(morning writing)

[elainegrey]

Maybe i am emotionally shut down. I just don't know. I guess i need to meditate on clearing the spring. Keep getting distracted and not finishing this post.

I find i am focusing pretty hard at work and then just tick over into, Nope. Somewhere someone posted the "I don' wanna do the work today" scene from the "Firegbringer" play and that can fill my brain.

On Thursday Dad came over and cut down the top of one of the eastern red cedars (Juniperus virginiana, not really a cedar) in my hedging project to take to his sweetie as a Christmas tree. He measured the height of the tree, but not the girth and it was somewhat comical to see him try to fit it in his Subaru. I admit that if the owners of the parcel next door subdivide it, i will probably want some height to screen the no-doubt oversized homes from having unfettered visibility onto our property. But at the moment i'd rather have light. The bottom five feet of the cedar that remains will convert some of its branches into new leaders and will be plenty tall soon enough.

And Thursday night nibling W played jazz guitar in a streaming concert with the jazz ensemble he's in at NYU. That was a pleasure to listen to.

--== ∞ ==--

Saturday i did lots of laundry, packed for the trip, and did some clothing seasonal switch overs, as well as identifying clothes to donate and throw away.

I thank past me for check lists, because going through one at the end of the day identified many items i'd forgotten to pack.

I should have time today at the hotel to go through notes and prep for the conference.

It's 24°F here, 37°F in Boston. Going north to warm up?

--== ∞ ==--

I remain easily triggered by Shinyfast.  Despite me configuring my internal router to use DNS over TLS, it continued to complain about an automated attempt to reach a specific URL. How could they know that, i wondered? I've found DNS leak tests and tried them: i am not being routed to the the DNS i configured but to some other DNS, and now know about https://dnsleaktest.com/what-is-transparent-dns-proxy.html  (And it turns out it's an http connection, anyhow.)

I recognize if i was a parent or coffee shop vendor and wanted to lock down the network access i was paying for, i would need to override my children or customers' DNS requests so i could block some of their access. So, this is not nefarious but a feature, in theory. "Oh look at all the controls we provide for free," says Shinyfast. Well, bleep you, i don't want any logs of my activity. I am not thrilled about the whole mass of surveillance capitalism that exists out there. While i have no evidence my ISP is packaging data up to sell, i am very frustrated that they so opaquely slurp it up.

Rationally, i recognize that i also don't think Shinyfast is necessarily competent enough to find logs to hand them over,  but the corollary is i don't think they are competent enough to protect them. It's the layers and layers of service providers that seems so messy. Shinyfast is contracting with Calix, my guess is Calix is contracting with the DNS folks. What other companies have a view into my home's internet traffic to provide all the security services?