My brother is going into his fourth surgery for brain tumor atm. Perspective is a tidal wave.
I think I am done with this one. That's from two Pubski's ago. It was the right choice. Covid exposure happened on the business travel. One of those checklist days.
I cancelled some upcoming business travel and a annual friend get together in NYC due to Covid. I don't want to bring it home with me. It wasn't an easy decision, but it feels like the right one.
I am up at the cottage for a few more days. I am building a sauna. Last year I built the deck. This year, the frame. With any luck it will be ready next summer. That's my dog.
My wife bought this tile from Greece: Hubski centaur. I cancelled some upcoming business travel and a annual friend get together in NYC due to Covid. I don't want to bring it home with me. It wasn't an easy decision, but it feels like the right one. I wish my wife wanted to move to the countryside as much as I do.
Saw a couple of you walking past the door, so I decided to open a day early. Pitchers are on special.
Tin-Can was approved for iOS! https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tin-can/id1435356247 I will make a post about it as soon as Android is updated. Think Twitter, but without the internet.
Working on my first vertical landscape painting. This one will be a bit more fantastic. My cousin is building a frame for my largest painting, and in exchange I am giving him a fatastical landscape. I've been busy with a bunch of stuff I'd rather not publicly relate, some good and some we shall see. When I have been able to steal a moment, I have been teaching myself Swift. Thus far, my impression is that it is ok. It kinda feels like CSS + Javascript + HTML, which I guess makes sense. It's not very intuitive to me, but I haven't found a language aside from Lisp that is. Swift seems rather fussy, tbh. Anyway, I currently have an app that can pull things from a database based on your location. I am now trying to get a handle on in-app navigation. We are going to Tennessee in a couple of weeks to a mountain cabin.
This is my backyard this morning. A bit late in the game, even for Michigan. But, sometimes it snows in April. I played Xmas music for my daughter this morning. I am adding an email activation link for new accounts. Hopefully it will have a dampening effect upon the spam. That will probably be pushed out today. After that, I am going to finish image hosting. Pretty busy otherwise. We are planning a major house remodel, and Forever Labs and other things are quite good, but busy. I need to socialize more and have more recreational fun. That is what I am going to do. I'm going to head back up north next month to finish the sauna. This time I will not cut any finger tips off.
This is what happened at our home today. His name is Winston. My daughter had no idea and was over the moon.
I started doing something different with the sky, which will eventually affect the lighting of the whole painting. This one has been tough. I have never painted on canvas before, and I prefer wood. Maybe I have just gotten used to it. I have been coding up some changes related to this post: They are less draconian, and I hope will be better received. I’ll probably push it tomorrow. I will be removing user promotion, which should lower the barrier to entry. Thanks to those of you sending the positive vibes. Despite the COVID19, I’m looking forward to cooler weather. If it weren’t for time at the cottage, July and August would be my least favorite months.
I’m waiting for finger surgery. I chopped of the tip of my left index finger while working on the sauna yesterday. Really a dumb move with a circular saw. I think I am that more ready to be a grandpa. I’ll post pics of the sauna, and maybe the injury, later.
I am humbled by your compassion and fortitude. I am not religious, but the phrase "There but for the grace of God, go I." has been on my mind lately. Life can throw more than enough at us without a recession and pandemic to strip away resources and options. It makes me glad to see that you have managed to find constructive outlets for yourself. It's important that you hold onto that. We've missed you too. Take care of yourself, and good luck.
We are back at the family cottage for a couple of weeks. Might as well do school and work remote from here. However, I think we are going to burn through our 50G monthly plan in 10 days. Night potty training puppy is the worst part of puppy, especially puppy with a GI infection. Last night was a better night though. rezzeJ has carried bfv's #weeklymusicthread torch across the 400 week mark. Share your love: I am probably going to push a fix (that hopefully fixes) in a bit, so don't save any treasures in chat. Sometimes the internet doesn't give you what you want, but gives you what you need:
My daughter wrote something last week that kind of blew my mind. Apropos, I think. Some more work on the painting. I decided the sky needed to be more dramatic, so I started slopping on some darker blue. I completed our rain garden and my daughter and I planted a bunch of seeds we collected last fall. I'll post that in the craft thread. I went to the grocery store this morning. I wore a mask, and saw only one other person in the store wearing one. A person stocking shelves bolted when she saw me. It's funny, last week my wife went in our Chinese grocery, and said that she was the only person in there without one. I expect things to be different in 2-3 weeks. When I got back, I sprayed everything with 70% ethanol, put my clothes in the laundry and took a shower. Sterile technique. kleinbl00 explained to me what Journey is the other day. My daughter started playing it and loves it.
I got a new shirt!!! Thanks, _refugee_! I love it. Been busy working. My wife and I got drawn into watching Poldark. She's particularly taken with the protagonist. My good friends launched https://futureswap.com two days ago. If you are into Ethereum and Defi, it is amazing. Ridiculously good returns for liquidity providers atm. Oh, and my dev hubski server has my local weather. Coming to a Hubski near you soon.
I am back. I don't want to be, but I am. bfv? :( Does anyone know why? I am going to miss you, bfv. Thank you for what you did for this place.
I am going to the UP of MI tomorrow for our annual retreat. Everyone has agreed to quarantine for 10 days prior so we can have a covid-free family cottage. Here's hoping that everyone has been good about it. My custom 1/10 RC buggy progresses. I'll make a post about it. I also promised to post about Hubski's ills, and what might be done. I don't want to post that and skip town. We already have a funny history of site drama coinciding with my absence. It's something that I want to give proper time and attention, so I'll post on my return. Be well, Hubski.
Wow. My account is 3650 days old today, as is pub/1 I think any day after today is good. Next Thursday is perfect. Shall we plan on it?
This might break things. https://hubski.com/chat It definitely can and will be improved upon. I'll post about it tomorrow if things don't crash tonight. Impressive, Devac. ;)
I have a problem with this article. Sure, the Democrats should do more. However, the real call-to-arms should target the American people. The Republicans are not threatening to steal the election from the Democrats, but to steal it from the American people. That should be made clear. From where I sit, if the GOP was able to reject certifications and get faithless electors to elect Trump, then the US would be occupied by an unelected government, and it would be time to overthrow them and reclaim our democracy.
I agree. Once a public servant tries to subvert the democratic system, they are not worth having no matter their performance.
I don't know your story, so apologies if this is too presumptive or doesn't make sense: To what extent do you feel the same person more-actualized, as opposed to a new person, born after coming out?
I am 45 years old, and my RC car is no less fun. It has been dormant for about 27 years. My daughter and I are souping up her little Nikko RC buggy. I used a frequency app to determine that her current motor runs at about 8000rpm, and ordered her one that is 25000rpm. Let's hope the gears can handle it. We also gave it a custom paint job. It's been one respite to all-day Zoom calls.
Yesterday, our friend asked me, "When do you think this will be over?" To which I replied, "Civilization?" and we had a hearty laugh.
More work on a new painting. Just slopping down base colors at this point. My first oil painting on canvas instead of wood. Canvas is ok. I think I prefer wood. I replaced the innards on both of our toilets this month. I discovered this guy in my toolbox. I don't know where it came from, but it was made around 1939, and 9/16 was exactly what I needed. It also led me to discover this awesome site: Where's craftski? I just bottled this DIPA. I'm calling it "Spirit of '76", and that's plain beer on the right. The green caps are called "Grasshopper", the silver caps are called "Locust". I predict Bernie will drop next week if he doesn't win Michigan. Biden did crazy well last night considering that Bloomberg was drawing from him more than Bernie, and as there were a lot of early ballots spent on Amy and Pete. It seems like the Dems are falling in line, which is not a very Dem thing.
Merry Christmas, Hubski. I’ll add more later. Doing Xmas morning with family. This is the last Pubski of the decade.
We had a nice thunderstorm last night. It wasn't on the forecast until about midday. I tried some lightning pics. We've been nuked! This one made it look like early evening. It was a great test of the rain garden. A good amount of standing water during the storm. I didn't get to check after the rain stopped. Hopefully the cattails grow.
I'm finishing up the painting for my mom. It's not my cup of tea, but she's excited about it. I'm looking forward to painting something from my head next. If this weren't for my mom, I'd get a bit crazy with lighting and try to give this some atmosphere, but I don't think she'd like it as much. I learned two lessons from this one: 1) the quality of your white paint matters a lot, and 2) don't use ceiling paint instead of primer as a base. We now have 5 chickens. These are the latest additions. I made that frame to hold a grapevine. Now it's a perch. Chickens are so endearingly stupid. When they aren't resting, they seem to oscillate between curiosity and freaking out. Misty (the white one) is kind of like a dog. She likes people and likes to be held. Coco (the brown one) is a freak. Joy is just along for the ride. Our two big chickens are starting to tolerate them, but they aren't allowed to sleep on the high perch in the coop yet. When I was in Norway, mike gave me this puzzle: I've been solving it every day. It's pretty awesome. My daughter and I are headed to Maine this weekend for a daddy/daughter trip. It's our first, and it was her suggestion. We are staying at a rustic cabin on the water. I'm really looking forward to it. I just finished Visions of a Flying Machine by Peter Jakab. katakowsj bought it for me. It's a solid book that deconstructs the Wright's engineering process. It's totally an engineer's book, and the Wrights were totally engineers. They built the first self-powered airplane because they methodically isolated and addressed every issue that had to be overcome to make it happen. It's as simple as that. Everyone before them was building something with wings and hoping that it worked out. Next is David Palmer's Emergence, on wasoxygen's recommendation. I've been making some tweaks around Hubski. Let me know if you find a bug. Things are going well enough elsewhere. I haven't had to travel as much for Forever Labs in the last few months, and business is good. I appreciate the return to a slightly less frenetic pace of life. Not all of me could keep up. It's interesting watching Trump fall apart, and I hope our country comes out of this without irreparable damage. I expect that we are falling into a global recession; hopefully we keep our heads.
A bit more work on the current painting. My beer is done this weekend, and I am looking forward to tasting it. I am creating a rain garden, and will probably put some time into that this weekend. It'll basically be a long trench that our garage downspout drains into. Work to be done consists of digging the trench, and running about 50ft of drain pipe under the ground to it. I collected a bunch of cattail and swamp grass seeds last fall that I need to plant after it's been dug out. I'll take pictures. Covid-19 is officially here in Michigan. My daughter's school system just cancelled all after school activities. I bet she has a week or so left of the school year. Thought about NotPhil today. NotPhil, I hope you are well.
I will write more on this once able; however, I think that free from debt, and free from the fear of debt, is what wealth is all about. updated: I believe that wealth is a state of mind, and that it has little to do with what you have, but more to do with how you view what you don’t have. Personally, I want for very little. I don’t need more money to have things that I want. What I do want, is to be free from the risk of losing what my family has. I know that the biggest risk to that is our health. For that reason, I want enough wealth that I can go to the mat when it comes to medical bills for anyone in my family, and for us to be able to survive that financially. My parents were teachers, and my father broke his neck when he was in his early 40’s. Due to their healthcare, my parents were able to keep their jobs, keep their home, and keep their retirement. Teachers aren’t wealthy in the traditional sense, but my parents had wealth. It wasn’t in their bank account, however. I believe that most teachers today do not have that kind of wealth. I have mixed feelings about generational wealth. From the limited experience I have with beneficiaries of generational wealth, it doesn’t seem like a healthy thing. I can honestly say that, I am glad that I didn’t have generational wealth. I don’t’ think I’d be a very interesting or fulfilled person if I did. I have a feeling that if passed on generational wealth declined by at least 50% per generation, it would be a good thing; not for the sake of society, but for those that are beneficiaries of it.