Posted inSports

Sad to see last Pac-12 Oregon-OSU game. Glad Oregon won.

I had conflicting emotions this evening as I watched the Oregon football team defeat Oregon State 31-7 in what I've always thought of as the Civil War game, but now is the more politically correct Rivalry Game. The traditional name sounds more fitting to me, because I'm so used to it. But so does the longstanding tradition of the Pac-12 conference, which has been around in one form or another since 1915. That's 108 years of athletic history about to end, thanks to every school except Oregon State and Washington State departing for other conferences. Since I moved to Oregon…
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Posted inGrowing older

I’m thankful for a 98 year old guy I barely know

With thankfulness in the air, given that Thanksgiving is tomorrow, I feel a push to make this a theme of my daily blog post (I have three blogs and write something for one of them each day.) I don't want to run through a litany of all the things in my life that I'm thankful for. That's boring, and I'd end up feeling that to balance things out, I should also mention all the things in my life that I'm not thankful for. Which also would be boring. So here's one short, simple moment of thankfulness that happened to me…
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Posted inHome life Web/Tech

I rejected getting an Apple Watch. Now I’m a big fan.

Well, I guess this shows that I have truly joined the Cult of Apple. Before, I only had a MacBook Pro laptop, an iPhone, an iPad, Apple TV, AirPods, and HomePod speakers.  That speaks of abject devotion to all things Apple, but isn't quite cultish. However, now that I also have an Apple Watch, Series 9 variety, I believe that I qualify for membership in the Cult of Apple. (Don't need an invitation; I'm self-selected.) For a long time I looked down on people with an Apple Watch, or indeed any sort of smart watch, as being techno-snobs. I proudly…
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Posted inGrowing older Retirement community

Why we’re still postponing living in a retirement community

Recently someone emailed me, saying that they'd Googled "hippie retirement community," apparently found my 2013 post, I'm 65. Where's my "Aging Hippie" retirement community?, and wondered if my wife, Laurel, and I had downsized or moved into a community. Short answer. No and no.  A bit of arithmetic, which thankfully I'm still capable of, reveals that if I was 65 on November 24, 2013 when I wrote the earlier post, and today is November 14, 2023, then I must be 75 now.  Bingo! Right on. Nobel Prize in Mathematics please. I was going to reply to the email message with…
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Posted inFamily

My daughter’s thrilled that she was employee #1 of an $80 million company

Bragging can be annoying, but I'm claiming the Father Exemption, because I can't resist sharing the news about a company being bought for a reported $80 million that my daughter was the first employee of. I learned about the acquisition of Barton Perreira, a high-end California eyewear company, by LVMH, a luxury conglomerate (Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co, and Dior, among others) from my daughter, Celeste Vos, a few days ago. She no longer works for Barton Perreira, having left to become the Vice President of Sales for Silhouette, another eyewear company. But she has fond memories of her time…
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Posted inStarlink

Starlink couldn’t recognize my Gen 3 Starlink router. Here’s the fix.

Last August Starlink, the SpaceX satellite internet service, sent me an email saying that because I was an early beta customer, I was entitled to send them $200 for a third-generation router that offered better features than our first-generation router. I accepted that offer. After an initial installation glitch caused by sometimes glitchy me, I ended up liking the Gen 3 router more than the first generation router that came with our round dish.  Recently, though, I encountered a bit of weirdness associated with the Gen 3 router. Maybe this was unique to our setup, but in case someone else…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Our job is to empathize with both Israelis and Palestinians

We live in an age of extremism. Our politics is marked by right-wing and left-wing, with little room left for moderates in the middle. "Whose side are you on?!" is said with an accusatory exclamation mark, since too often it is unthinkable for someone to be on both sides; you've got to choose one or the other. This is why I admired an essay in the November 6 issue of TIME by Israeli historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, "The world's job during the war." Harari says that while currently both Israelis and Palestinians are too filled with pain to…
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Posted inSports

Oregon State football coach made a bad decision. But don’t we all?

Oregon State football fans, of whom I'm one, along with almost everybody who watched yesterday's OSU game against Arizona, are grappling with the astoundingly bad decision Jonathan Smith, the Oregon State coach, made at the end of the first half. Jonathan Smith This is how CBS Sports described the debacle. The game was a 27-24 victory by Arizona. While the game ultimately came down to that final drive, Oregon State's fate may have been decided much earlier when coach Jonathan Smith dialed up one of the most questionable calls of the year. The Beavers had the ball at Arizona's 16-yard…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Maine mass shooting and Israel war are both result of craziness

This evening the suspect in the killing of 18 people in Lewiston, Maine and the wounding of 13 others was found dead, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot. Robert Card had suffered from mental illness, having been hospitalized for two weeks last summer. Reportedly he had been hearing voices. Well, while Card likely had some form of schizophrenia, what he has in common with the rest of us is substantial, for we all hear voices inside our head: our own. Card's voices may have told him that other people were out to harm him, so he needed to kill as many…
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Posted inBooks Philosophy Science

I don’t believe in free will. Here’s why.

Today the monthly Salon discussion group that my wife and I are part of spent quite a bit of time talking about free will. This is one of my favorite subjects, for after pondering quite a few books about free will, or the lack thereof, I'm highly confident that free will is an illusion. I can't recall exactly how our group started conversing about it, but for sure I spurred our conversation by saying that I've started reading Robert M. Sapolsky's terrific book, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will. To give you a feel for his general view…
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Posted inSalem

Ron Eachus has died. He served the world well.

Thank you, Rachel Alexander of the Salem Reporter, for writing a marvelous tribute to Ron Eachus: Ron Eachus, "incorruptible" consumer advocate and activist, dies at 76. Here's some excerpts that give a feel for this remarkable man. Ron Eachus, a steward of civic life in Salem and former utility regulator known for his “bulldog-like tenacity,” died from a heart condition on Saturday, Oct. 14, while hiking in Bhutan. He was 76. Eachus worked for over 20 years as an Oregon’s public utility commissioner, earning a reputation as a fierce consumer advocate while helping steer Oregon toward a focus on energy…
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Posted inSalem Starlink Television

Five miles from Salem city limits, our neighborhood is unserved by broadband

Our neighborhood, Spring Lake Estates, is only about five miles from the city limits of Salem, Oregon's capital. So it isn't like we're in Outer Mongolia -- though when it comes to broadband access, we might as well be. For one of the things I learned by my phone conversation with a guy from the Oregon Broadband Office today, is that our neighborhood is unserved by broadband according to the federal definition:  An unserved location is defined as a broadband-serviceable location that the Broadband DATA Maps show as (a) having no access to broadband service, or (b) lacking access to…
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Posted inTai Chi

Death came too soon for Chris. So sad.

Today I heard about the death of Chris, a 46 year-old guy I came to first know during my Pacific Martial Arts karate days. Chris moved to the Portland area, but he'd return once in a while to take part in the Tai Chi classes that are now the focus of Pacific Martial Arts. He was engaging, positive, funny, and a pleasure to be around.  We were close in the way many men are: by sharing a love of a physical activity. I knew some things about Chris, but mostly I knew him through the martial arts classes we shared.…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Talking about racism in schools reduces bias

Here in blue Oregon, we're fortunate to have avoided the absurd laws in some red states, such as Florida, that make it very difficult, if not impossible, for teachers to talk about racism.  Obviously this head-in-the-sand approach doesn't do anything to combat racism. It just prevents open discussion that could reduce racism. Last year I came across an article in Scientific American that cites psychological research in concluding that it's best for students to engage in honest talk about racism. The article appeared in the November 2022 issue, though apparently it was published online in August. That issue has been…
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Posted inHome life Starlink

If you need rural cellular internet, I recommend MobileData2Go

Recently I spent a lot of time checking out providers of rural cellular internet, which basically set you up with a router and plan that accesses the internet via one of the major companies: Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T. If someone lives in a city, they probably have many internet/broadband choices. People like me who live in a rural area with poor cell service, don't. Out here in rural south Salem, Oregon, my wife and I suffered with 6-7 Mbps CenturyLink DSL over ancient copper phone lines because that was our only option. Then I was selected to be a beta tester…
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Posted inHome life Salem

CarMax beat Capitol Subaru’s offer on my 2020 Crosstrek

When it came time to sell my 2020 Crosstrek Limited because I was getting a 2024 Crosstrek Limited, the choice was between Capitol Subaru and CarMax. In the past I've sold cars on my own, but I don't enjoy doing this anymore. My wife and I have bought quite a few cars from the Capitol Auto Group, starting back when they were on Mission Street. Now the four Capitol dealerships -- Chevrolet, Cadillac, Toyota, Subaru -- are adjacent to the Martin Luther King Parkway, which enables the Capitol slogan: Your way on the parkway Usually I've agreed with that slogan.…
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Posted inSports

Oregon State and WSU score legal victory against Pac-12 departers

Usually I like to root for the underdog in sports. It's just more satisfying to watch a team that's expected to lose defy the odds and beat the supposedly more powerful team. That's one reason I was hoping Oregon State and Washington State would score a legal victory against the eight members of the Pac-12 who have announced that they're leaving the conference for other leagues after a media rights negotiation gone bad left the Pac-12 with less TV money than the departing members wanted. USC and UCLA had already announced they were heading to the Big 10, which means…
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Posted inSports

Oregon beats Texas Tech, thanks to a fourth quarter

I'm glad I don't have a heart problem, because even without one, I was feeling palpitations in my chest for most of today's Oregon - Texas Tech football game in hot Lubbock. It was a familiar feeling, given past occasions when Oregon unexpectedly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. I get excited about being able to watch the Ducks play, since we rely on DirecTV for television watching, and DirecTV still doesn't carry the Pac 12 Networks, which is where the Oregon - Portland State blowout game in favor of the Ducks was last week. (Of course, now that…
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Posted inHome life Sustainability

Some of our oaks are losing all their leaves in early September. Global warming.

We've lived at our home in rural south Salem, Oregon since 1990. In those 33 years, my wife and I have never seen some of the oak trees on our ten mostly natural acres lose all of their leaves in late August and early September. Repeat, never. But this is what the area in front of our well house looked like today. It sure seems to be a result of global warming. We didn't get any rain during June, July, and almost all of August. Maybe May also. And it's been considerably hotter than normal. The oaks must be stressed.…
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Posted inStarlink

After getting Starlink’s Gen 3 router, I’m liking it

I've had, and enjoyed, Starlink's satellite internet service since January 2021, when I was approved to be a beta tester and got to put the original round dish on our roof. Not for free, sadly, I had to pay for it. Recently Starlink emailed me with an offer to purchase their new Gen 3 router that works both with the first generation round dish and the second generation square dish. This time I had to pay $200 for the privilege of being a beta tester. I decided to get the router because the original router was still in use. It's…
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