What are you doing today?

[GaryE]

My wife has been in hospital for a few days, recovering after a life threatening event. I am always impressed by the people who work in there. The emergency room can be such a life saving machine - so methodical and so human. Sometimes I see an ambulance go by and for a short time, I'm impressed with our species. We put such resources into saving people who are strangers to us - we aren't that bad all the time!

She'll likely be home today, and have to deal with the dreaded Nurse Gary. I'm only trained for dealing with Ich.

 

[gwand]

My wife has been in hospital for a few days, recovering after a life threatening event. I am always impressed by the people who work in there. The emergency room can be such a life saving machine - so methodical and so human. Sometimes I see an ambulance go by and for a short time, I'm impressed with our species. We put such resources into saving people who are strangers to us - we aren't that bad all the time!

She'll likely be home today, and have to deal with the dreaded Nurse Gary. I'm only trained for dealing with Ich.

I wish for a speedy recovery for your wife.

 

[Oldspartan]

My wife has been in hospital for a few days, recovering after a life threatening event. I am always impressed by the people who work in there. The emergency room can be such a life saving machine - so methodical and so human. Sometimes I see an ambulance go by and for a short time, I'm impressed with our species. We put such resources into saving people who are strangers to us - we aren't that bad all the time!

She'll likely be home today, and have to deal with the dreaded Nurse Gary. I'm only trained for dealing with Ich.

Hoping the wife has a full recovery and returns to her chores. After the past few weeks I can give you some hints on disposable dishes, canned foods, and how to hide dirt. I also got pretty good at looking busy while procrastinating!

 

[Innesfan]

Sending positive thoughts across the border. (There's no tariff on positive thoughts, right?)

Thinking of you.

 

[MaloK]

Today I might end up doing the computer upgrade I was supposed to do yesterday...

Spinrite is stalling on some bad sectors and it takes forever to recover them.

But the shop is cleaned and ready for new maneuvers.

 

[Oldspartan]

All this computer talk makes me realize how electronically illiterate I am.

My idea of an upgrade is buying a new unit off the shelf somewhere, about every four years or so.

 

[Oldspartan]

Today we made some big changes in the fish room. Linda wanted Bozo in the 90 gallon that fills the pass thru. He is a hermit due to his attitude, so it seemed at waste to have him in the 90-gallon tank at this stage of his life, (about a 5-inch fish).

Beginning at 5 AM this morning I removed the stock in the 90, removed all decor and most of the substrate, (put about half the water and the substrate into totes). Took the 90 down and put it on a store-bought stand that actually came with it on a wall that was not supposed to have tanks. Rinse and repeat with a 55 gallon that holds Bozo the Blood Parrot. He is now ensconced where Linda can see him while doing kitchen stuff and while enjoying the fish room. Finished the project at about 10AM and all the fish appear to have settled in.

It is raining today, sometimes very hard, so it is a good day for such projects, even if I do not think the project itself was all that great.

The upside ---- When Bozo is grown out I will likely move him to the 90 and purchase a nice 150 for that pass thru space By then I should feel confident enough to have a herd of colorful Discus that Linda will equally enjoy staring at.

The downside -- I now have a large tank I have to deal with at least somewhat manually.

Note on the Parrot fish --- It seems they are somewhat trainable. Linda has him playing peekaboo from his hollow log and she also has him following her finger and ding flips. Not quite there yet but getting close. She trains him like he is a dog, feeding him treats, (snails) when he tries. I know the breed is controversial, but he is very enjoyable even if he does not care much for me, (he buts my hand when I am working his tank).

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Went and paddled the kayaks around Boysen Reservoir with the family and the Badgerling's best friend. I was hoping to spend a little time hunting carp--I like the skins for bow backings, and it's always nice removing invasives, especially when doing so involves harpooning the nasty critters with arrows. But somehow we forgot to bring the food and water, so our trip got cut rather short when everybody got hungry and thirsty.

Just put in for elk and antelope licenses. It's a lottery system, so I'll find out June 2nd whether I scored.

 

[GaryE]

I seem to have somehow made one of the best pots of coffee ever known to humanity, and I'm sitting beside my dog drinking my second cup from it. My wife is home from the hospital and doing well. It's unseasonably cold and rainy outside, but what was stark and bare 3 weeks ago is fresh and brightly green.
I seem to be suffering from an attack of positivity...

 

[Rusty_Shackleford]

Watching my black skirt tetras spawn.
Also the Poret foam arrives today so I'll be cutting that to fit my filters.

 

[Oldspartan]

Rainy, miserable, blustery weather today. Cannot do much outdoors, shop and housework is caught up -- More like fall than spring lately. So

I have decided to sit in the fish room, put some vaudeville style music in the CD rack and relax.
Perhaps start a book -- I was recently gifted the People of Dust by Marcus Martin.

 

[Lanpenn]

There are still things that must be done, but I have published some interesting videos.

I have found out these interesting worms (from my aquarium). The question is: Is there any nutritional value in them?



Unboxing the plankton net:


I got interested in urbanism, so I am also recording some videos while I walk around. Mococa is extremely car-centric (do you know "rodoviarismo"?), but without the good pavement available in the United States. Here they are building a cheap version from American suburbs... at least, suburbs in USA are more pleasant (well, where I lived, at least).

 

[MaloK]

Today... It's raining again, Spinrite concluded and recovered 100% of crammed sectors, I went ahead with my computer upgrade, It took 8 minutes to clone the OS on the new drive.

Results are stellar for what it is. System drive speed when from 150 to 7000... lolllllll, since it went so well I spent the rest of the afternoon upgrading the software of this Network PXE boot server to windows 11. Decrapified it. Then the latest PXELinux boot strap, iPXE, Wimboot and Memdisk. Also did the same with the TFTP and HTTP servers... Then, all main boot images. Maintaining the ability to remotely boot floppy disks.

This baby is my diagnostic recovery and reparation server and It has a career of development "inside" and saved hundreds of crashed windows per years.

I've been procrastinating this one for at least 9 years... Loll. But, If it's doig the job. Why play with it... It was a well deserved upgrade, was able to incorporate a couple new recovery Power Houses in my swiss army knife. And a spanking new Win11XPE boot wim that took me a good part of the winter to produce. But it will load any mass storage drive with oem drivers. Yeah, the old Adaptec AHA-2940 too.

I also upgraded all my cracking softwares and that was "amazing" bypass UEFI, temper TPM and load SED disks. Very eyes opening. There's no security in this digital world. But I still... need to be sure that I can recover my data in case of major crash before putting them on.

These Raids contain my lifetime of computing innovations and I cant remember all I put in there. But I can consult everything. so It's my precious.

But still the linux based distributions holded on, will have to wait next winter for a roll of upgrades.

Remember... There's no clouds... It's just someone else computer.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

I spent a big chunk of the day bare-shaft tuning arrows for my new bow. (WARNING: Nerd-level archery treatise alert)

What you do is fiddle with various parameters, especially arrow length, until they are flying perfectly.

Here's how it works. Wooden arrows aren't rigid; they are surprisingly bendy. So, when one shoots a bow that doesn't have a center-cut arrow rest, the arrows have to flex around the handle upon release. If the arrow shaft is too bendy, it will whip around the handle too far and hit off to one side; too stiff, and it won't bend around the handle enough, and hit off to the other side. Longer arrows are more flexible than shorter ones (think how you can bend a yard stick further than a ruler before it breaks). So with patience, one can start with an arrow that is deliberately cut too long, then shorten it gradually until the flexibility perfectly matches the power of the bow and the shape of the handle.

(Look up "slow motion archer's paradox" on YouTube if you'd like to entirely geek out about this with me. I find it interesting. You may not)

Now I have arrows hitting the bullseye at 10 yards, with no feathers. That's kind of satisfying. Tomorrow I'll cut all my arrows to that same, magical length, color and fletch them, and Bob's your uncle.

Once the arrows are tuned that well, the feathers become just a backup system, keeping the arrow on course in case of a bad release, all to common at my skill level. They also impart a bit of spin to the shaft, which can help it stay on course for longer shots.

And now, you know more about arrow tuning than you could possibly care about.

 

[GaryE]

There are still things that must be done, but I have published some interesting videos.

I have found out these interesting worms (from my aquarium). The question is: Is there any nutritional value in them?

Brazil is a vast country with many different fauna regions, as you know well. But it must be fun to contemplate what you can find as an aquarist.
When I was in my 20s, I was a very urban animal who didn't realize how many food and decor sources were all around me. I tended to think if it was from a store, it was safe, and from nature, dangerous. Later, I met people who took boats out to local swamps, collected driftwood, hosed it down and sold it to local stores. I realized if I avoided the worst water pollution (it's hard to avoid it completely), even in the city there were places with live food and interesting wood and rocks.

I don't know about those worms. Usually, thin white aquatic worms and larvae that we find in Canada are not very nutritional, and are often shunned by fish. Maybe, some of what we are the same as what you have there, because of the aquarium trade. But maybe not. It's so hard to comment from a distance given how different our environments and fauna are.