July, 2018

I went to ride my bike to the train this morning, only to discover a 100% flat front tire. With no time to fix it, I had to drive to the train. Boo.

When I went to fix it this evening, I discovered that the tube has a patch in it. I have no memory of having ever actually patched a tube, so it is possible this tube dates to when I was first getting back into cycling, in the 2003 timeframe. So I guess this tube doesn’t owe me anything.

I found a pretty big bug at work today.

We took it outside and released it.

My office’s summer outing was a visit to the ICA today. Clearly I am not an Art Person, because this view of Boston harbor was the highlight of the visit for me.

Today I recycled a couple of old computers at my town’s e-waste recycling center. First I opened them up, though, to remove & destroy the hard drives. It’s been long enough since I opened one of them — an old Dell — that I had forgotten how much sharp sheet metal is inside it: as it bit me today for the last time, I suddenly remembered all the other times when this particular computer case had drawn blood.

(I also discovered today that it’s pretty difficult to take a picture of the outside of one’s left hand).

In microprocessors, an Instruction Bus can lead to or from the Instruction Cache. I’m not sure what one is doing in Boston.

They don’t know me very well, do they?

Continuing on the birding theme this week: today I worked from home (recovering from our mini-trip). I was paid a visit by this female red-bellied woodpecker.

On day 2 of our mini-vacation to Newburyport, we went to the famous Parker River National Wildlife Refuge. While the tides were wrong for us to see much in the way of shore birds, we did see numerous egrets, herons, and waterfowl. But the highlight of the day once again easily stands out: for about 20 minutes we observed a family of Eastern towhees(*) foraging on the dune-forest floor, turning over leaves to uncover and eat insects, delivering some to the begging fledgling. The female, pictured here, was quite cooperative, and I also got a good picture of the male. Junior, though, stuck to the thickets out of reach of the camera lens.

(*) Formerly called rufous-sided towhee, a much more evocative name

Bonus picture: who knew, cormorants can actually look threatening, or at least like Klingon Birds of Prey

Lis and I took a mini-vacation to Newburyport, and on the first day we went to Maudslay State Park. The highlight of the day was definitely seeing this red-tailed hawk catch a meal, then fly up into a nearby tree to eat it.

I got a Full Tribble of fur off of the kitties this evening, which is surprising considering it’s been humid these past few days but not really all that hot.