is intended to save gas – a laudable goal – but it does it by shutting off the engine whenever the car stops moving.  Even at a red light!  The engine automatically restarts when you take your foot off the break, but of course there's a brief hesitation before it can actually apply power to the wheels.  It's such an awful driving experience after being used to the Model X!

Los Primos...

Los Primos ... is the name of a local restaurant that we enjoy.  They also call themselves the El Salvador, which is sometimes confusing.  We always thought that the name meant (in Spanish) “The Best”, or something along those lines, because “primos” sounds to us like “prime” or something closely akin.  As they serve the best Mexican food in town, this seemed completely appropriate.

But recently we discovered that “los primos” actually means “the cousins”.  It seems that three cousins started both the restaurant and the related grocery.  Nothing wrong with “the cousins” as a name, but it doesn't have quite the same cachet for us as “the best”!  :) 

Sisyphus table...

Sisyphus table ... some of my recent creations:

Bird feeding...

Bird feeding...  This post is in response to a reader's inquiry.

We have eleven winter feeders all together: five sunflower seed feeders, two Nyjer thistle seed feeders, one platform feeder, one suet feeder, and two feeders dedicated to “no mess” seed.  Except for three of the sunflower seed feeders, my feeders are all Droll Yankee products – I've found them to be more durable than any others I've tried; most last for at least five years and some we've had for over ten years.

In the summer we add several hummingbird feeders to our array of feeders.  None of our hummer species winter over, so they come down for the winter.

We go through quite a bit of seed in the winter time, and drastically less in other seasons, though it never goes to zero.  Right at the moment monthly seed consumption is about 120 pounds of black oil sunflower seed, 80 pounds of cracked corn (on the platform feeder and scattered on the driveway), 60 pounds of Nyjer thistle seed, 25 pounds of “no mess” seed, and 2 pounds of suet mix.

Except for the no-mess seed, my local source is Tractor Supply Company – they have the best prices locally, and the seed is all good quality.  The “no mess” seed I have no local source for, so once or twice a year we head down to Wild Birds Unlimited in Salt Lake City and stock up.  We don't get the “no mess” seed because it doesn't make a mess, though that's true.  We get it because I'd read that in extreme cold temperatures the wild birds can more easily get the calories they need.  I can't independently verify that, but I can tell you that the consumption of it is almost zero except when the temperature drops below about 20°F – and then the colder it gets, the more gets eaten.  A working hypothesis is that the birds actually prefer the seeds au naturel, but when it gets too bitterly cold and they need more calories, they'll go for the avian fast food.  We see all sorts of small songbirds on those “no mess” feeders; so far as I can tell there's no species that prefer it over the sunflower seeds.

The Nyjer thistle seed feeders are dominated by goldfinches (both Lesser's and American), though they are occasionally visited by chickadees and house finches.  Woodpeckers, magpies, and flickers are the most common visitors to the suet feeder; the occasional chickadee can be found there as well.  The scattered cracked corn brings hordes of juncos, a few pigeons and doves, and deer.  Magpies and doves seem to prefer cracked corn on the platform feeder, along with a lot of chickadees.  The sunflower seed brings many different species, but more house finches than anything else.

My mom would have loved to have seen our birds feeders, but she never got the chance...

Northern shrike sighting!

Northern shrike sighting!  We drove up Blacksmith Fork Canyon this morning, looking for wildlife.  We spotted about a bazillion deer, mainly up the snow-free slopes high above us.  Behind the Hardware Ranch visitor center we also spotted six elk about 200' from us – the only elk we saw on the entire trip.  The herd at Hardware Ranch, we read, has left to follow the snow line up higher.  Presumably if it does get cold again, they'll be back (for the free hay dispensed at Hardware Ranch).  We also read that the moose prefer to stay above the snow line, which may explain why we've only had one sighting so far this winter.

The highlight of the trip, for me at least, was spotting a northern shrike strutting on a fence post roughly a mile east of Hardware Ranch, right along the road.  That's not my photo at right, but the bird we sighted looked very much like this one.  It's a migratory species, and this one was here for our warm winter! :)  It probably came down from either Alaska or the Hudson Bay area.  They're not a common bird at all, so I cherish the sighting of it.  He popped up on a fence post as we were looking at some deer high on a hill a half mile or so behind him – it was just plain luck that we saw him at all...

Best scallops evah!

Best scallops evah!  Who'd have thought that we'd find our best source ever for fresh (never frozen) sea scallops right here in Cache County?  That's a strange-but-true for certain!  Combine almost two pounds of those fine scallops with Debbie's utterly perfected broiled scallops recipe – replete with butter, garlic, lemon, and dill – and you've got an unbeatable entrée.  Then add perfectly done white sushi rice and roasted asparagus and you've got an unbeatable meal (photo of my plate at right)!  We gorged ourselves yesterday afternoon on this repast fit for king...

Sunset in Paradise...

Sunset in Paradise...  From a few days ago, taken from our driveway.  While the east coast is having unusually cold weather – and even more unusual snow – we're having unusually warm weather here.  The snow is nearly all melted from the floor of Cache Valley, and mud is upon us.  The mountains are still snowy, but mostly above the 6,000' level.  Our 10 day forecast has only a couple of nights where our temperatures will be below freezing.  Last year at this time I was freezing my butt off in an arctic suit – this year I'm often outside in shirtsleeves.  So weird!

Kitchen modification, roughly number 357...

Kitchen modification, roughly number 357...  Since we purchased our home almost four years ago, we've been incrementally changing things in the kitchen to suit us.  The latest of these changes was to remove the modular cabinet-top Jenn-Air gadget that was installed in our island.  It was much like the one in the photo at right.  Both sides of that thing are removable (just by lifting them up), and a total of seven modules came with the house.  In the 3+ years that we've been living here, we've turned it on exactly twice – both times just to see if it actually worked.  With another four-burner range, two ovens, and a microwave, we just never even came close to needing it.  And it took up almost a third of our island counter-top!

So not long ago we had the brilliant idea of replacing it with a nice big cutting board.  With a piece of tempered glass to go over the cutting board when it wasn't in use, we'd be able to use the entire island as a counter-top – plus we'd free up quite a bit of space under the Jenn-Air that was consumed by the power source and a 6" diameter duct for the down-draft ventilation built into it.  The challenge was where on earth would we find such an odd-shaped cutting board?  I could make one, but I don't have a planer big enough to handle the 23" x 30.5" size we'd need.  So I did some research on the web, and discovered this site – and good reviews of it in several locations.  I queried them, and they had no problem at all making a nice maple cutting board to our specs.  The actual maker was John Boos, a company I'd read about when researching some other kitchen things, but had never done business with.  When I got the quote for the custom cutting board I was quite surprised at how reasonable it was: a solid maple board for less than it would cost me to buy the wood!

We received it a few days ago, and over the past couple days I removed the Jenn-Air and installed the cutting board (photo at right).  The tempered glass cover should be ready on Tuesday.  Removing the Jenn-Air was actually easier than I expected it to be, except for one little detail: making an odd-shaped “plug” for the hole in the bottom of the island's cabinet where the 6" duct entered from below.  Whoever made that hole apparently never heard of a compass. :)  It took me about eight tries to get a reasonably good fit, close enough that I could caulk the remaining crack.  That was a bit of a pain!  The board arrived packed in some of the best packaging I've ever seen – there wasn't a ding of any kind on it.  There was, however, a defect from our point of view: the edges had very sharp corners.  Probably the factory would have rounded them for me had I been smart enough to ask, but I wasn't.  So I used my router table with a 3/16" radius quarter-round bit, and put a nice radius on all those sharp edges, and sanded it all down nice and smooth.  That, however, caused a problem with the finish.  I bought the same finish the factory had used (they kindly documented it!), and by the time I was done you'd never know it wasn't done in the factory.  I mounted it in the Jenn-Air's hole by screwing eight rubber bumpers into the bottom of the board, two along each of the hole's edges.  I spaced these so that the board is snugged in tightly – yet it can be popped right out if need be.  We're very happy with the result!

Amazing battery lifetime...

Amazing battery lifetime...  I got my new iMac Pro in the last week of December, roughly six weeks ago.  It came with a wireless keyboard and mouse that incorporate built-in rechargeable batteries, much like a smartphone has.  My old mouse used ordinary AA batteries, which I typically had to change every 3 weeks or so.  My old keyboard plugged into USB and had no batteries at all.
So one of my first questions about these new-fangled peripherals was: just how long would these batteries last on a charge?

Well, I now have the answer for one of them, the mouse.  I recharged it last night for the first time since I received the system, when it reported being at 5% of charge.  My keyboard is still at 70% of charge, after six weeks of frequent use. 

For approximately the 37 billionth time, I am just in awe of the degree of advancement in a technology, within my own lifetime.  Rechargeable batteries were basically non-existent when I was a kid.  The standard was old-fashioned zinc-acid batteries, which are actually quite difficult to buy today – alkaline batteries have basically taken over the disposable battery scene, with capacities several times that of a zinc-acid battery.

The most significant advances aren't in the batteries, though – they're in the incredibly low power consumption of even fairly sophisticated circuits like a Bluetooth optical mouse.  That's truly mind-boggling.  The simple, inexpensive optical mouse on my desk has functionality that was either impossible (Bluetooth) or really difficult (the optical movement sensing).  The latter alone would have taken a roomful of circuitry in the '50s, dominated by power-hungry vacuum tubes.  A wild guess at the power consumption would be 5 to 10 thousand watts.  My modern mouse can't consume more than a few thousandths of a watt at most.  More likely it's an order of magnitude less than that. 

And now we have an electric car headed to the asteroid belt!  :)

The weather was nice enough...

The weather was nice enough ... that Debbie and I got to take a little walk this morning, with Race and Miki.  When we were getting ready to depart, the dogs had no idea we were about to go for a walk.  But when I picked up the leashes, Race immediately knew – even though it's been several months since he last got to go on a walk with us.  Happy dogs!  The temperature was quite warm for a February morning: 46°F.  The scenery was beautiful, too.  The foreground is a bit drab without our usual greenery, but the snow-capped mountains made up for that. 

Incidentally, both of these photos were taken with a hand-held iPhone X.  The second photo is using the 2x optical telephoto.  Both would look much worse without the image stabilization...

You should be envious...

You should be envious ... as this is what I had for dessert today, at Jack's.  It's an orange-rosemary panna cotta, and it was brains-fall-out delicious.  I had the pina colada version of this last week and thought it was great – but this version is even better!

While we had lunch today (with our friend Michelle), we watched the webcast of the spectacular launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy.  The image of the two side cores landing side-by-side looked like something straight out of a science fiction story.  It occurred to me that the science fiction trope of a flying car has at last become reality, with Elon Musk's Tesla roadster now in Earth orbit (and soon to be solar orbit).  That's not quite how I imagined flying cars would turn out, but ... it will do.  It will do...

Bunch of Valentines...

Bunch of Valentines...  Generated by JSisyphus on my Sisyphus table...

Blacksmith Fork Canyon...

Blacksmith Fork Canyon ... is just a few minutes from our house, and yet it's one of our favorite wildlife watching venues.  We make the roughly 35 mile drive (it's a long canyon!) up and back two or three times every week.  Yesterday we did so again, late in the afternoon, and were treated to three great viewings of bald eagles (twice the same adult, perched about 100 yards from the road), and a long viewing of a small herd of deer (8 does and yearlings) browsing about 30 yards from the car.  One of the things we love about the Model X is that it's so quiet that animals aren't leery of it.  We parked there, car on, for ten minutes or so.  The deer looked up at us at first, then decided we weren't a threat and went on munching...

Now here's something I can root for!

Now here's something I can root for!  If you know me, then you know I have a profound lack of interest in sports (and therefore an equally profound ignorance of them).  But the excitement that sports fans unembarrassedly display is something I can identify with – it's just that my excitement springs from something other than sports.  In this case, it's today's scheduled launch of SpaceX's “Falcon Heavy”, with Elon Musk's Tesla roadster as the payload.

If you don't know about the Falcon Heavy, here's some background.  Don't miss the animation on that page!  Today's launch will be the Falcon Heavy's maiden flight, and Musk has been careful to set expectations low, saying there was a 50% chance the thing is going to blow up.  Whatever happens today, I'm sure SpaceX will eventually get Falcon Heavy working reliably.  When they do, it will be the world's largest (by payload to orbit) operational rocket.  The qualification is because the Saturn V rocket from the Apollo program was larger, but of course it is no longer operational. 

More than simply being the biggest, it will (like it's smaller brother, the Falcon 9) be reusable.  I'm old enough to remember when NASA told Congress that orbital booster reusability was impossible, and that the closest anyone could ever get to that was the Space Shuttle approach.  For a tiny fraction of the Space Shuttle's development cost, private enterprise has done what NASA said was impossible – and as of today, with almost the same payload capacity that NASA was ever able to achieve.  The launch costs for SpaceX are absolutely dwarfed by NASA's costs – a single Space Shuttle launch (including amortized development costs) cost more than SpaceX has spent for their entire development program and all launches combined.  Yay, capitalism!

I will be watching in a couple hours...

Things that make me feel old, part 8,382,650...

Things that make me feel old, part 8,382,650... I read this morning that Paul Simon is retiring from touring – and that he's 76 years old.  Holy senior citizen's discount!

Latest Sisyphus table creation...

Latest Sisyphus table creation...

Quilts and little old ladies...

Quilts and little old ladies...  A couple years ago, at a craft fair in Logan, we ran into a little old lady named Marlene who made quilts.  She's a petite gal, and if I were to guess her age I'd say 70 or 75.  Her quilts are real works of art – beautiful fabrics, classic patterns, and hand stitching so precise you'd likely guess it was made on a machine.  Her prices are quite reasonable, especially when compared with, say, an Amish quilt from Pennsylvania.  And the quality of her work is even better than the Amish quilts we've seen.

About three months ago, we bought another quilt from Marlene, and this time we ran down to her place (in Roy, Utah, about an hour away) to pick it up.  She runs her quilt business out of her own house.  In conversation we discovered that she has 10 children – and 37 grandchildren!  Her 7 daughters all occasionally help her with the quilts, but these days they're so busy with their own families that mostly she does the quilting on her own.  She also told us that she was trying to use up her inventory of fabric, as she really didn't expect to be doing the quilting much longer – age is starting to limit her abilities.

Well, on our drive home that day, Debbie and I made up our minds to buy two more of her quilts for our bed.  We love them, and she's willing to make them oversized for us (to cover our pillows completely, along with our thick mattress and box spring).  We have no idea where we can get the equivalent, at any price – let alone at her prices.

So we ordered two more, for a total of four – we've got the seasons covered. :)  Today we drove down to pick up those two; she'd called Debbie this morning to let her know they were done.  This time we had a bit more conversation with her, and learned that she grew up on a wheat and potato farm near Burley, Idaho.  That makes her the third person I've met who hailed from that little farm town – all LDS (Mormon), all good people, all hard workers.  There's something in the water there, I think.  Something good.

One of these days when I have my wits all together, I'll post some photos of these gorgeous quilts...

Big-eye tuna poke...

Big-eye tuna poke...  We went to our local grocery store (Macey's) yesterday, and to our delight they had just gotten in some more big-eye tuna.  Their seafood manager told us it was “spectacular” – and he was right.  We bought a pound-and-a-half of it, and Debbie made her (also spectacular!) poke with it.  She served it over brown rice, as usual.  This is quickly becoming one of our favorite meals!  We were seriously stuffed when we got done. :)

Afterwards, as I mentioned in an earlier post, we watched Groundhog Day.  This was our first time watching it from Blu-Ray, a substantial improvement from the DVD – a much crisper picture and crystal-clear audio.  We enjoyed it just as much this time as on our previous viewings (probably six or seven over the years)...

My latest Sisyphus table track...

My latest Sisyphus table track ... this one mainly in order to demonstrate Bézier curves.  I called it “Swoopy Radiance”  :)

Happy groundhog day!

Happy groundhog day!  Only out here, they'd call it “rock chuck” day, for that's the common name of this marmot if you live here.  They have no idea what a groundhog is. :)  We're going to watch the movie (which we both love) again tonight – a newish tradition for us.

We had such a lovely day yesterday.  For me it started with a good night's sleep, something that is an increasingly unusual (and therefore more cherished) experience these days.  Astonishingly that was repeated last night.  Two in a row ... I can't even remember when that last happened.  Of course these days remembering even my name is starting to be a challenge...

I spent yesterday morning finishing up a major enhancement to my JSisyphus software: I added the ability to draw Bézier curves.  I'd used Bézier curves many times before, in drawing programs such as Photoshop or GIMP.  They'd always seemed kind of magical to me, and I had no idea how they were implemented.  So I read up a bit on it earlier this week, and quickly ran into yet another concept I'd never seen before: parametric equations.  This is a standard pattern in my programming experience ... in order to do something new to me, I have to learn something new to me.  That's what I call fun!  And this time, the outcome was surprising to me, as it turns out that parametric equations are actually a rather simple idea, and that Bézier curves are actually really simple to implement.  My code for the Bézier curves is about half Java's verbose boilerplate and about half “meat” – and yet the total is only a screenful of code.  The hardest bit turned out to be ensuring that I generated enough points over the line, as the rate of change varies over the whole line.  In any case, it was easy, and the code worked on the second try (the first try failed because I made a mistake in transcribing the basic equation).

Shortly after I posted the Bézier curve changes, I got an email from someone who had downloaded JSisyphus and was trying to make it work.  This fellow was a C++ programmer using Visual Studio, so his issues were really all about getting a Java IDE installed and learning a bit of Java.  In under an hour, he had it going – my first JSisyphus user, I think!  Later in the day I discovered that someone else had cloned it, too.  Cool beans!

Around noon yesterday Debbie and I took off for Salt Lake City with plans for a purely fun afternoon with two stops: the Red Iguana, then Caputo's market for some cheese and chocolate shopping.  The Red Iguana had two specials: a baby back pork rib in mango mole sauce, and seafood fajitas.  Both sounded wonderful; Debbie ordered the ribs (first photo below – Debbie started eating before I could snap the pic!) and I got the fajitas (second photo).  Both were just ridiculously good in every detail, as is our common experience there.  Debbie took one bite of her ribs and decided that she didn't want to share (as had been our plan).  After a bite of my fajitas, I didn't care!  :)  As always, I'm amazed at the attention to the little details there.  The chips and salsa were fantastic, and the iced tea perfect (as always).  My fajita vegetables were cooked to the perfect point, sort of al dente, and they must have put the seafood in toward the end of the cooking, as it wasn't overcooked as seafood in fajitas so often is.  The salsa fresca and guacamole were heavenly..  Debbie couldn't manage to eat all of hers, so I got to taste the ribs, and I polished off her black beans.  Awesome, both of them, even after I was stuffed full of my meal.  And of course we had dessert to finish up.  I'm not sure how we did it, but we both managed to eat an entire flan (regular for me, chocolate for Debbie) smothered with caramel sauce, whipped cream, and a half-cup or so of sliced fresh ripe strawberries.  Oh, my!

Then it was on to Caputo's, which is but a short drive away from Red Iguana.  There we got ourselves several nice cheeses (they let us taste them all before we bought), some sandwich ham for me, some pasta, and two varieties of chocolates: chocolate-covered candied orange slices for me, and chocolate-covered figs for Debbie.  Both are outstanding!