Category Archives: Uncategorized

Guts

It began in January on a trip to Seattle. My guts did not feel right. It took awhile for the serious discomfort to go away, and I was not sure what was going on. I’d get periodic resurgences—a really uncomfortable feeling, like there was a baseball lodged in there that wasn’t moving.

Then it advanced a bit more, waxing and waning, and began to include pain. And then I remembered that this was not the first time. It was just different. Diverticulitis. I’d first had it in 2012, brought on by plant secondary compounds, like spicy lettuce leaves (e.g., arugula). That had gotten quite painful, and a trip to the emergency room sorted it out with antibiotics and a liquid diet graduating slowly back up to and through soft foods. Periodically I’d get a little ping to remind me, but I didn’t have another real case until this sort with its different feeling in 2024.

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Passwords and petrified erasers

Alright, I’m going to rant a bit. There have been a lot of things going on, but small things can stick out of the churning maelstrom of activity.

I’ve written before about two-factor fuckery, the often needless application of high security for online accounts that really aren’t that important. A recent post on Xitter captures just how frustrated academics are with this crap:

(I disagree with the PowerPoint allotment, but the rest seems about right.)

Cory Doctorow coined the term ‘enshittification’ to describe the sort of platform decay we see with products like Google (e.g., here, and here). But I think it should be expanded to include the ongoing degradation of the entire online experience.

When I am working, actually interacting with UAF’s purchased software, some algorithm monkey somewhere just pulls the plug, stops everything, and makes me prove once again that I’m me. It’s infuriating. So I just leave my accounts open, always, on every machine I use during the day (as many as four). So secure.

On my new laptop, which of course debuts a ridiculous new look and feel of an operating system that takes weeks to figure out how to fix so it works the way I want, I made the stupidest user mistake. I let “my institution” have a crack at it while I set it up. Oh, god. Now at random times it makes me create a new PIN just to fire it up. And I can’t extend the idle time beyond 15 minutes without satisfying some other ridiculous algorithm monkey. I want to take a sledgehammer to it. How am I supposed to remember mildly different PINs across days and weeks when hopping among different computers to do different things?

And that’s where the passwords come in. I have a book of them, of course, and it’s one of the few things I use pencil for. I write cryptic reminders of what a password for a thing is—sometimes so cryptic even I can’t figure it out. Then, when I have to change one, I have to find an eraser that isn’t petrified. I swear, I have access to dozens of pencils, but not one of the damned things is young enough to have any life left in its eraser. So I have to go looking for one of the two erasers that I own. I treasure these erasers. They are an excellent reminder of how ridiculous the online experience has become. Not only do I have to prove that I’m me, I have to find an object in the physical world to do it effectively.

And that reminds me that I’m still a curmudgeon when it comes to smart phones. What a great tool— when I am traveling. So I rarely carry one. But I teach in a “smart” classroom, and to get onto the computer there I, yes, have to prove that I am me, twice: once with my supersecret password and once again with this real-world object that I am supposed to be carrying. You guessed it—I often forget to carry my phone when I am headed off to class. Sledgehammers again come to mind. The computational tail is wagging the dog. I just want a tool that tells all the machines I have to work with, “Kiss the ring, fucker!”

Alright. I needed to get that off my chest. There are calming things going on, too. Yesterday as I sat in my office at home working on a really interesting paper, a gorgeous cross fox loped across the wooded slope behind the house. (A cross fox is a melanistic color morph of a red fox, and they are surprisingly common in this neighborhood.) And yesterday evening, Rose spotted a beautiful cow moose at the edge of the backyard. This moose is heavily pregnant. As we watched her, her calf from last year came out of the woods to join her. We haven’t seen these two before. They proceeded to paw up and eat choice pieces of the compost we’d dumped on the compost pile throughout the winter. I think it’s only the second time I can remember moose doing that. I’ll bet onion and garlic skins, broccoli and asparagus stems, and old flowers taste pretty good after a winter of sticks.

Finally, after dark, I made sure to refill the bird feeder. The pigpolls have been pretty nearly emptying it every day. As I stepped out, a night squirrel leaped off the feeder (northern flying squirrel). Life is good after all.

P.S. The good feelings did not last long. After posting this, I noticed that it didn’t send me an email, as it usually does. Oh, what befuckery hath software upgrades wrought? I have no control over these systems’ needs to be constantly upgraded, and they not infrequently break something that used to work perfectly. I didn’t have time to try the different fixes The Google recommended, so I set it aside for a week. Then I wasted too much time on a Sunday going through an extremely arcane process to carve another email solution. It worked, but cripes — upgrades just as often create substantial downgrades. (On our analysis computers at school we have one rule: NEVER LET IT UPGRADE ANYTHING. It works pretty well. Though I did that with one of my own laptops once and after a few years it experienced catastrophic failure.)

The Winter Feast

The eggnog was chilled and the taters all mashed,
The gravy de-lumped and the roast nicely slashed.
Cranberries, stuffing, candies, and booze—
All of the goodies a body could choose—
Were carefully laid on a table so large,
It usually served as a small river barge.

Although drooling, they controlled themselves,
Grinning sly little grins like mischievous elves;
The splendiferous spread was not yet complete,
Without that one dish, they just couldn’t eat.

What was this one dish for which they all waited?
The dish that all loved, and nobody hated?
Why, that wonderful taste treat, that olde Christmas musto:
Fresh-baked, angelic, delicious Bread Crusto!
Who minded if stockings were hung up with care
If there wasn’t that holiday Crusto to share?

When it finally was ready, loudly they cried,
Then they all laughed, and babbled, and sighed.
And amid all the feasting, and yakking, and mirth,
The entire group felt at peace with the earth.

When feasting was over and frenzy all done,
The last turkey downed with the last tasty bun,
They sat around playing with fun Christmas treasures,
All those marvelous doodads that brought many pleasures.

And what with the playing and washing the dishes,
Some sought to satisfy all of their wishes,
For what with the play, and the work, and the rest,
It didn’t take long for those treats to digest.
And though they had eaten until they could burst,
There was still a bunch left of the best and the worst.

There were crackers and cheeses, and veggies and dips,
There were seafoods and landfoods, and fruit-flavored flips,
There were candies and cookies, and schnitzels and strudels,
There were popcorn and peanuts, and oddly shaped noodles;
There were chocolates and toffies, and Aunt Mabel’s beaners,
There were fruitcakes with goobers and short pickled wieners.

But none could compare with the leftover mound
Of that holiday treat that kept going around,
That treat of which making enough was a musto—
Yes, there was still just a little Bread Crusto.

So they nibbled and snacked on the slices and crumbs,
Ignoring migration of fat to their bums,
For wasn’t it Christmas, that big, day-long feast?
And besides, it was only just one little piece…

And yes, true, the mounds had taken a beating.
And yes, true, here we all still were eating,
But we find it much easier to have a good time,
Consuming and snorting like gluttonous swine.

Merry Christmas (oink oink)

(Apologies to Dr. Seuss. I wrote this over 30 years ago and had forgotten all about it until my sister Katy handed me a copy she had transcribed. I’ll post a Bread Crusto recipe soon.)

Coyote in the Boombah?

One thing about deep snow and a snowshoe trail—if you make it, everyone in the neighborhood will use it. So I was out yesterday seeing who’s around. At various places in the trail I found the tracks of two moose, a fox, quite a few snowshoe hares and red squirrels, and a grouse or two. The neighbor’s dog had bounded through, too, as she sometimes does. But yesterday there was a new set of tracks I hadn’t seen here before: a good-sized canine that walked like the fox. I’ve seen a lot of coyote tracks, and this sure looked right. But how to be sure it wasn’t a dog?

When I was out today, I remembered that yesterday I’d caught a faint whiff of a funky, skunk-like aroma. I went back to that spot and spent some time looking, and sure enough, the large canid had scent marked. It was a female. I bent down and picked up a piece of the very darkly marked snow, stuck it under my nose, and took a good sniff. Yowza! Too much! I couldn’t get that nasty, rank smell out of my face for a good ten or fifteen minutes. I’m pretty sure it was a coyote.

Probable coyote tracks

This is an unexpected [probable] addition to the local fauna. I’d just remarked to Rose a week or so ago that I was surprised that we hadn’t seen evidence of a lynx yet. We’ve seen them in the neighborhood less than a mile away, and there sure are a lot of hares around. We’ll keep our eyes open for better visual confirmation. But my nose knows.