The large freezer, over 20 years old, seems to have broken.
Arthur has been anxious about it, so finally today we contacted a repair guy in Craig, who wasn’t optimistic but said he’d take a look. Of course, that means getting it into town. Which means getting it up the hill from the lowest level (the boathouse) to the driveway. That’s going up 3 storeys. I happen to have a furniture dolly, so we used that. It can go over the steps – tug, strain, pull, pause – and doesn’t struggle too much with the gravel.
We fit it into the back of the Blueberry – just barely – and took it to town. The guy will look at it and see what’s wrong and maybe recharge the freon if it’s not leaking.
My personal opinion is that this is a lot of effort and it’s unlikely the freezer will be repairable for less than acquiring a new one. But I am trying to keep my unsolicited opinions to myself – arguing with Arthur is frequent and too easy, already, if I limit myself to solicited opinions.
When we got back from town, I worked on the temporary deck for my treehouse. This is not meant to be a permanent deck – it’s just a bunch of scrap 2x’s laid across the beams so I can move around up there. I need to work on upgrading the cable attachments at each corner.
Category: Banalities & Journaling
Caveat: The Narcissistic Device
I got my new phone this morning. I forced it to take a self-portrait. It only saw itself, at infinite regress.
It will take me a while to get everything figured out on it. But it seems quite acceptable. I’m pleased so far, despite the horrible-of-horribles that is the AT&T “customer care” system. I have been on hold for more than a cumulative hour, and so far I have spoken to no human – instead, they eventually just cut me off and force me to start over.
Caveat: Fishing Report #(n+7)
Personally I felt this trip was ill-omened, because instead of any kind of back-and-forth discussion between Arthur and me over when we would go next, Arthur simply imperiously announced, last night, “So we are going fishing tomorrow.” It’s just another example of his recent imperiousness in matters of communication, I guess. It meant I was grumpy, starting out.
Arthur got up quite early – around 5 AM, which is also when I normally get up. I found him already up when I went into the kitchen to get my oatmeal. But he futzed around with his anxiety with respect to a freezer malfunction and we only finally left at 6:30.
The weather was supposed to be light wind and no rain, and it cooperated in that respect. The swells at the open ocean felt quite substantial, but that was forecast too.
We drove the boat directly out to east side of Noyes Island just west of Siketi, where we’d caught the two coho on our last trip. We trolled through the channel and down along the east side of Noyes at Saint Nicholas Channel. We caught one quite small coho and one small black bass. We ventured into the open ocean south of the channel, but the swells made me uncomfortable and I could tell Arthur was struggling keeping his footing as he deployed the downriggers, though he’d never have admitted it.
We trolled back up alongside Noyes, back and forth over the spot where we’d had success the other day, until the low tide had come. Nothing more.
So we went to San Ignacio (which is on the way back, anyway). The commercial fleet was still there, as they’d been the previous few times. I theorized that it was because it was where they were being allowed to fish, and not necessarily because that’s where the fish were. The commercial boats are often restricted by regulation to smallish areas. Arthur said he hadn’t thought of that – his tone said that meant it wasn’t worth thinking of.
But I saw a lot of sonar fish (I’m never sure if they’re really fish, but their shape/size/movement on the under-boat sonar always make me think they’re fish). So maybe there were some fish here. We trolled all the way down the east side of San Ignacio to the southern end, and back up. We caught a tiny black bass. Finally, Arthur landed a fairly substantial coho at around 1:45, back up at the northeast corner of the island.
Because we needed to get fuel, we decided that despite that unexpected success, we should pull in and head back.
We had a stuttering engine problem – which we’ve had before, sporadically. I always feel like it seems like vapor lock or some kind of fuel supply problem. When we have it, it’s always much more likely when the tank on the boat is low. It was much worse this time. It was like the boat was running out of fuel. The indicator was at a quarter tank. But maybe that’s not very accurate? We had brought along the 5 gallon extra fuel, so we added that to the tank. We still had the stuttering problem, on the way in to the dock.
We got our fuel. The fuel dock was busy – the sports fishermen are out in force, COVID be damned. I feel a lot of anxiety about parking the boat at the fuel dock when there are other boats – I don’t feel like I have enough experience to be particularly competent, and I worry about offending the other boaters with my bad driving skills. It’s hard to slot yourself in to a spot at the dock when other boats are tied up there.
We got fuel and headed home. The engine ran smooth for about 20 minutes and we were feeling optimistic that the stuttering problem had been entirely an issue related to the tank being low. Perhaps the fuel pump had trouble getting fuel when it was low? But then the engine stuttered when we were within one mile. This is the most common place to experience the stuttering problem, in the past – enough so that Joe once called it our “Bermuda Triangle.”
It’s annoying, because neither Arthur nor I have any idea what causes the problem, and since it’s sporadic, it’s very hard to take it to a mechanic and have them diagnose it. Not to mention that taking the boat to the mechanic is a very major ordeal, requiring taking the boat out of the water and putting it on the trailer.
I left Arthur to butcher the fish and I went up to water the garden. I don’t like being around when he butchers the fish. When he was done, I walked back down to the dock and washed the boat. Arthur seemed surprised that I was going to wash the boat, despite the fact that I always wash the boat, and I had told him when we’d docked that I would come back down later to wash the boat.
Year-to-date totals:
- Coho: 6
- Halibut: 1
- Lingcod: 1
Coda
During this trip, I had resolved to not bother talking except when spoken to directly – because we spend most of our time in a communication no-man’s-land, between my spontaneous statements and his refusal to listen or care what I have to say. I mostly stuck to this resolve, so I was quite taciturn I suppose. Arthur didn’t seem to care. And the few times when my resolve failed and I did say something spontaneous… each and every time, they began with “what?” (because unless he himself has immediately asked me a question, he isn’t paying attention), and ended with a dispute about some factual aspect or another of what I was trying to say. Trivial things:
“That boat is towing something, a raft or skiff,” I said. I had been watching the boat for a while, and had seen the two from the side. It was evident to me.
“What?”
I repeated my exact words, more slowly. Then he said, “What boat?” He scanned the horizon for a while. “No. The black thing is in front of the boat.”
“I saw it earlier. It’s towing,” I explained.
“Maybe. If you say so.” An almost resentful tone.
The trip was exhausting: not physically, for me, but emotionally. Not because it’s a fishing trip, but because 10 continuous hours cooped up with Arthur in our communicative purgatory is taxing.
Caveat: Unheard, Unspoken
Arthur has some incipient deafness, but he’s somewhat in denial about it. It makes it hard to tell him things – it feels as if everything ends up being repeated. But it doesn’t help that he constantly has his audiobooks running (I suppose he likes those because he can plug in the ear buds and turn up the volume, which allows him to feel like he hears things just fine?). So there are attentional issues. But above and beyond even that, even when he does pay attention and he does understand what I’ve said, I struggle with the frustrating fact that he doesn’t seem care what I have to say. He will regularly interrupt me in the middle of an explanation with a non sequitur, and he will outright argue with or reject any advice that runs counter to his preconceived way that something must be done. Several times a day, I mutter to myself “I should just shut up.”
I have lately found myself intensely fantasizing that my cancer surgery had left me unable to talk – this had had a very high chance of being literally true, and I miraculously beat the odds in the fact that I regained my full, unimpaired ability to talk. It feels like it would be easier, and I wouldn’t have the temptation to communicate when it is so utterly pointless and frustrating to try.
I mostly talk to the world around me – the plants, birds, trees, rocks. They listen.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: Fishing Report #(n+6)
We went out fishing today.
It started overcast and drizzly, just like our last trip, last Saturday. But instead of keeping that up all day, it cleared up nicely. And the seas were calm and almost glassy on our way out.
We trolled along San Ignacio from south to north (for a change – we normally do the other direction). No fish.
We went out Siketi, and trolled there. Nothing until we’d gone through the channel between Cone Island and Lulu Island, and were in the confusingly-named Saint Nicholas Channel (confusing because we live at Port Saint Nicholas, 15 miles to the east).
There, amid tide-roiled waters and a brisk wind from the open sea to the south, we caught a black bass and two coho. Arthur was pleased. We also tangled our propeller in some kelp. Arthur was displeased. These things happened in no particular order.
And then we came home.
Arthur gets grumpy when he cuts up the fish. I’m terrified to even offer to help, because every time I have attempted to assist with fish-butchery, he gets very controlling and perfectionistic and he makes clear that I can do nothing right. So I leave it to him, even though it makes him grumpy.
Year-to-date totals:
- Coho: 4
- Halibut: 1
- Lingcod: 1
[daily log: walking, .5km; boating, 40km]
Caveat: Tromping for Berries
When I walk up on the hillside, away from the road and driveways, I call it “tromping.” It’s not much like walking. The ground is steep and there are precarious holes, fallen logs, thick, damp underbrush that never dries out. It’s more like a constantly controlled fall than a walk.
I had this idea that I could find some berries up in there.
There were a few, but in fact most of the berries seem to be along the road. Probably the opening in the underbrush created by the road gives the berries a place to thrive.
I found just a few handfuls of berries, despite a full circumnavigation of lot 73.
[daily log: walking, 1km; tromping, 700m]
Caveat: Rearranging the deck
… rather than “rearranging the deck chairs…” (“… on the Titanic,” to complete the aphorism).
Which is to say, I was working on the treehouse project. I’ve got a sort of temporary deck on the west portion, now – just some 2-by’s (2×4, 2×6, 2×8) laid across the four beams that stretch from tree to tree. I then stood on this deck, feeling a bit precarious, while I hung the cable on the west tree and attached it to the two corners of the western support.
It would be easier to explain with a picture, I suppose. But no.
Another drizzly day. And I tired myself out, going up and down the ladder, pushing boards around.
[daily log: walking, 2.5km]
Caveat: Fishing Report #(n+5)
Art and I went out in the boat today. Joe went fishing too – but not on our boat, rather, on some other friend’s boat. No report yet as to how he made out.
The weather was predicting drizzle and light wind. That’s about accurate, the only piece that was maybe off was that the swells on the southwestern exposures were broad and maybe 3-4 feet. It drizzled or rained the whole time.
We got launched without problem by 7:45, but then realized about a mile west of home that Arthur had forgotten his cellphone and fishing license. Since I don’t have a phone I felt more strongly that Arthur should have his, and of course, the fishing license is a good idea. So we turned around, re-docked (I think it was a good docking, smooth and gentle), and Arthur went into the house to get those things.
We re-launched at 8:05 and cruised through the misty rain out to Siketi Bay. We trolled along the south shore of Lulu Island, hooked one Coho salmon that got away, and then landed another moderately-sized one. We turned around and trolled through Paloma Passage back into the Marina Real channel. We saw a salmon jumping in the water, but no more catches. We went back east to the north end of San Ignacio Island. There were lots of commercial boats there, and we trolled down the east side of the island. We got to the southeast corner and the large swells from the south were making me nervous, so Arthur and I agreed to not proceed along the south side of the island. We turned around and trolled back northward. No more luck catching, though right at the end, back at the northeast corner, Arthur landed a tiny Coho, which we returned to the sea “to grow up some more.” We pulled our downriggers out at around 1:45 and came back home. It was very drizzly and misty, that meant calm winds so the docking was again very smooth.
I was tired when we got home, but I had dried another batch of salmonberries, and found some fresh blueberries down between the kitchen and the sea, and so I ambitiously made another berry cobbler. It came out much nicer than my first effort; I think drying out the berries helped a lot in reducing the liquid content.
Then after dinner when Art and I were watching TV, the power went out. So this is posted a bit late.
Year-to-date totals:
- Coho: 2
- Halibut: 1
- Lingcod: 1
[daily log: walking, 1km; boating, 35km]
Caveat: The Continued Bootstrap Operation
Which is to say, I put in some hours on my treehouse project, today. Each step takes a long time, working alone. Today I worked on setting a kind of temporary deck on joists of the treehouse floor, where I can stand while I take the next steps in attaching the cables to the corners of the platform. It feels very precarious up there, as there are currently only two solid anchors – one large lag bolt at each tree. I needed to hoist a 4’x8’x3/4″ piece of plywood up there, to lay across the joists as a temporary deck. But it was very heavy – too heavy to just lift over my head and shove up there. So I had to engineer a “ramp” using a 16′ long beam leaned up against the “shallow end” of the treehouse, and then shove the plywood in increments up the ramp. It was all very tiring. But I’m making slow progress, still.
Caveat: My Mold Garden
This summer seems much grayer and wetter than last summer, as I remember it.
My greenhouse struggles with long series of overcast days and drizzly weather. My vegetation is overtaken with mold or mildew or somesuch fungus. The leaves wither.
Some plants are still okay: tomatoes seem reasonably healthy, the beet greens are untouched, the new lettuce is bright. But my bean plants wilt in the wet, the squash and cucumber flowers have been attacked, the spinach is laconic.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: Minimalistic Blog Post
This is a minimalistic blog post.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: I had some berries…
… so I wanted to make something.
I attempted a berry cobbler, using salmonberries and blueberries.
It tastes delicious. But it didn’t thicken at all. It’s a berry soup. But considering it’s the first cobbler I’ve made in about 25 years, I guess just being edible is an accomplishment.
I’d offer a picture, but… you know.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: Fishing Report #(n+4)
We went out fishing today.
We left early – before 8. That was easier without the dead battery we had last time. It was only Arthur and I, since Joe or friend didn’t come along. It was raining as we left but cleared out nicely during the day. The forecast for “light wind” seems to mean about 10-knot winds, but it was fine.
We went to the fuel dock to get fuel and ended up spending a long time there, because Arthur couldn’t get his credit card to work. He called his bank on his cellphone and found out he hadn’t paid his bill. He was definitely disturbed by this news, as it was a real-world bit of confirmation that his attentional issues are “real.” Fortunately I’d brought along my card, too, so we used that. We left the fuel dock around 9. But it put him in a grumpy mood.
We went out through the north entrance to Craig harbor (north of Fish Egg Island) and then southwestward to the northern tip of San Ignacio. We trolled southward on the east shore of that island. There were a lot of commercial boats clustered in the area, trolling up and down. I saw at least one of the commercial boats pulling in a fairly steady supply of smallish salmon – so we took that as a good sign.
We didn’t hook a salmon until we reached the southwestern corner of San Ignacio, at Coco Point. The swells were pretty sloppy there, but we trolled back and forth twice hoping for another. No luck. Anyway, as Arthur put it, “at least we’re not skunked.”
“Not even for the season,” I agreed. It was, after all, our first salmon of the season.
We trolled up the western side of San Ignacio, where it gets quite shallow. I’m not sure that was a productive use of our time. But we made a full circumnavigation of the island, which I don’t think I’d ever done before in a single outing.
We finally pulled up the downriggers at the island’s northeast corner, and headed home. We arrived home at around 2:20. I didn’t dock the boat very well this time. I used the “crash the boat into the dock” method, which is a bit humiliating. No damage, though.
Arthur cut up the fish and cussed a lot because he wasn’t happy with the quality of the job he was doing. He fired up the traeger woodsmoke grill and I had a brainstorm to try to make a salmonberry glaze for the salmon, since there are fresh salmonberries abounding in our driveway right now.
I adapted a recipe for raspberry glaze that I found online, using salmonberries instead, with honey, garlic and balsamic vinegar. I thought it was pretty good, but I think Arthur didn’t like it, mostly because he didn’t like all the little salmonberry seeds.
No pictures, because no smartphone.
[daily log: walking, 2km; boating, 30km]
Caveat: Quechua Trap
“Trap” is a sub-genre of hiphop music. This woman in Peru is making Quechua language trap music.
[daily log: walking, 2.5km]
Caveat: Tree #… nevermind
Since my phone broke (which was serving as my camera) I shall not be taking pictures of trees. I have some trees in my archive of photos taken in past years, but I think instead I’ll send this feature on a little hiatus.
[daily log: walking, 3km]
Caveat: being taken in a lower-tech direction by the forces of nature
I stepped in a hole.
My phone broke.
I wasn’t hurt.
There might be fewer photographs for a while, since my phone was also my camera.
Caveat: Lot 73 is fruitful
I found some berries: salmonberries and blueberries.
Caveat: One flower or another
I have some plants flowering in my garden.
That means I can hope for some fruit later on.
Here is a large yellow squash flower and a small purple bean flower.
Here is a small tomato flower.
Caveat: Fishing Report #(n+3)
We went out fishing today. Joe and his friend Paul came along.
We intended an early start, but a dead battery in the boat slowed our departure, and we didn’t leave until about 8:30.
The forecast was for “light wind” and “seas 1 ft”. In fact the wind was at least 10 knots, and maybe 15 in the afternoon, and this kicked up the water into 2-4 waves.
First we headed for the northeast corner of San Ignacio Island, and we trolled for salmon. Nothing. From the southwest corner of San Ignacio, we motored southward to the west side of Suemez Island. Trolling there, still no salmon, but a hefty lingcod bit Arthur’s hook off San Jose Point. We also caught some small black bass – most were thrown back but a few were large enough to decide to keep. “It’s a fillet,” is how Joe phrased it.
We trolled some more, across Port Santa Cruz. The swells were wide and slow, about 3 feet, with open ocean to the southwest of us.
Giving up on trolling and salmon, we tried for halibut in the center of Port Santa Cruz. Joe caught one small halibut, and several rock fish. Art caught the bottom with his hook – twice. The second time he got really angry. He was kicking the boat. And when Joe and I tried to help, he yelled at us and was pretty scary. I felt awkward and embarrassed.
Finally, Joe wanted to find another halibut, and we tried bottom fishing in two more spots, one on the northwest corner of Suemez and again back at the north end of San Ignacio. But the wind was picking up and it wasn’t easy keeping the boat still.
We headed home and by the time the boat was cleaned and the fish all cut up and in packages for freezing, it was dinner time.
I’ll make some fish soup tomorrow.
Here is Arthur’s lingcod.
Here is the view toward the south end of Baker Island off the bow, from Port Santa Cruz.
Here is an eagle, looking for handouts (thrown away too-small fish).
Here is the blue sea off San Ignacio Island’s north end.
Here are Arthur and Joe cleaning some fish.
Caveat: On the Intolerance of Online Political Communities
I have read the “Lawyers, Guns, Money blog” (LGM) almost daily for 4 or 5 years now. I always found many of the comments interesting or enlightening, and collectively they offered a particular view on the world that I felt I need to remain exposed to. This morning, I saw a thread on the Slate Star Codex blog (SSC) controversy and I was happy and surprised – because SSC is not exactly on the same political wavelength as LGM, but I used to read that blog regularly too, for similar reasons.
So I de-lurked and made a comment, mostly to the effect that I was a “regular” lurker on both sites, and that I was pleased the one was acknowledging the other.
I also made a throw-away comment about how the NYT seems to be essentially vilified by both sides, and that seemed… well, indicative of something. I suppose it was that bit of anodyne “both siderism” that raised the hackles of the jackals. I might have done better not to have said that.
My comment was subjected to what seemed to be a fairly vitriolic set of reactions by some (though not all) commenters. Perhaps if I’d been more attentive to the LGM comments section in the past, I wouldn’t have been unprepared for this. But I was utterly unprepared. And hurt.
I am disappointed and frustrated. I am losing not one but two of my favorite websites in the space of a week. One because of Scott’s “take my toys and go home” reaction to the NYT. And the other because I was stupid enough to try to contribute to that community more actively and was attacked. I am the first to admit that I am thin-skinned. There’s a good reason why I mostly “lurk” in these online communities, of course.
It’s actually doubly frustrating, because in my own politics I think I’m much more sympathetic to the LGM position (proudly left) than to the SSC (right – at least it’s characterized that way by its detractors – I think the characterization merits some caveats). And I will admit that I was probably shaken in part because this experience does, in a sense, call out my “privilege.” How can I argue?
Yet I don’t think I have to present bona fides to the American left. At least half my positions are farther left than anyone in the progressive wing of the democratic party. 100% open borders? Please. Single-payer socialized medicine? Even “far right” South Korea manages that. De-militarization of the police, including take away all their guns? They’d learn de-escalation skills fast, I bet. Reparations for descendants of slaves and for Native Americans? Due yesterday. Close down Gitmo and all similar sites completely? I’m still waiting, Mr. Obama. Gender-based affirmative action for all government hires and contracts? Let’s do it. I proudly supported Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy this election cycle, and only grudgingly will move rightward to support Biden because… well, the alternative?
And yet when I had expressed my sympathies to the SSC diaspora via a comment at a known SSC-adjacent web community, I received no such vitriol. It’s almost as if the current American left is guilty of exactly the kind of vitriol and ideological intolerance that I had always taken to be merely caricatures drawn by those on the right.
The whole thing depressed me deeply.
I normally stay very quiet about my politics on this here blog. It’s a survival mechanism, part of keeping sane first as a long-term resident in xenophobic and quasi-fascist South Korea, and now as a resident in the libertarian “no government is good government” wilderness of Southeast Alaska… not to mention now being roommates with – and sometime caretaker to – my uncle, who very much fits in here, ideologically. But something has compelled me to lay the cards on the table, if just for a moment. I suppose being accused of wishy-washy both-siderism has provoked me. I’ll go back to my lurking, now.
Caveat: Progress – Brought to You by Bacon!
… Francis Bacon, that is.
A historian and author, Ada Palmer, has a long-form essay on her blog, from a few years ago, on the subject of how Francis Bacon “invented” the concept of Progress in the 17th century. I also find that in general, the essay is quite well-written and fundamentally optimistic about the human condition, a la Steven Pinker but less controversially so.
Anyway, I recommend reading it if you’re looking for a dose of philosophical optimism.
In other news, an interesting mushroom showed optimism amid my latest cohort of lettuce.
Caveat: Fishing Report #(n+2)
Art and I went out in the boat today. I hoped it would be a relatively low-wind, no rain day.
It’s true there was no rain. But it was mostly cloudy, and the wind from the west was quite strong relative to the forecast, at between 10 and 15 knots.
We left at 7:30. We went out to the east side of San Ignacio Island.
Here is a view looking back east toward Craig and Sunnahae Mountain, shrouded in clouds. The foregrounded island on the right is the north end of San Juan.
This is a view southward as we approached San Ignacio. Foreground on the left is the flank of San Juan Island. I like the smooth curve of the dipping ridge between the two distant mountains on the south end of Baker Island, on the far horizon near the center. The slightly closer island on the right is San Ignacio.
We trolled down San Ignacio’s shore and saw some eagles eyeing us. We caught nothing. From the south end of San Ignacio, we crossed eastward to Tranquil Point. Arthur has strong associations with fishing success there, but I’ve never experienced it since I’ve been up here. We trolled along the north shore of the Prince of Wales mainland there all the way to Caldera Bay. There were quite a few commercial fishing boats trolling around, all of them looking as fishless as we were.
In Caldera, we put down hooks for halibut. I do vaguely recall we might have caught some halibut here the fall when I first got here. But maybe not. Anyway, we caught absolutely nothing, the ocean was sloshy and choppy, the wind was chilly, the sun never showed up. Arthur seemed quietly bitter on the way home. I was proud of my boat-docking job, though – completely smooth, not even a gentle bump, I grabbed the dock as we approached and stopped the boat simply and began tying up.
So. Salmonless and only one halibut so far for the 2020 season.
I washed the salt spray (from all the wind-kicked waves splashing) from the boat. Clean boat.
Caveat: Slate Star Supernova
I had a bit of a shock this morning. I went to collect my daily dose of internet, and found my favorite blog had folded up shop overnight.
The announced cause of this is that the host of the blog, who goes by the pseudonym Scott Alexander, was about to be doxxed by the New York Times in an article they’re writing about his blog. “Dox” is a recent coinage used in internet contexts meaning “to publish the facts of an individual’s identity who has expressed a wish to remain anonymous.”
The blog was called Slate Star Codex. I think the origin of the name was that it’s a “near-anagram” of Scott’s pseudonym. He’s good at that kind of wordplay. For those who’ve never heard of it until right now, it will be hard to explain what this blog was – since it’s now gone. It’s not just a blog – my blog is just a blog. But Scott’s blog was a community. And Scott is an excellent writer and thinker.
I came upon SSC in an an unusual way. I discovered SSC because of Scott’s imaginary maps. Given my geofiction hobby, I was of course curious. So one could say: I came for the maps, and stayed for the commentary.
I can link to others who wrote about the blog’s disappearance. Scott Aaronson wrote about it, here, for example. Tom Chivers wrote about it, here.
Aaronson compared Scott and his blog to Mark Twain. That seems hubristic (is there such a thing as being hubristic on behalf of another?), but the more I think about it, the more I like the comparison. Scott writes with humor and wit and looks at things from unexpected angles, and does so while hoving to a clearly enunciated humanistic optimism that is enviable. His vast community of blog commenters slanted, on average, substantially to the right of Scott’s declared values, yet he and they were always civil to one another, because that was what Scott, the community moderator, expected and enforced.
I don’t need to go into a long description of the Slate Star Codex community – others have done that better than I have, including those two bloggers linked above. I will note that I was never a participant in the community, but rather simply an observer. I have what many would consider a strange approach to politics: I have fairly strongly held convictions, but mostly I don’t enjoy explaining or defending those positions. I do enjoy reading other people doing that, though. Hence my enjoyment of Slate Star Codex and its community of commenters.
I felt the same way about Andrew Sullivan’s blog back about a decade ago. It had evolved into a civil community of political commentators. And that despite the inherent disadvantage that Andrew Sullivan himself was a pretty obvious asshole. Scott Alexander is not an asshole. Sometimes functional online communities just happen, I think. The Andrew Sullivan moment is long past, and he’s gone to seed (in my opinion) and is almost unbearable to read and the community is dispersed. I hope Scott Alexander’s fate isn’t that one. He would be be horrified, I think, at the comparison.
I’ll miss Slate Star Codex, if it never comes back.
Caveat: Luck o’ the driveway
My loyal blog-reader and once-upon-a-time college roommate, David, had observed in a message to me a while back that he easily finds four-leaf clovers where he lives.
I have therefore been on the lookout for four-leaf clovers, among the patches of clover that have sprung up in our driveway.
I found one today. Here is the plant in question, in the center.
Here is its location in the drive way – the green patch of clover below and left of center near the rim of the retaining wall.
Caveat: $120’s worth of crablessness
Arthur and I have occasionally dropped his lone crab pot into the water in front of the house. All of last year and through this spring, no crabs of a size worth eating have walked into the trap.
We did catch something this week though: we caught a $120 fine from the State of Alaska, who fished the waters of Port Saint Nicholas for additional revenue.
The fine was for a) a mis-labeled buoy (Arthur hadn’t included his boat license which is apparently required, and had written his enigmatic “rockpit.ak” instead of his name, which the fish and game official legitimately considered to be uninformative), and b) absence of a biodegradable locking mechanism (normally a piece of hemp string).
Arthur was disgruntled. Apparently many people along the inlet received similar fines this week, though.
This is the offending crab pot.
Caveat: Fishing Report #(n+1)
My fondness for enumeration has been made demonstrably clear by this here blog. I thought I could start enumerating fishing reports, since Art and I go out fishing now and then. But I have no idea how many fishing reports I’ve already done – the “fishing report” aspect was incorporated into other various blog entries over the last year and half, and it’s hard to go back and isolate those references.
So this enumeration will be somewhat vague as to its starting point. This is not “Fishing Report #1” but rather #(n+1), where n=’however many fishing reports I’ve already given.’
Hereforthwith, then, is the first Fishing Report explicitly declared as such.
Today, Art and I went out in the boat.
We left at 8 AM. The weather was forecast to be partly cloudy but with little wind. In fact, over the day, the skies cleared to beautiful sun, but the prediction of light wind was a bit inaccurate. It got pretty breezy, and the trip was through choppy water – especially on the way back. “Hammer off those barnacles!” Arthur insisted.
We motored out to Ulitka Bay, off the northern tip of Noyes Island. That’s open ocean (“next stop: Kamchatka!”) just around the point, there, so the swells were wide and slow.
We trolled for salmon. There were two other boats there, when we got there – a much lower number than the 20-30 we saw several times congregated at the point last summer. I expect the sport fishing season is seriously impacted by the pandemic. One boat trolled around randomly, the other was mooching close in to the rocks.
We trolled in a loop around the little bay there, and then eastward along the north shore of Noyes Island all the way to Steamboat.
We caught no salmon, but we caught a ling cod and 3 black bass. We threw back the two smaller of the black bass, as not worth the effort. The 3rd black bass we ate for dinner, and the ling cod was frozen for future soups. Despite this, Arthur will tell all our acquaintances with utter sincerity that “we caught absolutely nothing.” That’s because in his mind, only salmon and halibut count as something. I somewhat understand this, but it’s annoying too, because he gets all depressed about our fruitless fishing trip, but it’s not, technically, even true that it was fruitless.
We also put hooks on the bottom off the east side of Noyes for a bit around noon, hoping for halibut. That’s the spot where we caught halibut a week or two ago with Joe.
The sea was quite bumpy on the return trip. We got home around 2:30.
Here is a mountain on the north side of Noyes Island. It still has patches of snow in mid June.
Here is Arthur with one of our fish we caught which he will tell you is nothing.
Caveat: Radish #4.5
Arthur likes to make grilled cheese sandwiches with pickles. Normally he uses a spicy sweet pickle, like the Famous Dave’s brand that he prefers.
Tonight, however, he used my home-made radish pickles. And happily, they were actually pretty good on grilled cheese. Here is a pale pink radish pickle on the grilled cheese – I opened it for the photo op.
Caveat: APT Time
When Arthur and I left to go to town, we found the road blocked by the APT guys, fixing a utility pole. “APT” is “Alaska Power and Telephone,” the local utility monopoly. They said “20 minutes,” so we waited.
It was more like 1 hour. They work at their own pace. That’s “APT Time.”
We did finally make it to town. I told a guy Doug in town that the traffic coming into town today was terrible.
Caveat: Bleaugh
I’ve been a bit bleaugh, these last few days. I suppose that is evident reading between the lines of this blog thingy.
It’s a feeling of low creativity, and not much inclined to solve problems or progress on any of my projects.
Such as it goes. Arthur stuggles with his computer, daily. I have my own obsessions and struggles with my computer work, but they involve less cussing and yelling and violently slamming the table than he prefers, and more just moodily contemplating my stuckness. I’m a bit stuck with some configuration stuff on my servers. They’re working, but I’m seeing reliability issues I can’t figure out or solve. So I’m just plodding along.
Caveat: Gone fishin’
Art gazes out toward home, because no fish where hungry for hooks today. We got a few ugly red snappers – which is good whitefish but bony. But no halibut nor salmon. In the picture we were at the (not-so-) auspiciously-named Shipwreck Reef.
Earlier we’d been along the east side of San Juan Island and then down around Tranquil Point and Estrella Bay.
The clouds were nice.
Caveat: mysterious wire connector thingy
Arthur really wants to buy some of these – somewhere online.
The problem is that neither he nor I have any idea what they are called. Some kind of locking electrical connector. But all of Arthur’s and my googling skills have turned up nary an image of one. So I’m putting this out there.
What is this called? I will attach three pictures, to show how it fits together. Overall connected size is about 1 1/2 inch long, but Arthur says there are different sizes.
[UPDATE: My brother Andrew got me the googlable name for these things. “Te Conn Knife Disconnectors“. Thank you Andrew and thanks all others who took the time to investigate! Logically (vis-a-vis Arthur’s affection for them), they are used in aircraft wiring.]
Caveat: draining…
Arthur’s house has a drain.
Meaning, there’s a valve down near the water that you can open to drain the entire house’s water system. This is useful and important for when you want to winterize the house, to prevent water from freezing in the pipes in the event the house won’t be heated for a period of time.
Over the past winter the valve apparently broke. This wasn’t a problem because there is also a valve inside the house that leads out to this valve, so we just kept that inside valve closed. But when we went to use the boat, we realized that the dock water supply is downstream from that inside-the-house valve. That meant that the only way we could get the water running on the dock was to fix this house-drain valve.
That’s what I did this morning. Arthur borrowed a PEX-pipe-fitting crimping tool from our neighbor Mike, and we’d bought a new valve at the hardware store last Thursday, so I took off the old broken valve and put on the new one.
I feel almost competent, some days.
Caveat: Looking down and wondering
I was up a ladder leaned against a tree working on my treehouse. And I thought, “This is ironic.”
I have a discomfort with exposed heights. I’ve commented on it before, in the context of Arthur’s seeming affection for high places, ladders, rooftops, and such. I don’t know that it is so extreme that it merits being termed “fear of heights” or acrophobia. In the right context, I enjoy being up high – but don’t trust my own body’s coordination and sense of balance so I need to feel secure in my perch if I’m up high.
So I was up the ladder. I thought, “Why am I building a treehouse? Wouldn’t I be more appropriately building a bunker or a cave?”