The Curmudgeon Speaks

It has been a weird couple of days. Several ads ago I for some reason tried to recall the name of the town in which we lived and could not. I tried concentrating harder. Still nothing. Then, I tried remembering the town nearest to our lake place. Nothing. Forgetting things does seem to become more common with age, but this was unusual. One would think you could remember where you live even if you haven’t been there in a couple of months. I tried related things. I could remember my street address. I could remember the town next down the road from the up North town I was trying to remember. It has my favorite coffee shop so maybe that makes a difference.

This issue came and went during the day. I tried practicing – Richfield and Danbury. It did not seem to matter. I finally told Cindy. During a call with our oldest daughter, Cindy happened to mention that I could not remember where I lived and this daughter suggested I call my doctor to ask about the situation. This would not have been an action I would have taken on my own. I made the call knowing that the best I could do was talk with my physician’s nurse. She asked about other symptoms – headaches, unsteadiness, numbness, etc. Everything else was fine. She suggested I go to urgent care or the emergency room. This is not easy to do on Kauai, but we did make the drive to the hospital emergency room.

Same story, same questions, blood pressure, heart rate, blood tests, etc.  The doc said I should have an MRI. The MRI is that small tube with loud magnets that rotate around and activate the cells of your brain in a way that can be detected to produce an image of your brain. It is not for you if you struggle with tight places. It is loud so they let you wear earphones and select the music you want. I decided I should listen to Hawaiian. Nothing – my brain at least looks normal. I guess the goal is to identify a stroke and no stroke could be found. I suppose this was the reason for the immediate visit to a doc.

I was released and told to do a telehealth consult with a neurologist. The nearest one is on Oahu, but for two days they have been unable to get his attention to set up an appointment. I am going to assume I am fine. My memory seems to be working again and I know where I live. Emergency room docs are not particularly talkative because they are trying to deal with many patients as quickly as possible. I do forget weird things from time to time. I am guessing not remembering your phone number or something like that is less important. How often do you phone yourself? Not being able to remember where you live does seem a little more significant and you are asked for this bit of information more frequently. I suppose I could do some online research, but that would likely give me too much to think about and make me anxious. Your memory works better when you are relaxed.

Hawaii is a very expensive place to visit and also to live. The locals do get a break from some costs through Kama’aina (it means locals) which means a different cost for locals and others, but many things are simply more expensive. A barber did cut my hair today including neck shave with a straight edge for $20. I haven’t had a barber do that since the barber in the UND union retired. I thought a shave may have been outlawed as a health hazard. Anyway, such benefits are rare. Taxes are high and there are strange taxes I don’t understand.

I guess taxes are what it takes to keep things running in a location that requires nearly everything to be shipped in and so much of the economy depends on the money spent in one way or another by tourists.

Biden recently made this kind of side comment during the state of the union speech about what he described as “junk fees“. These fees are different taxes and additional charges added to the advertised rate by airline companies. hotels, etc. Biden provided some stats about what these fees add to costs in his speech (billions), but mainly focused on the deceptive nature of these fees. You may technically be able to understand that you will be charged junk fees if you read the fine print, but these extra charges are not mentioned if you go through a booking service. In some cases, you can avoid such fees because they are optional (you don’t have to bring a suitcase on a plane), but in some cases, the charges cannot be avoided.

We have had to piece together three different providers during this state in Kauai. The condo we typically stay in had already been rented for part of the time we intended to visit and Cindy had to find two other locations to cover this lack of availability. We are now in the second of these accommodations and more of a motel than an actual condo. No dishwasher. I understand this may sound like a first-world problem and I have washed dishes by hand, but not in a “home” for several decades.

I can handle the dishes, but the $25 amenity fee (before taxes) has me a bit annoyed. This is simply a charge for amenities which is required. Examples of such amenities appear to include anything that is consumed – coffee, soap, toilet paper, etc.  I have plenty of coffee because we have a kitchen and I buy coffee from the coffee plantation. That leaves soap and toilet paper. Nice to have I admit, but $25 a day seems a bit much. 

Travel Hawaii does not endorse resort fees, but the fees are still legal and at the Plantation Hale Suites are still required. I agree with Biden. Just stop with the deceptive practices and clearly state your prices. It seems slimy when some providers do not engage in such practices and some do.  

More heavy rain coming and the emergency alerts keep activating our phones. I think the danger is from travel over roads with a tendency to being covered with running water and mud/rock slides. Not something you want to encounter at night. Of course, friends at home are dealing with ice storms and blizzards. Stay safe whatever your weather challenges. 

The Democrats from the House during the Trump Presidency obviously conducted several investigations typically calling Republican witnesses to address inappropriate actions of the President and associates. I found the claims to be reasonable and the evidence credible. The evidence available from concrete sources (recorded calls, video evidence, and documents) were not faked and related to attempted extortion for political gain and attempts to pressure public officials to change votes as counted by public officials. While those asking the questions were Democrats, the witnesses and those who were under pressure were not affiliated with that party.

Now, the makeup of the House has changed and the Republicans are now investigating concerns of their own. The first target is Dr. Fauci who served during the Trump administration as the Director of the National Institute of Health. Fauci had an impressive resume both as a researcher and administrator, but somehow became a target perhaps for disagreeing with positions taken by the Trump administration in response to COVID.

As I understand the concerns the Republicans have advanced, they are proposing that COVID may have escaped from a Chinese research facility and may have been manipulated with the cooperation of researchers from the U.S. before this accident. The claim is that both the source and the collaboration of U.S. researchers have been purposefully covered up.

I must say this seems far fetched and I am perplexed as to what would motivate a particular party to cover this up. Why would the party not in power feel the need to do this? Why would the party not in power somehow have been in collaboration with an agency such as the NIH? The only thing that occurs to me is the general distrust of big government.

Dr. Fauci said he will be glad to testify. Aside from having the listen to the inane comments that typically are generated by antagonistic questioners before actually asking a question, I expect Fauci to offer a knowledgeable presentation of both the science and international collaboration that is involved in addressing serious diseases.

Musk’s new Twitter is annoying me. I understand that businesses can set their own rules, but being honest about what these rules are seems a fair expection.

I have encountered another issue. I create blog content aimed at educators. When I post to one of these blogs, the blog automatically announces that a new post has been generated to Twitter. Fewer and fewer folks make use of RSS readers so I see this as necessary. Twitter responded to one of the announcements in the following way.

There is nothing sensitive about this blog post which announces and gives some information about a new Mastodon client that displays in columns the feeds from multiple Mastodon instances. The issue for Twitter is that Mastodon is a competitor.

I have maintained a blog since 2016 describing our travels. I post there more frequently than on this blog and decided to provide a separate source people can explore depending on their interests.

We will be in Kauai for about two months and have been spending time here to take a break from the Minnesota winter months. It is quite a contrast.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JSFjQqSLlUY

So, if you are interested in our travel experiences you are invited to explore.

I have been baffled lately by the number of GOP politicians I see in my Twitter feed. There are few that I follow, but my feed lately has been dominated by the GOP politicians and the GOP organization complaining about Biden’s documents and Buttigieg’s computer failure grounding planes. I take the time to explain the misinformation in both positions, but I get tired of repeating myself.

This problem recently seems to have grown much more severe. I have an easy way to combat the frequency of tweets from those I don’t follow. You can use Twitter in chronological order or to prioritize top tweets. Chronological order will show you the tweets from those you follow in chronological order and other content will follow if you keep scrolling. I want to see the Tweets from the people I follow and not the tweets selected by Twitter’s algorithms. On your desktop, you should see a “star” symbol in the upper right-hand corner of the Twitter screen to change this setting.

I have trying to locate this adjustment on my phone (iOS) and have not been able to find it. Finally, I did a search and found that Musk has changed this feature. So, it wasn’t my imagination, Twitter has been modified for the iPhone and offers less control over what users view.

I have been exploring the educational and hobby opportunities in hydroponic gardening now for a couple of years. In the late fall, I plant tomatoes and lettuce so we can have salads using our own produce. The tomatoes are just ripening now.

We have been interested in the potential of solar energy and decided to add panels to our home. We don’t really have high electric bills and were told when the panels were installed that we should not really expect to see any income from our investment. In part, they can make such predictions from an understanding of your normal consumption of electricity and the orientation of your roof. They were correct. In a good month (June in the example that follows we covered about half of our consumption).

After the first few months, I started to wonder what would happen in the winter expecting the panels to be covered by snow producing no electricity. This turned out to be partially the case, but so far snow depth of several inches with moderate temperatures has eventually slid off the panels. Perhaps a more important issue has been the frequency of overcast days we experience in the winter. You produce some electricity on a cloudy day, but not much. Clouds and snow can mean nothing generated for the day.

June – generated $64

December – generated $4.20

This image shows one set of panels (the other is on a different section of roof). You can see what I mean by the snow eventually sliding off the panels by comparing the panels to the depth on the adjacent area of the roof.

There are many data collection and analyses options associated with solar and this represents a project-based learning opportunity for educators.

It was the day before Christmas. I went to the dump. The guys were all working. Made me feel like a chump. …. [creativity ends]

I have taken nearly this same photo several times, but my dump buddy was not wearing his suit this year. Thanks Google photos for finding what I was thinking of from my collection of thousands.

If there is a message in this insight, it is one of appreciating opportunities and good times. Our year included a few negative experiences, but mostly life was good and we end with everyone well. We hope it is the same with you and yours.

We are spending the holidays at the lake place with Josh/Lynn and Todd/Jess and kids. Kim/Jim, Sid and Frankie will be joining by Zoom. The weather has been very wintery, but too cold for all but necessary outside activities. Great for photos and watching the holiday movies and football games. We save “Emmit Otter’s Jug Band Christmas” for this evening.

Happy holiday.

If I have hobbies, they would be technology and photography. Some time ago, my wife invested in an Indigogo project that combines both. The Bird Buddy is a bird feeder that contains a camera triggered by nearby moving objects. Such objects are intended to be birds. Think of one of those video doorbells positioned inside a bird feeder.

The camera captures pictures of these birds and sends them to your phone allowing you to keep copies of the birds you photograph. The system makes use of artificial intelligence that attempts to identify the birds and provides some facts about range, habits, and diet. The identification works pretty well. You can set the system up to post the images to social media, but I would find regular posts of birds in my account annoying so I don’t.

The following images show the Bird Buddy and pictures of a male and young female Cardinal our Buddy captured. The images are high quality.

I think we have captured pretty much every species we see in the winter. Now, it is fun to see just what interesting poses you get. The Spring should bring some new visitors.

I call this one “chubs”.