Busy, busy, busy

[umar]

Friday found me in central Vermont, helping with a radio broadcast from
the Tunbridge World's Fair. The weather was excellent, and we were
operating out of a pop-up tent. Lots of people wandered by; one
mentioned that she lived outside our station's coverage area but hated
our competitor; we gave her our URL and told her how to get us online.

We had to sign off in the middle of the afternoon to make way for a
high school soccer game the station was scheduled to air. It was
being played in a field where there's no power, so we loaded two
70-pound deep cycle marine batteries into the play-by-play announcer's
car; he and the color guy did the whole game off those batteries,
using a Verizon mobile router to get the game broadcast back to the
studio, where I was hooking up some equipment so a station in
southern Vermont can air Boston Bruins games later this fall.

The central VT station has a unique country format that includes a
good deal of bluegrass ("too twangy for you? well, that's too bad!").
The general manager is fond of playing bluegrass versions of pop or
rock tunes; two such, "Billie Jean" and "Everybody Wants to Rule
The World", aired back-to-back while we were at the fair.

It was a refreshing change from my usual routine.


umar

[songbird]

umar wrote:

...

> The central VT station has a unique country format that includes a
> good deal of bluegrass ("too twangy for you? well, that's too bad!").

hahaha! :)

> The general manager is fond of playing bluegrass versions of pop or
> rock tunes; two such, "Billie Jean" and "Everybody Wants to Rule
> The World", aired back-to-back while we were at the fair.
>
> It was a refreshing change from my usual routine.

no trains?!?!! :)

it is harvest season here so i'm keeping busy picking
the beans and whatever else is ready to bring in.

my routine is seasonal now and that is good for me.

for fun i'm working on learning some graphics stuff and
python. i didn't have much of a reason to learn anything
new for a long time and nothing really inspired me much
until i finally got a new machine that was capable of
doing some decent graphics. my brain doesn't learn as
easy these days, but i'm gradually getting better and more
familiar with how it goes.


songbird

[umar]

On 2021-09-21, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:

> no trains?!?!! :)

Alas, there's only one train a day to that part of Vermont, and it
serves New York not Boston. The track connecting White River Junction
with Concord, New Hampshire, which used to carry trains between Boston
and Montreal, was torn up about 30 years ago; most of it is now a bike
path. So, it's no longer possible to get a train from Boston to Vermont
without going west to Springfield (MA, not NH or VT) and then north.
There's only one train a day between Boston and Springfield, and it
doesn't connect to the one to Vermont.

It's theoretically possible to take one of the Northeast Corridor trains
to (ugh) New Haven, and catch the Vermont train there. But it's not very
practical.

The situation is, in a word, bogus.

> it is harvest season here so i'm keeping busy picking
> the beans and whatever else is ready to bring in.

Here, it's apples! There's a tree in the front yard of the radio station
with loads of delicious McIntoshes, and I brought a big bag full of them
home with me.

> for fun i'm working on learning some graphics stuff and
> python. i didn't have much of a reason to learn anything
> new for a long time and nothing really inspired me much
> until i finally got a new machine that was capable of
> doing some decent graphics. my brain doesn't learn as
> easy these days, but i'm gradually getting better and more
> familiar with how it goes.

I've never played with Python, despite Aahz's evangelism. I'm stuck in a
Perl rut. My most recent software project was two scripts to transfer
logs and audio files from one radio station automation system to another
using a web API published by the developer of the automation software.

Today I'm going to deploy a Raspberry Pi-based audio streaming encoder
at a local college station.


umar

[songbird]

umar wrote:
> On 2021-09-21, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:
>
>> no trains?!?!! :)
>
> Alas, there's only one train a day to that part of Vermont, and it
> serves New York not Boston. The track connecting White River Junction
> with Concord, New Hampshire, which used to carry trains between Boston
> and Montreal, was torn up about 30 years ago; most of it is now a bike
> path. So, it's no longer possible to get a train from Boston to Vermont
> without going west to Springfield (MA, not NH or VT) and then north.
> There's only one train a day between Boston and Springfield, and it
> doesn't connect to the one to Vermont.
>
> It's theoretically possible to take one of the Northeast Corridor trains
> to (ugh) New Haven, and catch the Vermont train there. But it's not very
> practical.
>
> The situation is, in a word, bogus.

sad indeed. i hope things will improve somehow.

>> it is harvest season here so i'm keeping busy picking
>> the beans and whatever else is ready to bring in.
>
> Here, it's apples! There's a tree in the front yard of the radio station
> with loads of delicious McIntoshes, and I brought a big bag full of them
> home with me.

i love the early apples and Macs are way up there in
what i'm after in terms of flavor and texture. i also
only really like the first pressing of apple cider.

>> for fun i'm working on learning some graphics stuff and
>> python. i didn't have much of a reason to learn anything
>> new for a long time and nothing really inspired me much
>> until i finally got a new machine that was capable of
>> doing some decent graphics. my brain doesn't learn as
>> easy these days, but i'm gradually getting better and more
>> familiar with how it goes.
>
> I've never played with Python, despite Aahz's evangelism. I'm stuck in a
> Perl rut. My most recent software project was two scripts to transfer
> logs and audio files from one radio station automation system to another
> using a web API published by the developer of the automation software.

it takes a few years to get decent in any language IMO and
i still have a long ways to go, but at least i have picked
up some of the concepts recently that were eluding me before.
i'll keep poking at it, maybe by the time i'm 70 i'll have a
clue or two.

i never got into perl as i'm an old time awk and sed and
other unix tools type paster togetherer in bash scripts.
almost all the things i'd written in quite a long time were
mostly done in bash. anything that didn't work well in that
i did in C instead.

the overall lack of enthusiasms for anything much in the way
of programming was the desire to avoid sitting at some desk job
for too long and i managed to avoid that by doing a part-time
librarian job instead. part-time gardener fits very nicely now
instead.

> Today I'm going to deploy a Raspberry Pi-based audio streaming encoder
> at a local college station.

those are pretty amazing little gadgets. i've never
had one in my hands to even look at it let alone do any
work with one. i hope it went ok! :)


songbird

[steve pope]

Hello umar and songbird,

Thanks for checking in. It's good to hear some familar voices here in
the old space.

Steve

[Freyja]

Indeed! It's been quiet here.

I can use the Q word here without getting slammed with admissions,
transfers, codes, and general mayhem ensuing.

--
Freyja the NurseWench
http://freyjaw.dreamwidth.org
Twitter: @FreyjaRN @DuchessHonor
“There never yet have been, nor are there now, too many good books.”
-Martin Luther

[umar]

On 2021-09-22, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:

> i love the early apples and Macs are way up there in
> what i'm after in terms of flavor and texture. i also
> only really like the first pressing of apple cider.

When I was a child in upstate NY, there was The Cider Mill;
you could see them pressing the cider out of the apples, and
we'd buy a jug along with some doughnuts.

Later, they turned it into a theater. I've not been back
there since my father died, so I don't know if they still
press cider.

> the overall lack of enthusiasms for anything much in the way
> of programming was the desire to avoid sitting at some desk job
> for too long and i managed to avoid that by doing a part-time
> librarian job instead. part-time gardener fits very nicely now
> instead.

I do a fair amount of sitting in my job, but I also have to go to
transmitter sites and the like, so I get a fair amount of exercise
just from my work. One of the more challenging sites is a place
called Green Mountain, which despite its name is not in Vermont but
New Hampshire. It's about a mile and a half walk up to the top, and
takes a lot out of me, but the view from there is spectacular.

> those are pretty amazing little gadgets. i've never
> had one in my hands to even look at it let alone do any
> work with one. i hope it went ok! :)

The Pi works beautifully as a streaming encoder when coupled with
a USB audio interface. It's a good machine to leave at a transmitter
site, too, as it doesn't have any moving parts other than the optional
fan.


umar

[umar]

Greetings to you, too!


umar

[umar]

On 2021-09-27, Freyja <Fre...@despam.yahoo.com> wrote:

> Indeed! It's been quiet here.
>
> I can use the Q word here without getting slammed with admissions,
> transfers, codes, and general mayhem ensuing.

Admissions and transfers and codes? Do tell.


umar

[songbird]

:) i'm usually around, but if nobody else is talking here
it would sound too much like i was talking to myself. and
aside from the fact that i've not been dating much in eons
so all i have to talk about is gardening and puttering around
cooking and cleaning with Mom (she does a lot of cooking for
other people and i help out and wash dishes or whatever).

for gardening topics i tend to stick to the gardening group
and ditto for cooking. the food preservation group has been
quiet the past few years so not much gets written there by me
any longer.

what have you been up to?


songbird

[songbird]

umar wrote:
> On 2021-09-22, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:
>
>> i love the early apples and Macs are way up there in
>> what i'm after in terms of flavor and texture. i also
>> only really like the first pressing of apple cider.
>
> When I was a child in upstate NY, there was The Cider Mill;
> you could see them pressing the cider out of the apples, and
> we'd buy a jug along with some doughnuts.
>
> Later, they turned it into a theater. I've not been back
> there since my father died, so I don't know if they still
> press cider.

the only apple cider press that was tied to an actual
orchard that i visited was shut down many many years ago.
they turned all of the apple orchards into an artificial
ski hill and a golf course and sold lots around it to the
people who wanted to live on a golf course. sadly the
other orchard that we started visiting turned out to have
bad products and was not really using their own apples in
the products so we've stopped visiting them.

at one time we had a good connection to a person who
was growing organic apples who had extras that he couldn't
sell or use himself, but that was a short-lived thing and
we didn't get a chance to do more with him. we were
making apple sauce and apple crisps for a food kitchen.

>> the overall lack of enthusiasms for anything much in the way
>> of programming was the desire to avoid sitting at some desk job
>> for too long and i managed to avoid that by doing a part-time
>> librarian job instead. part-time gardener fits very nicely now
>> instead.
>
> I do a fair amount of sitting in my job, but I also have to go to
> transmitter sites and the like, so I get a fair amount of exercise
> just from my work. One of the more challenging sites is a place
> called Green Mountain, which despite its name is not in Vermont but
> New Hampshire. It's about a mile and a half walk up to the top, and
> takes a lot out of me, but the view from there is spectacular.

do you climb the towers too? that would be "interesting"...
the internet service for me comes via radio towers (not cell
phones). it works. most of the time. that's about all i
can ask of it. :)

>> those are pretty amazing little gadgets. i've never
>> had one in my hands to even look at it let alone do any
>> work with one. i hope it went ok! :)
>
> The Pi works beautifully as a streaming encoder when coupled with
> a USB audio interface. It's a good machine to leave at a transmitter
> site, too, as it doesn't have any moving parts other than the optional
> fan.

i hope it can hold up to the weather!


songbird

[Freyja]

Admissions and transfers can happen on any shift. What it means to us
is a heavier patient load. Admissions are the most time and labor
intensive, having to set up a room, get the history and do a physical
exam, and set up the chart. Then we have to implement orders, and
obtain them if we don't have any. Transfers have a chart, history, and
orders. A quick physical exam is next, then implementing the orders.
Since I worked ICU and the stepdown units in my career, often my
patients aren't stable. Too often I've either called the code blue (or
whatever each hospital uses instead) or arrived there when I heard it
yelled down the hall. I've done CPR too many times.

Whenever someone mentions the Q word, things get busy fast.

--
Freyja the NurseWench
http://freyjaw.dreamwidth.org
Twitter: @FreyjaRN @DuchessHonor

What did the doctor say when one nurse asked him to recite an amnesia
joke? I think I've forgotten how it goes.

[umar]

On 2021-09-28, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:

> do you climb the towers too? that would be "interesting"...
> the internet service for me comes via radio towers (not cell
> phones). it works. most of the time. that's about all i
> can ask of it. :)

No, I don't climb towers. I don't carry the insurance for that.

My work is all on the ground. However, many FM sites are on hilltops
or mountaintops, and some of them are best reached on foot.

>> The Pi works beautifully as a streaming encoder when coupled with
>> a USB audio interface. It's a good machine to leave at a transmitter
>> site, too, as it doesn't have any moving parts other than the optional
>> fan.

> i hope it can hold up to the weather!

The one on Block Island, where I was yesterday, is inside a building
with two 5,000-watt FM transmitters. It survived the recent hurricane,
the eye of which went directly over the island, just fine; indeed, the
station actually stayed on the air through the storm.


umar

[umar]

On 2021-09-28, Freyja <Fre...@despam.yahoo.com> wrote:

> Whenever someone mentions the Q word, things get busy fast.

Here in New England, a lot of health care workers are getting burned out
and quitting. The perverse economics of our time have led to a lot of
jobs going begging, some of which pay a lot more than those in health
care. It's become a big problem.


umar

[Freyja]

The burnout is bad and getting worse. Out here, salaries are in six
digits, yet retention is still an issue.

--
Freyja the NurseWench
http://freyjaw.dreamwidth.org
Twitter: @FreyjaRN @DuchessHonor

Mr. Spock wears Vulcanized rubbers...

[songbird]

umar wrote:
> On 2021-09-28, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:
>
>> do you climb the towers too? that would be "interesting"...
>> the internet service for me comes via radio towers (not cell
>> phones). it works. most of the time. that's about all i
>> can ask of it. :)
>
> No, I don't climb towers. I don't carry the insurance for that.
>
> My work is all on the ground. However, many FM sites are on hilltops
> or mountaintops, and some of them are best reached on foot.

:) the technicians for the localish radio tower network i
use have to get out there in all sorts of weather so it would
certainly not be a job for the people who are sensitive to
weather or heights. i wish i could do such work as i think
it would always be a challenge, but i also know better that
i'd probably screw up somehow in the process or drop things
or ... :)

>>> The Pi works beautifully as a streaming encoder when coupled with
>>> a USB audio interface. It's a good machine to leave at a transmitter
>>> site, too, as it doesn't have any moving parts other than the optional
>>> fan.
>
>> i hope it can hold up to the weather!
>
> The one on Block Island, where I was yesterday, is inside a building
> with two 5,000-watt FM transmitters. It survived the recent hurricane,
> the eye of which went directly over the island, just fine; indeed, the
> station actually stayed on the air through the storm.

i'm glad when things work as they should!


songbird

[songbird]

Freyja wrote:
...

> The burnout is bad and getting worse. Out here, salaries are in six
> digits, yet retention is still an issue.

i think it would be very disheartening when so many people
are not taking very good care of themselves or following the
recommendations given. i've certainly become a lot less
charitable myself during this pandemic and the past election
cycle sure didn't help either. i feel like as a nation we've
squandered trillions of dollars for education and still ended
up with a nation of people who don't even understand basic
math or reason let alone many other things - but then don't
get me started... "Get off my lawn!" <-- joke, we don't
really have much of a lawn any more. :)


songbird

[Freyja]

Our lawn is artificial grass. It was good enough to fool a rabbit who
tried to eat it and ended up confused. Achilles liked watching him.

--
Freyja the NurseWench
http://freyjaw.dreamwidth.org
Twitter: @FreyjaRN @DuchessHonor

"If at first you don't succeed, switch to power tools."
-Red Green

[songbird]

Freyja wrote:
...

> Our lawn is artificial grass. It was good enough to fool a rabbit who
> tried to eat it and ended up confused. Achilles liked watching him.

are there a lot of rabbits around there? if enough of them
volunteer to trim it then eventually it might get destroyed (and
it won't grow back).

we have a kind of similar issue with plants that are supposedly
deer proof, but if we get enough young deer who sample them
they'll still be damaged and croak.

i want more fence up to prevent deer from getting at the
gardens but Mom doesn't want it. oh well, such is life. :)


songbird

[Freyja]

We have some rabbits, but they don't hang out on the lawn to eat. They
just grab a hibiscus petal and stroll off. Achilles watches intently.
I think they figured it out. Lizards don't bother. They seem to just
want to bask or skitter around. All the cats love watching them.
Achilles prefers to watching the coyotes from inside, of course. He
hunts and kills flies that get in, bless him.

I'm not sure what you can do about the deer. When I was in Cary, NC, I
nearly had a deer hit me in the rear of my car. They were everywhere.

--
Freyja the NurseWench
http://freyjaw.dreamwidth.org
Twitter: @FreyjaRN @DuchessHonor

If life gives you lemons, throw 'em into a quart of vodka.
-Red Green

[songbird]

Freyja wrote:
...

> We have some rabbits, but they don't hang out on the lawn to eat. They
> just grab a hibiscus petal and stroll off. Achilles watches intently.
> I think they figured it out. Lizards don't bother. They seem to just
> want to bask or skitter around. All the cats love watching them.
> Achilles prefers to watching the coyotes from inside, of course. He
> hunts and kills flies that get in, bless him.

skyraisins! :)

> I'm not sure what you can do about the deer. When I was in Cary, NC, I
> nearly had a deer hit me in the rear of my car. They were everywhere.

deer are all over here too. i always wish for wolves as the
coyotes don't control deer and hunting doesn't do it either.

i've hit deer with my car (since sold), Mom's car has hit
at least three deer (one technically ran into the side of the
car when i was driving it). about every three years it seems.

fences are the only reliable method that is economical for
the long haul. any other deterrents that you have to keep
refreshing end up getting more expensive than just buying the
vegetables and fruits...

a living fence is possible except it takes about four years to
get established and somehow you have to protect the plants until
the fence is big enough to protect itself - so, well, you might
as well put up a fence IMO.

guard animals we don't want, and i'm not interested in hunting
them myself either.

we have a mix of fenced and unfenced gardens and while i can
get results from the unfenced areas there are some plants that
i will only get a harvest from if they are inside the fences.


songbird

[umar]

On 2021-10-07, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:

> :) the technicians for the localish radio tower network i
> use have to get out there in all sorts of weather so it would
> certainly not be a job for the people who are sensitive to
> weather or heights. i wish i could do such work as i think
> it would always be a challenge, but i also know better that
> i'd probably screw up somehow in the process or drop things
> or ... :)

One of the best tower guys I ever worked with started out as a plumber.
He learned one day that much of what tower guys do is more or less
plumbing, albeit 900 feet in the air. Radio transmission lines are
basically pipes, after all. Plus, there's no sewage to deal with.


umar

[umar]

On 2021-10-05, Freyja <Fre...@despam.yahoo.com> wrote:
> On 10/4/2021 08:41, umar wrote:
>> On 2021-09-28, Freyja <Fre...@despam.yahoo.com> wrote:

> The burnout is bad and getting worse. Out here, salaries are in six
> digits, yet retention is still an issue.

This damned pandemic came along at the worst possible time. It may still
prove the USA's undoing, the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's
back. The scale of the ugliness it seems to have revealed in people is
shocking.

The problem with living through a punctuation in history is that one
rarely perceives all of what's going on except in the rear-view mirror.
We shall see where this takes us.


umar

[umar]

On 2021-10-07, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:

> i think it would be very disheartening when so many people are not
> taking very good care of themselves or following the recommendations
> given.

They are getting it all through the media, and the media are no longer
trusted, mostly because they have become untrustworthy. As a broadcaster,
I'm a part of that problem.

I thought I could make a difference as a radio station owner. But, in fact,
to stay in business you have to play the hits. And in news/talk, that
means telling people what they want to hear, as opposed to what they
need to know. Is it any wonder no one trusts the media?

No, they don't understand that viruses evolve. The concept of biological
evolution in general is not generally understood. When someone tells
them they don't need to wear a mask, and two months later tells them
differently, they see it as just another example of the media lying to
them. They think it's like diet fads: eggs are bad for you; no, they're
good for you; wine drinkers live longer; no, they don't. And so on.

They remember the fable about the boy who cried "wolf", but don't
remember the bit where there really was a wolf and no one believed
him.

> i've certainly become a lot less charitable myself during this
> pandemic and the past election cycle sure didn't help either. i feel
> like as a nation we've squandered trillions of dollars for education
> and still ended up with a nation of people who don't even understand
> basic math or reason let alone many other things

Over the weekend, I was looking through one of my old course catalogs
from my college days, looking at the descriptions of all the courses I
could have taken but didn't. I could have taken courses in history from
Doris Kearns Goodwin -- she was just Doris Kearns back then -- or in
evolution from Stephen Jay Gould and Edward O. Wilson. And it was only
$5,000 a year back then. It costs more than ten times that now.

People go to college not to learn but to get a piece of paper. I had a
conversation a few years ago with someone considering pursuing a
master's degree at the [mumble] School of Education. I opined that I
hoped the [mumble] School of Education's reputation was better these
days than it had been in my youth, but zie said zie didn't care. Zie
only wanted a master's degree, any master's degree, because that was the
key that opened doors in the field of non-profit management.

It's just another example of the subtle corruption I call "social
entropy". Money is being spent and work being more to enrich the
caretakers than to provide actual care.


umar

[umar]

On 2021-10-09, Freyja <Fre...@despam.yahoo.com> wrote:

> Our lawn is artificial grass. It was good enough to fool a rabbit who
> tried to eat it and ended up confused. Achilles liked watching him.

That reminds me of a YouTube video someone posted of "the world's
stupidest woodpecker". The bird is sitting on a diagonal strut on
someone's steel ham radio tower, and starts pecking at it. Plink-
plink-plink-plink-plink! My father said that was perfectly normal
woodpecker behavior; the bird was just making noise for its own sake. I
would almost say making a joyful noise unto the Lord, but we are all
agnostics in my family.


umar

[umar]

On 2021-10-14, Freyja <Fre...@despam.yahoo.com> wrote:

> We have some rabbits, but they don't hang out on the lawn to eat. They
> just grab a hibiscus petal and stroll off. Achilles watches intently.
> I think they figured it out. Lizards don't bother. They seem to just
> want to bask or skitter around. All the cats love watching them.
> Achilles prefers to watching the coyotes from inside, of course. He
> hunts and kills flies that get in, bless him.

Achilles is a kitty, I take it.

> I'm not sure what you can do about the deer. When I was in Cary, NC, I
> nearly had a deer hit me in the rear of my car. They were everywhere.

I had an owl crash into my car the other day. There wasn't a damned
thing I could do about it. I hate it when things like that happen.


umar

[Freyja]

On 11/1/2021 12:46, umar wrote:
> On 2021-10-14, Freyja <Fre...@despam.yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> We have some rabbits, but they don't hang out on the lawn to eat. They
>> just grab a hibiscus petal and stroll off. Achilles watches intently.
>> I think they figured it out. Lizards don't bother. They seem to just
>> want to bask or skitter around. All the cats love watching them.
>> Achilles prefers to watching the coyotes from inside, of course. He
>> hunts and kills flies that get in, bless him.
>
> Achilles is a kitty, I take it.

He certainly is a cat. He's our all-black pocket panther (Wakanda
forever!). Achilles is our youngest.

>> I'm not sure what you can do about the deer. When I was in Cary, NC, I
>> nearly had a deer hit me in the rear of my car. They were everywhere.
>
> I had an owl crash into my car the other day. There wasn't a damned
> thing I could do about it. I hate it when things like that happen.
>

An owl? Yikes.

--
Freyja the NurseWench
http://freyjaw.dreamwidth.org
Twitter: @FreyjaRN @DuchessHonor

I have lived with many Zen masters, all of them cats.
-Eckhart Tolle

[Freyja]

I wouldn't call it joyful but annoying. I had a woodpecker pecking on
aluminum siding. Gah.

--
Freyja the NurseWench
http://freyjaw.dreamwidth.org
Twitter: @FreyjaRN @DuchessHonor

Quack, damn you!
-Jamie Hyneman, Mythbusters

[Freyja]

Our time has seldom been scarier. Health care and even our democracy is
at risk.

--
Freyja the NurseWench
http://freyjaw.dreamwidth.org
Twitter: @FreyjaRN @DuchessHonor

My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child; we can’t
decide whether to ruin our carpet or ruin our lives.
-Rita Rudner

[umar]

On 2021-11-03, Freyja <Fre...@despam.yahoo.com> wrote:

> Our time has seldom been scarier. Health care and even our democracy is
> at risk.

I recently read a book called _War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall
of Empires_ by Peter Turchin. He talks about empires going through
"integrative" and "disintegrative" cycles throughout their histories.
The United States is certainly an empire, and I think we are living
through a "disintegrative" phase that began about the time Neil
Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. Vietnam, Watergate,
deregulation, deindustrialization, the increase in economic inequality,
the loss of public confidence in government: these all suggest the old
order is breaking down. But what will replace it?


umar

[songbird]

umar wrote:
...

> I had an owl crash into my car the other day. There wasn't a damned
> thing I could do about it. I hate it when things like that happen.

aw! :( did it scare the crap outta ya?

we have some owls that come around here at times to hunt
the mice. we're prime mice habitat with all these rocks
and gardens.


songbird

[songbird]

umar wrote:
...

> It's just another example of the subtle corruption I call "social
> entropy". Money is being spent and work being more to enrich the
> caretakers than to provide actual care.

yes, IMO that is the wrong turn to take in any health-care
situation. if it is for a profit then that no longer qualifies
as care. then you look at the non-profit organisations and
see how actual care they provide vs. how much they spend on
overhead and perks.

if we had just one overall system of health-care we could
eliminate a lot of useless overhead and spending that isn't
really needed to get actual care done.


songbird

[songbird]

umar wrote:
...

> deregulation, deindustrialization, the increase in economic inequality,
> the loss of public confidence in government: these all suggest the old
> order is breaking down. But what will replace it?

social media? just kidding...

i don't know but i think world problems we currently have are
not able to be solved by the current nations without some overall
control structure which makes them responsible to agreements and
rulings made by the international courts. as long as we maintain
the status quo we're just wasting a huge amount of resources for
weapons that should never be used. we could solve so many of the
world's problems if we all worked together instead of apart, but
there's no way that any country other than the very tiny ones
want to give up their control to any world body.

in space we cannot survive with crazy people given rights that
we have here on this planet. things like guns and explosives
very easily available. just won't work "Up There" so it will be
very interesting to see if we can make any kind of transition to
beings in space and still be able to survive the nutcases.

i think the next 500yrs will be very interesting and i wish i
could stick around long enough to see what happens next. :)


songbird

[songbird]

umar wrote:
...

> One of the best tower guys I ever worked with started out as a plumber.
> He learned one day that much of what tower guys do is more or less
> plumbing, albeit 900 feet in the air. Radio transmission lines are
> basically pipes, after all. Plus, there's no sewage to deal with.

haha! :) fresh air, great views, must not be afraid of
heights and able to climb, oh, and you need to know what you're
doing up there.

i don't...


songbird

[songbird]

Freyja wrote:
> On 11/1/2021 12:44, umar wrote:
>> On 2021-10-09, Freyja <Fre...@despam.yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Our lawn is artificial grass. It was good enough to fool a rabbit who
>>> tried to eat it and ended up confused. Achilles liked watching him.
>>
>> That reminds me of a YouTube video someone posted of "the world's
>> stupidest woodpecker". The bird is sitting on a diagonal strut on
>> someone's steel ham radio tower, and starts pecking at it. Plink-
>> plink-plink-plink-plink! My father said that was perfectly normal
>> woodpecker behavior; the bird was just making noise for its own sake. I
>> would almost say making a joyful noise unto the Lord, but we are all
>> agnostics in my family.
>>
>
> I wouldn't call it joyful but annoying. I had a woodpecker pecking on
> aluminum siding. Gah.

haha! yep! :)


songbird

[songbird]

woodpeckers sometimes plink on things to make noises
to attract their mates and to deter the competition if
they can make a bigger sound they'll win. sometimes
they'll use hollow spaces on the walls/sides of houses
to get that done. it can be annoying, but also amusing.


songbird

[umar]

On 2021-11-05, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:

> haha! :) fresh air, great views, must not be afraid of
> heights and able to climb, oh, and you need to know what you're
> doing up there.
>
> i don't...

What you don't want to do is drop anything. Even a bolt or nut falling
from 900 feet up can do nasty things when it hits something. There's a
Virtual Railfan camera in Missouri that happened to catch a tower crew
working on a radio tower near the train station when they dropped a
large microwave dish. Fortunately, it missed all of the guy wires
holding up the tower. If it had hit one, it might have brought the whole
tower down, crew and all.

Just weeks before I joined the Boston radio station where I was to spend
more than twenty years, a truck backing into the parking lot caught a
guy wire and took down a 350-foot tower. For years after that you could
see scars in the pavement where it landed. Luckily, it was Saturday
morning and the lot was empty.


umar

[umar]

On 2021-09-27, steve pope <spop...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello umar and songbird,
>
> Thanks for checking in. It's good to hear some familar voices here in
> the old space.

You're welcome.

I've been missing Usenet.


umar

[umar]

On 2021-11-03, Freyja <Fre...@despam.yahoo.com> wrote:

> He certainly is a cat. He's our all-black pocket panther (Wakanda
> forever!). Achilles is our youngest.

Kitties are delightful. It's hard to hang out with one and not get a
smile on one's face.

> An owl? Yikes.

Now, this morning, I got off the T -- that's what they call public
transit in these parts -- and I was walking through Boston's Dorchester
neighborhood, just off busy Morrissey Boulevard, when I heard a squawk
over my left shoulder. Strutting around in an adjacent parking lot was a
wild turkey. They've become remarkably common in recent years; I've even
seen them in downtown Boston.

I wonder if any other major metropolitan areas have been infiltraded by
turkeys.


umar

[umar]

On 2021-11-05, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:

> umar wrote:
> ...
>> I had an owl crash into my car the other day. There wasn't a damned
>> thing I could do about it. I hate it when things like that happen.
>
> aw! :( did it scare the crap outta ya?

It was like watching a squirrel run across the road in front of your
car. You know what's going to happen, you see it happening, and there's
nothing you can do.

> we have some owls that come around here at times to hunt the mice.
> we're prime mice habitat with all these rocks and gardens.

I opened up a tuning unit at the base of an AM radio tower the other day
to find it full of mice -- there were at least half a dozen in there.
They had made nests under the coils.


umar

[umar]

On 2021-11-05, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:

> woodpeckers sometimes plink on things to make noises
> to attract their mates and to deter the competition if
> they can make a bigger sound they'll win. sometimes
> they'll use hollow spaces on the walls/sides of houses
> to get that done. it can be annoying, but also amusing.

Quite so.

I came home from work the other day to find a downy woodpecker on my
front steps. That was cool.


umar

[umar]

On 2021-11-03, Freyja <Fre...@despam.yahoo.com> wrote:

> Our time has seldom been scarier. Health care and even our democracy is
> at risk.

I read yesterday on the New York Times Web site that control of the U.S.
House of Representatives has already been decided, by state legislators
redrawing maps. No one has cast a vote; many candidates haven't even
announced they're running; but we already know the winner.

I was reading through an old course catalog from my college years the
other day. The Government Department had a course listed on the future
of the American republic. I wish I had taken that course. There are so
many courses I wish I could go back in time and take.


umar

[umar]

On 2021-11-05, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:

> umar wrote:
> ...
>> deregulation, deindustrialization, the increase in economic inequality,
>> the loss of public confidence in government: these all suggest the old
>> order is breaking down. But what will replace it?

> social media? just kidding...

Well, Facebook certainly seems to have more power influence on the media
landscape than the FCC.

> i don't know but i think world problems we currently have are not able
> to be solved by the current nations without some overall control
> structure which makes them responsible to agreements and rulings made
> by the international courts.

In other words, a universal empire.

Can such a thing exist?

I asked a Europhile friend the other day if she thought the EU could
exist without the protective hegemony of the United States.

> as long as we maintain the status quo we're just wasting a huge amount
> of resources for weapons that should never be used.

One of the courses I did take back in college was one on arms control
and disarmament, taught by Albert Carnesale. He seemed to think that
universal deterrence driven by the sure knowledge that in a nuclear war
there can be no winner was the key to lasting peace. This was back in
the 1970s, when the Cold War was still happening.

> we could solve so many of the world's problems if we all worked
> together instead of apart, but there's no way that any country other
> than the very tiny ones want to give up their control to any world
> body.

It seems to me the problem is not so much governments but market forces.
Capitalism is driving the climate change problem; the more governments
try to impose rules and limits, the more the captains of finance cheat.
An enormous amount of energy is being wasted "mining" bitcoin, which is
literally nothing. It's the hottest commodity right now, and a whole
economy is emerging around it that no government will ever be able to
regulate.

> in space we cannot survive with crazy people given rights that
> we have here on this planet. things like guns and explosives
> very easily available. just won't work "Up There" so it will be
> very interesting to see if we can make any kind of transition to
> beings in space and still be able to survive the nutcases.

Space is fast becoming the playground of billionaires. The future may
see the wealthy and privileged looking down upon the rest of us from
mansions in the sky.

> i think the next 500yrs will be very interesting and i wish i could
> stick around long enough to see what happens next. :)

That's my greatest regret about growing old. I won't be around to see
the next chapter, to find out how it all comes out.


umar

[songbird]

umar wrote:
> On 2021-11-03, Freyja <Fre...@despam.yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Our time has seldom been scarier. Health care and even our democracy is
>> at risk.
>
> I read yesterday on the New York Times Web site that control of the U.S.
> House of Representatives has already been decided, by state legislators
> redrawing maps. No one has cast a vote; many candidates haven't even
> announced they're running; but we already know the winner.

the redistricting committee (bipartisan with some independents on
it too) is getting some resistance and taking time, but i hope it
results in fairer elections in Michigan. we'll see what happens -
it can't be any worse that what we currently have.

> I was reading through an old course catalog from my college years the
> other day. The Government Department had a course listed on the future
> of the American republic. I wish I had taken that course. There are so
> many courses I wish I could go back in time and take.

i wish i'd had a better instructor for statistics so i'd have
stuck it out, but the lecturer was not very good and after the
first day i walked out and dropped the class (i would have been
stuck with that instructor for three classes total and didn't
really have the time or energy for dealing with his sort of
incoherence as a lecturing style) and later picked up a probabiliy
and statistics course that was the alternate choice for fulfilling
the degree requirements. it was pretty tough class but i managed
to get through it.


songbird

[songbird]

umar wrote:
> On 2021-11-05, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:
>> umar wrote:
>> ...
>>> deregulation, deindustrialization, the increase in economic inequality,
>>> the loss of public confidence in government: these all suggest the old
>>> order is breaking down. But what will replace it?
>
>> social media? just kidding...
>
> Well, Facebook certainly seems to have more power influence on the media
> landscape than the FCC.

i don't really spend any time on FB or many other things
but i do enjoy watching music reaction videos for some of
my favorite groups. it is fun watching younger people
discover some great music.

>> i don't know but i think world problems we currently have are not able
>> to be solved by the current nations without some overall control
>> structure which makes them responsible to agreements and rulings made
>> by the international courts.
>
> In other words, a universal empire.
>
> Can such a thing exist?
>
> I asked a Europhile friend the other day if she thought the EU could
> exist without the protective hegemony of the United States.

currently it looks like they're looking away for too
many things so i don't have much actual faith in their
willingness to take a stand.

>> as long as we maintain the status quo we're just wasting a huge amount
>> of resources for weapons that should never be used.
>
> One of the courses I did take back in college was one on arms control
> and disarmament, taught by Albert Carnesale. He seemed to think that
> universal deterrence driven by the sure knowledge that in a nuclear war
> there can be no winner was the key to lasting peace. This was back in
> the 1970s, when the Cold War was still happening.

in recent years i don't think it has improved at all. :(

>> we could solve so many of the world's problems if we all worked
>> together instead of apart, but there's no way that any country other
>> than the very tiny ones want to give up their control to any world
>> body.
>
> It seems to me the problem is not so much governments but market forces.
> Capitalism is driving the climate change problem; the more governments
> try to impose rules and limits, the more the captains of finance cheat.
> An enormous amount of energy is being wasted "mining" bitcoin, which is
> literally nothing. It's the hottest commodity right now, and a whole
> economy is emerging around it that no government will ever be able to
> regulate.

based upon how much energy is currently being used to
mine and support these things i consider it an environmental
crime and it should be made illegal and no banks should be
allowed to use them or any other uses either. none of this
makes any sense at all.

>> in space we cannot survive with crazy people given rights that
>> we have here on this planet. things like guns and explosives
>> very easily available. just won't work "Up There" so it will be
>> very interesting to see if we can make any kind of transition to
>> beings in space and still be able to survive the nutcases.
>
> Space is fast becoming the playground of billionaires. The future may
> see the wealthy and privileged looking down upon the rest of us from
> mansions in the sky.

likely they'll end up killing themselves off by doing
something very stupid. it will take a very disciplined
person to really understand what it will mean to live in
space and from what i've seen most of the billionaires
are not that. if instead they take up learning how to
mine and build within a moon colony or a large enough
asteroid they may have a better chance of carrying it off
but so far i don't see encouraging signs that humanity
has any idea what kind of a bind they're in so ...

>> i think the next 500yrs will be very interesting and i wish i could
>> stick around long enough to see what happens next. :)
>
> That's my greatest regret about growing old. I won't be around to see
> the next chapter, to find out how it all comes out.

as an avid reading of science fiction there are so many
ways this can all go. :)


songbird

[songbird]

umar wrote:
> On 2021-11-05, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:
>> umar wrote:
>> ...
>>> I had an owl crash into my car the other day. There wasn't a damned
>>> thing I could do about it. I hate it when things like that happen.
>>
>> aw! :( did it scare the crap outta ya?
>
> It was like watching a squirrel run across the road in front of your
> car. You know what's going to happen, you see it happening, and there's
> nothing you can do.

:(

>> we have some owls that come around here at times to hunt the mice.
>> we're prime mice habitat with all these rocks and gardens.
>
> I opened up a tuning unit at the base of an AM radio tower the other day
> to find it full of mice -- there were at least half a dozen in there.
> They had made nests under the coils.

we used to have to contact ATT a few times a year when
the mice would invade the cabinets and build nests and
then the snakes would get in there going after the mice.
so many of the technicians would mention that they hated
snakes. i like snakes, mice i can do without but they
are a big menu item for a lot of other creatures so they
are important in this web of life.


songbird

[songbird]

umar wrote:
...
> What you don't want to do is drop anything. Even a bolt or nut falling
> from 900 feet up can do nasty things when it hits something. There's a
> Virtual Railfan camera in Missouri that happened to catch a tower crew
> working on a radio tower near the train station when they dropped a
> large microwave dish. Fortunately, it missed all of the guy wires
> holding up the tower. If it had hit one, it might have brought the whole
> tower down, crew and all.

i'd have been glad not to be the person who did that or even
anywhere near that! yikes!

> Just weeks before I joined the Boston radio station where I was to spend
> more than twenty years, a truck backing into the parking lot caught a
> guy wire and took down a 350-foot tower. For years after that you could
> see scars in the pavement where it landed. Luckily, it was Saturday
> morning and the lot was empty.

were they able to reuse the tower or did they have to scrap it?


songbird

[Freyja]

On 11/16/2021 05:18, umar wrote:
> On 2021-11-03, Freyja <Fre...@despam.yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> He certainly is a cat. He's our all-black pocket panther (Wakanda
>> forever!). Achilles is our youngest.
>
> Kitties are delightful. It's hard to hang out with one and not get a
> smile on one's face.

Yup! Achilles just came to see me in the bathroom and purred at me for
skritching his neck and cheek. Somehow the nausea eased. Purrs are
said to be healing.

>> An owl? Yikes.
>
> Now, this morning, I got off the T -- that's what they call public
> transit in these parts -- and I was walking through Boston's Dorchester
> neighborhood, just off busy Morrissey Boulevard, when I heard a squawk
> over my left shoulder. Strutting around in an adjacent parking lot was a
> wild turkey. They've become remarkably common in recent years; I've even
> seen them in downtown Boston.
>
> I wonder if any other major metropolitan areas have been infiltraded by
> turkeys.
>

It wouldn't surprise me.

I remember the T from when I was interviewing for a job. Easy to figure
out.

--
Freyja the NurseWench
http://freyjaw.dreamwidth.org
Twitter: @FreyjaRN @DuchessHonor

"Kittens believe that all nature is occupied with their diversion."
-F.A. Paradis de Moncrif

[Freyja]

Some do, but not enough. Certainly not enough of the right ones.

>>> i think the next 500yrs will be very interesting and i wish i could
>>> stick around long enough to see what happens next. :)
>>
>> That's my greatest regret about growing old. I won't be around to see
>> the next chapter, to find out how it all comes out.
>
> as an avid reading of science fiction there are so many
> ways this can all go. :)

I agree. I'm an avid reader.

--
Freyja the NurseWench
http://freyjaw.dreamwidth.org
Twitter: @FreyjaRN @DuchessHonor

Get it right, you're a star. Get it half-right, you're a gas giant.
-Joe Quigley

[Freyja]

I had probability and statistics as part of my nursing research course.
It is mandatory for a BSN.

--
Freyja the NurseWench
http://freyjaw.dreamwidth.org
Twitter: @FreyjaRN @DuchessHonor

The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but
sometimes to prevent it.

[umar]

On 2021-11-17, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:

> we used to have to contact ATT a few times a year when
> the mice would invade the cabinets and build nests and
> then the snakes would get in there going after the mice.
> so many of the technicians would mention that they hated
> snakes. i like snakes, mice i can do without but they
> are a big menu item for a lot of other creatures so they
> are important in this web of life.

A milk snake once fell out of the ceiling at a radio station owned by
one of my clients, right in the middle of the morning show. It landed at
the feet of the owner's daughter, and pandemonium ensued. The snake had
to be ushered out the back door by the morning jock, who was an almost
perfect clone of WKRPin Cincinnati's Dr. Johnny Fever.

In this part of the counry, we have the eastern milk snake, Lampropeltis
triangulum. It's a less colorful relative of the southern ones that
mimic the candy-cane pattern of the coral snake. Milk snakes fall into
the category of ill-tempered but harmless snakes; I don't know why so
many people hate or fear them.

The mice are actually more dangerous; not only do they spread disease,
but they can actually burn down buildings by gnawing through electrical
insulation.


umar

[umar]

On 2021-11-16, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:

> i wish i'd had a better instructor for statistics so i'd have
> stuck it out, but the lecturer was not very good and after the
> first day i walked out and dropped the class (i would have been
> stuck with that instructor for three classes total and didn't
> really have the time or energy for dealing with his sort of
> incoherence as a lecturing style) and later picked up a probabiliy
> and statistics course that was the alternate choice for fulfilling
> the degree requirements. it was pretty tough class but i managed
> to get through it.

That's more or less what soured me on math. I was something of a whiz at
math in high school, and entered college with an AP credit that let me
bypass the introduction to calculus course. But the math course I took
was taught by someone who couldn't communicate effectively with anyone
below Ph.D. level. That's the problem with some of these big-name
universities; their reputation is built on research and scholarship, and
the quality of teaching is a crap shoot. You might get someone who's a
world-class scholar but can't teach worth a damn.

Anyway, I muddled through that math course but never took another one.


umar

[umar]

On 2021-11-18, Freyja <Fre...@despam.yahoo.com> wrote:

> I had probability and statistics as part of my nursing research course.
> It is mandatory for a BSN.

It ought to be mandatory for everyone, I think. One of my biggest gripes
these days is that people don't seem to know how to weigh relative
risks. They worry more about terrorists than drunk drivers, even though
they're far more likely to fall victim to a drunk driver than a
terrorist.

They're also far more likely to die of Covid than of any vaccine
side-effect, yet they rant away about "freedom!" all the way to the
morgue.

Sigh.


umar

[umar]

On 2021-11-17, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:

> i don't really spend any time on FB or many other things
> but i do enjoy watching music reaction videos for some of
> my favorite groups. it is fun watching younger people
> discover some great music.

In my 40+ years in the radio business, I've helped introduce a variety
of music to myriad new listeners. It's always a joy to hear from them.

(re: bitcoin)

> based upon how much energy is currently being used to
> mine and support these things i consider it an environmental
> crime and it should be made illegal and no banks should be
> allowed to use them or any other uses either. none of this
> makes any sense at all.

I couldn't agree more. It only makes sense to speculators, who are
driving the whole cryptocurrency thing. But the sad thing is that in a
world of finite resources, there and fewer and fewer opportunities to
generate wealth, so investors have largely become speculators.
Speculation strikes me as a zero-sum game; for someone to win, someone
else has to lose.

It's like casinos, which people in my part of the country support
wholeheartedly. They don't actually generate any wealth; they just rob
Peter to pay Paul. That brand new casino in Everett, just north of
Boston, is little more than a black hole into which people pour their
money. Yes, some of it does support some local jobs, and the state takes
its pound of flesh, but at the end of the day Massachusetts is that much
poorer, it seems to me.

(billionaires in space)

> likely they'll end up killing themselves off by doing
> something very stupid. it will take a very disciplined
> person to really understand what it will mean to live in
> space and from what i've seen most of the billionaires
> are not that. if instead they take up learning how to
> mine and build within a moon colony or a large enough
> asteroid they may have a better chance of carrying it off
> but so far i don't see encouraging signs that humanity
> has any idea what kind of a bind they're in so ...

I think Musk, Bezos et al. imagine themselves watching the world implode
from the safety of space-bourne mansions. They don't care what happens
to the rest of us, I think.

> as an avid reading of science fiction there are so many
> ways this can all go. :)

As an avid reader of history, I agree.


umar

[umar]

On 2021-11-17, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:

(re:)

>> Just weeks before I joined the Boston radio station where I was to spend
>> more than twenty years, a truck backing into the parking lot caught a
>> guy wire and took down a 350-foot tower. For years after that you could
>> see scars in the pavement where it landed. Luckily, it was Saturday
>> morning and the lot was empty.

> were they able to reuse the tower or did they have to scrap it?

It was scrapped. There are engineering and regulatory issues with trying
to re-erect a fallen tower. They replaced it with a new one.

Directional AM stations have arrays of two or more towers, and it's not
uncommon to find towers of different ages in the same array, as a result
of past tower collapses.


umar

[Freyja]

On 11/23/2021 09:30, umar wrote:
> On 2021-11-18, Freyja <Fre...@despam.yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> I had probability and statistics as part of my nursing research course.
>> It is mandatory for a BSN.
>
> It ought to be mandatory for everyone, I think. One of my biggest gripes
> these days is that people don't seem to know how to weigh relative
> risks. They worry more about terrorists than drunk drivers, even though
> they're far more likely to fall victim to a drunk driver than a
> terrorist.

I agree. CPR should also be mandatory. It was the year I was in IN.
It was part of my sophomore HS Health class. We had first aid, CPR, sex
ed, and other stuff. More schools should require something like it.

> They're also far more likely to die of Covid than of any vaccine
> side-effect, yet they rant away about "freedom!" all the way to the
> morgue.
>
> Sigh.
>

More like free-dumb.

--
Freyja the NurseWench
http://freyjaw.dreamwidth.org
Twitter: @FreyjaRN @DuchessHonor

Do files get embarrassed when they get unzipped?

[songbird]

Freyja wrote:
...
> More like free-dumb.

i really have to bite my tongue here. sometimes i just
want to scream it is so bad.

my own version of a mini-rant is why in the heck did you
parents send me to school if what i learned has no value
at all to you?

i've studied sciences, biology, botany, microbiology, etc.
my whole life since i was a kid. during this whole thing
has any of my relatives actually asked me what is going on
or even asked me to explain anything? not once. i have
a cousin who's an ER physician in a nearby large city and
the stories they tell are about on par from what i've
experienced. i'll leave it there...

today i did get a bit of a very sad laugh out of the
people still displaying a Trump/Pence election campaign
sign.

i feel like i'm on a different planet...

c'est la vie... or asta la viesta baby!


songbird

[songbird]

umar wrote:
> On 2021-11-17, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:
>
>> we used to have to contact ATT a few times a year when
>> the mice would invade the cabinets and build nests and
>> then the snakes would get in there going after the mice.
>> so many of the technicians would mention that they hated
>> snakes. i like snakes, mice i can do without but they
>> are a big menu item for a lot of other creatures so they
>> are important in this web of life.
>
> A milk snake once fell out of the ceiling at a radio station owned by
> one of my clients, right in the middle of the morning show. It landed at
> the feet of the owner's daughter, and pandemonium ensued. The snake had
> to be ushered out the back door by the morning jock, who was an almost
> perfect clone of WKRPin Cincinnati's Dr. Johnny Fever.

hahaha! since i remember that show (and had such a crush
on Bailey) i can see it all. :) that must have been a sight
to see. :)

> In this part of the counry, we have the eastern milk snake, Lampropeltis
> triangulum. It's a less colorful relative of the southern ones that
> mimic the candy-cane pattern of the coral snake. Milk snakes fall into
> the category of ill-tempered but harmless snakes; I don't know why so
> many people hate or fear them.

we have a rather fiesty brown snake that is harmless but
can startle you if you don't notice it in time. we do have
the poisonous swamp rattler snakes here but they are usually
around the wetlands and we are not too close to those so it
takes some travel for them to get here. i think i've seen
one in all the years i've been here.

i like snakes. i don't have any or keep them as pets, but
i do like them. with all the rock piles around there is
plenty of habitat for them.

> The mice are actually more dangerous; not only do they spread disease,
> but they can actually burn down buildings by gnawing through electrical
> insulation.

yes, i've had to trap hundreds of mice out of the walls here
over the years. it wasn't until just a few years ago that i
finally got this place properly sealed up, but i do have to keep
an eye out for any new attempts to get back in. once the snow
flies at least i can see the mouse tracks in the snow to find
out if anyone is trying to nest in places they shouldn't be.
one nest we had to remove from the AC a few summer's ago after
they'd finally destroyed some wiring and the capacitor that was
used in that part of the control box. luckily it did not cause
a fire or harm the motor of the AC unit.


songbird

[songbird]

umar wrote:


...teacher and me did not mesh...

> That's more or less what soured me on math. I was something of a whiz at
> math in high school, and entered college with an AP credit that let me
> bypass the introduction to calculus course. But the math course I took
> was taught by someone who couldn't communicate effectively with anyone
> below Ph.D. level. That's the problem with some of these big-name
> universities; their reputation is built on research and scholarship, and
> the quality of teaching is a crap shoot. You might get someone who's a
> world-class scholar but can't teach worth a damn.
>
> Anyway, I muddled through that math course but never took another one.

i was so naive and had such poor study skills when i got to
college, but i also had a major handicap and it was never found
out in time before i wasted a lot of effort and money and poor
performance.

in high school i never had a pre-calculus course, but i did
so well on the placement test the college gave during orientation
that they put me into the first calculus class. it was a five
credit class and i was lost so bad i had no idea what was going
on and the instructure for that class was a genius but he couldn't
get past my ignorance.

i flunked it. i didn't even know i could drop a class. i
didn't even know that there was such a class as precalculus, i
stuggled through the first one, failed, repeated it, got a C,
took the next one, struggled through it but at least i did make
it through the class but still didn't know anything about
pre-calculus, etc. i was failing the third class in the series
when i dropped it and tried again the next quarter. eventually
made it through and only had Differential Equations to get
through to finally be done with the sequence and i had a great
teacher and was actually getting a B in the class when the
teacher announced that she had only been filling in for the
guy who was supposed to be teaching the class and that he would
be taking over. i about hit the roof i was so mad. and the
new teacher was not a very good speaker of English and that
made it hard to attend lectures, but not only that he got
angry if you asked him a question. it was horrible. i finished
the class with a D. to say the least all these math classes
with poor grades did screw up my grade point average, but i
wasn't on any kind of scholarship so eventually i got through,
got my degree and that was it.

somewhere in there i found some friends in the math depart-
ment who were also excellent teachers and i took any of the
classes they taught for fun if i could afford it and had the
time. so i learned that i could do some kinds of math and do
well and i also learned how important it was for me to be able
to say no and drop a class if the teacher or subject wasn't
working for me. it wasn't until my third time through a
computation theory course that i finally started making sense
of it but i still only got a C. the book and teacher were
both better and some concepts finally leaked into my brain
somehow. some topics i just don't learn very easy at all... :(

ah, well, good memories now and a lot to learn from and i
did my best after that to put into action what i did learn. :)

ok, well, rambly mood i guess, ... cold outside. i hope
everyone has a nice TG. :)


songbird

[songbird]

haha! interesting to know. i've never been much into the
actual technology of radio towers and antennas. certainly
things have vastly changed since the last time i knew the
difference between UHF and VHF. the change to digital is
still on-going here in this house and some tribulations still
happen at times. :)


songbird

[songbird]

umar wrote:
> On 2021-11-17, songbird <song...@anthive.com> wrote:
>
>> i don't really spend any time on FB or many other things
>> but i do enjoy watching music reaction videos for some of
>> my favorite groups. it is fun watching younger people
>> discover some great music.
>
> In my 40+ years in the radio business, I've helped introduce a variety
> of music to myriad new listeners. It's always a joy to hear from them.

:) as a young listener of 12yrs old way back when it was the
local Public Broadcasting Station that got me going on classical
and then there was W3Soul out of Saginaw that i could listen to
for that and then the pop station which i also listened to at
times for rock. when i went up north we had our local college
radio classical station that i would listen to which had the
primary feed from Minnesota Public Radio and i also had the
other alternative station that came from the attic of a residence
hall and my roommate of the time was also a disk jockey for them
and a Jazz drummer and a Punk Rock drummer. here i was a
classical music and rock and roll and soul music loving kid and
they put me in the same room with him and it turned out great
because we both agreed that we didn't like REO Speedwagon (which
the guys next to us played every night for a year - we even went
as far as taking an REO album, heating it up with a lighter and
impressing various things into the record and then when it
cooled off we broke it up into pieces and made a mobile that
we hung in our room. it was a small bit of resistance but we
were happy about it :) ).

i pretty much agree with the rest of your comments but i don't
have time to write back on them for now.

cheers and i hope you have a nice holiday if you get any time
off. :)


songbird

[songbird]

umar wrote:
...

> It ought to be mandatory for everyone, I think. One of my biggest gripes
> these days is that people don't seem to know how to weigh relative
> risks. They worry more about terrorists than drunk drivers, even though
> they're far more likely to fall victim to a drunk driver than a
> terrorist.

true, but even then i still hate flying and enjoy driving
so sometimes personal preferences do come into play. but at
least i recognize i'm being foolish and will admit it.

> They're also far more likely to die of Covid than of any vaccine
> side-effect, yet they rant away about "freedom!" all the way to the
> morgue.
>
> Sigh.

yep. ghods, i live in a region and my family is all
anti-* as long as it doesn't fit their political agenda.

i'll stop there, i really don't want to rant, but i could
go on for pages.


songbird

[Freyja]

On 11/23/2021 15:06, songbird wrote:
> umar wrote:
>> On 2021-11-17, s