XKCD is great when it sticks to science and tech, not so much when it comes to the First Amendment.
Category Archives: General
On The Road Again
We’re flying to Denver this afternoon, and driving up to Wyoming on Monday, returning to CA the following Monday. I’ll have a laptop with me, but blogging may be light. Consider this an open thread, but be good in comments.
Amazing Illusion
Happy Easter
…to all of my Christian readers.
Off The Air
We flew to St. Louis yesterday for the weekend to visit Patricia’s family. Probably not much posting until Tuesday. Consider this an open thread.
Well, That Was Fun
The BMW has been running rough, and the OBD says that it’s misfiring on #6. I changed out the plugs, and swapped the #6 coil with #5, to see if that moved the problem. It didn’t.
Next step (since it’s two decades old, with 180,000+ miles on it) was to check out and clean the injectors. So I spent a couple hours figuring out how to get them out, cleaned them, put on new O-rings, and reinstalled. Now #2 and #4 are leaking at the rail. Now I’m wondering if it was a mistake to change the O-rings, but I’m just scratching my head at how, as hard as they were to get in to both the port on the head, and the rail, they could be leaking.
Big Sur
Welp, the road was washed out again, this time at Rat Creek.
Trying to figure out how that happened. Presumably there was a culvert under the road to allow the water to pass through. Did it get clogged with debris? Fortunately, no one was hurt, but who knows how long Big Sur will be cut off from the south?
[Sunday-afternoon update]
Yup, as I suspected, the debris flow clogged the culvert.
As I note in comments, this was one of many washouts waiting to happen.
Kathy Sheidle
RIP.
This is sad. But her obituary is entirely in character.
[Sunday-morning update]
Mark Steyn remembers her.
[January 17th update]
Sheidle among the stars.
[Bumped]
[Afternoon update]
Link is fixed, sorry.
Silent Night
…by Gabriella.
She recorded this a couple weeks ago. I love the little harmonic at the end of the stanza, and the ones at the end of the song.
If you go all the way to the end, it segues into her amazing cover of Sultans of Swing, that she did a couple months ago. She’s getting a unique sound on that one with steel strings on a classical guitar (usually they’re nylon). They’re probably light ones, because of the weaker neck, but it also makes it easier for her to bend them. I like the brushes with the left hand. You have to appreciate that she’s playing both guitar parts from the Dire Straits version simultaneously on a single instrument. It’s clearly an open tuning, probably DADFAD.
Second Cativersary
[Christmas-morning update]
Merry Christmas (and other holidays) to all of my readers.
[From yesterday]
On this day two years ago, on Christmas Eve, we adopted the kittens.
We originally thought they were sisters, but a few weeks later we discovered that Ashe and Ember were sister and brother. He was the dark kitten who fell down the stairs. He was the runt of the litter, but he’s now outgrown his sister, weighing 15 pounds to her 13. She still scraps with him, though.
They’ve turned out to be pretty good cats, very social and almost too friendly. Ashe likes to lounge on my lap after painfully kneading my right upper leg, but only at my desk. Ember likes to lie on Patricia’s desk while she’s trying to work. He also likes to help out in the kitchen, but he’s not as helpful as he thinks he is. Anyway, here are the Christmas kittens, at age two.
They’ve both obviously grown a lot. Stretched out, he’s almost three feet long, from ears to tail. I didn’t have to put him in that position. They’re both characters.