And yet I do. And yet I must, because the machines we use that are “smart” or “advanced” are designed by humans, and we are imperfect, and the devices we make are in our own image.
But in olden times I actually kind of enjoyed hunting down a solution to an issue, fixing it, and basking in the glory of the fix.
Today I just want things to work, so I can look at more cat pics.
I think both viewpoints are valid.
But I prefer more cat time today.
Here’s one now:
A while back, I noticed my Mac Studio getting quite warm, even when idle and with only a few simple programs running. I checked the back, which has a billion holes to blow out generated heat, and it seemed fine. I was puzzled. My solution was to just turn my Mac off and stick to the PC. Switching back and forth is a bit of a pain, anyway, and it gave me time to mull over how Apple’s IOS-ification of macOS is not really a good thing.
Generally, the Mac is just not as fun to use anymore.
Still, I eventually devised a simple plan: I would use a super-strong vacuum to pull out any ingested dust through those billion little holes, then see if the Mac’s high temperature improved (by getting lower). To prep the Mac, I unplugged everything from it, picked it up and DEAR GOD WHAT I SAW WHEN I TURNED IT UPSIDE DOWN.
Normally I take photos of everything, but I think I was so shocked this time I forgot.
You see, the Mac Studio handles cooling with fans that draw air in from the bottom, then blow the hot air out the back. You might be thinking, “How do you pull air in through the bottom when it’s, like, the bottom?” And it’s because the Mac Studio actually sits on a big round foot that is surrounded by somewhat less than a billion holes. It looks like this:
When I turned over my Mac Studio, those holes were covered in a thick layer of dust. If dust could be encrusted, I would describe it as encrusted. It was coming off in clumps.
As mentioned, I was too shocked/appalled to take a photo, but here’s the Swiffer duster I used to take the initial layer of dust off:
Anyway, today I’m going to try powering on the Mac Studio and see if it doesn’t overheat because actual airflow is happening again.
Nerds, dust your computers!
From an old Batman comic. Possibly before the Comics Code, I don’t know.
It’s the first day of spring!
The weather is a bit cool, with clouds and a little sun occasionally poking through. It will probably shower at some point. Such is March. (Edit: It started raining before I finished making this post.)
But I went for a walk and touched trees. Here are a few photos.
It’s around 10°C, which is seasonal, and we’re getting intermittent light showers, which is also pretty normal for mid-March.
Winter 24/25 was a bit odd, weather-wise. We got very little genuinely cold weather and the only snow, which spanned a few days, didn’t happen until early February. Late fall and early winter were more notable for a repeated number of storms blowing through, then not much after for the rest of the season.
It was like winter could never commit to itself.
I’m okay with that, because winter ranks last in my pick of seasons. Ice belongs in the freezer, not on the sidewalk, where it can meet with my butt when I slip on it. We are now one day away from my second favourite season of the year, spring!
Unlike winter, where it’s cooler and wetter throughout, spring gets a little weird, but more on that later–maybe tomorrow!
Here’s the Brunette River yesterday, nearly the end of winter:
Seriously, who would even go through the gate after reading this?
Side note: I have never seen anyone inside this alleged park.
Other side note: This is a weird piece of vacant land right next to the Lougheed SkyTrain station, which you can see in the right edge of the photo.
I saw this blog post linked on Mastodon and Joan Westenberg does an excellent job on summarizing what I am trying to achieve, in part, with what I call The Culling–trying to rid myself of as much reliance on, and use of Big Tech as possible, while understanding it’s impossible to completely escape all of it, unless you go live in a mud hut and hunt squirrels or something.
Link: On Ideological Purity
Relevant quote:
But the point isn’t perfection. The point is intention.
You don’t have to be all or nothing. You don’t have to make every decision a moral battlefield. You don’t have to sever every tie to every compromised system – and you sure as hell don’t have to do it overnight.
You have to engage. You have to stay aware. You have to keep questioning the default.
For me, I:
I am glad to be done with Meta, I have no plans to buy future Apple hardware, and I’m dropping all Microsoft products, save for the operating system of my PC (Windows 11) because Linux is not quite there yet. It’s ongoing and it can be a pain, but in the end it gives me clarity and I feel more in control, less spied on and, maybe, just a little more content in a world that seems to want to snatch all contentment away and eject it into space.
Where: Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby), Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam)
Weather: Party sunny, some showers, bonus hail, 7°C
With a narrow window of possibly decent weather, we decided to do a quick afternoon of birding at Piper Spit and take our chances. The weather held for the most part, with the sun poking out at times, though we did get the occasional and rather brief cloudburst (literally, ten seconds of rain, then it would stop). As we crossed over the dam upon exiting, it got fun with hail as well.
But despite the lack of song birds (I managed to catch all of one song sparrow), the waterfowl were still out in force, with the lake level higher and the land mass east of the pier temporarily reduced to two small islands, which the crows and gulls seemed to be fighting over. The shorebirds were gone, departed to other shallows.
Even the blackbirds seemed to be mostly hidden, with bunches chattering in the trees, but mostly out of sight.
The usual gang were out in abundance, though a lot were acting a bit snippy, with lots of tail biting and such (hence the title, because ducks don’t care about you if you’re in their section of the lake). Several geese were acting berserk, which is almost comforting in these troubling times.
It was Sunday, so the number of people shouldn’t have been a surprise, but still, it surprised me. Most started clearing out mid-afternoon when it seemed clear (ho ho) that the weather was shifting.
And we got treated to a Douglas squirrel being adorable, so in the end it was fine overall.
We skipped the community garden and a glance later confirmed ponds a-plenty throughout, so it would not have been easy to navigate without getting into the muck. Plus, the flowerbeds are still too fallow to be attracting birbs.
The waterways along the trails did yield a few species we didn’t see at Piper Spit, namely some gadwalls and, somewhat unusually (for us), a pair of grebes.
It was rather brisk, though. Every shot I took looks cold. The bridge over the Coquitlam River had shiny new planks, though. Well, they weren’t shiny, because they’re wood, but they had that fresh wood look to them.
In all, a shortish trip to Tlahutum, but not a bad one. The weather was again a bit erratic, starting out quite decent (the rains in Burnaby missed the area) but turning dark ‘n moody as the afternoon progressed. Still, we mostly dodged the rain again.
Overall, not bad for a truncated outing, but I’m looking forward to it being a bit greener, a bit warmer and a bit drier.
Theoretically possible
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
Waterfowl and shorebirds:
Common:
Raptors:
Non-birds:
Shot on my 1889 vintage iPhone 12.
Flowers:
Bridges, bridges, bridges:
A tire taking a break:
A pigeon macking on another, which was not impressed:
At the time of writing this post, of course. Presumably, both numbers will continue to go up.
I saw a mention of the song on the interweb, so checked out the video again. The video is fine–I like the colour and lighting, and Thom Yorke looks appropriately weird. The song is one of those quiet-LOUD-quiet numbers that is predictable, but extremely well-executed. I can see why it has so many views.
But 202,075 comments. An average novel is around 80,000-100,000 words. Even if every comment was a single word, that’s more than double the word count of an average novel. That is a lot of words.
It makes me wonder how long it would take to read every comment. It makes me wonder if anyone has tried. And what they felt when they were done, assuming they were still conscious.
Also, here is the video in question:
I got this in my email this morning. It was titled thusly:
I assume dope still means “awesome” in 2025. I am dope, woo.
Then the body of the email, with further info bits redacted:
Wow, a free t-shirt, for me? I am dope, so I guess I deserve it. I am especially curious how Peter stumbled upon my IG profile, since it doesn’t exist any more. Perhaps he saw it before I had it deleted. Perhaps Peter has access to a time machine and travelled back in time to when the account was still active, and also loaded up on a bunch of t-shirts while back in 2015 or whatever.
In any case, I appreciate having style and being dope, so thanks, Peter.
P.S. I may have categorized your missive as a salty pork-based product that comes in a can.
Scalzi is an eminently reasonable person and given that my Culling™ often has an ethical component to it (I didn’t drop my Microsoft 365 subscription just because the price was going up), I found his take on billionaire boycotts well-articulated.
Check it out here: The Billionaire Boycott Conundrum