Yup. I got stung. Again. Some of you might remember this little adventure just before we moved: When Moving Preparation Goes Wrong.
Well, this morning at exactly 7:00 am (I checked my phone when it happened) another of the buggers stung me on the outside of my left hand, near base of my thumb. Ouch!
We were walking the dogs, and it was pretty cool. I noted a vibration in the cuff of the outer shirt I was wearing and wondered what it was. I reached down to move it when suddenly it hurt, and then something - a wasp, probably, but perhaps a yellow jacket - flew off.
Thankfully I am not particularly allergic to these things (yet) and all I have is some minor swelling and a tiny bit of pain. Not a big deal.
Except...
What is it about me that get me into these situations? I've seen plenty of wasps flying around our area, and never noted a nest. I've been careful as a result. But at 7 am when the temperature was perhaps 9 degrees (Celsius, for my American readers... it's not that cold) any self respecting wasp should have been asleep or catatonic, not flying into the cuff of my shirt and stinging me for trying to let it out.
Sigh.
Just my luck, I guess.
Showing posts with label unexpected_things. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unexpected_things. Show all posts
Monday, October 2, 2017
Saturday, August 26, 2017
More power isn't always better
Maybe it's an American thing, that belief that more power is always better. The big engine, the big car, and so on. Today I have a story where (so far at least) the opposite is true.
At our old home in the Santa Cruz Mountains, we had 2.5 acres of land, on a slight slope. We had redwood trees, what remained of an old pear orchard, and a lot of very tall weeds that needed to be mowed several times during the season to keep the fire danger down. Then the rains arrived and you didn't mow until it started to dry out because your mower would get stuck or slide on the hillside.
To do that work I used a walk behind, high weed mower from one of the big manufacturers of such things. (DR, in my case, but there are others.) It had a 17 HP motor and a 30" blade. It had four speeds powered going forward, one in reverse, and weighed something like 400 pounds. Steering it was real work. I also used a heavy duty, gas powered string trimmer made by Stihl.
Mowing took 12 - 16 hours spread over 2 or 3 days, and left me dehydrated, with leg cramps, blisters, and callouses.
Then we moved away from all of that. And oddly I am mowing the yard in our rental. Doing so got me a small reduction in the rent and the landlord bought me a mower and string trimmer to do the work. The lot is large by suburban standards, perhaps 20,000 square feet, or nearly half an acre.
On arriving, the house had not been maintained for months. The grass was two feet long, dried out, and matted down.
Based on the agreement with the landlord, I bought a $300 gas mower and a cheap string trimmer that is either battery or extension cord powered. Both are laughable in comparison to the gear I used in California.
And yet...
Despite worries from the landlord about how large the lot is and the work involved, once the initial overgrowth was mowed down, mowing this place is trivial. I can mow and trim the whole thing in two hours or so.
It turns out that the cheap gear is just fine for this job. It uses a lot less gas, and is easy to steer and move. (The mower doesn't even have powered wheels... it's up to me to make it go.)
Fascinatingly, I am told the previous owner of the house had a riding mower (amusingly called a "sit mower" by some up here). I didn't even have a riding mower in California, as I didn't trust such a thing on the sloped ground. But I am certain that a riding mower is totally unneeded for this lot. Compared with what I am used to, this is an easy lot to maintain.
I admit that first mow - trying to cut the grossly overgrown grass - took a long time, and required hours of effort. But now the job is easy.
And I find it interesting that in this case, less power is just fine. Not a very American point of view, I fear.
At our old home in the Santa Cruz Mountains, we had 2.5 acres of land, on a slight slope. We had redwood trees, what remained of an old pear orchard, and a lot of very tall weeds that needed to be mowed several times during the season to keep the fire danger down. Then the rains arrived and you didn't mow until it started to dry out because your mower would get stuck or slide on the hillside.
To do that work I used a walk behind, high weed mower from one of the big manufacturers of such things. (DR, in my case, but there are others.) It had a 17 HP motor and a 30" blade. It had four speeds powered going forward, one in reverse, and weighed something like 400 pounds. Steering it was real work. I also used a heavy duty, gas powered string trimmer made by Stihl.
Mowing took 12 - 16 hours spread over 2 or 3 days, and left me dehydrated, with leg cramps, blisters, and callouses.
Then we moved away from all of that. And oddly I am mowing the yard in our rental. Doing so got me a small reduction in the rent and the landlord bought me a mower and string trimmer to do the work. The lot is large by suburban standards, perhaps 20,000 square feet, or nearly half an acre.
On arriving, the house had not been maintained for months. The grass was two feet long, dried out, and matted down.
Based on the agreement with the landlord, I bought a $300 gas mower and a cheap string trimmer that is either battery or extension cord powered. Both are laughable in comparison to the gear I used in California.
And yet...
Despite worries from the landlord about how large the lot is and the work involved, once the initial overgrowth was mowed down, mowing this place is trivial. I can mow and trim the whole thing in two hours or so.
It turns out that the cheap gear is just fine for this job. It uses a lot less gas, and is easy to steer and move. (The mower doesn't even have powered wheels... it's up to me to make it go.)
Fascinatingly, I am told the previous owner of the house had a riding mower (amusingly called a "sit mower" by some up here). I didn't even have a riding mower in California, as I didn't trust such a thing on the sloped ground. But I am certain that a riding mower is totally unneeded for this lot. Compared with what I am used to, this is an easy lot to maintain.
I admit that first mow - trying to cut the grossly overgrown grass - took a long time, and required hours of effort. But now the job is easy.
And I find it interesting that in this case, less power is just fine. Not a very American point of view, I fear.
Thursday, August 24, 2017
Mysteries
This post is going to cover three different mysteries. These are things I have wondered about, and want to know the answers to, but that I have yet to understand.
Anyone who can help me with the answers to any of these things will earn my eternal gratitude, and a link here to their website if desired. Obviously that means I will update the post with new information as it arrives. As with all things, you can reach me if you try, despite comments being off here.
Oh, for all images here, click to see a larger version.
MYSTERY 1 - Strange marks in highway pavement in the USA
SOLVED! SOLVED! SOLVED!
Here's a picture taken on I-5 in Northern CA, on a trip to Vancouver:
MYSTERY 2 - Wood, round, antenna structures west of Richmond, BC
On our regular dog walks along the dyke on the western edge of Richmond, BC, we see odd, round structures, apparently made of wood. There are several of them, well spaced out. Here's one, from afar, and zoomed in. (The zoom'd image is blurry... sorry.)
MYSTERY 3 - The scanner that stopped working in Ubuntu Linux 16.04
SOLVED! SOLVED! SOLVED!
No pictures for this one, I'm afraid, but I wrote it all up in great detail in a post on the Ubuntu Forums here:
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2369422
In short, I updated my OS and everything works (as far as I know) except the scanner. And the failure mode of the scanner is really, really odd. It's as if the bus ID and device ID that were in use for the scanner in the previous version of the OS were saved somewhere, but after the OS update everything got renumbered. When software to find the scanner is run as a regular user, the scanner cannot be found. When the same software is run as root, it does find the scanner (apparently).
As with the other mysteries, Google has not revealed a solution so far.
And that's it. Fame* and fortune** await the people who help me understand these things. Consider it a challenge, please!
Footnotes:
* "Fame" defined as a link to your website, if you want it.
** This is a lie. There will be no fortune for anyone who helps. Sorry.
Anyone who can help me with the answers to any of these things will earn my eternal gratitude, and a link here to their website if desired. Obviously that means I will update the post with new information as it arrives. As with all things, you can reach me if you try, despite comments being off here.
Oh, for all images here, click to see a larger version.
MYSTERY 1 - Strange marks in highway pavement in the USA
SOLVED! SOLVED! SOLVED!
Here's a picture taken on I-5 in Northern CA, on a trip to Vancouver:
Look at the road in front of the car. See those sets of 3 marks on each side, roughly where the wheels of the car go? Those are the mystery. Here's a closeup:
What are those things? Here's what I know so far:
- I have googled quite a bit and been unable to find a search that tells me anything.
- It appears that they happen on expansion joints (or some other linear crack in the road, perpendicular to the direction of travel).
- I have seen them in several states, mostly in I-80, but also (as above) in California on I-5.
- The spacing between groups (in the direction the cars travel on the road) can vary.
- Sometimes there are 2 groups of 4 marks instead of 2 groups of 3. No idea why. But that happens on very different roads. I have never seen groups of 4 & 3 on the same road.
| Mystery 1 has an answer! Readers K and P (possible links still coming) tell me these marks are made as part of a 'dowel bar retrofit', which is a mechanism used to reinforce cracks in highway concrete. Here's a Wikipedia article about the technique. |
MYSTERY 2 - Wood, round, antenna structures west of Richmond, BC
On our regular dog walks along the dyke on the western edge of Richmond, BC, we see odd, round structures, apparently made of wood. There are several of them, well spaced out. Here's one, from afar, and zoomed in. (The zoom'd image is blurry... sorry.)
And here is a shot showing several of these things off to the south:
And finally, here is a captured image from Google Maps, where I have measured the distance between these things. The points on the white line show their locations.
And here's what I know (it's not much):
- They appear to be made of wood, and have no apparent electrical connections.
- They face South West. (Bring up google maps for Richmond, BC, switch to satellite mode, and zoom in to confirm that yourself. You can see them in some detail there.)
- The spacing between them isn't regular. (See map above.)
- They are in a straight line running very close to due North/South, as far as I can tell. (Again, see map above.) It is just possible that they do not run perfectly North/South, but from the level of detail I have, it's hard to know.
- And once more, Google has let me down on finding more details.
That's it. I know nothing more.
| Mystery 2 has been solved. It prompted a lot of discussion on Facebook and in email, and many people participated in the conversation. K suggested these are navigation markers for ships, and looked at some nautical charts but didn't find them specifically. I found them in openseamap.org, but couldn't find the description of the actual things I found. J found the actual information about the chart annotation that resolved it, along with the formal description of the item type - "Daybeacons" - which says: "Generally, daybeacons are unlighted aids used primarily to assist the mariner during daylight hours" and goes on with other information that makes it clear that these things off the coast of Richmond are there to keep ships out of trouble. Thanks to the many people who looked into this and helped find the definitive answer! It was really fun to get it worked out. |
MYSTERY 3 - The scanner that stopped working in Ubuntu Linux 16.04
SOLVED! SOLVED! SOLVED!
No pictures for this one, I'm afraid, but I wrote it all up in great detail in a post on the Ubuntu Forums here:
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2369422
In short, I updated my OS and everything works (as far as I know) except the scanner. And the failure mode of the scanner is really, really odd. It's as if the bus ID and device ID that were in use for the scanner in the previous version of the OS were saved somewhere, but after the OS update everything got renumbered. When software to find the scanner is run as a regular user, the scanner cannot be found. When the same software is run as root, it does find the scanner (apparently).
As with the other mysteries, Google has not revealed a solution so far.
| Mystery 3 has been solved. Without going into too much detail, there was a permissions problem because of changes introduced in Ubuntu Linux between 14.04 LTS and 16.04 LTS. I, personally, got the problem about 95% solved, but thanks to confusing and inaccurate documentation, I missed a bit of syntax that kept it from working. A good friend (John M.) pointed that last issue out, and suddenly everything works again. I think someone at Ubuntu needs a kick in the head for this, but such is life. The scanner works, and that is all that matters for now. Anyone wanting all the details can read this thread: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2369422 wherein I document the entire mess. |
And that's it. Fame* and fortune** await the people who help me understand these things. Consider it a challenge, please!
Footnotes:
* "Fame" defined as a link to your website, if you want it.
** This is a lie. There will be no fortune for anyone who helps. Sorry.
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Trying to deal with Twitter... differently...
So... some time back in this very blog I indicated that I didn't get twitter, and that I didn't use it. That changed as I found myself trying to update people in my neighborhood about local fire related items and events. I found a place for twitter.
I used it purely to send data out about fires and the like. Email isn't always a good vehicle for real time information distribution. It can suffer delays, and people don't always get email quickly. But twitter lets people get things via their phone, and (with luck, anyway) the number of delayed transmissions for the SMS messages twitter sends out will be lower than the email delays I've seen.
So, fine. I started using twitter for that.
Then it turns out I have some friends that use twitter. Of course. So - much like Facebook - if you want to see what is going on, you need to follow them on their platform of choice. Fine. And of course they follow some interesting people, and there are a bunch of emergency information sources on twitter as well, so I wound up following about 40 people.
Next I discovered that my web host makes use of twitter too, and they respond to questions there. Interesting. But if I send questions to them using my existing twitter account, those tweets will show up in the feeds of people following me for emergency information, which is not something I wanted to do.
And someone I wanted to contact in real life doesn't give out an email address, but she's on twitter. Not a huge deal, but again I don't want to cause cruft to show up in the twitter streams of those who follow me for emergency purposes only. Gah.
So guess what... the one who said he doesn't tweet now has two twitter accounts, and is struggling to find a good Linux client that supports that situation. So far, I have tried three:
I may look into Poly, but it's in pre-alpha status still, and I don't know how stable it is. But it may be better than Gwibber, so I will ponder.
This is craziness, I know. But here I am, trying to be part of the modern age. Again.
If you're silly enough to want to follow me on twitter, I am:
If I was following you before, I still am, but possibly on the new account if you're not one of those I track for emergency information.
What on earth am I doing?
I used it purely to send data out about fires and the like. Email isn't always a good vehicle for real time information distribution. It can suffer delays, and people don't always get email quickly. But twitter lets people get things via their phone, and (with luck, anyway) the number of delayed transmissions for the SMS messages twitter sends out will be lower than the email delays I've seen.
So, fine. I started using twitter for that.
Then it turns out I have some friends that use twitter. Of course. So - much like Facebook - if you want to see what is going on, you need to follow them on their platform of choice. Fine. And of course they follow some interesting people, and there are a bunch of emergency information sources on twitter as well, so I wound up following about 40 people.
Next I discovered that my web host makes use of twitter too, and they respond to questions there. Interesting. But if I send questions to them using my existing twitter account, those tweets will show up in the feeds of people following me for emergency information, which is not something I wanted to do.
And someone I wanted to contact in real life doesn't give out an email address, but she's on twitter. Not a huge deal, but again I don't want to cause cruft to show up in the twitter streams of those who follow me for emergency purposes only. Gah.
So guess what... the one who said he doesn't tweet now has two twitter accounts, and is struggling to find a good Linux client that supports that situation. So far, I have tried three:
- Gwibber is OK, at best, but it doesn't make use of the colors you assign to each account. That means arriving tweets are intermixed and you need to know which ones come from where if you care. Also, when I send a tweet, I can find no way to choose which account the new tweet will come from. That's bad. But so far it's the best I've found.
- Birdie claims to support multiple accounts, but I couldn't figure out how to make it actually do that. One account was OK, but if I tried to add another one it seemed to just add the first one a second time. Odd and pointless.
- Hotot wouldn't work at all. I could not get it to let me login. No clue why.
I may look into Poly, but it's in pre-alpha status still, and I don't know how stable it is. But it may be better than Gwibber, so I will ponder.
This is craziness, I know. But here I am, trying to be part of the modern age. Again.
If you're silly enough to want to follow me on twitter, I am:
- @jrpstonecarver - my emergency info account, mostly for Santa Cruz Mountain residents who want to know about fires and other events in our area
- @jeffpstonecarver - my new account, for everything else
If I was following you before, I still am, but possibly on the new account if you're not one of those I track for emergency information.
What on earth am I doing?
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Things you don't expect
How about a water leak when it isn't raining? And no, a pipe didn't burst.
Apparently some time back - no one is sure how long ago, but probably back in mid-December before we left on vacation - one of us left a hose valve just slightly open. The water dripped out once every couple of seconds. Normally this would not be a problem, but we live in a house with a flat roof. An 18 year old flat roof with a deck over it.
Well, apparently the part of that roof right against the house where the hose was dripping slopes the wrong way. Water had pooled up against the house there over the years and rusted through the steel roofing. That rust may have been exacerbated by nails driven through the wall just above the roof line, into something vaguely like but not really flashing.
Anyway, the water runs into the house there, drips down through the ceiling and into the guest bedroom. But it's not really that simple. The entire house is shear-sheeted with plywood - on the inside even - so that soaks up and holds a TON of water before it drips down onto the drywall.
We discover the mess in the guest bedroom a week after getting home. I got some advice from friends and tore out a lot of water soaked sheet rock. Now we run fans in that room all the time trying to dry it out (which is working) and I've opened up the deck and put a bunch of goo into the area of the leak which I hope will prevent additional water intrusion.
What a mess. I have a garage full of busted up drywall and muck to haul to the dump and need to give everything a long time to dry out before we close it back up. Fortunately we have little or no mold in there, which is good.
Oh, and I did note dry water stains on the back of some of the drywall as I pulled it out. That means there was previous leakage that we never saw. This could have gone on for years.
I guess this summer we get a new roof/deck. What fun.
Apparently some time back - no one is sure how long ago, but probably back in mid-December before we left on vacation - one of us left a hose valve just slightly open. The water dripped out once every couple of seconds. Normally this would not be a problem, but we live in a house with a flat roof. An 18 year old flat roof with a deck over it.
Well, apparently the part of that roof right against the house where the hose was dripping slopes the wrong way. Water had pooled up against the house there over the years and rusted through the steel roofing. That rust may have been exacerbated by nails driven through the wall just above the roof line, into something vaguely like but not really flashing.
Anyway, the water runs into the house there, drips down through the ceiling and into the guest bedroom. But it's not really that simple. The entire house is shear-sheeted with plywood - on the inside even - so that soaks up and holds a TON of water before it drips down onto the drywall.
We discover the mess in the guest bedroom a week after getting home. I got some advice from friends and tore out a lot of water soaked sheet rock. Now we run fans in that room all the time trying to dry it out (which is working) and I've opened up the deck and put a bunch of goo into the area of the leak which I hope will prevent additional water intrusion.
What a mess. I have a garage full of busted up drywall and muck to haul to the dump and need to give everything a long time to dry out before we close it back up. Fortunately we have little or no mold in there, which is good.
Oh, and I did note dry water stains on the back of some of the drywall as I pulled it out. That means there was previous leakage that we never saw. This could have gone on for years.
I guess this summer we get a new roof/deck. What fun.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)