Two Hours of Boredom

6FPS V7#4: April 14, 2025

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Welcome to the new issue of 6FPS.

Spring has definitely sprung, with warmer weather. Spring birds are arriving and I just saw chickadees checking out a nest box, and my first Starlings flying around with nesting material. Out in the yard, the daffodils we planted are blooming nicely for their second year, and the tulips are coming up and will join in soon. I’m starting to see some of the trees budding out.

March was an expensive month but in good ways. It’s when we have the well pump inspected the the filters changed, and we had the HVAC system inspected, and it’s in good shape, but the heat pump needed a replacement starter capacitor ($450). But the feeling is the HVAC system has a lot of life in it, which is nice, since it’s now the oldest piece of infrastructure in the house. Because of the power outage we also needed to have the generator serviced. Oh, and it was new eyeglasses time, and I decided to get a set of sunglasses as well, since I really should be wearing them when out driving because, well cataracts. Oh, and the doctor things we have years before we’ll need to deal with those, so more good news.

Since it’s spring, I hauled out the pressure washer I bought last year and started planning cleaning off the decks and the areas where the moss is taking over. And then I put the washer back into storage and called a local group called Johnny’s Tsunamis that happens to specialize in pressure washing (and also do windows). They came over and gave me a quote, and then a few days later, a couple of those guys showed up and spent the next four hours pressure washing 1000 square feet of decks and patios and washing the outside of all of the first floor windows. The total cost was about $1,000 (3/4 of which was the pressure washing) but it was a good value, because it would have taken me a couple of weeks of attacking the moss, and it was unclear to me if my inexpensive washer would even handle it. They also treated the areas and think the moss will be slow in returning, so hopefully it’ll be a while before I need to have them out again. Really good job, and I really wasn't looking forward to all those hours of cleanup myself (not to mention that just doing the back desk last year left me stiff and sore for days), Sometimes calling in the pros is the smart option.

April will be quieter, but it’s planting month and so we’re going to work with the landscapers on which things didn’t survive the winter and need to be replaced. That said, I’m happy with things and there are no projects planned, either in landscaping or in the irrigation systems this year (unlike the previous 3 years)

I bought a new MacBook Air

Another reason it was an expensive month was that Apple released the new M4 MacBook Air, and I bought one. I traded in my M1 MacBook Pro and that covered about half the cost, which was nice.

I’m really liking the new Air. It’s noticeably lighter than the MacBook Pro and that was a primary reason I upgraded. It’s a lot more comfortable to use as I sit here in the great room with Laurie. It’s also a lot cooler — the MacBook Pro got uncomfortably hot while playing Civ 7, while the Air is “only” warm.

I was surprised the MacBook Pro was 4 years old; it was a great computer with no real complains, but the Air fits my needs better now that I’m not working for a living, and it’ll serve me a good many years.

Santa Clara County Bird Alliance Celebrating 100 years

Santa Clara County Bird Alliance (formerly Santa Clara Valley Audubon) is celebrating their 100th year of existence this year, and are planning a shindig on October 3 and 4 featuring Kenn Kaufmann as their lead speaker.

I have something like 2000 volunteer hours in that organization and leaving them behind was one of the big losses in my life when I moved to Washington. So I’ve decided if nothing comes up to make it possible, I’ll be heading down to Cupertino so I can celebrate this event with them in person. Right now (very tentatively) I’m thinking about coming down a few days before the event so I can stop and bird at a few favorite places (Sacramento and Colusa NWR around Willows, and Merced and San Luis NWR near Los Banos), then bird Santa Clara Valley and enjoy the events that weekend, and then wander back home up the coast with stops in Bandon and Newport. While it’s early season in the refuges, there should still be some nice birding there, and I expect both Bandon and Newport (and probably a stop in Cannon Beach for the puffin rock) will make this a solid birding trip, plus a chance to see people I haven’t been able to for a few years.

If there are opportunities for meet ups, I’ll share them, and it’ll be a while before I can confirm the trip as definite, but it really feels like this is the right reason to head back and spend some time in the old stomping grounds….

Caffeine experiments

I’ve been caffeine free for a few months, but I decided to do a bit of experimenting to see what my tolerance for it is. the latest research on it is that it can actually help migraines in some people at moderate dosages, and so I’ve been curious about what I can do, because to be honest, when out and traveling, when you are zero-sugar, zero-aspartame and zero-caffeine in your fluids, the options get really sparse (and boring).

So I set myself up to drink soda to about 100mg a day to see what happened. Day 1 was fine, day 2 not quite so and day 3 got a bit rough, and so I stopped there, and it took about 2 days for things to settle down and things to feel good again.

So it looks like an occasional drink is fine (a typical can of soda is about 40mg) but continuous and/or moderate use seems like a no-no. But if I’m on the road and the choice is a generic bottle of water or an iced tea, I think getting the tea will be okay. Within reason.

Other than those few days, March was another strong and good month. I think I’ve identified the triggers and as long as I keep my distance from them, I have relatively little problems — it’s now been two full months since I’ve needed a second dose of the migraine meds to knock it down, and I’m averaging about 8 days between any usage at all. I’ll take that.

XBOX thoughts

I mentioned this last month, and after thinking about it for a couple of weeks, I cancelled my XBOX subscription and cleared off the disks and did a factory reset of the box. It’s currently In a box in my office and will go into the garage in storage. I looked at XBOX exclusives for the next year and honestly, didn’t see anything that interested me, and at least for now, gaming using the new Mac and Steam will get me to the games I really care about, at least for the foreseeable future. Not sure if I’ll sell the thing or not, but it’s in hibernation for now.

One thing mothballing the XBOX has done is that it’s meant when I’m downstairs I’m probably working on something like a LEGOs build instead, and I’m really enjoying that a lot. I just finished their Kingfisher build and it’s absolutely gorgeous. I’ve started another one Laurie got me, and soon, one of their new, large builds will be my next project. It is really nice to have some things going on that don’t involve computers, no?

Reuters Rocks

A couple of months ago I noted I’d tossed Washington Post to the curb, and after doing some evaluation, decided to put my news money into Reuters instead. I’ve been incredibly happy with the quality and overall lack of bias in their reporting. Also happy to not be putting money into the pockets of those newspapers that have become Trump apologists.

New Wallpapers!

I release a new set of wallpapers, and you can see download info at the bottom of this issue. This was the first time I did the organization and processing for these since shifting from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom, and I’m happy to say it was pretty fast and easy, which makes me happy.

See you next issue!