Posted inHome life

Yay! We qualify for solar panels, even though our house is surrounded by tall trees

Today I got some good news. After seeing an ad in the Oregonian by Energy Trust of Oregon, I took them up on an offer to have reputable solar companies contact me, rather than taking a chance on the many posts I see on Facebook by firms making grandiose claims about how much a homeowner can save by installing their solar panels. Soon after I filled out an Energy Trust form with my address and contact information, I heard from someone who grew up in our rural south Salem neighborhood, and still lives nearby. Miles Henderson works in sales with…
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Posted inFamily Home life

I just learned about placeholder relationships. Sure didn’t apply to me and my wife.

Thanks to an article in TIME magazine by Meehika Barua, "The Rise of the Placeholder Partner," recently I learned about placeholder relationships. Barua explains what this means in her opening paragraphs. A friend of mine got out of a six year relationship, only to have her ex marry someone new within six months. Another woman I met at a networking event recently has been with her boyfriend for a decade, waiting on a ring. Every time they go on a vacation, she wonders if this holiday will be the one where he will propose, only to be dejected on the…
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Posted inInvesting

I was surprised how good I felt selling a crude oil fund and buying a sustainability fund

Gasoline prices have been on peoples' minds lately, given how the war with Iran that Trump started for some dubious reasons has caused the price of Brent Crude Oil to shoot up markedly, as shown in this 10 year chart provided by the Trading Economics site. Our neighborhood gas station here in Salem, Oregon is charging $4.25 a gallon, last time I looked. While I'm an environmentalist, a number of years ago our financial advisor thought that my wife and I needed a commodities fund in our investment portfolio, which otherwise largely consists of index mutual funds and a balanced…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Making daylight saving time permanent would save lives — of people and deer

I've found that whether changing our clocks twice a year is a good thing or bad thing, and whether it would be best to make daylight saving time or standard time permanent, are subjects that arouse more extreme opinionating in a group than religion or politics. Almost everyone has a firmly held view on this. Mine is that daylight saving time should be made permanent, as I've argued in these previous blog posts: Making daylight saving time permanent is a must, Congress Daylight saving time should be permanent -- no more "fall back" time change Let's make daylight saving time…
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Posted inWeb/Tech

If your iPassword extension for Safari disappeared, this worked for me to get it back

Recently the 1Password extension for Safari disappeared on my MacBook Pro. The extension wasn't showing in Safari settings, so most of the tips for getting it back that I found via some Googling didn't apply. Nothing else worked either. I was down to the tip of uninstalling 1Password on my computer, then installing it again. I was reluctant to do that, because I didn't want to risk screwing up my much-beloved 1Password, which I use a lot and had been workin fine until the extension disappeared. So I asked 1Password support for help. Soon I got an email from a…
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Posted inSports

Ilia Malinin lost an Olympic ice skating medal, but he won the heart of people who also have screwed-up big time

For me the most tragic moment in this year's Winter Olympics was Ilia Malinin, a hugely talented American figure skater, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory when he bungled a seemingly certain gold medal by falling twice in a performance where Malinin was so far ahead of his competition, all he needed to do was skate a clean program and the medal was his. As his stood on the ice, unable to comprehend what had befallen him, there was still a lot of cheering from the audience. They recognized his brilliance, and how uncharacteristic his deeply flawed skating was…
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Posted inSports

2026 Pac-12 football schedule shows the conference has recovered from nearly dying

It warms my heart to behold the recently released Pac-12 football schedule for the 2026 season. Back in November 2023 I wrote about how sad it was to watch the last Pac-12 Oregon vs. Oregon State game, as back then Oregon, Washington, Stanford, California, UCLA, USC, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and Arizona State had announced they would flee the Pac-12 conference for greener (as in more media money) pastures. That left Oregon State and Washington State as the sole remaining members of what had become the Pac-2. Things looked dark for OSU and WSU. But in December 2023 they got $255…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sports

In Super Bowl, Bad Bunny was terrific. So were the Seahawks.

I felt a bit embarrassed yesterday when I left a voice mail message for someone that ended with "Have a good weekend; not sure if you're a football fan, but I'm rooting for Seattle since they're closer to Oregon than the Rams." Oops. After I hung up I realized that I'd just demonstrated how little I follow the NFL (not at all, basically), since the Seattle Seahawks defeated the Los Angeles Rams for the NFC championship a few weeks ago, and Seattle played the New England Patriots in today's Super Bowl. Which I did watch, this being the first NFL…
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Posted inHome life

We’re loving our Daikin heat pumps that we bought from Advantage Heating & Air Conditioning in Salem

I enjoy giving praise to local businesses who provide a great product and excellent service. So this is my shout-out to Advantage Heating & Air Conditioning, who installed two Daikin Fit heat pumps at our house after our previous heat pumps reached the end of their useful life. We've used Judson's for most of the thirty-five years we've lived here in rural south Salem. They're also a fine company, but in the past few years we've noticed a decline in the quality of their maintenance and repair work on our American Standard heat pumps. Won't go into the details, as…
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Posted inHome life

I just ordered six months of emergency food in case the Big One earthquake hits

The Big One earthquake is a matter of when, not if, for us here in the Pacific Northwest. In 2015 an article in the New Yorker brought a lot of attention to the massive Cascadia subduction zone earthquakes that periodically strike our area of the world. I quoted from the article in "People of Pacific Northwest: Be scared, very scared. The Big One is coming." By the time the shaking has ceased and the tsunami has receded, the region will be unrecognizable. Kenneth Murphy, who directs FEMA’s Region X, the division responsible for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, says, “Our operating…
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Posted inTelevision

Apple TV’s Tehran is a great series to watch anytime, but especially now

Iran, once again, has been convulsed by massive protests against the country's totalitarian rulers by citizens fed up with hyper-inflation, cruel repression, and lack of basic human rights. A disturbing Political story, "You Might Not Like What Comes Next in Iran: Chances of a democratic transition are slim," says: Iran’s repressive, clerical regime is fighting for its life. There are lots of reasons to hope that it collapses. The Islamic Republic is violent, corrupt and theocratic. It systematically discriminates against women and minorities, and its policies have led to economic disaster. When Iranians take to the streets to protest, the…
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Posted inSports

Oregon lost to Indiana in convincing fashion tonight. My optimism about the Ducks winning lasted 11 seconds.

Ever since the Oregon football team beat Texas Tech 23-0 in the national playoff quarterfinals, I'd been looking forward to the Ducks rematch with Indiana in today's semifinal game. After all, Oregon had played Indiana close for most of the first game, which Indiana ended up winning 30-20 after Indiana scored the last 10 points, aided by a couple of fourth quarter interceptions thrown by Oregon quarterback Dante Moore. Coach Lanning and the Oregon players had been talking about how they were a better team now, having learned from their only loss of the season. Oddsmakers had Indiana favored in…
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Posted inSports

Wild day of college football playoffs puts Oregon in semifinal rematch against Indiana

Wow. I'm exhausted. Mentally, not physically, because I was just sitting on my butt watching three college football playoff games today, unlike the players who gave it their all in ESPN's nationally televised games. And I watched another game yesterday. Tough job, but someone's got to do it. The most satisfying game for me naturally was the Orange Bowl contest between Oregon and Texas Tech. I was nervous about it, as an Oregon fan, because Texas Tech was seeded #4 with Oregon #5. Thus the teams seemed equally matched, both with stellar offenses and defenses. Pre-game, the ESPN announcers said…
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Posted inEntertainment Television

The Pitt is much more enjoyable to watch than I thought it would be

I'm not a big fan of medical shows. I never watched ER. I've liked a couple of old television shows about doctors doing their thing, but House is the only one that comes to mind. So at first I wasn't interested in The Pitt, which was released by HBO on January 9, 2025. Then as December rolled around, I saw The Pitt was consistently featured in lists of 2025's best television shows. I decided to give it a try. And am really glad that I did. It's set in a Pittsburg emergency room. The fifteen episodes in Season 1 mirror…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Travel

Detroit (Oregon) has suffered more than its share of natural disasters

When I moved to Salem in 1977, the only Detroit I was familiar with was the one in Michigan. Since, I've driven through the Santiam Canyon many times to and from central Oregon. I've gotten to know the charming stop along the way, Detroit, nestled on the shores of nine-mile long Detroit Lake. Then wildfires devastated the town in September 2020. A CNN story said it looks "like a bomb went off." Wildfires scorching the West Coast have devastated the small city of Detroit, Oregon – located about 120 miles southeast of Portland – where a majority of the structures…
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Posted inSports

Oregon beat James Madison by 17 points. So why do I feel so bad about the win?

Football is a strange game. Well, all sports are. But it's mainly in football that I can watch my favorite team win, yet feel almost like it was a loss. Conversely, I can watch my favorite team lose, yet feel almost like it was a win. Tonight the Oregon Ducks defeated James Madison 51-34 in Eugene. I believe Oregon was favored by 21 points, so the 17 point margin of victory wasn't far off from the expectation that #5 seed Oregon in the College Football Playoff would handily beat #12 seed James Madison. Especially since James Madison only got into…
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Posted inHome life Writing/Weblogs

Big news in our 2025 Christmas letter: we’re alive!

Every year about this time, out of the depths of my unconscious rises, unbidden, a theme for our Christmas Letter, a.k.a. Holiday Greetings. This year it was being alive -- which used to be one of the purposes of sending Christmas cards in the not-so-ancient days before the internet and social media made it easy to tell who of your friends and acquaintances was still alive. I also talk about other things. Such as the bidet we got for the bathroom I use most frequently. Laurel, my wife, thought it seemed weird to mention something about my bathroom habits in…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Entertainment Television

I hugely enjoyed The American Revolution on PBS. And I’m not a big fan of documentaries.

When I started watching The American Revolution on the Apple TV PBS app, I looked upon this as sort of a civic duty to see the newest documentary from the talented Ken Burns -- especially since documentaries aren't my first choice for evening entertainment. Well, six episodes and about 12 viewing hours later, my first impression was completely wrong. I was enthralled by every minute of the series, even though obviously there were zero photographs or videos of our Revolutionary War. Burns and his co-creators skillfully wove together voiceovers, documents, commentary from historians, maps, battle plans, reenactments, and such into…
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Posted inFood and drink Home life

I didn’t suffer in my vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner

When I became a vegetarian 57 years ago, at the age of 20, that was cause for concern among friends and family who thought I was depriving myself of an essential food group: meat and fish. That didn't make sense then. It makes even less sense now, given how many more options vegetarians have when shopping in a grocery store or going out to eat at a restaurant. We're still a decided minority, about 6%, with about an additional 4% embracing a vegan diet. For Thanksgiving yesterday, I dug my last remaining Trader Joes Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast out of the…
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Posted inGrowing older Home life

My take on why old guys like me are so set in our ways

I'm now the person that I was always afraid of becoming. An old guy (I'm 77) who is really reluctant to deviate from his accustomed lifestyle. I'm not exactly the proverbial senior citizen sitting on his porch who screams at playful neighborhood children, "Keep your damn ball out of my front yard!" But I can understand why that dude would say that. Because the older I get -- and so far I haven't found any way to stop that inexorable trend -- the more I cling to habits in an almost obsessive fashion. The reason I do this, so far…
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