Author: bhayes952

April 4, 2024 – Never Have I Ever…

April 4, 2024 /

Listen very carefully at the beginning of this video and you will hear the tail end of someone shooting 15 successive shots. As far as I know, no person was found nor was any evidence. The 911 call revealed that several people had also called this in. However, like all recounts of evidence, the story was all over the place.

I happened to be outside when it happened. This is the reason the camera was on in the first place. I was putting some chairs back away in preparation for the weather to change and then all of a sudden, there were 15 rapid shots that sounded like it came from somewhere very close. My first thought was fireworks and I was looking in the sky. But, when no lights followed, my mind was trying to figure out what happened.

It is context. If I was at the rifle range, I wouldn’t have given a second thought about it. I have never heard fifteen successive shots at my home. In the country, you occasionally hear one shot or maybe some erratically spaced groups when some predator or pest shows it’s face at the wrong time.

Before I get completely speculative, no information is really known. Was it someone who just went into their backyard and fired a magazine? This would explain why there was no evidence. I talked to both neighbors next to me and we all thought the shots came from the same general direction.

You, the reader may not realize this but there are some other firsts here too. This is the first time I have ever downloaded a video clip from Ring. This is also the first time I have embedded video directly into WordPress. I think that function may be new because I have always put it to YouTube previously. So, this post was a little more than just ‘hey, I just realized I live in a war zone’.

I am not going to deny that I believe the social and moral fabric is eroding quickly in this town. That being said, I can remember thirty years ago my wife saying ‘that is where the coke dealers live’. I think what has changed is the level of violence and the quickness of escalation. There is more gang activity than ever, there is more police involved shootings and the frequency is getting shorter. Over half of the high school students come from families qualifying for reduced lunch, there is bound to be trouble.

In many ways, I feel like my home location’s greatest weakness is also it’s greatest strength. Because I live on a state highway, there is constant traffic and no legal parking. That keeps trick or treaters away but it also keeps people from stopping or loitering. The side street has seen it’s share of people up to no good, but vigilant neighbors keep an eye on things. It should be mostly empty due to a church taking the majority of the block across the street from me. Anyone stopping is immediately suspicious.

This morning I woke up to the garage door being open all night. Apparently, my son left it open after I locked up for the evening. It really makes me mad because I really try to perform good operational security. But that is only as good as the people in the system. Fortunately, we have never had any sort of theft other than a birdbath in our first year of living here.

End Your Programming Routine: So yes, I am in shock that I heard an entire magazine fired off very close to me. Yes, I do believe that this city is experiencing urban decay and increased violence. But, to put it into perspective it is a fact of life wherever people live, I am not one of those people that believe nothing ever happens, it is just a matter of whether I know about it or not.

April 3, 2024 – Always Say Yes

April 3, 2024 /

We had a wonderful weekend a couple of weeks ago. Since spring is here, so does the yard work. Since I pay someone to do most of it, when it comes to extras they check if we are OK with spending more money. They came with two propositions. One is to treat the grass and the other is to treat the pavers.

I am not big on chemical usage. I don’t care so much about weeds in the lawn but I really don’t want moss in it because it will eventually take over and kill the grass. I said yes to that. But, my wife and I differ about moss on the driveway. On one hand, it does cause degradation of the block setting, but I don’t feel like it hurts much. So, I said that I will do that.

This is probably only the second time I have used the sprayer in the picture. I remember getting it from my grandparents when we got into our first house in the late 1990s. I didn’t know if it worked even since it has been sitting for so long. Once I figured that out, I also learned that there was a lot of pumping involved.

This particular model has a port for a hose. The act of filling up the water pressurizes the vessel. Very nice until all the air leaks out. That happens when some of the powder (moss killer) gets into the threads or the rubber seals are dried out because they have never been lubricated. By the time I really figured all of those problems out, I was on the last tank.

The whole process took me about two and a half hours. My out of shape body was wondering if this was really worth the effort. But, it was one of the very first 70 degree days in spring and it felt really good to be outside with pleasant weather. As the moss killer works, I also notice that there is some grass also springing up . That actually requires a different treatment. So, now I have to go with a second application. I am less enamored with spraying something like Round-up than a zinc based moss killer.

If I look at this analytically, I saved myself $170. That is $180 for the job minus $10 for the moss killer. Given the time I spent, the pencils out to $68/hour. I am sure that I would not pay someone that rate to do this job. But, if I have to do it twice that is going to take it down to half of that and now I am getting into the rate that I would pay for.

I am not going to say that I didn’t learn some things, like how to use my sprayer. But, you always have to do the calculus of would that time be better spent doing something else. In my case, I am very close to that line. I am not too proud to do the job, I just have limited time to do things and I am not sure this is how I want to do use it. I also know that there was a significant amount of inefficiency in my doing the job and messing with pumping and the sprayer.

My grandfather was a farmer and my dad wishes he was one. Spraying has been in my whole life. Being a chemist and a believer in whole, natural foods and environment I think chemicals has a very limited place. One place is to not destroy property and infrastructure like my driveway. If you look very carefully at the picture, you can see some patches that are loose. I have tried to repair them several times. I don’t want that to get worse.

End Your Programming Routine: So, for now I will see how it goes. I feel like I should have paid the money. The last time I did this, I had a quote to prune the apple tree for $200. I did it and it took me 16 hours, plus I had to deal with all of the clippings. It is not like I have a burn pile. So you would think that I learned, it is just hard to spend the extra money.

April 2, 2024 – A Moveable Feast

April 2, 2024 /

A Moveable Feast by Earnest Hemmingway is the March Left Coast Culinary Book Club selection. By an unfortunate series of events, I had to cancel the actual moveable feast as my wife was having a procedure done in preparation for Chemotherapy. The plan was to go crabbing and then have a seafood boil afterwards.

I was introduced to the seafood boil in South Carolina, named the ‘low country boil’. It is sausage, corn on the cob, small boiling potatoes and some kind of regional seafood. We were planning on catching a couple local Dungeness crabs and feasting out. I have come to learn that there are many different versions using crawdads or lobsters or soft shelled crabs depending on what is available regionally.

A Moveable Feast was published posthumously and featured Hemingway’s years in Paris and some of France. It is really a series of writings that he made while he was there and tucked away in his belongings to be discovered after he died. As a result, it is kind of a incongruous set of chapters with different interactions of the period.

Hemingway served in World War I and kind of fell in love with Europe. He spent roughly 1921-1927 living in Paris as a result. While he was there, he tended to rub shoulders with all of the expatriates that were also there. The chapters were some of those interactions with people like Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald. By proximity and scene, he also befriended people like Pablo Picasso as well.

Hemingway was an interesting dichotomy. On one hand, he was an artist. He had passion, partied hard and loved hard. On the other hand, he was a man’s man interested in hunting and fishing and bull fighting. Clearly, he was worldly choosing Paris and Cuba for a lot of his life, but ending it in Idaho (literally).

I wouldn’t call myself a Hemingway fan per se but I definitely prefer him to many and most of the contemporary classic writers. I think about The Old Man and the Sea or The Sun Also Rises and remember not hating it like some of the others we read. But, I have to say that this book felt like a money grab. There was no real story, just anecdotes of his run ins with cronies. And not really interesting at that.

I believe that it is called Moveable Feast because nearly all of the chapters center around Ernest at a cafe and talking about writing or talking with other artists. They seemed to have a bit here, then move somewhere else all kind of dreaming and scheming about the work.

This isn’t a culinary book but there is plenty of food and drink in it. Beer, wine, cocktails and coffee flow freely as well. I proposed that if the book offended the senses of the hard-core cookbook readers of the group, they could also check out the PBS series of the same name. That I could get behind. I love Americana and people passionate about what they do.

End Your Programming Routine: My recommendation on this one is skip. If you are extremely interested in the life of Hemingway, then maybe this is your cup of tea. I simply did not find enough value in the book to recommend. I still want to have the seafood boil, but that will likely have to wait until after all of this cancer stuff. For now, I can keep on reading while I play the support role.

April 1, 2024 – Don’t Be a Fool

April 1, 2024 /

I am trying to bridge the past and the current today using my way too extensive experience with pharmacies. It is a total mess and their financial books show it. My main point is there is always more to the story than what the story says. I guess I don’t have too much in the way of facts other than one plus one does not equal three.

March 29, 2024 – The Divine Comedy, Purgatory, Canto I – IX

March 29, 2024 /

With all that is going on, I struggled to get through this week. In my book, nine Cantos was something like 160 pages, including the introduction to Purgatory as well. With all the notes and heavy language and combined with the distractions just made it difficult. I will put all of that aside because here we are.

As I have stated earlier in this review, I am not a believer in Purgatory. I have never really studied it and so I really don’t know much about it. After reading this week, I can kind of, sort of get a sense of it’s purpose in the role of heaven. At least I understand how the religion effects the after world.

Again, I imagine that I will get a real education throughout the series. But, for instance at the different levels are those that sought repentance from God at their last moments. Above them are people that died without last rites, like being killed in battle or murdered. Presumably they were mostly good or faithful but didn’t get a final blessing before death.

I don’t fully understand third shelf. It was political leaders who led their states into conflict, I think. Things do get mixed up between figures here versus other leaders in the Inferno. Like I stated there, I think this is as much as what side they were on in Dante’s perspective rather then their actual deeds.

Just as in hell, the symbology runs deep in Purgatory. Hell was all dark all the time. Purgatory has days and nights. Purgatory is described as a mountain. It is steepest at the start and gets easier as you go. The idea is that eventually, if souls stay on the right path or wait long enough and are earnest in their repentance that they will eventually advance. Just as the mountain is steep, they could just as easily not advance or give up. Makes sense to me.

Canto nine ends at the gates of Purgatory. There are moral challenges and judgement to entering. Also, the sentry warns them not to look back on entry or they will be kicked out. This is a serious stage gate in the afterlife.

Part and parcel with my beliefs, I don’t take the Catholic view of baptism to heart. Reading along here it was indicated people that died before receiving the initial baptism go not to purgatory but to hell. Presumably to the very first level that Virgil is in which is the level for souls before Christ. My belief in the new covenant and a benevolent God finds this belief almost counter-intuitive.

End Your Programming Routine: I am not anti-Catholic. I respect most faiths that generally fall into order with my line of beliefs. There is a lot of good that they do throughout the world and I have a lot of interaction with that faith because my wife’s family is largely Catholic. Heck, I’ve gone to baptism class twice even to be god-parents. There is just some doctrine I cannot get behind. Babies dying condemned to hell, while politicians waiting to get into heaven, no.

March 28, 2024 – No Wonder People Hate Technology

March 28, 2024 /

I am a programmer for goodness sake, why is so much information bad? A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that the hard drive on my primary desktop was almost filled. It wasn’t that long ago that I went on a cutting spree trying to free up space on that hard drive (a couple of months). I finally figured out that One drive was syncing everything wherever it was connected. I thought that I was putting stuff into One drive to keep my hard drive clean.

At the same time, I had enough of my laptop. The hard drive is constantly pegging at 100% use. It cripples the ability to do anything on the computer and has for many years. I had an idea, I am going to swap that hard drive for a solid state drive and take the old hard drive and put it into my desktop that is almost full.

I am no idiot. In the old days, you had a CD-ROM that you put into the drive and you rebuilt the operating system from disk. Well, I don’t even have an optical drive in my laptop. So, I looked up multiple instructions that concurred. Create a recovery drive on USB. Replace the hard drive and then boot from the recovery drive to rebuild the operating system. “NNNNNT, Wrong”.

First of all, a recovery drive is only for rebuilding working and existing hard drives. Trust me, I spent hours trying to make it work. I don’t care what expert said what, it does not work. It wasn’t even easy to build the recovery drive either. I spent probably six hours messing around with that.

The instructions say, you need a 32GB USB drive. OK, I went out and bought one. Then, it says use the recovery drive utility built into Windows. After two hours, the first one failed. Two more hours and the second one failed. I started checking the internet for why this was happening. As it turns out, the USB drive needed to be formatted in NTSC and not FAT32 format. Once I did that, add another two hours to create the recovery drive.

I swapped the hard drive and then booted from the recovery drive. At first, I tried the option that restored my settings. That got to 70% complete and then I was alerted that there was an error. I tried it again, same result. Then third attempt, I tried a new install, also failed. I went to bed for the night, pissed and bewildered.

The next morning, I started checking the internet and found out that this can only be done with a Windows image. The registration component is apparently on the motherboard. I didn’t want to ruin my recovery drive in case I still needed it, but I needed an 8GB drive for Windows 11 media. The only drive I had of that size was my bootable Ubuntu image. It turns out, when you build an Ubuntu drive, it write protects those files and so my 8GB drive had three partitions that I could not get rid of. I had to download Rufus again just to get rid of the partitions.

One of the permaculture principles is the problem is the solution. So, fortunately, all of my data was backed up to One Drive. But, I did have to re-connect mail, and download browsers and Microsoft 365 and all that stuff. This is the easy stuff since I have been religiously using Bit-Locker to store all of my account information. And now, I am just clicking through and adding stuff.

Did this make a performance difference? You bet it did. I no longer want to throw my laptop off of a building. Installing the old hard drive should be easy (compared to this). Once I have all of that working, I am going to start ripping DVDs of content that I am keeping on One Drive. I don’t want to get rid of my podcast raw data and things like that, but I certainly don’t need to keep easy access to it and I definitely don’t want it clogging up my hard drive. That is a whole different story. Even though I have a DVD burner, that is not working either.

End Your Programming Routine: We are in the habit of taking all information as good information, myself included. When multiple sources had the same instructions, I took for granted that it was correct. It may be that this was valid for Windows 10 and not 11, I don’t know what was wrong. This should have been done in a couple of hours and stretched into days based on bad information. I am glad that I had more than one computer and USB drive.

March 27, 2024 – The 1990s Called, They Want Their Fountain Back

March 27, 2024 /

Spring is in the air. No, it is not exactly here but I think that we are past the worst of winter. A water feature that I purchased for my wife’s birthday a couple of years ago sat idly on the deck. I know for a lot of people, the sound of water brings serenity. Not me, but she wanted it on.

She came in frantic saying that it was broken. I feared that freezing weather might break the glazed clay structure. I had drained all the water, but that wasn’t enough as the base had split. I felt bad because nerves about upcoming biopsy was getting the best of her. Sure, we can replace it but that isn’t going to calm nerves the night before a hospital stay and potentially life altering information.

Back in the late 1990s there was a trend to to have these small, table-top, serenity fountains. We had one as well (from here on out, I will call it mine). It had sat in storage for years (and years). I remembered that we had it, so I sprung into action.

The one I had was home built, meaning the pump was purchased separately from the bowl and the bedrock and the focal rock. We had used a piece of bamboo to conceal some PVC tube from the pump and it never quite flowed the way we wanted it. After a month or so of running, the bamboo would break and then I would run around and try to find a suitable replacement. To top it off, I filled the bowl with aquarium gravel and that took all of the volume in the bowl so it was always running dry.

Being much older and wiser (and tool richer) now, I thought I will drill a hole in the focal rock for the water to come out of. Forget the bamboo and the tubing and it will look a lot nicer too. The roughly and poorly adhered slices of slate cemented together broke in three pieces. but I did get a through hole in two of the pieces. So, I forced the PVC tubing through the two so that they would roughly look like they belonged.

I have some work to do still. But, you can see it is working and I think it looks better than it did before. I want to put some hardware cloth down for the rocks to sit on. I tried a couple of steel rods that I had with some window screen over the top. It kind of worked, but I didn’t have time to wait for serenity.

Changes to make.

  1. Weld up a steel super structure.
  2. Purchase hardware cloth (wire mesh) and cut to fit the bowl
  3. Layer the window screen on top of the hardware cloth
  4. Adhere the two pieces of focal rock back together and place
  5. Finally, add the base rock
  6. Maybe, embellish a little more with craft store or aquarium finds
  7. And now we are back in the 1990s, but much better

End Your Programming Routine: This fountain does not make the noise of the outdoor fountain. But, I think it has the potential to look nice and it does take it out of storage. I can also put it in a place that my wife can enjoy it while going through treatment even if winter continues.

March 26, 2024 – Gearing Up For Battle

March 26, 2024 /

I am going to tell you, being a support person to someone going through a life-threatening illness is not the hardest thing. It doesn’t compare in a long way to the person going through the battle. But, it is not easy either. For better or worse, I know a little something about this.

Today, I want to talk about making the support role successful. The obvious priority is for the ill person to focus solely on healing. My first foray into this was in 2010. My kids were two and four. At least life is a little easier in that I don’t need childcare anymore. Here are the basics.

  1. Communicate Proactively- In the US, we have a social benefit of Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Your job will be protected up to six months of providing support if you choose to file it. You may not get paid for that time, but you won’t be fired either. I was lucky in that I could work from the hospital and come and go from the office as needed.
  2. Anticipate that you will lose control of the situation. One hour doctor’s visits turn into an all day battery of tests. You are just going to have prioritize your support role over jobs and deliverables. Be prepared for the unexpected.
  3. Simplify- Do whatever you can to simplify your life. Extra curricular activities, hobbies and anything not related to survival will take a back seat. It is OK if you communicate proactively, people will understand. Even things as simple as meals are a victim here. I will talk about some strategies later.
  4. Take advantage of all of those people that said they would help. I rotated help with child care primarily. Yes, I would take my boys with me sometimes, but they got bored after a couple of hours. So, I would take them to the hospital and then drop them off or have someone watch them while I went to the hospital. But, they can also make good companions or drivers or even pet feeders.
  5. Pack a go bag – I lived out of my backpack for several months. I had my work, my entertainment, my hygiene and snacks with me. I could leave one day and come home the next depending on what was going on.
  6. Stash supplies – I kept meals and clothes at the office. This allowed me to come straight from the hospital if I needed to. I didn’t need to worry about stopping or going home.
  7. Keep being a parent- You cant just forget about the kids. They also need attention, maybe even more so than before. You still have conferences and sporting events and their activities. Keeping some normalcy helps them cope with the situation as well.
  8. Support people need a break too- There were some times that I was just worn out. I would call my spouse and check-in and take the night off. This is a very difficult role, especially if it happens abruptly we can’t also add guilt to the list of problems.
  9. Temporarily suspend principles- Things like strict bedtime or drive through windows go a long way in remaining flexible. I rarely eat fast food. I say rarely because it has its place and the place is on the way to the hospital. It is a terrible way to live but when you are exhausted and everything is uncertain, it solves a problem that isn’t needed.
  10. Keep an open mind- The support person needs to be a positive and supportive attitude for the patient. The support person also needs to plan for the future and that future needs to consider the patient not being in it. Do the best you can to focus on the next step but don’t get locked into an outcome until it is clear.

Depending on the illness, an extended hospital stay is less likely. In some ways, it is easier when the patient is in the hospital, but in other ways it is more difficult. These strategies will work in both cases. I would say that I was lucky that hospitals and doctors were only thirty minutes away. Some people are hours away or even plane rides away. Modify these techniques as necessary for your situation.

End Your Programming Routine: It has been twelve years since I have had to go to battle. I am not looking forward to it, but at least I know what to expect and way too much experience. Pray for the doctors, the patient, the family and a positive outcome. If I could impress one thing, be prepared for and embrace the unexpected.

March 25, 2024 – The Words You Never Want To Hear

March 25, 2024 /

Today is an emotional response to some recent developments. I talk about being an advocate for your own health and my own experience of the health care system. I have been saving this up until I get all of the right and proper details, but after a month of waiting I just couldn’t anymore. So, while this journey has already begun, it is early. Surely, there will be a lot more to come.

March 22, 2024 – The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Conclusion

March 22, 2024 /

Let’s take a moment to breath. It hasn’t been too many pages but the ones that are there are rough ones. There is a lot of innuendo and recent history to Dante as well as mythology and biblical references that we had to wade through. It was many a night that it took me two hours to get through 30 pages.

I should go back to the very beginning. I first read this book in AP English, in high school. My version was a straight translation and I really had no idea what was going on. It wasn’t until the classroom discussion that I had any clue that there was more to the book than the story. We didn’t have the internet so any sort of analysis had to come from sources like Cliff Notes that you had to find and buy if you were so inclined.

I really didn’t appreciate what we read in that class. From the titles that I remember, it was Canterbury Tales, Gulliver’s Travels and Moby Dick to name a few. None of them I cared for. Thirty years post, I thought that maybe I could give Dante another shot. From what I remember of his work, I thought that I could find some common ground between what I do and what he did.

I am here to say that my memory failed me. What I thought I knew was wrong. I was thinking that Dante took more of a biblical approach rather than a mythological and personal one. Were I to do it all over again, I would probably have skipped this one and left it in the memory hole because I am more than sure that I don’t agree with Dante’s view of the afterworld.

We are going to go on to Purgatory because I said so. That being said, I am not holding out any hope that this will work out any more favorably than it has so far. I won’t say that I hated the book, I didn’t. It is disappointing that it is not what I thought I was doing. That is hard to come back from.

The monsters, creatures and tortures were fun. I give Dante credit for what he did and then adding a personal vendetta to the whole thing. I have come to understand that Dante had some monastic training and this played strongly into the whole story. But to the accuracy and the theological logic was pretty shaky in my opinion.

In general, I think society’s mores have changed a lot since the 1300s. I suspect that disconnect makes me not empathize nearly as strongly with the crimes and punishments. According to common law (English middle ages in origin), we rank crimes against people over crimes against property. Then we still also have some Puritan in us so we have crimes against ourselves or so called victimless crimes. If I read things right, Dante puts hypocrisy (regardless of the victim) over murder and graft; something that we don’t give a second thought about.

It does remain to be seen that sin and crime are not synonymous. In a world created by god, in his image for us to spend eternity with him, it is hard to appreciate heresy being smaller sin than hypocrisy. Adam was created to be a friend of God, how is it possible that God’s betrayal be worse than man’s? I mean that the whole hierarchy made little to no sense to me other than gross categories.

Moving forward, as a protestant I don’t jive with Purgatory. It is not something that I believe nor have I invested much energy into learning about it. From what I have ascertained so far, Purgatory is a place to atone for sins before you can ascend to Heaven. It also appears that some of the same sins in Hell are also found in Purgatory. Next week it will be the first nine Cantos in Purgatory.

End Your Programming Routine: I don’t mean to be down on Dante, we just don’t believe the same things. We also come from different times and cultures. If you haven’t read the Inferno, it is a must read to round you out as a person, not to give you insight into the afterlife. This is fiction and entertainment just like “The Good Place“. Just keep that in perspective.