Storm and Outage

There was a lot of storm activity here Friday afternoon.  I used iLightning to catch this pic of a lightning strike in the nearby foothills. 

Oops, and there went our power last night… and it came back on 90 minutes later, for 5 seconds, then went off again… sitting on the couch playing word games to candlelight wasn’t so bad…

The power came on and went back off twice more during the night. This morning, I was dealing with an angry beeping carbon monoxide detector in the basement, even after the power had been on for awhile. I replaced the battery and it was still beeping every 30 seconds. Turns out that several basement circuits were dead. I discovered, after tromping outside in the cold rain, and manhandling the dumb breaker panel doors, that multiple GFCI breakers in the newer power panel had tripped, probably when the power surged during one of the outages, or maybe when lightning struck nearby. Fixed! Then later this morning, we realized the house WiFi wasn’t working, as its backup battery had run down overnight. I hit the power button on the UPS, and we had internet! For about 5 minutes… then the UPS started beeping every few seconds, and shut down again. After downloading the user manual, I realized it was beeping because the outlet it was plugged into was dead. That lead me to yet another GFCI that had tripped, on the wall in another room, hiding behind my skis. After resetting that, everything seems pretty normal here… other than all that snow coming down out there.

We’re having fun watching the birds frequenting our feeders over the deck. I was going to say “Birds love snow,” since we tend to see more of them when it’s snowing, but of course the real takeaway is “Birds love to eat,” especially on snowy days…

Good article about phishing

We all need to be highly sceptical of unsolicited communications, even from people we know, especially when they contain links to web pages.

I just finished reading this excellent article by Kyle Chin of UpGuard, that describes many of the methods that cyber criminals use to attack their victims. I found it highly informative and well worth reading. 

GPS Jamming Map

Is anyone else interested in a map of GNSS (GPS) jamming areas? Well here you go:

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/gps-jamming

I've been seeing discussions about this in recent years, but I find it interesting, to see where it's happening. Here’s the article about it:

https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/gps-jamming-map/

Belmar Park Walk

 

We enjoyed a fun Monday afternoon walk at Belmar Park, with snow still in the ground in some places, and some muddy spots in others. The rookery was well-occupied by Cormorants this time of year.

Dust bunny

Amorphous Bean kitty, helping to clean my blinds from the backside…

Post-Snow Friday

 

It's a beautiful 23-44° partly sunny Friday in Littleton! 

 

The snow remaining on my deck looks nice, but the depth is laughable, in comparison to the photos my friend in Highland Ranch has been posting. 

 

The birds are happy that all the snow has melted off their feeders. The Bird Buddy’s solar cell roof has continued to keep its battery fully charged all year. 

 

It’s pretty breezy out there, but my weather station is still clogged with snow, so the anemometer is currently useless. 

 

The kitties are happily entangled while snoozing as we enjoy our breakfast.

Snowy PI(e) Day!

Happy snowy 30-36° Thursday morning! 

It's PI Day - 3.14! That's a pretty rough approximation of PI, which being irrational, has an infinite non-repeating number of digits in the mantissa. Many years ago, I memorized the first 10 of them: 3.1415926535, but the reality is, going through engineering school, 3.14 was about all we could read on the slide rule anyway. 

 

So… we DID get our snow accumulation after all! The weather app on my phone has been refusing to admit there may be a snowflake in the future… until today, faced with inches of snow on the ground, and still falling, they finally begrudgingly added a few snowflakes to today’s forecast.

 

We were awake at 4:19 a.m. this morning, because the power went out for about a minute. The only clue when we’re sleeping, and the power goes out, is that the smoke alarms chirp for a second, so I woke up long enough to realize what had happened and note the time, then started to back asleep... when the power came back, the alarms went off again, this time for much longer, a definite wake up call… but we still managed to fall back asleep for a little while. Then later, while we were up and getting ready for the day, the power went out again, this time for an extended period. We forewent our usual hot meal, with my traditional delicious homemade latte, and settled on cereal and milk for breakfast. We were going to bake a pie for PI Day, but with the power still out here, maybe a trip to the local bakery makes more sense… Oops… they’re closed too, with employees and customers being advised to stay off the roads…

Kitties marveling at the snow. 

 

Update 12:10 - Power’s back on 3 hours later! After seeing my friend posting about his 19 inches of snow in Highlands Ranch, I went outside to measure our snow depth - I found 19.5 inches in a nice undisturbed flat spot out front. 

With the power back on, we ran down to the grocery store, and picked up a pie to bake. I’m trying something new - a Dutch Apple pie from Willamette Valley. It was twice the price of Marie Callendar’s, but I have a special place in my heart for the Oregon coast, especially the Portland area, so… I’m hoping this means I’m spoiling myself. And… it’s in the oven!

Hollywood!

Apparently, the red anti-collision light at the top of the Capital Records building in Los Angeles has been spelling out “Hollywood” in Morse code for the past 70 years. Pretty fun!

https://twitter.com/historyinmemes/status/1766712590766624778

Bird Watching

We spent a fun Saturday morning out on a bird watching expedition sponsored by a local bird supplies shop. I guess we’ve fully embraced the retirement lifestyle, as we were somewhat challenged to be up and out before 7am, in time to grab breakfast at the coffee shop, then drive 45 minutes to our meet up place. We met my sister and the rest of the group in Lafayette at Waneka Lake, and hiked over to Hecla Lake and back. Nice hike. Not too many birds, but it was still fun to socialize with people that know far more about birds than me.

We started at Waneka Lake, and saw this Cooper’s Hawk right away. My photos of it were pretty much a joke, with the hawk being so small, it was hard to pick it out in the picture. Then I tried holding my phone up to our guide's spotting scope, and after some persistence, I was rewarded with this beautiful image. 

We really like those spotting scopes, OMG they bring the bird images so close! We were flirting with the idea of buying one, but then we saw the price online, and were pretty much dumbfounded at the $5,000++ price for the scope and required accessories, like the eyepiece and tripod.

Then we saw some Mergansers...

Long’s peak looked really spectacular from our close perspective in Lafayette

Three intrepid amateur birdwatcher/hikers

Snowy front range mountains

Nice little trail between lakes

Our guide Sarah and her awesome spotting scope

The second lake we visited was Hecla Lake. There were a few more birds, but in general, it was a pretty quiet day for birding.

These two pelicans were pretty, and they were dipping into the water in a really graceful, synchronized way.

Cute view of the Rocky Mountains through a viewing port in a birdwatching station

Routine Wednesday

Happy 15°F Wednesday morning! 

When I walked into the room…

I was reminded of…

the “powers of 10“ photo collections…

that I’ve seen over the years.

Yesterday’s snow is almost melted off the deck, and 

the Amaryllis is looking about as fully bloomed as it can get.

Even with all their high-energy acrobatics throughout the house, and how productive they are in the litter box, the kitties are gaining body mass like gangbusters. They’re already up to 8.9 pounds in the chart here, and they’ve been gaining linearly since before we got them. These guys also have big paws, which suggests they are going to be big kitties. The vet told us to let them eat “as much as they want” until they turn nine months old, so I guess we have three more months of not paying much attention to that. I thought it was very cute this morning, when I was doing my exercises on the floor, and Rufus climbed up on my chest, and spread himself out while purring madly. My exercise routine suddenly became an impromptu meditation session.

Home from ER

We're glad to be home from the Littleton Hospital ER on this otherwise pleasant Sunday evening. Jennefer had another SVT (fast resting heartbeat) event, that went longer than any she’d remembered, and the clinic recommended she go.

 

The ER PA taught her a trick that knocked her heart rate right down to normal; we need to remember that one! It involves simply trying to blow into a limited-airflow tube (a straw would probably work) for perhaps 15 seconds while sitting up, then quickly lying back. After that, it stayed down in the normal resting rate. 

[This event closely followed a few days of nausea, followed by a long period of vomiting Friday and Saturday, not positive why. We resorted to calling her medical clinic on Saturday. They recommended a visit by a mobile service that could provide home IV to get her rehydrated, replenish electrolytes, and administer anti-nausea meds. The mobile techs thought she was getting over a virus, but we’re skeptical.]

Flying the DC-3

I've been having fun with simulated flying lately. I'd forgotten about how much fun it was to fly the 1940s vintage DC-3 around the Bahamas a couple of years ago, but it just popped into my head recently, and I've started flying it around. Lately, I've been exploring some southwest airports, like the one in San Diego near my old home. From there, I ventured out to do a simulated visit to Jennefer's sister in Yuma, AZ, then back to San Diego, then up to several airports in the LA area. This week, I headed up to Catalina Island, then San Clemente Island, San Nicolas Island, Santa Cruz Island, Point Mugu, Bakersfield, and just landed at Mariposa-Yosemite airport north of Fresno.

Fox sighting

We heard the squirrels yelling outside, and went to investigate from the deck. This healthy-looking fox was wandering through the back yard. 

Return from Omaha

So, we got to the house in Omaha this morning, to pick up Jennefer’s new flame point kitty (apparently, not to be found anywhere near Denver), and also met his sibling. 🐈🐈

The plan was to choose one of them, but they were both so darned cute, and everybody was concerned about separating them, since they’ve really bonded. So, I said, “Hey, let’s take them both, and do our best to give them a great home!” 🤦‍♂️

Both kitties did really well on the long drive home. We learned that one is a great adventurer, and insists on telling the entire world about it. His favorite place was on the shoulders of the passenger. The other is quiet and shy but cuddly. He would camp out for hours in my lap when I was driving. Occasionally the adventurer would join us. 

We’re finally home safe, after a moment of high anxiety along the way. With both cats in the car, we stopped for gas a couple of times. About an hour and a half after the last stop in Julesberg, we realized that we hadn’t seen the second kitty for awhile, which is not that unusual, as they like to wander the car. But they would eventually settle down someplace in sight, sometimes for hours, often in a lap. But this one wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and we decided we needed to know where he was, before we went any farther. We stopped by the side of the road, and tore the car apart, trying to find him. He was not to be found. 😱

We began to doubt our sanity, and wondered if he had snuck out at the last gas stop in Julesburg. We were back in the car, and preparing to turn around for the extra three hour round-trip, to see if we could find him at the gas station, knowing full well the odds were almost zero. 🥺

Then, Jennefer had the brilliant idea to feel all the way around way back under the rear seats, in some nooks and crannies where we couldn’t see, and, wonder of wonders, there was a furball under there. OMG, the relief was tremendous! 🎉 🎈

 Whew. Sooo glad to be home. And now our new kitties are excitedly exploring their new space. And we’re steeling ourselves for this new phase of our lives…