8 sept 2020

0221 working on ND2
0303 sleeping
1332 walking to the Fort
1337 exploring Ft. Abercrombie
2216 eating ice cream
2250 eating ice cream

Food: jerky, fruit leather and pita for lunch; steak and oranges for dinner

 I spent most of the day walking.  Shortly after I woke up I packed a lunch, put my rain jacket and flannel shirt in the small daypack, and then took off for the fort.  It was about a 3 mile walk, but it took well over an hour to get there since I stopped along the way and checked out Beaver Lake.  Once I got to the park I decided to walk out to where the battery and such were and then explore the trails all along there.  I never could figure out if I was supposed to pay or not since all the fees were for parking and by the car full.  Some really scenic views and lots of good birds.  I decided to eat my lunch in a meadow on one of the cliffs overlooking a bay where I could watch both the birds and some boats.  It was pretty idyllic.  There was a steady stream of people (maybe someone ever 10-15 min) but it was pretty quiet even with that.  After my lunch I wandered to a different cliff and watched puffins and various other sea birds attracted to a bait ball.  I was talking to someone from Monterrey and 1) she was amused I considered this to be crowded (cause I was saying I had bear spray but wasn’t super concerned about bears because of all the people/dogs running around) and 2) she didn’t know there were puffins in CA (I told her to go on a pelagic trip).  We chatted for a little bit and then went on our ways.  I decided to take the Parkside trail out instead of following the road so first stopped at Lake Gertruide and watched it for a while.  Just a couple of kingfishers and 3 Mallards.  I did see some American Three-toed Woodpeckers on the trail too.  Right as I was coming out of the park John called so I talked to him while I walked to town.  He is trying to figure out how to get the truck off the ferry in Bellingham if they aren’t going to be there (put him in touch with Dick from fantasy birding) and then some logistics of the AZ trip.  I told him this year its all about cutting out as many moving parts as possible.  Also the truth came out- he wanted to take the ferry to Dutch, but not in Sept lol.  Then I talked to the parentals until I was to safeway. Stopped there and decided to get a steak to grill and some ice cream along with some oreos and chocolate bars for the trip.  Oddly enough they had wet wipes, hand sanitzer, and Lysol wipes, but no thermometers or milk in anything smaller than a gallon.  Next I stopped by the beer store and got some Deep Powder Porter for the voyage since John said its fine to bring your own beer if you drink it in your state room (and he said he wouldn’t set foot on a ferry without some drinks).  One I got back to the house Robert turned the grill on (it’s a pellet grill) and I cooked my steak.  I ate it on the porch with my beer, and it tasted pretty damn good, and I don’t think that was just because I had walked 10 miles.  The weather was perfect and it was just an all around good day.  After dinner I ate some my ice cream and then did a bit of work before reading my book. 

7 sept 2020 

0040 doing some computer stuff
0637 sleeping
1452 on my way to the airport
1907 walking out to the windmills on Kodiak
 

Food: eggs, potatoes, sausage, and fruit for lunch, kodiak buffalo burgers for dinner

Woke up shortly after 8 since Steve is apparently up at the same time father is and Mary is up by 8.  We hung around the house for a bit and then went to Potter Marsh.  It was crazy windy and we were almost blown away.  We did see some of the carnivorous Mallards (Jason said as opportunistic feeders he wasn’t surprised they were feeding on salmon).  Not many birds due to the wind but still a nice walk.  The parasailers were out on the Cook Inlet, I counted at least 6 at one time.  We were going to grab some breakfast but the place was closed due to Labor Day so we headed home (drove past a large tree that had come down taking out their neighbor’s power) and Mary cooked breakfast while Steve showed me around the van conversion.  Father really needs to do one, I think they would have a lot of fun driving around.  After we ate we talked for a while until it was time for Mary to take me to the airport (Steve was on the phone).   

No problem checking in or getting through security then I just killed time at my gate until the flight boarded.  It was a much smoother flight than yesterday and the sky opened up a bit shortly before landing so I was able to see some of Kodiak from the air.  The runway totally appeared out of nowhere which is always exciting.  We also went low enough we could see some of the WWII bunker openings in the seaclifts.  It took forever for my backpack to come out- there was someone flying in with over 30 rubbermaid tubs (not sure how that worked) and all of theirs seemed to come out first.  Eventually mine came out and I grabbed it then headed outside (unlike WRG you didn’t have to get rescreened).  I saw the air bnb peoples truck and walked over.  When I got in they said they had overheard somone say the ferry was leaving out of Whitteir so then I was worried and spent the next 30 min trying to figure that out (eventually lizzie said that if my schedule had changed they would have called me).  Robert offered me a buffalo burger made from Kodiak Buffalo that he had gotten by trading one of his coworkers some fish.  It was very tasty even without miracle whip.  I met the 2 other people staying there who are both from Washington and working a short term construction gig.  Ronda lent me some bear spray so I could go on a walk, and I climbed up to where the windmills are overlooking the city.  It was about a 6 mile trek round trip and got back just before it got dark.  It was a pretty amazing view all the way up, and checked out a couple of lakes for geese with no luck.  There were a bunch of people up there both driving cars and racing dirt bikes.  Once I got back to the house I talked a bit with everyone and then they all went to bed.  I ate some fruit and watched ESPN before also calling it a night. 

 6 sept 2020 

0724 heading out the door
1055 sleeping. on a plane!
1621 flying between DFW and ANC
2147 hanging out with Steve and Mary

Food: Gallos enchiladas for dinner

5 sept 2020 

0202 obsessively tracking my package
0435 obsessively tracking my package (finally left Memphis)
1719 getting ready to eat
2355 making sure I was actually packed

Food: chicken for lunch, fruit for dinner

Woke up and checked fedex.  Package was delivered.  Then I saw an email saying the swab had been received and was in processing.  Hopefully I get my results quickly since if I am negative when I land it 1) makes things a lot easier entry wise and 2) I can stay with Steve and Mary.  Spent the day doing some packing off and on (mother waterproofed my rainpants) and playing with the critters.  We also churched this evening, and actually managed to get everything set up (including a trial run on the surface since I'll take mothers laptop) in like 25 minutes.  Mother and I also made mojitos since Matilda has been so bountiful.  I gave mother a hard time for not owning a cocktail shaker and yet sending us all to college with them.  We also hit my hair with some more dye to see if that makes it any bluer.  After they went to bed I finished packing and then lounged. 

4 sept 2020

0023 computer backup
0426 computer backup
0603 sleeping
2050 getting ready to talk to the west coasters

food: lamb and salad from the Mediterranean place for lunch, fruit for dinner

Fact: woke up at an ungodly early hour (10) and took the covid test.  It actually was really easy- the swab only stayed in my lower nose so no pain.  Then we drove to Madison and dropped it off at fedex.  Then we stopped the at the beer store and I got rum and amaretto.  I also went into the other part of the store to get some beer.  Next we went to costco and I got all the stuff the parentals thought they would need while I was gone.  It was super crowded with people buying stuff for labor day but I was able to get in and out pretty efficiently.  Then we put in an order for pick up at the Mediterranean place which was incredibly tasty.  Then it was time for the real fun.  I took apart my computer and replaced the battery, which was actually pretty smooth all things considered.  Had a problem with 1 screw, but father is more patient than I am and was able to get it out without stripping it.  I also discovered my computer basically had a cat living inside it so that was rather icky  But getting all that dust and fur out should help things run better.  Annoyingly my computer still didn't charge when I plugged it in.  Father tried testing the old battery with his multimeter to see if it was actually charged even though it claimed not to be, but we couldn't really tell since the connection was so strange (9 wires).  So for fun i tried the 130W charger I had found yesterday and oddly that worked.  Guess I have some extra resistance or something?  Then we skyped with the west coast people.  We talked some about the wedding, drinking in dorms, and the upcoming crazy weather (it will be significantly warmer in CA than in AL).  Eddie and Ania are going to socal for the week to an air bnb that advertises their wifi speeds.  The really nifty thing this evening though was getting to track my test kit.  I was following it both on flight aware and on fedex, and basicly within a minute of the plane getting to the gate the package was scanned in as in Memphis.  Same thing with leaving- the flight was delayed but fedex and flight aware both matched almost instantly when the plane pulled away from the gate/saying the package had left the facility. 

3 sept 2020

0146 getting raxml running for the Catharus alignments

0842 sleeping
1243 sleeping
2347 computer backup time

Food: tacos for lunch

Fact: The Hess Triangle is a small (each side is about 2ft) piece of sidewalk in New York City that is not owned by the city.  In 1910 a bunch of building were condemned by the city for infrastructure needs (subway and street) and they missed this piece.  The city tried to get the owner to give it to them anyway but he refused and the family even won a court case to keep it.  

Woke up and did some hanging on the hangboard.  I also started to gather my stuff for the trip.  Apparently part of coivd times is packing in advance.  Mother started experimenting with fruit leather and her first batch was pretty tasty.  She also dyed my hair.  We left it in for over 30 minutes this time trying to get it a bit more blue.  The basic Catharus analyses were finished so I sent Matt some trees and also set up a partition finder run.  Not much else happened today, did a bit of birding around the high school (dodging volleyball players and some unidentified sporting event that didn't look familiar to me at all).  I realized I needed to do a full computer backup in preparation for replacing the battery so I got that running and worked on some small projects using mothers computer for the rest of the evening.  The big annoyance though was I accepted my fate and started moving some of my clothes into the dresser.  At which point I discoverd a Dell charger like I needed.  Could have saved 90 bucks if I'd found it earlier.  But I guess its good to have a backup since my old charger is really not ideal. 

2 Sept 2020

0048 working on Catharus
0258 working on Catharus
0725 sleeping
2234 trivia

Food:Lamb and potatoes for lunch, fruit for dinner 

Fact: A palimpsests is a manuscript with multiple layers of writing.  Historically remote areas had chronic paper shortages, so they would errase and reuse the same paper over and over again, even in monastery libraries.  Using various lighting and xray techniques it is possible to read these errased layers, sometimes discovering totally lost works or even extinct languages.  St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai is home to about 130 of these, including some erased works in Caucasian Albanian, a language from Azerbaijan (and only examples of this language not in stone).

Spent most of the first part of the day going back and forth with various people at A&M trying to get my access back.  Noone was quite sure why it was still gone, and I found out in the process that even some people who were just changing from one dept to another were loosing email access.  Finally around 1730 I got it back, after 1) realizing that they had a different theres<x> matched up with my UIN (it was crazy being 1 of 3 theres<x> on the email thread and 2) resetting my password rather than using their normal process.  Whats annoying is I had actually thought about doing that last night but noone seemed to think that would make a difference so I didn't.  But its all fixed now.  I also talked to Jason for a bit over text and then finished editing the last 50 uces.  Got various alignment configurations running on raxml to see what the trees looked like.  We won trivia again, this time we didn't even have Zac play the last 2 rounds and we were still increasing our lead, what was crazy is mother had multiple answers correct that we shot down or our lead would have been even more extreme.  Mother and I also finished hanging the hangboard.  Tried watching HHI but gave up with the commercials still freezing and HH was no better so switched to Bill. 

1 Sept 2020 

0102 working on Catharus
1918 eating lunch
2155 working on Catharus
2221 working on Catharus

Food: tamales and enchaladas for lunch, fruit for dinner

Fact: The most popular car in East Germany (before the fall if the Iron Curtain) was the Trabant 601.  It had a two stroke engine and was made of Duroplast (a cotton reinforced plastic resin that is actually stronger and lighter that steal).  They were also built to be easy to work on using a standard tool set.  However since they were so underpowered as soon as western cars became available they were made obsolete.  Today they are a popular collector car.

Woke up and since Maria was facetiming with mother wished her happy birthday again.  Gave her a hard time about running super fast while she was in AK- told her it was because she was being chased by a bear.  I also admired the sign mother made for her, it has some cute kitties on it.  Then I spent a few minutes trying to make sure my netID stuff kept moving (since I lost my access while I was sleeping, looks like around noon.  Then I had a zoom session with a researcher about the impacts of covid/working from home on work and pleasure.  She seemed pretty fun.  I convinced her to check out ebird and told her i expected to see her in fantasy birding one day.  It looked like we were making some headway on the netID but by COB noone had actually been able to get it so I could log in and my emails were bouncing.  After dinner I worked on thrush stuff and read my book.  Was having trouble with HHI streaming so ended up giving up on that since it kept freezing about 2/3 of the way through the episode during the mitsubishi commercial. 

31 Aug 2020 

0308 working on Catharus
1121 sleeping
1600 picking up groceries
2020 working on Catharus

Food: Pork chops with rice and corn for lunch, fruit for dinner

Fact: Raw Agarwood is one of the most expensive natural materials.  It primarily comes from Aquilaria malaccensis that has been infected with a mold (Phialophora parasitica).  In its pure, high quality form it sells for 100,000 a kg.  Its host plant is of conservation concern due to overharvest to get the Agarwood. 

Woke up and realized that I hadn't heard from Theresa about my netID stuff being approved.  So i sent her a quick email then went to pick up groceries.  Monday between 3 and 4 is the wrong time to go, i waited for close to 30 minutes, and didn't leave walmart until about 1615.  The wild thing was as I drove in and out only about 10% of the people were wearing masks (as the entered or exited the store, not just walking in the parking lot).  On the way home I stopped and got mother some gas since her car was complaining about its fuel situation.  Once I got home I set to work trying to figure out my netID stuff.  Apparently the paperwork didn't process so I started setting things up as best I could for potentially being unable to access things.  Left a few message groups that I knew would have a ton of mail, copied over my google drive, and set up email forwarding on the off chance that would keep working.  After dinner we started to hang the hangboard- it took a while to find the screwed we needed to sink into the studs.  It ended up being a three person job but we got the plywood up.  Then spent the rest of the evening alternating between freaking out about my netID and working on Matt's stuff.

30 Aug 2020 

0146 working on Catharus
0842 sleeping
1243 sleeping
2347 working on Catharus

Food: French Toast and eggs for lunch, fruit for dinner

Fact: The Dolmen of Guadalperal, near Peraleda de la Mata, Spain, is a 7,000 stone structure that is usually underwater. However, in 2019 the drought was so bad that it was completely exposed.  The structure is made up to about 100 stones of varying sizes arranged around an oval.  Historically it was probabily enclosed and roofed, but not much of it remains.  It was possibly used for death rituals.

Woke up as the parentals were starting to set up for churching since Eddie requested we church at 1600.  So I helped them get things ready and then we chilled for a few minutes before it was time to start.  Grey Kittie was sleeping in the cat tree but the parentals decided he needed to be removed from the sunless room so I picked him up and put him on the couch.  He was unhappy at being disturbed so meowed for a while while we finished getting set up and during the service.  We are getting the set up down at this point, but we do need a checklist since I forgot to switch between grid and speaker view when father was doing the gospel and homily.  Then we talked to Eddie for a bit before signing off.  Since it wasn't raining I went ahead and painted the plywood the color of the walls in Maria's room since its the bluest paint we have.  Got everything cleaned up and then did some work while mother cooked dinner.  After dinner we just watched some tv and I workd on the sequences.  The end is almost in sight. 

29 Aug 2020

0631 sleeping
1157 sleeping
1946 eating lunch
2143 eating tapioca

Food: Corned beef and potatoes with veggies for lunch fruit for dinner

Fact: The newest gemstone found in the US is Sonoranite, the first US gemstone discovered in 40 years (which was Helenite, similar to obsidian, but formed by heating ash and dust from the Mount St. Helen area to form a glass)

Woke up and since it wasn't raining I painted the plywood for my hangboard.  It was dry by evening so I should be able to hang it tomorrow (I hope).  Did a little bit of birding, but not much going on.  I had wanted to walk down to the high school but it sounded like half the town was there, every time I stepped foot outside you could hear people yelling and the PA system making announcements.  So i decided to skip it.  Also with all the rain I figured going to wheeler was not likely to be productive, so hopefully we get some dry days later this week.  Black kittie was lounging on the treadmill so I decided to see what would happen if i turned it on.  He actually walked a little bit before loosing too much ground and sliding off the back.  So i tried it again but at the slowest speed possible (0.5mph) but this time he just sat there and slid off the end, so need to find the magic speed.  After the parentals went to bed I turned on a Bill Walton game and learned about Sonoranite.

28 Aug 2020 

0243 working on sequences
1129 sleeping
1327 trying to decide if i should get up or not
2215 talking with the west coast people
 

Fact: The Kush pyramids in Sudan are a little younger than the Egyptian pyramids.  They are also steeper sided and not reserved for royalty.  Instead anyone who could afford the construction costs could build one.  There are actually more extant pyramids in Sudan than in Egypt.   

Food: Enchiladas for lunch, fruit for dinner

When I took out Schubie at 0425 or so it was really eerie- it felt like an impending hurricane, which i guess it sort of was since it was what was left of Laura.  An odd mix of still and gusty wind, with really heavy air and clouds streaming by.  Decided I may as well take Dumas out so did that and then read my book for a while before bed.  I woke up to the sound of the parentals fixing the slick spot in the drive way with brooms and blowers, I eventually decided to get up and do some birding before the next round of storms came through.  It was already pretty windy a large branch came down next door.  Didn't see much and once it started raining i headed inside. Other parts of Morgan Co had tornado warnings but we just had watches all evening.  Jake called a little after dinner, which allowed father to solve a mystery that he had actually been telling us about over dinner.  When he was in 2nd grade he got in trouble for throwing spitballs (which he wasn't doing).  So he got sent to the principles office and was kept there until he would apologize.  But he kept just telling the nun that he couldn't tell a lie and apologize for something he didnt do.  So he was stuck there until Christy came to collect him.  Father had always wondered how Christy knew to come get him and who was actually the guilty party.  Turns out it was Jake.  At 2100 we skyped with the west coast people.  We ended up just talking again, but next week hopefully we will play skatagories (which Ania hasn't gotten to experience yet).  We were also talking about how amusing it is that these days when you ask a person what they are wearing to a wedding you are referring to masks not attire.  We talked until just after midnite then mother and I had a little bit of ice cream and i turned on HHI after the parentals went to bed.

27 Aug 2020

0421 reading the Jim Butcher book
1326 sleeping
1617 at the vet with schubie and black kittie
1930 working on sequences

Fact: Spectre opens up with a Day of the Dead Parade in Mexico City.  Mexico City really wanted to use James Bond as a tourism thing, so they cut a deal to fill the opening sequence there, have a bond girl be Mexican, and not have a villain be Mexican.  Only issue is there is no Day of the Dead Parade in Mexico City.  Then someone realized that they didn't want disappointed tourists showing up for the parade only to find out it doesn't exist, so they started hosting it, including customs and props from the filming. 

Food: burgers for lunch fruit for dinner

Woke up and took Schubie and black kittie to the vet.  Schubie got some chiropractery and acupuncture while the kittie got his shots.  It was pretty impressive with Schubie, you could actually hear the joints/bones in her paw shift back into place, and she seems to be walking better now.  The chiropractor also suggested some core strengthening and balance exercises for both puppies so we will start doing those.  They are actually pretty similar to what I did with my knee/ankle during pt.  The funny part though was when the tech came to get black kittie- she didn't realize the cat was massive so when she picked up the carrier instead pulling the carrier up she got pulled down.  Black kittie is now on a diet, although we were already feeding him even less that a cat of his girth should eat to maintain weight (250C vs 220C;now we are supposed to feed him between 200 and 230C).  It was raining by the time I got home so no birding today.  After dinner father put on some Hogans Heros.  We had turnovers for dessert which resulted in this amusing picture.  I tried to get Dumas to walk on the treadmill with me but he ran off as soon as it started moving.  I put on Spectre and worked on sequences, then once it was over switched over to HHI

26 Aug 2020

0032 normalizing the audio in my NAOC presentation so it can be shared
0723 sleeping
1646 sequence editing
1716 sequence editing

Food: Manicotti filling and sliced steak

Fact: The Tamil Tigers were the only recognized terrorist group with what resembled a conventional military instead of taking a more guerilla warfare approach.  The Tigers were the army, Sea Tigers was the navy, and Air Tigers was the air force

Woke up and answered emails then worked on the thrush sequences.  The Yankees played a double header and lost both of them in really annoying fashion.  Before lunch i did a little bit of birding in the yard.  Took the puppies for walks after dinner and did a little bit more birding.  Then worked on sequences for a few minutes before it was trivia time.  We won, although space balls was winning most of the way.  TBH i think Jimmy might have made some math mistakes, or space balls forgot to send in one of the answer sets because somehow we went from 7 down to winning by over 10.  Afterwards father was wondering how much cholesterol was in a drumstick since he has to have bloodwork done tomorrow.  Mother though thought he was talking about a chicken drumstick and kept just saying they are frozen (which clearly they were as an ice cream).  Eventually she figured out he was talking about the ice cream lol.  It was pretty amazing.  Then they went to bed and I watched some HHI.

25 Aug 2020

0001 playing with the star stacker
0258 sequence editing
0737 sleeping
1734 sequence editing

Food: tacos for lunch, fruit for dinner

Fact: Wilkie Collins dictated a chapter of his book, Moonstone (one of the first modern detective stories), to Caroline Grave's (his mistress) daughter because he was on so much opium to dull pain from gout that he couldn't write it himself (and the moaning from the pain resulted in his secretaries quitting).  When it was finished he said he didn't remember how the story turned out. Groves maintained two households in a polyamorous triad (the other part of the triad was Martha Rudd, with whom he had children and would go by Mr/Mrs Dawson).  When he died he divided his estate between the two women.

Woke up for our honorific name meeting.  It was a really good exchange that I mostly just listened in on since history isn't my thing.  Laura suggested we start meeting every 2 weeks, although the first meeting is smack in the middle of the day I am on Kodiak so we will see how that works out.  Then I spent the rest of the afternoon working on thrush sequences.  After dinner I had father show me how do to the audio trimming so i could create individual files for each slide now that they are normalized.  It took a few hours but eventually got it done.  I also discovered that when I was recording my last word on each slide tends to be much quieter than the other so I started manually normalizing the final bit of each slide.  I tried getting really fancy and swapping out a word where I cut the final s off of samples with another samples recorded earlier, but because my tone changes across the slide it sounded funny.  Rather than looking for a slide where i ended with samples i decided just to leave the original and call it good.  After that was all over I tried watching HHI but for some reason we were signed out of sling so i ended up watching tiny house nation instead. 

24 Aug 2020

0315 sequence editing
1519 sequence editing
1532 sequence editing
2136 sequence editing

Food: beer battered fish fillets for lunch, fruit for dinner

Fact: Lease agreements in Belgium are for 3, 6, or 9 year terms.  The rent can only be changed (outside of adjustment for inflation) every 3 years.  If you are breaking a lease early the amount of penalty is dependent upon if it is a 3/6/9 year lease and how many years in your lease is.  So most people who are just going for a year are stuck doing things like air bnb.

Woke up and spent most of the day working on sequences.  I decided to saw the board to hang my hangboard on.  Since the ciruclar saw battery wasnt charging first I tried sawing it by hand, which was working but taking a while.  Then father remembered he had a long blade for his jigsaw so I used that which was much faster.  Then I did a little bit of birding before dinner.  Mommy made the beer battered fish things I got at costco.  We should have taken a picture of the fish with father in it to send to the others to see if they could figure out what made the picture unusual (since we only got fish sticks as a kid when he was out of town).  After dinner we watched some TV then since it was clearing up outside we decided to take some pictures.  We got some pictures but then the clouds started coming back.  It was pretty amusing because where ever we pointed the camera the clouds would show up (and leave where we had been trying to take pictures of before).  Turns out this messed up the stacking software so we ended up not being able to get anything to stack correctly.

23 Aug 2020

1244 sleep
1816 cleaning up after churching
2147 watching Tiny Creatures on netflix with mother
2249 watching Tiny Creatures and eating desert

Food: baked chicken for lunch, fruit for dinner

Fact: Ash and camphor were both used keep insects out of ancient homonids bedding.  There is archiological evidence that homonids as far back as 200,000 years ago made bedding out of grasses that they would occasionally burn and replace.  There is also evidence of people working in bed on carvings or wepons.  So i guess working in bed isn't a modern human specific thing. (Wadley et al. 2020; 10.1126/science.abc7239)

Woke up and did some stuff online.  Then we got everything ready for churching.  We were able to get the sound to work this time, and also rearranged the camera location to see if that helped the video quality.  We talked with Maria and Kevin for a while both before and after.  Then it was dinner time.  After dinner father put on Hogans Heros while he did dishes and then mother put on netflix after.  We watched "Tiny Creatures" which is a new series filmed in the directors backyard basicly about small animals.  Very heavily anthropormophized, but the video quality was amazing, even if i don't think the mouse would resuce the raven from a trap who then turned around and rescued it a little later from a python.  Then they both rescuded the guy who owned the shack in the everglades (who had tried trapping the raven for stealing his fish).  The first one was so sad though because mother kangaroo rat got eaten by a Western Diamondback Rattlesnake so her baby would survive.  He then ran away but eventually got a Harris Hawk (that was trying to eat him) to chase off the rattlesnake so he could reclaim his family burrow.  But rattlesnakes have to eat so theres that lol.

 

22 Aug 2020

0637 sleeping
1018 sleeping
1140 sleeping
1646 grilling steaks

Food: steak for lunch, fruit for dinner with mint from Matilda's first harvest

Fact: You can pick up mining explosions on seismograph.  Its also possible to discriminate them from earthquakes, for example the mines in UT my brother has in his data set set off multiple explosions in a short period of time along a line.  

Woke up and played on my computer for a bit.  Really it was a pretty low key day- talked to Eddie a bit about why I wasn't ok with the night before.  Hopefully commnication improves- if we just know that something isn't going to work thats totally ok its just when you have a plan and then people bail that its annoying.  We also talked about exploisions and seismic activity.  Then he told me about the new Microsoft simulator that was just released.  It includes real time weather, air/runway traffic, and even the coulds include 32 layers of data.  I really want it.  Guess when we build our computer we will take the specs needed to play it to its full extent into account.  Father and I grilled steaks and they turned out amazing.  We had dessert and then I talked to Jack for a while.  He got a kitten a few weeks ago, and overall things seem to be going well with him.  He is TAing but his stuff is mostly online so luckily he doesnt have to worry about a ton of student interaction.  After I talked to him I talked to Maria and Kevin since something is cheeping in the chimney.  We figured it was prob a Chimney Swift since Maria listened to some recordings, but after I talked to them they decided to see if they could rescue it and it turned out to be a bat.  Luckily it flew out the open door once they opened up the fireplace.  Glad it was a successful rescue.  I also told them about the flight simulator and now Kevin wants to buid a cockpit mockup with VR in the basement.  Sounds like fun to me.  Maria said its the basement so he can do whatever he wants (although i bet if it was a 747 cockpit shed be down there constantly).  One of the exciting things was mother made me a fruit platter before she went to bed and included some mint from Matilda, her first harvest.  It was super tasty. 

21 Aug 2020

0005 working on Catharus
1017 sleeping
1613 at the botanical gardent
1716 driving to costco

Food: cheese burgers for lunch, fruit for dinner

Fact: Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) is a plant that was used by indigenous people to treat poison ivy.  Research studies confirmed that it does positively impact poison ivy rash.  The plant is native to much of the US and is found in shady wet areas, like near rivers and streams.  Its pretty aggressive, and actually can outcompete invasive species like garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata).  The plant can also be used to treat athletes foot.  Pretty useful (and pretty) plant. 

Woke up early (1310) because we were going to the botanical garden before going to costco.  It was really fun to go for a walk someplace different.  There were just a handful of people there and if you were outside you didn't need masks.

Lots of pretty flowers and some nice pollinators.  Father took a bunch of pictures along the way (including the Jewelweed). I tried playing Happy Birthday on the piano they have sitting out on a trail, but i couldn't for the life of me get the final note right.  They also had nifty sculptures from repurposed things.  My favorite was probabily the one made out of rail road spikes since we have our spike collection, but they were all very cool to look at.  We stopped for a bit at the pond and ate some fruit while watching the dragonfiles.  Then we made our way back to the enterance.  We didn't have time to go inside the butterfly house but we did see some butterflies, skippers, and moths.  I wanted to get a bird nerd shirt that the front desk person told us about, but they didnt have any in my size.  So i got a botanical garden t-shirt instead.  Then it was off to costco, where I had to get a new slurper and pick out sheets for mother.  The rest of it was pretty normal.  The checker prob though I was crazy since I didn't care about my raspberries starting to go bad (seriously, it was just 1 and it wasnt really bad yet) but then when she discovered my 24 pack of eggs was missing an egg i was like yup that has to be addressed. 

So ended up paying for everything then parking my cart by the employee area running back to the very back of the store (through all the random people running into long lost friends) to get a new carton of eggs (but not raspberries).  Once we got home father and I grilled burgers.  After dinner we moved the coffee table over and i fed the puppies.  Mother also used the used the new slurper for the first time. It sounds different than our old slurpers, but seemed to work well once she figured out some of the quirks.  Then it was time for trivia, only problem was while I was out getting a beer everyone else decided not to do trivial.  Which was not cool. But we all talked for a bit and i blew out my candles again (this time all in 1 breath; better than Ania and her 1 trick candle that she had to blow out since Eddie is still traumatized by them) and ate cake (or cupcakes for Maria and Kevin).  Then Eddie and Ania left to get ready for their trip Sunday and Maria and Kevin signed off after a bit also.  Once the parentals went to bed I put on Bill Walton cause i needed some fun in my life.   Maria was on facebook so talked to her a bit, reminded her that while she is inconvienced by the pandemic she still gets to see her friends, go out for drinks etc, im stuck 600 miles from all friends and have had to change my entire life and Friday trivia is my one hint at normal fun that i get. But then again its just a typical Therese birthday.  Maria said next year I could come visit for my birthday and we'd have fun but i pointed out by then she might have a screaming thing, and knowing my luck shed prob be popping out the screaming thing on my birthday.  She said shed try to make sure I don't have to share a birthday with it, so theres that at least.  Around 0300 I heard an explosion that didn't sound like it was from the quarry. Then again around 0400 there was a second explosion (and I could hear this one clearly since HHI was off).  It was super loud and sounded like it was really near by and wasn't gun shots like we have been getting in the last couple of weeks.  Schubie was in the living room with me for the 2nd one and she was really agitated she actually sat with me while I pet her for over 20 minutes which is so unlike her.  Father heard it also so when mother woke up she posted some about it on the Trinity facebook page and we eventually found out it was a transformer explosion. 

20 Aug 2020

0624 getting ready for bed
1127 sleeping
1330 sleeping
2136 talking to Maria

Food: tacos for lunch fruit for dinner

Fact: The Yankees assigned number 89 to Miguel Yajure.  Once he appears in a game that is the last uniform number between 0 and 99 that has not appeared in a MLB basball game.

Got the sharpie MS submitted since raxml actually finished a little before 2.  Once the MS was submitted (a little before 4) i read some and played WoW.  I went to bed after father got up so he wished me happy birthday (although both he and mother already had since they didn't go to bed until after midnite).  I slept well and woke up right around 1400.  I had a ton of emails, texts, and fb messages so answered those.  Apparently Jason and Matt had noticed I had pinned Kotzebue but the decided not to relocate.  But since Jason was saying he might start waking up early to see where I was I just went ahead and told the group about Rick's trip.  I spent a bunch of time on the phone with AA getting my various flights changed.  Now i have a flight on hold that used substantially less miles than my previous flights since I'm no longer going to WRG.  The 2nd person I talked to was really curious about AK but said she was more into plants than animals so I told her about Fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium), which i've always loved.  I did a little bit of work but spent most of the day hanging around with the critters and parentals.  I learned about fathers sailing days.  Turns out it was the armstrongs who introduced him to sailing (after he dragged his feet for a while) and they used to be in a sail club that had cheap rentals between 1700 and 0500 so they would get those and spend the night playing around San Diego harbor.  Then the guy he used to race with found out he liked sailing and invited him to come out on one of the mid winter races.  Father was miserable because the weather and water were really bad and he was glad they canceled the first race.  But then the next day they did the rance and it was a bouy race so he had fun.  By the next week he was invited to crew the boat and told the Ensanda was in a couple months so be ready.  They won their class on year.  It also took 4 or more days to get back north after the race- a couple years he took the week off, but one year he literally stepped off the boat and onto a bus back north (didnt even stop at Hussong's that trip although he did met the rest of the crew for breakfast in San Diego on their trip back North).  During July-Sept they would race to Catalina 2x a month, and there were times he was racing almost every weekend.  The boat had an oven so for dinner they would pick up a lasagna from Giovannis (which apparently mother would get for get togethers sometimes and pass off as her own) then when they were part way there throw it in the oven so it was ready when they anchored.  He said it was a pretty good way to pass time with some bottles of wine and away from the noise of orange co.  Mother sailed out to Catalinia a few times, once with father, but a number of times with her brothers also.  Then I showed up and everything got lame lol.  Then we went for a walk with the puppies and the parentals came along to pick up after them (best birthday present ever).  I also weighted the kitties and discovered black kittie was 18.1 and grey (not brown like mother is trying to convince us of) weight 8.6. Mother made me a texas choclate sheet cake so i was very happy about that.  She put all the candles on one side of the cake so we could use them again tomorrow and i failed at blowing out all 35 at once, it took 2 attempts.  Then I talked to Eddie, then video chatted with Maria.  After that the parentals went to bed (its cloudy out so no photography) and I watched James Bond.  Father came back out twice, once during james bond and the 2nd time right as i turned on HHI so we watched them looking for a house in Ireland for a little bit before he went back to bed.  

19 Aug 2020

0741 sleeping
0805 sleeping
1534 getting raxml running
2202 working on thrush sequences

Food: corn chowder for lunch fruit for dinner

Fact: Erta Ale in Ethiopia is not only one of the most active volcanoes on the planet but also has one of only 8 persistent lava lakes.  I've actually seen one of the others a few times- Massaya in Nicaragua.  Watching the lava slosh back and forth in the lake is pretty cool.

Woke up and saw that partitionfinder had finished.  So I got the new raxml analysis running and decided to wait for that to finish before submiting the ms.  Since its supposed to rain tomorrow I decided we should put off grilling so no costco trip today either.  Spent a lot of the day working on random things I'd been putting off- looked over some manuscripts, worked on some sequences, and cleaned up my computer folders.  We had a massive rainstorm in the early evening and the power kept flickering but luckily it didn't go out.  I kept obsessively checking my raxml run and since it was running really fast I decided to get everything else formatted so all I had to do was drop in the new tree and it would be ready to go.  Really, the highlight of the day was relocating our tomato plant to the deck in hopes of it getting a little bit more sun to help the tomatoes ripen faster.  We came in 3rd in trivia- there was a new team, plus space balls was back.  Our group was also off our game (even with Zac helping from a backpacking trip).  The worst was the bonus round which involved recognizing pictures of baseball pictures.  I ended up just resorting to naming players on the pictured teams and hoping the parentals could guess from there. 

18 Aug 2020

0105 working on the last Accipiter comments
0332 working on the last Accipiter comments
1154 sleeping
1502 answering emails

 

Food: ham, cheese, fruit and veggies for lunch

 

Fact: The Combat Cockroach Musuem was in an exterminator's office in Plano.  Cockroaches were dressed up in various scenes or as famous people.  Sadly we never went and it closed when the owner retired.  

Finally finished the Accipiter comments around 0530.  Sent it to Jason and Matt with a couple more clariifcations then i went to bed.  Woke up and answered some emails then talked to Jason about some potential funding stuff before heading to wallmart to pick up the groceries.  Dom was amazed i do normal things like grocery shop.  I tit tell him its only because of covid that i do trips to the store.  once i got home I did some sound normalziatoin on the naoc presentation to show a potential donor then talked to a prof at vanderbuilt about our bird common name thing.  I told her i worked at ANSP She was actually in RI and was like oh we could meet up sometime in PA, and i was like actually I'm in AL so when she has to come back south maybe we could meet up then lol.  Then it was lunch time.  Put on the Yankee's game (we lost) and took Dumas for a walk while talking with Jason about potential semiar titles.  Then watched Lord of War while making templates for each common name we need changed.

17 Aug 2020

1143 sleeping
1350 sleeping
1649 on my way back from the vet/publix
2147 working on the last Accipiter comments

 

Food: scallops and shrimp for lunch fruit for dinner

Fact: Cypraea fultoni is a mollusk found off the coast of Mozambique.  The shells are a collector's item especially since until really recently all the specimens were found inside the stomach of fish.  Each shell has a unique pattern and some of the individual shells have names describing the pattern, just like some of the big diamonds/other gems. 

Woke up and answered some emails before going to the vets.  I had to get food for Schubie and meds for both puppies.  Stopped at Publix on the way back to get some fruit since we were out.  There was still basicy no paper towels (only 2 packages), half a display of toilet paper, and no cleaning products.  Othere than that adventure I spend the evening working through Jason's final comments and getting the Accipiter manscript ready to go.  We listened/watched the yankees game- we won again and Chapman got his first save.  Then father checked the sky and it was pretty clear so we set up the camera (and my tv).  Took 10 30 second pics and then did 50 at 30 seconds.  I sat outside with the camera to make sure it didn't get hit by a random critter or something until it finished.  Then we pulled the pictures off and looked but no shooting stars.  Tomorrow we are going to try zooming in and taking 600 1.666 second pictures then stacking them.  Father also thinks we could make a movie of the stars moving.  By this point it was well after midnight and the parentals went to bed and i watched tv while working on the manuscript.  I also recieved Maria's wedding invite, I got two trexes cause I'm extra awesome.

16 Aug 2020

0633 sleeping
1126 sleeping
1306 sleeping
1846 watching the Yankees/Red Sox

 

Food: cinnamon toast and ribs for lunch fruit for dinner
 

Fact: when filming HP8 they brought in "dead" harry in a body bag.  Daniel Radcliffe was hanging around the set and found it rather weird

 

Woke up, heard the parentals still talking to fathers siblings so i kept sleeping until they woke me up.  Then we got the last of the sunroom set up for churching.  Then it was time to church.  We used the 2 mike set up, but when we were doing some troubleshooting I had muted the output on the laptop so we ended up having no audio until the end of the homily.  Afterwards we chatted for a bit (found out that one could not go to St. Mikes in the 1970s and be VP of the US material.  Then we spent the rest of the day chilling.  Tried getting my hangboard set up- we found the studs but realized the plywood needs to be trimmed down and that circular saw isn't working so I'll have to do it by hand.  Then we put on the Yankee's game (which we won).  Drew summed up the season by saying the red soxs make him realize his childhood dream isn't dead he could still be a pitcher for the sox.  Afterwards I watched the directors edition of HP 7b and put the finishing touches on the manuscript so Jason can read the final version tomorrow. 

 

15 Aug 2020

0452 watching NAOC talks from earlier in the day
0733 sleeping
0954 sleeping
1920 NAOC social

Food: ribs and sweet tea

Fact: Starlings recognize individuals just like crows do

Woke up and answered some emails.  Sounds like my talk went well!  Its funny, in some respects prerecorded talks are more stressful because I wasn't totally sure the moderator knew it was going to be a prerecorded talk.  But luckily since Renata was in my session i let her know to let the moderator know if he was looking for me.  Then I went for a quick birding walk to add Alabama to the NAOC map.  I also watered my plants and discovered more flowers on my morning glory.  Once I got back it was time for the story telling session, then bird calls, trivia, and a social.  I was briefly 4th out of 150 people in trivia but then I collapsed and ended up like 105.  The social was really fun, there were about 70 people and it was a series of 15 minute breakout sessions with between 4 and 6 people.  Talked to a big variety of people ranging from someone who lived in Plano from 1988-2001 (we talked about high school football), to a couple high schoolers (I told them to choose wisely since their high school project could become their phd), to a bunch of Canadians studying seabirds.  One person was in my randomly assigned breakout session 4 times in a row which we both found amusing.  The stories were also pretty good- some were serious (judging people for accents and local people in birding areas confronting bird people asking why nothing they do benefits the local community), to touching (doing field work with your dad and telling your family you are going to be a biologist), to funny (loosing your phone after running away from a cow that looked at your funny and finding it by using a bluetooth speaker to retrace your steps and listening for the tone saying you are paired).  After the total group got down around 20 we just did a single session instead of breakouts which mostly consisted of us talking about what birds are the worst to deal with in hand (cardinalids) and the crow people talking about how awesome crows are.  The zoom randomly died about 2120 (tbh it was supposed to finish at 2100) so then i ate dinner, drank my sweet tea, and then chilled with the parentals.  Then we got the sun room set up (even more extra than usual) since eddie wants to church early.  then the parentals went to bed and I watched tv.  

14 Aug 2020

0737 sleeping
1159 sleeping
1920 eating dinner
2242 trivia
 

Food: korean beef tacos 

Fact: Reindeer eyes turn blue in the winter, apparenlty to help them see better in the dark.  Eddie would have gotten this right (he figured Scandinavians often have blue eyes so was going with that) but Ania and Zac were very certain this was not true.  Ania even said if they were blue she would pay him.  I told her to pay up.

Woke up and did some work before the musuem people unoffical meet up.  It was really funny because one of the people cheersed with their beer, and someone said something about beer sounding good so we took a 30 second break to beverage before starting.  I had a freestate beer but i hadn't had one in so long that i had forgotten there actually was a Prairie Falcon on the label so i said it was Prairie Falconless.  They broke us up into a series of breakout rooms, first I was with Paul (AMNH) and some people I didnt know, but 4 of the 5 us us had loans from Paul.  Then i was in a room with John (FMNH) and some others that i vaguely knew, then I was in a group with Shanta.  It was really great meeting a bunch of new poeple though- considering if that was a normal meeting i prob would have just hung out with John and/or Shanta the whole time.  I really like how that works- and everyone is on even footing since even the most senior person wouldnt know everyone (or even most people) when thrown into a random room like that.  Then it was dinner time, but Mrs. Armstrong called right as we were sitting down.  So we waited while father talked to her.  Guess they were updating her address book (who has an address book) and were trying to decide if he should get filed under C or P. After dinner we got ready for trivia and then started the call.  The west coasters won, although Kevin and Maria were also in the center and we had all the pie pieces and were heading to the center.  The best was Eddie and Zac tottally confused about which gospel writers were apostles (even though Ania knew the answer immediatly).  Mother died a little inside.  We also had some random singing from the parentals of dawning of the age of aquarius. 

13 Aug 2020

0045 working on thrushes
0311 playing WoW
1432 sleeping
2343 working on thrushes

Food: enchiladas for lunch fruit for dinner

 

Fact: Alger Hiss was found guilty of being a Soviet spy (which is still debatable).  Part of the trial included a discussion of Prothonotary Warblers which he said he had seen and was considered to be a detail you wouldn't just tell random people so the fact Whittaker Chambers knew he had seen one was proof they knew eachother.  This trial launched Nixon's political career.  

 

Woke up and was a room leader for the LBTGQA+ social.  We did two breakout sessions that went pretty well.  Then we had trivia.  I did awfully but it was fun.  Ended up talking to Alix quite a bit during the trivia.  After the social ended I talked to Matt for a while about the hawk paper.  After dinner I put on a Yankees game from last year.  We beat Baltimore, but they had a player hit for the cycle.  I talked to Eddie for a bit also.  He got a big DOE grant so is hiring a postdoc.  He's all important these days.  Then the parentals went to bed and I watched tv and worked. 

12 Aug 2020

0101 working on Accipiter comments
0528 reading
1818 working on Catharus
2217 playing trivia
 

Food: Burgers for lunch fruit for dinner

Fact: You can use drones to do telemetry (via triangulation) in remote or inaccessible areas.  Also, since the drones are at a higher elevation than a person standing they can pick up signals that might otherwise be missed.

Woke up in time for the LBTGQA+ round table at NAOC.  The panel was pretty interesting.  I always forget how much Mark amuses me.  I really should hang out with him more when I go to UIUC.  After that it was time for my poster presentation.  I was the first one in my session which was a bit stressful not knowing how any of this would go, but i actually really liked it.  Each speaker talked for 3 minutes, then every 5 posters or so there was a 5 minute break for questions.  I actually stayed for the whole session since there were some interesting drone talks.  It was really easy to interact on zoom also since the chat function allowed people to give questions and then before they were actually asked by the moderator the presenter had a few seconds to prepare responses.  Once that was over I hung around for a bit then took Dumas for a walk before we ate. Since it was raining Schubie didn't want to stay out very long.  Then it was trivia time.  Our team won, but it was back and forth until the final round so I think everyone was happy with how it turned out.  The highlight though was maria admitting she got an answer right because of us making her go to maritime museums (it  was about light house lenses).  I also got a question right due to lord of war (name one thing on a Mozambique flag, I knew AK-47).  Then we randomly watched some home shopping network because they were selling these weird fake plant things.  Then i put on Spectre after the parentals went to bed. 

11 Aug 2020

0256 playing WoW
0806 sleeping
1721 Working on Catharus
2117 Watching tv with the parentals

Food: brautwurst and potatoes for lunch fruit for dinner

 

Fact: Before today 8 sept 1915 was the last time NY state hosted 3 major league home games on the same day (Buffalo Blues beat the Baltimore Terrapins in a double header; the Boston Braves beat the Brooklyn Robins in a double header; and the Yankees lost to the Senators).  Interestingly enough, if you search for 8 Sept 1915 mlb in yahoo it brings up the scores for that day but with the modern team names. 

Woke up and did some sequence cleaning.  Pretty uneventful day overall though since all the NAOC stuff is uploaded and I'm waiting on the last of the hawk MS comments.  The highlight was probably trying to take pictures of the meteor shower.  We were partially thwarted by clouds and we didn't capture any shooting stars, but I think we have a better idea now what will work picture wise.  Father stacked the images and the 1 second ones were way too dark, but the 5 second ones look really cool, even without shooting stars.  Then I put on Skyfall and worked on the comments on the response to reviewers. 

 

10 Aug 2020

 

0047 working on my NAOC talk
0209 working on my NAOC talk
1513 working on Catharus
1855 eating dinner

Food: pork chops for lunch fruit for dinner

 

Fact: In 1992 Pepsi ran a big competition called Pepsi Number Fever to win a million pesos in the Philippeans to try to increase their popularity.  Only problem is when they decided to extend the competition they drew a number (349) that had actually been printed hundreds of times.  Riots happened, people were killed, and lawsuits made it to the Philippine supreme court (which sided with Pepsi on not being responsbile for paying all the holders of the caps).

Woke up and spent basicly the whole day working on NAOC stuff.  I asked Dom how to say send me an email if you have any questions in Spanish and then father and I worked on getting my prounciation of mandármela correct.  The e was giving me such a hard time, even though i was apparenlty getting the e right in every other word in the phrase.  Father found it rather amusing but I eventually got it.  We recorded the intro outside, figured we would just record it half a dozen times and pick the one that sounded the best.  Apparently Dom's daughter has trouble with that word even though she only speaks spanish at home.  So i told father it isn't my fault.  Worked on the quail poster while waiting for Jasons comments on the recording.  I talked to Jason just before dinner about his comments, which were all pretty minor luckily.  We also talked a bit about some sequecing i want to do of  South American hawks.  After dinner I rerecorded the slides he had comments on.  I had father listen to it all the way through to make sure it sounded ok and then I saved it as an mp4 only to discover somehow it was 21 seconds too long even after I had set all the transitions and added them all together.  So had to trim the transitions a bit and redo the mp4 conversion.  Got it uploaded with 8 minutes to spare.  Then i spent the rest of the evening relaxing while watching tv. 

9 Aug 2020

 

0211 working on NAOC talk
0952 sleeping
1404 sleeping
1521 waking up

 

Food: steak for lunch fruit for dinner.

Fact: Crush, TX was a temporary citie where a railroad staged a crash between two unmanned locomotives.  40,000 people came (making it the 2nd largest city in Texas for a couple day period).  Admission to the event was free and round trip tickets to the site from anywhere in TX was only 2 bucks.  Only problem was rather than going off without a hitch like similar events in other places, both boilers exploded and the flying debris killed two people.  Ironically it ended up favoirbly impacting the railroad and other railroads continued holding fake crashes after that. 

Woke up and started putting transitions into the slide show.  Didn't quite get it done before churching.  We still havn't gotten the dual mikes sorted out- there was an echo so ended up using the crowd mike the whole time.  Then father got the slide transcription going.  Once it was done I worked on that while we watched tv.  Once i got that finished (and everyone else was sleeping) I rerecorded my slides.  I didn't get finisehd until about 6am, luckily father was able to keep all the criters quite while I was finshing, since they can be rather loud (looking at you schubie and grey kittie before and after breakfast. 

 

8 Aug 2020

0634 sleeping
1154 sleeping
1711 working on the presentaiton
1856 finishing dinner

 

Food: tamales and enchaladas with Corona, veggies, and asparagus

 

Fact: Ammonium nitrate is highly explosive and used in mining.  It is also used as a fertilizer.  This is the material that caused the West explosion (side note, it was a really strange experience being in Tanzania during the West explosion even though my experiences with West were all about stopping for kolaches), and also the recent explosion in Beirut.  To make it easier to handle, but still effective as a fertilizer, it can be mixxed with calcium, although this isn't commonly done for some reason.

Woke up and watered the plants.  Then spent pretty much all day working on stuff for my presentation since that has to be uploaded Monday.  I also gave the slides to father to translate.  During dinner I convinced the parentals we should take one more shot at the comet since we were thinking some longer exposures.  So we drove out to the dam and got set up.  We had a fairly easy time finding the comet- we found the marker star before it was even fully dark and were able to get lined up on it, then took a series of 10 second exposures until we found it.  The hardest part was actually getting the comet where we wanted it so it wouldn't leave the field of view during the 5-9 minutes it took to take the series of pictures.  The last set we did was 30 seconds (with 5 second pauses) for 15 pictures.  We just wish we had figured this out when it first started, could have had some amazing shots when the tail was really pronounced.  Then we headed home and played with the stacker some.

 

7 Aug 2020

0027 working on Accipiter complex
0813 sleeping
0924 sleeping
1416 working on Accipiter complex

 

Food: tacos and veggies

 

Fact: The King's Highway was built between 1650 and 1735 on the order of King Charles II.  It ran from Boston, MA to Charleston, SC.  It was originally used to transport mail on horseback, but eventually widened and smoothed as stagecoach traffic increased.

Right as I was falling asleep (arond 0600) black kittie appeared and started playing with some felt, although at first i thought he was a mouse until i heard him thud.  So i picked him up and tried to make him love me but he jumped away and started playing with the felt again.  So I tried to grab him and throw him out of the room, but he hid under the bed.  So i pulled him out and chucked him out then mostly closed the door so grey kittie could still come in if he wanted.  But then black kiitie came back again and started playing with the felt yet again.  This time when i tried to grab him he ran into the corner.  So i fished him out and threw him back into the hall then latched the door shut.  then for the next 10 min he kept launching himself into the door trying to break his way in.  Father was laughing at him, and i couldn't just give him the felt in the hall because i was worried about the dogs eating it.  Then I actually go to sleep.  Woke up a few minutes before the 1300 meeting with about Jacob's checklist committee document.  It was a very producitve meeting and we came up with a plan both for the opinion piece and for proposals.  Then I got back to Accipiter stuff.  Had tacos for dinner, and then back to work.  Just before 200 AOS announced they changed the longspur so that was good news.  Then it was trivia time (which had been delayed until 2130).  Everyone was impressed with the sign mother made for the birthdays.  Then we had father open his lens, he was super excited and surprised.  Trivia went well, we had a slow start, but it was competitive to the end.  Maria and Kevin won, on their first card once they got to the central circle.  We did have an intermission to all eat our baked goods, with candles (and we sung happy birthday).  Eddie ended up accidentally with trick candles which was pretty amazing.  After the game the parentals went to bed and I worked on the mt genomes.

 

6 Aug 2020

0438 working on Accipiter
0735 finally fell asleep maybe
0738 finally fell asleep maybe
1841working on Accipiter complex

 

Food: salmon and rice for lunch fruit for dinner

Fact: Towards the end of WWII the germans tried doing some guerilla fighting drawing on superstition like the existence of werewolves.  One group was made up of actual military personnel, while the other was civilians.  In either case they were supposed to terrorize soldiers or anti-nazi germans, typically in small very localized attacks.  They were not particuarily successful, although they did cause millions of dollars in damage and killed thousands of people.  

I had a heck of a time getting to sleep, it was close to 730 before I actually finally succeeded.  I looked over some comments that people had started making on the Accipiter manuscript and then got to working on the Accipiter complex for NAOC.  I got my NAOC mug in the mail, and also the tool kit eddie got me.  Otherwise it was a pretty low key day.  Took the puppies for walks and listened to the Yankees game.  We decided to give comet photography another try since its pretty clear.  I brought mothers laptop and was planning on working on the way only to discover Microsoft needed to connect to the internet in order to verify the license so so much for that plan.  Once the sun went down we started looking for the comet.  It took a while to find, eventually we found a post about what constellation it was near and then a map of the constellations relative to the Big Dipper.  We basicly had to make our way across the sky taking pictures as we went until I eventually spotted it.  Then we took a bunch of photo series (20-40 pictures each 5 second long).  There was a lot of light for some reason, even though the moon was down so that complicated things.  Then we headed home and father messed with the image stacker for a while.  We tried figuring out the comet stacker but couldn't get it to work right so that will be a project for tomorrow apparently.  Then I skyped with Dave for a couple hours.  In the process I realized I am basically on New Zealand time.  Afterwards I worked on Accipiter some more then went to bed. 

5 Aug 2020
0340 working on Accipiter (almost done!)
0611 getting ready to go to sleep
1957 walking the puppies
2326 watch House Hunters and working on this post

Food: chicken and rice stuff for dinner

Fact: The oldest road bridge in the US that is still in use is the Frankford Ave. Bridge in Philadelphia.  It's actually the bridge I used to stand on while waiting for the bus to take me to the Market-Frankford Line when I lived with the nuns.  The bridge was completed in 1697 as part of a law passed that required all river crossings along the King's Highway to have bridges between The Fall's of the Delaware (in Trenton) and Sussex Co, Delaware. 

Woke up and started working on the alignments for NAOC since the presentation has to be recorded by Monday.  Otherwise it was a pretty low key day.  Listened to the Yankees doubleheader.  Favorite yankee got his 3rd hit and 3rd homer.  Later in the game he got a 2nd hit that was his first non home run hit of the year.  It was frustrating that this year doubheaders are 7 innings since I think we would have come back to win it but at least we won game 2.  Took the pups for a walk and then it was trivia time.  Our team one again, although with very little input from Zac.  We made some suggestions to even out the scores a bit though.  Then I watched some HHI while I worked, then turned on Lord of War since I hadn't watched it for a while.

4 Aug 2020

0942 sleeping
1318 sleeping
1942 walking the puppies
2255 working on Accipiter

Food: steak and the ham chowder for lunch, fruit for dinner

Fact: Very little is known about the history Viktor Bout, the arms dealer that Lord of War (best movie ever) is based on.  He was in the Soviet army, and he was probably born in what is now Tajikistan although his date of birth is not certain.  He is fluent in 6 languages, and possibly also in Esperanto the language that was artificially constructed in 1887 (a triva question we got wrong last week) even though father thought it was in the 1800's i thought it was more recent than that.

Woke up and had mother cut my hair.  She's getting pretty good at it lol.  Next week i hope to have enough free time that she can dye it again for me.  Then I just spent the rest of the day working on the manuscript.  By the time I went to bed I felt pretty good about where it was at and figured it was ready for others to look over.  The extension cord to move my laptop from my office to the sitting room in the evening is working well.  I really hope the new battery fixes this though.  Since the yankees game was postponed due to rain we listened to the game against boston from Sunday.  Always love it when we beat them.  Took the puppies for a walk this evening- Schubie was wanting an actual walk so we went down to the bottom of the hill and back up.  Dumas and I went all the way to the sign.  The kittie in the house on the corner seems really lonely and was meowing at us through the window so mother is looking to see if it is possible for us to go play with it (and Maria and I think it should join the family). 

3 Aug 2020

0057 working on Accipiter
0305 working on Accipiter
1447 sleeping
2334 working on Accipiter

Food: Burgers for lunch, fruit for dinner

Fact: The airport on Midway Atoll (Henderson Field) has restrictions on what time planes can land to protect the albatri.  During the nesting season (November-June) planes can only take off or land at night. 

Woke up and spent basicly the whole day doing Accipter stuff.  I pretty much have the analyses done (other that what I need from Julie) so was working on figures and cleaning up the text.  I did talk to Matt for over an hour about the morphology figures for the paper.  We also agreed to skype beer at some point, maybe even skype skin if i can get ahold of some birds to prep.  We listened to the Yankee game, still no John.  Turns out he was hospitalized for a blood infection, but he should be back this week.  The most amusing part of the day though was father saying the was thinking about buying a macro lens.  Luckily he mentioned this before he bought one (he had been looking on ebay) so we told him to wait until chrsitmas... or Friday lol.  For dessert we had the rest of the lemon pie mother made then the parentals went to sleep and I kept watching tv while working on the manuscript.  Donor Choice had a 10x match with Tyson so maria and i funded a bunch of projects.  I did a lego one, a book one, and then she and i split a school supply one right before midnite since it was one of the the last 3 projects eligible for the match that would be expired before the next time Tyson did the match and the others were were small kids that I figured would get funded before they expired at the end of the month (this one was school supplies for a high school special education classroom)

2 August 2020

0418 working on Accipiter
1302 sleeping
1642 babysitting my computer backup
2124 watching TV

Food: Tamales, beans, tomatoes, with Corona for dinner

Fact: The Bethpage region of Long Island, NY was bought for £140 (about 34,000 now) in 1687 (although the deed wasn't signed until 1695) by Thomas Powell Sr.  He purchased about 15 square miles from a group of indigenous tribes (who retained the right to pick berries and hunt on the land).  He called it Bethphage (the 2nd h disappered eventually) because it was located between Jerusalm (now Wantagh) and Jericho (a Quaker settlement) just like the bethpage in the bible. 

Woke up and messed around with my computer backup.  Then I briefly helped mother work on the treadmill, but wandered off while she and father finished it.  Sent some emails, and then it was time to set up for churching.  Mother realized the treadmill would make a really good ambo so we decided to flip everything 90 degrees in order to use that.  It really looked nice since you can now see the stained glass.  Only issue is we forgot to test the speakers out and there was some sort of interaction with the new mike we got (so we now have a crowd mike and a second mike on the ambo) and we couldn't get them both working on the fly.  So we ended up having to just use the laptop and since everything was going through there now we had to take off the recorder.  Too bad because I got to do my principalities 2nd reading and father had a good homily.  Then we took everything down, but left the treadmill with the board on it so i could use it as a walking desk.  Then we had dinner- father decided to channel grandpa ikie with our meal.  It really hit the spot.  We also were talking about reading vs speaking Spanish- he doesnt think grandma stella or grandpa ike really read Spanish very well even though it was their first language, only aunt celine really did a lot of reading in Spanish.   But apparenlty mothers grandmother actually took Czech classes when she was a kid so she learned to read and write in Czech. I also learned that father has a diary that grandmas father kept during WWI and grandma used to read and translate it to them when they were kids.  I told him he needs to digitize it and it should go in a museum.  Then we watched some tv- an episode of Home Improvement.  Since it was clear outside we took a bunch of pictures (father figured out how to take 20 shots in a quick succession).  Mostly of the star from last night (but it was almost directly overhead and the focus kept getting messed up from the weight of the lense when taking 20 shots over 2 minutes) and another bright star, but also a few of Jupiter where you can see a bunch of the moons.  Then we all came in and watched a couple episodes of another show- According to Jim.  It was a pretty amusing show although none of us even remember it being a thing.  Then the parentals went to bed and I watched HHI while working.

1 August 2020

0057 trivia
0248 planning my 52 big day route
0728 sleeping
1156 sleeping

Food: Ham, potato, and corn chowder, fruit and veggies for dinner, fruit for a snack

Fact: American Robin (Turdus migratorius) can raise up to 3 broods a year.  Brown-headed Cowbirds (Molothrus ater) frequently parasites their nests, but robins appear able to recognize the cowbird eggs and remove them. 

Woke up for a zoom with Jacob to make sure we are on the same page with what we are going to do with the common names.  He also put me in touch with a new FMNH grad student who is into introgression and species delimitation.  Could be really handy for the sharpies.  Spent the rest of the day working on Accipiter.  Annoyingly Dumas turned off a power strip and my computer almost died.  Then i discovered my battery is completely not charging anymore.  Guess it's time to buy a new battery.  It was finally a clear night, so father and I took some star pictures.  We got a computer monitor hooked up so we can look through that instead of the viewfinder which makes it a lot easier to see the stars.  Impressively for the really bright stars autofocus even works.  What was amazing though was at one point he was trying to adjust the focus and the stars suddenly disappeared.  We both assumed he had bumped the camera or something, only to look up and discover the clouds had gone from virtually nothing to thick in just a few seconds.  So we called it a night and I worked on my computer for a while then started a backup. 

31 July 2020

0021 working on Accipiter
0756 sleeping
1141 sleeping
2024 working on Accipiter before trivia

Food: Pizza for dinner

Fact:  Jimi Hendrix was the closing act at Woodstock.  Luckily father new this since it was on the final card for trivia

Woke up and had a quiz bowl conference call.  Didn't really come up with any resolutions other than Rhys is confused about how auto grading would work.  I agreed to demo it but not until after my revisions are submitted.  Then I spent most of the day working on Accipiter.  However, we did do a pickup from Lowes in Hartselle, to get some new kitchen mats since the black kittie has destroyed the ones we have and listened to the yankees game along the way.  Also got stuff to hang my hang board.  Picked up pizza on the way home.  Then it was trivia time.  We were off to a slow start and it looked like Kevin and Maria might defend their title, but we came roaring back and won.  We even got 4 questions on the Baby Boomer card for the win.  The highlight though was the west coasters trying to figure out how many quarts were in a peck, which mostly devolved into everyone doing the tongue twister. 

30 July 2020

0718 sleeping
0943 sleeping
1241 sleeping
1847 getting ready for lunch

Food: hot dogs, mashed potatoes, deviled eggs and veggies for lunch, fruits for dinner

Fact: Rickie Ricardo, the spanish broadcaster for the Yankees's is actually named Jorge Lima, Jr.  However, as a young DJ the station's main talent suggeted he use Rickie Ricardo as a stage name and Ricardo is his middle name) because the listeners would never forget him.

Woke up in time for yet another 1100 zoom, this one the black/brown caucus at ANSP.  It was a really good session, hopefully we can come up with a plan for real change to make behind the scenes at ANSP more inclusive and supportive of diversity.  After the meeting I sent some emails and got Julie some files she needed, and then  I went back to sleep.  When I woke up I did a some work and then skyped with eddie to try and fix fathers computer.  I succeseded in breaking it more, but I think we came up with some ideas about what is actually wrong.  Then did some work, father put on yestedays Yankees game and we had dinner.  After that spent the rest of the evening working, first while listening to the game, then after the yankees won (as called by Rickie Ricardo and Suzyn) to House Hunters.

29 July 2020

0451 working on alignments
1438 working on alignments
1650 working on alignments
2314 working on alignments

Food: sausage, rice, peppers, and broccoli for lunch, fruit and veggies for dinner

Fact: In a cartoon short, called Missing the Mark, Mark Hamill voiced 4 characters- 3 of his normal ones (The Joker, the Trickster, Swamp Thing, and a fictionalized version of himself.  In the short, Mark Hamill is kidnapped by the Joker.  Must have been confusing.

Woke up for the lunch meeting.  Jason was the only one at first but a bunch of others trickled in.  As always good to talk to everyone.  Apparently Janice has 3 roosters that need to go but she isn’t sure she is ok having Nate turn them into soup.  Then I went back to sleep til a more reasonable hour.  Woke up to mother slicing jerky.  She also experimented with some venison, but since there is a bone in it itll take some work to get right.  Other than the zoom meeting I spent the whole day working on the various Accipiter projects and also getting some stuff prepped to run for Renata.  I weighted the kitty, black kittie is his highest ever at 17.4...  Almost twice gray kittie who was 9.1. Then it was time for trivia (where I got todays fact).  Social Distancing Flycatchers came in first by 1 point (beating Hot Mess made up of Alice, Grace, and Maria).  I was happy that WoW was the video game making the most money in 2014 (Zac thought it ws a Pokemon, but I figured those 14 bucks a month add up).  Then the parentals went to bed and I watched House Hunters while working on the alignments.  Random baseball note- the Jays played some home game at the National's stadium.  They even made the crown noise to be cheering the Jays instead of the Nats and played the normal Jays music during the game.  This season is beyond strange

28 July 2020

1744 eating lunch
1955 fixing the tredmill
2111 working on Accipiter
2223 working on Accipiter

Food: chicken and rice stuff with fruit and a salad like yesterdays, fruit and cucumber for dinner

Fact: The first post WWII professional symphony orchastra in Poland was the Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra.  They formed shortly after the Russians moved in, and held their first performace even before the war officially ended in Europe.

Shortly before going to bed Saudi Arabia checklists started trickling in.  It was so depressing- while i got a couple of them, i missed out on a really good one (with a new game bird) by like 300m.  But Dom had it even worse.  Not only did he miss out on that checklist, but he missed on one of the checklists i got by like 100m (or less).  Joost tried to convince Matt to move us since Dom has shady connections, but alas.  He did say he has considered telling everyone at Christmas that he expanded the radius by 1km.  I wonder how many birds people would pick up.  Woke up to the sound of the parentals slurping.  Found out they were slurping all the juice cubes they had made yesterday so we are set for both lemon and lime juice for a while.  Spent the day trying to figure out exactly why the SNP pipeline was sometimes erroring (turns out the there was still an issue in the file names, where it wold run through the first few steps which takes like 2 days fine, and then get to the last step and die because of a underscore instead of a dash in the original files).  But now it is all running for hopefully the final time.  Since tonights game was again postponed due to covid we put on a 2019 game.  Then mother and i glued a backing piece onto the treadmill to tomorrow we can attached the final piece so it will be up and running again.  Then we all sat in the sunless room for a while.  We want to put a tv in there and some plant towers like we saw in the keys.  Then i decided to take Dumas for a walk.  Grey kittie was being wierd so i told him if he followed me from the sunroom to the sitting room i would take him with me.  Since he did i put him in the kittie space capusle and took him on the walk too.  He seemed to enjoy it until he meowed a couple of times and then pooped.  So he got a bath.  Luckily he took the bath pretty well.  Then we cleaned the capsule out and hung it to dry.  Listened to the rest of the game (Yankees won, and infact won both games of the double header against the sox).  Then i spent the rest of the night watching house hunters and working on Accipiter.

27 July 2020

0721 sleeping
0808 sleeping
1153 sleeping
1537 working on Accipiter

Food: baked chicken with fruit and a cucumber/tomato/cruton salad for lunch fruit for dinner

Fact: 1/3 of KFC's sales in Japan happen in December.  When he ran the original KFC in Japan, Takeshi Okawara, said christmas chicken from KFC was a tradition worldwide and it stuck. 

Woke up and spent the whole day working on Accipiter.  It had rained quite a bit this morning so I didn't need to water the plants.  Anthony was able to reboot the workstation while I was sleeping so woke up and hit the ground running with the SNP calling pipeline.  Also tried to get partitoin finder running (and mostly failing).  But I did get raxml running with the final data set.  I talked to Jason for quite a while about the hawk stuff and also some planning about grants to go for and other funding sources.  Then it was time for lunch which was very tasty.  Since the yankees game was postponed due to covid we didn't do our planned double header and instead put on yesterday's game this evening to listen to.  Sadly it was cloudy all evening so no pictures today.