life in the old lane

According to Alexa, it is still 90° at 8PM. But the Asylum Sisters that were eating tonight decided that we could eat outside. 

There is something slightly Zen about watering with a finely balanced old tin watering can. After a dinner of crab cakes and beer on the patio. Life really isn’t too shabby at The Asylum.

I am still amazed at the quality of the images from the Google phone. 

And… 

And, the mysterious lavender-ish flowers have been identified as Stokes Aster. It is really more blue-ish than in this image. Had lots of goldern light for the picture and I didn’t try to counter it in processing. Stokes Aster is apparently an altogether fine native plant that just grows. My kind of plant. Unfortunately, I just have one. But fortunately, I have one. 

 

We have had lots of celebratory meals around Table 100 in the Jefferson Dining Room here at the Asylum. Now missing The Reverend Doctor Peg. I am pretty certain that Peg is currently at her final destination – making sure that there is a place at her table for all of us.  Nonbelievers, Unitarians, Catholics, one and all. 

Today, I muddled around. Suffering from one of Carlton’s imaginary maladays – unresolved discontent. Brought on, I am sure by the unexpected death of a treasured friend. Plan on snapping out of this funk real soon. 

Wasn’t able to catch any good bug shots today either.

And finally, the weed lot and garden box report.

I shouldn’t be surprised when one of my friends ends up on life support so her family can come for a last goodbye. I live in an old folks asylum. Nobody gets out alive. 

But still, yesterday at about 1345 I hoisted a hefty rollaboard out of car and yelled “bon voyage” to a friend. By bed time she was in an ICU in St Louis on life support. And, now we are just waiting for the final text message. 

Nobody is promised tomorrow. All of the Asylum Sisterhood are rechecking final doomsday planning to be sure everything is in order. 

I was sort of mopey about this turn of events all day and dealt with it in a mature manner. I took pictures.

And I filled in the Emergency data on Shamu 2. 

Oh, and the new stool I got yesterday – it is living in the closet for now.

Ok, Bunnies 2 – Old Bat Zip

On Wednesday, I noticed this plant had been largely denuded of leaves. But, there was this new growth. So, I wondered what might have happened. I noticed that several other planted in the area seem to be missing parts. Well, what could it be? I don’t think much of it.

This morning the remaining leaves had been gnawed off – leaving only the new leaves. And, I could see the mature leaves scattered around. Must be a rabbit. Maybe this plant – which is a brand new expensive plant – is in the middle of a bunny highway. Do rabbits have regular routes? It would be silly to leave the plant to get the rest of its leaves gnawed off. So I moved it to the other side of my weed lot.

Got a new stool today. It is very nice. Not what I ordered. But nice. I am not overjoyed with it. But, I am never overjoyed with new furniture. I will move it around and around until I find a place where it looks happy and then I will love it. Right now it just looks out of place. But, this is my normal reaction to new furniture.

And, tonight is Petit Fillet night here at the Asylum. It is the Friday Night Special. 

And, my very first monarch butterfly of the year – on my very own milkweed plant.

Nothing much happening, just an ordinary day in our strange unpleasant world. I am totally befuddled. And, that is just the way it is. I am going to go get comfy in my chair, pop on the vr goggles and escape for a while. 

And, that crow up top spent a long time looking in my window – then flew away. Shamu 2 caught the escape. The Pen F was the butterfly catcher.

A little working in my weedlot, a little dreadmill time, a stroll around the neighborhood, and a little time working on my Alexa Skills “skill”. Somehow, I missed nap time. But the Fitbit is happy. After dinner, it will be VR time. And then tomorrow it is back to work time.

Thinking about all the parks were Carlton and I spent happy crazy summers today. And before that when we would head out to a cabin in WV for long walks, simple meals, and a lot of book reading.

This is Carlton doing 1st person interp in Yosemite. He should have grown a beard but he refused. He was the world’s only down on his luck, bust up, gold miner who shaved every morning. 

On June 13, 2001 we were in Skagway Alaska and I was trying to repair a couple of elderly computers. And, the blog was about 2 months old.
June 12, 2001

Softshell crabs for dinner tonight!

Back to Wow – this is fun. The VR Goggles.  I got them going after dinner tonight. It was Free Wine Night (Tues, Thurs, Sat). Nothing like some cheap red wine to help get new techno toys going. Actually, all it took was turn Shamu 2 off and back on. Then it paired with the controller and it was up and running. 

This is an entry level setup. It is a Google product and uses the Pixel phone as the brains of the operation. So, it is only as good and responsive as Shamu. That is the downside. The upside is it cost $49. It was on sale for Father’s Day. Normally $99. 

I only played with it for 30 minutes or so. I gotta believe it has a lot of X-Rated potential. The porn vendors are always on top of things like this. But, I don’t want to go there. My brain went there after about 5 seconds of VR playtime. I didn’t actually or virtually go there – but I feel sure it is a huge business. Already.

Speaking of things pornographic.  The Post today had a little article at $15,000 sex robots. SO – where the hell is my robot cat? How hard can that be? Surely not as hard as a sex robot. 

Wonder if there is a virtual reality cat?

Anyhow – porn aside. I see a future for VR. For serious gamers – yes. I think that sports would also be a money maker. After that – I see it as a Star-trek holodeck starter kit. 

Looking at these goggles and my experiments with Alexa as tools to accompany me on life’s last great adventure – aging. An adventure of indeterminate length with only one goal – a graceful exit. 

Hopped on the 2A heading to hospital this morning and what do I find but an elderly seeing eye dog and his person. I am stupidly wondering how the dog knows when it is time to get off when I hear “Fredrick Street” announced and realize that I missed my stop! 

And then – coming home another seeing-eye dog.  

Now these are real honest to goodness working service animals. Not like the purse dogs masquerading as service animals that have bounced all over me on more than one plane trip.

My VR headset arrived. But, I have yet to get it working. It uses my phone as the brains of the operation and I can not get the controller to pair with the phone. OF COURSE, the directions do say to charge the controller for 24 hours. Stay tuned. 

Monday and Tuesday are devoted to work and yoga. No time for playing with new toys and coding Alexa Skills. 

Sort of tired today. Feeling the years I guess. Also, guess that I didn’t think that would happen to me. Figured I would be able to keep up my pace until the very last day. Then I would just stop. But no, like an old watch – I am just slowing down. Only 7,000 steps on the fitbit.

And, from the weedlot – 

Consider the lilies of the fields… 

But, my tired old self worked on Alexa Skills today – and got one to work. It doesn’t do much – But, start to finish – both major parts. It works. Happy day. 

It is – of course – a variation on Kerrigan and Ritchie’s:

main() { printf(“hello, world\n”); }

But since the early ’70’s (well into my coding days) that is where we start. 

and my wild and crazy garden box. 

Not much happening here – but I have been ignoring it. So, glad that it is doing anything.

Don’t know what to make of this lily. Guess I should just tell it “howdy”.

As for the Alexa skills experiment – I got this out of her:

Skill response was marked as failure
Hello Mars
Request Identifier: amzn1.echo-api.request.e59e09f5-4aac-49de-b50e-9f0b463e2667
The target Lambda application returned a failure response

But, I am happy that I got the Python part and the front end to “compile” or what ever the 21st century terminology is. And, to attempt to communicate with each other. And, it was sort of cool – saying Computer, Hello Mars and getting a spoken error message. Then I told it to stop and it did. I was afraid I would get my Echo into a hard loop…Will play some more later.

Seems like the Orange Lord threatened to  “stop trading” – exactly how is this going to work. No more Champagne, Belgium chocolate, Dior clothes? No more $299 55 inch TVs? No more Lamborghinis? What exactly do we not import? Agriculture products – that’s what. And who makes the agriculture magic happen? That’s right boys and girls – immigrants.  

Still not seeing any reason to shoot RAW on a regular basis. 

Just an ordinary day. Did life support things. Laundry, coffee and grocery run, review my books. Back in the day, I would call it balancing the checkbook. Now it is more like scouring the Quicken reports for anything odd looking. And, The Old Bat Cave was cleaned. (Not by the Old Bat.)

Will be finishing up Alas, Babylon tonight. I have been sort of stringing it out because I am enjoying it so much. 

Tomorrow will include another little foray into the world of Alexa Skills creation. I will be surprised if I can get my elderly brain around it. But, then again – I might succeed. 

Today, I took the “correct” gear out to shoot a bee on “my” milkweed. All I found was an ant. Still, I shoot what is in front of me with the camera I have.

Nice day at the office – spiffed up a Survey Monkey thing. No work on figuring out how to make an Alexa skill. Napped instead.

Currently reading Alas, Babylon. The 1959 novel by Pat Frank. It is considered one of the first apocalyptic novels of the atomic age and is eerily relevant today. It was a Playhouse 90 offering – but I don’t think it survived. Maybe a copy will surface some day. For now, the book is still good.

Addendum: OK, a copy does exist – in the UCLA film archive. 

Told you it was magnolia season. Oh and for no apparent reason other than I could – I ordered a pair of Google VR goggles to go with Shamu 2. Want to be sure I have plenty of toys when I get “old”.