Words of Wisdom

 

 

If you’re going to throw deep, don’t send a short receiver downfield.  The farther away they go, the smaller they get.  Send a 6”2, 6’4” receiver with a bigger catch radius.

 

Tom Brady.

 

 

 

The deluge

 

 

It happened right after yesterday’s photo.

 

 

A neighbor’s rain gauge recorded four inches of rain in the next hour or so.

 

Right at the same time as this photo, it turns out there was an Amazon delivery.  There might sometimes be an Amazon delivery van, but Amazon also contracts with various private drivers to make their deliveries, so there is no consistency for who shows up with the packages.  Rather than having inexperienced people driving all around the park trying to find lot numbers, there is an Amazon delivery box inside the park at the office.  We’re gated, so to get inside and access the delivery box, the driver has to stop at the gate, punch the button to call the office, and the office will trigger the gate to open.  Once inside, the driver puts each delivery for the day in the delivery box, snaps a photo to document the deed, and leaves.

 

Apparently, the office didn’t pick up for this driver’s call yesterday, so the driver faced a conundrum.  I have deliveries to make.  The gate won’t open.  What to do?  Delay the delivery and try again the next day?  No.  Different decision.  This is the photo we got to announce our Amazon delivery.

 

 

All the deliveries for that day.  Piled on the ground at the foot of the call box.

 

 

Moments before the deluge.

 

 

A chance of rain

 

 

 

 

 

In this bush

 

 

There is a Chachalaca.

 

 

It’s a big chickenlike bird.  It ranges from the south tip of Texas down through Eastern Mexico to the Yucatan Peninsula.  Noisy at dusk and dawn, it sits quietly in cover during a hot summer day.

 

 

Not really visible in the first picture, it appears in the one above.

 

 

And now we can see another one right below it.

 

 

These are the only ones I saw, but there could be so many more that went unnoticed.

 

Another thought

 

 

We have four hummingbird feeders up.  I refill at least one of them every day.  Usually, the hummingbird food is room temperature.  Sometimes it’s still a little warm from the stove, but not much.  Yesterday we had some left over, so I put it in the fridge.  Today I got it out, refilled a feeder, and hung it back up outside.  That made me wonder.  If hummingbirds drink ice cold nectar too fast, do they get tiny little headaches behind their eyes?

 

And the beat goes on

 

 

 

 

At about 50 beats per second.

 

 

 

 

 

The charming little creatures are so focused on food that a person can stand right next to the hanging feeder, and they will continue to buzz about all around and in front of that person’s head.  A tiny cacophony of chattering, buzzing of the wings, and the occasional splat as two birds meet midair, each vying for the right to feed exclusively at the nearby never-ending food source.  (And while they’re battling, ten other birds are standing quietly on the feeder eating.)  High drama.  And nerves of steel required of the observer to stand in the middle of such an intense random dart game without flinching.

 

And the Texas Firebush

 

 

 

The orange, red, and yellow colors are attractive to hummingbirds.  The long tubular flowers, that never open any more than this, are not available to anyone else, but perfectly suited to hummingbirds.

 

For comparison

 

 

Here is a native yellow Esperanza.  Also known as a yellow bell.

 

 

Same big trumpet shaped flowers.

 

 

And, bonus, a big black carpenter bee.  A good pollinator.

 

 

Pretty much solitary.  They don’t live in hives like honeybees.  They make their nest holes in exposed wood.  That’s why they’re called carpenter bees.  Not a problem unless the exposed wood happens to be on your house.

 

Esperanza flowers are usually yellow

 

 

The ones in our yard are orange.

 

 

 

 

Turnabout

 

 

I read a news story about a group of software engineers who, targeted by a cost cutting measure, got laid off and replaced by an AI agent.  They got together and wrote an AI package intended to replace a CEO.  Open source.  Free access for anyone to evaluate or upgrade.  “A senior advisor with Harvard MBA level knowledge.”  It’s an assemblage of eight different AI roles for strategy, finance, human resources, operations, marketing, product, and communications, all operating in concert.

 

AI can’t write this.  It takes skilled experienced software engineers to accomplish such an involved task.  A turnabout indeed.

 

 

Windmills

 

 

 

We passed a windmill museum out on the plains in Limon, Colorado.  I’ve always admired windmills, but I never really thought about how they would have evolved over the years.  There are a whole bunch of different ones:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I read all the signs and studied all the windmills.  I didn’t come away an expert.  I still can’t tell one from another even with the help of the narrative for each.

 

Elaborate

 

A tent trailer.  That folds out and out and out.  I don’t know what all it does, but it’s got stuff everywhere!

 

 

 

In that last picture it even looks like an inverter box and maybe battery backup, processing electricity like they’re off grid (but they’re also plugged in).

 

We’ve been discovered

 

 

Every trip report I send out gets archived on a blog site.  It’s not a blog with much of a readership; I just like saving a record of what I’ve said over the years.  Every week I get a report of the traffic there.  Most weeks are in the range of 100 pages or so; sometimes more if somebody discovers it and reads through a lot of pages, but that’s only occasionally.

 

For the last few weeks though, our traffic has been looking more like this:

 

 

Ten thousand views?  I don’t know why, for the last month, the traffic has been this crazy.  I don’t think it’s because I’ve suddenly gotten this interesting.  I suspect we’ve been discovered (attacked), by bots.  But come to think of it, why even would bots be this interested?  Surely they have something better to do with their time than visit me ten thousand times.

 

Motorcycle follow-up

 

 

Brother Tom located this photo of a 1947 Indian Chief.

 

I think he nailed it.  What a beauty!

 

Along the way

 

 

Harley Sidecars.

 

 

The black one looks modern, but the partially obscured brown and cream colored one looks classic.  They were in a private place so I didn’t go down for a closer shot.

 

Sidecars may not be all that practical, but I’ve always thought they looked cool.

 

Along the way

 

 

A boy and his dog.

 

Fall is here for sure

 

 

 

Not a single triple digit high in the forecast.

 

Electric cars

 

 

We never knew electric cars could be so dangerous until we bought one.

 

The other day I was putting the charging cord away and I dropped the heavy end on my bare foot.  Ow.  That would never have happened with a gasser.

 

 

In the morning

 

 

I grind the coffee beans and brew two cups of coffee.  Judy’s goes in an insulated cup with a lid.  Mine is an open glass cup.  As I top off the coffee in my cup, that’s when I think about Uncle Doug.  Not really my uncle, an older cousin.  And not a lot older, just the age of my second oldest brother.  But in my middle teenage years, in a random conversation, he called me Uncle Steve, and I called him Uncle Doug, and it stuck.

 

I think of him as I carry my full cup of coffee into the living room and set it down on the coffee table.  Doug would occasionally visit us when we lived in Colorado.  The kids were little and Uncle Doug was always a great hit because he paid attention to them.  And they could legitimately call him Uncle Doug.  We’d shuffle kids in bedrooms so there would be one open for him.  He’d stay a week or two, then be on his way back to Southern California.  He usually visited in the fall, close to the holidays, and several times got delayed coming or going by freak snowstorms.  One year, I spent an entire night at Stapleton Airport to pick him up during a blizzard, while his airplane circled, got rerouted, landed to refuel in another state, and finally made it back to Denver to land.  The only real information I got about his progress as that night progressed was from the pay phone with Judy on the other end of the line, and the best information she could get was already hours old by the time she got it.

 

Meanwhile, us all enjoying his visit, he taught us the dice game of Farkle.  Good fun to play a dice game that makes the kids giggle every time they say it.  And he taught us the card game Bullshit.  There was a more family friendly name, I Doubt It, but what a special treat for the kids to get to throw down their cards and yell Bullshit and not get in trouble.  What triggers all this for me is the full cup of coffee.  Doug would pitch in around the house and kitchen, naturally absorbing chores like he lived there.  In the morning the pot of coffee would be brewing in the Mr. Coffee maker, and I was amazed how he could get the water so perfect in the tank that the pot of brewed coffee would be so full right to the brim.  When he poured his cup, it would be the same way.  Coffee right to the brim.  Getting the most of it I guess.  I don’t know how he didn’t leave a trail of spilled coffee through the house into the living room.  I carry my less-than-that filled cup of coffee to the living room now to accomplish the same goal and still puzzle about how he did it.

 

 

Tiger Swallowtail

 

 

 

Ruby-throated Hummingbird?

 

 

Most of the time they don’t look like it.

 

 

The males have that dark throat.  The females and youngsters don’t even have that.

 

The male hummingbirds have to flash that red throat, and the lighting has to be just right, to see it really light up.  I’ve been waiting and watching, without much success to catch the moment.  Then it occurred to me.  That brilliant flash?  Maybe it’s more of a springtime thing.  Then, the birds are on their way north to claim territory, mate, and raise babies.  They’re all fired up.  On the way south, they’re done for the year.  Their colors are more muted.  They’re taking the rest of the winter off.  That said, I did catch a couple shots of one agitated male revealing that yes, he truly is a ruby-throat.

 

 

 

My memory

 

 

My memory is really good.  I remember incidents from throughout my life.  Like kindergarten when I was five.  Marlena and Judy next door.  Jimmy Olson, my best friend down on the corner in Seal Beach when I was eight years old.  He had a white rat that would crawl around on his shoulders inside his T-shirt.  He had a reel to reel eight millimeter movie projector, but we weren’t any good at threading the film so the cartoons didn’t come out backwards or upside down.  My phone number.  (It only had five digits.)  Crystal clear.  But now, it’s a little harder to hold on to new stuff.  I meet somebody, learn their name, and the next day it’s gone.  I have to hear their name again.  Maybe several times.  Or I set a reminder for the next day, but when it goes off the next day, I can’t remember what it’s for.

 

I’ve figured out what the problem is.  I’m so good at remembering things, I’ve filled the memory bank.  That’s it, and there is a solution.  Pick out a bunch of stuff from my early childhood to forget.  Make that go away, and it will free up room in the bank for new memories.  Then I won’t lose count at two again when I’m putting three scoops of coffee beans in the grinder.

 

The carport

 

 

It worked just fine for a Jeep and golf cart.  It’s not quite deep enough for the Transit Van.  No problem, though.  We back the van in, the front end sticks out to the north, and we put windshield and window covers on the driver’s compartment and everything else is in the shade.

 

Sweet.  (I don’t need to go in and out the driver’s door.  I can get up, walk through, and go in and out the side door.)

 

Now, one might think that if we want to relocate the van forward or back to get in and out of the back end, or retrieve something from behind it, we might have to undo those window covers so we can see out, but no.  Fully enclosed in the driver’s compartment cocoon, we can’t see out the windshield or the side mirrors.  No problem.  We have that screen in the middle. 

 

Cameras on the outside.  Push the button and we get front, back, and 360 degree overhead views.

 

 

We can see exactly where we are and where we want to be.

 

 

Now the Tesla and the carport.  There’s a different issue.

 

We have the same all-around camera views, but that post right behind it ensures that the little car doesn’t get in the shade at all.

 

 

That post has got to go.

 

And the beat goes on

 

 

 

About 50 wingbeats per second.

 

And when they’re flying, a heart rate of 20 beats per second.

 

The Lantana

 

 

Crushing it.

 

As is the Mexican Firebush behind it.

 

Hummingbirds favor those long tubular flowers.

 

Eighty degrees

 

 

That’s too hot to sleep.

 

But the air conditioning broke last night.  We turned down the thermostat and went to sleep, but not for long.  It didn’t cool off.  It never got below 80.  It was warmer than that outside.  It was 84 degrees inside by morning.  No sheets or blankets required.  It was closing in on 90 in the front room by the time the air conditioner guy showed up to save us.  Just a capacitor.  No big deal.

 

But having air conditioning here is a big deal.  Hot.  Humid.  And it doesn’t cool down that much at night.  Can’t just open a window and put a fan in it to cool off.  Now it’s dark and the inside of the house is cooled back down to our normal daytime setting of 78.  Tonight we’ll turn the thermostat down and tomorrow morning we get to wake up at our nighttime temperature of 66, warm and cozy under our lightweight down blanket.

 

 

 

 

Big Jude

 

 

 

Geared up for shopping.