Odds and Ends

Posted on 2023/12/04 by Gunther

So…nothing really going on outside of some odds and ends…but Ima little bored so here goes.

Us-wise…not much going on. Connie’s birthday was Saturday but Neil’s still under the weather with whatever the Intestinal thing he’s got going on so we didn’t do anything. She had chorus practice in the afternoon anyway and we ended up cancelling our Sarasota Orchestra concert that evening and swapping the tickets for a different chamber music performance later in the month. She had her concert with the Gulf Coast Symphony last night and it went well…

I’m sure glad (and so is Neil) that I wasn’t on the college football playoff selection committee after the weekend…because they got the worst possible results from conference championship weekend games. This is the last year of the 4 team playoff…it shifts to 12 teams next year just like the remainder of the divisions in the NCAA that play football (although actually the rest of them either have 8 or 16 team playoffs, the top division has 12 but the top 4 get a bye to the quarter finals and the others play a home game on the campus of the higher ranked team to eliminate 4 of them.

Anyways…the top 4 teams get in and that’s it. So…Washington and Michigan both won their conference championships and are undefeated and in…but after that it gets harder to choose. Texas won there championship game as well but have a single loss to Oklahoma during the regular season; they finished at 10-2…and Texas beat Alabama by 10 in Tuscaloosa the second game of the season. Florida State won the ACC and is unbeaten as well…but they lost their really good quarterback and although they won their last game and the conference championship game both were ugly and unproductive offensively. Alabama ran the table after losing to Texas and knocked off Georgia in the championship game…ending their 29 game 2 national championship winning streak, and their last 2 (and 3 of the last 4) losses have been to Alabama.

So…Texas, FSU, and Alabama, and potentially Georgia as well since they were top ranked most of the season and also only have a single loss…and only two of them could get into the playoff…so now you understand why I’m glad I didn’t make the decision. Two of those are going to be happy and the other 2 unhappy…and there are good and bad reasons for choosing any as in or out.

Georgia…it’s hard to see them getting in since the lost to Alabama unless Alabama also got in and that wasn’t going to happen…so they get eliminated from top 4 consideration almost immediately.

FSU…they’re an undefeated Power 5 conference champ…and one of those has never been left out of the playoff. However…they only bet 4 teams with winning records and have that definite QB problem. They beat Louisville by 10 in an unimpressive championship game…Louisville lost to Kentucky the week before and Kentucky got blown out by 28 at home against Alabama.

Alabama…they have the single loss to Texas but are obviously a much better team now…and beat the season long top dog pretty convincingly on the field if only by 3 on the scoreboard…they led by 10 in the 4th quarter and put together the TD drive they needed to ice the game late. On the other hand…they struggled a bit against Auburn in the Iron Bowl and won on an almost last second 4th and goal from the 31 TD pass…but then that game is *always* a dogfight no matter the records and relative talent of the two teams.

In the end…FSU got left out and the committee said that it was because there were 5 good teams competing for 4 spots and they came in #5 out of the group…and it all came down to the strength of schedule and the loss of their QB. I can see how they’re pissed about it…but realistically I think they had the misfortune of being #5 out of the good teams trying to make the top 4. And it turn out that we almost had the 12 team playoff this year…except the ACC which is their conference vetoed the idea…if they had not then FSU would be in the field as well as Georgia. 

Ok, enough of that.

I see that George Santos got kicked out of Congress last Friday…and while the man is an idiot, allegedly a criminal and all that…I really think this sets a bad precedent to kick a congress critter out because of so far unproven allegations. Yes…the evidence seems pretty solid based on the limited amount I’ve read about it…but he’s still innocent until proven guilty and that should count for something. Before him…6 Reps had been kicked out…2 for actually fighting for the Confederacy (i.e., participating in an actual insurrection) and the other 4 for being convicted of something. Santos…to this point…has not. Don’t take that as any support for the man…he’s already announced he’s not running for reelection and we don’t have any more use for him than we do for the MAGA crowd, the President and Veep, or the Squad. It’s just that fair is fair. And if they’re going to kick him out for being indicted…why hasn’t Senator Menendez been kicked out as he’s been indicted for what appear to be more serious crimes. Sounds like a double standard to me…or that the Senate actually has a clue about that whole innocent until proven guilty idea. Dunno.

I keep reading about the horrible atrocities the Israeli’s are doing in Gaza…and the fact that Hamas started it by butchering civilians seems to be lost in the media condemnation of Israel. In the long run…the ongoing elimination of Hamas in Gaza isn’t going to work because killing a bunch of civilians is just going to turn more of them into hard line terrorists…but the government there has to do something as their neighbors have sworn to kill every Israeli and take the land, and that’s been going on since 1948. When the land was partitioned…the UK setup both a Palestinian government and an Israeli one so we actually started with a 2 state solution. The Israelis were willing to live with the but the Palestinian government and all the rest of the surrounding countries immediately declared war and set out to wipe the Jews off of the face of the earth…and they’ve tried over and over unsuccessfully every since. Gaza…yeah, it’s a crappy place to live I know…but it was setup as a quasi independent Palestinian state and then they let Hamas take it over and launch terrorist attacks from civilian areas. It’s ugly…but I don’t see anything the Israelis can do about it.

Their friends down in Yemen (as well as Hezbollah in south Lebanon) however…seem to be pulling on Superman’s cape by launching attacks on US forces and ships. So far…we’ve shown restraint but how long that will last I truly wonder.

Over in the Pacific…the Chinese are still trying to claim and take over the entire South China Sea…despite the international courts deeming their claims worthless. And they’re still threatening Taiwan at this point. As you know…we have a treaty relationship with and have stated we will protect Taiwan…which is probably the only thing preventing the Chinese from trying to invade at this point. They’ve also been making numerous unsafe intercepts of US and allied aircraft operating in international air space and keep trying to bully ships from our fleet as well as allied ones from conducting Freedom of Navigation transits through declared international waters. They claim the entire South China Sea based on their 9 Dash Line used to declare their longstanding ownership of the waterway…but the only place that line appears is on Chinese maps from the 1940s or so. Frankly…if you look at the line it intrudes well into both the territorial waters and exclusive economic zones of every country that borders the sea…so the claim is clearly just a land (make that water) grab. Their buildup of artificial islands on reefs in the sea is clearly illegal under international law…but they keep doing it anyway.

On the political front domestically…both sides are still claiming all sorts of inflammatory BS about the other side, framing their press releases with the most incendiary language possible, and ignoring the fact that their side is doing many of the same things they’re condemning the other side for. I’m so sick of all this BS and think they should actually…oh, I don’t know…do their job and govern maybe? Instead…they seem to be interested in just a few things…getting reelected…demonizing the other side…and being against whatever the other side wants. Crimminee…they need to get together and come to some compromise that both sides can accept as getting part of what they want but not all. Abortion…taxes…spending…voting rights…the positions of the 2 sides are so far apart and the likelihood of getting both the White House and a super majority in both houses of congress is so low that neither of those positions are ever going to happen…but the idea of compromise instead of ‘my way or the highway’ attitudes truly prevents anything from getting done.

And here’s one that shows that even supposedly smart people can still say dumb, stupid things. Warren Buffet…he of Berkshire Hathaway investment juggernaut fame…actually said back in 2011…at least according to this
article…that he could solve the deficit problem in 5 minutes. According to the article…all that needs to happen is to pass a law saying that if there is ever a deficit greater than 3% of GDP…that all sitting members of congress (and by the lower case c he’s talking about both houses) are ineligible for reelection. He goes on to some explanation about how that would ensure fiscal responsibility in our governmental spending. Unfortunately…there’s just one single problem with that…such a law would be unconstitutional. The constitution lays out the requirements for being a member of the legislative branch…for the House one must be 25 years old, been a citizen for 7 years, and be an inhabitant of the state which elected him. The requirements for the Senate are similar…except the minimum age is 30 and citizenship requirement is 9 years. Therefore…such a law would be tossed out by the first court that heard the lawsuit over it. Now I’ll agree that Mr. Buffet is a really smart money manager…but for the love of anything holy…how can people that are supposedly educated make such inane statements. And how did such an article…which clearly states “Whether this plan could be implemented or would be effective is uncertain” didn’t get flagged by anybody at the finance bureau at yahoo.com is simply unbelievable. I could suggest a thousand laws which would (at least according to me) solve some sort of problem…but even a bear has the common sense to read the constitution (although to be honest most bears can’t read…but I’m an exceptionally talented bear) and say “Nah…you can’t do that.”

There were some fisticuffs on the sideline of an NFL game yesterday apparently…between a player and one of the staff members of the opposing team. They’re both going to get hammered by the league. We didn’t see it and really don’t care because we don’t watch or care about any of the professional sports leagues we have.

Interesting things found on the net.

Speaking of EVs…Consumer Reports has an article out that EVs have worse reliability than gas powered vehicles but that hybrid models are the same as gas powered. Given that hybrids also get around the charging issues and range problems of pure EVs, they seem like the way to go to us…but the tree huggers insist that we go all electric anyway. Never mind that the power to charge them comes largely from fossil fuels anyway and the grid simply cannot support complete conversion at this time…not to mention they’re pretty impractical if you need to drive long distances.

And finally.

Cyas.

Posted in Homebody, Reality Based Blogging, Ya Can't Fix Stupid | Leave a comment

And Even More Nice Weather

Posted on 2023/11/27 by Gunther

Although mostly Neil just tried a couple of new possible workflows for post processing his images so I figured as he had done the work I should post them for him.

As the title notes…gorgeous weather windows…high today was 73 and the low overnight will be mid 50s so we’ll have to shut down our windows a bit. Couple slight sprinkles the past week but nothing worth mentioning. 

Turkey day was pretty excellent for us even though it was actually a smoked and then grilled (to crispy the skin because crispy of course). Side dishes were an apple Manchego cheese salad which was surprisingly good and a loaded sweet potato casserole from Chef John which was surprisingly (for his recipes) mediocre at best. The bacon addition was great but Neil’s gonna go back to his pre baked and then sliced thick sweet potatoes browned in butter, brown sugar, and toasted pecans but he’s gonna add the bacon because that was the sole addition to the recipe that both of them liked. He made his Blueberry Crisp that they both like but this time instead of just blueberries he added dried apricots, craisins, and chopped dates along with a smidgeon of bourbon. Excellent with either ice cream or whipped cream (we’ve had both so far). We had leftover chicken on Friday and then leftover ricotta stuffed shells and marinara sauce from Wednesday night before the holiday…we didn’t want to get to being too over chicken. Saturday he took the bones from the chicken after stripping the rest of the meat off…froze the nice breast slices…and made some nice homemade chicken stock. Sunday he made gumbo…onions and peppers sautéed and then browned some Andouille sausage slices. Made the roux and tossed in some chopped bacon while it was browning…then added some of the aforementioned chicken stock and spices…cayenne, thyme, sage, hot sauce and the all important file (that’s ground up dried sassafras leaves and is pronounced like filet. It’s what gives gumbo the ‘gumbo’ flavor. He left out the okra because it’s okra and it’s nasty…and let it simmer for a couple of hours. Made the rice outside since he didn’t want to make the kitchen hot…then added the Andouille, the bits and bobs of chicken he saved from the carcass, and 20 or so bay scallops right at the end…to warm the first two and cook the latter but they only take like 2 minutes to be done. Served it over rice and had a nice bottle of Merlot alongside it…and as he predicted the leftover gumbo with some freshly cooked rice was even better Monday afternoon…they have to leave early for her Mastersingers practice and they need to run by the Wines R Us on the way home.

Over Tuesday and Wednesday…he went ahead and did the swap from their old watches and iPhones and dropped the old iPhones off at the shipping place for trade in…that will get them a bit over $300 back. The new iPhone 15s and watch series 9 are faster, don’t have battery life issues the old ones were showing, and have some nice new features as well. 

He started working on his visa application for Tanzania…some issues there he’s trying to get sorted out with the web page options…and checked again to see if he could get a seat assignment for the returning flight from Arusha Tanzania back to Amsterdam…when they did the reservations the was the only one he could not get an assigned seat on. He paid extra for business class seats so he could actually sleep on the overnight flights going and coming…and it turns out that Delta’s partner KLM wants an extra $87.20 to choose a particular business class seat on that returning flight. At worst…he’ll be 5 rows further back than the front of business seating and that won’t really impact him getting off the plane and on to his next gate to catch the flight back to the US…there is only a 55 minutes layover in Amsterdam but an extra 5 rows of seats to get off won’t make a difference as it’s not all that far to anyplace in the Amsterdam airport. Hopefully he’ll get the answers he needs to solve the visa application issue in a day or two.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the Iron Bowl or the annual game between Alabama and Auburn. They’ve now been involved in 2 of the 3 most dramatic endings to a college football game we’ve ever seen. Ten years ago playing in Auburn…it was the famous Kick Six bowl. The score was tied with 1 second remaining and Alabama attempted a 57 yard field goal to win…the kicker had kicked 3 total field field goals in his career at that point and none nearly as long…so it wasn’t likely to be good anyway but hey, ya gotta try. An Auburn defensive back lined up in the end zone, fielded the short kick…and ran it back 109 yards down the left sideline for the game winning points. Yeah…it was a great play and it was the second game that year Auburn won on a fluke play at the end…against Georgia earlier they had a deep pass that bounced off of 1 receiver, 2 defensive backs, and into the hands of a second receiver for a long touchdown that provided the winning points in that game. So…naturally those two plays were shown again this year as it was the 10th anniversary…and again…and again…and again. This year’s game itself was your typical Iron Bowl…back and forth, 4 total lead changes, and the relative records and quality of the two teams had nothing to do with the game. In this one…the much better team usually plays down from its best and the worse team plays much better so it’s almost always a tight game until the end. And ya know…it happened again. Alabama punted with about 3 minutes left and the Auburn receiver muffed the punt resulting in the 4 points behind Alabama team having one final chance to score and win. They drove down to just inside the 5 and then the Alabama center snapped the ball too early when the QB wasn’t looking for it resulting in an 18 yard loss so it was 2nd and goal from the 26; Alabama uses a hand clap to indicate the snap rather than words…and the defense isn’t allowed to clap at all if the offense uses claps to snap. One of the Auburn linebackers clapped immediately before the errant snap and it should have been called a penalty which would have given Alabama a 2nd and goal at the 2 yard line instead of the 26…but the referees didn’t call it. Third down was a touchdown pass but the QB was past the line so it was 5 yards back and loss of down so now 4th and goal from the 31 with 20something seconds left. After an Auburn timeout…they snapped the ball…Auburn had a 3 man rush easily handled by the 5 lineman and put 8 guys back in pass coverage while Alabama sent 5 receivers to the end zone. QB could have had a sandwich he had so much time and finally tossed a pass to the corner where one of the receivers had gotten both open and single covered. Jump ball…and he pulled it in for what turned out to be the winning score. After the extra point…Alabama kicked off and Auburn had it inside the 10 with no timeouts and about 15 seconds remaining. A scramble play ensued and it was incomplete but the clock runs now on incompletions in the last 2 minutes. Auburn quickly got onside and with 1 second remaining snapped the ball but it was intercepted and returned for another apparent score although it was overturned because the refs said he was out of bounds (but there was never a replay showed) and there was no time remaining anyway. Final score was 27-24.

And speaking of refs…those guys were about the worst officiating crew we’ve seen this year and I’m not saying it because they only called penalties on Alabama that shouldn’t have been called and didn’t call them similarly on Auburn…there were an abundance of questionable calls both ways. For instance…on one play 3 Auburn players went in motion simultaneously and that caused a Bama guy to jump into the neutral zone but no contact was made. Ball was snapped while all 3 Auburn players were still moving which is obviously an illegal shift penalty as only 1 person can be in motion at the snap and whether there are defensive players in the neutral zone doesn’t make it offside which was what was called. They also missed a blatant face mask penalty against Alabama on the kickoff after their first score…but the offender was blocked in the back into the kick returner which might have offset the face mask because only the block in the back was called. Me…I thought that it would have been offsetting fouls and the ball stays where it was when the tackle occurred. Like I said…poor officiating all around.

Ok, on to photos.

Great Blue Heron or GBH as we call it.

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LBH…and I’ll give you one guess what those initials mean…the L is for Little. Note the red on the neck is getting a bit more pronounced…this means it’s a male and it’s getting on towards the mating season.

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Snowy Egret. Can’t see his golden slippers…but it is what it is.

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Ragnar the gator…haven’t seen him in a month or so in our pond so he musta been elsewhere. Strange pose as the middle of his body is underwater but the tail on the bank and the head floating. When we first saw it we thought that maybe the tail had been bitten off by an even larger specimen but after getting the photos and zooming in you can barely see the submerged portion of the body.

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And finally…our newly resident (apparently) Osprey. He (or maybe she…the sexes look the same and are about the same size) has been sitting in this tree a lot lately with the cooler weather and this is the third time we’ve seen it having breakfast up there. Don’t know if it is a catch from our pond or not though as we’ve not seen it until after it was well into eating every time. Sorry the beak is missing but Neil didn’t notice it had its head turned until after it had gone when he was processing the pictures.

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Interesting things found on the net.

This is a copyrighted photo so I can’t show you it directly…but go
here to see the 2023 Comedy Wildlife Award Grand Prize winner…Air Guitar Roo. Make sure you watch the changing sequence at the top to see all of the winners as well…but Roo clearly won hands down.

YMCA

BankBranches

Beavers

Cyas.

Posted in Critters, Homebody, Photography | Leave a comment

Nice Weather Continues

Posted on 2023/11/16 by Gunther

Yep…the title sez it all…we’ve had really nice weather pretty much since we returned from St. Croix. We had to close up and turn on the A/C a couple of days when it got hot and humid again but mostly it’s been highs in the low 80s and lows dipping into the high 60s…which means open windows and the doors get opened in the morning and closed at dark…which comes earlier now that we’re off of Daylight Saving Time. 

Neil went ahead and ordered new iPhone 15s and Apple Watch 9 models for both of them…their iPhone XS versions are 5 years old and watches 4. The problem is that the batteries are wearing out and neither of their watches lasts from morning to night more days than not and they have a similar issue although not as severe with their iPhones. Connie got a pink iPhone 15 because she doesn’t like the larger size as it won’t fit in her pockets. She’s disappointed that they no longer offer a gold one though. Neil got a Blue Titanium 15 Pro Max because he likes the bigger phone, wanted the better camera it has over the regular 15, and got the blue because it shows the least amount of fingerprints. Watches…he got the large size but not the Ultra model and she the small size as it fits better on her wrist…black for him and light gold (Apple calls it Starlight) for her…again she’s unhappy not to be able to get the darker gold…but that would have required her to get the stainless steel case instead of the aluminum one and it’s more expensive and heavier. They stuck with GPS only watches instead of GPS/cellular…the latter is more expensive but can make calls without a nearby iPhone…and since they’re never without their phone that capability wasn’t worth paying for. 

One thing Neil is happy about is that the new watches and iPhones support a better geolocation capability via BlueTooth…and since Connie misplaces her phone around the house a lot using her watch to home on it with an arrow pointing which way to go will work a lot better than having Neil call her phone so she can hear the ring tone. It’s never really lost…just left behind someplace in the house…but then they both have CRS (can’t remember squat) so that should help with the problem.

Neil continues to test out his new 600mm lens…albeit just out back at the pond…and he really likes it. I’ve got some new pictures with it down below. He also needs a pile of additional things for his upcoming (April) trip to the Serengeti in Tanzania…more memory cards and batteries, bigger backup external SSDs for the 30,000 to 40,000 shots he’ll take in 10 days there, and a new tripod head for their trip to Costa Rica and his trip to Glacier NP without her (both next summer). Connie says that with 3 trips scheduled next year it seems to agree with Neil’s statement that it’s a lot of bucks…but then when we moved out of the rig in Feb 20 and into the house we intended to start international travel…then came COVID in March 20 that basically shut us down. So…her theory is that taking the 3 trips next year and the one to the UK this year and spreading them out over 20-24 results in a 5 year average travel budget of about what they had originally planned on.

They’re still negotiating on where to go traveling in 2025…but long range plans that far out don’t make a lot of sense at this point. They’ve both got a bunch of places they want to go and Africa is really the only place that is on his list but not hers…so they’ll work out something of a plan probably in late summer or so for 2025. 

Thanksgiving is coming up…and we’re going to break our last couple of years tradition of doing a duck breast…he got a whole chicken that he’ll brine overnight and then spatchcock (that means you cut out the spine and flatten it out). It will then get smoked on our pellet grill for 4 hours or so and tossed onto the regular grill to crispy up the skin. We’ll have this delish sounding loaded sweet potato casserole on the side…it’s a mix of baked and chunked sweet potatoes, bacon, sour cream, cheese, and scallions so how could it be bad. For dessert we’ll have our 2nd favorite (behind pecan pie brownies but they had them last year) of crisp…which is sorta like cobbler but has crunchy oatmeal/brown/nut stuff instead of dough. We found the recipe probably 30 years ago and it was originally blueberry crisp…but we vary the fruits we put in routinely, he’s going to use blueberries, dried apricots, and dates this year…he’s never tried dates but we like ‘em so why not…and again, how can it be bad. Dunno what wine the sommelier (Connie) will pick for us though…either Pinot Noir (Neil’s favorite and the only red wine that goes with poultry) or either Chardonnay or Buttery Chardonnay if white…both of those are made from the same grapes and I don’t know how they do it but instead of the crisp tart taste of Chardonnay the Buttery is much more mellow and smooth. Don’t worry though…he’s got the stuff to make pecan pie brownies and is going to do them next week as well probably…but they always get cut up and frozen in packages of 2 which is perfect to thaw and cover with ice cream or whipped cream…and they even eat them nekkid sometimes…yum.

They signed up for the Trusted Traveler Program with TSA…it gets you shorter security lines, you don’t have to take your shoes off, and you don’t have to take your laptop out of the bag…100 bucks for 5 years. They signed up online back in October and got to the schedule interview step last week…so they’re on for a Feb 12 interview up in Orlando. It’s a Monday so we’ll just head north after our Sarasota Orchestra concert on Sunday, do the interview and they drive home afterwards. 

Lessee…what else…can’t think of anything so let’s get some pictures. These were all taken with his Nikon Z9 and the new 600mm lens…mostly in full frame FX mode but a couple in crop sensor DX mode so that makes it effectively a 900mm lens and all were handheld since it’s a really light lens for being 600mm and the mirrorless bodies have excellent vibration reduction capabilities compared to older non mirrorless bodies.

Tricolor Heron…also known as a Louisiana Heron but Tricolor is the more widely used name.

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Adult White Ibis…gee, I wonder why it’s called that.

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Snowy Egret although you can’t see the golden feet in these shots…and in the second one if you look close its eyes are closed.

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A pair of White Ibis.

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Mr. Snowy again…although on our side of the pond this time.

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A sort of bedraggled Osprey on the dead tree across the pond…it was raining a lot that day. We’ve seen this specimen (at least we think it’s the same one since it keeps coming back) 4 or 5 times in the past few weeks…always sitting in the same tree in the same place.

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One of the Ibis came up out o the water almost in our neighbor’s backyard.

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And lastly…another Tricolor Heron.

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As you can tell…this is a really sharp lens even handheld and that makes running and gunning for shots a whole lot easier than if one has a tripod. A regular 600mm lens is about 17 or 18 inches long and weighs 7-8 pounds which added to the almost 3 for the Z9 body makes a tripod (another 6-7 pounds) almost required for any length of time out and moving and leveling the tripod takes a lot of time…plus you can’t easily get down to ground level or eye level with the bird to improve the shots…not to mention the 3.5 times it costs compared to the 600PF. The 600PF is not really cheap…it runs almost $5K but it’s 11 inches long, weighs about 3 pounds, and is easily hand holdable. The secret is that it uses a Fresnel lens…large focal length lenses require a main lens with considerable curvature in it almost like half of a tennis ball. Instead of grinding this out…a Fresnel lens is designed like the one you’ve always seen on lighthouses. The designer essentially flattens the lens out by grading a thinner overall piece of glass in concentric circles…the outer circles have the same curve as the outer edges of a non Fresnel lens and the circles get gradually flatter towards the center…so the final lens is about 1/5 of the depth of the single curved lens it would be other wise. This makes it a lot easier and cheaper to grind and lowers the overall cost of the lens. He’s actually gotten decently sharp shots down to about 1/80 of a second with it…10 years ago you would have laughed if anybody claimed you could do that with a 600mm lens and been right…but with advanced lighter lenses, the vibration reduction tech in the body and lens (which dampen out camera movement) and shooting 20 frames per second instead of taking a single shot like we used to do back in the film days with 36 shots in a roll…one just fires off a burst of 15-30 shots while the AF keeps locked on. Between the VR and AF you’ll get a couple of those 30 perfectly tack sharp focused on the eye which is what you want…then you toss the rest when you’re reviewing the images later. An additional advantage of the high frame rate is that for higher shutter speeds (like anything more than about 1/320 of a second with this combo) about 90% of the shots will be tack sharp and you’ll have a bunch of slightly different poses so you can get the foot raised or the bill open or the fish in mid swallow…and choosing the best shot out of 20 or 25 perfectly usable ones makes nicer overall shots. He’ll be taking this lens on all 3 of his outings next year…along with one of his shorter zooms (100-400 or 70-200) and perhaps his 24-120 for really close shots. He’s gotta do some comparison shots for sharpness between the longer two of those zooms and see whether the better reach of the longer one or the slightly better image quality of the shorter of the two makes the most sense. Weight and size wise they’re about the same but the shorter one provides a much bigger gap in available focal length…so unless the difference is considerable he’ll take the 100-400.. Might even take the shorter 24-70 over the 24-120 for size and weight and just not worry about the 70-100 focal length range that won’t get used that much anyway.

Interesting things found on the net.

And even more math nerdery. As you know…there are an infinite number of…well…numbers. However…the number 69 is the only number whose square (4761) and cube (328509) use every decimal digit from 0–9 exactly once.

And another number you might recall…115132219018763992565095597973971522401 is a 39-digit number that equals the sum of 39ᵗʰ powers of its digits.

I’m really concerned that the people that figure things like this out must have way, way, way too much free time on their hands. Either that or they live in their mother’s basement and have a pocket protector full of pens all the time with a white short sleeved button up shirt buttoned to the color with no tie and glasses held together with duct tape…and thus have no social or dating life…I’m not sure which though.

This one from our friend Gail via Connie (and before you get all on me ‘bout this being an anti Jewish joke…Gain is most definitely Jewish…and besides, it’s funny…and besides that there’s a reason that every stereotype exists. Besides…itsa my blog.)

 

A clearly inebriated woman, stark naked, jumped into a taxi in New York City and laid on the back seat. The cab driver, an old Jewish gentleman, opened his eyes wide and stared at the woman. He made no attempt to start the cab. The woman glared back at him and said, “What’s wrong with you, honey? Haven’t you ever seen a naked woman before?” The old Jewish driver answered, “Let me tell you sumsing, lady. I vasn’t staring at you like you tink; dat vould not be proper.” The woman giggled and responded, “Well, if you’re not staring at my boobs or my butt, sweetie, what are you doing then?”

He paused a moment, then told her, “Vell…… M’am, I am looking and I am looking, and I am tinking to myself, vair in da hell is dis lady keeping de money to pay for dis ride?”

Fishing.

Following directions explicitly.

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And finally…in Japan in Ishikawa Prefecture (that’s like a state in the US or a province in Canuckistan) there is a Ryokan (or traditional Japanese Inn) named Hōshi (法師) (see, I even put in the Kanji lettering just in case ya can read it). The interesting thing about this inn is that it’s been managed by the Hōshi family for the past 46 generations since it was founded in the year 718 (well, it wasn’t actually 718 by Japanese date keeping rules but it’s been converted to something that non Japanese people understand). It’s the oldest hotel in the world still operating under it’s original management.

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Ryokans are pretty neat…Connie and Neil stayed in one in 1983 when he was on temporary duty in Japan and she flew over for a week early in her pregnancy with Bryan. The floor in covered in tatami mats (woven straw like fiber) and since the mats are a standard universal size through the country since forever the rooms are specifically dimensioned to be floored with tatami mats with no extra. There’s a small raised mattress on the floor maybe 6 or 8 inches high and a pillow full of walnut shells or something similar. Most of them these days have small armoires for clothing. No shoes are allowed inside…one takes your shoes off at the door and dons a pair of slippers inside. Most have a small attached restaurant where you can dine on traditional Japanese cuisine…the tables there are about 12 inches tall and one kneels on the floor or sits on a little pillow or cross legged. The bathroom is down the tall…and is a whole different thing than any bathroom you’ve ever seen. Suffice it to say that there are no western style sit on it toilets…imagine a urinal mounted flat on the floor and one stands over it…although in some places there is a sort of western style stool over the top. The tub is large and designed for soaking only…so to clean yourself before hopping in the communal clothing free tub…one goes to the shower room. This consists of a set of faucet heads (which may or may not have a shower attachment) about 18 inches off of the floor, a bucket, a washcloth, and a small stool. One sits down, washes up, rinses off with buckets full of water from the shower…then hops into the bath itself…which is steaming hot. Generally…the coolest Japanese bath is hotter than any hot tub you’ve ever been in…and in really large installations (like 3 dozen people sized) the temperature varies from one end to the other. Japanese are very blasé about nudity…it just doesn’t phase them at all. Fortunately…the one they stay at was pretty small (maybe 5-6 rooms tops) and there were several baths to choose from so one could be communal or not depending on desires…and Connie most definitely wasn’t getting nekkid in front of anybody but Neil. He had been there for 2 months already though and he’s a guy so a mixed gender bath didn’t bother him at all. Anyway…they’re really cool places to stay…and largely are found not in big cities where you’ll find big chain hotels much more western style in amenities…but out in smaller towns and villages they’re just about all you’ll find.

Cyas.

Posted in Homebody, Photography, WIldlife | Leave a comment

St. Croix and Tampa

Posted on 2023/11/01 by Gunther

Howdy…we’re back from a week of vacation so I can now update you on what happened.

After our trip up to see the human kids, Nick our financial guy, and Cynthia our old eating buddy that Connie worked with back in the day…we were pretty busy that 2 weeks and needed an actual vacation…so we decided to head on over to St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands…we’ve been there several times before, most recently for their 35th wedding anniversary where they ate over at the Beachside Cafe at the Sand Castle on the Beach resort on the west end of the island south of Frederiksted. We scheduled a dinner there again to recreate/relive that anniversary and the only other thing on our list was to go see the beer drinking pigs on the island…Neil saw them 40something years ago and Connie finally found out how to go see them.

After some thought before we left we scheduled our flight out of Tampa rather than Miami since you can’t fly direct from here to the island…which made it a little more complicated than it needed to be. Flying out of Tampa meant that it would be a slightly longer flight since the Tampa to Miami portion connects to the same flight we would have taken out of Miami…but it was cheaper than going to Miami by the time we included the parking and overnight hotel since the flight left early from Miami.

So…off we went to Tampa and got a hotel near the airport because it was an early flight no matter what…and once again the DLETC picked an outstanding place for dinner…Whiskey Joe’s Bar and Grill right on the water, here’s a snot from our position at the end of the bar. We scored a parking spot at the beachside parking for a whopping $1.65 for 2 hours which was a lot cheaper than we expected.

Note…all the shots in this post are from Neil’s iPhone…he was originally not going to take a real camera at all because this is vacation and not a photo oriented trip…but he relented and took a single small body and a single zoom lens for the pigs…but never actually ended up taking it out of the bag for reasons as discussed below. 

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We had cocktails and then moved on to dinner…Oysters Rockefeller and Coconut Mahi Bites…all was excellent…and of course we got a couple of nice sunset shots over the water…Neil took them from the edge of the outside seating area to the right side of the shot above. These were taken a few minutes apart obviously but he went back and forth to get them.

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We were up early the next morning and arrived on the island in mid afternoon, picked up our rental car, and got checked into the Sugar Apple B&B and for most of the 5 nights we were there we were the only people in the 12 or so room establishment. On arrival…we found out that the breakfast was vegan…so no pork fat…and Connie was seriously unhappy because she wanted real breakfast and would not have picked the place if she knew that. It said vegan menu was available but not that it was the only one available. As it turned out…we had pastries every day and they were good despite having no butter and only coconut oil and various other vegan ingredients. Not the best pastries ever…but better than average actually. Dinner was pizza and cocktails at The Mill on the boardwalk…with leftover pizza for lunch the next day. There are chickens…a lot of chickens…running loose on the island and this sign was on the bar at The Mill.

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Turning 90 degrees to the left sitting t the bar…the reason for the sign.

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Wednesday…we did nothing all day except head out to our dinner at the west end…Beachside Cafe was as good as it was last time and we even had the same table we sat at 12 years ago…carefully selecting our reservation time so that dinner would include sunset.

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Wine for her…Myers Rum for him. Strangely enough, despite there being excellent Blackstrap Rum made on the island…only 2 places of the 8 or so we ate at actually had it on the menu.

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Sunset was kind of a bust…the cloud out on the western horizon obscured most of it…too bad, we were hoping for the green flash but alas, didn’t happen.

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Dinner was excellent though…seared but mostly raw tuna for Connie and tangy fried shrimp for Neil…then they followed that up and split a rum bread pudding with caramel sauce for afters (as the brits would call it). 

Thursday…we planned to have lunch out at the beer drinking pig place…yes, beer drinking pigs…and ya know…see the pigs.

A little background on the pigs…back in the late 70s when Neil was here on his first submarine the pigs were a well known island thing to do. The problem was finding them as they were wild feral pigs and had no fixed address…so they drove around in the jungle rainforest awhile after talking to some locals and finally found them. You would stay in the car…remember, wild feral pigs with big tusks…and toss them full cans of beer they would catch, puncture with their tusks, and drink the beer. 

Well…naturally those pigs died out because pigs don’t live 40something years…but apparently some enterprising soul decided to open an establishment with captive pigs to recreate the experience and make himself some money…hence the Mount Pellier Hut Domino Club. We drove out there after checking their website. Turns out that using captive vice wild feral pigs entails all sorts of requirements on them…vet care to keep them healthy and non alcoholic beer only because the health people don’t want any pigs going on benders. So we get there…only to discover that they were closed for the week for a kitchen remodel before the high season in the islands starts in November. So…no pigs for Connie and she was turrible disappointed…turrible I say (or actually as Charles Barkley pronounces that word). Neil said that it wouldn’t be the same anyway…but that was small consolation for her. So…we headed back out of the rainforest to the hotel…only to arrive just in time for the power outage caused by working on a line that needed fixing nearby. We headed down to the boardwalk, passed up Nate’s Boathouse because they had no power and ate at the next place down the boardwalk because it was in a hotel and had a generator. Neil had some Blackstrap Rum (this was the second and final place we found any), Connie a gin and tonic (ehh…yeah, it was lunch but we were on vacation in the islands)…and split an order of fried calamari and one of fish tacos.

Friday we had lunch at Rum Runners…really good hot dogs and a couple of Red Stripe beers…ya gotta have at least a couple of those if you’re in the islands…it’s the law. Then Friday evening we went to Nate’s Boathouse…dinner was pretty decent appetizers but cocktails were pretty terrible and the bartender was a crotchety old lady…she basically refused to make Neil the cocktail he ordered (nothing fancy, just a regular Old Fashioned which is essentially bourbon on the rocks with a muddled cherry and a bit of sugar syrup in it)…her surliness was duly reflected in her teensy tip. There were a couple of decent signs in the place…the second one seemed like it was almost sexual harassment to us but the crotchety old lady bartender amazingly didn’t care about it. Besides being old and crotchety…she was seriously tattooed and most of them had little old lady wrinkles all through them…not a good look at all.

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Other things happening on Friday…Neil ordered a new lens and cancelled the backordered one…deciding that the lighter weight of the prime outweighed the much heavier zoom he had ordered…and he’s got a shorter zoom already to ensure adequate focal length coverage. And we decided to spend an extra 2 nights in Tampa on arrival back for a couple of reasons. First…we were landing about 2000 so it would be getting on to 2100 by the time we got out of the airport…our initial plan was to drive home Saturday night…and then make another round trip to Tampa on Monday really early for her 0900 appointment at the Air Force base to get her spouse ID renewed. Staying overnight Saturday night on further review was a no brainer as we were tuckered out when we got out of the airport and would not have relished the 2 hour drive home and by staying we eliminated the extra round trip driving.

Sunday we went to Mass then lazed around the hotel room doing nothing…and headed out to Salt Shack on the Bay for Happy Hour and dinner…luckily Neil told her we needed Plan B just in case. We had the two worst cocktails we’ve ever had and decided the food wouldn’t be any better…so jumped into Plan B which was to drive a mile down the beach to the American Legion…which turned out to be decently crowded, made much better cocktails, and had really good pizza for us to eat. Friendly people, better booze, better food, and cheaper…yeah, we’re on that.

Monday we headed over to the base for her 0900 appointment…she got her new ID and now that she’s older than 65 (missed it by less than 30 day last renewal) she gets one without an expiration date. The airman also redid Neil’s ID with the new credit card style ones since he would need a new one by 2025 anyway and we were already there. Once that was done we headed home and all was well.

Interesting things found on the net.

DontDrinkAndDrive

We have a new owner of the “Largest Star in the Known Universe”…it’s named Stephenson 2-18 and it’s diameter is 2,150 times the diameter of the sun which makes the star about 20 astronomical units in diameter…an astronomical unit is defined as the distance from the earth to the sun so 20 times that in diameter. To get a sense of the actual scale…
go here…which shows Jupiter, our sun, and Stephenson 2-18. Despite being the largest star in the known universe…it’s invisible to the naked eye because it’s around 20,000 lightyears away.

This is the world’s smallest image sensor…it’s a 40 megapixel backside illuminated sensor named OmniVision OV6948.

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Up in the Gulf of Alaska…there’s a fish named the Rock Greenling which despite the name…is not green at all. It’s actually blue, black, and orange…and the flesh inside the fish is…blue.

Rock greenling side-by-side: Whole fish versus sliced.

Weird, huh?

Then there’s the old wive’s tale…well, actually it isn’t an old wive’s tale at all since it’s true…that nuclear reactors glow. You’ve probably seen many movies, TV shows, and whatnot where there’s a pulsating usually green glow from the reactor. In actuality…most of the time the reactor is inside a pressure vessel and you can’t really see the reactor at al. However…there is a type of reactor known as a swimming pool reactor that operates in research facilities at atmospheric pressure…they’re shielded by a big water tank, hence the name. Anyways…the core actually does glow…although it’s really the water next to the car…with blue light known as Cherenkov Radiation. This radiation is obviously supersonic and as it interacts with the molecules in the water it makes noise. So…take a look
here…there are several examples of reactors achieving criticality (i.e., self sustaining chain reaction in the core producing power)…make sure you have your sound turned up for it.

Nothing to do with Russia other than the location…but the central bank in Tatarstan there recently introduced a new 1,000 ruble bill…it features two famous churches in the majority Muslim Tatarstan Republic…one is a Russian Orthodox Church and the other is a Muslim minaret. 

The redesigned 1000-ruble banknote featuring an illustration of the Kazan Kremlin.

However…just days after introducing this new bill…the government there withdrew it from circulation because…the church dome (building to the let with the onion dome on top) does not have a cross on top of it. Orthodox priests complained that there is not a cross on top of the dome…despite the fact that the actual church…does not have a cross on top of it. There used to be one but it was removed back in 1917…but since both buildings have been modified since then the bill used the actual current configuration…but unfortunately the celebrity Orthodox priest Pavel Ostrovsky objected…and because he has 174,000 followers on Telegram it was taken down.

Weird.

Cyas.

Posted in Food, Travel | Leave a comment

Quick Update

Posted on 2023/10/17 by Gunther

I wanted to pup up a quick update as we’ve had a couple of wildlife sightings out pack at the pond this week. The weather has been pretty nice…70s to low 80s during the day and 60s at night so we’re able to shift to our preferred A/C off and windows open lifestyle with the arrival of the cooler weather. Don’t know if it is here to stay for the winter or if it’s just a temporary thing but at least for the next few days it’s supposed to be pretty darned nice.

After our trip up north a couple weeks back we’ve been just staying around the house mostly…we had Bingo on Sunday and a couple Date Nights as well as a Wine Dinner at Carabba’s on Saturday…when we brought home a whole pile of food as it was a four course dinner with wine pairings and each course was pretty much a full meal by itself so we just sampled them and packed the rest away to bring home and we had 3 or 4 meals out of the leftovers.

We got our new induction stove delivered right before we left on our trip and Neil really likes it. Works like gas instead of electric with instant on and off of heat, and things don’t stick since the pan doesn’t get overheated.

We picked up his new bike the day after our trip and he really likes it. All carbon frame, disk brakes, and electronic shifting so there’s no cables to ever need replacing and the brakes work a lot better than your older stye wheel rim brakes. It’s kind of a purplish gray paint job…but the model he wanted only comes in that shade. It’s a Giant Defy and has more gears and a nicer feel than his old bike (although a lot of that might be due to the old one being worn out after over 10,000 miles. He’s averaged about 1.5 miles an hour faster than on his old bike with less overall effort…he thinks that’s because the geometry of the frame and gearing fits his physical makeup a bit better than the old one. It was even more expensive than the stove was but it’s probably his last bike unless he eventually has to get a recumbent style because of balance reasons down the road apiece age-wise.

I’m sure you keep seeing the ongoing fighting over in Israel and the Gaza Strip…the progressives are all up in arms in the media and twitterverse demanding an end to the war crimes by Israel and a deescalation of the conflict…and the human kid jumped right onto the bandwagon that it’s all Israel’s fault because they’ve “isolated the Palestinians in an open air prison for decades now…but the real story is a lot more complicated than that.

Yes…Israel annexed Gaza, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights from their neighboring countries…in various wars over the years since 1948 that those neighboring countries started and Israel finished. They’re surrounded by people who want every Jew dead and the country returned to it’s “rightful owners” but when you go back and look at actual historical facts you’ll find out a couple of things. First…there has been a Jewish state there for thousands of years…Jerusalem was the capitol and it was recognized as a kingdom (and conquered and released over and over). On the other hand…there has *never* been a Palestinian state…Palestine has always been a term for the general area that was mostly populated by Arabs outside of the Jewish state but there was no country named Palestine. Nonetheless…the progressives have been demanding a “two state solution” ever since the annexation of various lands by Israel in those aforementioned wars that the other guys started. 

Now I’m not going to say that Israel is completely blameless nor have they done everything right…but 20 or 30 years ago the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) which had previously demanded an end to the state of Israel and had a long term skirmish I guess is the best word for it with the Israeli army decided that in the interest of peace they would renounce their end of Israel and Jews demand and have peaceful relations with Israel. As part of this…Israel gave them the Gaza Strip to govern and eventually would probably have allowed it to turn into a Palestinian state. Unfortunately…Hamas and their sponsors in Iran were having none of this and continued near constant attacks across the border into Israel…and based their missile launching sites in residential neighborhoods so that the inevitable response would kill/injure civilians and thus rouse the world’s angst against the “war crimes” of Israel. And it worked as most of the world sees Israel as the aggressor here despite the fact that basing military in civilian neighborhoods is in itself a war crime and firing missiles and rockets into Israeli civilian targets is…again…a war crime.

Then 10 days ago we all saw the terrorist acts carried out against Israel by Hamas…and now they’ve royally pissed off the Israeli government (as opposed to the other long term disdain)…and according to what I see in the news the Israeli man in the street thinks of Oct 6 exactly as the US thinks of 9/11…and at this point Israel has stated they’re going to wipe out Hamas. Given the relative strength of the military forces…they will achieve the goal if they’re willing to accept the cost in lives of both their soldiers and the inevitable civilian casualties because Hamas is going to continue to fight with human shields in front of their troops because committing war crimes is situation normal for them.

It’s gonna be a bloodbath all the way around…and if Iran and Hezbollah get involved then I think they’re also going to get hammered because outside of the US military the Israeli’s are probably about the best in the world as they’ve been almost continually at war for going on 75 years and are surrounded by countries that mostly want to wipe the country and Jews from existence. I’ve seen some rumbling that maybe Iran has nuclear weapons and might use them…and that would be an existence ending mistake for them IMO as it’s generally accepted that Israel has both nuclear weapons and the willingness to do what is necessary to defend their country…which is quite different from the defense resolve that the US has demonstrated repeatedly over the past 50 years by administrations of both parties.

Frankly…I can’t blame the Israeli’s for going in there and doing what they need to do to defend their country, territory, and citizens…and since Hamas chooses to fight dirty…then they deserve everything they’ll get. I hate that innocents will be killed…and a lot of the people living in Gaza don’t support Hamas…but the people living there voted them into power so to some extent they got the government they voted for and while I’m sorry for their problems now…it isn’t Israel’s fault that Hamas is in charge and chooses to engage in terrorist activities from civilian neighborhoods. For Israel to take the high road and not shoot back is foolhardy and will only lead to repeat incursions. Sometimes…you need to hit the other guy with a hammer to get his attention.

As an aside…this is one of the reasons…the hitting them with a hammer thing…that back in the 70s to 90s when a lot of assorted militant groups were taking hostages of foreign citizens like US, French, British, etc…and holding them for ransom or for prisoner swaps with the Israeli government of jailed terrorists. The militant groups kept doing so for a simple reason…it worked. What you never saw after the first time it happened though was for Soviet and then Russian citizens being kidnapped for ransom. The reason for this is that the only time it happened the then Soviet government figured out who did it and bombed the house of the head of that militant group taking him out…along with his family. And Russians were never taken hostage again because the militant groups learned that if you screw around with the Russians they’ll screw you back much harder…and this is what Hamas needs to learn about their tactics over the past decades.

Anyways…enough about that.

The only other interesting thing in the news is the dismissal of the Speaker of the House by the crazies in the Republican Party…and now they’re trying to put one of the crazy members in as Speaker…so far that’s not going real well and I really wish the adult Republicans would talk to the adult Democrats and elect a centrist member of the Republican side as Speaker and then get on about the countries business…but unfortunately the likelihood of common sense, patriotism, and compromise breaking out in Congress is about as high as Neil winning the Tour de France next year…or essentially zero. And with the government set to run out of money again the end of November…and the crazies on both sides insisting on my way or the highway…there isn’t much hope that anything will change. According to most of the media…it’s all the Republican’s fault but just as the situation in the Middle East goes…it’s a lot more complicated than that and crazies on both sides tend to drive the agenda for their party despite being a small minority of the caucus.

Ok…we did have a few wildlife sightings this week.

While Neil was out getting shots of the waders down a bit after he saw them…Connie wandered out to see what he was looking at and spotted this Osprey high in the tree over their head…after seeing the waders he completely missed it.

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It must have spotted him because it gave him the stink eye after a bit.

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This is the Little Blue Heron and Snowy Egret that originally attracted his attention.

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And then yesterday he spotted this gator across the way…he’s not sure if it’s Ragnar or another one because it looks bigger than Ragnar to him. Gators grow all the time of course but this one looks a foot or so longer than previous shots so who knows.

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Interesting things found on the net.

We all know about credit ratings and how anything above 750 or whatever is just fine…and the scale goes up to a maximum of 850. Why it’s 850 we have no idea but as part of our banking services we get notified every time it changes and a few weeks back we got notified that it went up 14 points. Neil checked to see what it was now…with no debt ours is normally pretty high…and was surprised to see that ours was 850…he didn’t think anybody could actually get that. No worries though…it’s bad down 10 or 12 points to the range it normally runs in.

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Guess we could get a good rate on a mortgage or a car loan except our house is paid off, we don’t want a different one, and we pay cash for cars.

And talking about a bad day…

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This is what happens when sharks swim through a shoal of bait fish.

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SquashCreativity

PhoneBooths

Revenge is being plotted here by Shroedinger’s cat.

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GeeGrandma

WalkDownTheAisle

Billionaire

Cyas.

Posted in Photography, Reality Based Blogging, WIldlife, Ya Can't Fix Stupid | Leave a comment

Finally…

Posted on 2023/10/11 by Gunther

Now Ima only a bear and if I piss the humans off too bad they won’t feed me…but Neil finally got around to processing the photos from our 2 week trip so I can finally catch ya’ll up on what happened and what we saw. I’m hesitant to report much about our trips until we get back home because advertising that you’re out of town seems…foolish.

Anyways…home news first.

As I may (or then again, may not but I didn’t go back and look at previous posts)…we bought ourselves a new stove. Neil grew up cooking on a gas stove and until we moved into this house always had a gas stove. The advantages of a gas stove are legion…higher heat for things like wok stir frying (but then we do that outside on the propane camp stove anyway because our exhaust fan over the stove sucks up all the smoke and then instead of exhausting it though a hole through the cinder block wall like anybody with even a quarter of a brain would have done…it exhausts back into the kitchen area so any smoke just stays inside. We learned pretty early after moving in that cooking anything that was going to generate smoke needed to go outside.

But I digress…sorry ‘bout that. Besides the higher heat output…a gas stove has the advantage that if you turn the burner up or down you pretty much get more or less heat instantaneously which is a good thing…much more and finder control. Electric stoves have a lot of carryover heat if you turn them down and take awhile to start making more heat if you turn them up…and basically cooking on them is a pain in the butt…so we always wanted and had a gas stove. Then we moved into Magnolia Landing…and that resulted in 2 problems. First off…gas to the house is practically non existent in SW FL in the first place and it’s especially non existent in any sort of community with an HoA. Second…the crazy HoA rules don’t allow you to install a propane tank…even if it’s underground and out of sight…so that means no gas stove for us. We persevered for 3.5 years with the crappy electric and decided to buy ourselves an induction stove. It’s still electric…but rather than the burner getting hot it just generates a magnetic field and you use a a magnetic pot on top and only the pot gets hot…and it gets hot a lot faster (and cooler when you turn the burner down) than a regular electric stove. So…all the benefits of gas (well, most anyway) and all the benefits of electric as well. The only drawback is Neil’s beloved Calphalon pans…which are aluminum…don’t work because they’re aluminum and therefore not magnetic and therefore won’t work. So he looked around and bought himself a set of All Clad…they’re still mostly aluminum so they remain light but have a base of stainless steel which is magnetic…and they’re all non stick which makes cleanup a lot easier. In addition, after cooking on the new stove a couple of times there’s a lot less sticking and stuff that needs to be scraped off when he does the dishes. Here’s what the new one looks like…which is basically what an electric one looks like but the stovetop itself doesn’t get hot other than by heat transfer from the pot which does get hot when cooking.

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Basically…he likes it…a lot. Four total burners and he can gang the left two together if he needs to for using a griddle or tortilla pan or whatever.

Ok…let’s get on to our trip.

The overall trip was to head out to Daytona Beach for a couple of days for the Ladies of Elks Annual Meeting. Following that…we were headed up with a stop overnight in the Florence SC area to Annapolis MD with the intention of catching up on the eastern end of our US-50 trip that we took in 2019 in the RV…we missed a few of the miles and Fun Stuff© on the eastern end due to Neil’s kidney stone and associated 6 week layover in Cody WY (which if you have to be stuck somewhere for 6 weeks is actually a pretty decent place as it’s right next to Yellowstone National Park…and it’s orders of magnitude better than being stuck in NW Indiana which is where we got stuck when Connie had her detached retina back a few years before. Our plan was to spend a couple days gallivanting about Annapolis (the capital of MD) and the eastern shore of MD in what is called the DelMarVa Peninsula (for Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia) seeing the places we didn’t see but had planned to back in 2019. Following that…we were to transit back to northern VA for (1) a meeting with an old friend from Connie’s work, (2) a meeting with our financial folks at Cassaday and Company, and (3) to see the kids and grandson Alex for a couple of days…our schedule was designed to arrive in Midlothian on Friday and spend the weekend before leaving Monday because school is back in session ya know.

After visiting the kids and grandson…we would transit home but as Charleston SC is just ab out halfway home we figured to stop there overnight (although it’s 70 miles or so off of I-95 which is the direct route home) for a dinner at one of our favorite restaurants High Cotton in downtown. The next morning…we would head home.

So…off we went and from here on in I’m going to just give you the details of our trip and some photos.

After arriving in Daytona on Thursday…Connie had some Ladies of Elks stuff on Friday and Saturday but Neil’s only commitments were in the evenings…so his plan was to go down to a couple of birding places in the morning on Friday and Saturday. Unfortunately…Friday was raining pretty hard so he cancelled and picked what he thought would be the best of the two locations for Saturday morning…Black Point Wildlife Drive at Merritt Island NWR…so accordingly he got up early Saturday, picked up a coffee and couple of donuts fro Dunkin’ and got there just ab out 0700 which was both opening time and just about sunrise.

Unfortunately…wildlife mostly did not cooperate with him and he only got a few shots that morning.

A pair of Snowy Egrets.

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A little gator  at the porta-potty near the halfway point on the drive.

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A Great Blue Heron and Louisiana Heron.

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Little Blue Heron.

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And that was about it for the trip…very poor wildlife sightings…so bad in fact that he skipped doing the beach road part that he originally planned…and headed back to Daytona instead. He told Connie later that it was about the worst day he had ever had at Black Point out of probably a dozen visits.

A few more shots from the LoE convention.

Connie parading in for the Memorial Service for Ladies that passed away this year.

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And later on that day…she was installed as the Chaplain for the 2023-2024 LoE State Officer slate.

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After finishing up our LoE (Ladies of Elks, or more accurately FLOE Florida Ladies of Elks) duties on Saturday…we were up early Sunday morning for Mass and headed north.

Nothing happened for 2 days as we stopped overnight near Florence SC and then continued north and east to Annapolis for Fun Stuff© there as well as in Ocean City MD and other points over on the eastern shore.

 At the easternmost end of US-50…there’s a sign saying how far it is to Sacramento (the western end)…there used to be a similar sign on the other end but road reconstruction there eliminated that sign so the eastern one is the only remaining indication.

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Yep…3,073 miles west from Ocean City MD you get to Sacramento and we’ve now driven every one of those 3073 miles and seen most of the great places to see on the way…what a trip it was albeit we had to do it in a couple of phases due to kidney stone.

Other sights from the Eastern shore of MD.

In Annapolis…the state House of Representatives chamber…the Senate one is similar except for red leather chairs, fewer chairs, and red carpet.

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The original house chamber.

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The original Senate chamber (or maybe the last two were the other way around, can’t remember) where General Washington resigned his commission as commander of the armed forces of what would eventually become the USA.

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Neil next to a life size statue of old George…the weather was colder and rainier up there than we’re used to now that we’ve been in FL permanently for 3+ years.

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The dome in the capitol building in Annapolis.

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At the Maritime Museum in Ocean City a model of one of the early oyster harvesting vessels.

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You’ve probably heard of the Mason Dixon line…it was surveyed by a couple of guys named (amazingly enough) Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon between the years 1763-1767…and served as the original boundary between the states of PA, WV, VA, and MD. Most of the markers they installed are gone but this one remains over on the eastern shore.

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We visited the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Museum.

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A lighthouse over on the eastern shore.

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Had some wine at lunch.

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And noticed this map…an actual location for one of the inlets in the inside of the barrier island that Ocean City MD is on…Big Ass Woman bay. Normally…that woulda been in the Interesting things found on the net section…but this was found on a map at the Ocean City Lifesaving Museum.

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Had dinner and drinks at this place on the boardwalk in Ocean City.

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Walked on the boardwalk in 30 miles an hour winds from the Tropical Storm Phillipe as it made its way north for eventual landfall in the northeast someplace.

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Some other Ocean City shots.

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Right after we had the wine above…we spotted this neat building…it’s actually a hotel.

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After all of that we headed to the DC area and spent a couple nights in McLean near Fairfax for 2 planned evolutions. First up was a dinner with Cynthia, an old friend of both of ours who used to work for Connie. We took her to dinner at our favorite restaurant in the DC area…the Cafe Renaissance and the same fellow that opened in in the early 90s still owns and runs the place…we’ve been eating there for special occasions since shortly after it opened. It’s your typical French-Italian place; dinner is expensive, comes with wine, and takes 2-3 hours but a good time was had by all.

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After dinner, the next day we went to see our financial guys at Cassaday before heading to see the kids and grandkid on Friday.

Mostly we visited, ate dinner out a couple times, and family stuff. Here’s a shot of Alex at his tennis lesson on Saturday morning.

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Monday we weighed anchor and headed for Charleston via an Hampton Roads and an overnight stop in Emporia VA for dinner at what used to be one of our favorite places…High Cotton. Before we got there…we decided to go visit the Yorktown battlefield in the Hampton Roads area.

This is Redoubt 9 or 10…which was one of those captured from the first siege line that General Washington established and thus finished the establishment of the second siege line which when combined with the French fleet preventing Cornwallis from retreating cross the Chesapeake Bay resulted in his surrender and the eventual end of the Revolutionary War.

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The Second Siege Line itself…it’s the raised portion on the left side although not much is left of it really.

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The Moore house where the terms of surrender of General Cornwallis were discussed. The building was extensively modified in later years but has been restored to the configuration it had during the surrender negotiations.

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The dam and lake that Mr. Moore built to support his mill near the house…you actually drive over the top of the earthen dam to get to the other side even though it’s almost 300 years old.

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And we visited the field where General Cornwallis’s troops marched out to lay down their arms after they surrendered.

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We also stopped by Fort Monroe…which turned out to be (although it was built before the Civil War) to not be a historical site but an actual US Army base and its associated lighthouse. Neil was disappointed as he expected it to be a historical site but it was still a pretty cool place to visit.

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Charleston SC was our final stop and really, we went out of our way to visit and eat at High Cotton even though it was 70something miles out of the way from the straight shot own I-95. He loaned her his hat for the shot at the bar.

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Unfortunately…the food there has gone downhill…we had She Crab Soup, a Beef Carpaccio appetizer, and shared a slide of Buttermilk pie for desert. All had some issues…and while we expected Disneyland prices in downtown Charleston foodie district…we thought that $200 for a pair of cocktails, 4 glasses of wine and the aforementioned light dinner was pretty unreasonable…so we’ll seek out a new place if/when we go back to Charleston as there are plenty of good eateries in what is now known as a foodie city. Drinks were average, dinner was below average, the bartender was very nice but not enough to overcome the other deficiencies in food and drink.

Next morning we were up early and hit the road south on US-17 out of Charleston until it joined up with I-95 again and continued home by the end of the day.

It’s already been a pretty extensive photo laden post…so I’ll skip Interesting things found on the net this time.

Cyas.

Posted in Photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Trippin’

Posted on 2023/09/28 by Gunther

Yeah…dat be us…trippin’. As in “You’re now free to roam about the country”.

For a little bit anyway.

We were in Daytona Beach last weekend for the Florida Ladies of Elks (FLOE) convention…Connie was installed as the state chaplain and Neil’s contribution was to be her +1 to the banquet on Friday and the President’s Reception on Saturday night. With that completed we headed north for a couple of things.

After an overnight stop in Florence SC we were in Annapolis MD overnight and did a few tourist things there the next day…this portion of the trip was to finish up the MD Eastern Shore things on our US Route 50 trip that we started back in 2019 and got cut short by Neil’s kidney stone in Cody WY. Another overnight stop in Ocean City MD to finish up the eastern portion of the US 50 tour then after a couple things there in the morning we headed back west to the Fairfax area where we used to live for a very nice dinner with our friend Cynthia at Cafe Renaissance and a meeting with our financial advisor and his mentee he’s training in the financial planning area. 

We’re done in this area now…so tomorrow morning we’re headed to Midlothian VA to visit grandson Alex and his parents over the weekend…he’s in school full time now at age 8 so a weekend visit makes more quality granny time. Then a day in Norfolk area to see the Yorktown battlefield from the Revolutionary War and a fort that guarded the entrance to Chesapeake Bay before heading home. We’ll overnight in Charleston SC which just happens to be both halfway home from Norfolk and the location of High Cotton…one of our top 3 favorite restaurants so we’ll have visited 2 of the 3 on this trip.

Neil got some photos…but hasn’t downloaded them and processed them yet…they’re coming next time along with a more complete description of the Fun Stuff© we’ve been having. I do have a couple of iPhone shots he got for ya though…the first is the rainbow we saw at Daytona Beach and the second is a short of them on the Boardwalk at Ocean City in 25 knot winds. Both of the weather phenomena are courtesy of Tropical Storm Philipe which was off of Charleston when we were in Daytona and the NE when we were in Ocean City.

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Then in a few weeks we’re off to St. Croix in the USVI for a couple of days…that one will be strictly laying by the pool drinking tropical cocktails with rum and those little umbrellas to wrap up our (we think) last trip of the year.

Ya probably saw on the news how the President went to stand on the picket line with the UAW workers the other day…and this is just plain wrong. This dispute is between the union and the auto companies…and he does himself and the country a disservice by taking sides. On the subject of the strike itself…the union is demanding that since profits are up 40% for the car companies they deserve a 40% raise. Never mind that the profit rise is from the depths of the COVID and the “we really didn’t call it a recession” recession but the demands of both the UAW and the President that the workers deserve a share of the profits is just completely wrong. The profits should be distributed to shareholders who actually own the company and invested in upgrading facilities and remaining competitive…the workers already got their share of the profits except they’re called wages. 

The unions demands beyond the 40% pay raise include an additional COLA every year, restoration of the defined benefit pension plan that all companies used to have but have replaced with 401K plans over the past 25 or so years, a 32 hour work week for 40 hours pay, and an end to the two tier wage system currently in place. Now I’ll agree that the new contract should provide the workers a raise…but considering the average worker makes 28 bucks an hour (58K a year) or 33 (68K a year) for the top tier…plus their benefits which add something on the order of 25% to that so even the lower tier is still making a decent living. I don’t begrudge them a raise…everybody wants to increase their standard of living…but let’s get real. Workers on the auto assembly line are essentially doing manual labor, not high tech work…and the UAW is essentially pricing the US auto makers out of the market with demands like this. And the President putting his thumb on the scale is just plain wrong…and it doesn’t matter which party the President is in or what industry we’re talking about…with the exception of government workers the President has zero authority to involve himself and in fact he has trashed his ability to call both sides in and act like an honest broker of a compromise in this case.

I see where Senator Menendez was indicted…again…and there are calls for his resignation. There were similar calls for the resignation of Representative Santos when he was indicted…and in both cases those calling for them to step down are just plain wrong. Even though indicted…they are innocent until proven guilty and were elected by a majority of their constituents…so until they are convicted either in court or at the ballot box they should stay in office.

And let’s say a prayer that the Senate passed unanimously a dress code yesterday…earlier in the week Senator Schumer said that the former informal code would no longer be enforced at which point Senator Fetterman showed up in his preferred dress of gym shorts, hoodie, and sneakers and Senator Collins threatened to show up in a bikini. Nobody on either side should be subjected to either of those and there should be some respect for the institution and decorum in not dressing for a backyard cookout. Now they’re officially required to have a coat and tie for men and business attire for women with no real d definition beyond that. Those in favor of no dress code are correct in saying that how one dresses is irrelevant to passing legislation…that is true…but please, let’s have a little decorum and not decide to no longer enforce the informal code because of a single Senator who wants to dress like a beach bum.

It looks like the government will shut down in a couple of days…and the media has already started blaming Republicans for doing so…and I guess they’re technically correct as it looks like it’s the House that will fail to pass out the continuing resolution to keep things funded…but in reality it’s really up to both of the parties to negotiate and compromise and unfortunately neither side is willing to give the other side anything in the negotiations. The outliers on both sides essentially say “my way or the highway” and with a very slim majority the Speaker has little room to lose some of his caucus…and the same wacko radicals who are preventing any compromise are also the ones threatening to remove him as Speaker if he passes something with Democratic votes. The trouble with removing him is that (a) it isn’t clear that the Democrats would support the vote to declare the Speaker’s chair vacant and even if it is then both caucuses will have to put up a nominee for a vote in the full house. No other Representative except Mr. McCarthy can possibly win a majority of the Republican side and the Democrat side will either vote lockstep for Mr. Jeffries or enough of them will vote to support Mr. McCarthy so that he wins again. The alternative is that we could have a Democrat being Speaker in a majority Republican House…and that ain’t gonna happen either I don’t think. The Speaker is in a hard place…he came to an agreement with the President back in February and unfortunately the morons in his caucus with a narrow majority decided to burn things down as the Speaker says…they’re just a bunch of toddlers demanding their way instead of…doing their jobs and compromising so that the government keeps running. On the other hand…the Democratic side’s far left isn’t any more interested in compromising than the far right is…but that’s the state of politics in the US these days.

Lastly…out in Oregon the State Court of Appeals has thrown up its hands and asked the state Supreme Court to weigh in on a case. Essentially in the last term a bunch of Republicans in the legislature didn’t show up for work to prevent a quorum and thus stop bills they didn’t like. In response, the Democrats put on the ballot a constitutional amendment in the state that says that any legislator that has more than 10 unexcused absences is ineligible for reelection. That sounds pretty straight forward…but in reality since both sides in various states have done the same thing it seems like the majority is punishing the minority for doing the job they told their constituents they would do…but my opinion isn’t really relevant to the question. The intent of the amendment (which passed and is the law in Oregon) was that absent legislators could not run again. Unfortunately…the law of unintended consequences bit the amendment writers in the ass and that isn’t what the amendment says. What it says that the said legislators are ineligible to run in the next election after the completion of their terms. Now the election for the next term is in November but the completion of the previous term isn’t until January when the new legislature is sworn in…so the actual words in the amendment say they can’t run in the election after the next one. Pure and simple…they screwed up and it’s now up to the state Supreme Court to decide whether the actual words in the amendment are what counts or whether it is the intent of the amendment that counts…and to be honest the intent of the amendment is such a nebulous thing and who knows who gets to decide what that intent was. It will be an interesting case…and my personal opinion is that the justices will read the amendment as it was approved by the voters and the legislators can run again…but we’ll see.

Interesting things found on the net.

ProtectYourHome

Dogs

DoorIsLocked

QuestionEverything

Cyas.

Posted in Reality Based Blogging, Travel | Leave a comment

Some Updates

Posted on 2023/09/19 by Gunther

Well…3 weeks since my last post and while I could tell ya nuttin’ has happened there have been a few things. 

We’ve been on the COVID watch for Connie for the past 7 days as several of her friends at the Ladies of Elks came down with it and she had lunch with them the day before they announced they had it so could have been infected. No symptoms so far and all of them were sick within 5 days of exposure so likely she’s just fine. We’ve both had 2 immunizations and a booster but at this point are passing on the new shot since it is basically untested…and having had it twice each anyway with only mild symptoms…for us COVID is basically just another cold.

We’re hading off to the Florida Ladies of Elks confab for a couple of days…at least unless the tropical storm that’s supposed to form right off the coast where we’ll be in Daytona happens but even if it does we’re most likely go anyway. Neil will do a couple of birding trips in the morning assuming the weather holds though. 

We did spend some bucks though…Neil ordered a new bike as his is 13 years old and needs a lot of maintenance work…and given it’s age and construction (aluminum but the paint is pretty much flaking off at this point but it’s a cosmetic issue more than a strength one) he decided to upgrade. Ordered a Giant Defy Advanced model…and it’s got all the goodies, full carbon frame and fork, disk brakes, electronic shifting, all the brake hydraulic lines and shifting stuff is internal to the bike tubes…although he did pass on the more expensive model with carbon wheel rims since he doesn’t race…but it still wasn’t cheap. But it’s probably the last one he’ll need until he gets old and has to have a recumbent model old people bike. 

And we ordered a new stove…a KitchenAid induction model. He’s always preferred gas for cooking as it’s just quicker to heat up and cool down and when you turn down the gas the heat stops as opposed to electric where it is still hot and continues to do whatever it was doing before. Induction basically uses magnetic induction to heat the pot directly so the stovetop itself stays cool and if you turn the heat down the heat production stops right away…so it’s got the advantages of both gas and electric stoves (the flat glass no drip pan design that electrics have is soooo much easier to keep clean). It cost a lot…but actually less than his new bike.

And since induction only works with magnetic pans…all of our existing cookware which is aluminum Calphalon needs to go but we got a set of All-Clad that are aluminum sides and bottom but with a stainless steel magnetic plate bonded to the bottom so they work inductively. The mostly aluminum construction keeps them light and this set is all non stick so the chief cook and bottlewasher ‘round here (Neil) is happy with them.

We’ve started seeing a few birds and the gators out back the past week or two…the weather is starting to get a little cooler although it’s still hot and humid…

Other than that…not much new. Her choral group started up again last week, we have this season’s tickets to the symphony up in Sarasota, we continue to have date night and get up early on bike days so he’s back before it gets really brutal outside.

She did get a nice rainbow pic with her phone last night at chorus practice.

Rainbow2

Lessee what else is in the news.

Oh yeah, the UAW is on strike against the car companies as I’m sure you are aware…and their demands are ridiculous…they want a 40% raise, a COLA on top of that, a fixed 32 hour work week for 40 hours of pay, more profit sharing, a restoration of the old defined benefit pension plan…and even a new better pension plan for already retired auto workers. To get these demands…they’ve struck one plant at each of the big 3 US makers and will strike at some more plants this Friday. I wonder what they’ll do when the companies shut down a lot of other plants and lock the workers out due to lack of parts? I realize they want more money and it’s hard to gripe about people wanting to get pay raises…but they’re already pretty darn well paid for a mostly low skilled manufacturing job…but the union is essentially pricing US auto plants out of business compared to foreign ones…realistically the quality of the imports is better (we know, we looked at cars for Neil a couple years back) and the price is better. Like many other industries…labor costs are getting out of control and this is why a lot of companies have moved a lot of production elsewhere. We see a bunch of whining from the unions and others about buying imported things…but until John Q Public is ready to pay higher prices for exclusively US made goods the world economy is going to continue to move production to lower cost places.

An the Democrats are all up in arms over the impeachment investigation into the President…the Speaker instigated the investigation (not an actual impeachment yet) to gather facts as he said but really he did it on his own without a vote in the House because he wasn’t sure he had the votes to pass it. Impeachment…although it talks about high crimes and misdemeanors…is really a political act, not a judicial one and while we think this is going nowhere…I don’t think the House will have enough votes to impeach unless some smoking gun is found against the President during the investigation and he’s going to be acquitted in the Senate just like the last 2 impeachments were because his party controls the Senate. The calls on the other side to impeach SCOTUS justices likewise aren’t going anywhere because they’re again…political acts because the other side doesn’t like the decisions made recently. Realistically…although one would not know it from the news…Justice Thomas probably erred in not reporting his various vacation trips…but then justices travel in the higher social circles in DC and they all have rich friends…including the liberal ones…and a realistic, actually non partisan look at all of the justices would reveal embarrassing things about all of their behavior. But as I said impeachment is a political act and both sides are just flapping their gums for votes.

I continue to wish that neither the President or his likely opponent were on the ballot next year…one is senile and doesn’t remember where he is day to day and keeps making statements that are patently untrue (I was at 9/11 ground zero the day after it happened is the latest one) and the other is losing it as well (yesterday he demanded that the Republicans in the House invoke the 25th amendment to remove the President despite them not being the ones who can invoke it and stating that he would not seek reelection in 2028 if he wins next year despite the Constitution clearly prohibiting him from doing so). And the former President will likely be convicted of at least some of the crimes he’s charged with (although to be honest is is actually impossible for him to get a fair trial on the facts as 100% of the people in America have already made up their minds about the man and would vote innocent or guilty sans any facts or evidence)…and the current President (although so far no clear and convincing evidence has been found they White House is doing an awful lot to hide from the House investigation) has a lot of smoke and investigating to see if there’s evidence of a fire seems warranted to me but I wish it could be an impartial one instead of a partisan one but that’s politics today.

And we have a new dress code in the Senate now…they no longer need to wear a suit and tie (men) and equivalent (women)…this was instituted essentially so that Senator Fetterman can wear his trademark shorts and hoodie onto the Senate floor…to which several Republican women said they would wear a bikini to the floor. I’m not sure what I really think about this…there’s certainly some justification in the idea to keep the formality and decorum but then again business casual is a thing so how far should their dress code go? Seems to me that if we’re going to have dress codes for school or what not then having one for government is just as good a thing…but even Neil would draw the line at shorts and a hoodie on the Senate floor…or a bikini…or the jeans, cowboy boots, and a Stetson that one of the Republicans wore yesterday although the latter comes closest to acceptable in his view.

I guess you saw the news about the prisoner swap with Iran yesterday…and while the US citizens were essentially hostages and held illegally…releasing $6 Billion in sanctioned funds to Iran as part of it sounds an awful lot like paying a ransom and negotiating with terrorists to me…and I’m quite sure that if the same thing had happened when the former President was in office the Democrats would have been screaming about it just as loudly as the Republicans are screaming about it today…but as I said…politics.

I guess you also saw about the “‘lost’ F-35 jet on Sunday…and Neil is really curious about what happened. It’s been advertised as a “mishap” by the Pentagon with zippo supporting details…but the pilot put the plane on autopilot and ejected right outside his intended landing airbase in Charleston SC after a training mission…and then the plane flew another 100 miles or so before crashing into a field. Now Neil’s not an aviator…but generally those guys tend to remain with the aircraft and do their best to save it and themselves and only eject as a last resort just before it crashes…and in most cases the news articles have information about an engine failure or whatever that caused the crash and ejection…so just saying “mishap” with no other information seems quite odd to him. If the plane was still in flyable condition which it obviously was until it ran out of gas and crashed…why didn’t he just land at his destination airbase which was about 2 miles or so from where he landed after ejecting? He’s really hoping we’ll find out what actually happened. He’s also shaking his head at the announcement one of the nutcase right wingers (can’t remember if it was Taylor Green or Bobert) who wanted to know how we could possibly not find a stealth aircraft on radar because don’t they have tracking devices on them? Now granted…the F-35 is an overpriced, under performing, not combat worthy pile of junk because of the whole design philosophy of making a single do everything for every service aircraft despite each service needing different things…but ejecting out of what appears to be a perfectly flyable aircraft seems…as I said…odd. The plane was eventually found about 100 miles north of the ejection location after it crashed into a field.

The pols in DC are also flapping their gums about the terrible impact Senator Tuberville’s hold on promotions is causing…and both sides of the debate are pretty much ignoring the facts of (a) what he’s doing, (b) why he’s doing it, and (c) what can be done about it. In case you haven’t been following it the short version is…the Pentagon is providing additional time off with pay and travel expenses for service members to travel for abortion related medical care if the state they’re in has restrictions. The problem with this…at least for Senator Tuberville…is that the Hyde Act outlaws spending federal money on abortion absent a threat to the life of the mother…so arguably this spending is illegal regardless of one’s position pro or con on abortion itself. His response is not blocking promotions…it is merely blocking blanket promote everybody the Pentagon has offered up for promotion at once without a floor vote. There’s nothing…zero…preventing the Senate Majority Leader (Senator Schumer) from calling an individual vote for any or all of the held up promotions…and realistically they’re all senior level generals and admirals. The press (and Democrats of course) are all over the incredibly dangerous reduction in military readiness…despite the fact that all of the generals and admirals who’ve retired from senior positions have been replaced in an acting status by the person who is being held up in the Senate. Those people are…in their acting capacity…making decisions and keeping the ball rolling…and while it is having a slight impact on the families of the affected officers…readiness has not really been affected and impact on families is no more or less than the impact on families from unscheduled deployments or whatever that goes on…all…the…time. But again…politics.

Interesting things found on the net.

Starbucks

This is why we use the grocery pickup thing from WalMart now.

WalMartCheckout

Autocorrect2

FiveMinutes

BanSoberDrivers

And there was a terrible tragedy down here in FL last week…a pack of wild dogs viciously attacked one of our local alligators.

DogPackAttacksAlligator

Salad

And finally…

WalkDownTheAisle

Cyas.

Posted in Homebody, Photography, Reality Based Blogging, Ya Can't Fix Stupid | 2 Comments

Once Again…We Have Survived The Hurricanpocalypse

Posted on 2023/08/30 by Gunther

Yeah…according to the news the past couple of days…FL was in for…”a catastrophic storm”…”a once in a lifetime storm”…”an unprecedented 15 feet of storm surge”…and assorted other hype and click generating headlines.

Tropical storm Idalia which formed down off the coast of Yucatan and turned into a hurricane as it moved due north west of the end of Cuba and Key West…and passed North Fort Myers about 125 miles out in the Gulf…eventually made landfall up northwest of Cedar Key near Fish Creek up in the Big Bend area…it’s southeast of Tallahassee about 40 miles an in a pretty unpopulated area…and while there was some storm surge, winds at cat 3 hurricane level and localized flooding…it doesn’t appear nearly as bad as Ina was last year down in the Naples/Fort Myers area…and in fact here in North Fort Myers it was pretty much a nothing burger…we’ve had regular old summer thunderstorms with more rain, wind, and lightning than we had yesterday. As I type this it’s still overcast and some drizzling off and on but really…despite whatever sensationalized news reports you see about the devastation down in FL…it’s really a non issue…at least where we are, can’t say about up near landfall.

The storm will proceed up through GA and across Savannah and Charleston as a Tropical Storm as of the time I’m typing this then out to sea, veer a bit to the ESE, then back to NE and out into the Atlantic to die…looks like it may pass near Bermuda but only as a storm at that point.

So…don’t panic…and really I wish that the state, county, city, and local news media would quit trying to overhype storms. Yes…sometimes it’s gonna be bad and sometimes people are going to need to really evacuate and there will be damage…but the hype machine has been going on for years at fever pitch intensity and people just eventually tune the warnings out…that’s a big reason why so many people did not leave Fort Myers Beach and the barrier islands last year during Ina which was a much worse storm and hit a pretty heavily populated area.

Let’s see…what else is in the news…unfortunately beyond the normal political hate and discontent not really much going on. We did get a letter today from the Saint Vincent de Paul Society asking us to donate to the relief efforts in the PRC after their flooding…but again…they had a tropical storm less intense than just went past here…and while it did rain…it’s the PRC and as far as we are concerned that whole state sliding into the Pacific can’t come soon enough.

College football starts up this weekend with our fave the Crimson Tide playing at home against Middle Tennessee…they play Texas (who will be in the SEC in 2025) the next week then their SEC schedule starts up. Once again…the Tide and LSU are picked to win the west and Georgia to win the east…and after this year there’s gonna be a whole bunch of changes in the sport. First up is the beginning of the 12 team playoff which will be way better than the 4 we have now…previously there was some argument as to whether #5 might actually be better than #4 and depending on strength of schedule and who you lose to that’s a valid argument…but with the major conference champs and a bunch of at large berths…I’m pretty sure that the top 12 will really have all the best teams…and while there will be similar arguments that #13 is better than #12…the thinking that they’re also better than #1-#4 is pretty unlikely. In addition…with the expansion of the major conferences and the death of the Pac 12…the SEC will no longer have an east and west division…each team will play 8 opponents annually and 2 or 3 of them (can’t remember) will be every year as traditional rivals…for the Tide it will be Auburn and Tennessee…and the remaining games will cycle through the rest of the conference…then the two best teams will meet in the championship game instead of the east and west champs. That will be an improvement because in some years the championship game was a mismatch between an undefeated division champ and a 2 or 3 loss team from the other division.

That’s about it…so I’ll go ahead and post this so ya’ll will know we survived.

One interesting thing from the net though…

WhenIWasTwo

Well…let’s make it two…especially as I’ve got this one of a fierce dog pack attacking a gator down here in the Sunshine State.

DogPackAttacksAlligator

Cyas.

Posted in Homebody, Reality Based Blogging, Ya Can't Fix Stupid | 2 Comments

You Just Can’t Believe A Single Thing You See On The News Any More

Posted on 2023/08/23 by Gunther

At least that’s the way it seems to me.

Used to be…journalists were just that…journalists. They told you the facts which were generally actually the true facts…and dabbled not at all to opinion/viewpoint…except maybe an occasional commentary at the end of the news clearly identified as commentary and not news.

Nope…not any longer…today just about every media outlet has decided to become the news instead of trying to report the news…and it’s getting harder and harder to figure out from the various sources the actual facts and form your own opinion.

Sorry…but some of this is going to sound political…but in reality it’s not…so if you want to close the browser window and wait on the next more normal for this space post that will be just fine and dandy.

First up…the whole situation revolving around both our former President and our current President.

Let me say up front…that we’re not supporters of the former in his reelection attempt and would never vote for him…he’s a complete moron and narcissist and really just needs to go away. However…the current President while running doesn’t deserve to be reelected either…any fool can see from his tripping over things, falling off his bicycle, constant repetition of obviously untrue stories from his past, and his rambling…that he’s declining both mentally and physically…and he needs to step aside as well. The former really needs to step aside too…both of them should recognize that the needs of the country overcome their want to be President. Frankly…the only worst person to consider for the job than those two is the current Vice President who has also clearly demonstrated her lack of ability to do pretty much any job…it’s time for both parties to find new blood…hopefully closer to the center and believing that compromise rather than being a dirty word is the key to getting some of what you want while also giving the other guy something of what he wants and with neither of you getting everything you want.

I took out a bunch of stuff here about the ongoing legal cases…we’ve always thought that there were some issues with the charges and evidence as seen in the media. DAs always say they have ironclad evidence…that’s their job. But like some congressman claiming they have ironclad evidence of Russian collusion…and like some losing politicians saying they have ironclad evidence of election fraud, and like some defense attorneys saying they have ironclad evidence their client is innocent…it ain’t necessarily so.

The classified documents case seems the easiest one to get an actual conviction on. All of the others the defense can make a case for contesting an election’s outcome rather than trying to overturn the election illegally…there’s a lot of difference between “find me 11,000 votes” and “find some fraudulent ballots to get me 11,000 votes”. But the biggest problems are that finding an unbiased jury of his peers will be essentially impossible since just about everybody has already made up their mind one way or the other and that some of the evidence may not be so ironclad once they finally get to a trial. 

Let’s see…what other idiocy do we have in the media today.

I saw an article this week where the questioner asked Mike Pence about the difference between the 2002 ejection from Congress after being convicted on corruption charges of James Traficant and whether or not a convicted FP in any of his trials should also not be allowed to be President. His response was that the voters got to decide that…for which the article roundly condemned him for this double standard. The difference…as noted in the article but not in the headline…was that Mr. Traficant was convicted of corruption charges as a serving Congressman and therefore ejected…and that the FP hasn’t been convicted of anything. Mr. Traficant could have run for election to Congress (assuming he was out of jail) and if elected whether he should have been seated would get a vote…and since ejection is essentially the same outcome as impeachment and impeachment requires something be done while in office I think it unlikely he would have not been seated if he then won reelection. Marion Barry…the former mayor of DC…was reelected and served as mayor despite his conviction and prison sentence in between his terms office on drug charges…in a Democratic stronghold like DC it’s obvious he was not going to be kicked off the ballot or help ineligible to serve because his crimes were not while he was in office…and I think that’s fair. Now to be honest…while the courts as noted above have not specifically said that an impeachment/trial were a judicial proceeding and I have no idea how they would rule on it…as a practical matter impeachment is mostly a political thing at this point and if the House were to turn the other way and the FP became the President againI have no doubt that he would be summarily impeached by the House without any “high crime or misdemeanors” being involved…he would be impeached merely because it says R behind his name and the Speaker of the House would have D behind his/her name. Frankly…I’m surprised that the R house hasn’t voted to impeach the current President…but that’s probably because they realize it’s going nowhere in the Senate just like the last 3 Presidential impeachments did.

You’ve probably seen all the handwringing from the White House and SecDef about Senator Tuberville’s hold on military promotions and how this is causing severe and ongoing problems with national security. I asked Neil about it…and he told me that it’s all a bunch of crap for numerous reasons. First up…the “unconfirmed nominees” to new top leadership in several services and at the Joint Chiefs…have already been serving as a high level deputy to the former leader and are now serving as “acting” heads…so management and leadership of the armed forces is not in question and the top leader of any of our military branches mostly worries about policy and budget and where is the service going rather than day to day management of military actions…that’s just the way the chain of command works. Second…the Senator is *not* holding up *all* promotions…he’s merely placing a hold on approval of whole slates of promotions simultaneously by what’s called “unanimous consent” and that he will *not* hold up any singular nomination that the Democratic leadership in the Senate brings to the floor…they’re free to do that and the nomination would be approved and the current “acting” leader would become the “Senate confirmed leader”…whoopee. Senator Schumer says that it’s the Republican leadership’s job to convince Senator Tuberville to release his hold…and the hold on unanimous consent has been used numerous times in the past by both parties for military promotions and assorted other unanimous consent bills, resolutions, and what have you. Senator McConnell has said…go ahead Mr. Schumer…schedule the votes on the floor. So…despite what you read in the media…this situation is not atypical…and is both another senseless political pissing contest and is not materially affecting military readiness or national security. Senator Sinema is actively trying to persuade both sides to come to some sort of compromise and is being roundly criticized in the media and by the Democrats for doing so…and again…she’s trying to do her job and get the political pissing contest set aside.

There’s an article this morning with the progressive mayor of Los Angeles decrying the sending of busing migrants from Texas to CA as “beyond politics…it’s evil” during the ongoing “unprecedented storm” in the state…that storm would be the tropical depression Hilary which if had come to Florida would have been a nothing burger…down here nothing would have closed, there would be no toilet paper and milk shortages, and there would be no panic. Yes…it’s a tropical storm…and yes that doesn’t happen much in estate…but come on people…it’s a nothing burger. And since both CA and LA (the bad one, not the good one known as Lower Alabama) have declared themselves to be sanctuaries for illegal immigrants…Texas is just trying to help them be a sanctuary. While I don’t completely agree with their decision to move migrants to blue locations…I can certainly see their point since the federal government and Congress seem completely uninterested in stemming the flow of criminal illegal immigrants flooding across the border…and this whole “undocumented persons” relabeling is just more political hogwash.

In the “I really don’t understand this” category…back on August 9 a small plane carrying the pilot and a hunter crashed into a narrow ravine in Denali National Park…there’s a picture of the scene
here. Now I’ll grant you that’s a narrow ravine…but according to the article rangers have repelled down to the aircraft more than once…and have determined that both are dead. However…they’ve also decided that recovery of the bodies is too hard…even though they down by the aircraft it’s flat enough to walk around and verify death…since they would be subject to “falling rocks” while recovering the bodies and it needs to wait until the river flow goes down or winter freezes the river before trying to recover the bodies. They decided it would be too hard to recover the wreckage with the bodies inside at this time…but I really don’t understand how if they’re standing next to the aircraft getting the bodies (or parts of them possibly) out, putting them into body bags, and pulling them to the top the same way the rangers standing next to the plane to verify death got back out…several times.

Apparently the Ukrainians have attacked and destroyed a Russian S-400 surface to air missile system in Crimea (that’s their most advanced one and the same as that which resulted in the Turkish government getting kicked out of the F-35 program)…they even provided a video of the thing blowing up
here…but I’m sure the Russians will announce later on that nothing of the sort happened and it must be one of those fake AI created videos. And some fellow from NATO said over the weekend that Ukraine would have to negotiate soon with the Russians and would have to give up territory to get peace. The Ukrainian president (can’t remember how to spell the name and too lazy to go look it up) said they would gladly swap the Russian city of Belgorod for NATO membership…and that Ukraine and only Ukraine would decide when and if negotiations would take place and that no Ukrainian territory would be ceded to the Russians. The Ukrainians also blew up a Russian Tu-22 strategic bomber (they’re being used in a conventional role to launch missiles against mostly civilian targets). The interesting part is that it was blown up by a short range helicopter like drone 400 miles from the border…so hmmmm…seems the Ukrainians have infiltrated some special forces across the border to give the Russians a taste of their own medicine. Naturally…the Russians have claimed that this is a completely unauthorized an overreaction escalation of the war they started.

Speaking of the former President…how in the world did Melania not file for divorce on Jan 21, 2021? Enquiring minds want to know.


Here’s an article…which claims that the Chinese have increased their antisubmarine warfare capabilities and that the US submarine force will be required to use jammers and noise makers to confuse the Chinese should we ever get into a shooting war with them in the South and East China seas due to their surveillance systems and the “capable low frequency active sonars” on new Chinese corvettes. I asked Neil…and while he’s been out of the submarine biz since the mid 1990s…physics hasn’t really changed and current US submarines are essentially quieter than background noise…and while the shallower waters and smaller overall area compared to say the Pacific Ocean do present somewhat of a more difficult problem…we’re still talking about areas that are hundreds of miles in size and with depths averaging around 1000 feet or 2500 feet depending on whether it’s the East or South China Sea. The cited surveillance systems are really low frequency detection systems…that’s what gives them longer detection capability…and because of that none of them really localize a submarine…they tell you “there’s one that direction and the center of the ellipse it was in 3 hours ago is (for example_ 200 miles away…but the ellipse might be 40 miles wide and 150 miles long so it’s really not much of a help other than where generally to send your ASW forces to look for it. The “low frequency active sonars”…well, they’re better than the older ones but at best they’re a generation behind what US ASW forces have and one of the drawbacks of an active sonar is that the submarine can hear it at least twice the range at which it can possibly detect the submarine…and the relatively shallower water (compared to open ocean) and assorted shoal areas make reverberation a much bigger problem and have a pretty big impact on active sonar performance. Physics hasn’t changed in the past 30ish years…and while software algorithms have improved…physics is always going to win. So…yes, it would be more challenging to fight the Chinese with submarines in those seas than it would be out in the central Pacific…but it’s certainly not the bugaboo the article claims it is…but then the primary purpose of articles like these is to influence Congress to buy more of the newest submarines I guess. As to using noisemakers or jammers…yeah, a submarine would use a jammer to decoy an enemy weapon after it was launched while going the other direction…generally the way submarines keep from getting killed by a torpedo is to use their speed to stay away from it until it runs out of gas. And conceivably one could use a mobile submarine simulator (basically what submarines practice shooting exercise torpedoes against in peacetime) to say have it approach an enemy fleet from the north to attract attention while the submarine itself sneaks in from the southeast…every one of those that a submarine carries decreases the amount of actual weapons it can carry by one…and the relatively short running time of those simulators and the distance it needs to be launched from where the submarine actually wants to approach for a real weapons launch…make it a hard thing for a single submarine to carry out such an attack…and coordinated Wolfpack submarine operations have not generally been something the US forces use and if they had been brought back into vogue one would have seen articles about it in the media or Navy related publications. Frankly…I would think that in the vast majority of situations based on Neil’s admittedly out of date knowledge a US submarine would get to the torpedo or missile launch point undetected and unless there was an ASW asset right in the area would generally either kill the enemy ship or launch the land attack missiles…and then would immediately head away from the launch point…and after an hour or so the circle of probable positions would be hundreds of square miles increasing every hour. Would we lose some submarines in such a shooting war…we probably would but at this point I don’t see how we would still not have the advantage in submarine warfare. Carriers might be a little more susceptible to attack by their ship killer ballistic missiles…but carrier task forces do practice operating without using radio, radar, or other electronic emissions and that does make targeting more difficult…but they’re an easier target to find and localize than a submarine that one can’t see or hear from a satellite.

Finally…there’s this an article this morning about the FedEx driver who was shot at in Mississippi more than 18 months ago. The judge declared a mistrial in the case against the two men who shot at him last week because of prosecutorial/police misconduct…and the case will be re-tried. However…the driver in question has been off work at full salary for in excess of 18 months because of ‘trauma’ and has been receiving FedEx paid for therapy. The therapist pronounced him fit to return to work…his response was that “nobody but me can decide when I can go back to work” and he demanded that FedEx provide him a work from home position at his same salary. FedEx doesn’t have these and said “you can come back to work full time as a driver…or you can take this part time warehouse only position”. He declined to do either so FedEx provided him paperwork saying he was terminated (i.e., quit) because he failed to show up for work. He filed a $5 million suit against them for discrimination…which the judge dismissed…so now he’s filling a $10 million suit. I sympathize with the guy for getting shot at…and think the perps will eventually get convicted and imprisoned…but come on…after 18 months of not working and getting full pay and with a therapist that medically (and hence legally and morally as well in my opinion) clearing him to go back to work…to not show up for the job you have and refuse a job that doesn’t require you to relive the trauma of delivering packages…at this point you’re not a victim, you’re a malingerer looking for a payday.

Interesting things found on the net.

UkeImYourFather

Work

FrightenTheKids

And now you know just *why* Dr. Spock had that weird hand sign.SpockSuperGlue

Irony…

Irony

HowManyWork

PumpGasBehindPlate

And finally…

SisterMaria

Cyas.

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