Tree Swallows

The tree swallows have returned from their winter residence. It's always enjoyable to watch these acrobats catching bugs as they fly over the fields.

Digging in the Dirt

THUMP! ...  THUMP! ...  THUMP! ...  For the past week, for a couple hours each night after I got home from work, I would work on digging a 2 foot deep, 2 foot wide, 25 foot long trench in my yard.  Initially, it was grueling work, but about half-way through the project, while swinging a pick mattock over my head and noticing I was smoothly transitioning from one overhand grip to another, it dawned on me that something about what I was doing felt very familiar.  The overhead hand transition I was making to easily switch from chopping away at the soil on the left side of the trench vs. the right side of the trench was the same type of movement I had done for years while practicing various bo kata.

I then also noticed that rather than just swinging with my arms and getting tired very quickly, I could combine working with the weight of the pick and my own body weight to more easily chip away at the hard packed soil.  Suddenly, I was making significantly faster progress and was not getting anywhere near as tired as I had been earlier.  I was paying better attention when digging, noticing when to give in to the resistance rather than work against it, something that had been practiced quite a bit while studying udundi.

It all seems so obvious now - I just wished I had been  mindful of all of this from the start. I finished the last 12 feet of the trench in about 1/3 of the time it took me to do the first half.  It's a good reminder of something I've been missing from my lack of martial arts training these past couple of years.

Radom Eye Dull Photos - The Tree Frog

Saw this little guy sitting on a gate in my back yard...

Ch..ch..ch..changes

Almost a full year has gone by with just one blog post and only 3 posts in the year before that.  What's going on here, you ask? (What, no one asked? Ok, fair enough, but I'll pretend someone did.)

First and foremost, I blame Facebook.  The main purpose of this blog was a way to share my photos and thoughts with friends and family.  The universal access to it was somewhat of a side-effect of the technology of the day.  I never knew which of my friends or family would be interested in this material,  so having a blog with global access meant anyone, friends and strangers alike, would have access to it if they happened to discover it.  I don't mind sharing somewhat personal thoughts and opinions with the world, but it was never really a goal.   As Facebook began to gain in popularity with the majority of my friends and family, I found myself posting more frequently there and less frequently here.  

However, reflecting a bit on things now, looking back on what I used to occasionally write about on this blog, I'm beginning to think I might prefer the long-form thoughtful format of a blog vs. the more snippety stuff I write on Facebook.

I'm not trying to say I'm going to abandon Facebook and return to solely writing on this blog.  Facebook is great for keeping up with a large group of friend and family, but I'm thinking, when time permits, I am going to try to use my blog as well.

And so, as a first attempt at getting back to this blog, I offer a summary of what has happened with me these past few years:

In late 2009, after several years of careful scheming and manipulation, I finally succeeded in convincing the woman of my dreams that it might not be a bad idea for us to date.  (Yes, it really did take her several years to agree to a date - we had been good friends for several years but she had always made it clear that we were only ever going to be "just friends."   If you read some of my early blog posts from several years ago, you will find there is the occasional reference to this friend.)

About a year and half ago we bought a house in the country and at the same time I somehow convinced said woman of my dreams that it might actually be a good idea for us to get married.  And so, this past spring, we did indeed get married. For a honeymoon we took a once in a life-time 10-day trek to Machu Picchu in Peru (I really should post some pictures - the mountains of Peru are quite beautiful).  And, now, at the close of this year, we are just a month away from the birth of our baby boy.

Exciting times both past and looking ahead, and as I've already been told many times, with the birth of a child life is never going to be the same for us.

Happy holidays to family and friends both near and far.  Wishing you all a happy 2013.

Pachinko

NOTE: somehow this post got lost - I wrote it about a year and a half-ago (back in 2010), but forgot to click the "publish" button.
For my birthday this year, my sister and brother-in-law gave me a vintage pachinko machine which they had discovered at a yard sale.



If you don't know what pachinko is, you can read more about it on Wikipedia.

Although I've been to Japan twice and I have seen lots of pachinko parlors from the outside, I had never actually ventured into one and I had never seen an actual pachinko machine until now. It's a pretty interesting mechanical device.

It's totally "gravity powered", meaning it requires no batteries. A series of levers, ramps, and pressure plates are all that control the inner workings of the machine. It does have two lights that can be battery powered (one for signaling the machine is out of balls and one which turns on during a payout), but the lights are totally optional as far as actual gameplay.



The machine I have was manufactured by Nishijin, in Tokyo, Japan in the early 1970s. Nishijin manufactured many different style machines, and this one is known as a model A, or recycler model. It had a unique feature of "recycling" the losing balls into the payout pool so the machine didn't have to be refilled with balls as frequently as other models.

In order to give you an idea of how the machine works, here a few videos of it in operation.

Random Eye Dull Photo: Bats!

The past few nights I've seen a large number of bats flying around at dusk. A friend asked me if I took any pictures of them, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Given the low lighting, it proved to be a bit challenging. I initially tried using autofocus, but that proved impossible.





I then tried setting a fixed focus point and guess when the bats were in the right place. This gave slightly better results, but still the low light just gave a blurry result.



I then opted for a flash, along with manually focused at a fixed point, and this gave somewhat decent results. They're not going to win any awards, but you can at least tell they're bats.

Random Eye Dull Photo: Cardinals

(You can click on image for a larger view)

Random Eye Dull Photo: Golden-Crowned Kinglet

Caught this little guy digging in the snow looking for seeds. (You can click on the image for a larger view).

Random Eye Dull Photo: Faucet Drip

It's a cold rainy day - what better time to take pictures of a dripping faucet?

Random Eye Dull Photo: Eye-closeup

I bought another new (used) lens for my camera, this time one for macro photography. It's the Nikon AF Micro Nikkor 105mm 2.8 D.

This being late fall, there's not really any flowers or insects to photograph outside, so I've been experimenting with the camera indoors. Again, Hiro was the test subject. He will generally sit fairly still while I put a camera lens very close to his face.

Took me a few tries to get his iris in focus... Coincidentally, you can also see my other dog Bodhi reflected in his pupil.

Random Eye Dull Photo: Hiro

I bought a new (used) lens for my camera, and was testing its ability to shoot wildlife in low-light outdoor conditions. Since there wasn't any actual wildlife in the area, one of my dogs had to play the role.

The lens is an old Nikon AF-D 80-200mm f2.8 ED. It's not as nice as the new Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 VR lens, but at about 1/4 the price, it'll do the job well enough.

The above photos aren't super sharp, but the sun was setting, I was in the woods, and I don't have the steadiest hand, so given all that, I was happy with the result.

Random Eye Dull Photo: Greenwich Bay

A picture taken with my iPhone last weekend

Random Eye Dull Photo: Fledgling Blue Jay

Who you calling ugly?

I've been seeing a lot of young birds that appear to have recently left the nest - tufted titmice, cardinals, grackles, and now blue jays.

Random Eye Dull Photo: Rose Breasted Grosbeak

Not the best of pictures, but I managed to snap a picture of the visiting rose breasted grosbeak. It's a first time sighting of this type of bird for me. Growing up, I used to see plenty of evening grosbeaks but no other types.

Random Eye Dull Photo: Wild blackberries and peas

Went with some friends to a great spot for lots of wild blueberries, blackberries, and huckleberries. I even found some wild peas that tasted pretty good.

Giant strawberry plants

Not sure what's different this year, but these strawberry plants are
way taller than last year - over a foot tall. The strawberries are
normal size, but the plants are huge.

Random Eyedull photo: Bobwhite

While waiting for my Internet service to come back, I saw these two bird hanging out on the lawn at the edge of some woods. My best guess is a male and female Bobwhite.

Verizon using the GLADOS system for automated telephone support?

For the first time in years, I experienced a DSL failure with my Internet service. As a compliment to Verizon, it’s been so stable all these years, I’ve taken it for granted. And since I now work from home, when the service was down I felt completely crippled in regards to getting any work done.

After logging into my Internet modem, it was obvious the problem was with Verizon and not something local on my end. The DSL portion of the the connection was up, but the PPP portion of the link was down. So, with that info in hand, I figured I’d make a call to Verizon to get the problem resolved. And then the fun began.

Verizon, like so many other companies these days, is taking the cost-cutting measure of providing an automated telephone support system. It’s a helpful friendly sounding female voice, similar to the computer voice, GLADOS, from the game Portal. (If you aren’t familiar with Portal, you are missing out. It’s a very clever 1st person puzzle game from Valve Software and is available on PC, Mac, XBox, PS3, etc.)

First off, the automated system doesn’t just use touch-tones for answering questions. It attempts to implement a form of speech recognition. You can interrupt the computer voice (I’ll call her GLADOS) at any time with your reply, but the problem is, even background noise is attempted to be recognized. I bumped my leg on the table and GLADOS stopped in mid-sentence and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that.” Then I had to wait for her to restart from the beginning and retell me a bunch of stuff I already heard before I knew how to proceed to the next menu.

As part of the automated system, GLADOS told me that she was able to perform a remote diagnostic of the problem. After hearing GLADOS repeat about 15 times, “I’m still waiting for the results of the test”, she finally told me there was a problem which required me to reboot the DSL modem. And this brings me to the second problem with an automated system. Unlike when talking to a real human, I can’t just say, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear what you just said, can you please repeat that?” Of course, GLADOS will say that plenty of times, but I can’t make the same request of her. In my case, as part of the automated system diagnostic, GLADOS asked me to walk to my DSL modem and reboot it. Near the modem, the mobile phone service is poor, so GLADOS’ voice began to get garbled (just like in Portal) and I wasn’t really certain what I might have missed in our “conversation”.

After rebooting the modem, and telling GLADOS, “YES, I really did reboot the modem,” GLADOS helpfully then asked if my Internet service was working. It wasn’t working, which was no surprise to me since I had also tried rebooting the modem several times myself before calling Verizon and each time the modem would fail on the PPP connection and would display a red error light for the Internet. Of course, I couldn’t actually tell the helpful GLADOS any of this, since she didn’t really understand speech, so instead I had to follow her next step in resolving the problem.

Since I answered “No” to her question on whether rebooting the router fixed the problem, and despite the fact that the modem was displaying a red error light saying the Internet was down, GLADOS then helpfully suggested that I reboot my computer.

The conversation went something like this:

GLADOS: Please reboot your computer. If you need help rebooting your computer, please say ‘I need help with that.’ If you know how to do it, say, ‘Skip this.’

Me: Skip this.

GLADOS: Ok, please say ‘Yes’ or press 1 when your computer has rebooted.

Me: (Seeing there’s still a red error light on the modem, I know rebooting my computer will have no effect so I just say ‘Yes’ without actually rebooting.)

GLADOS: Ok. Please try viewing a Verizon.net web page. Can you view it?

Me: No

GLADOS: I’m sorry this has not resolved your problem. Please reboot your computer. If you need help rebooting your computer, please say ‘I need help with that.’ If you know how to do it, say, ‘Skip this.’

Me: What? We just did this.

GLADOS: I’m sorry, I did not understand what you just said. Please reboot your computer. If you need help rebooting your computer, please say ‘I need help with that.’ If you know how to do it, say, ‘Skip this.’

Me: Skip this.

GLADOS: Ok, please say ‘Yes’ or press 1 when your computer has rebooted.

Me: (Thinking maybe she didn’t understand when I said ‘Yes’ last time, I press 1 on my phone this time.)

GLADOS: Ok. Please try viewing a Verizon.net web page. Can you view it?

Me: NO!!

GLADOS: I’m sorry this has not resolved your problem. Please reboot your computer. If you need help rebooting your computer, please say ‘I need help with that.’ If you know how to do it, say, ‘Skip this.’

At this point, it should be obvious there’s a problem with Verizon’s automated diagnostic system. Besides the fact that it got stuck in an infinite loop asking me to repeatedly reboot my computer, there’s something else wrong. First, they did a test and determined there was a problem. As part of the resolution, they had me reboot the modem. That makes sense. Then, where the test process broke down, however, is they didn’t do another diagnostic after rebooting the modem. Instead, they just assumed the modem was OK, even though I could see it was definitely not OK since it had a red error light on it. And then, they had me perform a completely useless step of rebooting my computer.

Were I speaking with an actual human, I would have been able to interrupt and try to explain this problem. Instead, I was stuck in an automated system.

I finally resorted to pressing 0 to speak with a real person, and after several minutes of being on hold, with GLADOS periodically chiming in to tell me I can probably resolve my problem by viewing their tech tips at verizon.net (even though I have no Internet service!), the phone call went completely silent with no explanation. The call was still connected, there just wasn’t anyone on the other end anymore. Pressing numbers on the touch pad had no effect. Apparently GLADOS gave up on helping me.

Then, ten minutes later, my DSL Internet connection started working again. And I never rebooted my computer. Sorry I lied to you GLADOS.

Black Raspberry Brambles

There are a large number of wild black raspberry brambles growing in
the backyard and based on the number of flowers, it looks like they'll
be bearing fruit this summer, too.

I had noticed them growing last summer, but since they were just
thorny brambles with no flowers, I wasn't certain they were raspberries.

Now I just have to make sure the dogs don't take a liking to them as
they have with the strawberries.

Swamp dog

Guess who likes to play in the swamp...