20JAN2022 – OCF Update – This’N’That

Today I intend to mail off my old camera for sale.  I feel a little disloyal for casting it away but I have had it for over four years and the trade up in capability is well justified.  But it’s funny how mechanical devices can become like old friends.  I’ve gotten e-mails from people who, after seeing the classic car photos of the day, wrote about some memories of their favorite old car.  It’s almost like there’s a symbiosis between our machines and us.

But it’s got to go and so that’s that.  The main problem is that it’s snowing again so I’ll first have to clear a path so I can drive to the post office.  This snowing every other day is a royal pain but at least a familiar one.  It gives me an additional reason for hating New England.

Last night I headed out to attend the monthly Dunwich Republican Committee meeting and when I got to the town hall I found out the meeting had been cancelled.  No announcement, no nothing.  And the building custodian shows up at the door wearing a face mask and so now they’ve brought those stupid things back.  When he sees I’m not wearing a mask he hands me a stack of R-95 masks and tells me how great they are.  I thought of saying something sarcastic and then thought, “The poor guy is only doing his job.  It’s not his fault he lives in a mental asylum.”

The battle to repair the heating system is (seemingly) headed for the final chapter.  After the last burst of activity the system worked without failure for a full week.  Then it developed a new failure mode.  This time the system would fail to restart after it cycled off on high loop temperature.  Because no failure code and hard lockout occurred this apparently proved that the problem is indeed in the power venter.  Now a crack team of technicians will descend on the compound in the next day or two and replace the power venter and order will be restored to my heating system.  But somehow it reminds me of that scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where HAL 9000 declares that a component on the external surface of the spaceship will fail and must be replaced.  I feel like I’m being lured into some horrible conspiracy where I’ll discover that a maniacal mechanical device is attempting to finish me off to further a bureaucratic initiative that is “for my own good.”

After snow removal and mailing off the camera I really have to do some photo work.  I’m out of photos again and must put in the time for the post-processing.

I watched some of Dementia Joe’s press conference yesterday.  After a very few minutes I had to turn it off.  His endless lies and play acting are really hard to stomach.  I read an article that discussed the unlikelihood that after the current Supreme Court session the Dems will try again to get Justice Breyer to retire so they can nominate Kamala Harris to the Court.  Amusingly it would require Harris to vote for herself to get it passed.  Also it would leave the Senate deadlocked until a new Vice President was installed and that might prevent one from being installed at all.  So theoretically, if Dementia Joe dropped dead, the future Republican Speaker of the House would then succeed to the presidency.  So if Harris leaves the VP spot this year maybe Trump will run for congress just to be able to become Republican Speaker of the House just in case Biden drops dead.  How’s that for 4D chess nonsense?  The article was especially amusing because of how openly it disparaged the intelligence of both Harris and Justice Sotomayor.

Well, gotta go make the donuts.  I’ll be back later with more interesting things.