Wordle 1851 Hint

Hint: When grilling out, this food gets (or at least should get) top billing.

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First Letter: S

Just Watching, After Ten Days or So

The experiment in retreating from "digital fitness tracker / smart watch" to "plain old analog watch" is going well so far.

I think I'm still getting my usual number of steps in per day, and I'm less stressed by a thing on my wrist buzzing every time I get a phone call or text message, telling me about the variations in my heart rate, analyzing my sleep, etc.

If there's a down side, I suppose it's that the newfangled stuff COULD clue me in early to stuff with health implications, but to be honest its main function on that has been to warn me of possible heart arrythmia events that my doctor can't find any trace of and that I suspect are just caused by me startling at night or something. If the watch tracked blood pressure and blood glucose, it might be more useful on that, but I just don't find what it does useful anymore because I don't see sudden changes (over time, my resting heart rate has decreased and my sleep has improved, but both of those plateaued some time ago).

I'm not in any big hurry to get a better watch ... but I'd like to get a better watch band ... and based on what I'm seeing in the watch market, the band I would want would cost about 2/3 of what a decent watch with a band that looks like what I'd want.

When I was growing up, Casio was known for 1) cheap digital watches and 2) cheap music keyboards. Apparently they're all grown up now and make pretty good analog watches, like this one (not an affiliate link), for about a third of what I thought I'd pay for something like it:

It gets 4.5 stars on more than 13,000 user ratings on Amazon. It's not my perfect watch (I don't need the name on the frame, would probably rather have it just glow in the dark than use a light-up button, and am of two minds about a date window), but it looks fairly nice, allegedly keeps good time, and is reasonably rugged, and I like a hook-and-loop cloth band.

I may grab it the next time I have extra Amazon gift card credit on hand, or cite it when asked what I want for my birthday or Christmas, or find something else as good for the price.  But I'm not in a big hurry, especially if the current El Cheapo watch continues to keep good time and the band maybe softens up with age/washing.

Wordle 1850 Hint

Hint: Dark beer.

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First Letter: S

Wordle 1849 Hint

Hint: Often preceded by "clickety."

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First Letter: C

Applicable(?) Aphorisms #27

"Do not look down on any teaching." (Buddhism, Dhammapada 4:6)

True, false, good, bad, useful, not so useful, etc.? Discuss.

My thoughts:

I disagree completely. If a teaching is demonstrably false or valueless, it should be looked down on.

Of course, in the realm of religion, it's hard to get to "demonstrably false" because claims as to the existence of a deity or deities are intrinsically faith-based. They can't be proven or disproven.

In areas such as ethics or economics, teachings can be compared to desired outcomes and observed reality.

For example, the labor theory of value isn't just demonstrably bullshit, it's the kind of bullshit that anyone who has two neurons to rub together and try to light up a synapse with should be embarrassed to advocate for. I look down on it because it's unworthy of respect.

Wordle 1848 Hint

Hint: It's a bird! It's a pla ... nah, not a plane, looks bird-like.

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First Letter: A

Why I Continue to Resist Four Wheels

It's not that I don't think about giving up the motorcycle for a car or truck. I do, every once in a while. But then I come up against the difference:

• You can still buy a motorcycle, new or used, affordably, that runs on a carburetor instead of fuel injection, rocks analog gauges (including an actual float rather than an electronic sensor in the gas tank) and involves little or no computer stuff. In fact, they're cheaper than the ones with all the "ride mode" nonsense, touch screen, etc.
• In order to get the car or truck I want, I'll have to find a 1970 to 1980 vehicle in decent shape mechanically and body-wise. And those seem to be very, very expensive.

I am not a skilled mechanic, but I'm pretty sure I could easily get back on top of things -- do my own oil changes, my own tune-ups, replace my own brake pads, replace an alternator or starter, etc. -- and not have to go to the shop for every little thing.

These days, it's a bunch of computer diagnostics, and if you have to replace something it seems like often the car's computer has to be flashed or trained to accept the new part, etc. You can't even rely on a trouble light, because it may just be a bad sensor rather than whatever the sensor is supposedly measuring.

But if anyone knows of a 1974 Oldsmobile Delta 88 for sale, in good condition, at a reasonable price, let me know. Best. Car. Ever. Other than the gas mileage, of course (12 mpg on the highway, 8 mpg in town).

Good Kindle Book Deal

Fractions: The First Half of The Fall Revolution (not an affiliate link) by Ken Macleod, is on sale in ebook format at Amazon for $2.99.

It comprises two novels, The Star Fraction and The Stone Canal, which sell separately for $11.99 and $14.99 respectively.

The second half (Divisions, comprising The Cassini Division and The Sky Road) isn't on sale, but once you've read The Star Fraction you're going to want to read them all. I've got all of them in hard copy, but having a Kindle version allows me to have myself read to sleep to them by Alexa.

The novels are full of "anarcho-capitalists," commies, and everything in between and far afield from both. The first novel, Macleod says, is haunted by "the uncomfortable question":  "What if capitalism is unstable and socialism is impossible?" He even discusses Ludwig von Mises's "calculation problem" in the introduction.

More than those interesting points, though, what's important is that Macleod always spins an absorbing and rewarding story. I can't recommend the Fall Revolution cycle highly enough (and the books can be read in any order, or alone -- I came across The Cassini Division before any of the others, and didn't need knowledge of the other three to make it worthwhile).

Wordle 1847 Hint

Hint: When a man had a plan in Panama ...

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First Letter: C

Unlikely Option, But Option

I've seen pictures of this bike online before --  usually marketed as the Venom or Belmonte Sportster 250, but underneath it's the Chinese Dongfang DF250RTG -- and didn't like the way it looked in photos. But yesterday I happened to park next to one:

It looks a LOT nicer in person than in the ads. It's fairly inexpensive ($2k to $2.5k new, depending on where you find it, and I occasionally see them barely used and quite a bit cheaper on e.g. Facebook Marketplace).

Down sides:

• I've been planning for my next bike to be a 500-750cc engine. This is a 250cc.
• I prefer alloy wheels to spoked wheels.
• I'd probably want to replace the handlebars for less required forward leaning.

Up sides:

• Like I said, inexpensive.
• I've seen top speed, stock, listed as 65-70 in some places and 70-75 in others, neither of which is terrible, and with a performance exhaust, 28mm carb, and performance air I would expect it to manage 80+.
• It's got a plain round can headlight and analog gauges, which I prefer to the weird-shaped headlights and all-electronic stuff on most newer bikes.
• It's an air-cooled engine, which I prefer (one less fluid to leak), and some of the engines are made by Lifan (others are made by Zongshen, which I don't trust as much, but they are all clones of a very reliable Honda engine).

For the moment, I'm still planning on saving up for a reasonably priced, pre-2025 Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 (before they started doing all the digital crap). But this is one of the 250cc bikes I'm adding to my "that would work" list. I'd want to find it lightly used -- "bought this bike to see if I liked motorcycling, it took me 100 miles to decide I didn't" -- and at $1k or under.

I saw what looked like a REALLY good deal on a well-maintained/fixed-up 2006 Buell Blast today, and might have jumped on it, but I've learned since my last flirtation with that idea that parts range from "impossible to find" to "very expensive if you find them." From what I've seen, aftermarket parts for these cheap Chinese bikes are plentiful and inexpensive. They sell a LOT of them, just under various private label brand names, so it sometimes takes a little research to make sure you've got the right thing, but the stuff is out there (a lot of the engine parts, you can find listed as for that Honda engine mentioned above).

Wordle 1846 Hint

Hint: Alter/modify, usually through a formal procedure.

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First Letter: A

Wordle 1845 Hint

Hint: Fallen angel.

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First Letter: D

World's Smallest Violin

The people who endorsed and/or voted for Graham Platner in Maine's Democratic Party US Senate primary knew he was a snake when they did so. It wasn't any kind of secret. The information was out there, and it was on bullhorn.

I'm bipartisan on this kind of thing. I hear from people who supported Trump three times whining that "this isn't what I voted for," even though they knew he was a lying, philandering, untrustworthy con artist who changed foreign policy (and other) positions more often than most people change underwear long before November 2016.

Spare me the tears and outrage. Live with the consequences of your actions. You weren't lied to, you lied to yourselves.

Just Watch (Literally)

Last week, my Fitbit Versa 4 started acting up. It's done that before, and there's a good chance that once the battery has had time to completely drain I can re-set it and have it functional again.

But do I really want to?

In theory, fitness trackers and "smart watches" are very useful and convenient. They'll helpfully buzz when your connected phone receives a call, text, or app notification. If you want to set up Google Pay, you can "tap to pay" at the gas pump and so forth.

I find that all a little busy and annoying.

I like having a step counter, but I can just buy a dedicated pedometer for that if need be, and at this point I've got a good handle on where and how far to walk each day to meet my fitness goal. All the other stuff it tracks (blood oxygen, sleep quality, etc.) seem pretty stable to me and I seldom actually look at the stats.

I do like the "buzz on wrist" thing for one function -- connected to Google Maps, it will buzz when I have a turn coming up. That's helpful on the motorcycle, as it's hard to hear the voice coming from my phone on the handlebar. But I can definitely get by without it.

So, while waiting for the battery to drain (it may take a week or more), I decided to go back to wearing a watch. Not a smart watch. Not even a digital watch. Just one of those old-fashioned dials with hands on it.

I wasn't going to waste a bunch of money on one until I decided to stick to this, so I ordered a $10 watch. Green canvas band, white face, black frame and numbering, glows in the dark (but in this watch's case, it's usually dim before dawn).

Three days in, I think I like it. I may never go back to the Fitbit.

If not, I'll just order a cheap pedometer for step count, stop worrying about the other stats (or maybe get a "smart ring" to handle that stuff), and eventually buy a better, more durable/trustworthy watch -- a $100-$200 Fossil, maybe, or if I'm feeling like a somewhat bigger spender, a Timex Pan Am or Expedition or a Citizen/Bulova (the former company owns the latter). I don't feel any need to own an Omega or Rolex, just something that I can expect to still be working when I stop having a heartbeat that a "smart watch" would track.

I'll probably replace the factory band with a wide olive drab canvas band with Velcro cover, just because I found that comfortable and unintrusive back when I used my old Timex with extra sweep second hand to e.g. match outgoing mortar rounds to aircraft time over target for Suppression of Enemy Air Defense missions. Not sure what ever happened to that old Timex, but I suspect it would still be keeping time on my wrist right now if I still had it.

Wordle 1844 Hint

Hint: David's giant-killing tool.

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First Letter: S

I Suspect Tears Were Shed in Quantity

Per the New York Post:

A semi-truck leaked a whopping 40,000 pounds of sticky Frank’s RedHot sauce onto an Ohio highway amid a brutal heatwave last week.

That hot sauce is brewed up at the same factory where I worked as a miller making French's mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and sometimes barbecue sauce. I never made the hot sauce, but did occasionally help push the carts full of pepper seed that were extracted in the process out to the waste disposal area.

I don't recall how many tanks, or of what capacity, were used to store the sauce before bottling, I can tell you that your eyes instantly started watering when you walked into that part of the plant. Especially when they were making the "hotter" variety, which involved 55-gallon drums of capsaicin feeding extra heat into the basic brew.

This truck leak of 40,000 pounds calculates out to roughly 5,000 gallons of the stuff. Theme song for the passing traffic:

You Had One Job, Starz ...

... and that job was to tell a story that had an ending.

I'm a big fan of Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods (not an affiliate link), and just as big a fan of the Starz TV series (available to stream "free with ads" on Tubi), which ran for three seasons before ending in a "cliffhanger" without finishing the whole story.

With a novel/show/story like this (one that has a beginning and an ending), there shouldn't be any question of "renewing after each season." You either make the fucking show, or you don't.

If you do make the show, it should start with (metaphorically, anyway) "once upon a time" and finish with "the end," not with "yeah, we know we need a few more episodes to wrap things up, and we know that this show is going to continue making us money from streaming revenues forever no matter what we do, but screw the viewers who pay us every month o and the 'free with ads' viewers who watch after we 'syndicate' it, we're moving on to other things instead."

Just to be clear: I am not complaining about the show. It's very well-made, it tracks the novel well but goes down some alternate plot lines that make a lot of sense, and the people who actually made it ended it as best they could under the non-renewal circumstances. If you haven't watched it, you should.

Rotten Tomatoes agrees with my general assessment -- the show's first season got a 92% rating, and while the second season fell to 61%, the third season surged back to 79%. I suspect beginnings and endings tend to be more popular than middle segments, which the second and third season are.

What I'm complaining about is studios'/services'/networks' approach to whole stories. Sure, renew an episodic comedy or dramedy or action show by the season. But if you've got a full story -- beginning, middle, ending -- commit to making that whole story or turn it down and let someone else do it.

I wish Neil Gaiman had presented the deal that way: "I've got the whole novel. I've got treatments for every episode of the show and can have first-draft scripts (adjustable when it reaches shooting script stage) for those episodes by the time we start shooting. Here's how many episodes it will take to tell the story. Here's how much I'm willing to accept for the rights to the story, but the contract stipulates that the whole story gets made. If not, you pay me a kill fee of four times the original price and release the rights to me so I can continue making it elsewhere. In fact, we should just start shooting and stop shooting when the whole thing is in the can, instead of taking long 'season' breaks, even if you release it in 'season' chunks."

Wordle 1843 Hint

Hint: A hot cocktail.

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First Letter: T

Wordle 1842 Hint

Hint: Religious teacher/leader a la Prabhupada.

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First Letter: S

Wordle 1841 Hint

Hint: If you're the average American, you eat it about three times per month (that seems low to me, so I guess I'm above average).

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First Letter: P

Applicable(?) Aphorisms #26

"Water benefits all things without contention." (Taoism, Tao Te Ching 8)

True, false, good, bad, useful, not so useful, etc.? Discuss.

My thoughts:

Most of the aphorisms on this list kind of explain themselves, but I'll admit I had to read up on this one a little.

The three qualities of water Lao Tzu emphasized were:

1. That it doesn't care whether it's consumed by bamboo, a cat, or a human. It "just works" for whatever needs it;
2. It doesn't seek status -- in fact, it naturally flows to the lowest place it can find; and
3. Although it is  powerful -- it can penetrate and split rock -- it's also soft and easily shaped.

His point being that we should be like that.

It's been so long since I last read Tao Te Ching in its entirety that I don't recall whether he looked at it from the other side. Water is neither always beneficial nor always non-contentious, as anyone who's ever nearly drowned, had a home destroyed by storm/flood, etc., or even just had to treat or drain a gas tank because water got in the fuel can attest.

So I'd say that water is a lot more like humans actually are than like this aphorism implies humans should be. It doesn't just simulate human kindness or a supposedly ideal human placidity, it also simulates human will to power, human recklessness, etc.

Wordle 1840 Hint

Hint: When you're running a footrace and you pass something, but what you pass is not another runner.

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First Letter: B

Wordle 1839 Hint

Hint: A guru, of the "expert" or "virtuoso" type rather than the "spiritual leader" type.

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First Letter: M

Back to the Tarp

Once winter was over and the weather was dry, I hit the roof of the Jayco 806SD camper with two good coats of sealant. That and some caulk along one seam seemed to solve the very minor leak problem (a slow drip in one spot) I observed when it rained.

The other day, though, I noticed a few drops of water in the cabin. I couldn't figure out for sure where they came from, but the roof-mounted AC/heater/fan unit was the prime suspect.

We had frog-strangler of a thunderstorm yesterday, and this morning, as I was working, a mini-torrent suddenly poured out of one vent and onto the top of my mini PC. Can't have that.

I don't use the unit, and it seems like completely removing it would create an even bigger sealing problem. I'll research that, but in the meantime I ordered a new tarp, large enough to cover the entire roof, for delivery later today.

The previous tarp worked OK, but wasn't really very high-quality and was already starting to degrade when I pulled it off in early spring after maybe four months of use. Other than visual appearance (and nobody can see the camper without looking really hard for it anyway), my only problems with tarping were:

1. I thought I might want to use that rooftop unit, but it turned out to be a crappy cooler (I suspect it needs a coolant charge) and heater (no real heat from it at all); and
2. I wanted to get the camper in full "like new" functionality/appearance, which isn't going to happen because replacement canvas would cost twice as much as I paid for the camper itself.

So, a tarp it is. For now. Maybe removing the unit and sealing the roof where it was won't be as big a deal as I think, but this incident increases my interest in either finding a more appropriate camper to use as an office, or moving ahead with the "geodesic dome home office" project I blogged about yesterday.

Wordle 1838 Hint

Hint: To hesitate due to doubt or objection.

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First Letter: D

Thanks For Asking! -- 07/01/26

Ask me anything (yes, anything) in the comment thread below this post. It will be my pleasure to answer in, or linked to from, the comments. That commitment applies only to genuine readers/commenters. Pseudonymous trolls only get answers if I find their questions interesting.