Category: Uncategorized
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A matter of physics
Hot humid air injected into cold air-conditioned air results in fog. It’s, however to see a cloud inside a plane instead of outside.
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Phuket
We visited Phyket, Thailand and I saw this pillow. Came darn close to buying it for background to my video calls.
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Just chillin’ with a Hornbill
As one does. We are on Banana Beach somewhere off the southern coast of Thailand. You kind of have to look for it, but he (or she) is there.
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Fully silver
We are sitting at the wedding reception, enjoying the meal, when my self-definition took hard blow. The conversation wandered from topic to topic, as conversations do, and, at some point, made it around to gray hair. There was some back and forth as the young people near us starting commenting on how they were starting…
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View from the hotel: Phuket
The wedding families headed to Phuket a couple of days after the wedding. A resort area in southern Thailand, it is on the shore of the Bay of Bengal. And it is pronounced poo-ket, not they way you pronounced it in your head. We spent today visiting elephants (more on a future post) and then…
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Benjakitti Park
Beautiful walking park. Lot of flowers. It also happens to be a water treatment facility. The nicest one I’ve ever seen. The lizard pic was taken by Joyce. She has a way of finding wildlife that is beyond my understanding. Lots of koi in the water. Mostly gray with a few bright orange ones. Since…
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Cooking class
The other day, we took a Thai cooking class. It was great fun. We made Pad Thai, Massaman curry, papaya salad, and mango sticky rice. Well, that last one was made for us. Lots of chopping things up and wok work. The teacher was very fun and knew how to make it an experience. There…
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Power lines
Bangkok has interesting power lines. Below are some pics showing the quantity of wires and very confusing junctions. The coils of extra wire are probably for future adjustments. Although a resident I spoke with said they often just cut and leave when they replace wires. Nothing gets removed. I imagine that this technique is cheaper…
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Different squirrels
I love squirrels. The grey ones hang around our yard. We have a bird feeder and massive trees which pulls them into our yard. They clean up the maple seed helicopters nicely. Our dog is insufficient to keep them out. She can get within a few feet of them, but they don’t consider her a…
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Not what you expected: Krispy Kreme
There is a high-end mall near the Bangkok mall and there is a Krispy Kreme booth there. It had your standard glaxed donuts and then a bunch of varieties. So many to choose from….
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Seoul/Inchon Airport
We had a layover at this airport and it is beautiful. They have newer tech than other airports I’ve been at recently. Including bidets in half the men’s bathroom stalls. We had to walk from one end of Terminal 2 to the other. There was a crazy number of high shops, at least a half-dozen…
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35,000 ft, my butt is asleep, and I should be
As I write this, I am standing in a valley in the middle of the plane on our flight across the Pacific. Sitting for long periods of time is problematic, especially on seat with, shall we say, limited padding. The flight is 13+ plus hours and I just watched Rocketman and The Black Panther. I…
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Clouds at Sunset Sept 2026
Walked into Walgreens to this the other day. Stopped and watched it for a bit as the light and clouds slowly drifted into new shapes and colors.
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Nokia and AI tokens: what gets delivered
Remember the Nokia phones? They were indestructible and the best thing next to a Blackberry before smartphones. They were doomed. Not because their product was inferior. When the iPhone came out, everyone’s product was inferior. It was because they were slow. It would take a developer 24-48 hours to compile and get changes ready for…
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Nothing like a dog jumping off your lap…
to get your attention. Our sunroom looks out onto our yard and the park behind our house. Luna will sit on my lap from time to time and, when she isn’t sleeping, is looking out the window. We often leave the door open so she can go in and out without us having to get…
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Stuff We Don’t Know: Data Center edition
Matthew Yglesias is a political writer. I don’t always agree with his opinions, but he is always thoughtful. This article is about data centers and he frames the debate slightly different. The water problem is generally solved. The energy problem has known solutions to make it a win/win for everything. The AI data centers are…
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View from the Hill: Moonshadows
The moon was bright the other night out on the hill. We had some friends over and walked our dogs after dark. The moon was very bright and we could see shadows cast by the moon. I remember the old Cat Stevens song “Moonshadow”. Every time I listen, that word–Moonshadow–would catch my ear. I’m being…
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Anika Nilles First Show w/ Rush Tom Sawyer
This post won’t be very interesting to those that aren’t Rush fans. And if you are a Rush fan, you have already seen this. Part of the reason that everyone is excited about the Rush tour is that (1) Geddy and Alex are good people, (2) they have dealt with a lot of crap with…
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Understanding how trained AI works
Short answer: we don’t know and it seems really challenging that we will, at least in the near term. LLMs are black boxes and we don’t know how they work. We can’t follow and explain the logic like we have been able to in all software since the dawn of computers. Machine learning started us…
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Rule of Three: Deaths
Every time the celebrity dies, people start talking about the rule of three. The claim is that it always seems that celebrities die in threes. Starting with TV and radio we massively increased the number of “celebrities”. With our ubiquitous media, we have caused thousands of names to be known by some portion of the…
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Minnesota State Fair, 2026
The Minnesota State Fair is one of the best in the country. Granted, I haven’t been to a lot of them, so maybe I’ll just say it is the best one I have been to. We went on a day that broke the attendance record so the crowds got pretty intense in the afternoon. The…
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Betting on the ponies
We had family in town and went to Canterbury Park to watch the horse racing. Some were very into it and some weren’t. Fortunately, I was only better $2/race so the fact that I had only one winning ticket didn’t matter. It was still less than the cost of going to see a move with…
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Girl Scout Cookie Arbitrage
Girl Scout Cookies are sold for a limited time each year. The rest of the year, we are out of luck. No cookies to be had. No thin mints. No samoas. But, if someone bought a bunch of extra boxes and kept them in the freezer until the cookie drought months… How much would a…
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Anticipating Pain
Have you ever noticed that brief little sliver of time between when your little toe hits the table leg and when the pain hits? You know it is going to hurt, but the thought somehow shows up before the pain does. The anticipation of pain shows up before the pain. Step on a lego? That…
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Distant Dolly Connection
Dolly Parton made connections with a lot of people. I only have a distant connection. My dad’s cousin is in the picture below with Dolly. He was involved in her Imagination Library and appeared at a number of events with her. There are many reasons she will be remembered. It is hard to imagine something…
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Fall already?
Beginning of September and already one tree has given up. Sigh.
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Old Man Edition
Saw this at the local Costco. Pretty funny. I looked it up and, while it isn’t a real thing you can buy, there is a whole industry on Etsy and other sites with these things. Very well done.
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Library of Congress is crazy!
Library of Congress: Fascinating Facts When you publish a book, it is recommended to register it with the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) helps uniquely identify the book and is related to copyright. Part of the process is to send a copy of a physical book to them. This isn’t…
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View from the hill, Aug 2026
The sunset was great the other night. Luna and I were doing our rounds before bed and this was the view.
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We are getting fiber!
With no notice, construction crews came by our neighborhood installing fiber. Yes, I realize that if we paid more attention to city government, we probably would have seen some sort of notice. Haven’t heard anything from any company announcing service so we will have to see who it is. I have been using comcast/Xfinity for…
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EXPOSED: The Dirty Little Secret of AI (On a 1979 PDP-11)
Yes, a bit clickbait-y on the title. It isn’t so much as exposed and illustrated. This isn’t a secret to anyone who looks into it. A walk thru, in simple terms, of the fundamental components of AI. Running on old iron. You need a bit of tech background to enjoy this.