“I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.”

Whidbey Island, Washington, where I live, just had a whole-island power outage. A couple of years ago the whole-island outage lasted 3-½ days. This time (election day) it was 35 minutes.

What to Do?

I have an elderly MacBook Pro

Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015
Processor 2.7 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5
Memory 16 GB 1867 MHz DDR3
Graphics Intel Iris Graphics 6100 1536 MB

It’s running the latest OS it can: “macOS Monterey 12.7.6”

But in addition to this I also have an Intel Mac mini (last of its breed), and a MacBook Pro M1 (the one with the touch bar above the function keys) with a 2TB drive.

Yes, I’d like to have 1) fewer computers, and 2) one new computer. But what should I do with the old ones? They are like old friends, but they expect a lot of care and feeding.

cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_…

I know we’re not overtly political here, but I’m wondering how many people understand there is a better-than-good chance that in the coming four years JD Vance will become president of these united states.

I’m going to change my name to Joey Mascarpone.

I’m shocked to realize I’m actually writing again. I’m 1200 words into a short story that’s shaping up nicely. Still ‘draft zero’, but I’m liking it.

It’s another morning.
I will now become clothed and ambulatory.

Plenty of Apple updates today, though nothing for this 13-inch, Early 2015 MacBook Pro which is running Monterey 12.7.5

I am tempted to try turning it into a FreeBSD machine.

We have returned home from Victoria B.C. because, well, we aren’t Canadians.

Hanging out here for a few days, marking the occasion of another of my many birthdays. We arrived here via the Coho, a vessel that shuttles between Port Angeles, WA and Victoria, B.C.

And Yes, we’ll be away from Freedom’s Land during the great “debate” that will apparently begin in about one hour.

In other news, I’ve learned that the name “Westbrook Tater” is a plausible one for a fictional character.

Our back yard CreatureCam recorded no overnight action, and no neighbor offered pies today, so it’s been slow overall.

Some nights the back yard — which faces a broad field and, beyond that a forest made up mostly of Douglas fir — serves as a pathway for raccoons (one was a tripod), families of blacktail deer (the only kind on the island), and a number of coyotes from two different groups.

I’m giving Ulysses a try as some sort of journaling app. Other evironments within which I have misused words and imitated sentences include iA Writer and Obsidian, Day One, and an assortment of TiddlyWiki variants. None have afforded me lasting satisfaction; each is an excuse to avoid actually writing. It’s almost as if I don’t really like any of them.

Is it true, as Fredric Jameson once suggested, that conspiracy theory is just the poor man’s version of critical theory?
- Joseph Heath

A first for Mrs Me:

Wordle 1,155 1/6

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Today I learned there is no need for
me to ever look at threads.net again.

Wasted some time today;

Wordle 1,115 2/6

🟨🟩⬜⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Outdoors (Pacific northwest, Washington, (the temporarily) USA), having dinner, we have visitors. Tiny red spiders. Without looking closely, they are cute. (I don’t look closely.) And fast. But what are they?

The air this morning is thick with fireworks haze. I’ll be surprised if a foul air alert has not been issued.

If only Biden didn’t sound desperate …

Lyric: “We are the champignons of the world …”

I’m wondering how many days will pass before Google ensures that the “udm14” trick no longer works.

“Teenage Waistband”

Something I’ve not seen mentioned regarding the recent Mac updates: The “Duck” notification sound is gone. GONE! I’ve used it for years to signify incoming messages. That’s a lot to unlearn.

Update: It’s not actually gone, but it’s not made available on my iPhone.

Current reading: about Mesrop Mashtots, who invented the Armenian alphabet in the fifth century in order to translate the Bible.