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The phone battery died in the night. I woke on my own, a good bit later than i intended and presumably with enough sleep. I had dreamed dense detailed dreams before waking: driving the same urban off ramp over and over into a museum and university district, radiation therapy for some cancer at the base of my spine (and everyone's attitude was this was about the same as getting dental fillings: dream cancer was not cause for grave concern), music that embedded a subtle message about how to produce music independently of corporate interests, moving digital files around repositories, crowded rides over hills, hat shops, modern buildings of steel, glass, and concrete. I'm sure my brain worked out something.
--==∞==--
As the kettle came to a boil, i watched the birds instead of doing any kitchen tasks. The new feeder seems to be successful at holding smaller seed than sunflower seed. I'm monitoring how much spills past its tray. The tray is a new feature that seems to have gotten the towhee's attention on an occasion. The goldfinches and chickadees have been delighted by the feeder: it's three conic sections of wire mesh, tiered together. The top two are an hour glass shape, and there's a baffle at the bottom of the middle tier to guide seed to the sides, but allow some to spill down into the third tier which repeats the top of the hourglass form, and then ends in a tray. At the narrow neck in the hourglass shape there's a circumscribing wire perch.
The chickadees and goldfinches make use of all the features, clinging to the mesh, perching, sanding in the tray. Housefinches, however, seem to still find the structure a challenge compared to the previous tube with the stations at set intervals. I watched one arrive and then backflutter -- hovering in the air as if aghast at the change. He landed on the porch rail as if to get a sense of the structure. He then slowly landed on the tray and craned his head back to look up at the shape. It seems the overhang of the feeder perplexed him. He considered, and i marveled that i don't think i've ever had to watch figure something out. I'm not sure if that makes him slower than the other birds that just land and feed, or if he was a more reflective bird, cautious so that he will live another day. Eventually he fluttered up to the middle tier, clasped the wire and began pulling seeds through.
Christine notes that it is more generous to assume he was a cautious bird. (As if we weren't generous enough with the expense of the bird feed.)
--==∞==--
Sleeping in has not put forward my morning plans. I need to recalibrate my intentions.
Yesterday evening i puttered with genealogy and confirmed a switch between our authorization service and an institution's. Usually, these encounter some headache or another, so i was prepared for a long evening of poking at changes. In late June we'd had the headache of an institution that had first kept our servers blocked at their firewall, then had a round robin system for their LDAP servers and the certificate needed to successfully connect to the servers only worked for some of the LDAP servers, causing intermittent failures. Furthermore, they wouldn't give us testing credentials that would work completely.
Last night, it just worked. Testing credentials went through. Success. No hiccups. Hurrah!
Christine laughed as she looked at the two of us on the deck. She had my iPad and her iPad as she tried to get my iPad set up to test our app. I had my work laptop, my own laptop, and the genealogy book by my great aunt. We do use the tech.
As it cooled off we retired inside to watch the Gettysburg section of Ken Burns' Civil War documentary and i knitted (knooked). I'm doing a square as a washcloth, practicing a tighter knit, and practicing the right angle turn. I'd made up a right angle turn in my last project and liked the result, a raglan yoke for the top, but didn't think the turn was the best ever. So when i saw the Templeton Square i thought i'd give it a go. One thing, the column clarifies for me why this raglan technique is used in crochet and not knitting (traditionally): the number of needles to keep a growing diameter is probably a challenge. Crochet doesn't need the stitch holder and knooking trails a cord, similar, i suppose, to the "newfangled" circulars. I'm not making the lace, just the square, and i started with a crochet circle in the center. It worked from a construction point of view, but it is a more dense bunch of knots in the center of the more fluid knit.
I just ordered a bunch of rivoli crystals and earring mounts from Fire Mountain for the Meeting fund raiser. $45, a tiny bit of time, and a $100 profit, at least. $255 profit, if they sell well and at full price.
--==∞==--
As the kettle came to a boil, i watched the birds instead of doing any kitchen tasks. The new feeder seems to be successful at holding smaller seed than sunflower seed. I'm monitoring how much spills past its tray. The tray is a new feature that seems to have gotten the towhee's attention on an occasion. The goldfinches and chickadees have been delighted by the feeder: it's three conic sections of wire mesh, tiered together. The top two are an hour glass shape, and there's a baffle at the bottom of the middle tier to guide seed to the sides, but allow some to spill down into the third tier which repeats the top of the hourglass form, and then ends in a tray. At the narrow neck in the hourglass shape there's a circumscribing wire perch.
The chickadees and goldfinches make use of all the features, clinging to the mesh, perching, sanding in the tray. Housefinches, however, seem to still find the structure a challenge compared to the previous tube with the stations at set intervals. I watched one arrive and then backflutter -- hovering in the air as if aghast at the change. He landed on the porch rail as if to get a sense of the structure. He then slowly landed on the tray and craned his head back to look up at the shape. It seems the overhang of the feeder perplexed him. He considered, and i marveled that i don't think i've ever had to watch figure something out. I'm not sure if that makes him slower than the other birds that just land and feed, or if he was a more reflective bird, cautious so that he will live another day. Eventually he fluttered up to the middle tier, clasped the wire and began pulling seeds through.
Christine notes that it is more generous to assume he was a cautious bird. (As if we weren't generous enough with the expense of the bird feed.)
--==∞==--
Sleeping in has not put forward my morning plans. I need to recalibrate my intentions.
Yesterday evening i puttered with genealogy and confirmed a switch between our authorization service and an institution's. Usually, these encounter some headache or another, so i was prepared for a long evening of poking at changes. In late June we'd had the headache of an institution that had first kept our servers blocked at their firewall, then had a round robin system for their LDAP servers and the certificate needed to successfully connect to the servers only worked for some of the LDAP servers, causing intermittent failures. Furthermore, they wouldn't give us testing credentials that would work completely.
Last night, it just worked. Testing credentials went through. Success. No hiccups. Hurrah!
Christine laughed as she looked at the two of us on the deck. She had my iPad and her iPad as she tried to get my iPad set up to test our app. I had my work laptop, my own laptop, and the genealogy book by my great aunt. We do use the tech.
As it cooled off we retired inside to watch the Gettysburg section of Ken Burns' Civil War documentary and i knitted (knooked). I'm doing a square as a washcloth, practicing a tighter knit, and practicing the right angle turn. I'd made up a right angle turn in my last project and liked the result, a raglan yoke for the top, but didn't think the turn was the best ever. So when i saw the Templeton Square i thought i'd give it a go. One thing, the column clarifies for me why this raglan technique is used in crochet and not knitting (traditionally): the number of needles to keep a growing diameter is probably a challenge. Crochet doesn't need the stitch holder and knooking trails a cord, similar, i suppose, to the "newfangled" circulars. I'm not making the lace, just the square, and i started with a crochet circle in the center. It worked from a construction point of view, but it is a more dense bunch of knots in the center of the more fluid knit.
I just ordered a bunch of rivoli crystals and earring mounts from Fire Mountain for the Meeting fund raiser. $45, a tiny bit of time, and a $100 profit, at least. $255 profit, if they sell well and at full price.
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