- If I could go back to 1982 (age 18) and start over, with all of my current knowledge and memories intact, would I (obligatory time travel question)? Yes.
- Do I have a favourite colour? No. I used to say red when I was a kid.
- Do I have a favourite band? No. But the ones I listen to the most are: R.E.M., They Might Be Giants, Pink Floyd, The Alan Parsons Project, and ELO. Yes, I grew up in the 70s/80s.
- Do I wish I had a full, luscious mane of hair? Yes.
- Do I weep over the lack of #4? No, but I do wear caps (outside).
- If I could go back in time and start jogging earlier, would I? I wouldn’t go back in time just to start jogging sooner, but if it happened due to Convenient Science Fiction Plot Device, I would do so.
- Am I an optimist or pessimist? I lean toward pessimist, but never go fully cynical.
- Has my opinion of “the average person” declined in the last few years, though? Oh yes. Yes indeed.
- What do I think the world will be like in 100 years? Generally worse.
- What do I think the world will be like in 200 years? For humans, probably better, for those still around, but not for all.
- Will we ever land on other habitable planets? Answer unknown.
- Aliens? Aliens!
- What’s the most relevant lyric Morrissey ever wrote? “It’s so easy to laugh, it’s so easy to hate/It takes strength to be gentle and kind” (from “I Know It’s Over”)
- Are people silly? Yes.
- Am I silly? Yes.
- Will this list go to 20? Yes.
- Hot take on capitalism? It sucks.
- Favourite food: I will never say no to cashew chicken.
- What used to be my favourite food? Pizza.
- Are we stronger together? You know the answer.
I can ease your pain
A few years back I had my ears tested and the guy who tested them, a professional ear-testing guy (I forget the term and I know I could look it up, but I have posts to crank out, and I’m falling behind), had kind of a grave look on his face during the test. I probably did, too.
You know how when you’re taking a multiple choice exam at school and you have this feeling that you’re getting all the answers wrong somehow?
That’s what this ear test was like, especially when he moved to my right ear.
My left ear was rated not great, definitely some hearing loss.
My right ear was basically terrible. Like, you can hear things, but everyone below the age of 20 will be like they’re talking inside a cone of silence or something. Just a huge swathe of my hearing range gone.
Why? I was in my 50s, which I have been assured is not old and is, in fact, the new 30s. Thirty-year olds don’t have bad hearing.
But I did listen to loud (and often terrible) pop music on headphones when I was young. Was the volume too high at times? Probably.
More recently, in 2010 I dated a guy for a while, and we went to a club that was having some kind of contest and there were judges at a table, plus very bug speakers pumping out music at very high volume. We were standing near one of the speakers. My right ear was the closest part of my body to it. I remember after leaving the club, my right ear rang for a long time. It felt like my hearing had been permanently damaged. Probably because it had been.
Then the guy said he wanted to break up. This admittedly had nothing to do with my ear (as far as I know).
The worst part of this loss of hearing was I could tell how bad it was by listening to some of my favourite music. For example, in the song “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd. It features Roger Waters singing the line, “Just a little pinprick” followed by what sounds like a triangle going PING. I could no longer hear the PING. Where once was a PING, now there was now nothing. It made me very sad.
Tonight, I did an experiment where I reversed the left/right channels of my earphones (by cleverly wearing them backwards) and played the song, because this would make the PING go to my left ear, which is not completely destroyed yet. I nervously waited for the song to get to that part, noting (not a music joke) that the song so far actually sounded pretty much the same, indicating that the mix was, as the professionals say, balanced.
When it got to the PING…I heard it! It was faint, but I definitely heard it. So now I can still hear the PING, as long as I listen to music in reverse stereo. Or maybe when I get some sort of hearing aids, which I am totally too vain and silly to do.
Anyway, in a world where so much seems to be collapsing all around us, it was nice to know the PING has not completely vanished for me.
An obligatory post
I’m not sorry.
Things of more substance soon.
Looks like I’ll be spamming a lot of posts soon
I am way behind on my two-posts per day minimum (which is an arbitrary number I made up, but my blog, my rules). Let’s do the math:
- There are 31 days in March, so two posts per day = 62
- As of this post, I have written 31
- This means I must write 31 more
- After today, there are four days left in the month
- If you divide 31 by 4, you get 7.75
I must write 7.75 posts every day for the rest of March.
I’m not sure if I can do it this month, for reasons.
But I’ll try.
Run 912: The mid-May weather in mid-March run
This was both unplanned and unexpected.
After missing a week of runs due to waiting for deliveries and other nonsense, then missing another week with no real good excuses, I found myself staring at record-breaking temperatures today and decided it was the perfect time to jump back in.
I donned a single layer–my long-sleeved short–and headed out. It turned out I would have been fine in just a t-shirt (well, and shorts–I don’t want to get arrested while jogging). The temperature was 16C when I started–tying a record set in 2019, then rose to 17C by the end, before maxing out at 19C later in the day.
It was partly sunny and really, quite pleasant, more reminiscent of mid-May than March. Such is climate change.
I didn’t have any goals, other than completing the run, but I secretly hoped I could stay under the six-minute mark. And I did, by the smallest possible margin, with a pace of 5:59/km. I was 5:45 for the first km, which I clearly could not sustain, as the second km was 6:09. Oof. Other than feeling myself get slow, I had no issues.
Tomorrow looks to be similar, weather-wise, and I’m tempted to go out again, but my Garmin watch told me my recovery time is delayed by about 800 hours due to all the activity. As I type this, I am at 33,659 steps, which is rather a lot. So maybe I’ll just go for a stroll instead.
In all, it was again nice to get out. I swear I’ll make this a regular habit again!
Stats:
Run 912
Average pace: 5:59/km
Training status: Productive
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW, short loop)
Start: 1:50 p.m.
Distance: 2.50 km
Time: 14:58
Weather: Partly sunny
Temp: 16-17°C
Humidity: 77%
Wind: light to moderate
BPM: 152
Weight: 169.2
Total distance to date: 6,405 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Saucony Switchback (these are old shoes and will be replaced soon™)
The Culling: OneDrive
I have not just turned off OneDrive on my Windows 11 PC, I have uninstalled it! All of my files, photos and electronic doodads are now stored locally and/or on my NAS, until such time that I choose to store some of them “in the cloud” again. And if I do, that big fluffy cloud will not be floating over the hellscape that forms the current political realm known as the United States.
I ponder, but for now, I’m all local, baby. And you know what? It actually feels kind of good. Not even retro (though it definitely has a retro vibe, as well), just…nice. I never really needed cloud storage before, it was just a perk. And now that it’s gone, I’m perfectly fine with that.
Birding, March 22, 2025: Some bunny is better than no bunny
Where: Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby)
Weather: Cloudy, some sun, 9°C
Piper spit
Today’s trek was a bit shorter than usual due to a late start and me not feeling entirely skookum in the morning. I walked to Burnaby Lake, and we then walked from Cariboo Dam to Piper spit and to our delight, there were birbs on the way, specifically black-capped chickadees and plenty of ’em. We also saw some towhees, as well as various sparrows, which was a lot more than the last trip here.
We also saw the titular bunny, but it didn’t stay around long, due to a couple of people walking close by it. I got several lousy shots, though! (I did better with the chickadees.)
In another sign of spring, skunk cabbage is starting to pop up in the marshy spots alongside the trails. It isn’t quite to the point where it earns its name, but that will happen soon™.
At the spit, the better-than-forecast weather meant there were a fair number of people, but it was fine. The people were much better behaved than the waterfowl, who were rather nippy with each other. Several geese went full-on berserk. Spring fever, perhaps.
And I almost got a decent shot of a gull in flight. Almost. Maybe I’ll just focus on them for a bit one time and adjust settings to better capture them in the air.
I did get more good shots of some crows. Yeah, they’re just crows, but in the right light (which I got today) you can see a ton of detail in their feathers, rather than it all just being a spooky black blur. And I enjoy taking shots of “ordinary” birds, always hoping to catch them doing something weird.
In all, it was a fine outing, even if it was a bit more compact than usual. The only thing I really missed was getting a shot of a squirrel being adorable. Maybe next time, when I show up completely covered in nuts.
Side note: Efforts to revive my old one have failed, so I am tottes looking for a replacement now. I did discover the camera still shoots and records video, though, so I could still use it to become a world-famous vlogger.
The Shots
Theoretically possible
The Birds (and other critters)
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
- American robin
- Black-capped chickadee
- Bufflehead
- Dark-eyed Junco
- Fox sparrow
- Golden-crowned sparrow
- Red-winged blackbird
- Song sparrow
- Spotted towhee
Waterfowl and shorebirds:
- American coot
- Bufflehead
- Canada goose
- Green-winged teal
- Mallard
- Northern pintail
- Sandhill crane
- Scaup
- Wood duck
Common:
- American crow
- Assorted gulls
- Rock pigeon
Raptors:
- None!
Non-birds:
- A bunny (that didn’t stick around long)!
I don’t like troubleshooting anymore
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:
Hot dust
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!
With mustard, it tastes like strawberry shortcake!
From an old Batman comic. Possibly before the Comics Code, I don’t know.
The first day of spring, 2025 edition
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.
