Surgery Report…And Some News On The Botswana Images

Posted on 2025/08/23 by Gunther

Well…Connies surgery went pretty well…the surgeon got all of the affected area and then did some reshaping of her right breast to take care of the hole left behind. She was in a little pain on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning but has pretty much quit taking Tylenol as of Saturday morning. She’s tender and sore if she moves too much but no real pain at this point. What she does have is a huge bruise…makes the image of the one I posted from the biopsy look small…and it’s basically black/purple. She’s also going to have a scar across the lower outside but like the one on the other side from 40ish years ago it will not be all that noticeable. Swelling is down some today as well…but she still looks like an E cup or maybe D cup on that side.

The remnants went off to the pathologist and she’s got an appointment after Labor Day with the surgeon to follow up and also the radiation guy that week. Nothing with the oncologist yet as he’s waiting on the path report I guess.

So…overall pretty good news and both the surgeon and the radiation guy as well as the oncologist said that stage zero encapsulated calcified cancer cells are 98% curable so we’ll just have to wait and see on that.

She’s a bit emotional about “not being pretty naked” anymore…but Neil told her not to worry about it and wait until the swelling and bruising goes away. She’s really more emotional about the fact that she cares about how it looks than how it looks in and of itself. She had told herself that she didn’t really care about looks in the outcome but discovered when she took the bandage off the first time how swollen and bruised it is and that she actually cares about how it looks. But she’s agreed with the wait and see attitude, especially as it’s looking a lot better today than it was on Thursday when she saw it for the first time. Plus…the lady surgeon only does breast surgery and she told Neil that she had done some reshaping so it would look nice but that it would look not so nice in the interim. 

Other than that…not much new here. It’s been raining almost every day and we’re just taking things easy until she feels better. Neil’s doing his usual cooking thing and feeding her well…and we went out to Longhorn Steak House for Date Night yesterday which perked up her a lot.

This image from the local news rag almost perfectly encapsulates the weather in SW FL in the summertime. It was offered as the weekly meme…but it’s more of a simple truism than just a meme. Neil left to go biking yesterday morning and it was not raining and partly overcast. Shortly after he passed Del Prado Boulevard headed south about 3 miles from home it started sprinkling and by the time he got to one of his bailout routes at Playa del Sol…it was raining pretty steadily so he bailed out and headed back home. By the time he got back to Del Prado it was raining hard and stayed that way all the way home. Connie was tracking him on Find My and opened the garage door so he could come in hot as they say. He pulled off his wet bike shoes and jersey and sat down in the beach chair in the garage for his normal cooldown…and with 7 or 8 minutes of his return it had stopped raining and the sun as shining brightly. Go figure.

Summertime in Florida.

On the Botswana image processing front…he’s got over 50,000 images from the trip…shooting at 20 and 30 frames per second in anticipation of the kingfisher taking off or the hippo yawning builds up a lot of them. But he’s using a new processing technique with a multi button mouse to more quickly cull through them…I’ll give you a brief discussion on that later on but not today.

Although not a wildlife image…here’s a photo the other truck took of Luann, Lin, and Neil out in the bush at the bush camp. Our leader Steve is in the front left seat and these are right seat driver vehicles since…Botswana and Namibia were British colonies and well, the Brits drive on the wrong side of the road and from the wrong side of the car. These are special constructed vehicles based on a Toyota Land Cruiser pickup that gets an entire new body…at least from the used to be cab back. With 3 people in each truck plus the driver and Steve or Rose depending on the drive…clients have easy access to both sides of the vehicle for shots. And since we all use telephoto lenses…we tend to stay farther from the animals which both accommodates the lens reach and reduces the looking down on the critter angle…plus we sometimes hang the camera over the side holding the lens foot and the rear screen to focus and frame the shot to get more eye level shots. Your typical (and much cheaper) tourist safari is mostly a bunch of iPhone shooters and the drivers tend to get far too close to dangerous game because of iPhone lens reach and because their tips are better when people can go back and tell their friends they were within 10 feet of the lions. People like that are more interested in impressing people than in taking actually decent photos…and in both the boat and truck drives we noticed plenty of that sort of guide doing things that were just stupid and dangerous.

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I’ll go into more detail about the places we stayed and what we ate later…but in short the places were fantastic and the food even better. We ate a lot of lamb and a lot of kudu which is an antelope in between the size of a bull elk and a moose…and they were all tasty. They asked us the first day about any dietary requirements and we had one fellow (coincidentally from the Fort Myers area) who tries to be gluten free and they went out of their way to have at least 2 or 3 gluten free dishes at every meal for him…and special gluten free cookies in the rooms in addition to the regular ones that Neil was eating. Wine and cocktails were included and they fed us far, far too much…but a photo workshop is generally a luxury trip so that’s to be expected I guess.

His team Alabama opens their season next Saturday against Florida State then has a cupcake, Wisconsin, and a bye before the SEC season opens against Georgia…and the SEC announced this week that starting in 2026 teams will play a 9 game league schedule instead of the current 8. Each team will have 3 preserved rivalry games every year…Alabama’s will be Auburn, LSU, and Tennessee…and will rotate the other teams so they play everyone in the league every 2 years and have a home and home with every team over 4 years. With the expanded playoffs…strength of schedule becomes an important factor so with 9 league games and at least one power 5 conference game every year that will reduce the cupcakes to 2 per season.

Cyas.

Posted in Africa, Botswana, Homebody, Okavango Delta, Travel | Leave a comment

And He’s Back

Posted on 2025/08/14 by Gunther

Hi, Gunther here.

And by popular demand…I present you Neil for some important updates.

————————-

Hi, Neil here. Just wanted to report what I’ve been up to in the past couple of weeks…and what I’ll be up to in the next few weeks.

I just got back…well, actually at 0100 Wednesday morning…from a basically 14 day trip to Botswana for another photo workshop with Steve Perry. Essentially 10 days in country at Botswana and 2 days flying to and fro to get there and back. While I have about 50,000 images…I just wanted to give you a few quick hitters on the trip before turning things back over to the bear.

Johannesburg, South Africa…it’s a long way away. 16 hour flight and another 6 hours time change and while I left Fort Myers at 1700 or so the overnight flight left at 2330 and got into Johannesburg at 2130 the next evening. Luckily…I had a reservation at a hotel literally 40 yards from the airport exit so I went there and crashed for the evening. Next day…we had a 1400 or so flight from there to Kasane, Botswana where the actual workshop would take place. 

While under the label of Steve Perry…Pangolin Safaris was responsible for the details. On arrival in Kasane which is right on the Chobe River…we went to the lodge where we spent 3 nights and had a total of 6 boat wildlife drives along the Chobe River. It’s the dry season there so animals come down to the river to drink and we saw a leopard the first night.

After 3 nights there we flew on a bush plane to the Kanana Bush Camp…which while labeled a bush camp is actually the nicest place I’ve ever stayed outside of the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong. While we were there we had a total of 8 game drives 3-4 hours in length and saw a whole passle of wildlife. 

Flying back to Kasane…we went across the Chobe River and entered Namibia where Pangolin has registered houseboat which we lived on for 3 days including 6 more boat rides. The first afternoon and morning were close to the same area we were in before but then the houseboat went about 15 miles upriver to a much less populated area for a couple rides then came back to the original mooring near Kasane. 

We then transferred back to the original lodge for lunch and then back to the airport for the flight to Johannesburg, arriving there about 1530. I stayed in the same hotel overnight and had a nice kudu (a herd hoofed animal about the size of a moose) dinner and then headed over to the airport again the next day for the flight home.

A 11 hour flight to Amsterdam, 4 hour layover, 9 hour flight to Atlanta, 6 hour layover, and 2 hour flight to Fort Myers got me home about 0100 2 days later…and I gotta admit I was pretty toasted.

Of the three places we stayed…the lodge was pretty nice…the camp at Kanana was not only the best safari camp I’ve stayed at but when evaluating it as hotel it’s in second place all time after the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong. The food at all three venues was excellent but Camp Kanana was the winner of the three.

Ok, that’s a few quick hitters, I’ve got 50,000 images to go through so I’ll have them up…eventually.

Back to the bear here.

Ok…lemme talk about the schedule a bit. Neil’s going to work on photos but to be honest it’s pretty low on the priority list, Lemme look at what is on the list.

-Connie’s breast cancer surgery on Tuesday, this would normally be top of the list but has been bumped #2 based on schedule.

We got new iPad Pros today…and since we have trade ins they only have 2 weeks. So…Neil work on them over the weekend and get the returns ready to go back.

Then she has her surgery on Tuesday.

In the meantime…he has the following on his priority list.

We’re in the middle of a tech upgrade at home…new wifi…new iPads, new printer (our old one died)…and then finally we’ll be able to work on photos. Neil’s going to try a new culling regime this time…but to be realistic you probably won’t see those photos until September.

Cyas.

Posted in Africa, Photography, Travel | Leave a comment

The Knees of a Twenty Year Old

Posted on 2025/07/26 by Gunther

Well…things are pretty slow around mostly…but it I summer in Florida and it’s hot and humid and we have thunderstorms just about every day.

Neil is finishing up his preps for a photo workshop in Botswana…got his stuff mostly packed and he’s trained Connie on all the stuff that she might have to do if we have a hurricane in the next few weeks. However…with the persistent high offshore of Jacksonville and the repeated dust storms from Africa heading across the tropics to the west of the continent…those cut way down on the development of storms. Anyway…he’s not all that worried and she’s got people who will help her with the storm shutters if needed so all is pretty well there.

On her breast cancer diagnosis…she’s had her pre-surgery appointment and all the pre-op tests and things are looking pretty good. Sure…it’s the big C…but it’s isolated, no mass, and she should be just fine according to the surgeon, cancer guy, and radiation guy.

Then there’s the knee thing…and this story is a bit interesting.

A few weeks back Neil had his normal routine annual visit with Doctor R who is his primary care guy. He’s a really good doctor…a cuban refugee that used to be a surgeon but reverted to being a primary care guy after escaping the island…but he (in Neil’s opinion) tends to try to solve problems that aren’t really problems.

Anyway…he decided there was some fluid behind Neil’s right knee and so sent him over for an X-ray and after that came back with a diagnosis of osteophytes and mild osteoarthritis he sent Neil to the orthopedic guy. Now…to be fair…Neil has no issue with the knee at all…no pain, nothing. So…he was really wondering what the heck he needed to see the ortho guy for.

So Neil has his appointment with ortho doc yesterday…and naturally they can’t get into the system to see his original X-rays…so they took more. Obviously this is just a ploy to get to charge Medicare more instead of just getting the original X-rays…but I digress. 

Then the doctor comes in and Neil tells him the whole story. He asks questions about pain, clicking in the joint and that sort of thing…and Neil says no, no, and no. Then he looks at the X-ray and Neil wonders why he was referred to ortho guy in the first place. Ortho guy responds that the ‘mild osteoarthritis’ was the reason but then he looked for about 30 seconds at each of the 4 X-rays they took that day and says “you know…that osteoarthritis statement is just a way, way over read of the actual situation. Then he looks at Neil and says two different things…”you have perfect knees for a 71 year old guy that was a runner for 40 years”…and “you have the knees of a 20 year old”.

Neil said thank you…they left…and headed off to date night. After all…it was Friday and we were down south of our normal stomping grounds a bit so Connie got all date night dressed up and we stopped at one of our favorite seafood places on the way home. A few glasses of wine…some steamed oysters…and then some New England Clam Chowder for her and some Shrimp Tacos for him and they headed home.

So…there you have it. Neil has 20 year old knees, a 12 year old attitude about life…and the rest of him is just old feeling. A quite spritely old mind you…and the floor keeps getting farther and farther away…but ortho guy congratulated him on his 2,000 miles a year on the bike, said that’s the best exercise for your knees, and to come see him if there is ever a problem.

Sorry…no images today…but by the next post he’ll be back from Botswana and probably have some for me.

Cyas.

Posted in Homebody, Medical | Leave a comment

Wow…Going On Six Weeks

Posted on 2025/07/18 by Gunther

So…I need to get everything up to date. Sorry about the delay but it’s been a considerably busy 6 weeks.

My only excuses for not posting are (a) it’s been busy and (b) Neil hasn’t provided me any photographs to share.

So…here’s a brief list of what’s happened since early June.

The biggest thing is that after Connie had her biopsy of the right breast she was diagnosed with DCIS…that’s Ductal Carcinoma in Situ. She’s at stage zero and ductal means it’s in a milk duct and in Situ means it hasn’t spread. The cells are calcified and it’s about a 1 cm section of one milk duct. As a result…we’ve had a wave of appointments…Neil went along on all of them to serve as a second less affected set of ears. Surgeon, oncologist, and radiation oncologist we’ve all completed along with an MRI of both breasts to make sure there are no other issues…and there aren’t, no mass, no other regions other than the single duct. She also had genetic testing and none of the bad genes exist in her so that’s also good news. While cancer is never good…this is pretty much a home run if you have to have breast cancer as the docs all agree. She’s scheduled for surgery (same day) Aug 19 and once the post surgery pathology report she may need therapy. The surgeon and oncologist talked about putting her on a 5 year does of hormone reducing drug…but the radiation oncologist suggested that if things happen as we think they will that’s probably overkill and it does have some significant side effects. She’s researched a bit and is not going to do the drug unless something changes…too many eye, heart, and liver issues for essentially no gain in cure rate.

She had just about the biggest bruise Neil has ever seen after the biopsy…he took a photo and after cropping out all of the important parts she OK’ed him posting it here. I’ll put it way at the end in case you just don’t want to see it.

Neil’s scheduled to depart for Botswana for 2 weeks in 10 days and one thing we were concerned about was whether any surgery would impact that…if it did then we would just have cancelled and absorbed the $15,000 loss for the trip. However…the earliest her surgery could have been scheduled was about when he would have returned and the docs concurred that a delay of a week would have zero effect so her surgery is scheduled as noted above. However…Neil’s been busily doing pre trip preps along with the myriad of doctor appointments and tests and that’s another contribution to the busy schedule.

We also had Bryan, Jen, and Alex here for a week for their vacation…Alex is still a bit picky on food but not as much as a year ago. We had to buy a new air mattress…our one from the Fairfax VA house renovation in 2001 bit the dust so we needed a new one. And Bryan let us know that the guest toilet flapper valve was a gonzo and it was filling and refilling a lot…so we had to get a plumber in to fix that once they left.

In the neighborhood…the HoA management is being turned over from the developer to a homeowner elected board…and there’s been a lot of ongoing controversy over that. Mostly it’s due to the people on the transition committee and the HoA lawyer being incompetent idiots who didn’t bother reading the rules on how to run a board election under both the FL state law and the HoA bylaws.

Add in the bourhaha over the merger of our Elks Lodge with several others…but politics engaged there and the proposal was voted down by 1 vote despite there being no alternative than to merge. So…we’ll probably transfer our member ship to the Punta Gorda lodge by the end of the year.

We signed up for our annual Sarasota Symphony Orchestra season ticket renewals and have also signed up for both the Fort Myers Community Association concert series and the second season of the Florida Symphony series…it took a bit of figuring out what conflicted between those and with her Mastersingers concerts.

Speaking of Mastersingers…the new director decided to have everybody audition…again…(well, only the ones he hadn’t already auditioned last year. She was concerned that it was a thinly disguised attempt to get rid of old people as the new director has added mostly young people in the past year. So…she was sweating it big time but she had her audition and made the cut so she will remain an Alto 1 which makes her happy. However…between her concerts and the 3 mentioned above we will have a pretty packed classical music schedule from the fall through the spring…but hey, it is what it is and none of us are complaining.

Neil needed a knee x-ray…on our routine visit a week or so back Dr. Rodriguez found some possible fluid behind his right knee. It doesn’t hurt and is causing him no issues whatsoever at this point…but he had an x-ray this past week and has a consult with the ortho guy this week to see what the deal is. 

So he’s headed off to Botswana in a week or so…she’s staying home. And since it’s hurricane season here in FL…she needs lots of into on power, water, and assorted hurricane preparations. He’s written her a WHIM (Wife Hurricane Instruction Manual) with all the details on a whole passle of things that need to happen, had her review it, and answered a bunch of questions she had…he still needs to train her on operating the generator to keep the freezer and fridge cold but that’s on the schedule. He’s got anti malaria medication in hand and is collecting all the things needed to charge batteries, watches, laptop, iPad, and iPhone along with the same checklist of stuff he needed for Tanzania last year. None of that is hard and all the stuff is pretty much on hand…but there’s still a lot of checking, gathering, and all that that needs to happen.

And…we’ve even got some computer network upgrades in progress. Our laser printer which is going on 15 years old has started printing really faintly and after a bit of research it needs both a new drum and a new toner cartridge…which total to about $130. So he decided that it was better off just buying a new Brother laser printer for $170 so he decided that it made more sense to upgrade to a printer currently on sale. The new printer needs he needs to reconfigure the local network settings on the router…and that exacerbated another issue. Several years ago…Netgear who built the Orbi Router mesh combo we have issued a software that essentially bricked the ability to connect to the router and reconfigure it. Netgear’s solution is to nuke the router to factory defaults and load the new software (which is now 2+ years old) and start from scratch. Given a couple of factors…the fact that Netgear would rather sell us a new router than fix the old one…and that we now have some devices that work on WiFi 7 instead of of the older WiFi 6 or 6E…he’s going to get a pair of US built Ubiquity routers, establish a mesh, and reconfigure the local network at the house. He’s tested the new printer to verify that it’s not DOA but on return from Botswana will have to deal with both processing the 30,000 or so photos he brings back but also with buying and setting up the new wifi devices, the new printer, and processing photos.

So…as you can see…despite not posting here…we’ve really been pretty darned busy.

Interesting things found on the net.

 

And that’s the only one I’ve got for you.

So…I’m gonna do my usual Cyas in the next paragraph…but if you’re really interested in how big a bruise from a breast biopsy is…scroll down a bit and I can tell you

Cyas.

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Ok, here it is. For scale…Connie is a C cup and the right side is about a half inch from showing nipple (which she vetoed and he agrees). This is the outside of the right one and the actual biopsy incision is under the tape…but as you can see this bruise is probably 3 by 3 inches. And…don’t worry…Connie approved both the cropping of this image and with posting it here. After all…I talk mostly these days about our everyday life and it is what it is.

Posted in Africa, Homebody, Medical, Travel | Leave a comment

Lazy Summer Update

Posted on 2025/06/07 by Gunther

Wow…been a whole month since my last post and I can only blame it on a couple things…life happening, being fairly busy with the aforementioned life happening, and basically no photo opportunities for Neil. So…let’s see what’s been going on.

The biggest life thing is that Connie needs a biopsy. She had annual mammogram and then since she’s got dense boobies they called her back for more imaging…and then they see some sort of calcium things so she’s gotta have a biopsy to see what happens next. No mass visible and she gets one every year so she’s not overly worried yet.

Then there was Neil’s 71st birthday…we went out to Lashley’s Crab House up in Punta Gorda. We had a nice bottle of wine and some Oysters Rockefeller.

We had the annual Elks Conference up in Orlando…Connie had meetings on Friday and Saturday morning so we headed up Thursday afternoon and went to the Hospitality Suites for free dinner and booze both nights. Neil had originally planned on going out to Orlando Wetlands Preserve about an hour east of the Rosen Center in Christmas, Florida but he didn’t feel very good when they woke up so he just stayed in the room instead.

On the home front…we got a nastygram from the HoA complaining that our roof was dirty and needed cleaning. They were right of course and we got that done and also the driveway pavers power washed and sealed and the lanai power washed along with the exterior windows. We had 2 bids…selecting the one that was both a reasonable price and that the vendor seemed professional and reliable. The other one was 2.5 times the price and he and his buddies were obviously amateur good old boys…there’s nothing wrong with being a good old boy of course but overpriced and not professional took them out of the running. Matt and his partner Steph did an excellent job and used their drone to give us some before and after images of the roof. They use a lower pressure spray and some anti mold chemical on everything but the driveway and actually I think they used the chemical on the drive as well in addition to higher pressure. They had a bit of an issue with the sealing…the pavers need to be completely dry with no rain in the forecast for 24 hours and this past week we were in a strange weather pattern with a lot of rain most days on and off instead of the typical summer pattern here of late afternoon showers. They got it done last Friday though…and since you have to not park on it for a couple days while the seal dries and sets we took advantage of our neighbors who are on an Alaska caravan with their RV and not expected back until late August and borrowed their driveway. And as you can see in the before picture the pond out back is pretty low as we’ve not had a lot of rain…and even the post cleaning week of rain only brought the level back up about a foot max.

Before

After

Neil had a checkup with Dr. Warrier…she’s the retina specialist he sees after he needed a little tasering down of a weak spot a few years back. He’s all good to go for another year though.

We’re making progress on the “we have no Elks Lodge” front as well. Turns out that out lodge has some money in the bank but no lodge, another lodge on the north side of the river has no money but a paid for building, and a third lodge south of the river no money but a paid for building as well but declining membership and they’re competing with all of the high end eateries down in Cape Coral. Our lodge management has been looking since last summer but they’ve had a champagne taste and beer budget problem. They lost out on 2 potential places based on cost and too close to a school for an alcohol license and on a third because the plans kept getting rejected. Finally…they admitted to themselves that with all 3 lodges in steady but small or declining membership that merging the 3 lodges made the most sense. This was attempted for 2 of the 3 lodges last summer but both sets of management got into a squabble about which name and number would be kept and it fell apart. So…we’re working on getting a completely new name and number and will become the Central Lee County but until the meetings for approval later this month happen it’s not a done deal yet. So hopefully we’ll have some resolution on that front soon and can move along…Connie will be happy that the Ladies can have Bingo again and I think they’re going to move it to a weekday evening as with our symphony tickets and her chorus Sunday afternoons have been a problem.

On the tech front…Neil’s upgraded all the computers in the house except for his laptop…which just seems wrong because as the computer guy he’s supposed to have the fastest computer in the house and right now his is the slowest. He’s still thinking on what to do…in reality he doesn’t do photo processing on the laptop and has repurposed Connie’s old M1 MacBook Air for the travel computer since it’s the lightest and is more than enough to backup memory cards while on travel. However…since rule number 1 is that the computer guy gets the fastest computer I think he’s gonna end up with a new one anyway and he’ll probably get a loaded one just in case he needs to do some image processing with it. As part of getting the new M4 Max Mac Studio setup for his processing…he’s arranged all the drives so that shifting the Studio Display to a laptop if needed will be a lot easier. 

And on the political front…we predicted months ago…Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk have fallen out with each other. The proximate cause is that Musk trashed the “Big Beautiful Bill” as not actually cutting spending and as actually increasing the debt and deficit. He is completely correct…and the Congress and White House are gaming the system to claim it’s actually doing the opposite of what it does. Musks time as a special government employee was about out anyway…it’s a maximum of 130 days in a calendar year…and his companies have taken a severe economic hit with the DOGE and all the other crap he’s been pulling. And since his now named Ship rocket (which used to be the BFR for Big F***ing Rocket until it was renamed) has now failed 9 out of 9 launches and needs major redesign to beef up the structure which will limit both the completely reusable aspect as well as the payload capacity. I think we can take it to the bank that we’re not going to either Mars or the moon again anytime soon…the former because the BRG is a POS and the latter because while the SLS can get astronauts to lunar orbit there’s no landing or ascent vehicle going to be available anytime soon.

Neil actually got a couple of images for me yesterday…we had a Green Heron earlier in the week but it didn’t stay long enough for a photo. We’ve had a couple of off and on appearances by a pair of female Mallard Ducks but they usually leave before the light gets enough to get a photo. Yesterday we had a couple of Black Bellied Whistling Ducks which we’ve never seen before and there was enough light for him to actually get a few shots. The genders look the same so no idea whether these are male or female…but since they mate for life a male/female pair is the most likely.

Black Bellied Whistling Ducks

20250606 Z8 LPR 1079.

20250606 Z8 LPR 1061.

If they had been flying you could see the white wing bar on the leading edges of the wings…they’re the only species of whistling duck with the bar. This image is from Wikipedia.

Interesting things found on the net.

Everybody knows that Christopher Columbus “discovered” America even though the Indians already knew it was here and he was lost and looking for the Orient anyway. But back then European ships were pretty small. The smaller model in the image below is of one of Columbus’s ships from 1492 while the larger one is the flagship of the Chinese Admiral Zheng He who lived from 1371-1434. The Chinese had a whole bunch of far larger ships than European navies did at the time.

Zheng He vs Columbus.

Over in the Swiss Alps there used to be a village named Blatten south of the capital Bern…emphasis on the used to be. It was famous for the views of the large Birch Glacier on the mountain overlooking the valley. Well…the government figured out that a landslide was likely to happen so they evacuated the entire population…and it was a good thing they did. Here’s a shot of the before and after of the village.

Swiss Landslide.

And finally…a little math nerdery. You’ll need a calculator this one so grab your phone and check it out.

Phone Number Trick.

Pretty cool, eh?

Cyas.

Posted in Critters, Homebody, Medical, Technology, WIldlife | Leave a comment

Multitudinous Tech Upgrades

Posted on 2025/05/04 by Gunther

Well…we been doing a lot of that lately…upgrading tech. As I discussed a month or two back…Neil had to get a new higher capacity RAID array for the photo processing machine back in the office but then we needed to do some more.

It started with Connie’s laptop…a 4+ year old M1 MacBook Air…the drive was getting pretty close to full and it’s not upgradeable internally so it was time for a new one. So…he ordered her a new M4 MacBook Air which is about the same size and weight but he got her a much bigger drive. She was sort of bummed that the Rose Gold color she had is no longer available but opted for the silver blue color option.

But ya know…the IT guy can’t let anybody have the best computer in the house…no sireee…that just can’t be allowed to happen. So…he did some thinking and his original idea was to get a new high end laptop for himself and photo processing on it instead of the desktop back in the office…he would carry it back there and use the big display of course. But then he figgered out a couple issues with that plan. First off…the desktop would need to stay around since it does other stuff; it’s the home file server, print server, scanner server and laptop backup destination. And besides that…he would have to carry his laptop back and forth every time he wanted to do something photo wise. So…idea one was out of the running; but then we got into that whole tariff thing from the clown car circus in DC and that’s gonna make prices go up when they’re fully implemented. Now we don’t need new iPhones, iPads, or watches as they’re still fairly new…but the photo processing machine and his laptop are both again 4 years old and while still reasonably quick they’re no longer the speed demons on the block. 

So he ended up ordering a new Studio desktop with the M4 Max chip which is quite an upgrade to the M1 Max in the old one and got the all setup and running. He adde a new multifunction mouse to make it easier to cull photos and pick the keepers for processing as well. The only thing left to upgrade his laptop and he’s picked out what he wants and will get it on order this week.

When he was ordering Connie’s new laptop he looked at the trade in value of the old one and it was just under 200 bucks…so they got to thinking and he ended up repurposing her old one as the travel laptop. Yeah…the drive isn’t big but since he doesn’t really do photo processing when they’re traveling but just needs it to run the camera memory card backups to a couple of small external SSDs anyway…and since it is a couple pounds lighter than his higher end laptop it will be much easier to schlep around on traveling excursions. He went ahead and set up both of their email accounts on it and they’ll be happy to have a lighter electronics bag on future trips.

Lemme see…what else is going on. It’s getting into summer down here and we are running the A/C most of the time. For the next month or so we will be able to open up for a few hours most mornings as long as temp and humidity outside allows but probably by June we’ll be closed up for the summer. 

And the idiots up in DC on both sides are just continuing to be…idiots. Looks like Connie and Neil were right back before the election last year…we were screwed no matter who won.

Neil hasn’t been on any photo trips lately…but he did want to test out the new image processing hardware as well as some notable improvements in the Lightroom software he uses to manage and edit photos…so I had him put together a few edits on some of last year and early this year’s outings.

These first two are a pair that he printed up and donated to Connie’s Florida Ladies of Elks Chance Auction at the upcoming convention in Orlando…they printed up nicely on our Epson EcoTank 8550 printer at 13 by 19 inches. First is the Richibucto Lighthouse up in Canuckistan just after dawn from their trip up there in the RV and the second is a Bull Elk in the Madison River that parallels the road coming in from West Yellowstone where they parked their RV when they were up there several times. Again…taken right after dawn so wonderful morning light…and hey, it’s an Elk so it will likely go down well at an Elks function.

D75_3883_Luminar2018 edit 2 Edit Edit Edit 2 Edit.

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Kildeer from out back of the lanai.

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A few from Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary and Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive this year.

Male Redwinged Blackbird

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Golden slippered Snow Egret in his breeding finest to…ahem…attract the ladies.

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He converted this one to B&W and heightened up the contrast…there isn’t much color in it anyway but the tones and shapes appeal to him.

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Great Blue Heron with breakfast…one of Connie’s shots.

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Reddish Egret using his patented sunshade fishing technique…and again in breeding plumage.

DxO_DeepPRIMEXD_20240222_Fort DeSoto_Z8_8730-NEF_DxO_DeepPRIMEXD.

Goshawk in Serengeti.

20240401 Serengetti Z8 0018.

Lilac Breasted Roller.

20240401 Serengetti Z8 0445.

Giraffe…one in color and the second in what’s known as High Key.

20240401 Serengetti Z8 0567 Enhanced NR.

20240401 Serengetti Z8 0567 Enhanced NR 2.

Northern Shrike.

20240401 Serengetti Z9 5270 NEF 20240402 DxO_DeepPRIMEXD2.

20240401 Serengetti Z8 1151 NEF 20240402 DxO_DeepPRIMEXD2.

Prototypical African safari image…acacia tree with a storm in the background early in the morning he thinks (although it could be late in the afternoon, he can’t remember)

20240401 Serengetti Z9 5760.

And a few from the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica last summer.

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Connie got the one from their room in the resort.

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Capuchin monkey…note the use of the prehensile tail in the second as they crawl through the trees.

20240707 CR Z8a 8699-Enhanced-NR.

20240707_CR_Z8a_8753 NEF DxO XD2.

Interesting things found on the net…and you have to be a geek for this one.

For the non geeks…Schrödinger was the physicist that came up with the quantum mechanics theory that if you put a cat in the box and could not observe it then it could be either alive or dead and you could only know by observing it which would possibly change it’s alive/dead state…he did this as an illustration of one of those quantum mechanics things. Heisenberg was another quantum mechanics physicist who came with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Theory which says you can either know the precise location of the quantum particle or its velocity but that it is impossible to know both.

Like I said…ya gotta be a geek for it to make sense. Both of those theories have been proven correct as quantum mechanics physics advanced.

Cyas.

 

 

Posted in Africa, Costa Rica, Critters, Technology, WIldlife | Leave a comment

He Got Done Faster Than I Figured

Posted on 2025/04/11 by Gunther

Yep…Neil actually finished processing the images from Corkscrew pretty quickly so they’ll be down below in a bit.

Not too much else is new since last Monday…we went over to Elks 2742 for Show Me The Money (or Bingo for Dummies as Neil named it) and dinner. On the Elks front…it looks like the place we were going to move into is going to require too much expensive modification even assuming we can get the city to approve the plans so there is some discussion going on that the Fort Myers, North Fort Myers, and Cape Coral lodges might merge into a single new lodge that has more members. Each of the 3 lodges has something contribute to a new merged lodge so hopefully the political considerations that killed our last merger discussions have gone away.

And we went to Walmart and picked up groceries…but there’s a Connie oopsie there. We started doing the order online and pickup thing during the pandemic thing and have continued to do so since it takes us 30 minutes or so to make up the list, pick a time for pickup, and input the list into the Walmart app…then just a quick trip down to pick things up. Plenty faster than wandering around the store ourselves amongst all the strange people that are in Walmart. We still get a few things at Publix that aren’t available at Walmart though.

Anyway…we use these ScotchBrite green scrubbing pads…Neil called them greenies in the Navy…to clean our hand wash dishes and we were out. They normally come in a pack of 6 and a pack lasts us about a year…we toss them in the dishwasher when they get grungy and toss them when they start to fall apart. So she’s going through the Walmart app and found and asked Neil if a pack of 10 would be OK…he said sure and she didn’t look at the price or the details and just ordered them. Turns out that it was actually a pack of 10 packages each containing 6 of them and the price was $45. So…we have now a lifetime supply of the darned things. We always say that we try not to be deliberately stupid but accidental stupidity happens all on its own and can’t really be worked around…but we still have a lifetime supply of greenies now.

Neil’s thinking about upgrading his laptop and upgrading Connie’s Z50 camera to the new Z50II version…she is running on 4-5 year old tech and the II model while it has the same sensor also has he latest version of the CPU chip and the associated better auto focus software including animal detect and eye detection along with a faster frame rate. That upgrade is going to happen and he’s still cogitating on the laptop upgrade.

OK, onwards to photos. The water was getting sort of low down at Corkscrew so we skipped the long portion of the walk out to the tower that looks over the grassland and stayed mostly in the wooded section of the boardwalk and the two wet areas known as the Lettuce Lakes due to one of the plants that is abundant around them looking a lot like lettuce.

Male cardinal was our first specimen just a few yards after leaving the visitor center…Connie didn’t get a photo here because the limited auto focus didn’t lock onto the bird…hence she now agrees she needs that upgrade..

20250403 Z8B Corkscrew 8219-DxO.

Flower and bee

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Backlight spiderweb…there was no color in this one to speak of so Neil converted it to black and white as one of those artsy pattern and tone photos.

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Then there was this thing he found…color version first and then a black and white version…again one outhouse tone and pattern images. He actually likes the black and white one better for this particular shot.

20250403 Z8B Corkscrew 8224-DxO.

20250403 Z8B Corkscrew 8224-DxO-2.

Roseate Spoonbill.

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Juvenile White Ibis…they’re brown and then turn white so this one is an almost adult. Strangely opposite to the Glossy Ibis which is white as a juvenile and turns the black glossy color when mature.

20250403 Z8B Corkscrew 8257-DxO.

Connie’s been practicing her panning for catching birds in flight…and this shot of a Great Egret was a pretty decent shot except for the lack of critical focus on the bird itself…that will be helped out by conversion to the new model and also he’s trying to get her to change and select the shutter speed she needs rather than the aperture in the lens as some of the soft focus in this bird is motion blur due to too slow of a shutter speed…she was at 1/320 second and needed at least 1/1600 to freeze the motion and 1/3200 would have been better.

20250403 Z50 Corkscrew 6128-DxO.

A different Great Egret shaking water off its bill after swallowing breakfast.

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Snow Egret…started on the log and hopped to the stump and then flew off.

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Gator.

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Barred owl female and her three owlets…these were directly over the boardwalk about 15 feet up which made for less than optimum composition…but hey, ya take what you get sometimes and in the absence of anti gravity boots getting up to their level for an eye to eye shot just wasn’t happening.

20250403 Z50 Corkscrew 6201-DxO.

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And mom after she flew away from the nest across the lake…then down into the grass to eat something.

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Male Anhinga…still in breeding plumage as you can see by the brighter tan feather tips on the tail.

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Tricolor Heron, sometimes called a Louisiana Heron.

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Juvenile Black Crowned Night Heron.

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Great Blue Heron with breakfast and then a cropped version…Connie just missed getting the toss and swallow shot.

20250403 Z50 Corkscrew 6232-DxO.

20250403 Z50 Corkscrew 6232-DxO-2.

Another Tricolor…Neil likes the green reflections on the water here.

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Female Red Bellied Woodpecker…the male’s red cap extends all the way to in front of his eyes as opposed to the grey top cap the female has. This feeder is normally frequented by Painted Buntings instead of woodpeckers but they were not there…not sure if the larger birds drove them off or it just isn’t their time to be here. There are 3 or 4 feeders literally less than 10 feet from the visitor center door.

20250403 Z8B Corkscrew 8603-DxO.

And that was our day…they stopped by Costco on the way home for some meat to restock the chest freezer, then at the Winn Dixie liquor store for some more adult beverages, and then at the Home Depot to visit the Italian Sausage sandwich food truck there and bring home lunch.

Just one interesting thing from the net today…and I think I may have used this one before. Back in 1911…the Titanic was the largest ocean liner built and this is a bow on view of it compared to one of today’s cruise ships…that isn even the Icon of the Seas which is the largest one afloat.

Cyas.

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Good News This Time

Posted on 2025/04/07 by Gunther

Well, I got some decent news for ya today…

Connie and Neil went down to Corkscrew last Thursday and got some nice shots…its getting to the end of the breeding season but the water at the two Lettuce Lakes is still up enough to  allow the waders to feed and so there was still a decent number available. 

Unfortunately…I don’t have those images for you today since Neil and Connie were overcome by life…but I do have a couple of quick ones he got out by the pond out back that I’ll get to in a bit.

As noted last time…they got last minute tickets to the National Symphony Orchestra and as I reported it was good…but then had a Sarasota Symphony concert last Friday evening. They had shifted to Sunday afternoon matinee performances a few years back because getting back home at 2300 or later is just no fun…but because of her Mastersingers commitments she couldn’t attend on Sunday. We left early, ate dinner at our usual Longhorn Steak House only it was pre instead of post concert…then headed over to the concert hall. We stayed for the opening piece which was a piece by contemporary composer Peter Boyer named Horizons and it was the best modern piece we’ve ever heard. Mostly current composers are into atonal and noise rather than music but Horizons was well worth it. Then it was the Beethoven 3rd Piano Concerto which was excellently played by the soloist…and we can now say that we’ve heard an Elton John piece as the extra by a classical musician…it was a jazzed up version of Bennie and the Jets and was actually quite good as well albeit unexpected. None of us were overly enamored by the piece after the intermission…the Brahms 4th Symphony and Connie had an early rehearsal Saturday morning so we left at half time and were home about 2200 or so.

Saturday she was off most of the afternoon for the dress rehearsal of the Mastersingers concert…then on Sunday it was Mass and the concert. Our original pans were to eat on the way home but Neil was feeling poorly all day with stomach issues so we just came home and ate some chicken noodle leftovers…it had Port wine instead of Marsala wine and mushrooms in the sauce and was pretty tasty. Along the way the other day when he was cooking it…he called it Chicken Port…we wondered what the basic difference between Port and Marsala is…turns out that both are sweet, fortified wines (fortified means they add extra alcohol)…but Port is made from white wine grapes and Marsala from red wine grapes. Then they’re both aged in barrels…typically those started as bourbon barrels since bourbon requires new white oak charred barrels which the distillers then sell to the rum producers to age rum and then they sell them to Port, Marsala, and Madeira (another fortified, sweet wine) wine producers and then they probably sell them to somebody else for something. Along the way the barrels soak up some flavors from the bourbon and rum and pass that to the wine.

Today we had left over pork carne asada with peppers and onions in corn tortillas…we had some of that on Saturday and kept the rest for today. And now she’s off to the Mastersingers rehearsal place…no more music for the season but they do have the end of the year annual meeting to go over schedule for next season and assorted admin business stuff. And oh yeah…we had the Lee Country inspector this morning to close out the post work inspection for the permit the HVAC guys had to get to replace our A/C unit last week. Turns out our 10 year old unit needed a new coil. They run $3500 and come with just a year warranty and nothing on the labor so it was better to just replace the entire unit and compressor…we got a Lennox which because of the way the coil is built will solve an ongoing problem we’ve had where the filter which sits at the bottom of the vertical unit gets sucked up into the coil area. The Lennox has a dual sided coil and the sides are much more vertical so that allows a better filter retaining mechanism.

Hopefully…the current stupidity coming out of DC from both sides will stop soon…but I fear that’s pretty much a forlorn hope at this point. 

Hopefully he will get to the Corkscrew images this week. With that though…we did see an old friend out at the pond over the weekend and a never before seen here at our pond critter.

Ragnar…the big gator we see…hasn’t been around in 4 or 5 months but he was out sunning himself the other day on the other side of the pond. He’s a big dude…probably 8 or 9 feet long and is never seen on the house side of the pond. The smaller two come over this side occasionally and Neil’s gotten some photos of them in the past literally 10 feet from our lanai.

20250405 Z8 LPR 8631.

Then there was this female Mallard Duck…we’ve been here a bit over 5 years now and this is the first duck we’ve sen.

20250406 Z8 LPR 8635.

Hopefully those two will keep ya primed up for more later this week…assuming he gets off his keister and finishes them.

Interesting things found on the net.

Strong Passwoord.

I knew New Zealand was sparsely populated but had no idea that 78% of the country had nobody living there…no inhabitants per square kilometer.

We’ve all looked up at one point…well most of us anyway…and beyond the Big and Little Dippers the most recognizable constellation is Orion which has the distinctive 3 stars in a row forming his belt. Those stars are named Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka which was one thing I didn’t know. The second thing I didn’t know about them is how large thy are. As you can see in the shot below…they’re about as much larger percentage wise than our sun as our sun is larger than the Earth. The first is a triple star system, the second a single star, and the third is a sextuplet start system (we knew about binary and tertiary systems but never heard of anything larger than that). Multiple star systems consist of however many stars that orbit each other in some manner with any possible planets beyond that. Because of the strange orbital mechanics involved…it is unlikely that any but a binary system would have stable enough planetary orbits (if they have planets at all) to offer even a capability to support life as we know it. The three stars forming the belt have Arabic derived names and were known to ancient Arabs as Al Niṭhām which means String of Pearls and you can see how that name came about. The three stars are 1200, 1300, and 2000 light years away and only appear in a line due to the vagaries of geometry. Orion itself is the 26th largest of the 88 named constellations…and contains two of the larger known stars…Betelgeuse and Rigel…and the stars in the constellation range from 500 to over 2000 light years away…the sword stars also include the Orion Nebula which is the remains of a supernova.

Here’s what the complete Orion Constellation looks like. Although it…like most constellations…looks like a 2D object…its actually composed of stars at greatly varying distances so  it only looks like what we call Orion when the 3D is compressed into 2D…and if we were elsewhere in the galaxy it would not be recognizable as the pattern is only visible from near our solar system. And that’s probably way more than you ever wanted to know.

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Cyas.

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Bad News…and Good News

Posted on 2025/03/20 by Gunther

Ok, here we are the day after Saint Paddy’s day and it’s a beautiful high 70s day with clear skies, low humidity, and slight winds here in SW FL. But…it’s getting on towards summer when we’ll need the A/C. For that, Neil did filter and drain pipe maintenance items the other day and we discovered a potential problem with the drain system. Going to turn it on in a couple days and see if it’s really something we need a repair guy to come and look at…the house is 10 years old and 13 is the average life so we’re not there yet but who knows.

Anyways…we moved Date Night from today until tomorrow (Wednesday) for the good news below…Connie’s off to choir practice and then we’ll have leftover stuffed shells for dinner. Neil made the sauce but we buy premade stuffed shells and manicotti because they (like lasagna) are just too much trouble to make for two. We found a nice brand at one of the higher end stores here and always get 2 meals out of a $7 or $8 package. This time he made bacon, onion, mushroom, and green pepper marinara sauce instead of his normal Italian sausage just to be different.

(Short timeout here for preparation of an Old Fashioned cocktail…Connie’s gone so us fellas are on our own)

So…sorta bad news but there’s some good news in it as well (in addition to the actual good news). We were supposed to go to San Antonio on Friday for a Saint-Saéns Organ Symphony #3 concert, got the tickets right after Christmas and had flight/hotel/rental car we paid for as well. This morning Connie was just verifying the venue for the concert as the orchestra there plays in 2 different places and it turned out that after we bought the tickets they changed the program. Now I understand things like that happen…soloist gets sick, organ breaks or whatever…but really…no notification to ticket holders? The symphony (we’ve heard it probably 50 times around the world and use it as an excuse to travel since we like pipe organ music) got replaced with something we know of but at getting on towards $2,000 for the whole trip to hear something we don’t really care about seemed dumb. So we cancelled the flight/car/hotel and since we paid for refundable tickets for those are getting money back. She emailed the orchestra to see if they’re going to refund the tickets as well…it says all sales are final but we feel like if they bait and switch on the program audience members should get a refund. We’ll see what happens there. So sorta good news is that at worst it will only cost us the 200 bucks for the venue tickets…and also sorta good news is that we now have some free days this weekend where it was pretty crowded this week before hand.

And the good news is that the other day Connie happened across a reference to the National Symphony Orchestra (they normally play at the Kennedy Center in DC) are in town for a concert tomorrow night at Barbara B Mann arts center. So…we had already moved Date Night…she’s in a six week course over at church on Catholic doctrine…she’ll just dress for the evening and Neil will go with here then we’ll head down to Logan’s Roadhouse down that way for dinner and then on over to the concert hall. 

Neil his new 48 TB RAID array all setup and in operation…so the only thing left is to order another big hard drive for some additional backup. The new one make more noise than the old one since it uses full size rotating hard drives instead of the quieter slower spinning laptop size…but the old array was maxed out on size and was getting close to full…making it time to upgrade anyway. He doesn’t really need 48 terabytes at all…but that’s the sweet spot on price per terabyte in full size hard drives. He’s also got our taxes about ready to go…just need to go over them with Connie to make sure he didn’t fat finger any of the numbers as he typed them in.

She just pulled back into the driveway so I’ll be back later after dinner for some funnies.

Well…dinner was wonderful but after cocktails and wine I never got back to it on Tuesday…and then yesterday I got caught up in other things so didn’t get to it then either. However…I can confirm that the National Symphony Concert was excellent. Connie got dressed for Date Night before heading over to her course at the church…then after that we went down to Logan’s Roadhouse for dinner as it is close to the concert venue. Dinner was pretty good…much better than we thought it would be…and we got to the venue an hour ahead of the concert for a pre concert glass of wine and some of their pretty spectacular candied pecans…but unfortunately the candied pecan lady wasn’t there last night so we just had wine for her and some Jameson Irish Whiskey for Neil. The first piece was advertised as being based on slavery era spirituals and while the basic themes may have come from there art wasn’t spiritual sounding at all. All 4 movements of that piece were pretty musical and we enjoyed them…but they weren’t spirituals at all. Then Hilary Hahn played the Brahms Violin Concerto…she was a child prodigy who made her professional debut at age 12 in 1991 in Baltimore. We heard her play while she was still a teenager there before we retired and moved into the RV and have heard her a couple more times over the years…she’s pretty darned good. After intermission they played the Beethoven 5th Symphony…that’s the one that starts out with duh duh duh daaaa…anybody that watches TV or the movies or listens to the radio would recognize the opening notes of the first movement. The piece was again excellent although the tempo was pretty fast…in fact faster than we’ve ever heard the symphony…but conductors routinely ignore the beats per minute the composers have always noted on their composition…in this case it’s marked as 108 beats per minute (I googled since I had no idea what it was) and the conductor used 150 or 160 instead. The NSO is here on a 5 concert 8 day tour in southern Florida…the moving around leaves no time for rehearsals so it is the same concert 5 times and they obviously had completed rehearsals before arriving here. 

The other difference was the enthusiasm of the conductor…we’ve never seen as much movement and jumping around as he did last night; too many Red Bulls maybe I dunno…but overall it was a highly successful evening.

Let’s see…what else I got…

Oh yeah…up in DC the idiocy from both sides continues to mount. The President seems to have ignored several court orders and both he and other admin officials say that the courts have no legal authority to stop executive actions…but longstanding SCOTUS cases say that they do have such an authority so I guess we’ll see what happens there. Then there is the DOGE claims that there is massive fraud in Social Security payments which just isn’t true (or at least they haven’t presented any actual evidence of it beyond “we say it’s there”). There might be some fraud…but according to SSA staff it’s minimal and there are not any 150 old year people still receiving benefits. According to the left however…this is all an insidious play to kill Social Security altogether…ya know, “the sky is falling”. I’m sure the actual truth lies someplace in the middle. And then there’s Mr. Bannon who went on a podcast the other day and said that the President would run again and win in 2028…at least according to him they’re working on a solution to get around the 25th amendment. In reality…just like the statement on birthright citizenship in the 14th the wording that you can only be elected President twice is pretty clear and either of those getting overturned seems even less likely than if I decided to transition from being a bear to a new species…say a cephalopod…nah, it ain’t happening. In the foreign policy arena…the current admin is obviously throwing the Ukrainians under the bus and cozying up to the Russians…which is about as dumb as most of the things happening in DC.

Interesting things found on the net.

Dog dating service.

And finally…Neil’s fave one of these. I don’t remember using it before but when I moved it from Funny Pics folder into the Done subfolder the ‘outer told me it was already there so mebbe I did…so whatever.

Cyas.

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Nothing Really Happening

Posted on 2025/03/10 by Gunther

Wow…a month since my last post and while I wish I had something interesting to blather about the truth of the matter is that I don’t. We’re just living life down here…enjoying mostly warm weather even though it’s winter and making do.

Connie’s had a busy time of it…she had a Fort Myers Mastersingers concert and between two performances, extra rehearsals, and all that pretty much took up an entire week. We went down to the Valentines Party at the Cape Coral Elks Lodge since ours is still closed…and there’s no real progress towards getting the plans approved for the place they’re trying to lease so management is holding some more discussions with other lodges in similar straits to see if something can get worked out. 

We got our dryer vent cleaned on a neighborhood special price, got one of our windows that had a busted spring mechanism fixed…and Neil had to replace one of his hard drives. He’s got an array that one of the 4 drives in went belly up, and it was getting short on space anyway so he bought a larger one that has more capacity. Getting data backed up, the new drive configured, and all the data restored to the new one then fixing all of the related backup tasks pretty much killed another week. 

We got the oil changed in both cars and a new set of tires for Connie’s Mazda CX-5.

Add in a Sarasota Symphony concert and a coupe of periods when one or the other of us wasn’t feeling well and…you end up being a month out from the last post.

Neil worked on our income taxes today…and we’ll be filing our last Alabama state return for 2024. The family timber company land was sold after a great deal of infighting starting in about June of last year. The two folks that manage the company are both older than we are and wanted to retire so they investigated a potential sale of the land and dissolution of the company. Naturally the few shareholders who hunt on the land (it was mostly used for harvesting timber and partly leased out to another hunting club) insisted that they were being “deprived of their birthright to hunt on the land” and figured the rest of us should subsidize their search for Bambi. We like venison as much as the next person does…but penalizing 100 odd shareholders for the benefit of a half dozen doesn’t make much sense…and despite saying they were ready to step up and manage the company none of the naysayers either have the experience to do so or actually stepped up to do anything. The sale finally closed late in the year and we got a nice distribution from the proceeds since we owned something close to 2 percent of the shares. That adds to the 2024 income tax bill of course but it is what it is.

We’ve been watching and scratching our heads at all the cost cutting and job elimination going on up in DC and have to admit that there is some validity in at least the basic idea of what they’re trying to do. Anyone with a functioning brain knows that every government department and agency has some fraud, waste, and abuse going on…but both sides pick and choose the most inflammatory things they can find to demonize both the departments and the other side. We agree that the country has a debt problem and an annual deficit problem…but the only ways that can be fixed are some combination of increased revenue and lowered spending…again, anyone who’s ever worked on a family budget and spending can see that.

However…randomly firing employees and shutting the doors at agencies one doesn’t like isn’t the way to go about it…and neither is issuing crazy executive orders to not spend money that the Congress has provided under their constitutional power of the purse. What should happen is that Teslaman and his organization should come up with ideas to increase revenue and cut spending…and then send that to Congress to actually turn into laws. Congress isn’t blameless here though…for decades they have passed laws that left the actual rules up to agencies and then those agencies change the rules randomly depending on who is in the White House. Congress needs to pass better, more detailed laws…and they need to learn to compromise and to realize that the reason there’re in DC is to get the country’s business done. They’re not there to demonize the other side and eat their own young…which both sides have been doing repeatedly since Jan 20.

Unfortunately though…I don’t see it changing anytime soon,

That’s about all I got for today…sorry it isn’t any more interesting than it is.

I did find a couple interesting things on the net though.

This one tells you how to identify whether a snake is venomous or not…but I have to agree with Pubity’s comment on Corrine’s post.

And finally…

Cyas.

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