As I mentioned in another post, I noticed yesterday that my son had parked on the street, so I told him to move it to the driveway. His excuse? My car was parked in the spot where he usually parks and there "wasn't enough room" for his truck to park behind it without hanging out in the street. He suggested that I move my car and he'd move his truck. I just grabbed the keys to the truck and backed it in myself.

Today, when he got back from school, he excitedly asked me to look out the window. He decided that if I could do it, he could do it too, and he backed into the driveway by himself. That picture is the result of his driving, not mine.

It may not seem like a big thing, but it was a big step for him. He's been somewhat reluctant to drive and now he's taking on challenges on his own.

Next up, backing the trailer!

We had to say goodbye to our little Chuey today. He's been suffering with congenital heart problems for the last year or so, but things took a turn for the worse this week. He's been getting steadily weaker over the last couple of months and he finally reached the point where he could no longer walk. He was in a lot of pain every time he tried. We've had to carry him outside to do his business for the last couple of days. The medication he was on made him need to do his business every hour or two. That was rough on both him and us.

We couldn't stand to see him in pain any longer, so we had to say goodbye.

It was a great run, little guy. Thanks for being part of our family for the last 12 years.

[Edit] Thanks to everyone. I'm finding that this loss has been harder than I expected. This little guy has been a fixture in our lives for so long. Unassuming. Quiet. Never demanding, but always there. Despite his size, he was never a lap dog. He just wanted to sit on your feet. Yes, ON your feet. That was his happy place.

He was a sweet little dog, but also somewhat grumpy. He didn't put up with any BS from the other dogs. He'd also take your finger off if you tried to give him a treat by hand. I think his bug- eyes messed up his depth perception, so in his haste to grab the treat, he just bit in the general direction and hoped for the best.

We're dropping off his stuff at the shelter today. Bad weather is coming in and they need all the blankets, sweaters, and bedding they can get. We'll miss him, but our loss will help the other pups who need a hand.

Take care and keep being excellent, Oppo!

My neighbor. He keeps being stupid and I've had enough.

What's this all about? Kids riding ATVs up and down my street.

I went outside to grab my cup from the truck and spotted him loading up four (!) kids onto their big ATV for a ride down the street. The 10-year-old was driving with his little sister riding in front of him and two boys on behind - one on the seat, one on the rack. Nobody had helmets. This isn't the first time it's happened and they aren't the first parents I've had to talk to about it.

I enjoy riding ATVs and I've given my own kids opportunities to learn how to ride them even though we don't own one. But we did it on private land in the country. Not on public streets.

So, I walked four doors down to talk to him. I'd love to give a word-for-word accounting, but I'll just stick with my main points to him:

• Riding ATVs on the street is illegal.
• It's neither tagged nor insured.
• Kids aren't allowed to ride two-up.
• Louisiana has a helmet law and none of those kids are wearing helmets

His response? "I know it's illegal. But are you going to be the guy who makes it so kids can't play outside?" Then he started yelling at me about being that guy. About how I was ruining kids. Wouldn't stop yelling about it. Finally he stormed off toward his garage and since he'd stopped yelling, I got a chance to say something. What did I say? "You're a fireman, you should know better."

That led to another round of ranting and then an invitation to step onto his driveway so he could kick my ass. He'd even give me the first punch! Yeah, right, buddy. I'm not stupid. You want to kick my ass because you're embarrassed about being wrong. If you want to kick my ass, come do it. Don't try to bait me onto your property so you can have some lame excuses about it being my fault for stepping onto your property and taking the first swing.

So, he backed down again and started off toward his garage again. Never being one to miss an opportunity, I said, "I'll call the sheriff if I see it again."

There were more words exchanged, but he did say that he wouldn't let them ride on he street ever again. Of course he said it like I was ruining their lives and they were destined to turn into slugs who do nothing but play video games and watch youtube. I walked away after he finally retreated to his garage again.

On my way home I noticed the neighbors standing outside watching the whole thing. The couple next door to the fireman just moved in. I welcomed them to the neighborhood. It's been my experience that people like the firemen are misogynistic buttheads who are usually racist. One of my uncles is a cop and he's one of the more racist people I know. Did I mention that he fireman wouldn't let his wife speak? Yeah, he wouldn't let his wife ask me a question or speak her mind. Anyway, the couple who just moved in next door to him are biracial. I'm sure that I sure hope the fireman doesn't live up to my expectations and that the new couple don't have any trouble with him.

The other couple lives a two more doors down, just across the street from me. They knew exactly what was up since their kids play with the fireman's kids. Their kids aren't allowed to ride the four-wheeler for the same reasons I gave. They weren't surprised at his outburst.

So, now I've made an enemy. At least it's for all the right reasons.

I hope everyone else's weekend went better than mine.

My daughter just survived her first automobile crisis far away from home!

For those that don't recall, she's going to school about 9 hours away from us. When she went out to her car this afternoon, she discovered that the remote locks wouldn't respond. So, she opened the door with the key, then tried to start it. Not even a click. The dash lit up, so the battery wasn't completely dead, but there wasn't enough juice to turn over. Time to call Dad!
She broke down the symptoms and I told her to get a jump start then take the car to Autozone for a new battery. Jump starting the car safely was a skill I required her to learn before I allowed her to get her license. I put a set of cables in the car as part of her emergency kit. She managed to find someone in the dorms to give the car a jump, then drove it over to the Zone where she got a new battery.

Success!

I was sitting in the left turn land and was lucky enough to snap a pic as he passed but. I really wanted to follow, but lunch was calling.

@essextee How am I supposed to concentrate when there are posts about planes doing plane stuff right there in my browser window?!?

To all of my good friends here in Oppoland. I wish you all the best this holiday season and hope for a much better new year.

I bought a full yard of sand this morning. Normally, I'd back the trailer up to the gate or even pull it through the double gate directly into the back yard, but it's been raining and the yard is still soft. So I broke out the yard trailer and moved it in a bunch of small loads. The best thing about using the small trailer is that the little trailer has a dumping bed, making it a lot easier to unload.
Here's the dumper in action! I did take some time to weed that raised bed. I think my wife's going to transplant a bunch of stuff into it. She over-planted one bed so we can move some plants over. She also has a seed starter in the dining room and those plants will go here too.

I still need another half-yard to finish this step. Once the sand is finally in, I'll get it all graded correctly, put down weed-stop, and then add gravel. This shot captures the last edge of the bed that's already planted and needs to be thinned.

The Frontier did a great job pulling the trailer. I only had one issue where a woman pulled out in front of me. I was a bit worried that the extra weight was going to result in me rear-ending her. It wouldn't have been an issue if she had just stepped on the gas. I wasn't too happy with her!

Woohoo!

My interview with one of the local universities this morning went extremely well. They've decided to bring me in as a guest lecturer in the spring with an eye toward an adjunct position in the fall!

I'm so excited about this that I had to share with my Oppo friends!

My coworkers joke about me putting on my professor hat when I have to train younger employees. They keep telling me that I need an outlet for that side of my personality. Now it looks like I found one!

With my background and my experience in disaster recovery, I'll be doing guest lectures on the "unintended consequences" that lead to or exacerbate disasters, and how our choices during the recovery phase can help mitigate future disasters. I can't wait to get started!

That the previous owner applied all the ugga-duggas when changing tires on our Frontier.

Saturday was brake day. We wanted to address the slight squeal coming from the right-front, so we went down and bought new brakes. Turns out the old ones weren't worn enough to justify new pads, but we did it anyway.
Since my son had never changed a tire on his truck, we broke out the stock scissor jack. We learned that the scissor jack is inadequate for lifting the stock tires off the ground.
We had to supplement it with a few bricks to get enough lift to remove the wheel.

My son did the bulk of the work on the front, but we were running out of time, so I broke out the floor jack for the rear and we each tackled one side. It was a good time to hanging out with my son and doing a little wrenching.

@dusty-ventures

I know the glare was just overwhelming the camera, but i was starting to wonder if the driver had passed out and was sitting there on fire. I was quite relieved when he finally stepped out of the glare.

@britsnswedes-was-minigti said in night oppo:

@bicyclebuck high viz vest is 10000x more effective than lights in my opinion.

Hi viz is good, but I lean toward lights. Two reason: red lights on the road are expected and have meaning, especially when they are blinking/flashing; powered lights don’t depend on a person taking care of the headlights in their vehicle and not overdriving their lights. The driver has some culpability in this wreck because his headlights seem to be dim and he was driving too fast for conditions. That is not to relieve the bicyclist of his responsibility in this wreck. He didn’t have lights or reflective material that I noticed. Of course, we only saw him for a few frames because of the driver’s speed.

@pip-bip

Guys who ride like this endanger themselves and everyone around them. There's a guy that rides near my house that always rides in the dark without lights or reflectors on a two-lane road with no shoulders and deep ditches. It's clear he's riding to and from work, but I don't know where. I thought about buying some lights for him, but I haven't seen him since I shifted my work hours. I wonder if he's still around.

@farscythe said in stopped by my favorite now-open-to-the-public cider house:

@bicyclebuck tbh...im mostly stuck on something that only exists digitally being money
i suspect when the value of regular money was decided i would have been just as confused
tho..at least thats based on something physical....bit coin is magical fairy hand wavey magic

"The Gold Standard Act of 1900 established gold as the only metal for redeeming paper currency. It set the value of gold at $20.67 an ounce​." That was the guarantee by the U.S. government. At least until it wasn't: "But the gold exchange standard was causing deflation and unemployment to run rampant in the world economy, and so countries began leaving the gold standard en masse by the 1930s as the Great Depression reached its peak. The United States finally abandoned the gold standard entirely in 1933."

So that "hard" currency you hold in your hand is really only worth what people agree it's worth.

Besides, if you really want a hard currency to trade, each bitcoin has an id number that can be written to a physical object and traded to someone else. There's a guy in Utah who has been doing exactly that. The trick is that if the hard coin represents one bitcoin, its value against the dollar changes daily, depending on the market. I guess you could think of it like an old stock certificate. This piece of paper represents one share in Reading Railroad. The value depends on the current stock exchange rate....

@farscythe said in stopped by my favorite now-open-to-the-public cider house:

@bicyclebuck i dont understand crypto.....i mean...i think regular money is imaginary
but this e-money shit is just baffling
im expecting a spectacular crash any day now

Try to think of it like a limited edition of a truly rare car. An old Ferrari only has value because 1) there weren't many made, 2) they are hard to make and hard to fake, and 3) most of them have an excellent record of the transactions from the day it was sold by Ferrari to the day you bought it. These are the things that also give crytocurrencies their value.

When the tie between the dollar and gold was severed, it meant that currencies only have value because we agree that they have value. Cryptocurrencies have a record of transactions (which they call the "blockchain") which tracks every coin from when it was created and by whom to every time it has been traded. There's no way to make more without a record of it being made and the process to make them gets increasingly difficult, so there's always a limited supply.

The next thing we need to give crypto coins value is some kind of agreement on what they're worth. If you agree to sell me two chickens for a bitcoin, then the coin is worth two chickens. Now we have a way to value bitcoin against dollars via chickens. As more transactions happen, more people agree on the value of the coins against various "hard" currencies and the value goes up. This is especially true as the supply reaches the limit. This is why bitcoins are trading at $50k+. Once one currency becomes valued too high for the average consumer to use, another currency will start to rise in value. In this case, it's Ethereum and Dogecoin.

The same is true in the classic car market. Ferraris are too expensive for most people, so they start collecting Mustangs which then become too expensive, so they fall back to the next car that has only become rare because people trashed most of them. The situation is more complex when it comes to cars because of maintenance, parts availability, poor record keeping, etc.

I hope that helps provide some insight. Now I need some coffee.

@aestheticsinmotion said in stopped by my favorite now-open-to-the-public cider house:

I also dumped 95% of my cash into crypto

I threw a little money into crypto a few weeks ago on a whim. It’s nearly tripled in value. I’m shocked. I haven’t made enough to buy a Ferrari, but I am pleasantly surprised. Maybe I need to add some more funds. Let’s see, gotta pay summer tuition, pay for a trip to DC, pay for taxes... Hmmm. Maybe not.

@ricerocketeer said in Been playing through Portal 2 co-op:

@bicyclebuck revisiting this ... I started on portal reloaded and my brain hurts so much. it is great.

Thanks for letting me know! I haven’t taken the time to play it yet. Now I want some play time!

@ramblinrover

Friday!!!!

I have several "things" that are waiting to see me. Trying to get some database updates out the door before the end of the day. Both of the "things" are waiting for the results. It's a good thing that I have time between updates to visit Oppo.

No big weekends plans this week. Just moving sand/dirt/rock again if the weather holds. So far, it looks promising.

@old-busted-hotness
My wife took Rocky to go pick up our son from school. He's awaiting the arrival of his favorite person.

I really need to get seat covers for the truck.

@civicwagonengineer said in Automation Challenge Ruleset Updates::

@bicyclebuck
Here is how the game calculates the MPG. The final score is in the bottom right

Interesting. Still so many questions...