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Cistus Victor Reiter in our backyard. Picked out by Abigail at Annie’s Annuals. :-)

From my backyard :-)

ISO good music for our 6-year-old. Recently our family has been loving Jim Gill on Spotify. In the recent past we’ve loved Tom Chapin, Laurie Berkner, the A Year With Frog and Toad soundtrack, and the indomitable Raffi.

In the past 2 days, I’ve gotten some 40 spam calls and 10 spam texts about getting medical care. I’m thankful that my phone is filtering most of it out but… yow, is this going to be the new normal?

I visited The Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz last weekend, some 35 years after my first visit! Instead of my parents taking me, I took my wife and daughter. It was both hugely nostalgic and and a lot of fun! Our guide, Chris was awesome!

The hat smells of… I can think of no better description: hot asphalt. I wrote to the company who responded “Yes, there will be a slight oily smell and feel to the hat. This will fade over time with exposure to sunlight and the elements of nature.” It is horrible, like wearing a tiny bit of a skunk on your head. I’ll stop noticing the smell for a while and then turn my head and think, “What the hell, why do I smell asphalt?!”

Every time I touch the hat, my hands get oily. It’s like the “oil” in “oilskin” was cheap lubricating oil.

Well, after a month… 1 week of full-time wear, 1 week sitting outside in the sun and rain, 2 weeks sitting out, it still smells of asphalt and makes my hands oily.

Don’t buy this hat.

Just leaving this here for the 35 AH AGM lead-acid battery I use for my CPAP.

Charge State
13.5 full charge (2.25 per cell)
12.5 66%
11.5 33%
10.5 flat (1.75 per cell)

2.0 nominal voltage
2.4 full charge
2.25-2.30 float, don’t overfloat AGM!
1.75 flat
200 discharge cycles total
via Battery University

I’ve bought my 3rd phone on Swappa.com in 3 weeks. I’m kinda over it. But third time is the charm, right?

My old phone, a Pixel 2 had this one quirk that I didn’t notice for the longest time: the audio on recorded videos is very quiet. EVERYTHING else works and I couldn’t find a fix for the audio problem so… buy a new (to me) phone!

Pixel 4… I realized it didn’t have fingerprint unlock, only face unlock. Face unlock doesn’t work when you’re wearing a mask and… ugh, I would much rather that the phone unlocks when I push the magic button and not when it sees my face.

Pixel 3… the top speaker didn’t work. So I could do everything except take phone calls with it. So, a smartphone that did everything except “phone”.

Pixel 3… third time’s the charm, right?

[Update 5-2-21] [Sad Trombone] The third phone is a fail. Some kind of image stabilization problem when recording videos. Blah!

Window-Swap.com continues to be a magical reprieve from the difficulties of the world. It’s so simple. People show videos of what it looks like out the window of their home. This morning I was welcomed into someone’s home in Brazil, heard birds chirping in Russia, felt the buzz of street traffic in Palestine, and whiled away the time listening to cicadas in Texas. The most magical thing is that in all these videos, nothing happens.
The site is free. I’ve chipped into their “buy me a coffee” jar.

We visited Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks over spring break, taking a Moterra luxury camper van.

Here are some camping & hiking resources we used
– Gypsy Audio Tours – We really enjoyed hearing the audio tours while driving through the park, even multiple times.
– National Park Service individual park guides, good for finding the main attractions
– National Park Rangers. Go to the Information Booth at the entrance to the park and ask questions of these flat-hatted fonts of information and good vibes
– Recreation.gov find national park campgrounds and activities
– National Park Service app, find National Parks

We heard about these resources and will use them next time
– All Trails find trails
– The Dyrt find campgrounds
– Campendium find campgrounds