Posted inHome life Web/Tech

Printers are the Achilles heel of personal computers

I love my MacBook Pro. Like most Apple products, almost all of the time it works great. I no longer fear major operating system upgrades, like I did when I was a Windows user many years ago.  The "blue screen of death" is an almost forgotten memory. I trust Apple software to do its thing without fuss or bother, and usually that trust is rewarded. But Apple stopped making its own printers decades ago. The apparent reason is that no one makes much money selling printers. The big bucks is in selling the cartridges needed to keep the printer functioning. Which…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Here’s Nate Silver’s predictions for key Oregon and national races

For political junkies like me, Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com web site is a treasure trove of election prediction delights. It's beautifully designed, statistically sophisticated, and a good way to learn statistical principles without actually taking a course. In this post I'm going to share how Silver looks upon some key House, Senate, and Governor races, naturally with a special focus on Oregon races. First, though, here's some tweets that Silver shared today: So the lean/likely zone for Nate Silver is between a 60%-95% chance of a candidate winning. And the toss-up zone is when no candidate exceeds a 60% chance of…
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Posted inBlack Butte Ranch Humor Recreation

My amazing Black Butte Ranch adventure

There are those who talk about doing great things. Then there are those who do great things. I'm pleased to be both "those's." I both do and talk. So after canine ZuZu and human Brian explored the far reaches of the mysterious land in the wilds of Black Butte Ranch known as Big Meadow, I was pleased to document our adventure -- just as (well, sort of as) Lewis and Clark chronicled their great journey of discovery. Behold, and click... 
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Posted inHome life Science Sustainability

Brown Oregon grass in October — climate change is very real

Yesterday I learned of a dire climate change report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Today I spread organic lawn fertilizer on parts of our rural yard where the grass is almost always greened up after fall rains. Not this year. And that's really weird.  I'm a creature of habit when it comes to fertilizing our yard. Twice a year, spring and fall, I spread organic fertilizer that I buy at Lowe's on both our shrubs/trees and our lawn. Some of the grass around our house is watered with a sprinkler system. Some isn't. We've lived on our…
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Posted inGrowing older

Regret and hope are luxuries for the young

I'm on the cusp of a decadal birthday. Tomorrow I'll be 70. So I've got just a few hours to say something wise about turning 70 before I'm actually there, and then can only talk about what's it's like to actually be so damn freaking old.  I came up with the title of this blog post yesterday, when I was musing about what, if anything, I've learned over these many years. In a bit of synchronicity, this morning I was reading Michael Pollan's book about psychedelics, "How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about…
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Posted inGrowing older Philosophy

Why I don’t like the term “new normal”

New normal is a term that's bandied about a lot, but to me it needs to be retired. Wikipedia says that new normal implies that something which was previously abnormal has become commonplace. OK. Makes sense. But I still don't like the term. For one thing, what the heck is "normal"? Often this word is used in a moralistic or judgmental sense that is much different from, say, a doctor informing a patient that her test results are normal -- meaning, within a typical range. Not long ago normal sex was considered to be between a man and a woman, not…
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