Here are photos taken during yesterday’s hike to Ernie’s Falls in Saguaro National Park East. The hike was a little over 9.5 miles. It was a beautiful day. Hiking has rapidly become my favorite recreational sport in the way of exercise.
Test Dummy.
After having a mustache for a few years (aside from one day in January of this year), I am clean shaven once again. Jamie is well into his barber school studies and practiced his shaving technique on me today. As I told him when he was done, “I’ve been shaved by many barbers. This shave tonight was nowhere near the worst experience I’ve had.” Like other barbers before him, Jamie remarked at how thick my facial hair is. An old Italian barber in Boston told me way back in 1990, “you have a face full of copper wire”. It’s more like silver wire now, but apparently it’s still designed to withstand the elements.
Jamie did a very good job. No blood!
Video: Ernie’s Falls.
A video of my hike up to Ernie’s Falls in Saguaro National Park East. We had some impressive rains this week so the water coming over the falls was equally impressing.
Caturday.
I love the stately vibe of this photo of Truman. He’s in my work office on his cat tree making sure everything outside is according to his standards.
Life.
Back when I was in 10th grade, my geometry teacher stopped me in the hallway after school. We’ll call her Marilyn.
Marilyn asked, “John, is there a reason you only do about 3/4 of your homework?”
Another math teacher, we’ll call him Doug, laughed out loud as he passed by. He was a popular teacher and his laugh was infectious.
Marilyn was looking at me with a look of incredulity. I looked her straight in the eye, while standing outside my locker, numbered 710, and said, “Yes. If I ace 3/4 of the homework I still pass geometry”.
She looked at me for a moment. She was what I considered at time to be a “scary teacher”. She usually taught seniors.
After looking me back in the eyes she simply said, “You’re right!”.
I passed geometry with an 80. I was content.
Brakes To Break.
I’ve been thinking about stepping away from social media, yes, again. I’ve been somewhat active on Mastodon for the past couple of weeks and I’m realizing that while it is a much friendlier experience than anything else out there (X, Bluesky, etc), there’s still a little undercurrent of something I can’t quite put my finger on that’s requiring more energy than I’m willing to sink into the experience.
When I start writing less on my blog, it’s usually because my energy is being sapped (or zapped!) by something else. And this week I’ve seen my social media participation go up, peak in a little bit of frustration, and subsequently, I’m struggling to write blog entries. This entry will probably sit in the hopper for a few days until I figure it out that’s it’s going to say what I want it to say.
Ironically, I don’t see Facebook as a social media tool anymore; it’s more like a family and friends communication tool. When I post my videos and my pictures there for folks back east to see, I’m basically offering a 1970s style slide show at a family gathering. I’m cool with that.
But coming up with witty remarks and interesting nuggets to engage with others inside a maximum of 500 characters? It’s not working for me as well.
I’m not deleting accounts at this point. I’m going to take a break, probably starting this weekend.
It’ll be a fresh way to start the week.
Technological Inspiration.
I was recently inspired to embrace my “geeky side” and decided my office would look good with a Raspberry Pi powered computer controlling the monitor off my shoulder in my work Zoom calls. I found a good deal on a Raspberry Pi 4 full kit this morning and by supper time Amazon had dropped it off at the front door.
As much as I don’t like Amazon killing brick and mortar businesses, that’s pretty amazing.
It took about 30 minutes to get the new Raspberry Pi 4 kit up and running, complete with downloading and configuring Raspberry Pi OS. I’m using the setup to write this blog entry.
I still have some tweaking to do on the system but I feel like I’m off to a great start.
Check Flight.
The flying club I belong to requires that active members fly with an instructor every six months. It’s actually a requirement of the insurance company; it helps keep insurance costs down. Another stipulation is that we can’t fly with the same instructor in two consecutive check flights. Luckily, there are plenty of instructors as part of the membership.
Tonight’s flight was a good flight. I’m always saying that I’m not flying quite enough since moving to Tucson, and it at times this makes me feel a like I need to knock a little rust off the skill set. I’m resolved to stop flying when I feel like I’m becoming a danger. This isn’t the case at this time.
I did some of the usual basic maneuvers for the flight and learned some new ones along the way. It’s good to fly with different instructors because it’s a great way to keep learning and keep building aviator skills. It keeps me out of the realm of complacency.
Earl and I are scheduled to fly on Thursday with plans to take our friend Ryan up for his first flight in a general aviation airplane, but the weather doesn’t look promising. I don’t want to take someone up for their first flight and have them bounce all over the sky, so I raise my personal minimums a little bit for these situations.
One nice thing about living in the desert is that it’s easy to fly year ’round, so I’m sure another opportunity will present itself if the weather doesn’t cooperate on Thursday.
This Is Why.
On Saturday I had enjoyed a great hike. I was home, feeling wonderful. I had hopped out of the shower, I was staring at myself at the bathroom sink, assessing things before finishing getting ready for the day. “Hey, Siri, play the news”. It actually worked and the typical noises indicating an NPR broadcast starting coming out of the HomePod mini.
The lead story from NPR was about President Biden’s recent State of the Union speech. I hadn’t watched the speech as I’ve been trying to avoid the news since it’s usually very depressing and my mental health is more important than the mental activities coming from the vast majority of elected people. But, I try to listen to the news at least once a week so I know what countries have been blown up and other asshattery going on in the world.
NPR’s lead story wasn’t about the content of Biden’s speech but rather one word uttered during the speech in an off-the-cuff remark. In response to screaming from the audience (how dignified!) apparently President Biden had used the word “Illegals” instead of “Undocumented individuals”.
First of all, President Biden is up there in years. It’s also well known that he has a speech impediment in the way of a stutter, and folks that stutter sometimes have a hard time getting the words in their head to come out their mouth. I’m often in the same predicament and I recognize that Biden does what I do; when he sees himself getting stuck he does a quick word substitution so something comes out and he avoids stuttering. I firmly believe in this case the word “illegals” came to mind and it just came out. It’s not a great word and in this age of thought and language policing from all sides of the aisle, people flip out over these things.
NPR leading the hourly news round up with this, nearly two days after the event, is just throwing gas on a societal dumpster fire. With all the crap going on all over the globe, THIS is what they choose to focus on? One word? I get it, folks don’t like the word “illegals”. Everyone is a human and a border is just a human created barrier anyway. I get it. But focusing on this aspect of the speech, instead of accentuating all the great things he said and has demonstrated during his tenure as President, is just making this election cycle a bleak, dismal, money grab for the media companies. NPR is just as guilty as the corporate owned media conglomerates when it comes to skewing, spewing, and carrying on about “the news”.
Dark times.
