This tree is among its peers, and not out of the woods yet.
[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 8.5hr]
Month: August 2022
Caveat: Poem #2220 “Artistry”
ㅁ a well-drawn valley all its contours well-formed appeared in my dream
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1313
This tree experienced the passage of time.
[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 8.5hr]
Caveat: Poem #2219 “Get the ladder”
ㅁ a secret passage to the treehouse's attic appeared in my dream
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1312
This tree experienced a mostly cloudy outlook.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: Poem #2218 “The current state of things”
ㅁ I'll end up like him: angry, taciturn, anxious. And I'll have no friends. As an old person, I'll insist that change is bad, Reject solutions. "Oh the kids these days... Lazy and badly brought up. Get off my damn lawn!" "The world's getting worse The system's out to get us." What system is this? Occam's razor says Nah, it's random fluctuations. There's no evil there. Shrug. I'll hunker down, A misunderstood hermit. Let my soul get stale.
– six pseudo-haiku as stanzas in a longer poem.
Caveat: Tree #1311
This tree was supervised by a deer patrolling the road (lower right).
[daily log: walking, 3.5km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: Poem #2217 “Try this at home”
ㅁ We can complain more, even about complaining, get some sympathy.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1310
This tree saw the clouds part – but that was yesterday.
More and more frequently, Art asks me for help with his computer problems. This is very hard for me. Art is and always has been a loyal Apple customer – his computers are all, always, only MacBooks. I hate Apple systems and OS design with a passion, and it’s always been challenging for me to even accept that he sees it differently. But even getting past that, I have to deal with the fact I really don’t know much about how they’re supposed to work. Add to that the fact that Arthur has his own idiosyncratic ways he thinks things should be done, and I really simply can never, ever please him at all.
Case in point: the other day he received in the mail from Amazon two large SSD external drives he’d ordered. He has a huge stockpile of saved stuff on his computers and hard drives, and he needed more storage (though arguably this is mostly because he doesn’t remember how to “clean house” on his computers anymore). Well he got these hard drives and couldn’t get either of them to work. I took a look at them. They were clearly labeled “for Windows.” Now it’s true that often these type of external drives are cross-functional, but I wondered how he’d managed to order them. You can’t really assume they’re cross-functional.
I told him I’d take a look at them on my computers. First I tried on my Linux machines, but no luck. So I booted up my rarely-used Windows partition, and pretty soon I had both of them working. I had to create partition tables – apparently they shipped without them, but expected Windows to attach to them and create the partition tables, or something like that. Once that was done, I could create partitions on each one and format them. I took them back downstairs and Arthur plugged them into his MacBook and sure enough, they were read fine, now.
Rather than thank me, Arthur complained that they drives weren’t displaying the way that he was used to, in his Mac OS finder tool. He considered this unacceptable – but it’s just a different display – the drives are not functionally different. I suspect they display differently because they’re still Windows formatted (NTFS), rather than generic (FAT32) or Mac format.
Why do I bother?
[daily log: walking, 5km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: Poem #2216 “Midnight surprise”
ㅁ The night was windy. A giant tree-branch fell down and bonked my treehouse.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1309
This tree was in the propinquity of a dog.
[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 8.5hr]
Caveat: Poem #2215 “Sixty-second stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon dreamed that the wind was her friend, Happy to blow through a life near its end. Waking she realized she wasn't yet dead; rising, she went out to see where things led.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Tree #1308
This tree stood aside for a sunrise at 5 AM.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3km; c093061058084s]
Caveat: Poem #2214 “Carpe diem”
ㅁ Seize the day, they say. The day slips out of your grasp. You just do dumb stuff.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1307
This tree was behind a bright red flower that finally realized it could bloom.
Arthur saw his follow-up with the cardiologist, today. Frankly, it was a bit anticlimactic – basically, the message boiled down to: “more data required, meanwhile just monitor things closely.”
The doctor placed a lot of emphasis on introspection – Arthur needs to pay close attention to how his pulse correlates with his general level of energy, his capacity for exertion, etc. Like that’s gonna happen – Arthur isn’t at all introspective (at least, to external appearances). I’m not sure Arthur even understood what the doctor meant in using the word “introspection”. Keep a diary? (The doctor actually suggested that). I had to suppress a snort of cynicism.
Well, to quote a common Arthurism: it will be what it will be.
[daily log: walking, 2.5km; c093051044084s]
Caveat: Poem #2213 “On the road”
ㅁ The night's not so dark. I can walk along the road, maybe notice rocks.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1306
This tree oversaw a dog on a steep hillside.
[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 8.5hr; c096063059084s]
Caveat: Poem #2212 “Now you know”
ㅁ Demonstrative sighs - sighs that call out, "I'm a sigh!" Those sighs annoy me. Sigh.
– a pseudo-haiku with an extra syllable coda.
Caveat: Tree #1305
This tree was there as the dog and I prepared for our walk (picture taken by Penny, dogowner).
[daily log: walking, 5km; dogwalking, 3km; c094056062084s]
Caveat: Poem #2211 “Of course”
ㅁ Peripatetic - given to walking around - I will get nowhere.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1304
This tree faced the sky.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3km; c100065056084s]
Caveat: Poem #2210 “Disappointment”
ㅁ The project was killed by my lack of any skill in the area.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1303
This tree was there as I began work on my new storage shed – let’s call it “studio 2.0”, since the original “studio” was crushed by a giant snowball last winter.
[daily log: walking, 7km; dogwalking, 3km; c103066066084s]
Caveat: Poem #2209 “Exuberance”
ㅁ A fish leapt upward and entered the sky, briefly and then slapped water.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1302
This tree hangs out at the cosmopolitan Frank Peratrovich Airport, just north of Klawock.
We took my other uncle, Alan, to the airport for his return to his home in Colorado, this morning. The skies had cleared remarkably.
[daily log: walking, 8km; dogwalking, 3.5km]
Caveat: Poem #2208 “Waiting”
ㅁ I awoke, midnight I rose and went down the stairs I stood in the dark
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1301
This tree saw the moon through heavy fog at 4:45 AM. It was quite dark, so I got a low-quality photo, but with today’s cameras, it still works out fine.
[daily log: walking, 5.5km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: Poem #2207 “Anthropomorphization”
ㅁ the deer headed up having spent time on the beach worried about bears
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1300
This tree is a guest tree from my past. I took this picture of a sunset looking west on Teheran-no, a major thoroughfare in the trendy Gangnam district in Seoul, in December, 2008.
[daily log: walking, 6km; retailing, 8.5hr]
Caveat: Poem #2206 “A non-event”
ㅁ the black bear was there just loitering on the road when the car came by
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1299
This tree was there before dawn, ready for action.
[daily log: walking, 4.5km; retailing, 8.5hr]
Caveat: Poem #2205 “The visible”
ㅁ at least there's twilight to illuminate the world in vague black and white
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1298
This tree existed among other trees.
[daily log: walking, 6km; dogwalking, 3km]