What A Boring Week! Oh, Caught A Trash Panda ...

Yep, had the trap set but not baited just sitting there in the garden and it caught a racoon. Trash Panda.

I was sitting on the 'throne' while my lovely-young-bride was out walking her cat, when the Dog, Wiz, started barking his head off using a bark we haven't heard before. And he kept barking. Then barked some more.

SWMBO actually called me to tell me Wiz was really barking at something with a bark she hadn't heard before.

Yes. I can hear it. So I got off the pot, went to find out what he (Wiz) was barking at, and found a racoon in the trap.

Now what?

Loaded it into the back of the truck, drove about 10 miles to a wooded spot next to a big pond, and let it out. Easy peasy. I think it appreciated the "I don't want to hurt you and I'm sure you don't really want to hurt me so let's make this whole release thing as easy and safe as we can." speech before opening the cage. He sped off like there was a fat white guy on his ass.

Date Day was good again because of the date I took. (SWMBO, of course.) We went kinda overboard at WinCo on Banana's ($.33/lb), Beets, and Chicken breasts ($1.49/lb) to freeze dry. Ya gotta take advantage of the sales! Kind of a DNA imperative thing.

So I spent a lot of time in the kitchen yesterday. Two hours to make 4 double-stacked trays of banana's. About 1.5 hours processing beets. About a half hour making sausage patties to just freeze. (I don't know why they don't sell sausage patties at the store. I mean hamburger patty sized sausage patties. Something you can fry up, throw on a toasted bagel with a over-hard egg added on top and call it breakfast. I do it a couple of times a week.)

Still looking at 6 lbs of chicken to process today.

Made a run to "Faith In Action" downtown Belfair for a pot big enough to water-bath can 4 pints at a time. Needed to do 4 pints the other day of the grape and blue berry juices I processed with my new steam juicer and wound up using a #10 can and doing 1 jar at a time because I didn't have a pot big enough that I could use on my induction stove without getting out the BIG water-bath caner and using it. Over kill! Unless one is doing quarts. But I wasn't.

Anywho, found a pot that will do 6 pint jars at once and uses only about a gallon of H2O so it heats up fairly quickly. Water-bath caning is too simple. And, yeah, I still 'can' because it's damned hard to freeze-dry fruit juices. I've done it, but, found it's just not worth the effort. Hence, pint jars.

Although, that can of orange juice concentrate I freeze dried still takes up a pint jar but it is shelf stable and still tastes good when added to cold water. You could carry it on a camping trip fairly easy.

Otherwise, rained like a bitch off and on for a couple of days. Got the trash burned during a downpour. Only head thunder once during all those sudden downpours. Bummer. But at least I got the burnables, well, burned.

But, the Wx is turning a lot cooler and I'm thinking my maters just ain't gonna make it this year.

'Nother Sunday Going Down! Phew!

Google Banana: "The only limit is your imagination." Is a lie. They really censor your input and output. I've had pictures of my renter wearing a short blue dress that Banana has just flat out turned down processing 'because.'

Same with that new 'image to video' thingie in Google Photo's on my phone. IF the picture will generate a bit too much skin it pops out with a "can't process this image. Choose a new image" error message. Which is BS because the AI is in charge of what it generates; thereby what it 'shows.' I've had it fail several times on the image to the right. However, it has still made a rather nice short video of my lovely young bride wearing that see-through white dress she had way back when. (It is nice!) So, make it make sense.

AND the fact that I'm 73 years old and if I want to animate a photo of a young SWMBO barely wearing a bathing suit; then I should be able to use the tools at hand. Not worried about offending anyone but SWMBO; if you catch my drift. To me, their 'programmed for the greater good' means it'll never be useful for real creativity because you have no real control of what the results are.

So, "The only limit is your imagination" is a load of crap because they impose their (morality?) standards on you whether you like it or not. "For your own good" has never been a good excuse for anything.

Honestly, it's got me wondering how difficult/involved it would be to host a private AI image to video or text to video computer at home. Hardware's not the real problem unless it requires a roomful of computers. Seems an AI that's already been 'trained' should be easy to download then set up for home use.

But what do I know. I grew up in the '640 k of ram is enough for anybody' era. And a 35 mb hard drive was $450.

Don't get me started!

Not a lot going on around here. Picked the last of the (delicious!) grapes and am rendering/processing them as we speak. Straining is the worst! A lot of the juice turns out to be chunks and strained out anyway. Seriously thinking that "preserves" will be good enough. I don't mind chunky.

Finally cleaned out and wiped down the inside of my truck. Don't go there.

Still waiting on the maters to ripen. Weather is turning cooler though so we'll be watching that carefully. First real time I've grown tomato's in a few years since that last batch is still sitting in jars in the pantry. We had an over-abundance. But, fresh tomato is good. Too good.

Relocated some sycamore trees; then the deer came along and ate them. Bastards.

Still haven't finished painting the deck. Unless SWMBO gets off her duff (since it was her idea) I'm not getting out there and painting so it probably won't get finished this summer. Good thing we got the primer done.

We still have Date Day every Friday; but limit it to the practical since everything (everything!) is so expensive now. $40+ to eat out, WinCo (Walmart) then home. So, I guess we really have "Old Folks Date Day," don't we?

It Has Been Another Extremely SSDD Week.

Except for me going to the doctor today. Early. My BP was only 112/76; which for me is out-fucking-standing! And the Doc finally got hands on and actually tested my head, eyes, grip. He says that, for an OLD guy with the life I've had and smoking for 40 years (quit about 15 years ago now) that I'm in pretty good shape. But he's still going to order a CT scan of my head because we still can't figure out what's causing this headache. And I've got to make an appointment with my optometrist 'just in case' that's the problem.

They drew blood to test my Potassium. It's low. Again. I'm sure the Doc will up my dosage. Again. But, it is getting easier swallowing those horse pills.

Gemini generated this picture of my lovely-young-bride from a picture I took, oh, 40 years ago. I really want to get it 3d printed, but, looking around online, I can't afford it. Got me to thinking of buying my own 3d printer and learning to do it myself. SWMBO would absolutely hate it. (The original picture is a bit more revealing since the dress was mostly transparent.) And she doesn't like being reminded of the past. (Even though I think she's still the most beautiful woman I've ever lived with!) So I don't know if I'll ever get it done or not. Would love to have that sitting on my computer desk though.

And I'd bet it'd sell well in those specialty shops where they sell the Anime figurines. Wouldn't that be a hoot!

Today was the most productive day around the house in a long time. Picked the rest of the grapes. About 15 lbs. The Trash Panda's are welcome to what's left.

Packaged the banana's that just finished freeze-drying. Three half-gallon jars of goodness!

Did a sous vide chunk of steak for SWMBO that was way too bloody for me; but she liked it. Says that maybe I could do that once a month or so for her. The portion I had was mostly tender enough for me to eat but I had to grill it a minute more. I'd have to be way starving to eat bloody meat. (I say bloody, but he juices were mostly clear-ish.)

Moved my HF antenna from the fence (started yesterday) to the peak of the roof. That was a job! Disassembled the whole thing and got it up there a piece at a time then re=assembled it. Only had to come down and get the correct tool once! And then once more for the feed cable. Took a couple of hours in the blazing sun and I had to rest only half a dozen times so it turned out well.

Was able to join the Mason County 10-meter net tonight on that antenna. Cool. Thought I heard Australia also but wasn't near enough to the radio to try to answer.

So, more maintenance and tweaking and maybe I can get back on HF. Cool! My friend in Pa really wants me to try FT8 for some reason. I'm not sure I'd like FT8 since you don't really talk/rag chew. It's just for the contacts; and I'm not a just for the contacts kind of guy. Look at my Field Day record! Hardly any contacts in 15 years of doing them. I'm there for the companionship and food. Mostly the food. Sorta.

Anyhow, we alive. We not doing too bad.

Thought I'd Be Nice. $34 Later ...

I'm (now) on way friendlier terms with my Ex-. She and her new BFF are (were now) up commercial Salmon fishing off the coast of Alaska. Thought I'd do something nice and send some freeze dried strawberry's and banana's (and ice cream sandwiches) up for them to enjoy in their 8  to 10 minutes of down time every evening.

The box was a bit oversized (but really not much) and weighed in at a whopping 3.2 lbs, and, for a distance (as the bird flies as it were) of 41 miles (49 if one were to drive it having to go through Tacoma and Seattle and all) it cost $34 to send that box.

I need to find out how much things are going to cost before I volunteer to send them! Not that I begrudge them the cost; I just wasn't expecting it to cost that much.

Ah, well. They're already back so they can do with it all what they will. Hope they enjoy it all.

Not a whole lot going on around here. Finally got the tractor filled with diesel. Put up my 6-btv antenna and need to order new cable to run to it. Still need to order a rotor for the other antenna and get it up before Winter sets in. Which should be about 2 weeks after the salmon counters down at the bottom of the hill pack up and go home. The "Tree of Winter Doom" has already started changing colors.

Picked about 12 lbs of grapes off my grape plant (where else would one pick them from>) yesterday. I should begin to turn them into grape juice tomorrow. There are probably still 20 lbs of grapes hanging on the vine out there! Offered some to friends but they haven't said anything about coming over and picking for themselves. I'm not gonna do it. If I offer you free grapes you need to get off your ass and come over and pick them.

Tried getting on the Quest 3 a few times. Can only stay on awhile then my head starts to pound, I get kind of dizzy, and nauseous. Will be damned glad when this headache goes away! Logged on and e-mailed my Doc so we'll see how that goes. I cannot find any reason for my head to hurt.

Anywho, got a good crop of tomato's ripening and a glorious crop of dandelions growing so I should be set for winter.

Sure.

Well, Well, Well. I Got X Jail!

Apparently you can't ask Chuck Schumer when he's going to stroke out and leave us in peace. Who'da thunk? So for 12 hours I can read X but not like or post or any of the 'normal' reason's anyone would be on X in the first place. So, why bother? I guess, for the next 12 hours I'll just have to, I don't know, sleep (since it's almost my bedtime anyway), or read my book or watch YouTube. I'll figure something out.

Didn't get anything done around the house today. Yesterday SWMBO started the prep for her colonoscopy and today I got to drive her to Gig Harbor by 1130. Got her checked in and all the 'designated driver' paper signed and they took her to a back room so I walked uphill to a small restaurant for some breakfast.

Wouldn't you know it; not 5 minutes after I ordered the 'Farmer's Omelette' she calls with the news that they're rescheduling her for Friday and I can come and pick her up. Well, it was only a block so I told her to walk to the restaurant and I'd buy her breakfast. Only took her 15 minutes to make it. Good breakfast. Great company.

By the time we got home it was nap time and I just didn't feel like getting all physical around the house anyway. Didn't know I was starting that long slow slide to X jail but I made it!

So I've been straightening up my Emby server on the NAS and on my localhost machine. Trying to get everything organized. Added our Music files from the NAS but didn't like the way it handled the artist/album picture display and organizing so I killed that library off. Also added about 200 more episodes to two more 'Arrowverse' playlists. Man, that's going to take us forever to get through. Just started season 1 of Supergirl. (Nice legs!)

Not much else going on. My Ex- tried to send me our middle daughter's obituary but it kept taking me to Facebook. I can't get on Facebook. I got kicked off there years ago and haven't even tried to get back on it. Sooooo, I looked it up at "Forever something' and, basically, found what I'd already been told. She got an infection and died before Canada Medical could save her. So Canada can kiss my royal ass forever.

Other than that: bought a trash panda trap yesterday and set it up by my grape plant. Didn't catch anything. Watched a few video's about 'how to' but haven't put everything in place. Yet. I know where I'm taking the beasties when I catch them though; and it ain't very local.

Grapes are really starting to turn purple and I want some left over for me.

So, guess I'll go cry in the beer I don't drink and find something else to do. Dishes maybe ...