Here’s me on the Snyder Creek trail gazing at the talus field, but still wanting to be out of there (rockfall is the reason for this talus). This is pretty near the end of the trail where there’s a camping area and a paternoster(?) lake, Snyder Lake.
Back in September we visited Glacier National Park. We didn't take the Going to the Sun Road, but opted for the lesser traveled Snyder Creek trail. Here's a couple of fuzzy caterpillars taken with a Fujifilm X100V.
Been over a week since putting in 1 Gbps powerline adapters and it’s perfectly fine for basic Mac Mini server duty (HomeBridge, file server), Sonos, Apple TV, RaspberryShake, and teleworking.
I’ve snagged a Fujifilm X-T5 — it’ll be delivered Tuesday. I haven’t had a camera with interchangeable lens system in over a decade! I’m so excited. I ordered the 55 mm kit. Seems for a kit lens, it is unusually highly regarded.
I’m apparently harvesting Mastodon accounts tonight.
I’ve had good success with an old 200 Mbps powerline adapter, so I’ve finally splurged on a gigabit adapter plus an 8 port switch. A few weeks I’ll know if this is worth avoiding running LAN cables for decidedly non-mission critical stuff like Apple TV, Sonos, & RaspberryShake.
Had my gas & electric company switch our home from gas heat to electric heat service (we now have a heat pump). The main impact is we now get 10kWh added to the cheaper tier 1 electricity allotment for a total of 21kWh a day during heating season.
Phat Tyre Ale is now fermenting. A couple of mistakes were made but nothing critical (probably). It’s getting easier and less stressful every time as I refine my protocols. Original gravity at 1.048-1.050. Close to the documented 1.052!
Funky moonrise tonight.
I just turned the compost and wow those soaking rains bring the FATTEST volunteer earthworms into the compost (or encourages them to gorge & get happy in the compost). We do have volunteer resident worms in the compost, though in the summer they stay at the very bottom.
Went to New Clairvaux Vineyard (home of Trappist-Cistercian monks) to pick up our first wine club order. It’s such a nice grounds.
Sierra Nevada Brewing’s Narwhal Imperial Stout is really good.
Thoughts on Heat Pump Heating
The weather chilled enough that our new Fujitsu 36LMAS heat pump is fully operational transferring outdoor heat into the house (during the cooling season it does the opposite). Our equipment continues to be amazingly quiet, quite unlike the natural gas furnace the heat pump replaced. It’ll be interesting to compare costs with last winter, though heating a house with a fully variable heat pump doesn’t work the same as a single cycle furnace. The heat pump continuously runs but adjusts the pump and fan from heating at full to a trickle of heat to maintain temperatures. So temperatures stay constant, as opposed to a single cycle furnace’s swinging indoor temperatures from chilly to screaming hot (in our case). With the heat pump being so quiet and keeping the house temperature way more even, I’m far more inclined to heat the house more. Which doesn’t bode well for heating costs! But at least there’s no longer a NOx, CO, and CO2 generating machine in the house, right?
Going to try Northern Brewer's Phat Tyre Ale Extract Beer Recipe Kit this Winter. Will be the first time with secondary fermentation.
Fujifilm X Raw Studio for macOS crashed on launch the last few weeks. Worked fine with other user accounts. Eventually I nuked the right crumbs to stop the crash: saved application state!
0.34” of rain today! Finally, the rainy season has begun in California. 🤞
So Slate is suddenly increasing their subscription from $59 a year to $119. And I can’t find the cancel button fast enough. Oh wait, it is missing despite the FAQ saying it exists! Poor form, Slate. I’m sure there’s another news org not doing shenanigans to customers.
Go away, Bolsonaro.
Region appropriate milkweed seeds sown today. Hope we get enough rain to avoid regular irrigation for germination and establishment. 🌱
I’m slowly understanding Mastodon and I’m sure happy that I chose micro.blog a while ago. Wish that searching for Mastodon users wasn’t out of the way on the Discover page.