I moved the coffee table and a chair to vacuum. Under both were areas of the rug that looked “Odd” I didn’t think much of it until I’d run the vacuum over them. Then I was looking at the backing of the rug.
It took me a moment… then I saw a moth. I got down on my hands & knees and saw immediately what happened. Some kind of small species of moth had come in, and made themselves right at home.
The rug was made of wool.
Well shit!
The rug was 13 years old. It was the last one of a set. The first one had been destroyed when the fire sprinkler pipe in the ceiling broke. This one had survived, but it was showing signs of wear around the edges.
I wasn’t quite ready to let it go but found myself having no choice. I rolled it up and carried it outside. Now I have to figure out how to get rid of it. It’s small enough that I may be able to stuff it in a black trash bag with some plant trimmings ( as camouflage).
The rugs, were two that Jerry & I picked out when we were buying furniture after the house rebuild. Both were neat matching geometric patterns.
I had to get rid of it, but it’s still another thing in the house that we selected together. Now it’s gone.
Jesse isn’t pleased. I think he believes he was bad although I’ve been trying to reassure him. I ended up wiping the underside of all the furniture trying to make sure I got any remaining eggs or other creatures.I scrubbed the floor and put felt on the bottoms of the furniture pieces to protect the floor. In case anything slid around.
I sort of like the room without the rug. I’ll have to see how this works. If it doesn’t I’ll pick something up.
This was not what I had planned for the day, but it’s probably for the best. I went around the house checking on the cedar blocks in drawers containing wool. I should probably find some replacements, they’re not as pungent as they once were. I’ve got wool sweaters and scarves for winter. I’d prefer not to have them eaten.
I usually moved the furniture around every couple of weeks to vacuum and I remember seeing something a few weeks ago but thinking it was just that the rug was getting old. I’m amazed how much damage was done in such a short period of time.
If there’s any benefit to synthetic carpeting, I suppose it’s that moths aren’t an issue.
Between the grape vine and now the rug, it feels like things are just slipping away.
I honestly don’t know what the fuck is wrong with people but I’m so over it.
I’m spitting nails and perhaps I’m over reacting. But FUCK!
Way back when Jerry & I moved into the house after the fire. We’d had the fence replaced so the pups could run around in their yard. The fence was bright and shiny, it looked sterile as all galvanized fences look when they’re new. This was the second fence we’d paid for and installed on our property.
By on our property, I mean we’d made sure that the fence was well within our property lines because we didn’t want to have any issues down the road. We literally had the property surveyed twice! Once, when the house was being rebuilt, and the second time, just before the fencing guys came in and reinstalled the fucking fence.
We had a neighbor that didn’t do or like fences at the time, but she understood and agreed that the pups needed a place to run and play where they couldn’t get hurt.
She died. There there was the meth head rental lady. Then there was the cute couple who during the pregnancy with their second child installed a monstrosity of a badly constructed wooden fence. (She kinda went nuts because at the time, the county was widening the wash, in the name of flood control and that forced anyone walking to be close to their property line. She was in momma bear protective mode and was super fearful of someone coming up and taking one of the kids. Likelihood of that was somewhere around .0001% but she would not be dissuaded and eventually her husband capitulated, even though he hated the wooden fence she made him install.) Shortly after they had their second child they sold the place and moved. Leaving behind the poorly built wooden monstrosity. Another couple moved in, they stayed a few years then he was transferred to New Mexico and they moved.
That brings us to the guy currently next door. Honestly, I’ve tolerated him. I’ve always thought he was a bit too arrogant and he always loves to correct anyone. In fact he corrected me during a fire evacuation when I’d taken the time from the road to inform everyone on the neighbor group chat that the primary evacuation route had been closed and that everyone was being turned around to the alternate route. At the time I was literally sitting in traffic on the alternate route and said so in the chat.
But Jerry who I was talking to on the phone at the time because we always remained in communication during an evacuation saw the text and immediately said, “Be nice. Everyone is stressed.” I should have let this guy have it right then and there, but in deference to Jerry I kept my mouth shut.
Anyway, In all the time not one person said a damn thing about the grape vines that Jerry liked and had me plant along the inside of our fence. We tended the vines and every once in a while we’d get a bunch of grapes.
Truth to tell, we spent more in water than the vines ever produced. But Jerry liked the vines and as they spread out along the fence, they softened the fence line and made for a cool shady spot for the pups to relax in.
At the time we planted the grapes, we also planted an overly ambitious apple tree. By overly ambitious, I mean that tree produced apples from the first year. In fact we had to remove some of the apples long before they were ripe because the tree had bent over from the weight.
The past 3 years the grape vine has spread a little bit along the fence and in all 3 years it’s produced some small but very tasty grapes.
There’s a narrow walkway between the fence and my neighbor’s house. He has a gate through the wooden monstrosity of a fence and while he rarely uses that gate, occasionally one of the grape vines will send a tendril out towards the gate. When I’ve seen that happening I’ve trimmed the tendril, or threaded it back through my fence allowing it to grow and in time soften more of the fence line.
Typically, I’ll do this once or twice in a summer, but due to the possibility of snakes taking up residence in the space between the fence and this guy’s house, I’ve also weed whacked the zone. It’s not a big deal for me, it helps him out, and I don’t have to worry about the dog getting bitten by a snake.
A couple of weeks ago he mentioned that he wanted to trim the grape vine on his side of the fence and I thought nothing of it. I figured he’d use his fucking brain and just trim it like a hedge. That wouldn’t hurt the plant so I said, “sure whatever”
This week I noticed that the vines were dying off running the length of my fence. At first I thought, “Well it’s fall and that’s pretty normal.” I went ahead and started giving the vine more water so that It could go to sleep for the winter.
The die off continued. Today I was outside and noticed only the vines extending along the fence were dying off. The central plant was still green and vibrant. “That’s odd,” I thought. Then I examined more closely.
That moronic son of a bitch had cut the vines wrapped through the fucking fence! Then to make matters worse in typical liberal democrat fashion had just left them there to die.
I say typical liberal democrat because A) He is a Hollywood liberal democrat leftist (he’s a voice actor) and B) because that’s so leftist, “Make a mess and expect someone else to clean it up”
I spent the next 45 minutes removing all the formerly productive (grape bearing,) now dying parts of the vine that I’d been training through my fence for literally years.
I don’t know if the plant will survive. It’s going into its winter sleep and without the leaves and additional energy it might not survive the winter because now it’s trying to heal itself and go into winter sleep.
This jackass destroyed a decade of growth and I’m doubting that I’ll get any grapes next year. He did this to a plant growing on my fucking fence. Typically once the plant has gone to sleep, I’ll trim and prune the older dead branches so that when the plant wakes up I’ll get new growth.
I was talking to my brother on the phone when I discovered this while I was cleaning up the mess I’d been left with. My brother who’s not a plant person but had seen the vines was understanding that I’d be pissed off.
He was blown away that someone would do something like that in the first place then leave it like it was nothing.
His response was the usual for him. “Well that’s fucking Californians for you.” Then he asked if I lived in an HOA community, which I don’t. When I told him that, he said just wait for it, that neighbor is probably going to try to start one.
He sold his place in Florida because the HOA wouldn’t let him plant a couple of trees in his fenced in back yard. The HOA made him get rid of potted tomato plants he was growing on his upstairs front deck. They didn’t like the aesthetics of the plants being on the upper deck and then kept hounding him about the plants after he moved them downstairs to his back deck inside a fenced yard. The HOA went so far as to forbid any “food plants” from the community.
His revenge was to find a field of dandelions and collect their seeds plus a ton of crabgrass then liberally distribute both throughout the community, 5 days before the sale of his house closed in springtime. With spring rains in northern Florida I’m betting they’ll have to tear out and re – sod the whole community.
That’s the kind of fuckers we are.
As I said he’s not a plant guy, but he likes tomatoes.
(As an aside, he’s laughing his ass off that DeSantis is likely to sign a law that makes HOAs illegal in Florida.)
I’m furious about what this neighbor did to my grape vine. There are a lot of layers to it.
It’s a plant on my property
it was growing on a fence on my property
It was a plant Jerry liked
It provided a cool shady spot for Jesse
It represented 10 years of work and nurturing
The plant had just consistently begun to provide grapes
I’d actually offered to share the grapes with the fucking neighbor. (It’s not my fault he didn’t get his ass out there to harvest grapes before the birds & squirrels got to them. I had plenty.)
That vine gave me some green along the fence that brought me a sense of peace because in the midst of a mostly grey landscape, (Unless you looked at or walked through the forest above us,) there was a deep green that I enjoyed whenever I was out there.
I guess I feel violated.
This guy has literally removed all of the natural plants from his yard. While overgrown he could simply have trimmed them back. He’s also pretty much destroyed the beautiful Japanese maple that was growing for years in his back yard. That tree was green and watching it change with the seasons was amazing.
He stopped watering it, then pruned the shit out of it, (badly) and is essentially letting it die.
I’ve included pictures of what he left me with. The vine used to extend all the way to the fence post you can see at the left.
Oh and don’t forget, he just cut the vine near the main plant. He left all of the vine threaded through the fence to wither and die making it much more difficult to remove because as it dries out, it’s no longer flexible. The stuff growing up his wall is a bit of Virginia creeper. Why he decided to fuck up my grape vine and leave the creeper is a complete mystery.
I’m tempted to tell him, “If you want to kill a plant, cut it off at the root.”
Now when I go outside I get to look at the side of his house, his shitty gate, and the exhaust ports for his tankless water heater. If you visualize the plant growing up the fence extending all the way to the left you’ll get a sense of the green wall that afforded me some privacy If I was sitting on my lower deck enjoying the sunshine.
As the plant goes to sleep, I’m sure I’ll find more vines he cut through but for the moment I’ve removed all the obviously damaged parts of the plant.
If by some miracle I’m able to stay in the house, come springtime I’m thinking I’ll move the grape to my back fence where it won’t inconvenience the neighbor and I’ll plant something really invasive and fast growing like Virginia creeper along my fence next to his house. He can cut that all he likes, he won’t make a dent in it. I’m thinking I’ll toss some Mexican Sage into the area between the fence and his house and I’m not going to bother cutting down the weeds between his house and the fence. Once the Mexican sage takes hold He’ll have a jungle and a hefty fine every spring from the county for fire abatement.
I think there’s a kind of prickly fence edging I can lay down that snakes aren’t supposed to like crossing. I’ll let him deal with the rattlesnakes that may take up residence on his property.
Thinking about it, he might have heard me talking to my brother. I was using my new AirPods during the conversation while I was cleaning up the mess he left me. I think I recall seeing him wandering around the moonscape his yard is now.
I hope he did hear me talking to my Brother. I hope he heard exactly what I think of him.
Were it not so close to my bedroom, I’d start dumping all of Jesse’s poop on that side of the house too.
I feel like I’ve been too nice. I’ve not said word one about his incessant music, (Oh I’ve thought some bad things, I’ve even played my music loud enough that his was being drowned out,) I’ve not complained about him using a leaf blower on dirt kicking up dust clouds, I’ve not said shit about him running a chain saw in the early morning or in the evening when I sit down to dinner and watch a movie.
I’ve been the ”nice guy” a.k.a. The doormat everyone shits on. The guy that just minds his own business and tries really hard to not make waves.
I’ve got enough on my plate without fighting with the neighbors too. I’ve been too quiet, too forgiving, and in doing so people think they can ignore me or walk all over me. Until they need something… Because, “Hey he’s a nice guy… it’s okay for us to fuck him over.”
Jerry taught me to be nice. What I need to relearn is how to be a raging asshole. That appears to be the only way to survive the liberal fuckers these days.
“ If Republicans kill ACA subsidies, a couple making $85K will pay $25,000 a year for healthcare.
That’s 30% of their income—just to stay alive.
This isn’t “fiscal conservatism.” It’s economic violence against the middle class.”
Brian Allen @allenanalysis
Health insurance doesn’t keep 90+ % of the population paying for it alive.
Most people in a given year don’t spend anywhere near the amount they pay in insurance premiums.
We joke about men not seeing their doctors. Women may see their doctors 3-4 times a year. If you’ve got children they’re seeing doctors more frequently, but even so an average normal family probably isn’t spending as much as their yearly or even monthly premium.
The question to ask is what does it really cost for a 20 minute visit with a doctor? What do medications actually cost to manufacture? Why can I self pay for a medication and pay $50 for 90 days, but if I put it through insurance suddenly that same medication is $400? Why can I “Self Pay” for my once a year doctor visit, have a physical + tests & have it cost $800 cash, but my monthly insurance premium per month is $1400?
Yes, insurance costs are out of hand. Yes, insurance companies are making breath-taking profits not on illness but by selling fear. The fear they’re selling is rising medical costs but they have a hand in driving those costs up by making those actually practicing medicine have to add staff just to deal with insurance billing and coding. Who are insurance bureaucrats to deny a doctor’s diagnosis?
The medical / insurance / pharmaceutical industry is a snake eating its own tail. That snake gets fatter each cycle but eventually it will eat itself to death.
This issue isn’t partisan. The issue is continuing to throw money at a system that is fundamentally broken and expecting the brokenness to get fixed without looking at or demanding to know why / how it’s broken and taking appropriate action to fix it.
ACA was presented as an attempt to address the problem. It didn’t work, the math never worked. Congress knew that going in. That’s why they attempted to mandate everyone pay into the system and why they were going to fine people who didn’t.
It failed In part because it didn’t account for economic conditions, and in part because it didn’t account for adherence to ACA rules adding cost and complexity to the practice of medicine.
The ACA pretty much drove small medical practices out of business. They had no choice but to merge with larger medical groups or hospitals meaning that a doctor hanging out a shingle and seeing patients on his or her own all but disappeared.
The quality of care decreased because now you may see one of four or more doctors none of whom know your name. None of them interact with you as a person and all of them are diagnosing / prescribing based on data in your chart, not actually knowing you as a living breathing human being.
Half the time they’re not listening and in some cases it’s questionable if they fully understand what you’re saying due to language barriers. You’re just one of a thousand bodies parading through an office in a given week.
Fixing this system isn’t about supplementing it with taxpayer’s dollars. Fixing this system is about bringing it to heel.
One way to start that might be for everyone that can, to stop buying the insurance companies fear. Switch to self pay and then negotiate fair pricing from medical practitioners.
Another possibility is to demand upfront pricing so that a patient knows it will cost X dollars for a procedure. If you see an MD it’s $100 /hr (And you get their FULL attention, no more playing with their computers). Blood work costs X dollars for a comprehensive panel. X-rays? What does it cost for materials+the hourly rate for the technician+the hourly rate for a doctor to look at the X-ray. There was a time when a film X-ray cost $50 flat. Why does where you have any testing done affect the bottom line cost? Just crossing county lines can have a 30% differential.
Why is it that we all have blood work done, but if you ask them to tell you what your blood type is, they want to charge you another fee? They’re already there, they’ve got the lab, the samples, and the typing cards. Shouldn’t we all know our blood type as a matter of safety?
These are the kinds of questions that should be asked.
You want the government to do something about healthcare? Then have them run audits and accounting to determine the real costs of care. Then move forward to make changes beneficial to the American people, not the insurance companies.
You wouldn’t continue to pump gas into your car from a leaky gas pump, why do people think it’s okay to keep pumping tax dollars into a system that is leaking money like a sieve and providing poor services?
I’m actively considering downgrading from an Apple update.
IOS 26 is pretty on my phone. It’s also pretty on my watch. But it’s very annoying.
Notifications half the time don’t show up on either my watch or my phone. Sometimes on one but not on the other, and sometimes on both. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.
I’ve checked and rechecked the settings and all the troubleshooting steps I can think of, and those suggested by Apple. Even turning off the “New” features doesn’t help.
How they could fuck up something that worked so well, is beyond me. I mean phone calls, and messages from known contacts not ringing? REALLY? That’s kind of basic stuff.
Thing is, it’s not any glaring “This is IT,” issue. It’s death by a thousand cuts. It’s little things.
For example, when starting a workout on my watch. In IOS18 I’d hit the action button on my ultra, that would take me to a list of workouts I’d done in the past. It was logically sorted by most frequent. I could tap the workout I was going to do and be off.
Now, hitting the action button takes me to the last workout I did. FULL SCREEN, No list, with a “Play” button.
If I want to select something else, I’ve got to roll the crown to see other selections.
They added an un-necessary complication to the process. The previous way was clean, direct, and simple.
It’s a minor thing, but it’s annoying. Then on the phone side you’ve got live activities which is fine and maybe even useful. But if you open the fitness app even after you’ve completed a workout and stopped it using the watch, there’s a screen showing the summary of that completed workout with a green check in the upper right hand corner.
Okay, but what I wanted out of the fitness app was something completely different, and now I’m forced to press the green checkmark to get to the underlying data screens in the fitness app.
Again another unnecessary step.
The whole of the OS is filled with extra, unnecessary steps that make working with my phone like answering 50 questions at a damn gas pump.
I just want gas! Take my money and turn on the fucking pump!
I’m not having a battery drain issue with my phone as so many others are, Because I’m not using it. Really, I’ve noticed I’m going to my computer for even the slightest bit of information.
Maybe this is just settling in stuff. Maybe I’ll get used to it. But I don’t need an interrogation from a device that is supposed to be my assistant, every time I interact with it.
Maybe this is just the age we live in.
Even researching the roll back process is annoying. I entered a search on how to roll back then found an article from Macobserver, fine. I tapped on the link, then Macobserver wanted age verification. WHAT? Then they wanted me to click on a check box the proved I was human. Then cloudflare pops up with a “Verifying” dialog and I still hadn’t gotten to the fucking article.
Why does everything have to be so complicated? I bailed on their page and made a different selection. Even then I was pounded with cookie notifications, an AI chat box to help answer my question, a Google login prompt, and some EU notification. ALL OF WHICH prevented me from reading a text article related to the question I asked. I couldn’t even see the title of the article to verify if it was what I actually wanted.
I bailed on that page, and went to the next listing in line. Finally! There was an article describing the process without all the bullshit!
Maybe I’m just cross.
Then again, maybe I’m just sick of bullshit at every turn of my existence.
It looks like downgrading from IOS 26, while possible, has a rather high risk of fucking up my phone, and data. I’ll have to reach a much higher level of annoyance before I undertake that project.
It’s got me thinking though.
I’m convinced that dumping the web hosting and this blog entirely, is in fact the right thing for me to do. It’s become such a headache I’m not interested anymore.
Between endless demands from the EU regulators to verify the owner and contact information on every single web domain, and them telling me that they’re implementing new rules to protect the delicate sensibilities of their members. I’m over it.
Gee Thanks Obama! You fucking moron! Turning over the domain registration to the EU was a fucking brilliant idea!
Well, the internet was a good idea, while it lasted…
I wonder if I can still get a print version of Encyclopedia Britannica? Why yes… it’s 2K on Amazon.
I was going to say Apple Christmas, but that actually starts on the 19th or a couple of days later when shipments of new iPhones start showing up.
Looks like this year I may update my Ultra. It’s got the O2 Sensing back online although it’s not on device like it was in the original Ultra. They’ve supposedly shifted the computations over to the iPhone to get around Massimo’s patent lawsuit.
Massimo has responded by filing suit against that too. But the sensors are still there, the appeals are still pending, and Massimo hasn’t figured out that they could make a hell of a statement by simply saying, “Hey, we’re a healthcare monitoring company. We make a ton of devices used in the medical industry and are interested in making everyone’s health better. To that end, Apple can use the disputed technology freely with the proviso that they make mention of our company’s technological innovations. Upon which the blood O2 sensing in the Apple Watch is based.”
It would be a hell of a PR move, save everyone time and money, end a bitter dispute, and put Massimo front and center, in a positive light. Yeah, Apple may have gotten away with something, but the larger win might be worth it and their case may have been enough to make Apple less likely to play around without paying patent royalities.
At this point the only people getting rich in this dispute are the legal firms anyway.
There are rumors that Massimo is spinning off their consumer monitoring device into a separate company or division, probably in an attempt to isolate their actual medical division from the legal conflict.
I’d bet Apple would go for it. America is the only country where they have to disable the onboard sensors. I’m not sure, but I think the EU courts told Massimo to go pound sand.
The new Ultra has other features that make it a decent upgrade to the Ultra v1.
Still deciding about it. And I’ve got plenty of time. Pre-Orders are reporting 8 – 12 weeks out for delivery. I’ll be interested to see what the initial reports are from people who get the first units.
The iPhone 17 Pro is also interesting. It seems that I’m only interested in iPhones when they have blue as an available color. The cameras (front & back) are vast improvements over what I’ve got in my current phone. The battery life and cooling system are also of interest. My phone gets a little toasty in some use conditions. Fortunately, I don’t encounter those conditions often enough to have it be a pain in my butt, however it would be nice to not have to concern myself with those situations at all.
I’ll give it some thought, maybe I’ll just wait for another “Blue” year.
Given the change back to an aluminum frame, maybe I’ll wait & see what the real world usage feedback is, before making a move. It’s a very expensive product and if mine is working fine, perhaps waiting another couple of years wouldn’t hurt.
Probably the most interesting thing is the AirPod Pro 3. I really like my AirPod Pro 2s. They’ve been out for a few years now. It’s likely the improvements will make me demand Apple take my money.
Better heart rate sensing during workouts would be welcome. I’m pretty confident I understand why my heart rate is all over the place when I’m walking or doing other activities in colder seasons just using my watch. Perhaps a secondary set of sensors would prevent the dropouts. But cold is cold and the human body is always going to divert blood flow away from the body surfaces to maintain core temperature.
It’s possible the ear canal works the same way. Equally possible is that heart rate measured at the ear canal would be less affected, since the body is going to keep the brain fed as a priority.
The improvements to sound quality is a win, and translation functions might be very interesting. I wonder if people will be less likely to be nasty if they realize everyone around them knows what they’re saying even if it’s in another language? Likewise, I wonder if Apple translation will be adapted to translate some of the urban speech that now sounds more like another language as well.
Rough math, if I updated everything. It’s the cost of a new laptop. Wow!
Then again, the power of the phones in our pockets has eclipsed the first few laptops I owned very significantly.
The question probably comes down to “So I need that kind of computing horsepower in my pocket, or on my wrist?” Better questions to ask might be in the arena of tracking, and privacy. Having a smart assistant in my pocket opens the door for having that assistant “rat me out” to someone who is not my friend.
I’m not sure I’ll update to the new OS immediately. Maybe I’ll wait for my devices to do it automatically. It’s likely that waiting for the automatic update to take place will take a week or so, that might allow me to avoid the inevitable first release bugs.
