This tree provides double the usual tree-type entertainment.
I got up extra early and Arthur and I attempted to repair the broken cable pulley at the base of the boat rail. I say “attempted” because I learned that later in the day, Arthur attempted to operate the trolley and the pulley broke again. I came home and found that the eye-bolt we’d used at the base was clearly inadequate to the task.
Meanwhile, I went to work and had an unexpected success: I got the video security camera system working. Apparently, that system has not been working for 12 years or so. Jan said, jokingly: “Impressive, but don’t let that success go to you head.” Fair enough. It was just trial and error, mostly – it turned out the power source for the cameras was faulty, and I solved it by “hijacking” the power source for the recorder box.
[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 6hr]
Category: Banalities & Journaling
Caveat: 단무지
Last week, Jan gave me a Daikon – which is a vegetable popular in China and Korea that resembles a radish.
On Thursday, I made some danmuji (단무지), which is a Korean-style pickled daikon that is a ubiquitous dish in Korean restaurants, often in a jar or on a plate at every table in cheap hole-in-the-wall restaurants. I used to call them “atomic pickles” because of their bright yellow color.
Well with the daikon Jan gave, and my earlier success with radish pickles and cucumber pickles, I decided to attempt some authentic danmuji. I found a recipe, and made some.
It actually came out pretty good. The yellowness comes from turmeric, which has allegedly been linked in recent years with lots of health benefits.
Arthur even ate one.
Caveat: Better Lucky Than Smart
This morning, we took Alan to the airport in Klawock and he headed back home. These are two masked bank-robber brothers at the tiny Klawock airport terminal at 6:15 AM.
Yesterday, we were very lucky. We’d gone in, in the morning, to fetch the boat from the boat service shop. Everything in town went very smoothly. We launched the boat without problem at the public launch, and I drove the Blueberry with boat trailer back home while Alan and Arthur navigated the boat back home. It wasn’t too windy, though it was sporadically rainy.
I got home before they arrived at the dock. I paused my efforts to park the boat trailer – a pretty complicated set of maneuvers involving backing the trailer into position – and ran down to meet them at the dock. I helped get the boat temporarily docked, and then went up to operate the trolley to lower it into the water to get the boat out of the water. We’d timed our trip to town to correspond with the high tide, with this transition in mind.
As the boat trolley was lowering, the pulley at the bottom of the rail snapped off. This was alarming. But it was very, very lucky – because my first thought was: what if the pulley had snapped off after we’d put the boat on the trolley and were raising it out of the water? The cable could have flown around with much more force, for one thing – possibly injuring someone standing nearby. For another thing, the boat and trolley would have been liberated from their cable, and would have rolled without brake or restraint back into the sea. Would we have been able to stop it? No.
That was the first element of luck.
So we paused in our efforts to fetch the boat out of the water. We’ll have to wait for: a) a low tide so we can inspect and work on the lower end of the rail, where the pulley attaches, and b) a chance to go into town to buy a new pulley and whatever other hardware is needed to repair the cable attachment.
Later I went up to finish parking the trailer, I was on the final leg: back the trailer into its slot near the water cistern. And… the left rear wheel came off the trailer. Literally, it just fell off onto the ground.
This was, needless to say, alarming. I stopped my efforts to maneuver the trailer, and Alan and I parked it off to the side of the parking pad by pushing it manually. It’s heavy – but not impossible to shove around with two people.
I was immediately struck by the sheer luck of this event: specifically, the wheel had not come off when the boat was on the trailer, in town. That would have been substantially more disastrous.
So twice, yesterday, Arthur was lucky. Alan pointed out that both failures were instances of a lack of ongoing maintenance. And for that, I feel I bear some blame – but it’s very hard to take on the tasks of ongoing maintenance within Arthur’s domain when: a) he never communicates what those maintenance tasks might be (he’s either forgotten them or he thinks of them but fails to share with me), and b) when he does decide to engage in maintenance, he gets highly annoyed and irritated with me, due to the fact that I don’t already know the procedures and so he insists that he will do it himself because I’m not doing it right. He doesn’t seem to have ever internalized the fact that I don’t actually know all his rules and procedures. Well anyway, that’s neither here nor there… ultimately, collectively, Arthur and I need to be doing more preventative maintenance, and we’ll have to work out how that might happen. This kind of luck can’t go on forever, right?
Today, I began the effort to repair the boat trailer. I removed the other rear wheel and then removed the “axle” – not really an axle, just a beam on which the two wheels are mounted. This will permit us to take the whole assembly into a mechanic in town and try to get the broken wheel repaired. That will have to happen on Monday at the soonest, however.
And we have to wait for a negative tide (not super common) to do the repair work on the boat rail. Meanwhile, the boat is going to have to wait things out, tied up at the dock, cultivating barnacles.
Caveat: Tree #613
Arthur and Alan drove the boat into town, while I took the Tahoe with the boat trailer, so we could pull it out of the water. I took this picture of Arthur and Alan in the boat departing the dock. I was standing on the neighbor’s lot, and the picture prominently includes the burnt tree from the house fire last summer.
Driving into town, I saw a rainbow.
While in town, we saw another.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: Tree #612
This tree has lots of moss.
Arthur announced that we would be taking the boat in for service tomorrow. As usual, the discussions about this must have happened in his head at some point without telling me. The military life: always be ready to jump when they say “jump.”
[daily log: walking, 2.5km]
Caveat: Tree #610
This is a small alder.
A really hard day. I was tangling with Arthur multiple times over the accuracy of his memory versus mine. I really desperately try not to argue about it, but generally by the time I realize it’s going to be a point of contention, I’ve already declared what I think happened, and I’m just not sufficiently wishy-washy to specifically concede a point of my own memory that I have confidence in and that I’ve already staked a claim to.
Specific example: watching a TV episode this evening of the British series George Gently. Arthur asserted that my memory was faulty when I stated that I remembered watching the episode with him last year. He claims that since the episode wasn’t in his on-computer video library (iTunes) until he added it today, there’s no way we could have watched it last year. But he also utterly forgets that in the meanwhile, he completely deleted his video library on his external hard drive (by accident, last year) and subsequently rebuilt it. There were many shows and episodes on the previous version of the library that were “lost.”
Another difficult thing that happened: the house’s fire alarm went off, multiple times. We had no fires, nor even dust or smoke beyond anything normal. Just random stuff. Arthur got extremely angry when I asked him for the manual because I really wanted to turn off the fire alarm, but he had no idea where he might have one. The fire alarms were very loud, and the first time they went off it took 20 minutes to get them turned off (by uninstalling them from their ceiling mountings manually). The second time, we were able to do this faster.
I guess we have a problem. Alan asserts we’d best off going back to an un-networked, battery-powered set of fire alarms. The fact of their being networked makes it almost impossible to troubleshoot as a system. I’m inclined to agree.
I’m just feeling really resentful and angry, right now.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: Town Day
It being Thursday, we went to town to do the weekly shopping, as usual. But with Alan visiting, he came along too, and we ran extra errands and socialized with some people.
One thing we did was we went to visit Richard, who was working on his landing craft. It’s progressed a lot since I last got a tour last year (when I put in a day helping work on it), and obviously even more for Alan, who last saw it in 2017 when he visited up here.
Richard is installing a crane. So he built a shed over the front of it to cover the work area to weld the base area of the crane.
Looking around, I saw a view that felt like a nice addition to my “Alaskan Gothic” theme.
We also stopped by the gift shop, so Alan and Arthur met a few of my coworkers.
Finally, since today is supposed to be the last day of sun for a while (by the sometimes-not-so-accurate weather forecast), Alan helped me replace the tarp covering the GDC.
Caveat: Tree #608
This tree is near my treehouse project.
I saw a raven on a truck in the parking lot after work this afternoon.
I was very tired from work today. Not sure exactly why – I felt the weight of responsibility or something.
[daily log: walking, 2km; retailing, 8hr]
Caveat: Tree #606
I captured this tree’s image because of the fall-hint below and in front of it.
With hardly a summer worth mentioning, fall is upon us.
I spent the day cooking. I made my slightly well-regarded Chilean-style chupe de pescado (fish chowder). I’m not sure what my uncle Alan thought of it, but Arthur has said he likes it a lot.
And for some unfathomable reason, I made a chocolate cake.
Earlier, Alan and I walked out to around 6.5 mile. He’s a much more intensive walker than Arthur is. I should follow his example.
[daily log: walking, 7.5km]
Caveat: Fishing Report #(n+15)
With Alan here, Arthur was motivated to go fishing again, despite continued reports of poor catching.
We left fairly early: away from the dock by 7:30.
The day was clear and the wind was light.
First we went to Port Caldera and tried for halibut. We caught a big ugly orange rock fish, which we decided to keep, though in Arthur’s book it doesn’t count. Then, much to all of our surprise, quite quickly we caught a good-sized halibut. Here’s Alan holding the halibut – it was maybe 30-35 pounds.
After that, we were unable to repeat that luck, so by 9:30 we started trolling for salmon. It was a desultory trolling. We went from Caldera to Port Estrella. A few small black bass, but no salmon at all.
At Port Estrella we tried for halibut again, but there was nothing. We crossed over to San Juan, and trolled from the southeast corner to Black Beach. No salmon there, either. We saw some people camping on the shore there: tents, dogs, a fire going – everything. That was interesting to me. Arthur thought maybe they were hunting deer. The east side of San Juan is native land, so I guess they hopefully had permission to be there. But who knows?
The whole trip, the large motor was behaving oddly. This was not the hiccupping problem we’ve had all summer. It wasn’t something that kicked in when the engine was hot. Instead, right from the start, at high RPMs there would be these irregular surges and pauses – RPM up 100, down 100, up 100. I managed to google the problem on my phone, and everything I could find and read said it was a fuel supply problem, which is also the likely cause of the hiccupping issue. I guess the fuel supply issue is getting worse. Anyway, it didn’t prevent us from using the boat – we could just go more slowly to avoid it, and even with it happening, it didn’t really handicap our ability to get around. It’s just disturbing. Arthur’s stated intention, though, is to get the boat in for service and out of the water before Alan leaves, so it will hopefully get looked at soon.
With Arthur and Alan both on the boat, despite their quite different personalities, they still both remind me of my grandfather (their father Dwight) a lot. It was “stereo Dwight” in some ways. Arthur’s personality is more like Dwight’s, but Alan has more of his mannerisms and his way of talking, if that makes sense. So between them, it feels uncanny sometimes.
Year-to-date totals.
- Coho: 22
- Halibut: 6
- Lingcod: 1
Caveat: Tree #604
In the morning I went on an unexpectedly long walk with my uncle Alan who is visiting here. We went all the way to 11.2 mile on the road.
I saw this tree in front of Sunnahae and said, “I think this would be a good tree but the power pole is in the way. Alan said, “Make it part of the picture.”
Here is Alan discovering that he has cellphone reception down there, because it’s across from the town’s 4G tower.
Then in the afternoon I ended up going in to work for 4 hours. I had to learn more about framing – specifically, we were trying to cut a oversize piece of glass for a custom frame. The glass cutting gadget only goes up to 48 inches. The frame we needed to do was 50 inches wide. It was difficult – we had to cut the glass “by hand” with a straightedge and long rule. I broke one piece.
[daily log: walking, 8km; retailing, 4hr]
Caveat: Tree #603
This tree is down by the water.
Art and I drove to Hollis this evening to collect Alan, Arthur’s brother (another uncle).
[daily log: walking, 3km]
Caveat: Once a year whether it needs it or not
Because the sun was out, I decided I should wash the GDC. I had taken off the tarp covering it, last month, thinking there would be summer sun to bake out some of the mold and moss beginning to grow on it. But with the gray and rainy August we had, it just got greener. So with the sun out, unexpectedly, today, I decided it was time.
I drove it up to the upper parking area next to the greenhouse, and washed it with a soft scrub brush and soapy water and the hose off the well.
A stellar jay came by, apparently interested in the undertaking.
After the GDC was clean (or, um, cleaner, anyway), I decided to wash the Blueberry, too. Although to be frank, that’s a sisyphean task – one commute into town will have it well-coated in gray grime again.
Caveat: Rockpit Resort Dinner Party
Arthur finally got around to wanting to host one of his patented Rockpit “Mexican Feeds”. He made his signature dishes: chiles rellenos, chicken verde, and refried beans. Jeff and Pam and Jan and Richard came over and we ate and Richard told stories, as he does.
In the picture, from left to right, you see Arthur, Pam, Jeff, Jan and Richard. I’m behind the camera.
Caveat: Purple Screen of Death
I’ve been feeling a bit out of sorts, lately – hard to pinpoint why.
So I decided to plunge myself into computer issues. Perhaps there’s something of my uncle in me, right? I started trying to build a “development box” using my old laptop that brought with me from Korea. It’s not (and never was) a very good computer. But I’m not looking for performance, here – just a separate machine where I can try to run things without messing up my main computer (which is the HP “Lemon” I bought in 2018 – a laptop, too, but with a useless battery and some other issues, but which I have repurposed as a desktop Linux computer and works fine as that).
The Korean laptop is a 2009 “XNote” – whatever brand that is. It had been running “Windows 7 Korean”, which was a hassle because Microsoft doesn’t let you simply change languages in an operating system: you have to pay them first, as if you were buying a new operating system. This is true despite the fact that the data to support such a change is already inside the computer. So for all those years, I had to cope with error messages and applications running in Korean. I suppose it was a good way to learn some Korean, but it was stressful when you have to get something done and you get an error message and you have to break out the dictionary to figure out what’s wrong.
Anyway, I had set up linux (ubuntu 18.04) a few months ago, deleting the Korean Windows altogether. So now I ambitiously set out to replicate on this little laptop the same configuration I run on my server (the one that lives in a California “server farm” where this blog and all my mapping websites live). This is possible, as long as one isn’t concerned about speed and performance issues.
But I messed something up. I was trying to install Ruby – a programming language environment used for some of the mapping website software – and got stuck on a permissions problem. These are very common in linux, which has a pretty arcane and strict system of file permissions. In trying to repair that problem, I broke the operating system – certain files require certain permissions, or the whole apparatus comes tumbling down. I lost the ability to run root-level commands (called “sudo” in ubuntu) and furthermore, on reboot, the system hung before fully loading. End of operating system.
Microsoft’s Windows was famous for many, many years for presenting a “Blue Screen of Death” when it crashed. This was called the BSOD, and was more common than anyone liked. Well Ubuntu linux has its own BSOD, except it’s more a dark purple rather than blue. And it’s even less informative than Microsoft’s version.
So I had to start over. Tomorrow I go to work. I might not now make progress on this project until Thursday or Friday.
Caveat: Tree #584
This is another of my “pile of rocks” pictures that happens to have a tree in it.
It’s been my turn to suffer some computer problems. Not sure quite what: seems like I’ve just gotten my hard drive too full and need to clean house. I get upset when Arthur has his computer problems – but I see that as being because of how he starts cussing and carrying on about it. I try to remain more calm, but there’s no denying it can put one out of sorts.
[daily log: walking, 2.5km]
Caveat: Tree #582
This tree caught some rays.
[daily log: walking, 1.5km]
Caveat: Tree #581
I found a forest of 2-inch-tall alders.
I made some progress on the treehouse. I finished the cables to the new bolt in the eastern tree. I tightened them up and got the eastern support beam lifted off the bolt under its center. Because it was windy, this produced an impressive result: the eastern end of the treehouse platform began to swing, ever so slightly, back and forth. But the corner cables remained taut, so the platform felt securely anchored. I felt pleased with the result.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: Tree #579
This is the eastern tree of the two treehouse trees, now with its new “upper bolt” holding the cables. I think this works much better – anyway the platform now feels more securely anchored to the trees.
[daily log: walking, 2.5km; retailing, 8hr]
Caveat: Tree #578
This alder is growing in the middle of Arthur’s “yard” (moss garden) – near the corner of where my storage tent had been positioned for my first year here.
I made some progress on the treehouse today – drilling my last hole and putting in the last giant lag bolt, to hook up the suspension cables down to the corners.
Tomorrow, I will go to work.
[daily log: walking, xkm]
Caveat: Fishing Report #(n+12)
We left by 7:20. The weather forecast wasn’t great, but it was the best of upcoming days, so I thought we should try. In fact, the weather was better than forecast, with flat water and very little wind. But it was overcast and kept trying to rain, and by the time we got home it was raining steadily.
We went out to Black Beach at the north end of San Juan first. We trolled down the east side of San Juan. Then we crossed from San Juanito (the southeast corner of San Juan) over to Tranquil Point, where we’d had so much luck two outings ago. We trolled westward to Port Estrella. We never caught anything but some tiny black bass, which Arthur threw back. Arthur said he had one bigger fish hooked right against Joe Island, but it apparently got away.
We tried for halibut in Port Estrella for about 30 minutes. Some other boats were there, but it wasn’t obvious they were catching anything either. No fish were being hauled on board the other boats, that we could see.
We returned to trolling, and circled Port Estrella a few times and then headed back along the shore back to Tranquil Point. Still nothing.
At 1 PM, we gave up and went to the fuel dock just north of Craig, to fill up the tank. Then we went home, watching the boat’s weirdly asynchronous windshield wipers in the steady rain and contemplating the moods of fish. We were fishless.
Year-to-date totals.
- Coho: 21
- Halibut: 1
- Lingcod: 1
Here is a small island just off Point Providence on the western tip of a peninsula of Prince of Wales Island, at Port Estrella.
When we got home, after cleaning the boat I walked up along the road in the rain and found some huckleberries and blueberries up in the shrubberies south of the road.
Caveat: Truce with the GDC
I went to do my monthly exercises with the GDC (the RV that my friends Mark and Amy brought to me about a year ago, now). I was a week or so late, so I went out and ran the engine for while, ran the heater for a while, changed its parking spot.
When I went to run the generator, the generator wouldn’t start. So I set out to try to diagnose the problem. It seemed the battery was dead.
I took out the battery, brought it over to the house and charged it up and took it back. But still, the generator wouldn’t start. I worried the starter was bad on it. So I ran an extension cord over and tried jumping the generator directly from the charger (I had thought to jump it from the engine, but the generator and its battery are electrically separate from the engine and its battery, and it’s actually a long ways around the vehicle from engine battery to generator battery, so jumper cables were ruled out).
Jumping directly from the charger worked! So that means, it’s just that the generator battery is dead and can’t hold a charge. Annoying, but easy enough to fix, using money. I’ll get a new battery at some point.
Meanwhile, the GDC and I have signed a truce until next month, when we will wage a battle of wills once again.
What I’m listening to right now.
Bronson, “Keep Moving.” I mostly like the video. It’s kinda interesting. Still, the music has a kind of a “nightclub minimalism” vibe going.
Lyrics.
[Chorus]
I can see how it moves
Don’t be afraid
I can see how it moves
Blackout again
I can see how it moves
Don’t be afraid
I can see how it moves
Blackout again
Yeah okay, blackout
[Chorus]
Go ahead
Keep moving
Go ahead
Don’t be afraid
Yeah okay, blackout
Go ahead
Go ahead
Go ahead
Go ahead
Yeah okay, blackout
[Outro]
Blackout again
Caveat: Fishing Report #(n+11)
Thursday isn’t a normal fishing day. Thursday is supposed to be shopping day. But now that I’m working Tuesday and Wednesday, I think Arthur felt some weird impatience about going out fishing. It’s odd – I suspect strongly that if I hadn’t worked Tuesday and yesterday, he’d not have had any interest in fishing today. But he may have felt some weird pressure to “make use of me” when I wasn’t working, now that I’m working, however limited my schedule. I don’t know.
We left the house at around 7:20 – pretty early. We motored out to Port Caldera, because Arthur was suddenly gung-ho to try for halibut. But as happens every time we try for halibut, after about 20 minutes he got impatient – halibut fishing requires more patience because unlike trolling for salmon, for halibut you just hold the boat still, put your baited hook on the bottom of the sea and wait. And wait.
No bites.
So after that, we pulled up the halibut hooks and began trolling for salmon. We trolled all along the shore from Port Caldera past Tranquil Point, which is where we’d hit the jackpot last time we went fishing. But this time, no luck. And worse, there was a net seiner at Tranquil, scooping up fish with a net. I guess that requires a special license and all that, but it sure takes the fun out of sport fishing. You just watch all the salmon jumping trying to get out of the net as it closes in around them, but they will be caught – probably hundreds in a single scoop.
I took a picture. It’s hard to see, but the idea is there’s the main boat, on the left, and a little skiff, like a motorized bathtub, on the right (right up tight against the shore, there), and a giant underwater net stretched out between them. Then the main boat and the skiff parallel each other and close their ends off, and all the fish between are scooped up. You can embiggen the picture some by clicking on it.
We caught no fish in our prior hotspot – the net took them all, maybe.
We motored over to the southwest corner of San Juan, and tried trolling up the west side (not sure I’ve ever done that before with Arthur). No luck there, either. And there was a very irate fisherman anchored there halfway up the west side, who seemed to take great umbrage that we got within 200 yards of his boat – he was leaping up and down on his deck, yelling at us to get away. Neither Arthur nor I could identify what possible offense we might be causing – he was clearly anchored and not in motion, he had no lines in the water we could even make out, which would be the main concern, that someone would foul some lines if you had them in the water. Well, who knows?
Arthur lost heart after that. We motored home, and got home around 1 pm. We were skunked.
Year-to-date totals:
- Coho: 21
- Halibut: 1
- Lingcod: 1
Since it was Thursday, we went ahead and did the shopping in town later in the afternoon. Arthur was quite exhausted.
When we got home from shopping, I noticed the real-estate guy sitting in the lot next door, which has been for sale these past few months. And he told me the lot had sold. I was surprised – it had seemed overpriced, to me. Anyway, if you’d been planning to surprise me by buying the lot and becoming my neighbor, I hate to say, but you lost your chance.
Caveat: Sasquatches!
In my new job, I am working in retail. So I get to talk to customers.
A man came in the store today and told a breathless, insistent story about a family of sasquatches that live near a sandy beach northeast of Thorne Bay, on the island. I tried to listen empathetically. He talked about how they never bother any one. How they have their own language, “not quite human.” Then that segued (somehow) to how the government took his land, long ago.
He bought a trinket for his granddaughter.
Caveat: Tree #570
This is a tree which I happened to see.
In other news – I “bit the bullet” today. A part-time job was offered at the Alaska Gift shop – one of the places I’d applied at some months ago, before the advent of COVID. Apparently one of the other part-timers there just quit, so Jan called me and made the offer, and I drove to town and filled in the paperwork and met the store’s owners. It’s just an entry-level retail job, such as I worked to put myself through college, at the bookstore in Minneapolis. I will be working Tuesdays and Wednesdays. We’ll see how things work out.
I could argue that it makes me feel young: “starting over” at age 55. But what to do? The teaching concept seems unlikelier by the day, up here, and … I’d rather work “dead end” retail than try to sell myself as some kind of “Telecommuting” IT person, which is the main alternative, if a job must be had.
In yet other news, my garden is growing a few beets. I decided to try an experiment, and made some pickled beets, yesterday. Arthur and I had some with dinner, this evening. They taste pretty okay.
[daily log: walking, 1km; retailing, 4hr]
Caveat: Stuck in the tree
A few days ago, I got a drill bit stuck in the tree, while working on the treehouse project.
It took me a lot of time and tedious effort to get it out. I tried chisels, vice grips, and finally, I used a smaller drill bit at an angle, around the edges of the stuck drill bit, to dig it out of the tree.
Then I completed the hole and installed the giant lag bolt, so I could hang two cables from it instead of wrapping the suspension cables around the tree, as had been my original plan. I decided to change that plan for two reasons: 1) several people felt I might “strangle” the tree over time with wrapped cables, and insisted it was less damaging to the tree to just put a big hole in it; 2) it was quite difficult to adjust the tension with the tree-wrapped method, because the cable might slip in small increments along the trunk of the tree.
Here is the stuck drill bit. It was really buried in there and wouldn’t even wiggle.
Here is the liberated hole.
Here is the giant lag bolt going in.
Here is the final configuration, with the two cables down to the corners.
Indeed, I am pleased with the new result. The cables have good, even tension and are easy to adjust.
Now I have to do the other tree.
Caveat: Mosquito Epic
Not what you think. Though I have been dealing with mosquitoes, lately.
I was waxing nostalgic this morning, because while doing some routine maintenance on this here blog thingy™, I ran across this unexpectedly well-made video I put together while sitting in a hotel room in Japan in September, 2009 (below). The music aspect is from a kids musical about a mosquito that I had seen earlier that year, starring one of my students.
It occurs to me that most of these students are finished with college, now. I know this for a fact, as I’m still in touch with a few of them.
What I’m listening to right now.
Music: 극단 날으는 자동차, “워워워 (지구를 지켜라 : 100살 모기 소송사건).” Video by me. This is a re-post, but 11 years later.
Caveat: Fishing Report #(n+10)
We started much later than usual, because we hadn’t planned on going. The weather report last night said it would windy and rainy. When I got up and looked out at 6, it was sunny and calm. So I re-checked the weather, and the forecasters had changed their minds. When Arthur got up at his normal time – around 830 – I suggested today might be a good day for fishing, after all.
So we left by around 930.
We went first to San Juan Island, where we’d had luck last Friday.
Today, we had no luck there. Zero nibbles.
But it was nice and calm. We motored south to near Tranquil Point, on the Prince of Wales mainland there. We had noted some other boats trolling along the coast, and thought maybe they knew something we didn’t.
I guess maybe they did. We put our hooks in just west of Tranquil, and within a minute, we had a bite. And so we circled around there, about 5 orbits in total, and landed 9 coho.
Arthur was pleased. Until we got home, and he had to butcher and clean and package all his fish. Then he was grumpy. I refuse to help in this process, because whenever I try to do something related to fish butchery or preservation, he hovers at my shoulder and tells me I’m doing everything wrong.
But I went down and cleaned the boat, and then I harvested some lettuce from the greenhouse, and then I found a few blueberries to pluck.
Year-to-date totals:
- Coho: 21
- Halibut: 1
- Lingcod: 1
Here are nine bloody fishies in the holding tank in the back of the boat.
Caveat: Fishing Report #(n+9)
We got a fairly early start, leaving the dock at exactly 7 am.
The weather called for summery skies, no wind. All was smooth and calm but the skies were starting to cloud over. You could feel that the weather would shift – a storm (wind and rain) was forecast for tomorrow.
But our start was inauspicious. We had planned to go out to Ulitka – the north end of Noyes Island. That’s pretty far. Forty minutes into our cruise out there, at the eastern end of the San Cristobal Channel, the motor started that stuttering problem we’ve had.
Since the motor never completely dies when it does this, we didn’t feel it merited completely scrubbing our mission, but we decided that, in case things did go wrong with the big motor, not to go so far out. We turned south and decided to fish off San Juan Island instead.
In fact, it turned out to be a good decision – there were actual fish biting actual hooks off San Juan.
The first two that we hooked and reeled in we lost, though. Arthur was being stubborn about trying to pull the fish aboard on the line, instead of using the net to scoop them out of the water and onto the boat. After he lost the second one, I gently suggested, again, that we try the net, and he relented. After that, we hooked two more in rapid succession off Black Beach (the northeast corner of San Juan) and pulled them into the boat using the net without any problems.
We trolled around the little bay at Black Beach a few more times, and when no more fish bit, we moved down the east side of San Juan. We hooked three more at wide intervals down the east side. We rounded the southeast corner, at San Juanito, and Arthur decided to try trolling back up, rather than continuing around the island to the west.
We caught no more fish. We decided when we got up to Black Beach that the fish we’d caught must have been “morning fish,” since as the day aged, the fish had lost interest.
We headed home at around 12:30. From Black Beach to our dock is only 26 minutes cruising at 19 knots, so we didn’t give the big motor time to get hot and start its stuttering games. It is a bit anxiety-producing when it happens, and I’m not sure what Arthur will want to do about it, over the longer term. For now, we might just limit our fishing outings to itineraries where we can limit the continuous cruise time on the big motor to shorter periods. This avoids the issue without solving it, as long as the problem doesn’t get worse.
Longer term, we probably need to get the big motor serviced. As said, this will be a drawn-out operation, which normally Arthur prefers to do only once a year: haul the boat out of the water at the public dock in Craig, use the trailer to take it to the boat store, wait a week or two… reverse the process.
Year-to-date totals:
Coho: 12
Lingcod: 1
Halibut: 1
Here is a picture of San Juanito, a well-named tiny sibling of San Juan Island off the southeastern corner of the island. I think it maybe only has 50 trees on it. It would be a nice spot for a gazillionaire to build a getaway fortress. I think it’s not forest service land, but owned by the Shaan-Seet (local Haida tribe).
Caveat: Now, furnished
Well, not really.
I put a chair on the temporary deck of my treehouse. I can sit in it to rest or to contemplate my next step.
I’m still not happy with the cables at the four corners. I’m going to reengineer those.
Meanwhile, today was shopping day. And we had to retrieve the allegedly-repaired freezer, and get it back down the three floors from the driveway level to the boathouse. That was a lot of work. Now I’m tired.
I’ve been on a kick listening to Korean rap. Korean pop is called kpop. Korean rap must be krap. But I like it.
What I’m listening to right now.
소현성 (KOR KASH), “그게 바로 나.” A note on the “English” phrase “i see bar” in the lyrics below: what is meant is the Korean phrase “씨발” [ssi-bal], which means “fuck!” Putting it in “English” gets it past the internet censors for the website that is publishing the lyrics.
가사.
그게 바로 나
입에 커피와 담배를 달어
쌓이고 또 쌓이고 쌓일수록
가사장이 빼곡해지고있어
이게 이제 내 돈이 될 수도
누가알아 누가 나를 점쳐
폰세 밀려도 여유가 넘쳐
행보는 행복의 손을 덥썩
팩폭 팍파라 퍽퍽퍽퍽퍽!
그게 바로 나
되는 대로 힘을 내 노래 쏟아 다
랩퍼새끼들은 한다는 말만 무한
반복을 돌렸어 안믿어 난
하루도 안뱉음 돋아버려 가시
하다말다 하다말다 하지 가지가지
난 욕 보는 중 i see bar
욕 보는 중 i see bar
지칠 때 쯤에 쇼미 나가 깔짝
빛을 보긴 봤지 끽해 라이타
내가 겨우 겨우 잠깐 반짝
할거라 생각한다면 착각
왜냐면 힙합은 오랜 단짝
이제 나도 나이값 나이값
나가 앞으로 빨리 넘겨버려 다음 장
too fast 우사인볼트도 당황
woo i’m the fresha casha mtf baby
woo i’m the fresha casha mtf baby
wait 이제 멋진 형님들께서 내 얘기해
wait 그게 아니 꼽다면 나랑 내기해
i’m on the fuckin dope beat ay
i’m on a purple boi beat ay
느낌이 뒤져서 코피 ay
내 랩을 얹혀서 죽이지 ay
짬내 풍겨 던져 더블백
이제서 얼음땡
소현성 걸을 때
돈 짤랑대는 소리는
이제는 못들어도 full pocket
인생은 거룩해
시궁창 to the 꼭대기
쥐새끼 뛰 놀던 3평짜리 방한칸 gutter boi
1차는 세번을 절어도 목걸일 걸었죠
느낌이 다르지 똑같이 랩해도
이젠 know 걔네도
다른 일 알아봐 각각
내비둬 남자가 없나봐 갑빠
날 기다리지마 brr bye bye
Caveat: Fishing Report #(n+8)
We set out fairly early, though not as early as last time. We left the dock at just after 7 AM. Interestingly, Arthur was actually somewhat reluctant to go – I had to convince him that today was a good day to go because of the weather forecast. Arthur was anxious about the freezer problem – we don’t have a “spare” freezer, since we’d taken it to be (hopefully? maybe) repaired on Monday. I only commented, “Too many fish for our freezer is a problem we should be glad to have.”
The sky was blue and cloudless, the water was flat like a mirror – all day, except some bumpiness out at the open ocean.
We went first to San Ignacio, and trolled the east side from north to south. All we found was a single miniscule black bass.
So we pulled in the lines and set out for Siketi. We trolled through the channel there, and a caught a fish right off the reef just west of that channel. It was a medium-sized coho. We kept trolling westward to the east side of Noyes, and down to the opening into the ocean there, and crossed and trolled up the west side of Cone Island – which I don’t recall ever having tried before. We caught nothing and so we crossed back over to where we’d caught the one, and trolled eastward through the same area.
But no more fish. Finally, we decided to stop at around 12:20, and motored back home.
We had the engine-hiccupping problem in Bucareli halfway across – about the 50 minute mark on running the big motor, but the fuel tank was still almost full. The engine hiccupped again halfway up Port Saint Nicholas. It’s a mystery what it is, to both of us. I revved the motor to full throttle for a while, hoping to provoke another hiccup, but no such luck. The problem is completely un-reproducible, which makes it hard to diagnose.
We got home.
Year-to-date totals:
- Coho: 7
- Halibut: 1
- Lingcod: 1
I had started borscht this morning before leaving, so we have some borscht for dinner. Relatedly, after getting back, I found a beet in my garden. I should have checked earlier, it could have gone in the borscht.
Caveat: mutely mute
I had a problem with my new phone that I might have solved. My diagnosis isn’t 100% – I could have misunderstood what I figured out. But it was puzzling, and I was unable to find any clear description or solution in online searches, so I thought I would provide my experience for future googlesearchers.
The new phone I bought is a Blackview BV5500. This is a Chinese knock-off brand – I bought it because I wanted something cheap, and I figured I could sacrifice on matters of quality for now. For the most part, Android-platformed smartphones are so commodified at this point that there isn’t much difference between the many different models and makes. Still, in terms of those sacrifices, I would say the most noticeable is battery life. While my 4-year-old Samsung Galaxy 7 still had an amazing battery life (about 36 hours at regular usage levels) and superfast recharging (full recharge from 2% battery in about 90 minutes), this new phone seems to have about 6-8 hours life at regular usage levels and recharging is quite slow. Anyway. That’s the difference between an $800 sticker price and a $200 sticker price.
The other issue I have is what you might call UI design – not at the Android level (operating system) but at the physical device level. There are only two buttons, and they are placed closely together on the right edge. I really valued the “home” button on the bottom front of my old Samsung.
Where this UI problem came to fore, however, was in the problem I had yesterday and today. Somehow, yesterday, my phone’s basic “phone call” function became mute. That is, I could place calls, but I could neither receive nor transmit sound. I kept testing this, over and over, by calling the house phone (landline) here. The calls were connecting, the landline would ring, but there was no sound on the smartphone. The speaker, and the “speakerphone” speaker (a different speaker), and headphones, and mic, were all mute. But there was nothing in the settings to indicate that anything was muted, no icon, no control, and call volume was set to normal. It was like the speaker and mic had simply been turned off. But it was only for making “regular” calls. Skype calling worked fine. Other media applications worked fine.
The best I could find online was some hint that there was a mute function that could be invoked by pushing both the buttons on the side at once. This was not included in the documentation that came with the phone. And I kept pushing those two buttons, but it wasn’t seeming to change the behavior of the phone-calling application.
I tried so many things. I installed a separate “dialer app” – but its behavior was no different from the native app. I reinstalled a bunch of stuff. I did a full factory reset of the phone. No luck. So not only was the Blackview BV5500’s phone calling app unable to make sound – mute – it was mute about it its muteness, so-to-speak.
I finally got lucky – I pushed the two buttons at once while I was in the process of attempting a phone call. Suddenly, it was working fine.
My hypothesis, based on this behavior, is that the “mute” function invoked by pushing those two buttons at once is “hardware-based.” It doesn’t reside in the operating system – that’s why the factory reset didn’t help. But that “mute” function is only accessible when a call is in progress. The device is “hardware-aware” of that – which makes sense. So the only way to “push the button again” is to do so while a call is in progress.
I could be wrong about this. I was messing with a lot of settings trying to find one that would make a difference, and I wasn’t systematically testing between each little adjustment. But my hypothesis is the only one that makes sense – both in how the problem arose (it arose when fat-fingering the phone to make a call while trying to do something else at the same time), and in how it finally resolved.
I’m mostly writing this for is someone tries to google this problem with their Blackview phone in the future, that they might have a possible solution.
I will now return you to your regularly-scheduled tree / poem / banality.
Caveat: Tree #557
I was starting to get used to my new phone but I’m having a problem with it. It works great as a portable internet device and camera, but the “actual phone” (making or receiving voice calls on my AT&T plan) has some kind of problem that is proving difficult to solve.
I saw this tree from my treehouse.
[daily log: walking, 2km; carrying a freezer uphill, 50m]