ㅁ Got to work, put the flag. There was snow. I'd driven slow, hit no snag. No customers, what a drag.
– an englyn penfyr.
Month: November 2021
Caveat: Tree #1033
This tree (which tree? – maybe the dead one in the water?) saw first snow on the beach.
[daily log: walking, 3km; retailing, 6hr]
Caveat: Frame Shop Journal #12
I don’t post these frame shop journals very often. There has been a slackening of demand for framing projects, but I still have done quite a few since my last entry in this series, two and a half months ago. I have been somewhat negligent in taking pictures of all these, however. Here are a few from the last 9 weeks, in no particular order.
This last frame is “kinda weird.” I had the framed picture (part of the store’s stock of prints and artworks) but a customer wanted the frame. Wanting to keep the customer happy, I cannibalized the frame from this picture. But now I had a picture, with matting and glass, but no frame. I decided to improvise a temporary frame using cardboard – this was because something was needed to hold the glass in place. If the work gets bought, the customer can order a nicer frame, or just take the artwork and leave the glass and matting.
Today I struggled with a poor-quality frame received from our increasingly-poor-quality supplier. The wooden slots cut at the supplier to place the wedges to hold the frame together were in several cases partly broken, or broke immediately upon attempting to connect things. The wood was too soft and the frame was too large to work with so few and such small slots.
I had to improvise, using metal fasteners and glue. I can’t say it was a super high-quality frame as an outcome. Anyway at least the outcome was better than the last time I tried to improvise a solution to a badly-wrought frame from our suppliers.
Caveat: Poem #1933 “Did you try rebooting it?”
ㅁ Hypnagogia: like hitting a soft reset for my buggy brain.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1032
This tree helps support the east end of the treehouse. I thought this was a very clear view of the “suspension bridge” style that I use to attach the deck of the treehouse to the tree.
[daily log: walking, 2km; moving and lifting stuff in the treehouse, 2hr]
Caveat: The piano speaks
I found this online.
This guy used data from a voice recording of a person speaking to figure out which combination of piano keys (i.e. complex “chords”) would best reproduce each point in the wave form of the speech. Generally these are too many keys, needing to be pressed too rapidly in sequence, for a human pianist to do this. So he used a mechanical piano-playing device to reproduce the speech. It’s just on the edge of comprehensibility. Quite eerie.
Caveat: Poem #1932 “Good thing I missed it”
ㅁ I awoke sweating. I don't feel sick, so what's this? Some exhausting dream.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1031
This tree is feeling overwhelmed by the surrounding brambles.
[daily log: walking, 1.5km]
Caveat: Poem #1931 “Duty”
ㅁ A dog was supervising traffic, there, imperious and proud, beside the road.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Tree #1030
This tree is from my past. I believe it’s up on Gobong Mountain near the 영천사 (a Buddhist temple) in Ilsan, walking distance from my home and work, there. I’m guessing I took the picture sometime in 2013.
[daily log: walking, 1km; counting raindrops, 30mm]
Caveat: Poem #1930 “A fine machine”
ㅁ I had a dream in which I stopped my heart There was a button down beside my bed I pressed it once and that would make it stop Another touch would make it start again.
– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Tree #1029
This tree glowered near the top of the stairs.
[daily log: walking, 1.5km; moving lumber, 0.5hr]
Caveat: Poem #1929 “Best way to handle it”
ㅁ I accepted loss and the failure of the plan. I'd restart later.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1028
This tree looks like an alien to me.
[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 6hr]
Caveat: Poem #1928 “Quotidian concerns”
ㅁ The snow began before the rising sun, but with the dawn it petered out, as rain. I drove to town as usual, again, but wondered if I should have brought the chains.
– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Tree #1027
This tree gathered some slushy snow in the morning before it turned back to rain.
[daily log: walking, 3.5km; retailing, 6hr]
Caveat: …dreamin’ is becomin’ a reality
What I’m listening to right now.
The Mamas and The Papas, “Creeque Alley.” Although this song was not part of my childhood soundtrack, its zeitgeist was. I feel like I could have been one of the small children in the video. The look and feel of it all, and the Dylanesque lyrics, all are profoundly nostalgic.
Lyrics.
John and Mitchy were gettin' kind of itchy Just to leave the folk music behind Zal and Denny workin' for a penny Tryin' to get a fish on the line In a coffee house Sebastian sat And after every number they'd pass the hat McGuinn and McGuire just a-gettin' higher In L.A., you know where that's at And no one's gettin' fat except Mama Cass Zally said "Denny, you know there aren't many Who can sing a song the way that you do, let's go south" Denny said "Zally, golly, don't you think that I wish I could play guitar like you" Zal, Denny and Sebastian sat (At the Night Owl) And after every number they'd pass the hat McGuinn and McGuire still a-gettin higher In L.A., you know where that's at And no one's gettin' fat except Mama Cass When Cass was a sophomore, planned to go to Swarthmore But she changed her mind one day Standin' on the turnpike, thumb out to hitchhike "Take me to New York right away" When Denny met Cass he gave her love bumps Called John and Zal and that was the Mugwumps McGuinn and McGuire couldn't get no higher But that's what they were aimin' at And no one's gettin' fat except Mama Cass Mugwumps, high jumps, low slumps, big bumps Don't you work as hard as you play Make up, break up, everything is shake up Guess it had to be that way Sebastian and Zal formed the Spoonful Michelle, John, and Denny gettin' very tuneful McGuinn and McGuire just a-catchin' fire In L.A., you know where that's at And everybody's gettin' fat except Mama Cass Di-di-di-dit dit dit di-di-di-dit, whoa Broke, busted, disgusted, agents can't be trusted And Mitchy wants to go to the sea Cass can't make it, she says we'll have to fake it We knew she'd come eventually Greasin' on American Express cards It's low rent, but keeping out the heat's hard Duffy's good vibrations and our imaginations Can't go on indefinitely And California dreamin' is becomin' a reality
Caveat: Poem #1927 “A ghost in the machine”
ㅁ In unrendered forests, oddities lurk, awaiting moments when the servers sleep.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Tree #1026
This tree saw a cloud-shrouded Sunnahae Mountain on a sunny, chill day.
[daily log: walking, 3km; retailing, 6hr]
Caveat: tough
At the store today things were moving very, very slow. Wayne (the owner) came in and we stood around talking for almost 30 minutes. He said something memorable, which he attributed to an old logger he used to know down in Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. “Anybody can get old, but you have to be tough to stay old.”
Albert (an old Native American guy) came in at a different time and told some of his never-ending and entirely implausible stories about Sasquatches, the “Waterfall Mafia” (Waterfall is a major resort down the island a way), and the Murkoswki family’s criminal empire.
Caveat: Poem #1926 “Journal”
ㅁ I've been feeling uninspired: no good words, thoughts like birds, my brain mired, sorta tired.
– an englyn cil-dwrn.
Caveat: Tree #1025
This tree was there when an orangish cloud was reflected in the sea.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: Poem #1925 “Fall back”
ㅁ That silly custom we have in this here country... I slept one more hour
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1024
This tree happens to be located at the northwest surveyed corner of lot 73.
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: Poem #1924 “Right?”
ㅁ I forgot what's next just sitting around instead you'd think I'd keep track.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1023
This tree (a bit hard to see at the bottom) had its roots soaked in seawater, due to a very high high tide.
This is looking down from the deck of the treehouse.
[daily log: walking, 1.5km]
Caveat: Poem #1923 “Run the percentages”
ㅁ the air gets chilly but the rain continues on chance of snow tonight
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1022
This tree hung over water.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: On staying up late babysitting cantankerous webservers…
Wednesday night has become “server maintenance night” for my opengeofiction.net website hosting project. With more than 200 active users, there has to be a fixed time that is announced in advance for server updates, changes, tests and reboots. We have settled on 0400 Thursdays UTC, which comes down to 8 PM Alaska Daylight Time (next week that’ll be 7 PM Alaska Standard Time).
Last night what was hoped to be just a regular backup and reboot of the main server, and a “refresh” of the carto (map rendering i.e. map-picture-drawing) server turned into an all-night odyssey, as I struggled with a bizarre failure on the render server that pushed me to having to restore the whole server from the previous night’s automated backup. I still don’t know what went wrong – the render program refused to restart after the manual reboot which was part of the render server “refresh.” As is so often the case with these Linuxy-sysadmin problems, I suspect something went awry with file permissions.
Anyway, it was one of those proverbial IT adventures, and with my normally very fixed, habitual sleep times, I made and drank some coffee late in the night in order to be able to stay awake to do what needed to be done, which further messed up my sleep when I finally was able to go to sleep. So now I’m… messed up, sleepwise.
There’s a less personal and more upbeat mention of the event, posted to my other blog, here, which was also cross-posted to the “User Diaries” on the OpenGeofiction server, here.
Caveat: Poem #1922 “Code as abuse”
ㅁ Sometimes computers refuse to do things. This habit springs from abuse: a programmer's unwise views.
– an englyn penfyr.
Caveat: Tree #1021
This tree witnessed a bit of rainbow.
Having been here for 3 years now, I can say with some confidence that Fall on Prince of Wales Island is “Rainbow Season.”
[daily log: walking, 3.5km; retailing, 6hr]
Caveat: Poem #1921 “Blackout”
ㅁ Nothing happened, then. The entire night: eventless. Seven hours were lost.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1020
This tree is in a treehouse. It’s my young coast redwood tree (sequoia sempervirens) planted in a bucket.
Meanwhile, here is my garden’s entire seasonal production of potatoes, with a few late carrots included.
[daily log: walking, 3km; retailing, 6hr]