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Stream of Consciousness

Gardening 2025

Last Spring I bought a handful of pots of flowers from the grocery store one weekend on a whim. I hung a couple of them on our front porch and sat a few others in the back yard. I was surprised all summer long at how much I loved seeing the beauty that they brought to our home and how much I enjoyed caring for them (which just consisted of watering them about every-other day).

As Spring came along this year, I knew I wanted to do even more gardening. This year I also felt like I wanted to plant some vegetables too. I’m not really sure why, other than just for fun. I mean, I do like to eat veggies, but it’s so easy to get them from the store. I don’t expect that anything I grow will be better, although maybe I’ll be surprised.

It was around the middle of March when I first got the itch to start this project. But, a little bit of research and asking around quickly led me to realize it was too early to actually plant anything outside. So instead, I started down two paths that I could pursue indoors, while waiting for warmer weather.

First I bought 16 different packets of seeds – 8 types of flowers, and 8 vegetables (I let the kids choose the flowers; they let me pick the veggies). Next I ordered 2 different seed trays from amazon (one) (two). A few days later, the kids and I spent a couple hours after supper one night filling the trays with potting soil and planting our seeds.

Our freshly planted seed trays in the kitchen window.
The seed trays as seen from outside the kitchen window.
Vanessa wrote the names of everything we planted in the blue tray on this card that came with it.

The kids had more fun than I would have expected. Other than the fact that they didn’t like getting their hands dirty planting… They also helped with daily watering. And we were all so excited after a week or two, as little seedlings started to emerge.

The first seedling emerges!
Can I really grow my own Brussels Sprouts??
After about a month we had several little green friends ready to get outside

Meanwhile, the second leg of my gardening adventure was to build a raised garden bed. I found a pretty simple design online, picked up some cedar at Home Depot, and, well, then I let it stand in the garage for a few weeks… But eventually I got to work with my mitre saw and drills, and after a few evenings, wouldn’t you know it, I had a raised garden bed to call my very own!

Our friends stayed in the garden in their trays for a few days to get acclimiated to being outside

Finally, we just had to wait for the weather to get warm enough, and a pocket of time to open up, where we could transplant all our little flower seedlings into pots and other spots around the yard, and into the garden for the veggies.

I need some more hooks for these baskets…

We’ll see what happens next. I went ahead and bought a few more store-grown flower pots for the front porch, just to add some color while we’re waiting to see if any of these guys bloom. But, I think I achieved my real goals already: Lots of fun, and some good new memories with the kiddos.

  • 2025-05-13
Pink Elephants / Stream of Consciousness

KP

At an appointment the other day, a physician told me that I’d have to be on “K.P.” for the next few weeks. I looked at them with a confused face, and said “what’s that?” They explained that it meant Kitchen Patrol, as used in the military.

Of course, the next day, I was reading a book and came across this line:

we are getting hard pushed to find things for all the volunteers to do that aren’t just glorified K. P.

Heinlein, Robert A. . Starship Troopers (p. 34). (Function). Kindle Edition.

  • 2025-05-02
Stream of Consciousness

Next Star Trek Rewatch Plan Complete – my first rewatch of the 21st century series

I’m currently less than a month away from completing my latest rewatch of the 20th century Star Trek series (that is, made in the 20th century, not set in the 20th century). And as I was wondering how I would rewatch them all next (which means how to sort the episodes), I had a different idea come to me.

This time, I’m going to do my first rewatch of all of the 21st century series. That is, I’m going to be doing my first ever rewatches of Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, and I think I’ll include the Short Treks.

I’ve decided not to include either of the 21st century animated series at this time – that is, Lower Decks and Prodigy. I’ve seen them both, and even though I did like them as I watched them, I’m not really drawn (pun) to rewatch them, at least not at this time.

The next question then is how to sort the episodes. Especially since that this will be my first rewatch of these series, and given the highly serial natures of the stories in Discovery and Picard, I think it would be a mistake to split up the seasons of these shows (as I’ve done in my last few 20th century rewatches). So my goal will be to watch entire series straight-through.

Since it is the 21st century, all of the seasons are quite a bit shorter than the 20th century shows – only 10 to 15 episodes these days, compared to a reliable 25 or so from the previous era. So shorter seasons should keep things fresh and interesting, as long as I rotate between series at the end of each season.

At this point, with both Discovery and Picard being out of production, we have 5 seasons and 3 seasons, respectively. Right now there are only 2 seasons of Strange New World, though season 3 might drop while I’m doing this rewatch – we shall see. Those numbers (5, 3, 2) work out nicely. I’ll plan on using Discovery as my “pace maker” – meaning every-other season that I watch will be Discovery. Then on the gaps between Discovery seasons, I’ll toggle back and forth from Picard to Strange New Worlds. And since there are only a handful or so of Short Treks (in 2 seasons), I’ll throw those in at the mid point and end points of the sort.

In other words:

  • DSC:1
  • PIC:1
  • DSC:2
  • SNW:1
  • DSC:3
  • ST:1
  • PIC:2
  • DSC:4
  • SNW:2
  • DSC:5
  • PIC:3
  • ST:2

This should be fun! And it was nice to spend some time in a Google Sheet to make my plan. Thank you to Memory Alpha for the episode listings.

Episode List – New Era by season Watch List.csvDownload

  • 2025-02-06
Pink Elephants

Mitochondria and Chloroplasts

I skimmed a mildly interesting article from Wired.com yesterday morning: Scientists Re-Create the Conditions That Sparked Complex Life. A quote:

Examples of endosymbiosis are everywhere. Mitochondria, the energy factories in your cells, were once free-living bacteria. Photosynthetic plants owe their sun-spun sugars to the chloroplast, which was also originally an independent organism.

Interesting. I think I’d heard that once about Mitochondria (The Powerhouse of the Cell, of course), but I hadn’t heard it about chloroplast.

Then, last night, wouldn’t you know it, reading The Expanse Book 9 (Leviathan Falls), this quote:

If mitochondria and chloroplasts hadn’t set up shop inside other organisms, eukaryotic life wouldn’t exist, including all of us.

— Corey, James S. A.. Leviathan Falls (The Expanse Book 9) (p. 321). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Seems about right.

  • 2025-01-28
Stream of Consciousness

Best Cable Organization Ever (for me)

As I recently mentioned, I have a pretty good system for organizing my computer cables. It’s easily the best system I’ve ever had. Which isn’t saying much, since all previous systems were simply huge tangled rats nest messes, with zero actual organization.

The approach is simply to use gallon-sized zip lock backs, labeled with the connector types; then place those bags in a plastic storage bin.

The Bags
The Bin.

I’ve got the following bags in the collection today:

  • USB-C → USB-C
  • USB-A → USB-C
  • USB-A → Lightning
  • USB-A → mmmble-USB (no idea ever if mini or micro or what – just rando non-A or C USB)
  • USB-C → Lightning
  • Miscellanous

Pretty exciting stuff!

  • 2025-01-23
Stream of Consciousness

90º Charger

The other day, one of my kids was having problems with a USB charging cable in their bedroom. Their devices wouldn’t charge, despite being plugged in on both ends. As it turns out, on the wall-side, the cable was plugged in to a typical little USB wall wart that stuck out about an inch, and then had the cable sticking straight out of it, then bending down at an uncomfortable angle, because the whole works was behind a piece of furniture, which, even with the unfortunate bend in the cable, was still further out from the wall than we’d have liked it to have been (like say 3 or 4 inches total).

As an aside, I know some people think that all furniture belongs in the middle of rooms, not against walls… We will save that discussion for another time.

Anyway, I’m assuming that it was the somewhat sharp bend in the cable that was causing the failure. So, I got a different cable (from my super-well organized bin of labeled bags of USB cables (no snark!)), replaced the bent one, and pulled the dresser another inch or two out, so it wouldn’t stress the cable so much, and all was working fine.

But I realized then and there, that what we needed was a charger that let the cable come straight down, e.g., at a 90º angle, or parallel to the wall. There may be better ones available (though I failed to find any from the normal accessory brands I use (Anker, Belkin)), but I went with this one (with a standard-issue amazon product name):

65W GaN USB C Charger,2 Port Flat USB Wall Charger,flodable Plug for Travel, with PD3.0&PPS for MacBook,Laptops,Tablets,for iPhone,iPad Pro,S22,XPS,with 3.28ft 100W Charging Cable, White

It is super thin – just over half an inch, and I like that it has both a USB-A and USB-C port, because we are still in that transition period between A & C (and probably will be for another decade, honestly). At 65W, that’s fairly high power I take it, which is nice too.

I’ve just ordered my second one of these and can see more in the future any time I need a charger behind something.

  • 2025-01-18
Stream of Consciousness

Winter Wonder Week

We got about six inches of snow on Sunday, 1/5/25. That was enough to cancel school on Monday through Wednesday, which meant extending the kids’ Christmas vacation for three extra days!

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get my snow blower to start… I’m guessing the issue is a combination of trying to use old gas, and/or its carburetor being, I don’t know, dirty or gummed up, or something. I don’t know if I have any real reasons to suspect that, but it’s what I’m going to go with. So, I’m going to try to replace the carburetor. I have YouTube videos that show how to take it off and put it back on, and ordered a replacement on Amazon for only $18, so I figure it’s worth a try. I’m choosing to view it as a fun project.

In the meantime, without a machine to clear our driveway (and no teenagers who knock on doors and offer to do it for us), I had to do it by hand. Well, by shovel. Despite losing a lot of weight last year, I didn’t necessarily gain much strength or muscle, so it was a pretty exhausting experience. I did wisely (if I do say so myself) split the task up into four batches, about 30-45 minutes each, so that made it overall fairly tolerable.

By Thursday they reopened school, but drop off and pickup lines were both quite a bit slower than usual. Then, overnight and in to Friday morning, another round of snow came, this one delivering another couple of inches, and cancelling school yet again!

However, now that we live in the future, our school district only permits three actual snow days per year, which meant that Friday was our first virtual school day since the good ole days of COVID-19. It went fine for everyone, with one special highlight: for FACS, my 7th grader got to bake brownies 🙂

  • 2025-01-11
Pink Elephants

Arete

Over the past weekend, I listened to Dan Carlin‘s 2nd Hardcore History episode about Alexander the Great, in which he used the word “Arete” as one of the key defining characteristics of the protagonist.

From the wikipedia page:

Arete (Ancient Greek: ἀρετή, romanized: aretḗ) is a concept in ancient Greek thought that, in its most basic sense, refers to “excellence” of any kind[1]—especially a person or thing’s “full realization of potential or inherent function.”[2] The term may also refer to excellence in “moral virtue.”[1]

And today, wouldn’t you know it, I got an email newsletter from David Sparks, speaking about how he views happiness, and he sums it up by saying:

Pursuing your best self (Arete) + Ethical Living = Happy Life.

Generated by my new BFF, Chatty G

  • 2025-01-06
Stream of Consciousness

2024 Year In Review

One task that I have pop up every week on my Reminders “Weekend” todo list is filling in a weekly log note in Obsidian. In each week’s log entry I have a few headings pre-populated, for the general categories of things I try to write down that I did every week. These headings are:

  • ColdTrack – to write down either important happenings, or things that I did for the “jobby job”
  • QQQ – again, to log any significant work done there
  • Home – for writing down anything notable that I did around the house, or with the family
  • Watching – to keep track of what shows and/or movies I’ve watched
  • Reading – to keep track of what book I’m working through

I’ve found it a slightly useful exercise to spend 5 or 10 minutes every weekend sitting down to reflect on each of those categories. But, even more interestingly, now that 2024 is wrapping up, and I’ve got more than a full year of these log entries, I thought it would interesting to take a look at all of my entries for each of these categories, to give myself a snapshot view of what the year 2024 looked like for me.

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  • 2024-12-30
Stream of Consciousness

The Old Adage about Shut Off Valves…

The old adage proved true again this morning for me: Any time you have a plumbing project that starts by turning off a shut off valve, that you actually have two plumbing projects, the first of which is, replacing a leaking shut off valve…

Off to Home Depot 🙂

  • 2024-12-30
Programming / Stream of Consciousness

Debugging Print Statements – Light!

Today I (re)discovered a potentially-quite-useful option in the IntelliJ debugger:

If you go into “More” when right-clicking on a breakpoint, then turn on “Evaluate and log” and enter an expression, it’s basically the equivalent of adding debugging print statements, but without actually dirtying up your code with them.  When coupled with un-checking “Suspend” (e.g., making the breakpoint not pause the program’s execution), it’s kinda perfect.

I feel like i should be using this a lot more often!

Makes me wonder what the rest of this screen does. I have used “Disable until hitting the following breakpoint” before, to help avoid the dance of: set a breakpoint; run; break; resume; resume; resume; “is this the context i wanted?  no?  resume”; resume; resume; “oh crap, i missed the one i wanted!  restart!!!“; resume; etc

Ah – TFM: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/using-breakpoints.html

  • 2024-12-27
Stream of Consciousness

2024’s Birthday Ice Cream Cake

We had a 15th birthday in our house this week. To celebrate, we made one of our favorite desserts: an Ice Cream cake. I think we got the recipe out of a kids cook book several years ago, and we actually don’t have a paper or digital copy. Instead, we just make it off memory, which works pretty well. Here’s my version of it:

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  • 2024-12-21
Stream of Consciousness

Circle of Giving Continues

I received a pleasant surprise delivery from UPS today: When I looked at the from-address on the label I realized what it must be: A “reward” packet from the good people at Relay.fm and St. Jude: A box of prizes for me, as their way of thanking me for raising a little bit of money ($1700, not so little? but not that much) for childhood cancer awareness month back in September.

Obviously, I didn’t raise the money just so I’d get an award, and I’d have said that I didn’t want one if I was asked (sorry, maybe they did ask and I forgot that I said “yes, please”?). But, I have to admit, this has really warmed my heart and made my day, getting these gifts. Thank you Stephen, Myke, and to everyone involved at St. Jude. It’s great to see the circle of giving continue, and this does motivate me to participate again next year 🙂

  • 2024-12-11