Bad Timing

      From the "Oh, Like I Needed This" department: I went down to my basement ham-radio setup to while away some time while the laundry ran, only to find a slow drip of water had started, apparently not long before. There were just a couple of drops of water on a typewriter awaiting repair, and a little more on the cardboard box it was in. The James Millen Co. VFO under it was dry. All this was sitting in my well-used office chair.

      I figured it was a one-time thing, from scrubbing my hairbrush in the kitchen sink right before (horrendous, it was). My hamshack is under the kitchen -- not a great location, but it was a cozy spot next to the stairs, handy for antenna feeds because it's near the center of the long axis of the lot and it was already wired for power.

      I went to the other side of the basement, moved laundry from the washer to the dryer and when I returned, water had been dripping on the chair.

      So the chair is outside drying now. Investigations in the basement aren't revealing any spraying pinholes or iffy connections in the pipes or drain and a search under the sink doesn't find any dripping water -- but there's a hidden area from the bottom of the sink cabinet to floor level, the "kick" about 4" high. The previous owner did a lot of his own plumbing, with a carefree disregard for the intermixing of copper and galvanized-iron pipe. This has made for problems in the past and there may be another of his copper-iron-copper unions hidden in that kick space.

      For right now, I'm going to keep an eye on it. If I have to drill some holes and saw out an access opening in the bottom of that cabinet, I will -- but not four days after cataract surgery, not unless I absolutely have to.

      The fun never ends.

     UPDATE: The dripping appears to have slowed markedly overnight.  For now, it appears to be strongly correlated with running water from the tap in the kitchen sink, which I have avoided doing this morning while continuing to use the drain.

Not Supposed To Read?

      You might as well ask me to stop breathing as ask me to stop reading.  Sure, I can hold my breath for a little while.  I can give up reading for about as long.

      Immediately after eye surgery, it was moot: I couldn't focus well enough to do much reading.  Shouldn't read, can't read, vision not really good enough for television -- what to do?

      Radio, of course.  The present-day offerings of music, talk-show irritainment* and sports; there's just not much there that appeals to me.  NPR has some good interview shows, their short top-of-hour newscasts are first-rate† and This American Life is a delight.  But it's not like a book.  You have to be there for it (mostly -- This American Life is extensively archived online).  I read fiction for entertainment.

      Recently, I've been reading Michael Connelly​'s "Harry Bosch" series and watching the TV adaptation.  The books are award-winning and Connelly's plots are first-rate.  I think the remixing and reduction/combining in the cast of characters done in adapting the series for television has improved it.  Being able to look back over nearly twenty books and reknit the long arc is a second chance few writers receive, and the writer's room for the series treats the source material with respect.

      The "Bosch" books and TV series are both the kind of crime fiction known as a "police procedural," following a case through the workings of law enforcement.  One of the oldest examples is Jack Webb's Dragnet.  Most people remember it from the TV series (if they remember it at all) but it began as a radio series, with slightly more relaxed acting style and the same stories-from-real-cases approach -- and the radio version of Dragnet is available online!  The thirty-minute episodes are essentially novelettes and Webb's docudrama approach to storytelling holds up well even now.  And if I fall asleep listening, I don't nap though an entire audiobook and have to scrub back frantically to figure out where I left off -- a self-contained half-hour story with a break in the middle is pretty easy to pick up on and start over.

      The same site has plenty of other classic radio shows, too.

      My eyes continue to heal and I am trying to readjust to not being severely nearsighted.  I can use the computer without eyeglasses now, though it feels strange to do so.  I have to sleep with taped-on eye shields (you dare not rub your eyes) and I'm supposed to wear my old eyeglasses‡ or a pair of disposable safety glasses (pretty ripply; I need to find my good safety glasses) during the day.
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* Tamara's coinage for the widely popular kind of political commentary that leaves listeners annoyed if not outright enraged.  It's not to my taste. 
 
† Yes, yes, readers will tell me it's all slanted.  Certainly NPR are great fans of government-as-helper, but you know that going in and it mostly affects what they cover and not how they cover it.  When it comes to reporting the meat and potatoes of news -- wars, natural disasters, the fussings of legislatures and heads of state, they do fine.
 
‡ It turns out that layering a pair of +1.25 cheaters over my old glasses comes very close to giving me normal vision.  That should tide me over until I can have temporary eyeglasses made Monday.  A full eye exam and new glasses are several weeks away.

Cataracts, Day Three

      Yesterday, the eye doctor did my right eye.  They load you up with Versed, which starts erasing memories as it wears off.  So about all I can really recall about the surgery itself is that the nurses and eye surgeon were nice, and the entire process was smooth, professional and felt unhurried.

     That last thing is no small accomplishment.  It's essentially a production line; patients are tightly scheduled and their process of evaluation, preparation, surgery intake, surgery and recovery shows every sign of careful time-motion analysis -- but analysis by an actual eye surgeon, someone who knows how long things ought to take, and why you ought to add ten or twenty percent extra time.  As a result, waiting rooms aren't crowded, patients don't spend a lot of time in them (and the longest waits are after you've been given dilating eye drops and they're taking effect) and everything just keeps moving.  (In fact, the firm is owned by an eye surgeon.)

     As a (almost certainly intentional) side effect, it's as good a cure for worry as can be had: everyone you deal with is relaxed.  They're not fighting the clock; they know patients will arrive and move though the system in good order.  That level of confidence comes though clearly to the patent, or at least it did to me.  Every single person you interact with begins with a name/birthdate check, and the same eye surgeon who does your pre-operative check (and pen-marks your face next to the eye they're working on*) does your eye surgery.  It appears they run in batches of five or six (or more), with at least that many prep positions outside dual operating rooms.  There are a pair of nurses per patient (and possibly pair of positions), timed so that nobody's hanging around waiting and nobody's trying to juggle more work than they can manage.

     This is a profitable specialty, and one that is highly reputation-driven.  The two factors appear to have resulted, for this practice, in a remarkably well-run end result.

     As for me, I am now less nearsighted.  My vision is still sorting itself out and I'm definitely going to need new glasses, but I think it'll be workable.

     I had been skeptical of the people telling me about yellowing vision and all the depth of color I would see afterward.  Surely not me -- I was seeing colors just fine!   Um, about that?  You were right.  I had no idea.  Whites are brighter, colors are deeper, shadows less impenetrable. Gas flames are a shade of purplish-blue that I don't think I have ever seen before!  I'm going to need stronger sunglasses for outdoors, too.  Why, we haven't had summer sun like this since I was a teenager (or so it has seemed).
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* I'm told that the simple step of marking the area to be operated on, universally adopted over the last 30 years or so, has made a huge difference in "Oops, not that side" surgical mistakes.  Yes, in hindsight it seems like a no-brainer, but it hadn't been SOP and by the time someone's all prepped and draped in the OR, who and where is not always obvious.  Ditto the practice of always verifying which patient you are in every interaction -- it might be annoying, but it's enormously helpful in making sure you don't get the treatment intended for someone else, or vice versa.

Cataracts, Day Two

 OK, I had the first cataract surgery yesterday. It went well. As people told me the colors of things have changed a little bit: a golden veil has been lifted from the world. My eyesight has changed in that eye, so I'll need new glasses after the second one is done and some time has passed for things to settle down. I'm not supposed to be reading much so I am actually dictating this and it's not going to get the usual editing job. You may notice that line spacing is different. My thanks to everyone who has offered helpful advice and support throughout this.  I'll be leaving in about an hour for the next round of surgery on my other eye.

Well, Here Goes

      Off to the eye surgeon in a couple of hours.  I may have a report later.  Or I might not.  I'd probably have to dictate it to Tamara, and she's fighting deadlines at present.

Modern Geekery

      For the radio amateurs among my readership, here's a nice little kit: the Nouveau 75 QRP AM transceiver. 

     It looks like an interesting radio for the price. You're probably not going to work the world with it, but it might be fun.

Closer To The Deadline

      The nearer I get to the date for this cataract surgery, the less sanguine I am about it.  My expectations appear to have been unrealistically rosy and while it's better than it used to be, outcomes are still not all that great.  And I can't get much in the way of straight talk from the cataract surgeon's office.

      Unless I am really impressed by high-quality information on my first visit to the surgeon, I'm probably only going to get the worst eye done.  It's my non-dominant eye and if the results aren't that great, well, it's not seeing all that great right now, either.

      A decade ago, they were supposedly five years away from a nice, soft drop-in replacement for one's natural lens.  It looks like that never happened.  I am disappointed by this.  The things they are putting in people's eyes instead scare me: small, odd-looking....  Just not comfortable with the idea.

Food, Home And Away

      Or "Away and Home," because we started with takeout.

      One of the few good effects of the pandemic is that nearly every place that serves food will make it to go.  Root & Bone expanded to Indianapolis several months before the great upheaval.  Tam and I had wanted to eat there, but indoor dining was shut down for months and the location is a little out of the way.

      Memorial Day shifted our night before trash-pickup day, when we usually get take-our or delivery for dinner and spend the time saved emptying wastebaskets and cleaning out the fridge.  I decided it was a good day to try the place.  It turned out to an excellent idea!  The food was marvelous.  I had the Braised Short Rib "Meatloaf," which was amazing, the nicely-seasoned meat falling-apart tender, and Tam tried their Bacon Board, very rich thick-cut bacon, house-made pork rind, cheese, picked, and pickled peppers and onions.  She loved it.  I got a side of butter beans, in case we were still hungry (nope -- portions were generous; my dinner came with mashed potatoes and asparagus) and because they're a bit tricky, delicious if the kitchen crew is paying attention and much less so if they're not.  The beans surpassed my hopes, smoky and flavorful, tender and not bitter.  By present standards prices are good, especially for the quality and quantity.  I found indoors to be slightly too loud (a happy, officially-reduced-capacity crowd) for my aging ears.  They have a nice outdoor dining area, so we'll plan on an in-person visit soon.

      Saturday was an at-home day; laundry and a little gardening for me, lawn-mowing for Tam.  Dinner was succotash (small red beans and tender white corn, seasoned with a little garlic, black pepper, parsley, cilantro* and the least hint of chili powder) and grilled ham and cheese sandwiches.

      They were not your usual grilled treat.  You see, I had bought truffle butter earlier in the week; I worked overtime last weekend and could afford to splurge.  It makes fabulous steaks; I made thin-cut ribeyes with it Wednesday.  There was plenty of the fancy butter left.  Starting with thin rye bread, I layered a slice of Black Forest ham, a slice of Swiss cheese, another slice of ham, cheese, and ham.  The meat and cheese slices are thin enough that it's not -- quite -- excessive.  Grilled in a frying pan over medium heat in truffle butter until the cheese is melted and bread is crunchy-toasted, the end result is warm and wonderful.  You can use plain butter and I usually do, but this was extra-special.
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* Neither one of us tastes soapiness in cilantro.  Some people do.  It's genetic, not learned: either you do or you don't, and if you do, nothing's going to change that.  Use it with caution and always tell people if you did. 

Rescued Another Bat

      At least I got the poor creature back outdoors.  Early Wednesday morning, our neighbor texted me before I'd even had a chance to make coffee:

      There's another bat in my house.  Can you help get it out?

      I texted back that I needed a couple of minutes, then brushed my teeth, put some clothes on, grabbed my leather work gloves and selected a small cardboard box from our (copious!) stock.

      A little background: our neighbor likes cats a lot, and she's usually got at least a half-dozen, living in comfort in her spotless house.  A row of well-maintained litterboxes in her finished basement ensure the house lacks the usual aroma and a nice collection of toys keeps them entertained.

      If you're a bat, her house is Hell: her cats are convinced that a flying mouse that wants to hide is the best toy they have ever seen.  And yet her attic has been unusually attractive to bats; for years, she averaged one surprise bat every twelve months.  Last year, the bats apparently set up an aerodrome in her attic.  They were getting into her house almost weekly until she hired a humane bat-abatement expert, who sealed up every point of entry but one, where he installed an exit-only flap.  After several days, bats were no longer tempting the cats or scaring her, and had presumably found new homes.

      But now one was back.  When I arrived, she told me one of her cats had carried it up from the basement and set it down on the floor at her feet, whereupon it had scrambled to the nearest vertical surface, attained some height and launched itself to skitter about.  It had found the kitchen clock and scrambled behind it.

      "I'm pretty sure it's still there," she said.

      I set the small cardboard box down on the counter, open, and asked if she had a sturdy chair.

      She was ahead of me.  "I have stepladder right here."

      We set up the ladder and I gloved up and climbed up.  Lifting the clock from its hook revealed a small brown bat, huddled tightly into the hollow body of the clock, giving a strong impression of a creature who is hoping this is all a terrible dream.

      I tilted the clock so the bat was cradled in it like fruit in a bowl (they're pretty awkward and slow on a level surface) and stepped down to the floor..  With the clock over the box, I gave the outside a few taps.  Nope.  The bat wriggled like a small boy who doesn't want to get out of bed and wrapped a wing over its head.  It might as well have muttered, "I don't wanna!"

      Turning the clock all the way over and tapping it, right on top of the open end of the box, resulted in a reluctant departure; I moved the clock out of the way and closed up the box, trying to avoid leaving a bat-sized opening.  It might not have mattered.  The little bat was trying to crowd itself into a corner, obviously hoping the nightmare would end soon.

     After a short discussion, I carried the box to a small tree near the street in her front yard.  The bat was not at all interested in leaving the box -- opening the top, turning it over above a group of branches and shaking did nothing at all to convince it to decamp.  We ended up wedging the box between three branches, open and upside down, so the bat could leave in its own time.

      Bats are generally beneficial animals. They devour mosquitos, which is enough to make me like them in and of itself.  They're not very strong and most U. S.-native bats are small animals.  Indiana's bat population has been suffering badly from White-nose Syndrome, so every bat matters.  I like being able to help even a little.

A Reminder

      Just because you like what a website, newspaper or network is saying, just because it resonates with you, that doesn't mean it's true.  That doesn't mean it's unbiased.

      The Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart remains the most accurate set of ratings I have found.  They sort news and opinion outlets on both bias (Left/Right) and accuracy/reliability (on the vertical axis).   You'll find most of the major U.S. networks and newspapers high in accuracy and Left of center to a greater or lesser extent -- about where I'd rank them.

      Epoch Times and Gateway Pundit are way out to the Right -- okay, they are -- and way, way low in reliability.  That unreliability is a problem: they publish things that are of dubious provenance.  Things that are poorly attributed, not well-supported by the facts or the experts and possibly even made up.

      Political bias is one thing; everyone's got an opinion and they're entitled to it.  But while you get your own opinion to have and to hold, you don't get your own set of facts.  And if you feed yourself a steady diet of non-factual "facts," you end up off in cloud-cuckooland, believing six impossible things before breakfast.  It may be great fun or at least a great comfort, but it's a dangerously bad set of tools for coping with the real world.  Sooner or later, that path will leave you stranded in fantasy with no way back and a surplus of anger.

      Things don't get better from there.

      Seek media that makes you a little uncomfortable.  Cross-check the claims that bug you.  Cross-check the stuff you like.  Don't just follow one guy's website, linking to itself.  Go back to the source material whenever you can and then check that the source is real and reliable.  Don't assume everyone who smiles and agrees with you is your friend.

Watching And Waiting

      When news about a possibly more-transmissible COVID-19 variant came out of Vietnam, it caught my attention.  So far, it looks like a combination of of the undesirable characteristics of two other strains, both of which are susceptible to the immunity created by the vaccines presently available in the United States.  So it's bad news, worse news if you happen to be in Vietnam, but not of immediate personal or local concern to me.

      By this point, in most places in the U.S. if you haven't been vaccinated, it's because you can't be, won't be, or are waiting to see if the vaccine makes people break out in fuzzy purple spots.  New cases are declining and people are increasingly able to get back to the way things were before this mess hit.

      New variants are of wider concern to me, though, and they should be to you.  Viruses are sneaky.  They mutate and  evade vaccines.  One way to stop that (or at least slow it way down) is to keep the virus from spreading.  If you've got a virus storming unchecked through a large, dense population, there will be a larger amount of mutated versions.  The virus only needs to get lucky once.

      Vietnam appears to have a grotty little one-party communist government with a lousy record on human rights.  Nevertheless, we need to get 'em vaccinated, Party members, peasants and internal critics alike.  Them and all the rest of the world.  C'mon -- we wiped out smallpox, we darned near wiped out polio, and we can knock this new bug out, too.

      The sooner and quicker COVID-19 gets eliminated, especially in those parts of the world where people have no choice but to live close together and work side by side, the fewer nasty surprises the human race is going to get from it.  The whole planet is connected now; a virus that does in an ox-driver in a bucolic backwater can ride the train with his neighbor to the capital city and hop on an airplane with a diplomat; next thing you know, it's climbed aboard a cabdriver in your home town and he's pulling up to the curb just in time to take you to the five-and-dime -- or a wedding.  Tick-tock.

But Gee, What If We Fight?

      Nitwittery abounds when people try to predict the future -- and knowing a lot doesn't seem to help.  Hand humanity a new technology or idea, and people will take it and figure out things that the inventor never intended.  (Mass production lines give you cheap cars.  Cheap cars give you drive-in theaters and carhops and eventually, drive-through fast food.  Cars with bench seats give you kids making out in secluded locations.  This gives you all sorts of aftereffects.  And so on.  But who saw all that hitched to the first Model T?)

      Space travel has its own predictors of the future, back as far as Jules Verne and then H. G. Wells, and plenty of engineers not long after.  Fill your tank with Cavorite and settle the Universe!  The softer sciences were on that train, too (we can probably lay attracting their attention more at Mr. Wells's door than M. Verne's).  This (eventually) results in think-pieces like "Why We Should Think Twice About Colonizing Space."

      Tl;dr?  That's okay.  The upshot is that the fellow who wrote it worries we -- and/or our institutions -- will mutate and this will result in distrust, wars and general awfulness.

     There are a couple of problems with this line of thought -- first, we've already done just that and learned to cope (however badly).  Second, it's straight-up racist.

      Yeah, yeah, I know, overused word, et cetera, et cetera.  It still means something.  The central thesis behind "We Should Think Twice..." comes crashing down here in the United States when you turn on your radio to listen to the jazz station while you drive your German car past the Japanese grocery store on your way to the Italian restaurant while remembering the wonderful French pastry you enjoyed at breakfast (and that's just in my neighborhood.  Yours may offer even more choices).  Yes, we fight -- we also raid one another's fridges.  If you can drink milk as an adult without discomfort after, some of your ancestors were milk-sucking mutants who drank from their herd animals instead of making cheese -- and lactose tolerance is a trick our species has worked out at least twice, in multiple places, with several different creatures, from goats to camels to cattle.  Humans don't all look alike.  Our cultures vary.  This does not doom us to nothing but an endless succession of wars: we trade.  We marry.  We steal -- er, "appreciate" -- one another's music and cuisine, fashion and religions.  

      Our descendants might do the same thing in space?  Well, so what.  Space is vast and travel is slow.  Barring someone figuring out how to cheat at physics (unlikely but humanity's full of surprises), interplanetary war is iffy and interstellar war is damned near impossible.  Sorry space-opera fans: it's too far to go, especially when you have a whole solar system right at home, full of sunlight, water (there's ice all over the place), metal and other useful material.  In space, we're more likely to be insulated from one another by distance and more likely to swap low mass, speed-of-light-transmissible songs, books and ideas than raw materials.  And the more widely humanity spreads through the universe, the more likely there will be people around to do the swapping.  Maybe they'll be blue-skinned, live on sugar water and smell terrible -- think what a nightmare monster you'd be at the court of Tiglath-Pileser, any of 'em, with your Raybans, Spotifty-blaring iPhone and crazy-tall height compared to most of them.  And that's before we get to what you're wearing (you left the house in that?) and how odd you'd smell to them.

     Let's get out there and make new homes in space.  Plenty of other people will stay home.