Musings of a minor megalomaniac
These rose bushes are “supposed” to be yellow. They were yellow the first ten years after I planted them here. Something happened around three years ago causing them to bloom red. They’ve had the exact same water/fertilize routine since day 1. Any ideas?
I made this cargo extender for the ’07 Dodge several years ago. It was a fairly good-sized welding project, for me. I looked at some commercially available models, but the ones I found all had what I viewed as major compromises of one sort or another, along with too-high prices. So I decided to fabricate this one myself with about $40 worth of 1″ steel conduit and a few rubber furniture feet.
The design maximizes available space right out to the corners of the lowered tailgate. It enabled the truck to easily carry ten 8-foot tables and 100 chairs for the graduation party last week. That’s a real achievement, considering the bed holds a large toolbox and auxiliary fuel tank to start with. The really cool part you cannot see is how the ~half-ton load does not even begin to stress the 5Klb air bag under it with a minimal 10psi charge.
Francie received her diploma from Frederick High Saturday. The ceremony was forced indoors due to the incessant rain we’ve had this spring. Nevertheless, we got it done in fine style and the event was even shared with family back east on livestream. I snapped a few shots during and after the ceremony for this page in her PhotoAlbum.
Grandma Shaffer flew in Tuesday for Francie’s graduation. We got lucky with the recently unsettled weather and had a nice day Wednesday for a little sightseeing up in the mountains. We did lunch at a little burger joint in Estes then spent a couple hours touring the National Park.
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Nothing, really. Same ol’ shyt. Just more of it, seeping into every nook and cranny of our daily lives. I was in on the ground floor as an IT pro when it really took off in the mid 90’s, so my perspective could be considered somewhat credible. The question to me now is: are we going in the right direction? With Net Neutrality rules following other recent right-wing political initiatives, One has to wonder…
Assuming some current Cyber issues all really boil down to politics, (the answer to my question posited here) let’s take for example, the Russian election meddling issue. Or Russian election “hacking” as has been erroneously characterized in the fake news and even from podiums in our most hallowed high government chambers: WTF? Who is naive enough to believe the Russians don’t have aspects of their own national security at stake in our election outcomes? And just how short-sighted do you have to be not to expect them to do anything they can to apply influence towards those outcomes with one of the few means they have available? You can be absolutely sure the CIA is monitoring Russian political activities looking for anything they can exploit to OUR advantage – and actively doing so at every opportunity.
What is the big difference between a Russian social media/fake news campaign, and the conventional campaigns waged here at home by the candidates themselves? Technically nothing, except who is doing it. And that you cannot control. But it sure does seem to make great fodder for politicians always ready to seize upon anything they can twist to their own ends. Maybe they are just afraid of the unknown, because let’s face it, the level of technical understanding on the topic of “hacking” is pretty darn low for probably 99.999% of the population, politicians included. So goes the Russian hacking nonsense: A huge issue garnering intense focus from idiots in Washington D.C. who actually know little or nothing about the topic, generally speaking.
Follow the money. Then consider all the other Internet-borne security threats we face today: Spam, Phishing, Identity Theft, Credit Card Fraud, etc. It’s all about easy money. And what’s the “easiest” money in the world? Why taxes, of course! And there we are full circle back to politics. So conservatives favor giving the Telecoms more leeway in how the Internet is managed, giving more control and thus greater market advantage to the C-levels in the business. AT&T and their ilk just love it when the government allows them to stack the deck in their favor. More profit buys more lobbying. Round-and-round we go…
Fuck security – there’s money to be made!!
The Columbines came up really strong this year for the first time. They are the Colorado State Flower. I had a hard time getting them to grow well for many years. It took a couple tries to find the right spot around here for them. They seem to be pretty happy out back by the pond now.
This yearbook page marks the end of Francie’s high school volleyball career. I’m sure it will be followed by an even better stint with the Plymouth Panthers:
That ground cover really exploded with color this year after the snow last weekend.
My favorite afternoon sitting spot has been in need of re-finishing for a few years. This is were I sit and watch the sunsets and cars going by when I’m too tired to do anything else at the end of a nice summer day. I finally started getting around to it over the past month, and the front porch glider is now nicely done after a decade of weathering and sun fading left it looking pretty shabby:
It took a total of around 15 hours of work over the past month to get this done right. After disassembly, 23 separate pieces of wood needed sanded, stained and re-done with three coats of spar urethane. The wood was somewhat damaged from uneven fading and discoloration due to how the original finish weathered over the years. I suspect it will last a bit longer than 10 years this time around.
The Aquatics hobby is ramping up with spring pond work and a new feeder tank in the basement coming this year. Pond needs re-lined. I was a bit disappointed we did not get more than one year out of the first liner in PondV3, but it was sort of expected. And it only took a year to find out 20 gallons is not enough to feed these guys live food as much as I (and certainly they!) would like:
At least the main tank is doing quite well. Notice the big guy peering out from the top left corner. Looks like the filter schedule on this one should settle into running for about 5 months. Despite still pushing good flow after a 6-month run last cycle, that appeared to be a bit too long, based on upwardly trending water nitrate levels. That Marineland C360 cannister has turned out to be a great choice for this tank.
It’s official: Plymouth State University, New Hampshire. We had a little signing ceremony for her and a couple of other Frederick High athletes yesterday. I’m sure there’s probably still just a wee bit more paperwork left to do at this point…
Link to a few more pics and the pre-Prom dress-up shots.
And new feet as well I suppose, depending on how the analogy works for the wheels. It’s running 235/40 18s. That’s pretty close to the most tire it’ll fit the same size on all 4 corners with the Ohlins suspension. The M models and some Sportline options come with bigger rears, but I like to be able to rotate, because the rears definitely do wear ALOT faster, even with the electronic nannys engaged.
They are the cheapest, not stupid-looking wheel/tire combo I could find at this size – cast, all-season. Nuthin’ Fancy – from the Skynyrd album of that name:
Just finished organizing the pics from the Girl’s trip to Panama last December for your viewing pleasure. There are some good shots of Michelle’s extended family at the bottom. It’s pretty obvious how so many guys like me ended up finding their wives down there…
We don’t get much in the way of visitors around here, so it was especially nice spending time with Carol ‘n Ron when they came to visit last August. I only just finished posting up the pics saved from their camera before they returned to PA. One in particular was a rare time-capsule view of Sis and me in Rocky Mountain National Park:
Fortunately I didn’t get around to reading this until later in life:
The Emperor Wears No Clothes, a book about the history of Hemp in the U.S.A.
It’s fortunate from my perspective, because learning I’d been systematically lied to by any number of influential people in my life including teachers, politicians, medical practitioners and indeed the government establishment itself, probably would have resulted at some point in me being incarcerated in the miserable mess of a prison system sitting beneath what we call justice in this country today.
This blog post is just my little better-late-than-never contribution to help preserve Jack’s legacy. Jack Herer was obviously a great visionary with the nads to go up against hopeless odds for what he believed was true and right. As long as I’m around, these pages will at least represent a timely token gesture towards him on my part, as we enter the Trumpomania era. Hell, Trump’s been doing the Dance Naked since well before the inauguration. So it appears once again, common sense, truth and justice will be defined by avaricious businessmen with little regard for what is truly right or valuable.
It should be interesting to see the new administration’s upcoming clashes with the will of the people in this country. Perhaps that will has already in many respects, been usurped by the election itself. Politics aside, the relatively few studies sneaking through over the past couple of decades have shown the drug’s therapeutic benefits pretty conclusively. With climate change knocking hard on the door and cannabis legalization already in place in a majority of states and many more in the making, we got some ‘splaining to do behind Federal DOE, DEA and FBI doors. DEA began the long, uphill backpedal. Amazing.
I used to go about the workplace(s) making small talk that inevitably touched on business and politics. One of my favorite quips was “I hate Corporate America almost as much as I hate The Government.” Now I’m not so sure those two things are all that much separate and distinct entities. Anything supporting the Federal Cannabis Ban topic in all it’s misinformed stupidity is simply morally indefensible. Despite still being at it to this day, the days where Corporate America enriches itself through Government market control at the expense of it’s citizens’ general welfare are numbered. Anyone remember “pharma bro?” Nobody will use Insys’ garbage if they can can get the real, pure, unadulterated product as nature intended from a plant they can grow themselves quite easily.
The brazen SOB’s at GW Pharma over in the UK even have the gall to attempt market-cornering tactics with legislative moves in states that are not presently even exploring MMJ initiatives. It is anathema to the most fundamental principles on which our free-markets are supposed to be based. I can’t wait to witness the fall of Big Pharma. Unfortunately, it will probably be preceded by implosion of the entire healthcare system as we know it today.
People just wanting to feel good and relieve pain should not need to mortgage their futures to drug companies for that purpose.
I typically spend more time playing with my little home enterprise data center over the winter when weather precludes other activities. This past winter has seen more system work than usual due to a number of factors, mostly hard drive breakage. The legacy SCSI storage subsystems are almost gone now, with only 1 remaining. They are just too finicky and difficult to maintain these days. The old PC’s represent the bottom tier of our hierarchical storage system. One of them (4 presently in rotation) gets an incremental data backup from the online NAS once every 1, 2, 3 or 4 months, so the oldest copy will always be between 3 and 4-months old. My data preservation scheme will be near perfect if I ever remember to work in an offsite 6-month tape cycle with Carolyn.
I was saving the last system needing attention for the Debian 9 release, but as usual they are taking their damn good old time with it. With spring here now, I decided to go ahead and put the RC2 release on it after getting tired of waiting. This guy has been refreshed with a new combo consisting of 2 Raid5’s for the root and data file-systems. An SSD has tmp and swap on it. The 10-year old Abit IP-35 Core2-Quad Intel machine ends up with 9 drives, 8 gigs of RAM and no SCSI in it this time around. Despite it’s age, it should nevertheless run very well as configured.
The coolest thing about this particular PC is the video subsystem, partially shown in the 1st pic above. That low-profile Nvidia card started life in an HP Pavilion 11 years ago. It was a premium upgrade for the Pavilion I ordered from HP at the time. It’s fan went bad at some point, but fortunately it got noisy before failing completely, so I was able to save the card. It’s been re-animated in the IP-35 with a cobbed-up dual fan setup as shown. The only new part needed for this build was an additional 4-port SATA controller.