Category: Uncategorized

This article in the intercept on the use of License plate readers by HOAs should bother you — big time.

The readers are, for the most part, unregulated. Which means, that already nosy HOA, can now record and keep track of all your visitors, their names, their addresses, the make and model of their car, and all of your comings and goings. All without any sort court order. After all, they’re the HOA, and they’re not being nosy little tin-pot dictators, they’re trying to protect you… Ha!

In case your curious how they do this, here’s an example of how it’s done in the State of Nevada.

You can find a vehicle owner in Nevada if you know the vehicle’s license plate number. To do so, you need to conduct a license plate search through the Nevada DMV or third-party license plate lookup service. Before the Nevada DMV issues license plates, vehicle records and vehicle owner information are obtained from vehicle registrants and maintained in a database. Hence, by searching DMV records using a license plate number, it is possible to find the owner of the vehicle

Nope, I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of maintaining your privacy without going completely off the grid. And then your neighbors, no matter how distant, will gossip about you, leading to some news program wanting to interview you. This in turn will tell the entire world where you are… So much for privacy.

Birders are weird.

I was out at the wetlands and ran into a couple of birders discussing a sparrow they’d seen.

It looked like a Savannah Sparrow, but one of them was pointing to a picture in his copy of Sibley and practically shouting that it was a bunting.

I pulled out my phone and snapped a pic then pulled up my copy of Merlin bird ID to identify the little bugger… It was a Savannah Sparrow.

This guy’s response was that the picture was no good and it was a “fuckin’ bunting.”

I asked if he knew what kind of woodpecker this was to distract him and get him to calm down.

He insisted that it was a sapsucker, not a woodpecker. He was wrong, but I certainly wasn’t going to argue with him. I simply thanked him and got as far away as I could without actually running.

The problem with Sibley’s is that the pictures are teeny-tiny artists’ renderings, not photos. -Not that photos that small would help my tired old eyes.

At the end of the day, birders are not always calm and peaceful, some of them are as wacko as anyone you’ll ever meet.

No wonder I hate to leave the house.

I saw this little guy in the garden this morning and heard him happily chirping away as he moved from blossom to blossom on the bottlebrush.

It’s strange that I’ve never heard a hummingbird chirp before. In fact, I didn’t know that they could chirp.

And the reason for this post? Well, the news is depressing, the pain is making me crazy, and the doctors I’ve dealt with lately are a bunch of gibbering idiots.

Rather than trying to find out why my legs are a fucking mess they sent me to wound care. Who now come to my house three days a week and change my bandages. Which changes nothing.

The system is such a rolling cluster fuck that they won’t give you pain meds without forcing you to jump through a bunch of hoops while trying not to cry.

The whole world is fubar and this little guy made me smile. So, maybe it will at least lighten somebody else’s day.

Bugs I found in the yard. (I think I’ve been stuck inside for too long.)

Anyhow, I went outside to water what little grass I have and noticed an interesting bug… Yes, I said “interesting. bug” – God I’m bored.

At any rate I thought I’d post a few of the critters we tend to ignore… If we see them at all.

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First we have a white praying mantis. Whether it’s an albino or just a normal variant I don’t know.

Here’s a mantis that’s the traditional green color, but it’s only a bit over three quarters of an inch long.

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This little wolf spider is one of my favorite critters. It’s around a quarter of an inch long, but it can jump a foot or maybe a foot and a half at a time.

A lot of these are brightly colored, with blues or greens, but this one is brown on brown. It’s also too small to bite through your skin so it’s fun to handle.

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This tiny hunter is a cute little lady beetle that hunts things like aphids.

These are the same critters you buy online to help control garden pests.

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And here’s a guy with ambition. This little ant rolled a seed that’s almost the same size as he is more than ten feet across the patio.

Yup, it was fun to watch… For about twenty seconds.

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I know this is boring, but it showed me the need to get outside. Even if it’s only to breath the air.

Because even a little smog is better than sitting in the house with no sunlight and recycled air.

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One last photo.

This guy is the reason I had so few critters in the house… Except, of course, for the ones he brought in.

If he looks kind of scruffy it’s because he was the only cat I’ve ever met who hated to be brushed.

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TTFN

I own a 2005 Toyota Camry that has far more plastic than metal, just like any other modern car.

The problem is this. The other day I grabbed the door handle and pulled. And this is the result.

Oopsie. I’ve never had a creak or groan out of the handle, until it decided to self destruct.

Well, being the genius that I am, I futzed around trying to get the bloody door open from the inside. Then, having given up on that I crawled over the center column and out the passenger side door.

Which, when you consider the fact that I’m 6’4” and 270 lbs, which makes me almost as big as the car’s interior, must have made for a pretty funny sight… I hope nobody saw me, or worse yet, had their phone out. – Because, if they did get a video, I’ll be a bloody internet meme.

But more to the point, something that didn’t occur to me until I was out on the ground, was that all I had to do was roll down the window, reach out, and use the outside door handle. (Go ahead and laugh. I did.)

At any rate, plastic may be light but it has a very limited life span. Fortunately you can find a lot of replacement parts on Amazon.

And if you need to replace the interior handle you’ll probably have to take the door apart. So my advice is to find a YouTube video on how to pull the door panel. -I missed two screws hiding under the bottom edge the first time through which was a real pisser.