Geek

It’s a quiet day here in the Desert Compound. My husband is watching football (his second game today), the dogs are sleeping near my feet, Truman is sleeping in his cat tree, and the rest of the family has gone on a movie date to see 3 1/2 hours of Avatar.

I’m enjoying the relative downtime.

I’ve been using this quiet time to clean up my computing experience a little bit. I’m always tweaking my setup here and there. I’m determined to not buy any new computers in 2023 and 15 days in I’m still holding to my word. I don’t need a new computer, of course, but once in a while I think about buying something to use at work as part of their “Bring Your Own Device” program. I have a cantankerous relationship with my work-issued, Windows 10-based laptop at best, but when all is said and done it gets the job done and that’s what’s important. I just need to take a focused approach at using the dang thing so I don’t get into my own head about buying another computer.

I’ve also been using the quiet time to engage in some of my hobbies. I’ve been watching flying videos, chatting with other pilots of aviation forums, and looking into some other flight opportunities in the area. The weather for the next 48 hours is rainy, cloudy, and cold, so I might as well engage in my aviator blood through other methods.

I’m also doing more research and planning for Storm Chasing Trip 2023 coming up later this spring. I’ve been looking at maps and the like, figuring out some key places I want to visit should I run into any downtime between storms.

And if that’s not enough, I’ve also been doing some research on my vintage point of sale systems hobby site. I found a video focused on John Lennon’s death and the impact on a local Tower Records back in 1980. It was quite interesting in itself, but I also noticed the Data Terminal Systems cash register featured in the video. It’s been over nearly four decades since these cash registers were in the mainstream, and they probably populate too many landfills, but I still hold out hope that someday I’ll find a unit I can clean up and restore for my own amusement.

Even though it’s the beginning of January and my 2023 storm chasing trip is scheduled for mid May, I’m already excited about the whole affair.

With Twitter going completely sideways since Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform, I’m remembering how dependent I was on the service last year when it came to seeing what other storm chasers were up to. There are plenty of other data sources to see where storm chasers are located. I belong to the Spotter’s Network and I track other sources through various apps, including RadarScope. But Twitter was incredibly convenient for incoming data. While my two remaining Twitter accounts remain dormant, I’ll probably fire up my aviation and storm chasing account when we get closer to traditional chase season, even if I just use it for monitoring and following. That is if Twitter is still around and people are actually using it. I keep hearing about tons of folks leaving the platform.

There’s always Facebook for this information as well, but with its kooky algorithms I’m left with a feed of a bit of storm chasing information, a bunch of ads trying to sell me shaving cream or beard balm, lovely pictures of friends’ cats, and then an ad for a politician I have no interest in.

Today’s popular Internet services are not really designed for those that need a focused data stream. And let’s face it, we all need a more focused data stream.

Today I learned how long distance dialing worked in 1951. I love these old videos. I find them much more enjoyable than the Chinese spyware known as TikTok.

Even without the app, one is thoroughly tracked at McDonalds.

As a geek that is fascinated by all things networked or connected, I have always had a fascination with electric power distribution, and more specifically, the higher voltage power lines that cross the country side.

There’s a particular style of pylons that support these wires in Upstate New York that I haven’t seen elsewhere in the country. Most of these carry two circuits of 115 kV (kilovolts). Their unique in that they don’t have a four point base, instead they’re designed with a two point base. I’ve never heard of one falling down because of the wind. When the North Country had their huge ice storm in the mid 1990s, this design withstood the weight of the ice.

I’ve never known who made these pylons but they’re found primarily in what used to be the Niagara-Mohawk footprint.

These lines cross the New York State Thruway just east of the Verona interchange. There’s always been several obvious “generations” of this design. The first tower is the older, the second was installed during the mid 1950s during the building of the Thruway, where an original was probably in the way of a bulldozer.

I went to the historical society in my hometown today. I had donated some of the clocks from the elementary school in the area and I finally had the chance to get them working for them. They were delighted when everything was working in this old school building.

They have a LOT of information on the surrounding area, including history on families and towns and all sorts of things. I have a copy of the yearbook containing my grandmother as a sophomore in high school. I recognized her right away.

Since the master clock that runs the old clocks is an electronic unit it doesn’t have an easy way to advance the clocks if the power goes out or at the seasonal time changes. I built them an auxiliary control box with buttons and switches to make this easy. It works great.

I told them if they have an issues we can easily solve the issue over FaceTime.

I honestly don’t remember the last time I was on Twitter. I think it was two weeks ago; I’m not sure. The other day I was going through my password manager and noticed I had some extraneous Twitter accounts that I had forgotten about, so I went ahead and deleted those account. My two primary accounts (one for aviation, one for everything else) were locked down and the tweets were pretty much deleted a few weeks ago when the Elonification of Twitter took place. I’m not sure if I like Elonification or Muskification. They both sound gross.

I continue to be on Mastodon but it’s not the same as Twitter. Some of that’s on purpose; it’s designed to be different. My interactions on Mastodon are pleasant but not as plentiful. If anything, the destruction of Twitter has forced me to step away from social media a little bit and that’s a good thing. My mood doesn’t need the algorithm. Slave to the clicks and all that.

At this point I don’t really care if Twitter fails or succeeds. The last couple of weeks have shown me that I don’t really need it in my life. It started downhill back during Trump’s birther idiocy. It’ll probably just become a bigger cesspool of idiocy under the new ownership.

Who knows, maybe folks will fire up their old school blogs (like this one!) again.