Silicon Valley Redneck

Random notes

Yesterday afternoon, out teasing the ducks: there comes a commotion from the trees, as of a lot of alarmed birds.  The ducks run frantically to their sheltered corner.  Hm?

Look up: sure enough, there's a bald eagle circling overhead.  Well, over the neighboring cow pasture.

This afternoon: one little errand.  Down the driveway, almost turn right, remember that I want to turn left for this errand.  Get onto the mini-highway and head for the big crossroads.  Approaching the school, see stopped traffic and lots of twinklies ahead of the line of vehicles.

Wait a while.  Realize that (a) this isn't a time for kids to be arriving nor departing, and (b) traffic isn't resuming, as it would were the twinklies cops directing traffic during school arrival/departure times.  So, get turned around (as others are doing), and backtrack.

Isn't there a reasonable alternate route?  Hm... yes, but it's beyond the stoppage and thus inaccessible.

So, back past home and take the route I would have been on had I turned right in the first place, which is mildly inconvenient for this destination.  Notice on the way a plume of smoke, as if someone is having rather a large brush burn... which I hope isn't in the Westward Expansion.  Proceed to the destination and complete the errand.  Map app on phone shows the traffic stoppage still not cleared, so back home by an alternative route.

Plume of smoke is bigger.  Like, either a truly huge brush pile or quite a small forest fire.  Definitely not in the Westward Expansion, but could be near the Northern Territories.

Never did find any news relating to the road closure, though Internet rumor says it was some combination of a police chase, a car crash involving a school bus, and a fire.  Possibly multiple crashes.  Maybe there'll be something about it tomorrow.

The plume of smoke, though: that turns out to be from a controlled burn at the birding park across the river.

Well, yesterday got busy.

Morning trip to Wally World, to catch up on some overdue shopping.

Extricating the Venerable Prius from the gravel pit that is the top of the driveway was challenging.

At the store, things were in disarray: seems a large part of the store is being rearranged, and many things are in transit from where everyone remembers them being (and where the signs say they are) to brand-new locations.

Back home, park outside the loose-gravel zone while unloading stuff, then move the car to the lawn and break out the tractor.

Swapping the tiller for the box blade is a pain, and it's just about time for some fall tilling, so I settled for back-dragging the gravel with the loader bucket, then driving across it repeatedly.

As long as the tractor is out, might as well move some of the leftover store-boughten compost to the nearly-ready compost heap.

Then it's time to help Joy load up several carloads of cardboard and such for disposal.

Later, finish hauling compost - I think in another month or thereabouts I'll be mowing a spot for a finished-compost pile and moving the entire heap there, doing some blending in the process.

And, as long as I'm out: give the Second Expansion Field a pass with the tiller.  It's dusty.  Various small vegetation is now reasonably well chewed up, or at least uprooted.

Well, yesterday was a day.

Morning all planned out: got a morning medical appointment, before departing for which I need to bake a new batch of muffins.

Awaken in a timely fashion.  Deal with the usual first-thing chores and chaos.

Set oven to heating up, and commence mixing up a batch of muffin batter.

Oven doesn't give its happy warmed-up beep.  Instead if gives its panic beep: there's been a control failure, and it's overheated.

Oh, great.  The top oven did that a couple of years back, we got it fixed, and it didn't stay fixed.  Now the bottom oven is also out of order.

Put the muffins in the oven anyway, and hope for the best as the oven coasts down from volcano heat toward room temperature.  It works reasonably OK-ish.

Deal with all the rest of the usual morning chaos, plus some extra.  End up getting out the door a few minutes later than planned, with phone nav set to take me to an unfamiliar medical office.

Phone nav stops talking to me shortly before I'd actually need directions.  Find a parking lot, restart navigation, and pull back out into morning traffic with more minutes lost.

Arrive at medical center.  The instructions I was given have the office being on the first floor.  In the main door, up to the desk: nope, it's just been moved upstairs.

Oh, well: I wasn't all that late.  Plenty of time to wade through an unexpected pile of paperwork.

And, turns out I need more lab work.  Lab is running slow; by the time it's my turn, it's way past my normal lunchtime.

Then home for a hasty lunch, and trying to make progress on the toaster project.

 

Today, Joy's been shopping on line for a new double oven.  Looks like the gas ones don't get great reviews, so we'll be sticking with electric.  Probably get one with the convection feature, and doors that open to the side.  Not gonna be cheap, but having a working oven is kinda important.

 

Bonus:  My left ankle got kinda itchy yesterday afternoon.  (It might have been somewhat itchy before than, but I started really noticing it yesterday.)  This afternoon, it's not just itchy but decidedly swollen.  Dunno what's going on there, nor what might have set it off.

New printer is here.

Unpacked, set up, starter ink cartridges installed.

Works fine.  Nice clear printing, too.

Old printer is in the basement for now; perhaps over the winter I'll find time to disassemble it and give it a thorough cleaning, which might get it back in operation.  If so, it becomes a backup or possibly a workshop printer once the workshop is a thing.

Printer, again.

So, the big inkjet printer (needed to print out a spreadsheet at legible scale, so I'm not trying to bounce around among three or four documents on the computer) is once again recalcitrant.

If it's on, and the USB cable is connected, it blinks a rather uninformative distress signal.

Check Amazon for inkjet printers that speak tabloid.  Another of the same seems to be the best option.  The current one was bought in 2017, so... yeah, 6 years of use, sitting idle, dust, cat hair, and whatnot is not too bad a working life for a reasonably affordable printer.  Order another one, for Sunday delivery.

I might be able to restore the old one, someday... when I have a bunch of free time, assuming that ever happens.

And I already have a supply of ink for this model!

Earth to California... Earth to California...

Got a notice today from the DMV.  The one in Sacramento.

Reminding me that it's time to renew my California driver's license.

It was addressed to me here, at my home address, in Tennessee.

Li'l disconnect, maybe?

I'm not, offhand, seeing any box to check to indicate that, no, I don't live in California anymore and I don't need to renew the license that (if memory serves) I surrendered almost four years ago to the Tennessee authorities when I got my new license here.

What are the odds that I'm still registered to vote in California?  That my ballot is still being cast?

Whatever became of the weekend?

Progress: Joy is building the duckhouse.  Should be ready for habitation in another couple of days, and then the ducks will be able to sleep outdoors for a change.

Southmoon is somewhat better, but still not at all well.  Turns out she definitely needs weekly injections of vitamin B12.

Meanwhile, various household complications disrupt my day, so there are no blocks of awake-time for doing anything.  (Good thing I reached a key milestone on the toaster project last week, so for the moment I'm not holding up the parade - though in a couple of days there'll be stuff I need to finish up to keep myself off the critical path.)

I need a nap, but that's not happening.  I also need to be spending at least two hours a day outdoors doing yard stuff, but that's really not happening.

There's a bit of nice evening time left, but I need to be indoors because reasons.

Ack.  Gotta run.  Another panic.

Additional:

The Venerable Prius turned off its Škoda light* yesterday - it had turned the light on a few weeks ago, shortly after I filled the gas tank, and I'd retightened the gas cap on the assumption that gas-cap leakage was the problem, but apparently it took several trips (and maybe two trips per week) to clear the indication.

Still need to get the car (and the truck, and Joy's car) to the shop for other stuff... as the chaos allows.

And: my 2020-vintage phone has developed battery trouble.  Still holds a charge just fine, but it's now bulged to the point that the back of the phone is delaminating, so now I'm carrying a potential bomb in my pocket.  Looks like replacing it shouldn't be that much trouble... but iFixit is out of stock on the replacement.  (It takes a KZ50; determining this took a fair amount of looking around, because the model name doesn't lead neatly to a parts list.)  I ended up ordering an off-brand replacement from Amazon.

 

* Czech-engine light.