Solar Power For Home Use…Does It Really Work?

Posted on 2024/01/13 by Gunther

I keep seeing posts on the NextDoor site about how one should go solar and “eliminate your electric bill” and while I realize that claim is complete BS based on our history with having panels on our RV…but I wanted to get a post up on the web so that I can refer anyone that asks to actual numbers. I based this post on some calculations Neil did…and in the interests of giving solar the greatest amount of benefit of the doubt he really was fairly generous his assumptions.

And granted…he’s a mechanical and not electrical engineer…but they learn electrical stuff as well…and in addition, all of this pretty simple math anyway, While we don’t and won’t have solar at home…we did have it in the RV days and you can make it work but it’s clearly not the same as being able to flip the switch to on for whatever you want whenever you want it.

So…let’s dive in.

For purposes of this…I’m using 200 watt rated solar panels which cost about 220 each from Amazon and they’re 56×26 inches in size or about 10 square feet each. Our neighbor has this type of panel on their roof and there are 14 of them if he counted correctly…but I went ahead and assumed an installation size of 30 panels or 300 square feet.

So…a 200 watt panel doesn’t actually produce 200 watts except under specific conditions…the biggest two are at a temperature of about 75 degrees and perpendicular to the sun rays…and since panels on your roof don’t move and are rarely at 75 even in winter in FL…at best you get about 60% of rated output or 120 watts. And in Florida you only get about 6 hours per day of maximum 120 watt output and perhaps another 5 at half output so each panel ends up providing about 1000 watt hour or 1 KWH per day…so with 30 panels you produce 30KWH/day.

Our house only uses A/C bout 5 months per year and the other 7 we are mostly open window people…and in 2023 we used about 13,000 KWH or 36 KWH per day at an average monthly cost of $160. So…even with the generous 30 panels you aren’t producing enough to cover the 36KWH per day needed and realistically most houses run the A/C unit a lot more down here than we do.

Can you run an A/C unit on solar with no grid? Well…your panels produce about 3,600 watts peak in the summer time…and by the time you factor in losses in the wiring from the panels to the inverter and the efficiency of the inverter you get about 3,200 watts AC or about 26 amps. Your typical 5 ton A/C unit takes 9KW to start (75 amps) and 6KW running (50 amps)…so no, you can’t run A/C on 30 solar panels even ignoring the other loads in your house (water heater, stove, lights, computers, etc). And realistically most houses down here have more than a 5 ton A/C unit   

Those 30 panels cost about 6,600 plus the inverter, wiring, and installation. I don’t have any quotes for installation but based on our cost of about $5,500 back in 2013 to put 8 panels on our RV (which is essentially the same as putting them on the roof and we already had the inverter and wiring from the roof and the inverter from the RV build), it would cost about 5 times as much and that’s around $33,000 in 2013 dollars and I’m sure it costs more now. A quick loan amortization calculation for 20 years on 33,000 loan at 6.25% which is what it is in January 2024 puts the payment at about $241 a month which you’ll note is more than the $162 our household electrical bill is. And that doesn’t include the fact that your 30 panels barely cover the total annual usage, the lower rate the power company pays you for power fed back to the grid vs the power flowing to your house…and the fact that you’re still going to be pulling power from the grid all day long in the summer to run the A/C anyway.

He even went so far as to give you another 25% of actual power output over his already pretty reasonable assumptions above and it’s still cheaper net to pay the electrical bill…and you’re not really off grid anyway.

In fairness though…if you don’t need A/C at all…and if you’re careful about managing power and all that……and if you have mostly 12 volt lighting for efficiency…and if you have a bunch of expensive, heavy batteries…you can produce enough to live off grid…it is doable but it isn’t easy and there are certainly drawbacks to trying to do so, especially with a house that was not built with an electrical system designed to subsist on solar alone.

So…that’s it. As we used to say in the RV days…solar is a lifestyle thing, not a fiscally responsible thing. In an RV it allows you to park off grid in the plains or desert and mostly subsist on solar with some generator usage…but again an RV is designed to run with a generator and unless you have a whole house generator and a bunch of expensive switchgear that most houses don’t have then adding in generator power at home isn’t all that simple either. 

Cyas.

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

Could It Actually Be Possible…

Posted on 2024/01/08 by Gunther

That we’ve reached “peak stupidity”. I know the question is sort of rhetorical…that means it’s meant to make a point rather than solicit an answer for those of you wondering…but work with me here. 

I know it’s only the 8th of January…and people being who they are and this being an election year…there’s bound to be a whole lot more stupidity but Ima just gonna say the the remaining 357 days of the year have an awfully high bar to meet to outdo this one.

And I know that abortion and the right to it or not and all that constitutional rights or not jazz is involved…but trust me…no matter what your position on this issue might be the abortion issue is actually irrelevant to the stupidity involved.


Here…is the Newsweek article that prompted this post. You can go read it but I’ll do my best to accurately report what it says.

There’s this person…obviously an abortion supporter (but again the issue involved is irrelevant to his idiocy)…named Mac Truing who resides in and is a citizen of the state of NJ (this will be important later). The case involved is Max the  vs. Abbott, a case filed by Mr. Truong sometime after the Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization case which was decided back in 2022 by the SCOTUS. As an aside…this case *did not* outlaw abortion in the USA…it merely overturned the previous decision in Roe vs. Wade from the 70s that determined that abortion was a constitutional right…and thus according to the constitution returned the issue to the individual states to decide (but still irrelevant).

As a result of Dobbs…Texas passed the Texas Heartbeat Act which essentially outlawed abortion after a fetal heartbeat was detected. So…Mr. Truong decided to sue over the issue…and filed a suit with a whole list of defendants…the six justices who voted for Dobbs, Texas governor Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Patrick, Texas Speaker of the House Phelan, and former President Trump. His suit alleges that the defendants “were involved in either passing, enacting or upholding the THA because he believes the Dobbs decision was incorrectly decided and thus, Roe v. Wade is still law.” 

Now remember…Mr. Truong is a citizen of and resident of NJ…which for anybody not paying attention is specifically not the same state as TX, and he filed his suit in Texas. Given the facts as noted…the trial court dismissed his suit because Mr. Truong…not being a resident of Texas…has no standing to sue in the state of Texas. He appealed to the 5th Circuit…and the appeal was heard by a 3 judge panel of that court (two of which were appointed by Democratic Presidents)…and lo and behold the vote was 3-0 that he had no standing and the case was rightfully, properly, and legally dismissed.

Mr. Truong…and his lawyer (who by the way should be hauled up by whatever bar association approved his membership and after appropriate due process be disbarred because no lawyer this stupid should be allowed to practice law)…decided to appeal to the SCOTUS.

So…let’s review the bidding here.

  • Mr. Truong who is apparently not himself a lawyer decided that the SCOTUS decided Dobbs wrongly…and thus Roe vs. Wade was still the law of the land. The first issue here is that SCOTUS…by definition…simply cannot decide an issue wrongly. They are the ultimate arbiter of law in the country…and while occasionally they overturn precedent whatever they say the law is…is…well…the law, ya know.
  • Mr. Truong included in his list of defendants the six justices who affirmed Dobbs…and with all the hullaballoo about the court needing an ethics policy…they instituted one a month or three back…and the other federal justices ethics code says that if a judge is a party to a suit they must recuse themselves. So…under their policy…the six justices who were the defendants in the suit recused themselves from consideration of the case.

Now…under their rules…the SCOTUS must have a quorum of at least six justices to even consider taking a case. With the six recusals…this left only 3 remaining. And since 3 is obviously less than 6…the court was unable to decide to take the case for review…and thus the judgement of the 5th circuit (which dismissed the suit unanimously) prevailed and is now law. This means that the suit is dead…like in as a door nail.

I simply cannot understand how Mr. Truong and his lawyer, who must have gotten his law degree from a Cracker Jack box or something…failed to think their cunning plan through.

It is also noted in the article that Mr. Truong (and presumably the same really outstanding lawyer) have additional pending cases involving the same issue. The only one mentioned is the suit filed in the Peoples Republic of California with defendants including “Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, President Joe Biden, California Governor Gavin Newsom, actors George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Tesla Founder Elon Musk, singer Britney Spears and media expert Norah O’Donnell.”

Now since the PRC has pretty much an unlimited right to abortion after Dobbs…I again have no clue why Mr. Truong has a suit against the state of CA as well…but then he clearly is a legal genius so I dunno.

Ya know…you really have to wonder about a lawyer who agrees to take a case where his client alleges that the SCOTUS decided a case wrongly. Sure…this is a contentious issue and the opinions on it, abortion, and all related stuff are all over the spectrum…but really…any moron that actually reads the constitution should understand that the SCOTUS is the ultimate arbiter and thus…cannot decide something wrongly. They can make decisions you personally don’t agree with…but under the law they are not wrong.

In other news…I guess you saw the articles about the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 that had the plug blow out. Now the fuselage is manufactured by a sub contractor who cuts an opening for an extra entry door then installs a plug in it so there’s not a door there. The door may become necessary given certain seating configurations in the aircraft but is normally sealed. The sub then sends the fuselage to the main Boeing plant which removes the partially installed plug and uses the opening to get inside to install seats, overhead bins, and all the other inside the airplane pieces…then Boeing reinstalls the plug completely. The plug is simply a mechanical piece that bolts over the hole…nothing more, nothing less.

So…apparently Boeing reinstalled the plug incorrectly and it blew out at 16,000 feet after the aircraft took off from Portland. It landed safely and there were no serious injuries…so that’s good.

But now…the recriminations start. And I’m not talking about between Boeing and the fuselage making subcontractor…I’m talking about the hyperbole in the news.

For instance…I read 3 articles today that discussed that the aircraft in question had …three separate instances of aircraft pressurization system warning lights since October when it was delivered to the airline…and that it was restricted from flying over water for long distances. All 3 articles pointed out that this was an obvious flaw in procedures and that the plane should have been already taken out of service.

But…the rest of the story as Paul Harvey used to say…

Remember…the aircraft pressurization system knows nothing…zip, zero, nada…about the existence of or status of the plug…any more than it knows about the windows. The three previous pressurization system warning lights were all worked on by maintenance and were determined to be bad sensors, alignment problems in the system, or other factors completely unrelated to the bolts holding the plug in place. Nonetheless…this is clearly a problem of great intensity and shows that Boeing is incompetent or worse.

And that whole flying over water thing…not required by the FAA but Alaska Airlines has an internal policy that after 3 warnings on the same subsystem on the plane regardless of the fact that they were fixed…in the interests of safety just in case the airline doesn’t fly the plane long distances over water until verified that the issues are not recurring…so that its never too far from an airport.

As you can see…much ado about nothing. As investigations continue…loose bolts have been found on some number of other plugs on different aircraft so obviously Boeing has an installation procedure issue they need to resolve.

And in the line of “no good deed goes unpunished”…there’s

this about the police in Toronto. Now again…this tangentially involves protests about the ongoing situation in Gaza between Israel and Hamas…but once again that issue is irrelevant to the stupidity.  This past Saturday there was a protest in Toronto in support of the Palestinians…which is perfectly legal under Canuckistan law…and the protesters were up on an overpass over a highway. Police were on hand to control traffic, monitor the situation, and general police things…and were not allowing (apparently again according to their laws) anyone else to go up on the overpass. At some point…some other unnamed people showed up to support the protestors…and brought them a take out box of coffee and presumably pastries from presumably Tim Hortons (that’s the Starbucks of Canuckistan and there’s one on every corner…their coffee is decent but the pastries are really outstanding). Anyways…since nobody was being allowed on the bridge…and since Canadians are almost universally polite…the on scent police took the coffee and carried it up to deliver it to the protestors. Seems like a neighborly thing to do and not out of line at all…Canadian politeness being what it is. 

Unfortunately…some of the media took outraged offense at this…and the chief of police ended up apologizing for his officers ‘supporting’ the protestors…seems like an overdose of both idiocy on the media’s part and an unneeded bow to political correctness on the chief’s part…but what do I know.

And I guess you heard about the SecDef…and his episode of “what was he thinking”. Apparently back on Dec 22 he had some sort of elective surgery which he as of today is still providing no details for as it is his private medical information. Nobody has…or should have…any issue with that at all…and his deputy was still available to handle anything needing SecDef vote on. But then on New Year’s Eve he woke up with intense pain from the unknown medical procedure, went to the emergency room, and was admitted to intensive care to take care of it. But…nobody from his staff ever told the President his SecDef was in the hospital…which is pretty bad form. If you’re a cabinet level official…one would think you’re smart enough to have somebody tell your boss when you go into the hospital. Naturally the other political side is all up in arms because “you never know what might have happened…national security was at stake here”…and the administration is saying “no big deal, he should have notified us but his deputy was handling things”. In this particular case…just like in the brouhaha last month about military promotions being held up by a Senator…no, national security was not at stake. In this case…the deputy would have handled things and unless SecDef was being given serious pain killers he could have been consulted if necessary…just as in the promotion hassle last month the deputy who was getting promoted was the acting whatever until the promotion was approved…but he/she was still acting and doing the job and I’m pretty sure that whether you have 2 or 3 stars on your shoulders (or 3 or 4 depending on the job) has little to do with you actually doing the job.

And finally…in the dumb thing category…there’s a lawsuit filed over in Norway by mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik who you might remember massacred 77 people back in 2011 and is serving a long sentence after being convicted. Now remember…Norway believes in rehabilitation in prison and not punishment…so he resides in a multi level section in prison that is just for him…it includes a training room, a kitchen, a TV room and a bathroom, pictures from a visit last month by news agency NTB showed…and he e is allowed to keep three budgerigars as pets and let them fly freely in the area. 

But…he is essentially in isolated confinement and not mixed in with other prisoners. And he’s suing the government for violating his human rights…despite that he has contact with guards, a priest, health professionals, and an outside volunteer…because he’s “isolated”. Bah…he should have been executed for his crimes post haste after conviction and appeals.

Interesting things found on the net…but only one today. 

Neil has found out his ultimate present just in case anybody out there wants to buy it for him.
This is it…a chocolate 3d printer…it prints 3D objects made from chocolate. Clearly the thing every chocaholic needs.

Cyas.

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

And Happy New Year

Posted on 2024/01/01 by Gunther

To all of our followers, family, friends, and whoever else is reading these missives. I know it’s really strange to see me posting two days in a row…but I got some New Years related interesting stuff for ya…so here goes.

As I sit here typing this…our osprey is out back in the tree…I didn’t get Neil to take a picture of it because it’s just about the same picture as the ones I posted yesterday…so go back and look at those and imagine it was a mere 24 hours later.

We welcomed the new year…well, actually the New Year’s Eve…with the arrival of eaglet E-23 at our local eagles nest…the offspring of M15 and F23 the parents (they don’t have names like the former occupants of their nest Ozzie and Harriet. You an review the progress
here…anyways E23 hatched at about 0700 on New Year’s Eve…the estimated time of hatching of the other egg was (as of a few days ago) about a day and a half later…as of this morning there’s no discussion of the second egg on the website but I imagine that’s just an oversight by the site maintainers. As the first hatched…E23 has a serious leg up on surviving eaglet-hood as the larger first hatchling usually muscles the later hatching siblings out of food and they end up starving a lot of the time. About 80% of first hatching eaglets survive but less than half of the later hatching ones do…at least based on our experience with this particular nest over the past 11 years or so. 

It got down to about the mid 50s last night…pretty cool for down here in sunny FL…and it’s only going up to 70 today so we’ll stay in, dress warm, and that’ all on our schedule.

OK, on to Interesting things found on the net…mostly New Year’s related.

Japan welcomed in the New Year with over a dozen earthquakes offshore of the western side of Honshu (the main island) in Ishikawa prefecture (that’s like a state for the US or province for Canuckistan). You can go
here to see the signs swinging in the Kanazawa train station about 90 miles WNW of Tokyo…or
here to see some of the collapsed buildings. Maximum intensity was about 7.6 and amazingly enough no one seems to have been killed as of the time I’m writing this. Their building codes are pretty rigorous on earthquake safety measures and the population is well trained in what to do when one happens.

This is a tree known as the Ankerwycke Yew…it’s located in Berkshire UK and is somewhere between 1,400 and 2,500 years old…it’s famous because the Magna Carta was signed there. For those of you non history buffs is sort of like the Declaration of Independence and Constitution in the US…it’s the document that an unpopular King John was forced to sign to appease a bunch of rebel barons and granted rights to people, churches, and more…it was signed in 1215 CE and is pretty much the basis for English law and thus law for most of the colonized world later on. 

image

While they were living in the RV…Connie and Neil noticed that in a lot of places you go from essentially the wilderness to civilization in just half mile or less as you drive the highways and byways of small roads where is mostly where they roamed. However…they don’t recall ever seeing a transition as abrupt as this one which is located in Arvinheer, Mongolia…Wow.

image

As you know…there’s this line in the Pacific Ocean named the International Date Line…and it jogs to and fro so as to keep countries in the same time zone…at least most of the time…but unfortunately it was drawn sort of strangely in the Samoan Islands area. Samoa and Tonga which are both part of the country of Kiribati…are the first place that celebrates the new year when it happens as they’re just about 20 miles west of the line…and while not specifically the last ones to see the new year American Samoa, Baker Island, and Howland Island about 100 miles east of Tonga are among the last to see it. And interestingly enough…Howland Island is the place that Amelia Earhart and her navigator were aiming for when they got lost and ran out of fuel never to be sen again. 

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And of interest only to the math nerds amongst ye…here’s a mathematical countdown to 2024.

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Speaking of 2024…it’s what is known as an apocalyptic year because it is an apocalyptic number…and most of you are now wondering just what in de heck is an apocalyptic year? Well…if you take any number and calculate the value of 2 to that power…then examine the result and see if it contains the sequence 666…then you’ve got yourself your basic apocalyptic number…and 2 to the 2024th power contains this sequence. Now just what the significance of that is…or whether it is must math nerdery…well, I dunno.

That’s ‘bout all I got fer ya today…so get yerself to celebrating in whatever manner you prefer.

Cyas.

 

Posted in Homebody, Learn Something New, Nerdery | Leave a comment

And That’s The Way It Is for 2023…

Posted on 2023/12/31 by Gunther

To paraphrase the late, great Walter Cronkite…the title that is.

Anyways…it’s the end of the year and I want to be the first to wish you a great year in 2024 no matter what your situation is…because that’s just the right and sociable thing to do. Our dinner will be a ham from the Honey Baked Ham store along with some roasted tater wedges and pearl onions, green beens, and roasted carrots…along with whatever bottle of wine our sommelier pulls out of the rack. We’ll do that mid afternoon and then settle in at 1700 to watch Alabama take on Michigan in the first football semifinal…Texas and Washington are in the other but Ima pretty sure we won’t be awake until the end of that one. 

I wanted to give you a recap of the entire year…and don’t worry…Neil actually processed me a few images from the pond out back the last couple of days…so there will be pictures…eventually.

January the highlight was a trip up to the northern sections of FL for some bird photography.

February was devoted mostly to the preps for and recovery from Connie’s colon surgery to alleviate her ongoing for a couple of decades diverticulitis problem. The good news is that after the surgery she was pretty much back to her normal self. The bad news is that whatever the after effects you’ve ever had from a colonoscopy prep…I can tell you for certain that the prep for colon surgery is far, far worse. Some of ya might be a wee bit sqeamish so I’ll spare you the details…but trust me…it’s a poopy deal all the way ‘round.

March we mostly took it easy as she was still recovering from the surgery aftermath…but her group for the UK tour started practicing in earnest for the pieces she would sing with them. The group was mostly composed of people from the choir at the church where the former director of the Fort Myers Mastersingers is the music director…but was augmented wit about 20% of the total from Mastersingers personnel. Our plans were to do the choir trip…about 8 or 9 days…and then spend another couple of weeks touring around the UK. We vacillated between some combination of Scotland, Wales, and northern England but in the end decided that rather than a “if it’s Tuesday it must be Belgium” sort of rapid tour to stick with just the north of England. This was key for Connie…as she loves the BBC show All Creatures Great and Small…and it’s filmed in and around the Yorkshire Dales district in England…so Neil got sort of outvoted. He really didn’t mind much as either Scotland or Wales would have been too much traveling and not enough Fun Stuff©…and they were renting a car and driving the last couple of weeks which was good because he needed to refresh his ability to drive on the wrong side of the road from the wrong side of the car.

April and May were mostly repeats of March…rehearsals for the singing tour, going to the Elks Lodge, and just home life.

Early June was final preps for the trip to the UK and we left on the 21st for what turned out to be a 3.5 week trip returning on July 15. I’ve detailed the places we saw, concerts they did and all that in earlier posts but suffice it to say that the concerts were wonderful, the food pretty good, and the roads narrow and with way too high of a speed limit considering the roads. On the bright side…getting used to…again…the wrong side of the road and wrong side of the car occurred pretty quickly and served as excellent training for our later trip to St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands.

On the bad side…both of them came home from the UK having suffered most of the post singing portion of the trip with what turned out to be bronchitis. They survived on Advil and cold pills and on arrival home went the first weekday to urgent care and got some antibiotics and cough medicine that actually worked…but it took another 3-4 weeks before they really felt normal again.

Also along this time…we signed up for a total of 3 photo workshop/tours for 2024…well, 2 for just Neil and the third Connie is going on as a spouse but isn’t doing the in the jungle taking pictures thing. In the spring he’ll do 10 days in the Serengeti in Tanzania and then in the summer they’ll do a week in Costa Rica (she’s going to go deep sea fishing one day and lay by the pool a lot) and then a week in Glacier National Park or just him…she wasn’t really interested in either the first or third trip. 

August and most of September were back to normal life for all of us…but late in September we headed off for the Florida Ladies of Elks convention in Daytona and then headed north for 2 things…first was to visit the kids and grandson in Richmond and second to pick up the parts of our US Route 50 tour from 2019 on the eastern shore of MD…that part got cancelled as you may recall because of Neil’s kidney stone in Cody WY…and if you ever have to pick a place to be stuck for 2 months…Cody WY is a pretty nice place to actually be stuck. The tail end of that trip we visited an old favorite place to eat…High Cotton in Charleston SC…but it’s gone downhill considerably since we were last there and neither the cocktails or the food were as good as we hoped. Decent but not the former spectacular.

We decided (well, the humans did anyway…nobody asked me) that they actually needed a real vacation where the highlight of the day was dinner…and one of our…again…favorite places was St. Croix in the US Virgin islands…so they scheduled a short week there in late October. While they accomplished their goal of not doing much…again the island infrastructure and ambiance has gone down considerably since our last visit. Not really surprising since they had major hurricane hits in both 2021 and 2022…and the Carrington Inn where they loved to stay is no longer in business…Claudia and her husband retired and closed the place. They ended up at a different B&B that while not bad lacked the spectacular views, friendliness, and ambiance that Claudia provided. They did eat at several really good places…but 2 of their favorites there have closed in the interim since their last visit. Between the falling apart infrastructure, road construction to recover from the hurricane damage and long term dilapidation of the structures…it wasn’t what they remembered and they’ll have to consider whether another visit is warranted or if another Caribbean island is a better choice. Overall…the islands in the Caribbean are pretty much like going to Hawaii…but without the 8 hour flight to get there. But there are a whole passle of other islands they could visit instead…they’re not really interested in the casinos and shows on the more popular islands…their idea is small enough so that 5 cars is rush hour and large enough to have great places to eat. On the bright side…they did go to the sam restaurant over on the west side where they had their 20th anniversary dinner and sat at the same table from 27ish years ago…so a good time was had there. But overall…the island has a lot of run down appearance…which given the storms they’ve had and the general governmental inefficiency, graft, and corruption/bribes that goes on in most islands it wasn’t as nice as they hoped.

November and December were pretty much consumed with Mastersingers and the choir at church…between rehearsals, paid gigs, concerts, and lots of new music Connie was pretty busy and Neil just hung on for the ride.

We had a nice Christmas celebration…Neil got a bunch of things he needed for his photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, and Montana and he grilled some marinated lamb chops for dinner…and we’re having a Honey Baked Ham for New Years (Connie’s favorite meat of all time). For Neil…the best thing about ham is the bone left over at the end…he makes stock out of it and ham stock makes the best gumbo ever.

Let’s see…what else I got.

Neil finished the year with 131 (11.5 mile average) rides totaling 1,509 miles biking with an average speed of 14.9 mph. His goal every year is at least 1,500 miles and he barely made it this year…but what with missing most of 7 weeks with the UK and bronchitis and more weeks for other reasons…he was happy to make his goal. About 150 miles less than the past couple of years…but then time off will do that as he’s usually up in the mid 140s for total rides. He did get a new bike after 12 or 13 years…nice carbon fiber frame, disk brakes and electronic shifting…and the good news is that the new bike is much more fitted to his level of fitness so his average speed for October and December with the new ride went up almost 1 mph…a not insignificant improvement.

Connie continued to sing both in the Fort Myers Symphonic Mastersingers and at St. Therese in both the choir and as the psalmist (used to be the cantor but with the new choir director and his focus on the Joe Show instead of the choir as a whole he took over most of the duties that the cantor would normally perform). She had concerts in the spring both with the chorus alone and also in conjunction with the Gulf Coast Symphony and the First Presbyterian Church of Bonita springs which provided the majority of the singers for the UK trip. They did a concert in Bath Abbey with John Rutter directing some of the choral pieces he composed (he’s like the Arthur Fiedler of the choral world if you don’t recognize the name) and a second concert St. Paul’s Cathedral in the Knightsbridge of London (not to be confused with the other much larger St. Paul’s Cathedral also in London).

Around the house…the only thing we really did was replace the stove. Up until we moved in here…we had always had a gas stove for him to cook on…and he really prefers the responsiveness and maximum heat output of a gas range over an electric one. However, gas is almost non existent in SW FL and the HoA rules don’t allow us to put in a tank. But the solution is what is known as an induction range. This is electric but other than having a heating element it’s got a magnetic coil under the top and one must use cookware that’s magnetic. The coil induces heat only in the pan itself…which has a couple of advantages. First…it has the responsiveness of a gas range, second…only the put gets hot, and third the lower temperature of the cookware itself results in far less sticking or burning. The bad news…as I said above…is that your cookware has to be magnetic and our long favored Calphalon cookware is alas made of aluminum…which is non magnetic. So…in addition to the new range we had to buy all new pots and skillets…but we did get some nice coated non stick stainless steel cookware that is a joy too cook on…so the chief cook and bottle washer is quite a happy man.

And…that about covers our year’s activities…if you’re inclined you can take a look at the posts from the relevant months noted above to see more details, photos, and discussions of Fun Stuff©.

OK…a couple off. images for ya.

First up…a couple of older images from our RV trip to Alaska back in 2015…he reprocessed these from the original RAW image files since the software today is much better. These are three different bears…the first is a grizzly and the last two are brown bears (although technically grizzly and brown are the same species…and while browns are almost always brown or blonde grizzlies run the gamut from black to brown to blond.

This was taken out of the truck window in (I think) the Yukon province in Canuckistan.

These two are from his trip on the bush plane down to Katmai National Park…they landed on the gravel beach and you have to leave before the tide comes in because at high tide the runway ceases to exist. The first was 40 or so yards out…the second one actually walked by them between the little grass hummock they were standing on and the edge of the creek…and they measured the distance to the creek at about 9 feet after it walked past. The shot isn’t quite a wide angle focal length but it was getting darned close to it. Fortunately for them…the bear was fishing and didn’t give a hoot about the 6 people including the pilot sending on the foot high grass hummock.

And a couple from out back at the pond…

This Osprey has been sitting up in the tree the other side of the pond a lot lately…usually either waiting on dinner to swim by in the pond or eating the catch after swooping down to grab it.

A wood stork…he sees them routinely in other ponds around the neighborhood including some that are on the main road and have more traffic…but we do occasionally see one on our pond. It’s actually a bit taller when it extends it’s neck than the Great Blue Herons we see routinely…and the Wood Stork is like the Turkey and Black Vultures…a face only a mother could love.

Great Blue Heron.

Interesting things found on the net.

What is interesting about this photo?

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As you can see…lion, crocodile, elephant, tiger, rhinoceros, and bear. The interesting thing is that India is the only country in the world you can find all of those living in the wild. The country has widely varying climate zones which allows all 6 species to live there.

I think I used this one before but was too lazy to go and verify…so ya get to see it again…maybe. Anyways…the RMS Titanic was the largest ship afloat when it set out on it’s maiden voyage and the picture shows the front view of it in front of a modern cruise ship., Shows you how truly monstrous today’s are…Connie claims it’s like a hotel that moves around but Neil says they won’t let him drive or go visit the engine room and they don’t have guns to shoot…so after a career going to sea he’s not interested in going on one. Modern cruise ships like the Wonder of the Seas check in at almost 1,200 feet long and 236,000 tons displacement…over 100 feet longer and 2.5 times the displacement of the largest aircraft carrier.

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And finally…a bit about uncontrolled growth…the bacteria E. coli divides and doubles the number of bacteria every 20 minutes. While it could never happen in actuality…if it were given sufficient resources to do so in 36 hours there would be enough bacteria to cover the earth a foot deep. Good thing there aren’t limitless resources, eh?

Cyas.

Posted in Blast From The Past, Homebody, Learn Something New, Photography, Travel, WIldlife | Leave a comment

Stupidity Rant

Posted on 2023/12/27 by Gunther

Yeah…that’s about the right title…other choices were “Why Don’t People Read” and “People Only Read The Parts They Like”…but Ima just going to put it down to basic human stupidity (I woulda used a more colorful noun but Ima trying to keep this kid and work safe).

Don’t worry though…there are some images at the end…

You probably have seen the recent brouhaha about our former President and various and assorted courtroom antics…but as noted below the stupidity is most certainly not limited to people that like the man…nah, the other side of the argument has it’s fair share of stupidity as well.

We keep reading about his 91 felony counts total in indictments but none of those trials have happened yet. We also keep reading about how he clearly and obviously participated in an insurrection from the left up to and including our current President…who stated unequivocally that he participated in one. And we keep reading from the other side that he was legitimately protesting the unfair election and all that…but that’s not really the point I’m making here.

Let me remind you again…that we are not supporters of former…in fact he should never elected to anything ever again and likely has committed crimes…although he hasn’t been convicted of anything. And likewise…we are not fans of either current or his Veep either…none of the 3 of those people needs to be our next President for various reasons. But…unlike most far left and far right people…we are capable of actually analyzing both sides of a situation and aren’t blinded by either MAGA devotion or Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Of most pressing concerns are two cases involving the SCOTUS…both of which need to be adjudicated in the near future. The first of these was from the special prosecutor Jack Smith who…after the trial judge paused his trial pending the outcome of former’s appeal that he was constitutionally protected from being charged for anything he did during his term office…appealed directly to SCOTUS so as not to impact the scheduled trial in March. Obviously former wanted to have the case heard by the appeals court first with initial arguments due in court Jan 9…but former’s entire game plan appears to be to delay the trial until it is election time and if he wins order the DoJ to drop the case after he is inaugurated. Mr. Smith’s attempt to short circuit this delay…which seems somewhat valid to us here…was turned down by the court and I’m guessing that mostly they want to not have to decide the issue. Internally…I’m sure they have their opinions about his absolute immunity claims…but if the court of appeals decision matches with what they think…then they can just decline to hear any further appeal and that’s a smaller political hit to their reputation. Our personal opinion is that absolute presidential immunity is an oxymoron and is most certainly not what the Constitution says…and if forced to vote on that issue he will lose and I would not be surprised to see a 9-0 vote on it. If a President has absolute immunity…he could just declare martial law, suspend elections, and essentially become king…and that just is as wrong as it could be.

The second and more pressing issue is the recent decision by the CO Supreme Court that he participated in an insurrection and thus is constitutionally prohibited from office and thus is banned from the primary ballot in CO…that decision was stayed by that court until Jan 5 to allow SCOTUS appeal since Jan 5 is supposedly the drop dead date for printing the primary ballots. Former’s obviously upcoming appeal to the SCOTUS really doesn’t have anything to do with CO…the party could just have a caucus and choose him as it’s state delegate nominee anyway but he doesn’t want the legal precedent that he can be banned since other (particularly blue) states will do the same thing. 

So…the original case was held as a judge only 5 day maximum trial by an election law judge in the state (that’s what the CO election laws require) and after this trial…the judge (and I’m not sure exactly that an election law judge is the right person to make this determination) declared in his Findings of Fact that it was an insurrection on Jan 6, that former participated, but that he should not be banned from the primary ballot because it wasn’t the actual election. He appealed to the state Supreme Court (composed of 7 Democrat appointed and therefore likely Democrats themselves judges)…who found 4-3 that the Findings of Fact were correct but reversed the no primary ban under section 3 of the 14th amendment. So you don’t have to go look it up…here is the entire text of the 14th amendment as copied from https/constitutioncenter.org.

 Section 1

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

 

Section 2

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

 

Section 3

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

 

Section 4

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

 

Section 5

The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

There are several arguments to be made here…and to be fair I’ll try and summarize the positions of both sides.

First…whether or not Jan 6 was an actual insurrection…that is an armed attempt to overthrow the government according to the applicable federal statute…or whether it was just a peaceful protest that involved some lawbreakers. Frankly…it seems like a bit of a stretch to me to call what was essentially a riot an insurrection even though some participants were armed…but then the left has declared their opinion that it was and the right that it wasn’t. Strangely enough…and I have the same issue here…both sides have the completely 180 degrees opposite opinion about whether the disturbances in Portland were an insurrection or not…and to be factual those disturbances actually occupied and destroyed a federal building and declared that some number of square blocks had seceded from the state and the union. Now…until a court hearing testimony actually makes a decision and it is affirmed on appeal either way…whether either was a riot of an insurrection is what lawyers would call “facts not in evidence”…but to the guy in the middle either both were insurrections or both were riots…neither side gets to have it both ways.

Second…is the President actually covered under section 3. Again…in the absence of a legal decision…nobody really knows. I can say that the list of people banned under section 3 in an early draft included the President (according to a couple of articles I saw but didn’t further research in detail) but it was removed for reasons known only to history. On one hand…it seems that the President should have been included…but then there is a specific list of who is included and it doesn’t include the word President. Further…whether the President is an “officer of the United States” and I have to admit the wording isn’t specific. Again…no court has ever officially answered this legal question.

Third…is the 14th amendment “self executing” or does it require a conviction. The Democrats claim that since it doesn’t say conviction that if you engaged in an insurrection in their opinion that’s all that is required. However…as we all know everybody has an opinion just like everybody has a navel…and your opinion and $4 will get you a latte at Starbucks until your opinion is actually ratified as a legal certitude by appropriate court action. The Democrats claim that the trial judge in CO issued a finding of fact…and that thus he has been immutably and permanently branded as participating in an insurrection. The Republicans on the other hand…state that he has been neither charged or convicted of the crime of insurrection…and that therefore even if President is an Officer of the United States…he has not participated. And in fact…they point that section 1 of the same amendment requires due process and that due process means a conviction by an unbiased jury of his peers…which hasn’t happened.

Thus…SCOTUS needs to answer these questions.

First question…was there an insurrection as defined by the federal statute. The wording is sorta vague and the definition of “armed” and “overthrow the government” is also sort of nebulous and not being a lawyer I did no legal research…but the judicial system can and will do that and then we’ll know (and only then).

Second…if there was an insurrection…did he participate. My personal opinion is that there was enough evidence for Mr. Smith to have indicted him for insurrection if he chose to…but he did not choose to do so. And being a politician himself…the likelihood that he made that decision with out consulting with (in my opinion) both the Attorney General and the President is pretty darned small despite his status as an “independent” prosecutor…he still works for the Justice Department and it’s never good to piss off your boss. So one thing to ask here is…why didn’t he indict for insurrection as we all know a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich as the saying goes. My guess is that several possibilities exist…he couldn’t find evidence to get a conviction under the specific terms of the insurrection statute…he had some evidence but decided that the likelihood of conviction was low enough that he didn’t want to take the risk of losing the case…or he (and potentially his boss and his boss’s boss) didn’t want the political hit of seeming to be a banana republic by disqualifying his political opponent from the election…or the most likely outcome some combination of all of the above. In any event…no insurrection indictment, trial, or conviction exists…and since the accused is innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt by an unbiased jury of his peers…former is at this point still innocent of the crime of insurrection and thus the 14th amendment doesn’t apply.

Now…if he was convicted…and if President was determined to be an “officer of the United States”…then yes, he should be excluded from the ballot since he can’t hold office. Until then however…to me section 1 of the amendment clearly makes section 3 not self executing because of that whole due process thing.

As an aside…even if convicted…could the man really get a fair trial by an unbiased jury of his peers? Personally…I think the odds of that are vanishingly small…because everybody has pretty much made up their mind already…and the anti former people will vote guilty regardless of the evidence while the pro former people will vote to acquit because of the “stolen election”. While neither Connie or Neil likes the man or will vote for him…they’re both in their view fair minded enough that they would be able to listen to the evidence and determine whether the prosecution proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt…but they also realize they’re in a very, very small minority there. And since neither the prosecution or defense would be able to select a jury entirely to their liking…any trial is likely to end up in a hung jury anyway…and that’s always going to be the case.

I’m pretty sure that SCOTUS will overrule the CO court on the insurrection issue…at least for now…and again it won’t surprise me if it is a 9-0 vote…because innocent until proven guilty…due process…and all that entails.

Gee…wasn’t that fun?

OK, on to some images. None of these are new but on one of his photo forums they asked each member to submit their 8 best wildlife photos of 2023…and since he did that he figured it would do to post them here as well. He went through his 300odd blog published images of the year and got it down to 39 pretty easily. Getting to 20 was harder and down to 12 even harder still…and then the final 4 cuts were pretty hard as all of the images were worthy and he didn’t want to over represent any particular species. They’re all birds…but that’s just because we didn’t go anyplace other than FL for wildlife this year. So…here are what he says are his 8 best of the year…they’re in chronological order of taking and all were from Jan to May because after that the heat and low water make the bird population mighty sparse.

Female Belted Kingfisher…the orange-brown belt is only on the female

Snowy Egret fishing

Red Shouldered Hawk…showing you why it got the name it did

Female Anhinga (rusty brown neck) with some nesting material

Osprey with breakfast

Reddish Egret…one of the last 4 cuts was of the same individual with wings spread out in front umbrella like in their classic hunting pose…but he decided the successful stab was slightly better

Male Red Bellied Woodpecker…the red on the female doesn’t extend to the top of the head…one might wonder why this isn’t called the red headed woodpecker…but that species looks like the whole head was dipped into the paint bucket

Male Red Winged Blackbird…the female is brown and does not have the red or yellow epaulets

Math skills needed for various life stages…and it’s perfectly on point.

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And since Neil’s going to Africa…he thought this illustration of just how darn big the place is was pretty cool…it plops some other countries (at the same scale) on top of the continent. Tanzania (specifically the Serengeti region) where he is going in the spring is just above the D in India

image

Cyas.

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

Happy Holidays To All

Posted on 2023/12/25 by Gunther

Yep…the greatest of salutations to you and yours no matter which holiday you celebrate or what name you give it. Round here it’s Christmas and we say Merry…but your mileage, religious convictions, social presence, influencer friends or whatever might lead you in some different direction…but ya’ll be ya’ll as we southerners say.

Or…as I found on the interwebs for ya…a politically correct holiday greeting.

Best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most joyous traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, but with respect for the religious persuasion of others who choose to practice their own religion as well as those who choose not to practice a religion at all;

Additionally, a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted calendar year 2000, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions have helped make our society great, without regard to the race, creed, color, religious, or sexual preferences of the wishes.

(Disclaimer: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others and no responsibility for any unintended emotional stress these greetings may bring to those not caught up in the holiday spirit.)

 

Anyways…we got some good stuff here this morning. Neil got some various and assorted camera and computer stuff he needs for the upcoming photo trips to Africa, Costa Rica with Connie and Glacier National Park (the first in April and the latter 2 in July). She got some clothes she picked out…and a couple of other things she decided she wanted to do. And tomorrow it’s Old People Tuesday at Bealls…that’s a store down here in FL…and that means we get a discount and she’s also got a birthday certificate that  runs out the end of the year so off we go to battle the hordes tomorrow.

Oh yeah…Neil got a red Hawaiian shirt too…’cuz if you go to the Elks Lodge on Friday (which they do albeit not every week)…you’re supposed to wear red and he didn’t have anything red so just pointed to the red flower on his shirt or whatever as meeting the standards. Connie got a couple of red dresses and a red top…but one thing she needs tomorrow from Bealls is some green stuff. As choir member and psalmist she’s supposed to wear the correct color to match the color vestments the priest is wearing and the changes Sunday to Sunday with green being the most popular color for what is called “Ordinary Time”…which is essentially everything except for Advent and Lent. She’s practically green-less so wants to have more options there…and heck, Old People Tuesday and birthday discount so…SCORE!!

I got some commentary on all the current political, social, and world order la-di-da going on right now…but it’s Christmas so I’ll save that for next time.

It’s raining today…not hard but we’re supposed to get a thunderstorm around 1300 but be better by dinner time…which is excellent because he’s got these lamb chops that been marinating and percolating in the fridge since yesterday in some good stuff and they are much better on the grill. He’s got a fancy tater dish and pearl onions with cheese cream sauce for sides and a bottle of Chalk Hill Pinot Noir to go along with it…and we’ll have a snack of Prosciutto and Gruyere cheese in the afternoon sometime. Don’t know about dessert…we’ve got Pecan Pie Brownies in the freezer and if they’re still hungry than thawing a couple of those out happens lickety split and toss on some whipped cream in the can and as Justin Wilson used to say…”It be wondermous!!” (Ya gotta say that with a Cajun accent though). And if you don’t know who Justin is…well, he was actually a safety engineer down in Louisiana that was a pretty darned good chef so got himself on TV for awhile back in the 1970s or 80s…you can go
here to get a small taste of his accent and viewpoints.

 

Edited…ok, now that we’ve had our dinner I wanted to give you a report. We had some Apple wine that we won in a gift basket thing at the Elks fr happy hour…then had the Chalk Hill Pinot Noir but we opened that while we were cooking and it was gone by dinner so we opened a bottle of Lions Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon with dinner but were good and only had a glass each of that. I an report that marinating lamb chops in fresh rosemary, wine vinegar, garlic, balsamic vinegar and olive oil for 26 hours and then grilling them to 125 degrees results in excellent lamb…which was then complimented by a glaze Neil made of orange marmalade, blueberry jam, a bit of the apple wine and a couple drops of hot sauce (Bill’s favorite Habanero sauce from up in Plant City) is mighty good. He sliced on the mandolin a couple of Russet taters and them mixed them with EVOO, smoked paprika, salt, and olive oil and then put them in couple of dishes for baking…they turn out sorta baked and sort fried. For veggies…he boiled about 8 ounces of frozen pearl onions. Then he chopped up a shallot and sautéed that in some duck fat and butter (hey, I said it would be good, not low calorie) then put in the chicken stock the did the onions in and some cream, Italian spices and butter and the ultimate secret for cream sauce…a bit of freshly ground nutmeg (not enough to taste but enough to alter the flavor and make it good but not nutmeg tasting. He poured that in a couple of dishes and topped with panko bread crumbs, more Italian spices, and some Grana Padona cheese (it’s like Parmesan sort of ) and tossed into the broiler for 5 minutes to melt and burn/carmelize slightly the cheese. And…it was really, really good. We’ll have a couple of pecan pie brownies later and a bit of eggnog the just might have a little hooch in it:-) They ate all the taters and onions but have 2 lamb chops to make something scrumptious out of later in the week.

Anyway…lessee what I got from prowling ‘round the internet for ya.

350360-9f58fe19b9a729bec411_lq_1_.jpg

That’s about all I got fer today…so get yourselves to your holiday plans…we’re staying home today since we’re the least popular grandparents I reckon…but as Walter Cronkite used to say “and that’s the way it is for today, December 25th, 2023.” We miss old Walter…one of the last of the true journalists on the news who wanted to tell you the news, not be the news and did little to no soap boxing or slanting of the facts in his broadcasts. Once he was retired…he started stating more political things and was what would back then have been called practically a communist socialist politically but today it would just be progressive as times and attitudes have changed. Despite his personal feelings though (and they were very likely the same when he was the face of the CBS Evening News) it never came through in his broadcasts and for that we as people were better off back then.

Cyas.

Posted in Homebody | 2 Comments

And Now The Shoe Is On The Other Foort

Posted on 2023/12/15 by Gunther

Yeah…that would be the impeachment shoe.

Now…before I talk about that…let me state for the record that at least at our house we are completely not fans of the former President, think he’s a complete idiot, doesn’t deserve to be reelected, and will probably go to jail over at least one of his current indictments. That said…until he is *convicted* of insurrection by a court of law…the justice system in the US says that he is innocent until proven guilty, so he’s not at this point guilty of having participated in an insurrection and all the hubba-hubba about the 14th amendment being “self executing” is just that, a whole lot of nothing-burger.

We are also seriously not fans of the current President or his Veep and neither of them deserves to be reelected either…and when you get down to it a lot of the reasons that former doesn’t deserve to be reelected also apply to the current…but that’s not really the point of this discussion. 

Frankly…some of the policies of both former and current are just fine, and there are just as many policies of both that are just…not fine…but again that’s not the point so I will move on.

I keep seeing a lot of the liberal media talking about how there is no proof of anything involving current at the behest of his son and money…but then back when former was getting investigated and impeached…there was pretty much their side saying that there was no proof. And while we know now that there was actually no proof of wrongdoing by former…we don’t know that about current yet. However…there’s a lot of smoke but no visible flames yet…and it deserves being investigated to see if there is any actual evidence. Without being able to see *everything* the congress has gathered, it’s impossible to say where there is actual evidence or just muckraking…but really, it was the same last time…I distinctly remember how Schiff and his ilk kept saying “we have undeniable written proof and I’ll show it to you later”…but later never came.

Both sides in every recent impeachment (except for Clinton’s, which was a slightly different case) have a lot of innuendo about collusion, corruption, payoffs, the big guy, and don and on…and both sides have protested vehemently that there is no proof…and no evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors” as is required for impeachment. 

But ya know…here’s the deal. Impeachment is absolutely not a legal thing…because according to the constitution it isn’t a legal thing, it’s a throwing people out of office thing. And that my friends…makes it a political thing with political pros and cons and attempts to influence the voters in election season.  Now personally…every impeachment (including Clinton’s)…was doomed from the start as the House in all cases was held by the opposite party and the House is historically far less carefully considered evaluation and much more stick it to the other side than the Senate. I can’t recall if the Senate was controlled by the Democrats for Clinton…but there was clearly not a 2/3 majority who would vote to convict (and convict here is specifically not in the legal justice system definition) and for the former and perhaps current impeachment proceedings the Senate is majority of the President’s party so it’s not going anywhere anyway regardless of the 2/3 majority requirement. So…in my opinion…any impeachment of current is just as doomed as impeachment of former…and the House leadership knows this to their core…and are doing it anyway (or attempting to for current as I type this) and this makes it entirely a political tactic. And going forward…I predict that every President who has a majority House of the opposite party will get investigated and perhaps impeached…and none of them will actually go anyplace because of the 2/3 majority if not the Senate being the President’s party.

Now…I have no idea whether current actually performed any corrupt actions as either the Veep or the former Veep or the current officeholder…but it is clearly obvious to just about anyone with an IQ above room temperature that the rich and powerful get away with a lot of close to the line things and perhaps some over the line things because they’re the rich and powerful. It shouldn’t be that way…but I recognize reality when I see it and also recognize that reality isn’t going to change just because I think it’s screwed up. So…absent seeing all the evidence presented in an unbiased manner and having it analyzed, challenged, and cross examined in a non political manner (which is pretty darned unlikely overall) it’s impossible to say for certain…beyond reasonable doubt…that either former or current actually committed either a high crime or misdemeanor which warrants impeachment and removal from office or whether they committed an actual crime for which they could be indicted and convicted and sent to prison. It’s also not clear whether (as former says and the SCOTUS is considering) whether any President is shielded from prosecution for his actions while carrying out his duties…and I can see an argument to be made for the answer to that question to be either Yes or No…so I’m glad that somebody else has to decide that rather than politicians or media personalities.

I just wish all this BS would go away and the two parties actually do their job and run the country, compromise on difficult issues, and generally not be infantile jerks…but who am I kidding, that ain’t gonna happen.

On the other hand…I see from this
article…that once again our thoughts that no longer teaching civics in high school has led to the dumbing down of the American people and clearly they’ll let you write articles that (a) are completely wrong and nobody actually fact checks them and (b) prove my point about dumbing down. To wit…this article by Dawn Alcott makes the following assertions…that Nancy Pelosi “stepped down from her role as Speaker of the House at the end of 2022”…and “leaving the House without a speaker at the start of the new year”. So…looking at actual facts…it’s clear that Dawn just doesn’t know what the hell she is talking about. 

A Congress is elected for a two year interval…the current one is the 1128th and runs from Jan 3, 2023 to Jan 3, 2025…and the previous one was the 117th running from 2021 to 2023. The new House is sworn in on Jan 3 and the old one is dissolved…and the first order of business of the House is to elect a Speaker…this is historically been the leader of whichever party would have the majority in the new House. In the 117th this was Ms. Pelosi…but she did not step down as Dawn claims…her term office ended and thus she was (as of Jan 3, 2023) no longer Speaker in the same manner that a President doesn’t step down…his term office ends on Jan 20 regardless of whether a successor is sworn in on that date. And the House…well, it wasn’t leaderless either as the first job it has is to elect a speaker and the rules provide for who actually manages the voting for the new speaker…and whoever that is has zero authority to do *anything* except manage the election of the Speaker and deliver the gavel to whoever that is. 

We learned all of this back in high school…because ya know, back in the day Civics was a required course so students would…actually be taught how the government works…but with the lack of that any longer we get people like Dawn who just blather on demonstrating their complete lack of knowledge.

Let’s see…what else I got.

I see that COP 28…ya know the climate change hand wringers…anyway they met in Dubai this week to discuss how to get rid of climate change (an actually impossible task) by eliminating carbon. I’ve never understood how all these rich tree hugger influencers can justify living in their big mansions and flying in their private airplanes to places around the world to debate climate change despite the way above average carbon production they’re personally responsible for…but ya know, that crowd believes in “rules for thee but not for me” I guess. Anyway…they’ve decided to “eliminate the carbon fuel industry by 2050 by legislating scientific progress and…although some of them labeled this point as heresy…actually increasing the amount of nuclear power energy production. They make no mention of exactly where the scientific progress in fusion power, better efficient solar panels, energy storage solutions for the power for when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing…but hey, they just say it will be so.

Now…I’m not saying that climate change is non existent or that it’s a good thing. What I am saying is that climate has always been changing over the 6 billion-ish years of the planet’s existence and it will continue to change. There has been an increase in global temperatures since the dawn of the industrial age…but that’s only been 200 or so years out of the 6 billion and we’ve only been able to measure temperature for about those same 200 years. While ice cores and their scientific analysis does present some idea of what the temperatures were like 3 million years ago…and despite the claims of the climate warriors to the contrary…it’s still a best guess at this point and while people and their cars, power plants, and all certainly have some effect on the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere…it’s not really possible (outside of idiots on both sides of the debate who ignore all evidence that doesn’t support their predetermined conclusion) whether people are a significant contributor, the major one, a minor one, or not at all in the overall scheme of things. And an even more important fact is that short of getting rid of about 2/3 of the 8 billion-ish people on the planet and their associated need for light, water, heat, and food…this isn’t a problem that is solvable. Realistically…the only long term solution that doesn’t violate the laws of physics is the development of fusion power. Fusion will provide essentially limitless power and there’s an essentially limitless amount of fusion fuel in the water in the ocean…but we’ve been 10 years from reliable commercially available fusion power for at least the last 30 or 40 years. Fusion is hard because of the conditions required to make it work. Fusion is expensive because of those conditions…and while we understand how to make fusion work in a thermonuclear fusion missile warhead…making it work in a controlled manner that can generate electricity for us is still a ways away. We’ll probably eventually get there…but all the climate warriors in the world can’t legislate scientific progress any faster than it’s going to happen. And in the meantime…COP kept talking about how the Chinese are on track to place in service more solar power in the next 10 years than the rest of the world combined (or some similar claim)…the same COP ignores the fact that China is continuing to build coal powered power plants at far greater rates than they’re building solar panels and they’re completely ignoring the carbon problem from those plants (both COP and China are doing this)…while demanding that the US and the rest of Western civilization essentially bankrupt their economies and industries to meet unachievable goals.

It’s a hard problem…and I wish there was an answer…but neither the “it’s not happening” people on one side or the “renewable can save us” people on the other side have a clue about what the answer is either. 

69…yeah, the number 69 so I guess this fits into math nerdery.

69 is the only number which when squared (4,761) and cubed (328,509) uses every digit from 0 through 9 exactly once.

And another bit of math nerdery…the number 115,132,219,018,763,992,565,095,597,973,971,522,401 is apparently unique. It is a 39 digit number that equals the sum of each of its digits raised to the 39th power.

Ok, enough of the math stuff…I’ve shown a similar image as these two regarding the amount of water on earth but keep seeing different ways of showing just how small the amount of water on the planet is. This first one…and the image credit is in the image…shows the total amount of water on earth (the largest sphere), the amount of liquid fresh water (the middle one) and the amount of liquid fresh water contained in lakes and rivers (the really tiny sphere about where Atlanta would be on the map…and all of this despite water covering 71% of the planet’s surface area.

Image

This second one is a pie chart version of essentially the same data…I have no idea who did it though but found it on the application formerly known as Twitter.

Image

Just goes to show how little fresh water there is.

 

This is the OmniVision OV6948…it’s the worlds smallest digital image sensor (like the ones in your digital camera)…it measures 0.575 x 0.575 x 0.232mm and is a 40 megapixel sensor (more pixels than in a lot of current top of the line digital cameras). I’m not sure what it’s used for…but it’s really tiny sitting there on a fingertip.

Image

Just a couple of photos for you today…and both of them are old. One Neil’s photography forum somebody posted a thread saying to post your oldest digital landscape image…Neil submitted these two which both date from 2002. The first is from the area outside of Sedona AZ and the second is the Fantasy Island waterfall in Kauai…both were taken on their 25th anniversary trip to Hawaii via Arizona for a work meeting Connie needed to be at.

Cyas.

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

Odds and Ends

Posted on 2023/12/04 by Gunther

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ok, enough of that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interesting things found on the net.

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

And finally.

Cyas.

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

And Even More Nice Weather

Posted on 2023/11/27 by Gunther

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ok, on to photos.

Great Blue Heron or GBH as we call it.

20231116 LPR Z9 2054 2

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

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

20231127 LPR Z9 2076 Enhanced NR

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

20231127 LPR Z9 2073

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

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Interesting things found on the net.

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

YMCA

BankBranches

Beavers

Cyas.

Posted in Critters, Homebody, Photography | Leave a comment

Nice Weather Continues

Posted on 2023/11/16 by Gunther

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

20231116 LPR Z9 1929 Edit

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

20231116 LPR Z9 1955

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

20231116 LPR Z9 1939

20231116 LPR Z9 1948

A pair of White Ibis.

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

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

20231116 LPR Z9 2009

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

20231116 LPR Z9 1977

And lastly…another Tricolor Heron.

20231116 LPR Z9 1969

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

Interesting things found on the net.

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

Fishing.

Following directions explicitly.

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

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

Cyas.

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