Posted inWeb/Tech

Claude AI and I team up to surpass Apple real person technical support

A few days ago a new M5 powered MacBook Pro arrived from Apple. I bought it because my 2019 Intel powered MacBook Pro couldn't handle the new Golden Gate operating system, also known as Mac 27 OS, I believe. I hooked the two laptops together with a Thunderbolt 5 cable, then expectantly fired up Migration Assistant on both computers to perform what, in the past, has been a straightforward transfer of my old computer's files to the new computer. Only problem was, Migration Assistant churned away for a couple of hours, never getting past the "starting up" message. I consulted…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Let’s give a lot of love to election officials: my takeaway from today’s Salem City Club talk

Paul Gronke is an expert on elections. Not what the outcomes will be  in the next election. That's the job of Nate Silver and other prognosticators. But how election officials go about the business of managing our country's elections. Today Gronke gave a talk at the Salem City Club about the work of an organization he's associated with, the Elections & Voting Information Center that's co-located at Reed College and Portland State University. My main takeaway from his talk was that election officials deserve a lot of love from us citizens. Theirs isn't a thankless job, thankfully, but it is…
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Posted inSports Uncategorized

Oregon quarterback Dante Moore was revealing run or pass by his foot placement

Unbelievable. But true. Thanks to Oklahoma State players who revealed one of the secrets to their unranked team's huge upset 38-31 victory over #6 Oregon last Saturday, we now know that Dante Moore, the Oregon quarterback, was telegraphing "run or pass" by his foot placement before the ball was snapped. A painful illustration of this was the first play in the game against Indiana last season in the playoffs. Moore threw an interception that was returned for a touchdown. The screenshot above shows Moore's foot placement, which screamed "pass" to the Indiana player at the bottom of the screen who…
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Posted inSports

Instead of disappointing me with a soul-crushing defeat late in the season, this year Oregon football did it early

The title of this blog post is the only bright spot I can come up with after #6 Oregon lost to unranked Oklahoma State 39-31 in Stillwater, which has to be one of the happiest places on Earth right now -- given that this was the first time in FBS history that a team which had lost ten games in a row defeated a top 10 team. Oregon was a three-touchdown favorite. They were lucky the score was this close, since 14 of the Ducks' 31 points came courtesy of the defense. Oregon was outplayed in every aspect: offense, defense,…
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Posted inCars

After four months of owning a Tesla, driving another car feels like being in a Model T

OK, for those who want to nitpick the title of this post, I've never ridden in a Model T -- which stopped being made by Ford in 1927. I'm just using the Model T as shorthand for a car that is technologically unsophisticated compared to the 2026 Tesla Model Y Premium that I got last May. In previous posts about the Tesla (see this blog's Cars category), I've described why I like it so much. Way more than any other car I've driven in the 61 years since I got my driver's license. Yeah, I'm old. What I haven't talked…
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Posted inSports

Football is strange: I felt better about OSU’s loss to Houston than U of O’s win over Boise State

So how is it that as a fan of Oregon college football teams,  after watching Oregon State fall to Houston yesterday 33-20, and the University of Oregon defeat Boise State 34-27, I felt quite a bit better about OSU's loss than Oregon's win? Must come down to expectations. Since Oregon was ranked #2, with a quarterback rated as the best in the nation, I figured that while the game wouldn't be an absolute blowout (Boise State always is tough to play), the Ducks would handle the Broncos without much of a problem. Well, Boise State was a heck of a…
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Posted inPhilosophy Science

Lindsay Clancy hung jury shows absurdity of believing in free will

Today the judge in the Lindsay Clancy murder case declared a mistrial, because the 12-person jury couldn't unanimously agree on a verdict. Eleven jurors thought that Clancy was innocent of the first degree murder charge -- which seemed to be an absurd charge, given that she suffered from postpartum psychosis when she killed her three children. One member of the jury reportedly told the foreman that he had doubts about Clancy's guilt. That should have led him to vote with the other eleven jurors, since they were required to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Clancy was guilty of first…
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