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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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Goshawk in Serengeti.

20240401 Serengetti Z8 0018.

Lilac Breasted Roller.

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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)

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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.

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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..

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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.

Posted in Critters, Homebody | Leave a comment

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.

Posted in Homebody, Technology, Ya Can't Fix Stupid | Leave a comment

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.

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

What In The H E Double Toothpicks Are These People Thinking

Posted on 2025/02/11 by Gunther

Or actually…what are they not thinking.

I swear…when you get into politics, government, media or pretty much anything else that attracts media attention these days…you must have to get a lobotomy, forget everything you know about how things work, and just spout whatever line you want. Doesn’t matter which party or which level of government or media…people are just plain not thinking.

Around the old home front though…we had a 2 day trip up to Umitilla FL (northwest of Orlando) for the Elks Quarterly Meeting that Connie had to attend and Neil went along for a Friday morning drive around Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive and he actually has some images for me to post in a bit. Our reservation for a king bed room at the Comfort Inn in Tavares got hosed up…probably because they were fully booked and we got there about 2100 at night after a Sarasota Orchestra chamber music concert on the way. We ended up with a dual queen bed room rather than the king bed we had reserved…and Connie was all kind of PO’ed over that…the front desk basically said we’re full and don’t care. She’s right though…if you reserve and pay for a king bed they ought not to give it away to whoever wanders in off the street. Just tell them you’re out of king beds since you’ve already reserved one for those people smart enough to make a reservation ahead of time.

Other than that…not much else is new. We had our annual Medicare appointments and they told Connie to eat fewer carbs. So we’re eating a lot more salads and veggies and trying to eat less sweet stuff and cut down on taters and pasta. She’s lost a couple pounds already and Neil needs to check and see if he has as well. 

She’s off to chorus practice tonight…and has a concert of the Bruckner Mass Saturday and Sunday after next…Neil got a ticket for the Sunday matinee. They’ve got a dress rehearsal before the Saturday evening performance and parking there is a bit limited so she’ll go on her own on Saturday and they’ll go together on Sunday…probably eat dinner on the way home afterwards rather than come home and cook.

OK, let’s get on to the various stupidities…in the interest of brevity I won’t bother posting the link to the news article but all of these are from the last couple of days.

Up in NC…the governor is pissed that the legislature passed over the previous governor’s veto a couple of bills limiting the governor’s power. Now the new governor is suing the legislature because according to him he was elected governor and thus the people want him to have the powers that were taken away and because the legislature made a “partisan” decision. Sure…it was a partisan decision but that’s politics for you. The legislature passed the bills, the governor vetoed them, and they overrode his veto…because that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Partisan doesn’t mean bad…it just means operating by the parties principles…and of course passing those bills over the veto is certainly partisan…but they’re still duly passed law. Just because he doesn’t like it doesn’t make it illegal.

The President’s killing of USAID, stopping all federal payments, giving Musk access to various computer systems, and banning birthright citizenship have all been place on hold by the courts. We’ll let the legal brouhaha play out…but fi it eventually gets to the SCOTUS, especially on the citizenship thing…it’s likely going to be a 9-0 vote against him. Yes…I know they’re conservative justices…and that liberals are convinced that they will give him whatever he wants…but they’re wrong. Conservative justices read the wording in the Constitution for what it says…not what they want it to mean…and born in the US and subject to our jurisdiction (which means the parents can be arrested and prosecuted) is what the 14th amendment says…so it’s going nowhere.

Out in Idaho…the city of Boise converted a park with some tennis courts over to pickleball courts…probably because it’s a popular game these days and takes less athletic skill, strength, and ease of movement than tennis. But the folks in the article are suing the city over the decision because of…the noise from the courts which has an “especially intruding quality” leaving them “tortured” and as a result they’ve incurred $1.6 million in losses due to the value of their property and psychological injuries related to the noise. Frankly…we think they are someplace off the reservation. We have picket ball courts in our neighborhood and they are maybe 50 yards from our house. We leave the windows open if all possible because we like fresh air…and while we can occasionally hear the players hitting the ball…it’s less of an intrusion than traffic noise and mostly we don’t notice it. 

There’s this idiot politician…or is that redundant…who claims that “Muslims don’t belong in America”. He claims that Islam exists “for the sole purpose of conquering Christendom and ending the Jewish people” (obviously completely bogus) and, therefore “they” do not belong in America. Doesn’t care if they are citizens, born here, converts, or whatever…Muslims “don’t belong here”.

Out in the PRC…one of their legislators is working on a ballot initiative to allow the state to secede from the union. Seems to me that the Civil War essentially wrote the law on that and anyway the SCOTUS after the war was over ruled that joining the United States was not revocable.

And it’s not just in the US…over in the UK there is a woman who was in a hospital bed for 550 days with a diagnosis of bacterial infection. She’s been medically cleared for release most of that time but the system (remember they have socialized nationalized medical care…so be careful what you wish for)…and the system has been unable to find a suitable place for her to be moved to. Nonetheless…she was evicted from her hospital room, arrested, and moved to some other facility which may or may not (the article doesn’t say) be suitable for her needs.

Getting back to the mess in DC…Representative Rabin has introduced the Birthright Citizenship Act which “ensures that U.S. citizenship is granted only to children born in America who have at least one parent who is a citizen, lawful permanent resident, or serving in our Armed Forces.”. Now let’s ignore the obvious idea that this would violate the 14 amendment…but this guy thinks that he can introduce a bill to change the constitution. There is a way to change the constitution…but news flash…introducing legislation is specifically ally *not* the way to make it happen. That requires an amendment and that needs 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress and 3/4 of the states. Amending the constitution is admittedly hard…but it was specifically designed to be hard…to eliminate the idea that a small majority could change it. 

A judge today (or maybe yesterday) issued a decision that basically said the administration was required to spend money that Congress had authorized and appropriated. Nonetheless…both Mr. Musk and the VP said that the judiciary had no right to overrule the “legitimate powers of the executive”. Seems to me…and I know that Vance went to law school…the courts are part of that whole 3 co-equal branches thing and ever since Marbury vs Madison the SCOTUS has been and will continue to be the arbiter of what powers the other two branches have…its that whole checks and balances thing. The admin needs to go back and reread the Impoundment Act which makes it mandatory that the Executive branch spend the money that the Legislative branch approved based on their powers under the constitution. 

Now…that doesn’t mean that we should just spend more…both parties have been spending like drunken sailors for decades and we as a country have a budget deficit and debt problem…and it needs to get fixed…but this is the wrong way to do it.

Let me tell you a little story…there was this guy named Clinton who was President a while back…you may have heard of him. He ran on a platform that he would balance the budget so after he was inaugurated he had his VP head up a commission to figure out how to do that and once they were done legislation was introduced to achieve the goal…and ya know…it worked. He had several balanced budgets during his time in office and he went about doing it the right way. Mr. Musk and the President are right…we do need to cut spending but in reality we probably also need to increase revenue since the majority of federal spending is mandatory under previously passed laws. While we like tax cuts as well as the next guy and while it’s also true that the high earners pay the vast majority of the federal income…and it’s also true that lower earners pay less…the old “the rich just need to pay their fair share” argument is just BS. Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders want a wealth tax…not an income tax…but they’ll need a constitutional amendment to do that…and even if they get one the federal government is no more qualified to administer and collect it than they are able to deport 11 million or whatever illegal immigrants. Neither of those goals is achievable…as is going to Mars anytime soon or ridding ourselves of fossil fuels. But…Congress has the power of the purse and they need to figure out how to balance the budget. Idiotic tariffs or unconstitutional wealth taxes aren’t the answer…it would require a hard, concerted effort by both sides and anyone with an IQ higher than room temperature should realize that with 2 parties and their differing goals some compromises in both spending and revenue are the *only* way this problem gets resolved. Unfortunately…in today’s political environment compromise with the other side is a dirty word and usually a death sentence for your political career as the radicals on both the left and right will primary any legislator who dares to work with the other side…and since it’s the fringes that vote in primaries the reasonable politicians will get voted out and we’ll get another election that turns out not to be a vote for the best person but a vote for the least bad person…and that’s a hell of a way to run a railroad as the old saying goes.

Senator Klobuchar has called for bipartisan working with the other side…which 40 years ago was pretty common but is apparently a not allowed thing today. After her call…Salon had an article that says there is “no common ground with fascists”.

One thing that might not be stupid…the President has ordered the mint to stop producing pennies since they cost about 3 cents to make…and in actuality a nickel costs about 14 cents to make. This has the left all up in arms…again…because Congress has the power to define currency. That’s perfectly correct…and the President’s order does not eliminate the penny as currency…they’re still legal tender (just as they are in Canada although production of them has ceased there as well)…he’s just ordered the minting of them to be stopped. Speaking personally…we think that both the penny and nickel should be abolished and federal legislation passed that the price after tax be rounded up or down to the nearest 10 cents and that’s what gets charged…or alternatively make that true for cash transactions and leave the penny and nickel in effect for non cash transactions (this is what they do in Canada and the UK). Heck…if we only want to eliminate the penny just start making nickels out of the same material as the penny but the size of a nickel and that will cut down the cost of making them as well.

I get the whole cutting spending and eliminating waste idea…and the argument about necessary vs unnecessary spending needs to happen…along with the how do we increase revenue as part of the solution since cutting spending significantly is impossible unless we eliminate the mandated spending requirements in law and that’s simply not an achievable goal for either side. 

Finally…and I don’t have the link for this one…there was a TikTok video that contrasted a couple of women in what happened if you left a political party…the two women went through what happened if both were red or both were blue. If both were red…the one said she wasn’t a Republican any more because her beliefs no longer were the same as theirs. The other one agreed that they could still be friends and discuss things since they had known each other since the 3rd grade. Then they pretended the one was leaving the Democrat party…and the other one responded “so you’ve become a racist, fascist pig”. The one leaving said again…we’ve known each other since the 3rd grade and I’m the same person I always was…the other one said “I have a policy of not being friends with Nazis. Given our current political polarization and looking at it from a mostly towards the center viewpoint…there’s a lot of truth in that video.

Ok…that’s enough of that for today…these morons need to actually remember what they were taught in Civics class or read the constitution or whatever is needed…they don’t get to unilaterally change things just because they say so.

OK…let’s have some images…but we’re going to have a little quiz today. Rather than label every image…Ima gonna let you see how much you’ve learned from my previous posts and you get to identify them. I’ll label them with a number and tell you at the bottom what the actual answers are.

1. 20250207_Z8A_Lake Apopka_0277-DxO.

2.

20250207_Z8A_Lake Apopka_0308-DxO.

3.

20250207_Z8B_Lake Apopka_8205-DxO.

4.

20250207_Z8B_Lake Apopka_8188-DxO.

5. 

20250207_Z8A_Lake Apopka_0365-DxO.

6. Flight sequence…she was brining back some nesting material.

20250207_Z8A_Lake Apopka_0574-DxO.

20250207_Z8A_Lake Apopka_0575.

20250207_Z8A_Lake Apopka_0578-DxO.

20250207_Z8A_Lake Apopka_0581.

20250207_Z8A_Lake Apopka_0580.

20250207_Z8A_Lake Apopka_0579.

7.

20250207_Z8A_Lake Apopka_0528-DxO.

8. This is a new one you may not have seen posted here before.

20250207_Z8A_Lake Apopka_0460-DxO.

9.

20250207_Z8A_Lake Apopka_0431-DxO.

 

10.

20250207_Z8A_Lake Apopka_0832.

11.

20250207_Z8A_Lake Apopka_0753.

I think it spotted Neil.

20250207_Z8A_Lake Apopka_0808.

12.

20250207_Z8A_Lake Apopka_0685.

20250207_Z8A_Lake Apopka_0687.

 

 

Ok…got all your guises written down? Here’s the key and I’ll let you grade yourself.

1. Great Egret (black legs and yellow/green bill)

2. Red Winged Blackbird Male (red/yellow swatches on the wing roots)

3. Moorhen

4. Great Blue Heron (or GHB as we call it)

5. Anhinga Male (species dives for food and perches with wings spread to dry them out).

6. Osprey (sometimes called a Fish Eagle although that is actually a different species in Africa). Could be either gender…they’re identical in appearance and size and both bring back nesting material so no hints there.

7. Anhinga Female (brown breast/neck)

8. Gray Headed Swamp Hen (I am not sure I’ve ever posted one of these before so…)

9. Red Winged Blackbird Male

10. Bald Eagle…our national bird. Based on size this is probably a female

11. Snowy Egret (golden slippers and black bill)

12. Red Shouldered Hawk (reddish on breast/shoulder/wing root). This is probably a female since it was bringing nesting material back.

So…how did you do on identification? Let me know in the comments.

Interesting things found on the net.

Only in Japan…their culture is markedly different from western society. They’re one of the few countries that are allowed to domestically produce (final assembly anyway) the F-35 fighter and this is the first one they finished. So…naturally…they got a Shinto priest to bless it.

Image

 

Cyas.

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

The World Hasn’t Stopped Spinning

Posted on 2025/01/27 by Gunther

Well…it’s a week past the inauguration and despite the hue and cry from the other side…the world hasn’t stopped spinning, the sun still comes up in the east, democracy as we know it still exists and the earth still isn’t flat.

That said…let’s see what really happened.

The President declared a national emergency and is sending military to help secure the border. He said he was going to do this and the troops cannot participate in law enforcement as that would violate the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. Numerous illegal immigrant activists have sued over this and I guess we’ll find out what happens later.

He declared an end to birthright citizenship…and to be honest he said he was going to do this as well. Unfortunately…it isn’t as easy as issuing an executive order…the plain text says that born here equals citizenship with a very few exceptions. His lawyers are going to claim that immigrants are not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” doesn’t apply because the illegals are still citizens of whatever country they came from. However…subject to the jurisdiction of means that you’re subject to arrest,  trial, and imprisonment…and that’s certainly true of the illegals…thus this EO will fail on miserably. My guess is that he will lose at the trial court (and it’s already been injunctioned) and lose at the Appeals Court and then either the SCOTUS will decline to take the case (my guess) or take it and rule 9-0 against him. I also think that he knows all of this…but remember…it’s never his fault and he never accepts blame for anything. Thus…even if he knows it will be overturned he can then say “See, I tried” and deflect blame to the courts. In reality…this EO would affect way more than just illegal immigrants giving birth…it would invalidate the citizenship of most people in the country when you actually look at the wording in the EO and think about how current citizens obtained their citizenship.

He’s fired bunch of Inspector Generals at various agencies…without following the law requiring 30 days notice and explanation of the reasons for the termination in detail. Not sure what is going to happen here…at least some of them have said they are showing up to work today and we’ll see what happens. He is perfectly within his rights to fire them…but he has to follow the procedural rules. My guess is that nobody bothered to research if there were actual rules so it was wrong out of ignorance rather than malice.

He’s deported some illegals…but not really many more than the previous administration was deporting. Again…he ran on this and is doing what he said he would do.

He’s cancelled DEI in the government and defined 2 and only 2 sexes. Again…he said he would do this. And to be honest…around here we believe in merit and not quotas so the way DEI has been typically instituted is wrong. We’re all for advancing people of any race, color, creed, or gender…but do it based on merit rather than potentially hire a lesser qualified person because of some quota. As far as sex goes…we don’t believe in transgender and in other than males and females outside of genetic abnormalities. That doesn’t mean any individual can’t dress how they want, modify their bodies if they want, and sleep with whoever they want…it just means that wearing a dress doesn’t make you a woman. All of those other choices are just that…choices…and we’re perfectly fine with whatever choices one makes. However…genetic males participating in female sports (and vice versa) is simply unfair.

Let’s not forget the outrage over the pardons of the Jan 6 rioters. I realize that the left is adamantly against this…but then they claim that former President Biden pardoning his family members is perfectly fine…and the Republicans claim the opposite in both cases. The real answer is…both Presidents issued pardons as one of their presidential powers under the constitution…and while one may not like it in certain cases or like it in others…that doesn’t matter a rat’s behind…presidential powers are presidential powers and not subject to media approval, congressional approval, court approval or any other sort of approval. Like them or not…tough nuggies. Personally…I don’t think either President Biden’s family or the Jan 6 rioters deserved a pardon…and I believe that the George Floyd protestors who took over police precincts and attacked federal buildings should have been charged with crimes as well.

There’s been a whole lot of hoopla over some of the cabinet choices…and again…a President deserves to have his or her choices for leadership posts. We remain unconvinced of the capabilities of some of them…but hey, the man gets his choices. We will be surprised if any of them except Mr. Rubio are still in their position in 4 years…after all he pretty much fires people all the time.

The wildfires in the PRC are still burning…and while we feel for those people a lot of their problems are self inflicted due to decades of mismanagement. It’s the people’s prerogative to vote in whoever they want in the state and establish whatever policies they want of course…but then don’t blame anyone but yourselves when things go to hell. Santa Anna winds have been happening for decades and blaming the fires on “climate change” while ignoring the lack of ire preparedness and building codes that don’t require fireproofing is just foolish…in fact it’s just as foolish as the building codes in Florida not requiring concrete block houses with tile roofs and raised houses in flood plains near the beach or rivers.

In short…nothing really much has changed in DC…the politicians are still being lying politicians and demonizing the other side and we don’t expect that to change. We really long for the days when compromise wasn’t a dirty word.

Let’s see…anything happening around here? Not really. Connie finished up her concerts with the Southwest Florida Symphony of the Beethoven 9th Symphony and they’re now hard at work getting ready for the Bruckner Mass in late February with the Gulf Coast Symphony. We made some reservations for a trip to San Antonio for an Organ Symphony concert and for Neil’s trip to Botswana next summer. Got the oil changed in both cars, had a couple of Date Nights, got our teeth cleaned and a crown replacement for Neil…and that’s just about it. Oh yeah…it’s been mighty chilly the past 10 days or so…we’ve had several overnight lows in the 40s and Neil has had more than one bike ride where he had to dress up like Nanuck of the North before heading out. 

Neil did get a very nice thank you gift from a lady on one of his photo forums. She wanted to transition from a Surface Windows powered tablet and slow spinning external hard drives for her Lightroom use to a MacBook Pro and asked for help on the forum with the transition. The thread immediately devolved into the typical macOS vs Windows arguments…so Neil sent her a private message telling her that either would be fine but if she did decide to shift platforms he would be happy to to help her offline with the transition. She eventually went with a MacBook Pro and SSD drives to store her images…the latter was the real issue with her former setup…the Surface Tablet was part of the problem as it is underpowered for Lightroom needs but the slow drives were the major contributor. Anyway…he spent probably 10 hours or so over a month on the phone with her and another dozen or so emails solving questions and issues with her. She sent him a couple bottles of bourbon including one that is up in the $80 range that he would not normally buy himself…he protested that it was too much and she said it was way cheaper than a paid consultant would have charged her (that’s true, a paid consultant she would have paid at least $1000 over the 3-4 weeks he worked with her). One bottle of Four Roses Small Batch and a more expensive bottle of Angel’s Envy Rye. 

We’re planning on getting down to Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in the next couple of weeks assuming the water levels have gone down enough so that the wading birds can get in. He’s got a request in on the forums to check and see if that’s the case. Hopefully it is and he’ll be able to get me some dadgum wildlife photos to post.

Interesting things found on the net.

Ya might have to think about the old nursery rhyme to get this one…and I suspect most millennials and younger won’t get it at all.

Cyas.

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

More Random Musings

Posted on 2025/01/14 by Gunther

Ok, lessee what’s been goin’ on since my last post.

Basically…nuttin.

We had (well, Neil anyway…Connie was tossing her cookies that morning so she rescheduled hers) routine dental cleanings. Neil needs a crown replaced but otherwise all is fine. She still didn’t feel very well so we cancelled Date Night last Friday and rescheduled it for Sunday since we were going to Sarasota for an orchestra concert anyway. Excellent concert…they played the Dvorak 6th Symphony which we’ve never heard (his 9th or the New World Symphony is the most popular of his works)…and they both enjoyed it so it will be added to our bedtime music selection rotation. In the second half…the opening work was the Ravel Piano Concerto in G. In the program notes it said that Ravel believed that in a concerto the soloist virtuosity should be highlighted and the orchestra play a minor part…and on that the concerto easily delivered as the soloist delivered some pretty fireworks playing. That was only outdone by the fireworks of her outfit though. She is a US citizen of Russian descent and she wore a relatively short bright pink dress with very low cleavage and let’s say a very robust figure…good thing for double sided tape as otherwise in her gyrations there might have been one of those ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ they talk about these days. She matched that with a pair of 4 inch tall neon chartreuse to lime green shoes…and while the combination certainly would have gone well at a party type thing it seemed a bit over the top for a concert soloist…but maybe that’s what the well dressed Russian piano player wears these days. 

This week…well Connie has been and will continue to be very busy. Monday she had Mastersingers rehearsal for their performance this week of the Beethoven 9th Symphony (that’s the one everybody is pretty much familiar with that uses Schiller’s Ode to Joy set to music in the 4th movement) on Friday and Saturday evenings. Tuesday’s she’s off (well Mastersingers at least but she does have a Ladies of Elks meeting and lunch followed by choir rehearsal) and then Wednesday and Thursday she’s got more evening rehearsals with the orchestra and the concert Friday and Saturday. 

Next week we’ve got her rescheduled dental cleaning and Neil’s crown prep and scheduled oil changes in both cars along with rehearsals Monday evening (Mastersingers) and Tuesday (choir) but other than that we have a slightly less hectic schedule next week.

Last week he got our new Epson ET8550 printer setup…it will print up the 13×19 inches and is designed for both normal letter/office printing as well as photographs. He did his first test today on the high quality photo paper and all I can say is…wow, that looks pretty darned good. We’ll use normal copier paper for everyday letters and bingo sheets and the like…but the more expensive (like $4 a sheet for 13×19) paper to print out some of our photos and hang them around the homestead. He’s gone through and picked out 35 or so candidates from our 2024 images and they’ll negotiate together to pick out what he wants to final process and print. Mostly we’ve just used their images for the blog as you know but it’s time to put some of them up where we can see, enjoy, and remember the places we’ve been. We’ve ordered some 13×19 picture frames and as soon as they do their culling and he finishes the editing and printing process I’ll post some shots of the finished pieces up on our walls.

And oh yeah…it’s the Presidential Inauguration next week too…and Congress will start to work on the President’s agenda…and the Democrats will complain about ‘the rich need to pay there fair share’ and all that jazz…but I would call their attention to
this put out by taxfoundation.org using actual data from the IRS rather than the admittedly (by both sides) carefully edited soundbites.

The top 1% pay an average 25.9%, more than 8 times the 3.3% average paid by thew bottom 50%.

The top 50% pay 97.7% of all income tax and the bottom 50% the other 2.3%

Since 2001…the top 1% share of total income tax paid has risen from 34% to 45%…all other groups percentage of the total has declined.

So…what I’m wondering is…why does the left and Democratic Party insist that the rich are not paying their fair share? Looking at income tax paid…they are certainly paying their fair share and more. Looking at wealth…yes…a lot of left people compare their income tax dollars to their wealth dollars and come up with absurdly low tax rates…but that is an apples to oranges comparison designed solely to stoke outrage. We do not and cannot tax wealth in this country…it is specifically unconstitutional and even to have an income tax required the 16th amendment back in 1913. Passing a wealth tax as Senators Sanders and Warren demand…well, in the first place it would require another amendment and given today’s toxic political environment that isn’t happening…but that’s not the real problem. The real problem is defining wealth.…that’s pretty easy with things like stocks and bonds…but how does one determine the price of a Picasso or Da Vinci painting…the government simply doesn’t have the technical capacity or knowledge to determine those things…and even if they did if the value next year is less does the owner get a rebate from last year’s tax due? Nope…they’re not interested in that…people that demand a wealth tax are really interested wealth confiscation and transference from the people that either earned or inherited it to use that money to buy votes and voters. 

Speaking of Presidential things…Neil found this comment earlier in the week on fark.com…he can’t find the exact site again to pass along but basically the article said that Mr. Trump says a lot of outrageous things because he wants to be on the front page every day and that the media puts him there because they want the headlines. He thought to himself that is pretty much the case. 

Now…we’re not really fans of Mr. Trump personally or as a Presidential acting person…but overall we like his policies better than those of the left which is what we got the last 4 years and would have gotten a lot more of if the election had gone the other way. But really…most of the things he’s said are just meant to rile up his opposition and are not going to happen.

Deport 11 million illegal immigrants…and yes, they are illegal, not undocumented. Isn’t going to happen since the government doesn’t have the capacity to do it and the courts aren’t going to allow it anyway.

Deploy the military to accomplish the aforementioned deportation…yeah, the Posse Commitas Act of 1978 pretty much limits that possibility. The Insurrection act of a little later does give him a little leeway in the event of an ongoing insurrection or emergency but again…the courts aren’t going to allow him much latitude there.

Making Canada the 51st state. Well…there could be some advantages to our two countries joining up as one…but there are also a considerable number of disadvantages as well. Should/could our two governments talk about it? Why not…but any joining would surely require a vote in both of the countries because nobody really knows whether either country’s citizens are interested in joining up…and there would be a lot of problems to be worked out. First…Canada has 10 provinces and 3 territories and that probably would mean 10 states and 3 territories or more likely 13 states rather than just one. There are two in our opinion insurmountable barriers to this happening though. First up…culturally the two countries are just so different that most citizens are not likely to vote in favor of it but the biggest problem is that of those 13 new states some would be red and some would be blue. The eastern provinces would probably be blue but at least 6 or 7 would be red and neither party is going to vote for something that gives more seats in the House or Senate to the other side. Given that impasse…this ain’t happening either.

Greenland…again nobody has asked the general population of the self governing territory of Denmark what they think about becoming a state in the US…and the last thing we need is another territory that is really an economic drain on Denmark. We already have military bases there and could easily negotiate for more so security is taken care of. Economically…US companies can already go there and mine their natural resources as long as appropriate environmental, permit, and agreements are hammered out. So…again, not happening and this is just a rile up the opponents thing.

Panama Canal…ditto…we signed it over to Panama and short of an invasion it’s not coming back…and we’re about as likely to invade them as either Greenland or Canada. I know that  he said he would not rule out either military or economic intervention in all 3 cases…but as the President he would be a fool to rule out anything at this point. Not ruling it out most certainly does not mean the invasion will start next Wednesday as a lot of the left media is screaming about.

I see that long time Washington post reporter Jennifer Rubin has resigned because…and this is her words…the owner wants to take the paper back to the center politically rather than be a liberal rag. She said that “the Post no longer safeguards democratic values”…when all Mr. Bezos said he was going to do was move the paper to the center politically but would still cover the news…ya know, do actual journalism instead of being a liberal mouthpiece. Methinks that news media being journalists instead of opinion writers is a very good thing and we should get back to it.

As everybody knows…there are massive wildfires out in Los Angeles burning up both the homes of Hollywood elites and the common folk. I’m not going to minimize the damage and disruption the fires are causing…but to some extent it is really the fault of both state and local governments. Let’s be honest…California has had Santa Anna winds, wet winters, and dry summers pretty much forever and the state has…for decades…not done the things that experts told them they needed to do to try and minimize those fires. Water management, fire prevention management, and firefighting management have for a long time been subordinate to their demands for climate change mitigation and other environmental causes. Yes…those things are important…but just like here in Florida where concrete block homes are very common to protect against hurricanes…controlled prescribed burns to remove the fuel, better funding of fire prevention and fighting efforts a opposed to high speed trains to nowhere would have enabled the fires to be less out of control than we’ve seen this week. Dry brush is eventually going to catch fire and burn…and you can either let it happen in a controlled manner when the weather is good or you can let it build up to the point that controlling the inevitable wildfire is basically impossible.

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