HinesSight

Happiness in this dry spring is 2.6 inches in our rain gauge

This is what happiness looks like when, as my wife and I do, you live in a groundwater limited area in the south Salem hills and this has been the driest spring ever in our part of Oregon.

I turned off our sprinkler system last week when substantial rain finally was forecasted. Then I dumped out the small amount of water in the rain gauge. 

So we got about 2.6 inches of rain during the recent wet weather period. That's more than I expected, thanks in part to some intense showers that passed over us periodically.

The past three years have been drier than normal, if I recall correctly what the KGW News weather guys have been saying.

That's added to my anxiety about this year's very dry spring.

We rely on our two wells for water (one is used for the sprinkler system; the other supplies house water). So do all of our neighbors, since our neighborhood is rural.

Thus dry weather means something different to us than it does to people who live in a town or city with piped-in water.

I guess rural residents are sort of like the Pacific islanders whose homes are threatened by rising ocean levels. Global warming has more immediate impacts on us than on city dwellers. 

Dry weather leads to worries about running out of water, whereas this is much less likely in a city like Salem -- where there are multiple options for keeping water flowing to its residents. 

I'm not saying that city folks don't care about global warming. Naturally they do. Rural and urban people just experience the current drought conditions in most of the western United States differently.

Which makes it kind of strange that rural residents, who are considerably more conservative than urban residents, tend to downplay the seriousness of global warming, even though they're more likely to suffer from devastating wildfires, dried-up wells, and other manifestations of steadily rising greenhouse gases.

We have a mixture of native and non-native plantings in our yard.

I like the Oregon Grape that was growing under two large fir trees when we moved to our house in 1990. Since, I've planted more Oregon Grape in that area, which doesn't get watered by our sprinklers.

The several inches of rain we got is good news for the plants in our yard. However, hot weather is coming in a couple of days. 

I'm hoping that our wells make it through summer. And that the next water year, which begins October 1, will be considerably wetter than normal. That's needed to make up for the recent dry years.

The Willamette Valley isn't in as bad a drought as California and the southwest are enduring. I'm thankful for that. Having lived in Oregon for 48 years, it just feels strange to be worrying about a lack of rain, since usually Oregonians complain about too much rain.

How to get voice recognition working on LG TV

I'm enjoying our new LG television, which we got about two weeks ago. So far there's only been one glitch, and one annoyance.

The glitch was the voice recognition button on the remote for our OLED55C1PUB model stopping working, after it functioned fine initially. 

I kept getting the error message, "A temporary issue has occurred while attempting to connect to the server. Please try again later. (200)" But after later arrived, the voice recognition button still didn't work. 

A phone call to LG customer support led to a solution, though it took quite a while (three transfers) before I finally was able to talk to someone who deals with LG televisions. Not exactly the greatest support phone system.

After initially being told that it might be necessary to reset the remote, something I didn't want to do because it was difficult to pair the remote with our DirecTV system, I was given an easier procedure.

(1) Unplug the TV.
(2) Press the power button on the lower front center of the TV for 5 seconds.
(3) Plug in the TV.

Gee, I wonder why I couldn't think of that. So obvious... (not!)

That did the trick. Since, voice recognition has worked fine. 

By the way, it helps the customer support person if you have the correct model number for your TV The receipt we got from Video Only made a "1" look a lot like an "I," so I kept saying OLED55CI (as in eye) instead of OLED55C1 (as in one).

Unable to find our model, the support person eventually told me to press the mute button three times, which brings up a screen that has the model number and other useful info about the TV. Again, who knew?

The annoyance is how ads periodically appear on our LG TV. Not ads from a sponsor of a television program. Ads coming from businesses that must pay LG for the right to annoy people who just paid $1,500 for a new TV and now are forced to endure ads.

I poked around in Settings for a while tonight and may have found a way to turn off ads. I'll update this post if that approach worked. If it doesn't, I'll phone LG support and complain about ads appearing on our TV.

Californians are one reason Oregon lumber costs so much

Having moved to Oregon from California 48 years ago, the statute of limitations, non-native variety, seems to have absolved me of criticism for where I came from before living in what obviously is the best state in the nation.

So now when I hear that those damn Californians are to blame for some Oregon problem, I feel totally comfortable chiming in with criticism of those misguided neighbors to our south.

Today Laurel, my wife, and I headed off to Parr Lumber in Salem to check out samples of composite decking from Trex and TimberTech. 

Our large cedar deck needs work, which all wood decks do. As someone knowledgeable about decks recently told me, "Wood decks look great after you stain them. For about six months." 

Having stained our deck every few years since we bought our house in 1990, I agree with that sentiment.

The last time I stained it was in the fall of 2017, and it definitely is looking poorly. That's one reason Laurel and I are looking into the cost of replacing the deck with composite boards and metal/wire railings.

While Laurel was comparing color samples of composite decking material, I talked with a Parr Lumber guy about various subjects, including why the cost of lumber has increased so much. 

I told him that I was clueless about this happening, not having needed to buy any boards or plywood for quite a while, until I started seeing Facebook posts similar to this:

The one I remember showed a stack of plywood and said, "Just found a dozen sheets of plywood in my garage. Willing to trade for a 2020 Ford F-150 pickup."

I thought that was kind of a stupid joke until a friend said that they'd bought a few boards to make some steps for their yard, and it cost them $70.

Anyway, the Parr Lumber guy had a few interesting observations.

He said that California builders are driving to Oregon and bidding up the price of lumber here, then taking their priceless (almost) cargo down south where million dollar homes are in the moderate price range.

A bit of Googling I did couldn't confirm this, but it seems entirely reasonable to me.

The guy added that whereas local mills used to supply most of the lumber sold in Oregon, now it's more difficult to buy from them, since so much of their product is going out of state to people willing to pay a high price.

I said that the Trex web site says composite deck boards cost more than wood boards, but have various advantages over wood. I asked if this was still true, or if wood was more expensive than composite.

He gave me a Parr Lumber Decking Price sheet.

It shows 1 x 6 cedar decking at $4.43 per foot. The top of the line Trex Transcend 1 x 6 composite decking is $4.29 per foot. So it does appear that wood and composite are now roughly equal in cost.

Our new LG TV has artificial intelligence. But I hold the remote.

Jim Ramsey, a long-time friend, deserves a commission from Salem's Video Only store. 

When I told Jim that I'd just bought the newly released Apple TV device that streams Netflix, Amazon Prime, and a whole lot more in 4K, he said, "But now you need a 4K television."

Well, damn. I hadn't thought of that. 

We had a Samsung television that was working fine, though it had started to seem a bit dated. But until we ditched our crappy CenturyLink DSL, the only so-called "broadband" option out here in rural south Salem, for the hugely faster Starlink satellite internet (thank you, Elon Musk!), we didn't have the internet speed to make 4K streaming an option for us.

So with a Memorial Day sale in progress at Video Only, off my wife and I went yesterday to check out what TVs can do in 2021.

I was clutching a printout from Consumer Reports of the top-rated 55 inch televisions that had an LG model rated #2, just one point behind a more expensive Sony model. 

Pleasingly, the guy we talked to at Video Only -- Lucas Weimer, the Sales Manager -- told us he owned that LG television and liked it a lot.

Even better, he said that the Consumer Reports ratings were from 2020 and the 2021 LG televisions are even better. Plus, if we weren't going to mount it on a wall, we could save several hundred dollars by getting the tabletop model.

It didn't take much for Weimer to sell us on the LG OLED55CIP. It was $1,500, three hundred less than the LG list price and the Amazon price. I liked Weimer's casual, competent, low-key approach to making the sale. 

Of course, we basically were sold on this television once we saw the excellent OLED picture and heard its impressive sound. 

It fit nicely into my Subaru Crosstrek. Once the LG was set up at our home, it was time to put it through its paces. At my age (72), I remember well how simple televisions were for most of my TV-watching life. Which, basically, is my entire life.

You turned it on. You turned it off. You changed the channel. You changed the sound. That was about it.

Oh, except when I was young, growing up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, where the only channels came over the air from Fresno or Bakersfield, fuzzily, to change the channel I'd have to climb a ladder and get on our roof to turn the antenna this way and that while my mother yelled through an open window, "looking better, no; go back, that's worse; OK, guess that's the best picture."

So back then my mother served as the human intelligence which led to our black and white TV being (barely) watchable.

Now, our new LG is brimming with artificial intelligence, based on a description of our model on the LG web site and my initial forays into the guide to features that I've been making my way through using the remote control.

For example:

Ooh! Deep-learning algorithms. Now we're talking! 

But I want more than just an artificial intelligence (AI) that automatically adjusts the picture and sound. How about a television that knows me so well, it automatically presents me with what I'll enjoy watching most when I turn it on. 

Such a TV is coming. I just probably won't live to see it. 

Though I've only had a day so far to learn what our new LG television is capable of, it seems clear that increasingly, the line between smart phones, computers, and televisions is blurring. 

Eventually the only difference between them may be the size of the screen. Otherwise, televisions will be as connected to the internet as smart phones and computers, while those devices will have the same entertainment capabilities as televisions.

Regarding the OLED thing, I didn't really know what it was yesterday when we bought the television. I just knew that Consumer Reports had said it was a desirable improvement over LED technology, so I wanted it.

Turns out, from an informative CNET article, that back in late 2019 at least, LG was the only television manufacturer making OLED screens, which stands for Organic Light-Emitting Diodes. 

The LG web site talks trash about those archaic LEDs.

The CNET article says that "infinite contrast" may seem like an overstatement, but actually it isn't.

OLED TV marketing often claims "infinite" contrast ratios, and while that might sound like typical hyperbole, it's one of the extremely rare instances where such claims are actually true. Since OLED can produce a perfect black, emitting no light whatsoever, its contrast ratio (expressed as the brightest white divided by the darkest black) is technically infinite. And contrast ratio is arguably the most important aspect of picture quality.

 

DirecTV wireless setup on Genie DVR overly confusing

It's been a while since I've bashed AT&T's DirecTV.

This doesn't mean that I like the crappy satellite television service any more than I did before, just that nothing additional that I detest about DirecTV has come to mind.

My previous frustrations still hold true. Local channels disappear regularly. The user interface sucks. DirecTV still doesn't carry the PAC-12 Networks. 

Today I was able to add a fresh irritation: how astoundingly difficult it was to get back the internet connection on our Genie HR44 receiver. 

I don't even know why we need an internet connection, since so far as I can tell, we've never used it. But it bugged me to see oft-repeated error messages pop up about the lack of an internet connection.

About three months ago we ditched our horribly slow CenturyLink DSL for much faster Starlink satellite broadband. (I'm a Starlink beta tester.) So that explains why our DirecTV receiver didn't have an internet connection.

I figured it would be simple to click on Menu, then Settings. And it was.

What happened after that was the frustrating part. No matter whether I clicked on a Reconnect option, or on the Internet Setup option, I couldn't find how to select our new Starlink wi-fi. 

Well, I did see it once as I went around and around the confusing menu options, but couldn't locate it again.

DirecTV kept checking for an internet connection, not surprisingly couldn't find one, and then told me to check with my internet provider about the lack of a connection.

I kept thinking, "It shouldn't be anywhere near this damn difficult." After all, I'm knowledgeable about setting up wi-fi networks. I have no problem getting my computer, iPhone, and iPad on Starlink. 

But DirecTV had a deeply unintuitive approach to reconnecting to the internet.

Which fits with the poorly designed menu system our receiver has generally, something I wrote about in "July 2018 DirecTV update changes user interface from bad to horrible."

Eventually I gave up and decided to call DirecTV support. That also turned out to be much more difficult than it should have been.

A support phone number isn't easy to find on the DirecTV web site. Eventually I found a number to call. That turned out to be a general AT&T support number.

I could barely understand the first person who answered my call. Eventually I conveyed that I had a DirecTV internet problem, not a different kind of AT&T problem. That led me to being transferred to someone else who still wasn't a DirecTV support person.

After being transferred a second time, I finally got someone who handled DirecTV internet problems. This time I ended up on a screen that showed an Ethernet connection, which I'd remembered encountering before. 

The person I was talking with said, "Yes, you should be using an Ethernet cable." I told him that we'd never used one before. Then I noticed the option to set up a wireless connection, which I'd been looking for all that time.

After that, it didn't take long to get Starlink set up to be the wi-fi network for DirecTV. As I was doing this, I had to listen to the support person tell me some "great news." 

That turned out to be an offer for AT&T to become the entity that takes care of all our computers, laptops, tablets, and such for an extra $12 or so a month. It took me a nanosecond to say, "No thanks."

The last thing I want is to have anything more to do with AT&T, since they've botched their ownership of DirecTV.

Memo to future self: Why our ten acres captures me

I'm 72. For thirty-one years, since 1990, my wife and I have lived on ten non-easy-care acres in rural south Salem, Oregon.

Well, for the first few years we had five acres.

But when the lot next to us became available, we bought it -- not wanting to run the risk of someone cutting down beautiful large firs and building a house there.

I've been the one in our marriage who has been more eager to move to a house in town as we've gotten older and our property feels increasingly like a pain to maintain.

However... that one word says a lot. Because we're still here. For some good reasons.

Ten days ago I had hernia surgery.

Not being able to do most of my usual exercises and chores for a while, I've been going on an extra one mile nature walk in the early afternoon to supplement my usual two-mile hilly dog walk on a road in the late afternoon. 

Being mildly depressed at the restrictions on what I used to be able to do during the six week surgery recovery period, I was pleasantly surprised at how much better I felt walking on our ten acres.

Nature is a great healer. 

And I feel deeply fortunate to have such beautiful natural surroundings right outside our front door. My post-surgery walking through our property to Spring Lake, a nearby nine-acre community lake, has, at least for now, changed my attitude about wanting to move.

In case staying here at our age, and older (sadly, we won't be getting younger), ever comes to feel like a bad decision to my future self, I took some photos today of how my daily nature walk looks.

Here they are, along with some narration.

My walk starts from our back yard. This old oak, probably well over 200 years old, lost two large limbs in a February ice storm this year. But it's still alive and growing. The oak is a good friend who I'd miss a lot if we ever move.

This path leads to our "other" lot, also known as the Rose lot, because way back when, Mrs. Rose owned it before she sold it to us. 

There's a mix of large firs and medium-sized oaks on the Rose lot. We've left it almost entirely natural, so it has a different feel from the lot our house is on, which gets mowed in places.

In warm sunny weather, like today, these trees feel all friendly. In cold dark winter weather, they can feel quite creepy. I like both sorts of feelings.

Trees have so much character. They all have their own personality. As with the oak in our yard, it's easy for me to feel like they're my friends -- albeit occasionally creepy friends.

The Rose lot trail curves around until it reaches our house lot near Spring Creek. We planted these redwoods maybe five years after we moved here. I look forward to seeing them grow even taller.

Looking up toward our house with some mowed areas. 

The trail heads down a slope toward Spring Creek. Laurel, my wife, has put in stepping stones for when the trail is wet and slippery. 

There's a little creek somewhere under all the ferns and other vegetation. It runs strong in the winter. Now, it's just a trickle, given how record-breaking dry spring has been in northwest Oregon.

We planted redwoods on the other side of the creek also. 

The trail on our property leads to one of the community trails on easements that are on most of the lots here in Spring Lake Estates. This is called the Evergreen trail, for an obvious reason.

Gnarly bent old trees appeal more and more to me as I become increasingly gnarly, bent, and old. This giant fir on our property close to the easement never fails to awe me. 

The variety of greens on the Evergreen trail are spectacular. Deciduous vegetation blends with evergreen vegetation in a multitude of ways.

Approaching the lake, the trail passes between some trees that feel like sentinels to me.

Spring Lake appears after the trail wends its way out of the woods. There's something calming about a calm lake, not surprisingly.

Someone planted irises near the edge of the trail that circles Spring Lake.

The lake looks different every time I walk around it. Also, the same.

A gnarly old damaged oak that's still oak'ing along. Naturally, I love it.

Water lilies, like lotuses, have that rooted in mud with flowers in the sun vibe. One of the more philosophical flowers.

I like to see young people fooling around on the dock, having a good time. Wholesome fun, to complement their unwholesome fun at other times and places.

I grew up in Three Rivers, California, which featured the Kaweah River running through it, fed by cold snow melt from the Sierra Nevadas near Sequoia National Park. So playing around in water was a big part of my youth. It's nice to see young'uns doing the same thing.

Walking around the lake back to the Evergreen Trail reveals a different perspective on Spring Lake. I believe the  bright dot in the boat is an inflatable pink flamingo, but maybe this was just a flashback from my LSD days in college.

There's a large collection of wild rose on our house lot. 

Speaking of our house, as I neared our home Laurel was working on the second row of three wood racks we got to hold a copious amount of oak logs that were split for us by workers who cleaned up tree damage near our house from the ice storm.

We also presciently had a large oak cut down in the dog yard behind Laurel, as it had branches overhanging our roof and side deck. There's a good chance some or all of it would have fallen on our house during the ice storm, so we felt good cutting it down, though it always hurts some to kill a tree.

Anyway, this was my walk today. Which will be my walk tomorrow, and the day after. The older I get, the more I appreciate the nature that surrounds us.

And by us, I don't mean just me and my wife. I mean everybody. We're just fortunate to be surrounded by more of nature than most people have nearby. 

That's a big reason -- really the only reason -- why I won't be surprised if Laurel and I are still living here when we're much older than we are now. I used to wonder why old folks were so reluctant to leave their difficult-to-maintain homes.

The walk I went on today offers up a big reason why.

My robotic hernia surgery goes well. Behold one incision.

At the age of 72, I'm no longer an adult surgery virgin. 

Up until today my only surgery was a tonsillectomy that was so long ago, I had to say "I don't know" when asked about the date of previous surgeries. Probably I was four or five.

All I remember about it was ether being poured on some sort of cloth, then put over my nose and mouth. 

But now I have a blog! (three, in fact) So I can go beyond the usual verbal "let me tell you about my surgery" -- a sure-fire conversation stopper, especially if an old guy is talking to a younger person.

I can write about my surgery. And share a photo of one of my three laparoscopic incisions. 

Not too gross, right? And by viewing it in a blog post, you're saved from me pulling up my shirt and making you look at it in person.

I'm a bit leery of being too enthusiastic about how little pain I feel about seven hours after the operation, since the anesthesiologist told me he puts some painkillers in the anesthetic "cocktail."

But so far I haven't even felt the need to take a Tylenol, much less one of the Hydrocod-Acetamin pills I was prescribed on an "as needed" basis.

The right side of my abdomen is sore -- which isn't surprising, since my large inguinal (groin) hernia was on that side.

My Salem Health surgeon, Dr. Hsinchen Lin, used robots to aid in the laparoscopic procedure. I've read that robot-assisted surgery has some advantages over plain old laparoscopy. Hopefully one of those benefits is less post-surgery pain.

The most stressful part of the surgery was waiting for it to start. 

My wife and I arrived right on time for the 11:30 am check-in at Salem Hospital. And it didn't take long for me to be ushered into the surgery prep room, where I got to put on the charming backless gown, get my vital signs checked, have an IV started, and chat with several friendly nurses.

Since my surgery was scheduled for 1:30 pm, I optimistically thought that I'd be home before too long.

That happy thought lasted until around 1:45 pm, when I was told that due to the previous surgery taking longer than expected, mine wouldn't start for another hour. This was the toughest part, since I already was getting tired of the decidedly non-ergonomic hospital bed I was on.

Way too soft. No back support. My sciatica-prone right leg wasn't having a good time. 

What saved me was a nurse disconnecting the IV tube in my left arm so I could use the restroom conveniently located right next door to the room I was in.

That solved a couple of problems.

I got out of the damn hospital bed and could stretch my legs. And since I have to use an intermittent catheter to pee, my bladder having gone on strike four years ago, I didn't need to worry about going through a semi-lengthy urinating process right after the surgery.

And the nurse told me that surgeons want the bladder as empty as possible prior to surgery, given the  proximity of the bladder to the hernia location.

(The anesthesiologist had pointed out what I already suspected. Just as when you go to sleep, the body's peeing and pooping functions are basically put on hold during anesthesia.)

Anyway, it feels good to have the surgery done with. It'll take six weeks to get back to 80% normalcy, Dr. Lin said.

But I'll be able to lift no more than 10 pounds between now and then, so light exercising will be possible, along with my usual two-mile hilly dog walk in the late afternoon after a few days of shorter walks.

I really appreciated how smoothly the Salem Hospital surgery process went, leaving aside the unavoidable delay in my surgery time. The nurses made me feel well-cared for. My wife and I had a very enjoyable conversation with the first RN who looked after me.

Having a surgery is stressful. Being able to chat about subjects totally unrelated to what I was about to go through helped a lot to keep my mind from obsessing about what was to come. 

Time will tell if I continue to have minimal post-surgery pain.

Regardless, I'm happy that things went as well as they did. Dr. Lin had said that I might need four incisions, given how large my hernia was, so I feel fortunate that I ended up with three, her original prognosis.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention a tip that might benefit others who need hernia surgery. About ten days before my surgery I had a rare bout of constipation, perhaps caused by stress, but maybe not. I'm a vegetarian, so constipation hasn't been a problem for me.

At any rate, I found that MiraLax, a mild stool softener, ended up working best for me. It takes several days to work, so I was glad that I'd started taking it before the surgery. Straining to have a bowel movement is a post-hernia surgery no-no, which is why a stool softener was included in my discharge instructions. (Heavy duty pain medications cause constipation.)

But since they take a while to do their thing -- softening the stool -- to me it makes sense for someone scheduled for a hernia surgery to start taking MiraLax prior to the surgery. It comes in powder form that's dissolved in liquid, so less than the recommended amount can be taken.

Yesterday I was told that if I use the Hydrocodone I was prescribed, I should increase the amount of MiraLax I'd been taking. But since I don't need that pain reliever, I'm sticking with the usual MiraLax dosage.

My office looks more Zen after painting forced it on me

I wish I could say that my many years of daily meditation led to an enlightenment experience that caused me to drastically simplify the office where I hang out in our house.

(By "hang out,"  I mean that this is the one room where I get to decide how it is furnished and decorated. Elsewhere, my wife calls the decor shots, mostly because she is better at this than I am.)

However, what actually happened is that last week we had three rooms painted by Apex Paint and Remodel, who did a great job. 

One of those rooms was my office.

It had wallpaper dating from when we moved in some 30 years ago. For some reason we decided to replace kid-room wallpaper with adult-room wallpaper, rather than having my office painted, which in retrospect would have made more sense.

Anyway, I had to get everything out of my office -- kind of a strange term for a retired guy's room where he doesn't even keep his computer -- before the wallpaper removal and painting could begin.

Believe me, there was a lot of stuff to move. Including a lot of books.

Laurel, my wife, tells me that I love clutter. Actually that isn't true. It's more that I'm comfortable with clutter. I'll blame it on my mother, which is easier than blaming it on myself.

My divorced mother was even more of a bookaholic than I am. (She also was an alcoholic, but that's another story.) Piles of books were all over the house I grew up in.

Me, I just had piles of books in my office. The rest were in bookcases.

I was able to start moving stuff back into the office while the Apex Paint and Remodel guys were finishing up the other two rooms. On Friday I asked one of the crew to take a look at the office.

"Thanks for giving me this opportunity to start fresh," I told him. "I'm taking a Marie Kondo approach, only bringing things back to this room that give me joy, that make me feel happy. If you'd seen what it looked like before, you'd know what a big change has been made here."

Philosophically speaking, which is how I frequently like to talk, this empty room experience points to the benefit of emptying out now-and-then, whether this be a physical or mental turn toward an embrace of a form of nothingness.

When we start with a blankness, it's necessary to decide what it really needs to be filled with, and what is extraneous. With my office, I was able to choose between truly satisfying items and what had crept into the room through an unthinking "might as well put that here."

Here's photos of the result, taken today after pictures had been added back to the walls.

Most of our house has natural wood walls and ceilings. I like the wood, but having off-white paint in my office rather than wallpaper markedly changed the look and feel of the room, brightening it considerably, not surprisingly.

The panther had to stay. I sit in the chair during my morning reading/meditating time. The red fan is part of my collection of Tai Chi fans. I don't know how to use them very well, but I enjoy the resounding "clack" they make when opened and closed with a flick of the body.

The Apex guy I showed my office to also was a long-time martial artist. He admired the Japanese katana swords, so I explained how the one on top in the wooden scabbard was made by a skilled fellow student.

It took me quite a while to rearrange the books, which are my core "meaning of life" collection.

I gave Taoism the top left honor, with Buddhism taking the top right shelf. Lower down is philosophy and a variety of mystical/meditation books, including what remains of my Rumi books, which used to number in the dozens.

Atheism occupies another shelf, with neuroscience on the adjoining shelf.  I humbly (yeah, right) put books I've written on the bottom shelf along with mindfulness books and more neuroscience titles.

To astound my wife, I left the bottom left shelf empty so my balance board could fit in there rather than leaning against the filing cabinet, where it had resided for several years.

I really like the view out of the window, especially when the Japanese Maple has leaves, as it does now. 

I got this photograph at the Salem Art Fair from someone who took it in China. The artist told me that he encountered this man on a mountain that had a Taoist monastery, I think it was, at the top. I love the image of a old Chinese guy pleasantly walking along a decidedly scary path. 

Beautiful reflection of how life should be lived. On the edge; hanging on to necessary support; smiling at the abyss that awaits us all at some point. 

I vacillated on putting my black belt certificate back on a wall. Eventually I decided that since it means a lot to me, and I like the design of it (which generally doesn't include a reflection of me taking a photo of it),  I should put the certificate up.

The style was a mixed form of karate of the Korean variety. My instructor was eclectic, having trained in numerous martial art styles, but his focus was on the Chun Kuk Do Korean-based, American hybrid style founded by Chuck Norris.

It feels good to inhabit an office cleared of clutter. My wife probably is wondering how long this will last. Well, I'm wondering also. I've already fought some temptations to put back some extraneous stuff.

So far I've won that fight. Time will tell if that continues.

Blog blast from the 2005 Statesman Journal past

Tonight Laurel, my wife, found a clipping from the August 12, 2005 Statesman Journal. Wow, there I was in the "Got Blogs?" story by Angela Yeager, looking 16 years younger than I do now.

Naturally my first thought was, I've got to write a blog post about how blogs were looked upon back in 2005. 

Yeager did an excellent job at capturing the excitement of the Dawn of Blogging. Below you can read her entire story, which I was pleased to capture with my halfway decent touch typing skill.

My second thought was, I wonder if Google still looks kindly on my blog post about washing lettuce that Yeager mentioned in the story. Sadly, that post has disappeared from a "wash lettuce" search. At least, I gave up looking for it after going through 10 Google search pages.

But the post lives on in all its 2004 glory. So you can still check out "American Splendor/I learn to wash lettuce." Hey, that post has faded from Internet fame, but I bet it still is the only blog post about washing lettuce to mention comic book artist Robert Crumb.

Regarding the other bloggers mentioned in this piece, www.williambragg.com still exists. Way to go, William! Hopefully college student at the time Stacy Austin is still blogging, but I have no way of knowing for sure.

Here's the Statesman Journal story.

Brian Hines has written and published several books during the past 15 years, but felt his work was disappearing into a black hole.

The Salem resident has found another way to reach a much wider audience with his words -- through his two Internet blogs, HinesSight and Church of the Churchless. 

Blogs, or web logs, started in the early 1990s as an offshoot of Web sites. Most were just personal diaries where bloggers could post their intimate thoughts and feelings.

But as Internet popularity rises, so has the use of blogs to do everything from covering political events to posting favorite recipes. The uses are endless, and the popularity of blogs is skyrocketing.

How many people are blogging is a question of debate. A site such as Technorati, a service that tracks blogging topics and trends, estimates that there are 12 million blogs worldwide, up from 100,000 in 2003.

BlogHerald, another blogging tracking site and news service, estimates there are 60 million bloggers.

Hines, 56, said his blog grew out of his growing frustration with the publishing world. He moved to Salem with his wife, Laurel, and the couple reside in a 10-acre country setting south of Salem with their dog, Serena.

His books, including a 2004 meditation on the Greek philosopher Plotinus, seemed to disappear as soon as they hit the shelves.

"The silence is deafening," Hines said over an ice tea at his home.

"With blogs, you write something that takes maybe a day and then it's gone. It belongs to others then. And unlike a novel, within minutes you have instant feedback. You realize you've touched someone."

Hines estimates he gets about 1,000 page views per day on his HinesSight blog, which is daily reflections from his life on "HinesLand," his nickname for his home.

HinesSight is where readers can go to find Hines writing about everything from the best way to get rid of yellow jackets, to the dog parade in downtown Salem, to arguments with Laurel on the proper methods of washing lettuce.

One of the big draws of blogs over a regular web site is that blogs register much higher on search engines such as Google.

For instance, type in "wash lettuce" on Google, and the second highest hit is Hines' blog on his lettuce washing debate with Laurel.

Hines' other blog, Church of the Churchless, takes on more serious subjects such as spirituality, meditation and faith, and only gets several hundred page views a day.

For a writer such as Hines, blogs are heaven sent.

"The frustration of writing books is you spend so long on one piece of work, and then you have to depend on someone else like a publisher to get it out there," he said.

"With a blog, for free or for $100 a year, you've got the whole world at your fingertips."

Citizen journalism
Frustrated writers aren't the only people who use blogs though. Bloggers were at both the 2004 Republican and Democratic National Conventions last year, writing every detail of the political parade on their blogs. This kind of citizen journalism is rising quickly -- resulting in conservative blogs, liberal blogs, blogs for anarchists, Libertarians, Greens and everyone in between.

A search on Orblogs.com, a site where Oregon-based bloggers can register, turns up hundreds of entries. Amateur film critics post their reviews of movies they've seen, music lovers list favorite songs to download or albums to check out and members of the Pacific Northwest Fiber Bloggers post pictures and tips on their latest knitting projects.

If you have an interest or political view, you are guaranteed to find a blog somewhere by someone who shares your view.

Then there are people such as Salem resident William Bragg. A traveler sho works for Willamette Academy, Bragg, 37, and his wife Jeani Bragg, moved to Salem in 1999 so she could take a job at Willamette University. He started his blog, www.williambragg.com, as a way to stay in contact with his friends all over the world.

"I'm just really bad at staying in touch with people," he said.

"I have friends and family everywhere, so it was just an easy way for people to drop in when they wanted and see what was going on with me."

Bragg said he doesn't get too personal on his blog -- the site is too easily Googled.

He posts funny articles that he thinks his friends might be interested in, and sometimes posts on his own favorite subjects -- youth issues, education and the Boston Red Sox.

His entries on the Red Sox were so easy to find that when the team won the World Series last year, he was called by East Coast newspapers to comment because they needed a fan living in the West.

Sometimes the ease of finding a certain subject can be misleading. Bragg said he commented on his blog one time about a guy participating in Klingon Karaoke who had the name Jigar Mehta. People who were searching online for a Miss Norway contestant from Iran who was disqualified for acting in porn movies ended up on Bragg's site, much to his surprise. A fellow blogger clued Bragg in -- apparently "jigar" is also a term for a sexy Iranian female.

Bragg says he also uses his blog as a way to post his photography, which has started to gain some attention. 

He said he has had exhibits at coffee shops in Salem, but also is getting nice feedback online.

Freedom of expression
While his own blog is not updated daily and is more for fun, Bragg says he has friends who are blogging professionally. Some bloggers are finding advertisers for their blogs, or ask people to donate money to them.

And some are getting co-opted by corporations. Bragg said he has a friend who used to write a daily blog about the bands he loves. That music lover still writes that blog -- but now is getting paid by a record company to talk up bands signed to that particular label.

Bragg thinks the democracy of  blogs will only continue to make them popular.

The accessibility can't be beat. Sites such as Blogger.com are free, while ones such as Typepad cost $5 to $9 per month.

"There's nothing romantic about what I'm doing and what other people are doing," Bragg said. "A lot of it is ego. But I think any new form of communication, especially one that gives access to those who wouldn't have it otherwise, is positive.

Hines said he sees a danger when people are only getting information from blogs that agree with their particular life perspective.

For instance, a self-professed liberal such as Hines can post comments on a conservative blog, but he said his comments are deleted immediately.

Staying connected
College students also have found a home on blogs, where they can post personal information, as well as write about their interests.

Stacy Austin, 21, is a political science major at Oregon State University. She writes a personal blog, as well as one related to her summer internship with PolitiCorps, a division of the progressive organization Oregon Bus Project. Austin said she has been using computers since she was 7 and sees blogs as a natural extension of the Internet.

"In the future, blogs and Web sites will be synonymous," she said.

"People always ask me, 'Why do you blog?' You can't really understand unless you blog yourself. They build a community. People who build blogs feel connected. People who read my blog tend to be female and in college. I've had fathers e-mail me and say I remind them of their daughter, that reading my  blog is like connecting to their kids."

Hines said those kinds of connections is the reason that blogs will continue to proliferate.

"In a way, it's a gamble because you're opening yourself up," he said.

"On the other hand, you see these aspects that everyone has strange ideas and no one is 'normal.' You start to realize that the weirdest thing is to be completely normal. It can be a profound experience to realize you are not alone in this world."

Goodbye, print Statesman Journal and Oregonian. We went digital.

Today was a day that I never thought would arrive -- the day my wife and I decided to stop getting home delivery of the Salem Statesman Journal and Portland Oregonian.

Given our age, early 70s, we grew up reading newspapers printed on dead trees that crinkled when you turned the pages.

Laurel and I both like print newspapers. 

But we also like seeing the Statesman Journal and Oregonian in the paper box at the end of our driveway. And increasingly, that wasn't happening.

Our neighbors reported the same thing was happening to them. So even though I registered a complaint every time this occurred, which was often, the delivery still was erratic.

Plus, for four years I've subscribed to the online editions of the New York Times and Washington Post. 

I find it easy and pleasant to read those newspapers on my computer, iPad, or iPhone.

So it finally dawned on me that I could do the same with the Statesman Journal and Oregonian, though neither has a web site as clean and easy to navigate as the Times and Post.

Thus today I phoned customer service at the Oregon newspapers and changed our subscriptions to digital only. 

That resulted in big savings. The Statesman Journal went from $59 a month to $10. The Oregonian went from $54 to $23. 

Bottom line: instead of paying $113 a month for the two papers, now we're paying $33 -- $80 a month less. 

It felt like a bittersweet moment, talking to the customer service people. I've gotten home delivery of the Statesman Journal for 44 years, ever since moving to Salem from Portland in 1977.

Holding a newspaper in my hand as I eat breakfast has been a part of my life for much longer. As long as I can remember, actually. 

OK, as a kid I probably focused on the comics. Which is still one of the favorite parts of the Oregonian for my wife, in large part because of Pearls Before Swine, a pleasingly acerbic comic strip.

After I switched to digital only, I couldn't find the comic strips on the Oregonian's oregonlive.com site. I also couldn't find the TV sports listings that I frequently refer to in the print paper. 

But after logging into my Oregonian account I found the e-newspaper that looks just like the print newspaper, insofar as a paper on a screen looks like a printed paper.

That solved the problem of comics and TV sports listings. (The Statesman Journal also has an e-edition, but I prefer the Oregonian for everything other than the few Salem stories in our local newspaper.)

So right now I have no regrets about going all-in on digital newspapers. Should mention that I also subscribe to the digital Salem Reporter for about $8 a month.

Thus I'm getting a healthy dose of daily news for not a whole lot of money per month: $15 New York Times, $15 Washington Post, $10 Statesman Journal, $23 Oregonian, $8 Salem Reporter -- $71 a month total.

That's just $12 a month more than I was paying each month for Statesman Journal home delivery. Going digital is a lot more cost-effective, for sure. 

I suspect print newspapers will become extinct before too long. Us baby boomers probably are the last generation to have a longstanding love affair with holding a print newspaper in our increasingly wrinkled hands.

Young people probably can't understand that infatuation, having grown up with smart phones and other electronic devices in the same way us old folks grew up with paper, pencils, and slide rules. 

(Google "slide rule" youngsters, if you have no idea what I'm talking about.)

Been married for 31 years today. But I'm not great at proposing.

In 1990 Laurel and I got married on St. Patrick's Day, March 17. Great decision.

I've never forgotten our anniversary, not even once in the past 31 years, because an image of green beer always makes me think, "Time to get flowers and a card!"

Shock (not). We looked much younger when we were much younger. Our wedding was at the house we'd bought a few months before in Spring Lake Estates, where we're still living.

My only regret about our wedding was how I'd botched my marriage proposal. On the plus side, it was spontaneous, though I'd been thinking about it for some time.

On the negative side, the proposal was so wishy-washy, Laurel paused for a few seconds after I'd stammered out what I had to say, then said, "Um, are you asking to marry me?" 

Naturally I responded with an emphatic "Yes!"

Not to excuse how I screwed up what could have been a much more magical moment for Laurel (she hadn't been married before), but the proposal was an improvement from my first marriage.

That took place when I was 22 and still in college. I don't recall ever proposing to Sue.

Somehow the decision to get married just happened -- unless the psychedelics I'd taken in my college years caused me to blank out on how we ended up getting married in a Palo Alto park by the crazed Greek Christian yoga teacher we'd been taking classes from, with sitar and tabla players from the Ali Akbar Khan School of Music.


Laurel and I got married in a more traditional fashion -- albeit by a Unity minister who we'd only met once before, and who had to keep referring to a piece of paper to make sure she had our correct names.

The cake had a leaning tower of Pisa feel to it. No big deal, though we were a bit nervous about the whole thing falling over before it could be eaten. Which didn't happen.

There's tricks to chainsawing that I don't know

I'm a chainsaw middle schooler, I suppose. Meaning, I've learned quite a bit over the 25 years or so I've occasionally used a small Stihl chainsaw on our property in rural south Salem.

But in no way do I feel totally comfortable with a chainsaw.

A feeling that I was reminded of today when I tackled a challenging tangle of logs that had fallen during the recent ice storm on a common property trail that runs behind our property to Spring Lake.

Yesterday I had the good fortune to stop by Ace Hardware and discover that they finally had some chainsaws in stock after being sold out after the ice storm. I had my eye on a larger Stihl chainsaw with easy start and a quick chain adjuster that doesn't require tools.

So I walked out with an 18 inch MS 251 CB-E. It's in the foreground above, with my old chainsaw behind it. (I'd recently had Ace Hardware replace a broken chain on the old saw, and they flipped the bar as you're supposed to do, which is why the "Stihl" now is upside down.)

Reading the MS 251 instruction manual last night, mainly to learn about how easy start and the quick chain adjuster worked (really simply, pleasingly), I couldn't avoid seeing the many warnings in the manual about all the ways a chainsaw can kill or maim you. 

That led me to order the helmet with ear protection and a visor perched in-between my two chainsaws. Amazon offered next day delivery so I was able to use the helmet this afternoon. I'd always worn leather gloves and eye protection, but having the helmet on made me feel even better.

My wife walks to the lake most mornings. She said it was difficult to make her way through the fallen trees and branches. Though I didn't take a "before" photo, my chainsawing definitely made it a lot easier to walk this part of the path.

The MS 251 Stihl chainsaw worked fine after a few stalls, probably caused by it being brand new. It cut through fairly thick logs with no problem. However, I had some difficulty with the chain getting stuck -- my biggest fear when using a chainsaw (other than being killed or maimed).

This happened two times. It was near the end of a cut of a log that was laying either on the ground, or just barely off the ground, preventing me from making a cut on the underside. 

Here's a similar log that I had cut almost all the way through, then abandoned when I could feel the shifting large log start to bind the chain. Since it was laying on the ground and easy to step across, I didn't want to take the risk of having my new chainsaw get stuck on its maiden cutting voyage.

I'm sure there are You Tube videos that would show me how to deal with this issue. The photo above shows the basic problem. 

The instruction manual illustrated what I already knew from my previous chainsaw experience. When a log is curved, as this one is, you're supposed to make a first cut on what the manual calls the compression side.

Meaning, the side that is going to be compressed when the log is cut through. In this case that's the top of the log with the inward curving shape. Then you make a second bucking cut on the tension side, which would be the bottom of the log.

Problem is, the manual shows a log extending over a slope with the bottom of the log easily reachable.

In this case, I couldn't get the chainsaw under the log, since it is laying on the ground. So I left this log alone, being worried that if I tried to cut all the way through from the top, I'd have a stuck chainsaw.

Likely there's a fairly easy solution to this problem. I just need to find it.

Walking back to our house, I took some photos of downed trees on our property that show how long it is going to take to clean up all of the damage from the ice storm.

These trees on the easement trail await someone with a bigger chainsaw and more expertise. We can walk over and under them. Horse riders will have more of an issue with them.

Some redwoods we planted a long time ago (in background) did fine in the ice storm. Other trees, not so much.

There's a lot of damage along the creek that leads to Spring Lake.

Soon after the ice storm we cleared a tangle of branches that prevented us from walking across the creek. Getting them to a burn pile will take a lot more work.

This sort of sight is repeated all through our ten acres, except right around our house, which is looking pretty much normal with the help of Noberto Flores and his crew.

At least this downed tree is close to the field we use for burning in the spring and fall.

Laurel, my wife, has created some wood art in our yard by arranging cut pieces of large oak branches. The giant mushroom is fake.

We'll have plenty of firewood once the oak is seasoned.

Even after quite a bit of what went through a chipper has been spread around, there's still a big pile left.

The chips make for an attractive path, and don't seem to bother dog paws.

Tree cleanup guys are the new Salem-area heroes

Ah, what a difference it made to my mood having tree debris from the recent ice storm cleaned up from our rural south Salem yard.

We'd done a lot of picking up small branches ourselves. And I'd been able to cut some larger limbs with my small 16-inch chainsaw.

But there was no way I could handle the big limbs from a giant oak that fell on our lawn. That required a bigger chainsaw and younger muscles than I possess.

So for almost three weeks my wife and I have been staring at a mass of tangled branches whenever we looked out of our living and family room windows.

That was disturbing, in part because one of the branches had landed on one of our favorite trees, a large Japanese Maple with purple leaves, leaving only a jagged remnant of the trunk.

Every time I looked in that direction, I'd think of the tree that no longer was there -- how beautiful it was for so many years, and how long it will take for a replacement tree to reach the size it was.

Thus it lifted my spirits today when Noberto Flores and his crew came out with a wood chipper and chain saws to deal with our branch mess. 

We've had Noberto do a lot of work on our property: pruning, dead tree cutting, walkway renovation, putting pavers and a retaining wall in our dog yard, removing brush around our house for wildfire purposes.

But I don't think I've ever been as happy to see Noberto as I was this morning. He did most of the chainsaw work himself, while his guys hauled stuff up to an area near the chipper.

Here's photos of what their hard work produced.

I neglected to take "before" photos. So just envision lots of downed trees and branches and you'll have a sense of what we've been looking at since the ice storm.


Or imagine these piles at the turnaround area of our driveway scattered across the 
"after" photos above.

Noberto even was able to get what's called a widowmaker branch down from one of the two large fir trees that overlook our house. 

I have no desire to make my wife into a widow, given what that would mean for my remaining life span (zero), so every time I walked under that branch I wondered if I'd hear a crack before it fell.

Noberto threw a line over the top of the branch, then was able to pull on it until it hit the ground. Not on my head, or anyone else's head, an excellent outcome.

After he'd cleared our top priority area, Noberto and his crew turned to the many oak trees that surround our house, looking for broken branches.

They found a lot today, so the chipping is going to have to wait for their next visit, maybe tomorrow.

Here's Noberto working in a tree near our well enclosure.

I don't like to stand on the top of a tall ladder, especially when it is against a tree. However, Noberto has been doing this work for many years, so he's confident in what he's doing, while I'm not. 

During his lunch break I thanked Noberto for making our yard look more or less normal again. I told him that even though we have many trees on our natural ten acres, thousands, I'm sure, it hurts to lose a tree that you love.

He agreed, noting that in the city people may have just one or two large trees on their lot. If one of them was lost in the ice storm, that's a big emotional hit -- way bigger than we've endured, given that we're surrounded by trees in all directions.

Seeing a fallen tree laying in your yard for days on end is sort of like having a dead body in your living room. You want to start forgetting about the death, but that's tough to do when the deceased is so visible.

So many thanks to all of the tree crews, both private companies and public workers, who have been working so hard since the ice storm to restore some normalcy to our hard-hit area of the Willamette Valley.

You're deeply appreciated. 

PGE tree clearing crew were artists at what they do

Yesterday a Portland General Electric (PGE) tree clearing crew was working in our neighborhood prior to the restoration of power following a massive ice storm.

We and our neighbors had been without electricity for 11 days at this point. So it was a joy to finally see PGE repair activity occurring.

Laurel, my wife, had noticed a PGE truck in the driveway of our neighbor to the south on Lake Drive in rural south Salem, where a tree was in contact with an electrical line.

She walked over to talk to the crew to make sure that they knew about a similar situation on our property. Some large branches were leaning against the line that leads from a power pole near our house to the house just north of us.

After she showed the crew chief where the problem was, he walked back to his truck and led the other two crew members to the location.

I decided to watch them do their tree clearing thing. The photo below shows part of the tangled maze of branches that had come down in the ice storm. Our neighbor's house is visible on the right.

The fence between our properties was intact, though a gate had been knocked loose. 

The other two members of the crew followed the chief's lead. I was impressed by the light-hearted energy of all three PGE employees. It was late in the day, about 4:30 pm. They'd been working long hours for many days. 

Yet they joked around, kidding each other. It was apparent that they had a lot of respect for the crew chief -- well-deserved, as I'll describe below.

It turned out that the crew chief, whose name I didn't get, had worked for Elwood's Tree Service before PGE. My wife and I have used Elwood's often on our ten acres. The crew chief remembered coming out to our property several times.

I didn't take photos of the initial part of the tree clearing effort.

That started with the crew chief picking up a rope with a loop at the end, swinging it around his head like a cowboy steer roper, and throwing it high up toward the end of a large branch, or tree, that was leaning against the electrical line.

He got the loop over the top of the branch on the first try. Really impressive. Then he threw the rest of the rope over the line. From there he and a crew member were able to pull on the line and get the branch, or tree, to topple safely. This is the crew chief.

That left a couple of other branches that were leaning against the wire. If you look closely the wire is visible about a third of the way from the top of the photo below, angling upward.

It was interesting to listen to the discussion as to how to deal with the branches. One of the crew members pointed to a branch and suggested they do that one first. 

But the crew chief said, no, no. Thinking several moves ahead like a chess master, he pointed out how difficult it would be if they dealt with that branch, then the other one. I didn't follow the conversation all that clearly, since I was standing a ways distant.

What impressed me was how the crew chief was able to size up the various aspects of the branch problem and quickly figure out the best approach. 

The photo below shows him using a long pole saw to remove a "hanger," I think they called it, that was keeping the large branch dangling on the wire.

I then made a video of the final stage of the branch removal. At one point you can see the dangling branch pushing the wire back and forth. My wife was watching from closer to our house.

She could see our power pole swaying, which shows how heavy the branch was. I was worried the electrical line was going to break, but they must be pretty darn strong, since it didn't.

This wasn't an easy job. There was no way to get a truck with a lift anywhere near the electrical line, so all they had to work with was a chainsaw, rope, and the long extension pole. 

Since a PGE guy in a truck had told my wife that power can't be turned on to a house if a branch is touching the line, we were deeply appreciative of the tree crew doing what they did, when they did it -- an hour or so before power came back on in most of our neighborhood.

We had to wait for power until this morning, along with three other homes in Spring Lake Estates.

PGE getting well-deserved ice storm criticism

First off, I want to say that I'm as thankful as anyone for the PGE crews that are working to restore power to the hundreds of thousands of Oregonians who are without electricity after the recent massive ice and snow storm. 

But I'm a believer in the middle way: give credit where credit is due, and assign blame where blame is due. PGE deserves some of each.

(PGE stands for Portland General Electric, not to be confused with PG&E, Pacific Gas & Electric, a Calfornia utility.)

My main gripe with PGE is their decision to stop giving estimates for when power will be restored to an outage area. My wife and I lost power around 8 pm or so last Friday, February 12. 

When I reported the outage via the PGE phone line that night, the automated message said that power could be restored at 6:30 pm on Saturday. On Saturday, the message said 6:30 pm on Sunday. On Sunday, the message said 8:45 am on Monday. On Monday, PGE stopped providing any estimate of when our power would be restored.

That's crazy. You'd think that as more information was learned about outages in Oregon, PGE would have more accurate estimates of when people would have electricity back. But the opposite happened.

That's highly unusual.

Living as we do in rural south Salem for the past 31 years, we've experienced many power outages. Not once has PGE failed to provide an estimate for when power would be restored. Often that estimate was inaccurate, but it sure makes us feel better to know that our neighborhood is on a schedule for repair work.

This screenshot shows what PGE currently is reporting for our address -- four freaking days after our power went out.

Let's decipher this lack of pertinent information, which so far as I can tell is similar to what PGE is reporting for most people in Oregon who lack power.

First, the cause wasn't heavy snow. It was ice. If you think this is a minor quibble, look to the bottom diagram that leads from "Power Out" to "Power Restored."

PGE makes it seem like after a crew was dispatched, the cause was determined. Well, it doesn't take any investigative work to figure out that the ice storm in our part of Marion County caused the power outage. 

The real question is what happened during the ice storm that caused the outage in our area of 503 customers affected. I can only speak about our specific neighborhood of about 95 customers in Spring Lake Estates.

Every day I walk our dog past a downed power line on Lake Drive, our street.

I can see that a big tree near 10161 Lake Drive collapsed the power line when it fell during the storm. The line snapped. Part of the line is on the ground. Some of the line is suspended about six feet over a Lake Drive lane.

I've talked with a PGE employee who answers the downed power line option on their phone system. I've told her what I just said above. I've pointed out that the poles on both sides of the downed line are intact, so seemingly it would be pretty easy to reattach a line between the poles.

Yet so far there's been no sign of any PGE activity in our neighborhood. 

So what's up with that "Crew Dispatched" item in between "Power Out" and "Cause Determined"? It's clear that dispatched means something different in power company lingo than in ordinary English. 

To most people, including me, when someone is dispatched to a problem, like a police officer responding to a 911 call, it means a human being is in motion to handle whatever needs to be dealt with. But here's how Duke Energy defines that term.

Dispatched/Assigned: A repair crew has been assigned to restore service and will proceed to the location as soon as the crew is available. Enroute: The crew is on the way to make repairs. Onsite/Arrived: The crew has arrived at the location where repairs are needed.

PGE must use the same definition, since like I said, there's been zero sign of repair activity at the downed lines even though a crew has been dispatched. So it appears that our neighborhood outage is on a PGE list for some repair work at an undisclosed future date.

When will our power be restored? PGE says in the screenshot, "Not available at this time." Could be tomorrow. Could be next week. Could be a month from now. 

If PGE knows, they sure aren't telling. And that irks a lot of other people besides me. 

The Portland General twitter account has been sharing tweets like this one from this morning.

I enjoy swiping right on my iPhone and reading responses from Oregonians. Some thank PGE for working to restore power. Others are critical. Here's a sampling of those.

Regarding that last tweet from Poonam, this morning I called the PGE outage number and waited on hold for 12 minutes until a live human being came on the line.

He was polite, unrushed, and refreshingly open with me. I appreciated that a lot.

After he listened to my gripe about PGE not having any estimate for when our power would be restored, and talking about how difficult it is for rural residents lacking generators who have wells that don't function without electricity, he said that he agreed with me. 

Here's how I described our conversation in a post this morning on our neighborhood's Facebook page.

I talked with a PGE customer service guy a little while ago. I expressed my frustration at how PGE no longer is giving estimates for when power will be restored to an area. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday there were estimates. Starting Monday, those stopped.

 

He agreed with me that it would be good if PGE could just say something like, "Our best guess is that your power will be restored in a week if everything goes as planned." He said he'd pass my concern on to a supervisor.

 

I mentioned that a PGE spokesman has said it could be "many days" before power is restored to everybody. OK, but what does that mean? FIve days? Two weeks? A month? Two months? it's hard to plan to survive this outage without at least a general sense of how long our electricity will be off.

 

The PGE guy said that major transmission lines are a big problem. Those need to be fixed before power can be restored farther down the line. I came away feeling like I'd been heard, though we still have no idea when Spring Lake Estates will get power back.

 

Lastly, being a progressive, I rarely agree with Republican politicians. But state House Republican Leader Christine Drazan has an excellent idea, according to the Oregonian. The Oregon legislature shouldn't resume until all Oregonians have power.

 

Oregon House Democrats have been discussing with Republicans whether [to] resume operations Wednesday. The caucus and some caucus members have used social media to express their concerns and share information to help Oregonians affected by power outages.

 

Drazan said Tuesday the focus should stay there. “We need to keep our focus on serving constituents and the most vulnerable while we await power to be restored. Our work in the legislature should come back online once the power does.”

 

UPDATE: I've gotten some comments on Facebook about this blog post that spurred me to write this response:

 

I said in my blog post that I respect the crews who are working. It's PGE management I don't respect. If you'd read my post before commenting on it, you would have seen that I made ZERO criticisms of the crews working to restore power.

 

I live in a rural area where everyone has wells that need electricity to work. So many people don't have water. I read their comments on our neighborhood's Facebook page. They're very disturbing. Naturally my wife and I have offered to provide water to people, since we have a generator.

 

It is much more difficult to plan for dealing with this outage when PGE persists in not providing even a rough estimate of when power will be restored. Many people out here have livestock, like horses, llamas, and goats. They need water also.

 

When PGE keeps people in the dark, communication-wise, it hurts peoples' ability to cope with the physical dark every night without electricity. 

Our dog is enjoying no electricity. Me, not so much.

Out here in rural south Salem, Oregon, we've been without electricity for two days after a big ice storm caused trees to topple and electrical lines to crumple.

My wife and I sleep in different bedrooms. We have a wood stove, but the heat from it doesn't reach to where I sleep.

I toughed out the first night without electricity, though naturally my room was much colder than usual, Last night I decided that I'd sleep on a blow-up bed. I put it in the living room, which is close to the wood stove in our open-plan house.

Our Husky mix, Mooka, greeted me in the morning. (She sleeps in an area close to my wife, so Mooka gets up when Laurel does.) It took our dog about three seconds to decide that the best greeting would be to jump on the blow-up bed, with me in it.

Since, Mooka has rarely left the bed. It's her new favorite place. So at least our dog is enjoying what comes with no electricity.  Me, not so much.

Being a modern liberated couple who disdain traditional sex roles, we've been equitably sharing the additional work that comes with non-electrical life after an ice storm.

After we get up, Laurel brings in firewood from outside to keep the wood stove going that day. Then she makes a fire with newspaper, kindling, and small pieces of wood. After that, she tends the fire until it is going nicely and starts to heat the house.

Me, I go out to the carport and turn the start key on our generator. Then I make my breakfast and relax, having done my part to keep our household running smoothly. Like I said, Laurel and I share household chores equitably.

Oh, forgot to mention that last night Laurel found the box in our garage that the blow-up bed was in, brought it inside, plugged in the pump, filled up the bed with air, and made the bed with sheets and two blankets.

I then turned down the bed coverings before I went to sleep. Again, we have a 50-50 marriage.

However, when it comes to outside work, I do 100% of the tasks when it comes to using our Stihl backpack blower and chainsaw -- both of which came in handy the past few days given how many tree limbs came down in our large yard during the ice storm. 

Yesterday I saw that the quart of chainsaw bar oil was almost gone. So this morning I set out on a mission to drive into Salem and get more bar oil, along with filling up two empty five gallon gasoline cans in case we need to use our generator for another few days.

There was a bit of a line at the south Salem Shell gas station I always go to. The attendant said that people had seen on the news last night that a long line had formed at a Woodburn gas station after the ice storm.

He added, "There's plenty of gas, though." I noted that the same thing happened with toilet paper last year when Covid lockdowns led to panic buying, quickly adding that I really did need gasoline for our generator. He agreed.

I neglected to mention that when toilet paper became available again last spring, or maybe it was early summer, I went overboard and bought so much that we're still using it up. The attendant made fun of someone he knows who acquired such a supple of toilet paper, it had to be stored in their garage.

Which is where we keep some of our supply -- another thing I didn't mention.

When I went to Ace Hardware for the bar oil, I immediately noted that the parking lot was unusually full. When I got inside, a line of people waiting to check out extended almost all of the way to the back of the store. 

Soon I found myself at the end of it, clutching a gallon of chainsaw bar oil. 

This wasn't panic buying. It was people getting what they needed to cope with the ice storm. The guy in front of me with the baby carriage had bought a chain saw. I heard him tell a salesman that he needed one long enough to cope with a large tree that had fallen down.

When I got home, I did some additional driveway blowing, branch hauling, and chainsawing of branches. Well, until the chain fell off my saw, which not surprisingly put an end to my chainsawing.

I'm pretty clueless about chainsaw maintenance, so my plan is to take it in to Ace Hardware tomorrow, a Stihl dealer, and hope that even though chainsaw sales have been brisk, chainsaw repair and tuneups won't take all that long.

Regarding tonight, I'm going to do my best to avoid having to sleep on the dog bed while Mooka sleeps on the blow-up bed. A handful of dog treats should do the trick at luring her off my bed -- my go-to dog training device.

Photos of the Great Salem Ice Storm of 2021

l've lived in Oregon for 50 years. I've seen plenty of freezing rain. But I've never experienced anything like the ice storm that struck northwest Oregon yesterday. 

Here's photos that I took this morning as my wife and I surveyed the damage to our property in rural south Salem, which was considerable.

The ice was amazingly thick. Up near Lake Drive this twig had ice the width of my index finger, about 5/8 of an inch. 

The walkway outside our front door was littered with fir branches. Trees and shrubs were bending over from the weight of the ice.

There was a certain beauty to the ice. But the damage it did to our yard was anything but beautiful. 

The saddest sight was seeing several large limbs that had fallen from a white oak that was more than two hundred years old, according to an arborist. It's the centerpiece of our yard. Hard to believe that it had survived so long, only to be decimated yesterday. Hopefully it will survive, though I have my doubts.

The oak branches littered the lawn in front of our deck. We'd heard loud crashes while watching TV last night. (We have a generator, as our power had gone out.) It was too dark to see what had happened. In the morning, we knew.

Some oak branches, along with other tree debris, had fallen near and into our water feature. A bird bath was frozen.

A bird feeder was festooned with icicles.

The brush and trees on the path that leads to Spring Creek were a vision in white. But after I'd seen what the ice had done to the big oak, I looked upon the whiteness as malevolent. Of course, nature doesn't have intentions, so that doesn't make sense. I still felt that way, though.


Imagine how much force it takes to split a thick branch from the trunk of a tree. Ice is powerful.


Last year we had a fairly large oak removed from our dog yard because it was so close to our house -- a fire danger, with branches overhanging the roof. I was glad we did this, since it could have caused considerable damage if the ice had caused it to topple over. 

We were fortunate to not have any large branches strike our roof or deck. Not as fortunate was a beautiful large purple-leaved Japanese Maple that was struck squarely by one of the heavy fallen oak branches. All that is left of it is the dark piece of trunk in the middle of the photo. Sad. It was my wife's favorite tree in our yard.


Many branches from two tall firs at the bottom of our driveway were scattered about. But the firs did much better than other trees with the ice, probably because fir branches bend so easily. Oaks are strong, but rigid. "Be like water," I recall Bruce Lee saying. Good advice for both trees and us humans.


A bunch of branches were strewn around the turnaround part of our driveway. 


Brush near the upper part of our driveway was oozing ice.


Since our driveway is "Y" shaped, I had two choices as to where to park my Subaru Crosstrek near Lake Drive. (Our steep driveway is partly shaded, so I was worried that freezing rain would linger on it, making it difficult to get out after the storm ended.) Not surprisingly, I chose a location with no overhanging branches. Turned out our driveway wasn't icy at all, strangely.

It was great that the two tall firs that tower over our house made it through the ice storm with minor damage. I was sleeping in a room that could be under them if they toppled over, a thought that occasionally went through my mind last night.

Seeing the large oak in our back yard so damaged is a recurring pain. It is entirely possible to have an intimate relationship with a tree. I know, because I've had many conversations with what I've called my Old Friend. 

USA broadband sucks. In rural south Salem, it sucks more.

Having fast internet no longer is a luxury, if it ever was.

A year into the Covid crisis, it's clear that access to genuine broadband -- defined by the FCC as at least 25 megabits per second download (25 Mbps) and three megabits per second (3 Mbps) upload -- is a necessity. 

Distance learning can't happen without it. Working from home can't happen without it. Keeping in touch with friends and family can't happen without it. Streaming entertainment can't happen without it.

OK, I've exaggerated a bit. 

Those things can happen with slower internet. However, I speak from experience when I say that it is much more difficult to do them when you have a 6 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload speed (6/2 in broadband shorthand). 

That's what I've had to deal with for many years out here in the "wilds" of rural south Salem, a whole six miles from the city limit of Oregon's capital.

So I have a lot of sympathy for the 157 million people in the United States, almost half the population, who don't have the 25/3 speed that separates genuine broadband from crappy broadband like our DSL that arrives at our house over a copper phone line that is almost fifty years old.

About two weeks ago I was chosen to be a beta tester for the Starlink satellite internet system. It's a project of Elon Musk's Space X company. Starlink is working well for us, by and large. 

There are occasional interruptions and marked variation in download/upload speeds.

That's to be expected of a system that is still under development. At the moment I'm writing this blog post with a Starlink speed of 34/7. That download speed is lower than it usually is, but at least it is within the bounds of the 25/3 broadband definition.

My wife and I could afford the $499 Starlink purchase cost, plus $99 for a roof mount.

When testing is over and Space X starts charging the expected $99 a month fee, we'll be happy to dump our CenturyLink DSL and pay about forty dollars a month more for much faster broadband (likely at least 150 Mbps down and 10 up).

However, that's too much for many Americans. Broadband, like health care, shouldn't be available only to those with the ability to pay the full cost of it.

Our country needs to set a goal of making broadband available to everybody within a fairly short period of time, like five years. Hopefully the Biden administration will make this part of a program that modernizes our crumbling/inadequate infrastructure, which includes broadband access.

As noted before, I live six miles from the city limits of Oregon's capital. A few years ago the average download speed in Mongolia was 5.25 Mbps. That's close to the 6 Mbps we've "enjoyed" (not!) from our DSL. 

So it isn't an exaggeration to say that in rural south Salem our internet speed is about the same as if we were in Outer Mongolia. 

That would be funny if it didn't reflect a huge problem: the unfair gap between broadband have's and have-not's in our country. This is partly due to the high cost of broadband, but in many or most cases it is a question of availability. 

Like lots of people who live in a rural area, we have exactly zero choice when it comes to an internet provider. I know, because I've checked out every possibility and come up with nothing other than the crappy DSL we suffered with prior to Starlink coming into our life. 

No cable companies out here. No fast cellular internet out here (we don't have a line of sight to a cell tower). No fiber optic out here. 

Again, this isn't literally Outer Mongolia, but it might as well be. We're a few miles from Oregon's second largest city. Yet until Starlink came along we were doomed to "broadband" with a speed less than 1/4 as fast as how the FCC defines that term.

I'll end by describing what life is like at 6Mbps for those who have never experienced internet at that speed.

In short, you do a lot of waiting.
Want to read a news story? You click on the link and wait. Want to upload a video to You Tube? You wait a really long time. Want to watch a movie on Netflix? Often it starts, then you wait while the video buffers (a few minutes later this may happen again). Want to download an operating system update? When Big Sur was available for my MacBook Pro, it took 12 hours to download; it failed to install the first time, so then it took another 12 hours to try again.

I'm 72. I'm retired. I'm not working from home or going to school from home.

So even though I'm a writer with three blogs and hate how much time I've wasted because of our slow DSL, I feel even more sorry for those whose job or education is made much more difficult by the lack of fast broadband. 

This needs to change. President Biden and Congress, do something about it!

 

 

 

Honey-Do is a great Salem handyman service

Today I was impressed again by the quality work that Laine Larson did for us via his Honey-Do Handyman Service. Laine is a neighbor, so during a dog walk this afternoon I took this photo of the back of his trailer so I could share it in this laudatory blog post.

For many years Laine was a State Farm Insurance agent. Now he's into the handyman thing, and doing it very well. My wife and I have used him for several projects that exceeded my decidedly minimal husbandly handyman capability.

Laine is very easy to work with. Honest, straightforward, pleasant, reliable. I'll describe what Laine did for us today, as it reflects why a handyman like Laine is so valuable. 

As I described in a recent blog post, the Space X Starlink satellite internet system  that I was selected to be a Beta tester for is working well for us -- hugely better than the slow CenturyLink DSL that we've had to endure at our rural south Salem home where prior to Starlink there haven't been any viable broadband alternatives (our DSL isn't really broadband, not with a speed of 7 Mbps).

So I phoned Laine and told him that we needed to have the cable secured from the Starlink dish on our roof down to the spot on an outside wall where a hole needed to be drilled into our living room, where the Starlink router was located.

(During our initial test of the Starlink we'd left a sliding door slightly ajar so the cable would fit through it.)

I'd gotten a Cable Routing & Wall Penetration Kit from Starlink, but I'd noticed that the description of the kit started off with, "Designed for customers with prior internet cable routing experience and installation; must be comfortable drilling through walls."

Well, I had zero internet cable routing experience and wasn't comfortable drilling through walls. Which caused me to call Laine.

When he came to our house this afternoon I showed him what the kit contained: a spade bit, drill bit, cable routing tool, silicone sealant, grommets, and wall clips. The screw-in clips were to hold the cable in place along the fifty feet or so between the Starlink dish on our roof and the router in our living room.

Laine took the clips up on the roof, but he ended up not using them. Instead, he had a more elegant solution -- a coax cable staple gun that used an oval-shaped staple. 

This turned out to be the only way the cable could be attached at the top of the slanted roof overhang above our deck, since a cordless drill wouldn't have had enough room to drive in the screw that holds a clip in place. Plus, the clips would have been a lot more visible than the staples,

So not only is Laine a skilled handyman who can do what you want done, he also can come up with better ways to do what you want done. 

When the cable routing kit arrived from Starlink, I looked at the instructions and thought, "Maybe I could handle this." But what I correctly suspected is that complications would arise that I wouldn't know how to handle, and Laine could.

Give him a call if you're in the Salem, Oregon area and need a handyman: 503-931-8822

My first Starlink beta test: fast but loses satellite connection

Yesterday the long-awaited box from Starlink arrived after I'd been notified that I was able to be part of the public beta test for this groundbreaking effort to bring broadband to underserved areas via thousands of low-altitude satellites. I happily paid for the equipment.

Naturally I was eager to open it up. At first glance, I wondered if somehow they'd forgotten to put the equipment inside.

But no, the goodies were under the cleverly fashioned plastic cover: satellite dish, tripod, router,, and cables.

Showing how old I am (72), I looked around for an installation manual. Then I realized that the sum total of the instructions included in the box were on the sheet that caught my eye when I first opened it up.

So I gathered that you set up the dish, plug it in, then fire up the Starlink app I had on my iPhone. Pleasingly, all the cables and power supply were already inserted into the proper places in the pieces of equipment. 

Since I hadn't gotten the roof mount I'd ordered, and it was nighttime anyway, the only viable option I had for testing the Starlink was to set it up on a small table on our upstairs deck. 

It faces north, where the Starlink satellites are located currently, so that was good. Not good were the many nearby oak and fir trees on our property in rural south Salem, Oregon. Thus I wasn't expecting much from this first test, since our roof has a considerably better view of the sky than the deck.

Getting Starlink up and running was very easy. After plugging the equipment in, and giving the router time to set itself up, I was asked to provide a password for the Starlink wi-fi network. Then I watched the Starlink app as the dish tried to connect with the satellites.

It took a few minutes for a connection to be established. That was exciting, since given the rather crappy location of the dish, I was worried that no connection at all would be possible. 

The app asked me to do a speed test. I did several of them.

They ranged between 26 Mbps and 14o Mbps. Here's a screenshot of the fastest result, which thrilled me -- since our horrible CenturyLink DSL is hugely slower. The second speed test screenshot is from this morning when I was using the DSL wi-fi.

Starlink

CenturyLink DSL

Aside from the much faster Starlink download and upload speeds, it's interesting that the Starlink latency (definition here) is so much lower than the DSL latency, even though obviously the Starlink signal has to go into space and back.

I guess having our internet connection start and finish via copper phone lines isn't so great, something I already knew after suffering through many years of DSL.

Unfortunately, the marvelous Starlink connection only lasted a few minutes before, I assume, a satellite signal was obstructed by the trees. Sometimes the connection was restored quickly, but sometimes it took quite a while. This wasn't surprising, given the location of the dish on our deck and the proximity to the afore-mentioned trees.

The Ridgeline Roof Mount I ordered a few days ago should arrive next week. That will allow me to try placing the Starlink dish in various places on our roof, since the mount is secured by the weight of concrete blocks or bricks rather than being fastened in place by screws.

I suspect the reliability of Starlink will be greater once the dish is on the roof. However, I've checked for obstructions via the Starlink app. One oak and three firs appear to be obstructing a totally clear view of the northern sky, so there's a decent chance we still will have connection interruptions.

Starlink support FAQs say that as more satellites are launched, obstructions will be less of an issue. If we still have a problem with losing the connection after the dish is on the roof, my plan is to ask for advice from Starlink support staff.

Should we have the large trees cut down (they're on our property, a benefit of living on ten acres), or is there a decent chance that upcoming satellite launches will cause any dropped connection problems to fade away? 

Regardless, I'm confident that Starlink will become our conduit to genuine high speed broadband. I'm beyond tired of having to deal with CenturyLink DSL. I've enquired as to whether we ever will get fiber optic out here in the "wilderness" five miles from the city limits of Oregon's capital. 

A CenturyLink manager said, no. The day we can ditch CenturyLink can't come soon enough for me.

Our 2020 Christmas letter finds some humor in Covid

This year it wasn't easy for me to write our 2020 Holiday Greetings. Usually it is.

But 2020 was such a depressing year, with 300,000 COVID-19 deaths in the United States, at first I wondered if a Christmas letter from Laurel and me was even appropriate.

Laurel convinced me that it was, after seeing a serious first draft of the letter. She argued that looking on the light side of disturbing situations helps us get through those tough times. 

OK. That was convincing. So I started over. Here's the result in both PDF and JPEG formats.
Download 2020 Christmas Letter PDF

Monkii 360 is my favorite Covid-era home workout device

Here in Oregon health clubs have been closed for most of the pandemic. I'd been working out three days a week at Courthouse Club Fitness, so needed to find an alternative way of getting in my usual dose of aerobic exercise and weight training.

I've bought five devices that seemed promising. Three of them currently are sitting unused. I'll mention them briefly, then share what I like about the #1 and #2 favorite home workout devices.

(I walk two miles a day with our dog up and down some fairly steep hills, so my device focus has been on strength and core exercises.)

Early on I got a Gorilla Bow. I used it for a while, but it didn't appeal to me all that much. The Activ5 is a palm-sized gadget that lets you do isometric exercises via a smartphone app. At first I liked it, but eventually it came to seem too difficult to use correctly. The Nucleus Central Core Pro is a simple water-filled device that I'd still be using if I hadn't discovered...

Monkii 360. (Scroll down that web page to see a video and description of the device.)

As shown in the photo above, Monkii 360 consists of a cleverly-designed ball with hand grips that allow you to grasp it in different ways depending on the exercise you're doing, resistance bands ranging from 20 pounds to 45 pounds that afix to the ball via a carabiner in three possible locations, and optional weights that fit inside the ball to adjust the intensity of a workout.

The other end of a resistance band is easily tethered to a door in your house -- either at the top, side, or bottom. A well-designed smart phone app leads you through a variety of multi-day programs such as Cardio, Core, and Hybrid (mix of Cardio and Core).

I've been using the Monkii 360 every day for about five weeks.

I finished the 36 day Hybrid program a few days ago. It starts off with short easy workouts, then ramps up considerably by the end, where a heavier internal weight and stronger resistance bands made for a pleasingly sweaty 20 to 30 minute workout session. 

The smart phone workouts are a blend of timed exercises, short rest periods, and exercises with a set number of repetitions.

This makes for an enjoyable workout that is challenging, yet not excessively so. I still enjoy my Monkii 360 as much, or more, as when I first got it. Every day I look forward to heading to our utility room, which has the best door for attaching the device, and experiencing another workout on whatever program I'm using.

Bottom line for me: Monkii 360 is a fun way to exercise at home. It's a full body workout, for sure.

I've gotten considerably more fit after using it for the past five weeks, and I was in pretty good shape before. The wide variety of movements you can do with the device makes it a winner. It can be used by people of all ages and fitness levels. 

I feel good that at the age of 72 I was able to get through the entire Hybrid program with no problem. Here's a video that explains Monkii 360 nicely.

Lastly, I can also recommend the OYO Personal Gym. I use it every day after doing some physical therapy and yoga exercises in front of the TV. It's well designed and is a good substitute for lifting weights. I just can't call it fun, like Monkii 360 is. For me, at least. Your opinion may vary, naturally.

DIRECTV back to its irritating channel-losing ways

I'd say that I have a love-hate relationship with DIRECTV, but that wouldn't be honest. My DIRECTV relationship is almost entirely based on hate.

I hate how much our monthly subscription costs. I hate how shows we've recorded mysteriously disappear from our DVR (digital video recorder). I hate that the Pac-12 Networks aren't carried. 

And I hate it when DIRECTV engages in a corporate pissing match with the owner of one of the channels that we've paid to get, yet is at risk of being taken off the DIRECTV lineup for reasons that are never specifically disclosed but which obviously involve corporate greed.

The current channel-losing irritation is the prospect of losing KGW, the Portland NBC affiliate, at 5 pm next Monday, November 30. 

KGW is owned by Tegna. DIRECTV and Tegna can't agree on how much the former should be paid by the latter for being able to offer the local station to subscribers.

I couldn't care less who is at fault here. Both corporations are money-grubbing assholes who don't care about ordinary people, just how much money they're making. 

DIRECTV says Tegna is doing them wrong. Tegna says DIRECTV is doing them wrong, 

My attitude is that both DIRECV and Tegna are wrong to threaten the removal of programming that us DIRECTV subscribers have paid for, yet won't be getting if KGW is taken off our channel lineup on Monday.

DIRECTV is losing customers at a rapid rate. So the non-geniuses at AT&T, which owns DIRECTV, are figuring that taking away channels from their diminishing number of subscribers is the way to increase profitability? 

Not going to happen. 

Sure, currently my wife and I are stuck with DIRECTV (or Dish, which is just as bad as DIRECTV) because we live in a rural area where cable TV doesn't exist and cell service is slow, leaving us with no TV alternatives other than satellite.

But I'm looking forward to the rollout of Elon Musk's Starlink satellite broadband service, which promises to give people like us a hugely faster Internet speed than the crappy 6-7 Mbps we get from CenturyLink now. 

This will open up streaming possibilities that are closed to us at the moment. So the more DIRECTV offers up horrible customer service, the more likely it is people like us will bail on DIRECTV when we have the chance.

Which hopefully will be soon. 

If you can't be with the life you love, love the life you're with

It's Thanksgiving today. I feel like I should put a one-day hold on my usual inclination to write something snarky, critical, or in my better moments, only mildly negative.

So here goes with my modification to a song lyric that popped into my head when I woke up this morning and realized what day it was.

And if you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with.

Stephen Stills performed the song, "Love the One You're With," in 1970. I turned 22 that year. Now I'm 72. The general sentiment still rings true to me, albeit with this modification.

This is firmly in a Thanksgiving theme, yet without the excessive sentimentality of the usual I'm so thankful for _____ that suffuses American households today.

Sure, it's wonderful to be thankful. However, life is difficult. And I hate to break this news to you younger folks, but life gets more difficult as we grow older. 

Not in all ways. In some ways.

Notably, when it comes to health and the pain that often accompanies our problems. Some pain is physical. Some is psychological, such as regret that one's life hasn't turned out as expected way back when.

So it's asking a lot to be thankful for things in your life that aren't welcome. I suppose my love the life you're with sounds similar, but I see some differences between thankfulness and love. Love of life is more inclusive than thankfulness for this and that. 

If our back is hurting so much we can't get out of bed, that isn't an aspect of life we want to have hang around. However, it's possible to view that pain as part of a larger life that we love. Which is sort of how we view our children when they're young.

They can be a pain to deal with, but we still love them for who they are, flaws included.

Acceptance of what is actually present in our life is a big step toward loving our life. Denial, which includes "this shouldn't be happening to me," isn't helpful, though it is temping to indulge in, since we would rather be with the life we love than the life we're with if the latter is lacking some things we value.

Via the Waking Up app on my iPhone, I've been listening to a series of short talks by William B. Irvine called The Stoic Path. One that resonated with me is called You Are Living The Dream Life.

How could this be, given all that is wrong with our lives? Well, Irvine says that out there in the world there are people who dream of living the sort of life that you or I have. Their lives don't contain what we have, being worse in those respects. Thus to them our life is a dream life.

Yes, our back hurts. But we can walk. And it doesn't hurt that bad all the time, just sometimes. There are people who can't walk at all and dream of being able to do this, even if it was painful. 

Closer to home, Irvine also says that later on in our own life, we may look upon the life we have now as a dream life. Meaning, our life might head downhill in some ways that we take for granted at the moment -- another reason to love the life we're with, since it may be the high point of the rest of our life.

Anyway, these are my Thanksgiving thoughts.

Our dog, Mooka, is lying under the small table I'm typing on, making it difficult to get my legs in a comfortable position. But I love Mooka. I'd rather deal with not being able to straighten out my legs than not have Mooka in my life. 

(Getting Mooka to move would be another option. Except, I like it when she lays under the computer table, though her motivation probably is to stay close to the person who takes her on a late afternoon walk, after which she gets dog dinner.)

My wife thinks I'm crazy. This is normal, right?

I have direct experience of being married to only two women, Susan and Laurel. In between Susan and Laurel I got divorced, to set aside any conjecture about polygamy. 

So I'm having to extrapolate from this small sample size to the much larger universe of wives.

Both Susan and Laurel thought I was crazy. Not clinically, but in the sense that sometimes, and maybe often, the way I looked upon the world baffled them. My strong suspicion is that this is normal.

Meaning, almost all wives look upon their husbands as crazy. I hope so, because otherwise I'm a husbandly aberration.

This came to mind today as I was going off to fight in the Leaf War. Since 1990 we've lived on a non-easycare property in rural south Salem. Our house is surrounded by large oak and fir trees.

The firs drop needles all year round to some extent. The oaks drop their leaves in the fall, of course. This being late November, I've been battling the leaves for some time.

But here's the thing: I enjoy the fight. Heck, sometimes I can even muster up admiration for the opposing force, as I wrote about ten years ago in "The Tao of leaf ranking." 

Last weekend I slipped into my old habit briefly when I interrupted my work for lunch, then said to Laurel, "Well, I'm back to the leaf wars." That was the old me speaking. The new me manages to mostly look upon the leaves as friends who simply need some nudging to get them into their proper places, since they aren't able to move purposefully on their own.

I actually look foward to dealing with the leaves.

Now that I have a system, albeit a constantly evolving one in accord with the ever-changing Tao, the three hours or so it takes me to do a complete run-through of our yard (which needs to be repeated several times in November) is a largely pleasurable opportunity to follow the Zen'ish adage "chop wood, carry water, rake leaves."

Which should have been called The Tao of leaf blowing and raking, because my weapon of choice always has been a blower -- raking alone, given our yard, being way more than the proverbial "bringing a knife to a gun fight." It'd be like bringing a toothpick to a gun fight.

Now that I'm 72, Laurel has been saying more often, Are you sure you don't want to hire someone to deal with the leaves? I always reply, No way, as long as I can physically do this, I want to keep on doing it.

Well, actually I'm going to still want to handle the vast amount of leaves in our yard even if I'm physically incapable of doing the job.

This is something wives find difficult to understand about their husbands -- again, I'm assuming that my experience is typical of many or most male-female marriages.

By and large, Laurel is eager to turn over a household chore, like carpet cleaning, to someone else who is wiling to do it for money.

I'm fine with this also up to a point. It just seems that my attachment to certain manly chores, such as spending several hours dealing with fallen leaves in our large yard, is greater than Laurel's attachment to certain womanly chores.

That seems to be the root of the question about how crazy I am. I am really reluctant to have someone come to our house and do something that I'm fully capable of handling, even if that thing takes a lot of time or is somewhat dangerous. 

Like, cleaning our gutters by walking along the edge of our roof with my Stihl backpack blower. 

In both cases, gutter cleaning and leaf removal, I explain to Laurel that it is simpler to do it myself, in part because the jobs are much easier when leaves and other debris is dry.

And it's hard to predict when dry days are going to occur in the fall, since this is Oregon. So I can leap into action on a dry day, while we'd need to schedule somebody else well in advance, most likely, so it could be raining when they come to do the job.

But that's not the whole story. If it was, I wouldn't seem so crazy, because that reason is rational. 

The truth is, I'm irrationally attached to certain chores that I've been doing since Laurel and I got married thirty years ago. I don't want to sit in the house and watch someone else do those things. To paraphrase Charlton Heston, they're going to have to pry my Stihl backpack blower out of my cold dead hands. 

Which admittedly could literally happen if I keep on blowing out the gutters past the time I'm able to balance on the edge of our roof.

Anyway, it doesn't bother me when my wife thinks I'm crazy. I think the same about her at times.

Men and women are different. Heck, all people are different. It's amazing that we understand each other as well as we do, given that the only mind we ever know directly is our own -- and that only partially.

Starlink app shows how good my view of the northern sky is

I live in a rural area near Salem with crappy CenturyLink DSL the only broadband option -- if you can call about 7 mbps download and 1 mbps upload "broadband."

CenturyLink has told me that they are going to bring fiber optic broadband to our neighborhood exactly never. 

And fast 5G wireless likely will be available in our area in the wilds of Oregon (six miles from the Salem city limits, the state capital, but it might as well be six hundred miles) at about the same time -- almost never.

So Elon Musk's Starlink satellite network is my best bet to avoid internet depression. I follow Starlink news on Twitter and was thrilled to see an Ars Technica story today, "Space X Starlink public beta begins: It's $99 a month plus $500 up front." 

SpaceX has begun sending email invitations to Starlink's public beta and will charge beta users $99 per month plus a one-time fee of $499 for the user terminal, mounting tripod, and router. The emails are being sent to people who previously registered interest in the service on the Starlink website. One person in Washington state who got the email posted it on Reddit. Another person who lives in Wisconsin got the Starlink public-beta invitation and passed the details along to Ars via email.

SpaceX is calling it the "Better Than Nothing" beta, perhaps partly because the Starlink satellite service will be most useful to people who cannot get cable or fiber broadband. But the email also says, "As you can tell from the title, we are trying to lower your initial expectations."

Well, those lower expectations sound pretty damn good to me: 50 to 150 Mbps, so vastly faster than my 7 Mbps. Back in June I signed up for updates on the Starlink web site. I'd like to be a public beta tester, though the chance of this is slim. 

As a consolation prize, the Ars Technica story mentioned Apple and Android Starlink apps. I eagerly downloaded the version for my iPhone. The main thing it does for me currently (actually, the only thing it does) is show how obstructed the view is of the northern sky. 

This afternoon I climbed up on our roof and sat down in various places on the ridgeline. A ridgeline placement looks to be the easiest to install, according to two PDF files I found via some Googling.
Download Ridgeline_Mount_Guide.pdf | DocDroid
Download Volcano_Mount_Guide.pdf | DocDroid

Here's how an unobstructed view of the northern sky looks on the Starlink app. I took this screenshot from Lake Drive, the road our house in on.

Unfortunately, there were trees inside the bottom part of the circle from every point on our roof's ridgeline that I tested for an unobstructed view of the northern sky. That's the bad news.

The good news is that since we live on ten acres, we own all of the obscuring trees. Three tall firs and two large oaks. I forgot to take a screenshot from our roof, but here's photos of the trees from an elevation that is fairly close to the height of the ridgeline.

The three firs in the middle and middle right of the photo are quite a ways from our house. The two oak trees partially obscuring the rightmost fir tree are much closer. Below is a photo of the trees that focuses on them.

Hopefully we won't have to cut down the trees. Mostly our view of the northern sky through the Starlink app is clear. So when it's possible to order Starlink, my plan is to set up the dish on our roof, hook it up to the router, and see what happens. 

If we can't connect to the Starlink satellites, or have a poor connection, then I'll call Elwood's Tree Service and have them take down the two oaks. Since they're close to our house, it makes sense to remove them to reduce the wildfire risk. If there's still a poor connection, I lean toward removing the fir trees one at a time.

My wife and I are tree lovers. However, large trees fall down frequently on our ten natural acres from wind, snow/ice, or old age. We're fortunate to have many large firs, oaks, and other types of trees on our property. Even so, cutting some or all of these five trees down isn't my first choice. 

It just is extremely frustrating to have such a slow Internet connection. Some days our DSL slows markedly, making it difficult to do anything on the Internet. Streaming movies on Netflix or other services is problematic. Usually we can do this, but not always. 

Maybe as Space X puts more Starlink satellites into orbit, the need for a totally unobstructed view of the northern sky will lessen. We are a bit south of the 45th parallel, so within the 44 to 52 degrees north latitude that will reportedly be the first rollout of the Starlink system. 

I can hardly wait.

My geeky search for the perfect winter tire

OK, "perfect" isn't a word that goes with "tire," so probably I shouldn't have used it in the title of this blog post. But my quest today was to find the nearest thing to perfect in a winter tire.

I enjoy browsing the internet for tire information almost as much as I enjoy browsing for car information. It took me months of perusing automobile web sites and watching You Tube videos of car reviews before I settled on getting a 2020 Subaru Crosstrek Limited to replace my VW GTI. 

Since the VW's winter tires won't fit on the Crosstrek I've got an ad running on Craigslist for the almost-good-as-new Michelin Pilot Alpin winter tires that were on the GTI. Question is, what winter tire should I get for the Crosstrek?

Well, the question before that one was, "Should I get winter tires?"

Since I hate to put on tire chains and we live in rural south Salem on a road that is never plowed when it is snowy or icy, plus our driveway is long and steep, for many years I've said yes to using winter tires from November to March.

True, it hasn't snowed in the Salem area the past two years, maybe three.

But we've gotten heavy snow and ice before that. And I figure that with climate change affecting the weather more and more, the chance of a polar vortex or whatever causing a big snow/ice event in our part of Oregon is a matter of when, not if.

So yesterday I brought home four 18-inch wheels from Capitol Subaru that the parts department had ordered for me. Since I like the look of the wheels that came with the Crosstrek, I figured it was worth some extra money to have winter tires mounted on the same wheels. 

Now, maybe I should have watched this video early this afternoon, rather than hours later, after I had spent a lot of time researching the best winter tire for my car -- since I probably was overthinking which winter tire to buy. This Auto Trader Canada guy correctly says that you've gotten 90% of the way there by simply deciding to get winter tires.

They're that much better than all-season tires in snow and ice. Plus cold, another benefit of winter tires even if it never snows, since winter tires stay soft in cold temperatures while regular tires get stiff, which reduces their effectiveness.

At any rate, I did my overthinking before I saw the video. And it turns out that all that pondering could pay off, since eventually I came across the fact that Michelin has recently released a successor to the X-Ice Xi3 which has the much better name of X-Ice Snow. 

However, I found that since this is a new tire, it isn't available in all sizes, including 225/55/18, the size of the Crosstrek tires that came with my car.

I was disappointed, since early reviews and You Tube videos of the X-Ice Snow rollout test put on by Michelin this year showed that it has some benefits over the previous X-Ice designs. 

For example, the Snow has siping (tiny slits) all the way to nearly the bottom of the tire depth. And the special compound the tire is made of is 100% of the tire, whereas other brands of winter tires basically turn into all-season tires after the tire is worn down by 50% or so, since the more pliable compound is only in the outer part of the tire.

So my first idea was to email and text Michelin, asking if the Snow will be available in 225/55/18 soon. An even better idea came to mind after that -- go down to a 17 inch tire, preserving the attributes of the 18 inch tire.

TireRack.com suggests doing this for winter tires, since a narrower tire cuts through deep snow better than a wider tire. Tire Rack can calculate a "minus size" tire for your vehicle. Mine turned out to be 225/60/17. Which, pleasingly, is available for the Michelin X-Ice Snow.

I then found a web site which compares the characteristics of two tires, in my case 225/55/18 and 225/60/17. Tires in these two sizes are very similar in the important variable of speedometer accuracy. It turns out that at 60 mph the 17 inch tire would produce a speed of 59.8 mph. Really close.

Tomorrow I'm going to check with a Capitol Subaru service advisor to make sure it's OK to put 17-inch wheels on my Crosstrek Limited. Since other Crosstrek trims come with 17-inch wheels (Limited is the only trim with 18-inch wheels), I'm anticipating this will be fine. And won't void the warranty in any way.

If I get the go-ahead to use 17-inch wheels, I'll return the 18-inch wheels to Capitol Subaru and get four 17-inch wheels. I don't like the look of the 17-inch wheels as much, but they will be more attractive than the steel wheels I've used before with winter tires.

Also, more expensive, but I figure that it is worth it to have wheels I enjoy looking at during the cold months, rather than looking forward to getting them off in the spring.

How I won my PayPal dispute against Peppermint Berri

Peppermint Berri is a disgusting company. Their 38 Trust Pilot reviews are all one star, the lowest possible, though somehow they end up with a 1.4 rating.

I made a big mistake when I ordered a weed remover tool from them on May 14, 2020, having seen a Facebook ad for the device. I then filed a complaint with PayPal on July 22, where I said this.

After ordering a weed remover on May 14 and not receiving it, I emailed Peppermint Berri three times on June 5, June 30, and July 20 asking why my order hadn't been received. Each time I was told there was a problem with the "courier" or shipping service. I was given a tracking number, but the information never changed.

I just checked reviews for Peppermint Berri and found that 36 people have given this Singapore company horrible reviews, with most saying they never got a product, or the product was defective, or they couldn't get a refund. It seems clear that Peppermint Berri is scamming people and shouldn't be allowed to have a PayPal account.

I've repeatedly asked for a refund and keep being told that the weed remover is on its way, but there never is any change in the tracking information -- which supposedly originates in Los Angeles. I live in Oregon. It shouldn't take months to get a product from California to Oregon. I want my money back, and I want Peppermint Berri to be preventing from scamming other people.

This seemed to me like an open and shut case. I expected that PayPal would tell Peppermint Berri to give me a refund. But I learned that PayPal makes it difficult for people like me who get crappy service from a sleazy company. 

PayPal wanted me to go through a dispute resolution process even though the scammers at Peppermint Berri (an online store based in Singapore) clearly had no intention of resolving my problem -- just stringing it out for as long as possible. 

I got some satisfaction out of a writing a scathing blog post on July 22, "Read these bad Peppermint Berri reviews before buying from them." But what I really wanted was PayPal to stop doing business with Peppermint Berri, or at least to give me my money back.

Which finally happened on October 6, almost five months after I ordered the weed remover. Peppermint Berri sent me the weed remover at some point, September, I recall, which I promptly returned, since I'd asked repeatedly for a refund after learning what a scam this company is. 

The secret of my success was not giving up. I had to contact PayPal via chat after the weed remover came and I returned it, because there was no way to submit additional information via the PayPal Resolution Center. 

A PayPal employee said I could send a PDF file with the additional information about the return to them, and they'd add it to my case.

It was frustrating to have to go through so much work to get PayPal to do what should have been done quickly -- tell Peppermint Berri, or Resilient Media (the parent company, apparently) that I should get my damn $88.94 back.

I learned a couple of things from this mess.

One, PayPal is an easy way to pay, but it isn't really a safer way to pay. I got screwed by Peppermint Berri and PayPal didn't make it easy for me to get my money back. They seem to favor sellers over buyers, probably because sellers are how PayPal makes most of its money. 

Two, don't blindly trust Facebook ads for products. Yes, I've learned about some great products via Facebook ads. However, I should have looked for Peppermint Berri reviews before ordering from them. Buyer beware is familiar advice, yet also great advice.

Getting a high dose senior flu vaccine isn't easy in 2020

Being 72 and a believer in vaccines (everybody should be, since they work), every October I've been heading off to Walgreens on south Liberty to get my annual high dose flu shot. 

(Since us old folks have weaker immune systems, a high dose flu shot offers more protection, though a regular flu shot is better than nothing, for sure.)

That's what I did last Tuesday, only to be met with a sign on the pharmacy window saying that they didn't have any high dose vaccine. Which was the same sign I saw last week.

So I decided to check with the south Commercial Walgreens. There I was told that they had high dose vaccine, but no needles/syringes. Maybe the needles would be available next week, I was told. 

Next stop was the Fred Meyer pharmacy on Commercial. The word there was they'd run out of high dose flu vaccine that day. More might come in next week.

When I got home, I did two things. I phoned my Salem Health family physician's office. They told me that they didn't have any high dose vaccine, but would put me on a waiting list. (The next day I got a call telling me I could make an appointment for October 23 to get the shot.)

I also made an online appointment for 2:45 pm today with the Costco pharmacy.

Last year, I think it was, Costco had bailed us out when my wife and I had gotten the first Shingrix shingles shot, but couldn't find any place with the second shot. Even though we hadn't gotten the first shot at the Costco pharmacy, they told us that they reserved some vaccine for people like us who'd had the first shot.

Talking with the pharmacist at Costco who gave me the high dose shot, he said they had run out several times recently, and were going to run out again today. But when someone has an appointment, they put aside the vaccine. Which was good news for my wife, since she had an appointment for 4 pm today.

Something is different this year, since I haven't had a problem getting a high dose shot since I turned 65 seven years ago.

The covid crisis must be the main reason there's more demand than usual for the high dose vaccine. Also, the Costco pharmacist said the demand for flu shots started early this year, since the wildfire smoke we were inhaling led to recommendations to get a flu shot, apparently because lungs already were being impaired somewhat by the smoke.

My theory, which I shared with the pharmacist, is that with all the debate about whether Covid is more deadly than the flu (it is, despite what Trump claims), maybe seniors are seeing the figures about how many people die from the flu each year -- 12,000 to 61,000 since 2010 -- and more fully realize now how important it is to get a flu shot.

Google News has numerous stories about shortages around the country of the high dose flu vaccine, so this is a real thing. See here, here, and here. Fortunately, any shortages likely will be temporary. 

But since it is impossible to know when the flu season will start in earnest, the wise thing to do is get a flu shot as soon as possible, especially if you're in a high risk group, such as being over 65.

Evacuation checklist a good way to relieve wildfire anxiety

Right now Oregon is suffering though a wildfire perfect storm of longstanding drought, high winds, and many fires burning across our state. 

My wife and I lost electricity in the early evening yesterday, along with about thirty of our neighbors. Apparently the windy conditions caused a utility pole to catch fire, with electrical lines lying in the road. 

I fired up our generator, so we had a fairly normal night -- aside from the fact that because of the smoke from wildfires in the area we didn't want to open any windows, and our air conditioning wasn't working because of the electrical outage.

Thankfully, the power came on when we were waking up.

But as shown in the photo above, at nine a.m. it was still very dark outside our house. The gusty winds had spread the Beachie Creek fire rapidly in the Santiam Canyon to the east of Salem. With the winds coming out of the east, our area was hit with dense unhealthy smoke that obscured the rising sun.

Since we've lived on ten mostly natural acres in rural south Salem for the past thirty years, wildfire is on our minds every summer. We have cleared vegetation for quite a ways around our house, but there still are plenty of trees surrounding our home. 

So even though it is quite unlikely that the Beachie Creek fire could reach our neighborhood, the high winds yesterday and today were a reminder that a wildfire could be sparked locally at any moment and spread like, well, wildfire. My anxiety was pretty high up until noon, when I decided to do something that had been on my mind for a long time.

Prepare an evacuation checklist. And even better, to actually do some of the things on the list.

We have emergency bags in our cars filled with things we'd need if stranded somewhere. However, that wasn't my concern as I envisaged how I'd feel if we got a notification that a fast-moving wildfire was close by and we only had a short time to evacuate our home.

I like to think that I'd be calm, cool, and collected. But almost certainly I'd be frantic, heated, and scattered. What do we take in our cars?! What do we leave behind?! 

I had imagined the answers to these questions. Yet I also had imagined how easy it would be to forget something important in the course of running around, getting ready to evacuate, knowing that our house might be a smoldering ash heap the next time we saw it.

So I Googled "evacuation checklist."

Just doing that made me feel better. Preparing for something that hopefully wouldn't ever happen provided an outlet for the nervous anxious energy that came with the electricity outage, red sky, smoky air, and high wind. I started by printing out this Fire Evacuation Check List.

It was a way to get me going. Later today I found a couple of other checklists that I like, here and here. 

I've got more to do, as does my wife. But it didn't take me long to mostly fill up a couple of suitcases with clothes, treasured personal/family items, health needs, and such. I also jotted down reminders about what else I need to put into a ready-to-go backpack that is sitting in my office -- my laptop, charging cables, iPhone charger, other things.

Naturally we'd never forget our dog or dog food. But we might forget essentials like the chew sticks that she enjoys for a doggie dessert after she has her dinner. So those now are part of a dog go-bag.

It pains me to see images of the homes and businesses that have been destroyed in the Santiam Canyon. When it is safe for people to return there, I'm sure the devastation will be even more horrific. But as people often say when they learn their house has been lost, "We can rebuild. And we're thankful we're safe."

Exactly. If Laurel and I ever have to flee our home in the face of a wildfire, that will be hugely stressful. After preparing some for that eventuality today, I'm feeling a bit more confident that we could do this without losing our minds -- too much. 

What I like and don't like about my 2020 Subaru Crosstrek Limited

When I meet someone who has just moved here from California, I give them advice on how to disguise where they came from. Which includes, ditch the California license plates ASAP. Then put them on a Subaru.

I've lived in Oregon for 47 years. Seems like I should have a Subaru.

Six months ago I bought another Subaru after owning a Legacy way back when. Here's my Adobe Spark web page review of what I like about my 2020 Crosstrek Limited (lots of things) and what I don't like (a few things). Click below to be led to the web page.

Read these bad Peppermint Berri reviews before buying from them

I have nothing good to say about Peppermint Berri, an online store based in Singapore. Below I've copied in 35 reviews from Trustpilot, one of which is mine, which are equally critical of this company. It sure seems like they are scammers.

On May 14 I ordered a standup weed removal tool from Peppermint Berri that I'd seen advertised on Facebook. At $89.98 it seemed unduly expensive, but I figured that if it didn't work I could return it.

What I didn't know is that nine weeks later, not only haven't I gotten the weed remover, there's no sign it ever has been shipped to me. And so far my request for a refund has been ignored. 

Fortunately, I paid via PayPal. Today I filed a complaint with PayPal. Peppermint Beri has 20 days to reach an agreement with me before the dispute gets elevated at PayPal. The only agreement I'm interested in is a full refund of my money. This is what I said in my PayPal complaint. 

After ordering a weed remover on May 14 and not receiving it, I emailed Peppermint Berri three times on June 5, June 30, and July 20 asking why my order hadn't been received. Each time I was told there was a problem with the "courier" or shipping service. I was given a tracking number, but the information never changed.

I just checked reviews for Peppermint Berri and found that 35 people have given this Singapore company horrible reviews, with most saying they never got a product, or the product was defective, or they couldn't get a refund.

It seems clear that Peppermint Berri is scamming people and shouldn't be allowed to have a PayPal account. I've repeatedly asked for a refund and keep being told that the weed remover is on its way, but there never is any change in the tracking information -- which supposedly originates in Los Angeles. I live in Oregon. It shouldn't take months to get a product from California to Oregon. I want my money back, and I want Peppermint Berri to be prevented from scamming other people.

I'd like them to stop doing business in the United States, but given their Singapore location, likely this won't be possible to achieve. So I'm warning people not to shop with them. Unless you like crappy products, dismal customer service, and not getting a refund.

This is the Trustpilot review I submitted today. When I wrote it I hadn't checked my VISA statement, so had forgotten that my credit charge had been paid via PayPal.

Company is running a scam

Nine weeks ago I ordered a weeder. Since, I've only gotten lame excuses about why it hasn't come. I get a tracking number that shows the order was in Los Angeles and is about to be shipped, and "Francis" assures me they are having problems with their delivery service and the tracking will be live soon. Not true. Worse, I can't get a refund on my credit card. I'll be contacting VISA and the Better Business Bureau, plus filing a complaint with Facebook.

Here's the other 34 reviews from unhappy Peppermint Berri customers. After the reviews I'll share a screenshot of the annoying repetitive email I've been getting from "Francis" at Peppermint Berri, along with a screenshot of the non-existent tracking information.

Poor delivery

I have not received my order. It’s been 12 weeks and I’ve received a response fro Peppermint Berri that the order has been on the way. But never received. And they refuse to cancel my order. I do not recommend to order from this company,

Terrible customer service

Terrible customer service. They sent 10% of our order (5 of 50 PC's) then offered us a 30% refund.

I ordered a wire twisting vise

I ordered a wire twisting vise. When I reviewed the order they charge me a $3.60 tip!! I emailed them but I am calling PayPal to cancel the order!!!! THE NERVE!!!!!!!!

Two months waiting for a weed…

Two months waiting for a weed remover....They respond to emails but expect no goods or refunds. At least facebook is making money out of them...

Absolute SCAM

Absolute SCAM!
EVERYONE FILE A CLAIM WITH THE FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION (FTC) ! They should not be getting away with this!

Never again

Same experience as others with this company.Ordered weed remover and doubt I will ever see it. Wish I read these reviews before ordering.

They will rip you off

6 months ago i ordered casting mound set and i still have nothing. When i enquiry, the same crap every time with “we will remind our refunds department” but 6 months is now enough. i’m going through an international fraud claim against this company and will launch a global awareness campaign to stay away. They ripped off the wrong customer. DO NOT BUY FROM THRM

I ordered a weed remover from this…

I ordered a weed remover from this company. I ordered it in the beginning of May...they have taken the $ from the credit card company and I have not received it. Now that I've read all of the reviews here I do not expect to receive the item I ordered. I would say do not order anything advertised on FB. This is the 3rd item from different companies I've ordered after seeing it on FB that was a SCAM!

the shipment came with a very long…

the shipment came with a very long delay of several months, the goods arrived not as described, you will not receive a refund!

Absolutely SCAM SCAM SCAM do not place…

Absolutely SCAM SCAM SCAM do not place any orders you will not receive your item or money back total SCAM SCAM SCAM and if I ever find this peter he will not wanna see me.

DO NOT ORDER FROM THIS COMPANY

DO NOT ORDER FROM THIS COMPANY. I was shocked to come on here and see so many people experience the same thing I did. Paying money for a product and never receiving it in the mail. It’s a SCAM. I hope it gets taken down very soon.

Utter scam took my money never received…

Utter scam took my money never received my product ordered in July now in October need to close website so they don’t take other people’s money!!

Can I give no star??

Can I give no star??? Horrible company and a scam. False advertising. Leather Restoration Cream was NOT what it was - first of all, the jar came in Chinese, not English. No instructions. And it was only half the jar it was supposed to be. I have been trying since July to get a refund - or the correct product, to no avail. The guy keeps saying he will send one in the correct size and in English and he has not.

I wish I would have read this first

I wish I would have read this first
Never got my product or money back
Scam!

If I only had read these reviews before…

If I only had read these reviews before placing my order!
I payed 20.93 USD for a pair of Spandex pants with express delivery since I needed them for a wedding.
After 4 weeks and a numerous of mails, still not a sign of the package. I got a link to the Chinese tracking site, the last notice there was from September 26th, since then nothing!
Don´t buy from this company, you will only lose your money!

DO NOT TRUST THIS WEBSITE

DO NOT TRUST THIS WEBSITE
I purchased a hair oil from this site. After a month I had to follow up on the product only to hear from a a so called 'John' who requests me to wait a bit more and states that the product is in transit. after a couple of weeks I follow up again and I was told (again by john) that shipment seems to have been stuck somewhere. He asked me to wait for a week and that if I still don't get it, he will send over the product again. But I requested for a refund instead. He agreed to it ( all in an email) but the refund has not been initiated yet. It has been more than a month now and on following up on the status of my refund, I do not get any response from these people anymore

We’ve ordered toothbrushes for our dogs…

We’ve ordered toothbrushes for our dogs several months ago, never seen the items or a refund of the money, every time I contact them I get the same emails back as copied from a script. Total scam artist !! I advise anyone never to buy from this company,

Products are not what they publish; no communication

I ordered a pair of shoes because they were publicized as safety shoes with steel toes, and that was not true - and in spite of announcing that you can easily ask for a reimbursement, the procedure for sending the product back was nowhere to be found. I tried contacting them through the website and via email, and I got one reply with a request for information and photos, but afterwards they never replied to my emails anymore. A complete fraud

DO NOT BUY FROM THIS COMPANY

DO NOT BUY FROM THIS COMPANY! I ordered an item on August 22, 2019. I have not heard anything from company, tracking number etc. I emailed them and asked them about my item. They emailed me back next day. Gave me tracking number and website. They said the tracking information was not updated yet. So, I have kept checking it and still nothing. I emailed them again, they emailed me back and they said they assure me my item is on its way. They would not give me tracking number or company. I emailed them again today August 19, 2019. Asked them again for information. When and if I get my item I will update.

I have experienced the same terrible…

I have experienced the same terrible product quality as the other reviewers on this site. They do not stand behind their products with a refund or return policy worth considering. DO NOT BUY FROM THIS WEBSITE! They are a cheap scam.

Do not buy from this company. AVOID AT ALL COSTS!

Do not buy from this company.
I bought a pair of shoes. They did come but they were not as advertised. The quality was ridiculous (the insole was smaller than the shoe so it just kept coming out).
The shoes went straight in the bin - they were so bad you can't even wear them around the house!
I asked for a full refund due to false advertisement and they offered 20% refund and they went up in 10% increments till 50% and then when I said no to that, they stopped replying.
They also expected me to pay for the shipping to return the shoes which is to Singapore (I'm from UK).

AVOID!

Do not use this company they placed an…

Do not use this company they placed an order two months ago and not received anything, they just constantly lie about the delivery and then stop answering your emails completely

Don't buy from this company

Don't buy from this company, they are scam. Always check the seller before the transaction. I'm a fool, I didn't check((((

It has been a month since I placed my…

It has been a month since I placed my order on July 23rd, it is now August 29th, have not received anything. Have contacted them on numerous occasions and they claim is on the way. They now say I should go to postal office and and see if I have received my order. I paid for shipping. THEY ARE A SCAM!!!
DO NOT ORDER FROM THEM IF YOU WANT TO LOSE YOUR MONEY AND TIME.

I ordered leather cleaner from this…

I ordered leather cleaner from this “company “ on June 12. It will be September in 6 days!!!
I informed Jake, Guest Relations, that if my refund isn’t in my account by September 7th my attorney will be involved and I am totally serious. I have sent numerous emails and texts.

I never received the product and I will not sit back and watch these parasites keep my money. Jake said that they are waiting for a response from “upper management”... he then had the balls to wish me a pleasant day.

Do not buy from this company!!

Do not buy from this company!!
If I could give them 0 stars I would of.
Products take months to arrive. They do not work as advertised. I bought the drain cleaner and it did absolutely nothing.
When you contact them they treat you like your stupid and when you ask for your money back they ignore you!
Completely unprofessional and selling products they are falsely advertised.

i have ordered and paid full amount…

i have ordered and paid full amount online ,....got an order no. when tried to track order after so many days in their tracking site ,it said that the order no.is not valid.....what the hell it is and where is my order ...i need my refund also.

Ordered some foam cleaning solution and…

Ordered some foam cleaning solution and it literally was just crystallized salts that did not work. No foam, no nothing and believe me I used as directed. I've contacted customer service and they can care less. DONT ORDER FROM THIS COMPANY.

Ordered the toilet cleaner and have not…

Ordered the toilet cleaner and have not received or heard from this company. Stupid me, I should of checked the website before ordering. Well I learn my lesson

don't buy from this site

don't buy from this site, it's a scam and you'll more likely to lose your money on garbage material.
I bought the titan shoes and it was absolutely the opposite of what the ad shows.
I also tried to write a review but it didn't show up.

I brought something over 2 months ago…

I brought something over 2 months ago and I have still not received anything!!
Poor customer service! No one reply’s to my emails!!

The worst online experience I ever had

The worst online experience I ever had. After placing order was waiting for two weeks for it to be shipped out no notifications whatsoever if it was shipped out or not , after sending request by e-mail for update on my order and what’s reason for delay, all I got “don’t worry it will be shipped out soon”. After two weeks of waiting got e-mail that my item finally shipped out and tracking number linked to delivery company app or website problem is it’s in French. I can’t even switch to English because all menus and everything is in French. Still waiting for my item and already one month went by. Wouldn’t recommend to shop at this store. 100% unsatisfied with service.

Would recommend to avoid this online store.

Ordered Quick-Foam Home & Toilet…

Ordered Quick-Foam Home & Toilet Cleaner back on the 23 June 2019 and I am still waiting 31July 2019. They won't answer emails. Looks like I have been ripped off once again. DO NOT ORDER FROM THEM.

Do not shop here

Do not shop here! Ordered a pair of steel toe construction shoes at may 11th. Did not arrive until mid july, after many unanswered emails. No tracking info. Said to arrive within 5-8 workkng days. Terrible service!

And WHEN they arrived they were missing THE STEEL CAP! wich is the whole point of the shoes! What I basically got were really heavy jogging shoes now. More useful as a chewtoy for a dog.

Its a scam.

This is my most recent email response from Peppermint Berri, which echoes their previous responses.

And this is the tracking information that never changes. Naturally I consider the claim from "Francis" that the parcel is moving despite no tracking updates to be a lie.

What two old people say while watching Hamilton on Disney+

It took my wife, Laurel, and I three nights to finish watching Hamilton on Disney+. One reason is that the show is long. Another is that when two 71-year-old people watch Hamilton at home, there's a lot of pressing the stop/start button.

Thankfully, we weren't watching on Broadway. If we talked through a live performance like we did through the streaming version, we would have been thrown out of the theatre pretty damn quickly. 

Here's some of what you would have heard if you could have been a fly on the wall of our TV watching area.

Laurel: Stop the recording.

Me: Why? 

Laurel: Don't ask why, just do it!

Me: OK, OK. There, now what?

Laurel: Can you understand what they're saying? 

Me: Once in a while. How about you?

Laurel: I have no idea what's going on. They talk so fast.

Me: Yeah, it's a rap cadence. Our ears aren't adjusted to it.

Laurel: For sure. OK, let's keep watching. Press play.

Ten minutes later...

Laurel: I've got a question.

Me: You're not supposed to talk during a movie. Oh, wait, we're at home. All right, what is it?

Laurel: Did Aaron Burr want to be in the room where the affair happened?

Me: Jeez, no! Are we watching the same Hamilton?

Laurel: Don't be sarcastic. Just answer the question.

Me: OK, do you remember how Hamilton was working away at his desk, and his wife wanted him to do something with her, but he said he'd got to finish a bill about something to do with the national treasury that Jefferson and Madison said didn't have a chance to pass in Congress because he doesn't have the votes, and then later Hamilton goes off and talks with Jefferson and Madison, during which Hamilton agrees to have the capitol on the Potomac, and also gives the south some other stuff that I couldn't quite understand, then we learn that the bill passed with Hamilton getting what he wanted and Jefferson and Madison getting what they wanted, because they'd worked out a backroom deal, and so Burr was wishing he could have been in the room where all that conniving happened, though I admit that Burr may have wanted to be in other rooms also, which helps explain why he ended up running for Congress so he wouldn't always be on the outside looking in, anyway, that's what I think is going on but I can't be completely sure since I'm only understanding about 20% of the words.

Laurel: Well, you're understanding more than I am.

Me: (wordlessly presses "Play" with an inner smile on my face, because now I'm contemplating a career as a 71 year old white guy rapper, since I can understand more of Hamilton than my wife)

Seriously, though, or even more seriously, since the dialogue above is close to what actually happened with us, Laurel and I enjoyed Hamilton a lot. 

We grasped more of the second act than the first act. Maybe our ears had started to get used to the rapid fire speaking and singing, or maybe the second act has more actual talking. Regardless, Hamilton was highly entertaining and inspiring in equal measure. 

It was quaint to be brought back to a time when having an affair could disqualify a man from becoming president. (At least, that's what I think happened with Hamilton; can't be sure, given how much of the lyrics I failed to grasp.)

After we finished watching, I fired up Google to see whether other people had the same problem with understanding the words of Hamilton that we did. The first and only link that I looked at was customer reviews of Hamilton from the Detroit Theatre. Apparently these were touring shows, with a different cast from the Broadway production.

But some of the reviews echoed our Disney+ experience, word-comprehension-wise.

I'm 39 and definitely not losing my hearing; however, I was in the upper deck and could understand about 25% of what was said. The song tempos are relatively fast and I'm sure the actors were enunciating their lines, however, it didn't definitely sound that way. Much of it sounded like gibberish. My father (71 years old) understood about 5%. It became a material part of our experience - too bad! I encourage a headphone option.

Lots of hype around the show maybe raised expectations too high. The show was good, but not spectacular. Hard to follow the rap pace, plus the phrasing used in rap, so the story gets lost.

My husband and I were excited to see Hamilton in Milwaukee. Our seats were excellent, but when a play’s story is dependent on the audience understanding what the actors are singing, it fell short. My husband understood nothing and I struggled to pick out words. Very disappointing.

The main complaint is that I concentrated very hard to hear what was being sung and still could only understand about half so I barely followed.

While the show was unique and dancing exceptional, the audio was not. I was sitting in orchestra section and could not understand the dialogue being sung. It was loud enough, but spoken so rapidly, it was like listening to another language. I actually dozed off a few times during the show from boredom. Certainly not your typical musical, but not for audiences over 35 unless you are really into rap music and can understand the almost incoherent verbiage.

Spots that make me smile on our ten acres

Laurel, my wife, and I live on ten acres in rural south Salem. For thirty years I've had a love/hate relationship with our property. After moving here in 1990, we've done a lot to improve both the land and our house.

But it's a damn lot of work. And at the age of 71, I find that maintaining what we've got isn't as enjoyable as it was when I was 41. Yesterday I finished mowing some grassy areas with a walk-behind DR Field Mower. It isn't the worst job I've ever done. I just can't call it "fun."

However, as I mowed various parts of our property I'd notice things that would bring a smile to my mind, if not to my sweaty face. After I finished, I grabbed my camera and walked around the ten acres, looking for more of nature that raised my spirits.

Here's the Adobe Spark web page result, the photos and some commentary.

Having coffee with an old friend on Father's Day is a great gift

OK, this photo was taken last Sunday, but it shows where Jim Ramsey and I also had coffee today, Father's Day -- the covered area outside of the Urban Grange coffee house in West Salem.

Jim is an old friend in several respects. Like me, he is old. (Though his recently-added gray goatee lends him an air of mature mystery, much as I like to fantasize my gray beard does.)

More importantly, I've known Jim for a long time. How long exactly is an unknown, which shows how long it has been.

I met Jim at some point after moving to Oregon in 1971 to attend graduate school at Portland State University. Since both of us were members of an India-based spiritual group that had few members in the United States, our paths crossed at meetings of the group even though at the time I was living in the Portland area.

Knowing that Jim was a realtor with Ramsey Real Estate, a family business, he was chosen by my first wife and I to find us a house in Salem after I got a job with the State Health Planning and Development Agency and was tired of doing the Portland-Salem commute.

Before too long we'd bought a house on Hillview Drive in south Salem, which if you walked out in the middle of the street, had a marvelous view of the shining lights of the Fred Meyer store. It also was close to a park and McDonalds, with children close to the age of our five-year-old daughter, Celeste, living nearby.

Perfect!

Until we moved to another part of south Salem where Celeste went to Candalaria Elementary School, Judson Middle School, and South Salem High School. That was followed by a divorce, remarriage to my current wife, Laurel, and many other changes to my life.

Throughout, from circa 1971 to 2020, forty-nine years, I've kept in touch with Jim. For most of that time I saw him every Sunday at meetings of our spiritual group. Sometimes we'd meet up as part of a group. Sometimes it's just been the two of us.

Eventually I had a falling-out with the group, having lost faith in its teachings even though I'd written several books that were published or distributed by the group. No matter to the friendship Jim and I had. We continued to get together, talking about politics, movies, books, cars, home life, health problems, all sorts of subjects.

When the Covid crisis hit, a stay-at-home order prevented Jim and I from getting together in person.

We also didn't communicate by phone or Zoom. I thought of checking in with Jim, but neither of us reached out to the other. I'd gotten so used to talking with Jim face-to-face, talking remotely just didn't appeal to me. This could be one of those male-female differences.

My wife talks to her female friends frequently by phone. Me, I figured that when Jim and I could meet in person again, we would. Until then, we wouldn't. Pretty damn simple.

It's been good to resume our coffee conversations the past two weeks. I feel better now. Maybe I would have felt better sooner if we'd talked by phone, but that's water under the Covid crisis bridge. Today we each brought a chair to free up the Urban Grange outside seating for other people. I brought a small table last week. Jim brought one today.

In all the many years I've known Jim, I don't recall ever explicitly telling him how much our get-togethers mean to me. So, now I am. Of course, since I'm a man, I"m not going to say this in person. I'll send him a link to this blog post. In my defense, I wrote about this sort of thing back in 2005 in "Why men don't share their feelings." 

To avoid messing up the warm fuzziness of this post, I'll copy in those 2005 musings as a continuation to this post.

Starlink, save us from our rural broadband hellscape

My wife and I have a third-world broadband speed even though we live six miles from the city limits of Oregon's capital, Salem. Right now -- 7:30 pm on a Tuesday -- I'm "enjoying" a download speed of 5.8 Mbps and an upload speed of .71 Mbps.

That's crappy, because the only broadband available to us is CenturyLink DSL, brought to our house via a copper phone line and, I'm guessing, a team of low-paid internet elves who shovel the content of web sites and streaming services into the phone line as slowly as possible, and with frequent breaks.

Like last night, when I fired up Apple TV to see what HBO Max had to offer and was met with a spinning ball when we tried to watch a program, which would play for a few seconds before the spinning ball returned due to our slow DSL being even slower than usual.

I've spent a lot of time trying to find an alternative broadband provider. None exists. At least, none that I'd consider using. 

In addition to living in a rural south Salem neighborhood lacking cable TV or fiber optic providers, our house gets poor cellular reception. So cellular internet isn't an option. Alyrica, a fixed wireless provider, came out to our house last year and flew a drone around in an attempt to find a sightline to their cell tower from the top of tall fir trees next to the house.

No luck. And today I got an online rejection from Peak Internet, another fixed wireless provider. Here's the message I got after supplying our address. "Thank you for your interest in Peak Fixed Wireless service. If your location is in green, you may qualify for service." 

Sadly, our house is where the orange marker is, quite a ways from the green. 

This week I emailed Danielle Gonzalez, the broadband access staffer with Marion County. She helpfully provided me with a link to a list of internet service providers in our zip code, 97306, which includes both rural areas and an area in the Salem city limits. None of them serve our neighborhood, aside from CenturyLink.

(We used to have satellite internet via WildBlue before I talked Qwest into bringing DSL to our neighborhood in 2008. It was slow and went out in rainy and stormy weather, which is frequent in Oregon. So I'm not interested in HughesNet or Viasat, the only current satellite internet providers.)

Gonzalez said she'll send me the name and phone number of a local CenturyLink manager in charge of broadband once she learns who this is. I've been told by CenturyLink that fiber optic exists along Liberty Road until a few miles north of us. But I'm suspecting that CenturyLink doesn't want to spend the money to extend fiber optic to our neighborhood of several hundred homes.

So that leaves me in despair, trapped in a rural broadband hellscape with only one hope: Elon Musk's Starlink satellite system.

It shouldn't be this way, since fast broadband (in contrast to our 6 Mbps broadband) is a necessity these days -- for businesses, home or otherwise; for online learning; for entertainment, streaming videos, games, and such; for writers/bloggers like me who need to upload large files with photos.

Just as every American should be able to get quality healthcare, so should every American be able to get quality broadband. That neither is happening shows how screwed-up our society is. Government isn't functioning as it should, so people have to rely on private enterprise to fill unmet needs. 

But so far no private enterprise has been willing to meet the need of our neighborhood for an alternative to slow DSL. Hopefully Starlink will be our savior. 

Starlink ultimately will use thousands of low-orbit satellites to provide internet access everywhere in the world, naturally with the focus being on broadband-lacking areas. As of late April 2020 the word was that beta testing would begin in about three months, with public beta testing in about six months.

The initial beta test will apply to those located in “high latitudes,” Musk added. To date, SpaceX has said that Starlink service will initially be made available to customers in Canada and in the northern United States in 2020, with additional service expansion to follow to other parts of the world throughout 2021. On Twitter in response to a question about whether Germany counts as “high latitude,” Musk said that it does, indicating beta service at least may be available in more markets than the U.S. and Canada ahead of next year.

Well, Salem, Oregon sits on the 45th parallel. Sure looks to me like that should count as the northern United States, though the center of Germany is about 51 degrees north. 

Regardless, I hope Starlink turns out to be as good as it looks to be. I'm encouraged by the fact that Elon Musk's Tesla cars are a big success, as is his SpaceX rocket. Reportedly the cost would be about $80 a month, which I'd pay gladly to get a broadband speed nearly equal to fiber optic.

For now, I endure with DSL. Maybe we'll be able to stream HBO Max tonight. Maybe not. I look forward to the day when those "maybe's" are a memory, not reality. For us, and also for lots of other people with no current broadband choice. 

It’s the space race, but unlike the 50s, this race’s goal is to connect the world—including rural areas—to the internet. Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet project aims to bring affordable, fast internet to underserved parts of the US and the world.

The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) 2016 report found that 62 percent of Americans have only one choice for “fixed advanced telecommunications capability.” And when they looked at rural areas specifically, the number of Americans stuck with just one internet service provider (ISP) to choose from rose to 87 percent.

SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell said that while existing ISPs are improving, it’s still hard for them to reach rural areas. But “Starlink . . . will cover all parts of the globe.”

Toilet paper leads to a realtor. I love blogging!

There's a lot to like about predictability. But life would be boring if everything happened as we expect it to happen. Also, that wouldn't be life. It would be something else, something boringly mechanical.

So I enjoy a mixture of order and chance, consistency and surprises. 

Virtually every day I write a post for one of my three blogs. That's orderly. But I never can predict what will result from my writing. That's the chance'y aspect.

Back on March 21, I wrote "Grocery shopping in Salem in the Coronavirus Era," noting that my wife and I had both struck out on finding toilet paper on our shopping expeditions. 

A few days later a woman emailed me with suggestions about where to find toilet paper in Salem, adding that she'd begun to explore an old school "family cloth" approach where flannel is fashioned into a toilet paper substitute if all else fails.  

As happens with me disturbingly often, I failed to reply to her message right away. Then the message sank deeper into my inbox, eventually becoming out of sight and out of mind.

Until yesterday, when I finally resurrected the toilet paper message in my newest attempt to eliminate unanswered emails.

My reply started with my usual "belated thanks for...", observing that eventually we'd been able to find toilet paper. The woman responded with her own thoughts, which included a mention that she and her husband had bought a historic house last year. That led me to ask some questions about the house.

And so it went, a pleasant exchange of emails with someone I had never met in person, but who'd reached out to me with her toilet paper suggestions.

I enjoyed looking at some photos of their home, which led me to send a message about how my wife and I periodically window-shop houses for sale in Salem, realizing that likely one day our home on ten acres in rural south Salem will become unsuitable for our steadily aging bodies to maintain.

That stimulated the woman to share the name of a realtor that they liked a lot who worked with them on selling their old home and buying the historic home. Which led me to call the realtor today, Bridget Welborn of HomeSmart Realty Group.

I know nothing about HomeSmart. I just liked the idea of talking with a realtor who came recommended by someone i'd just had a pleasant email exchange with. My wife and I have spoken with several realtors over the years who other people had liked, so I figured, why not give Welborn a call?

I'm glad I did. 

She was nicely low-key. I explained that we were simply wanting to start an exploration of homes in the Salem city limits, preparing for the possibility that one day we'll be serious about buying one. Welborn listened to my description of what sort of house we were looking for, and what parts of town appealed to us (south Salem, basically).

Who knows what will come of this? No one. Certainly not me. 

I simply enjoyed the seemingly random nature of how I was put in touch with realtor Welborn. I'd been vaguely thinking that my wife and I should get back to doing some planning about where we'd go if, for one reason or another, our current house stopped being right for us.

Maybe that day will never come. Maybe it will. Life is uncertain. All we can do is be open to possibilities, keeping our options as flexible as possible. Getting to know a realtor and getting pre-approved for house financing makes sense to me.

So that's my tale of how toilet paper led to a realtor. Where things go from here is unknown. However, my wife and I have enjoyed looking at a bunch of listings Welborn has already sent us. We'll refine the desired-house criteria that I told Welborn about doing our conversation today.

Then... who knows? 

Here's how easy it is to vote by mail in Oregon

TO: People in states that don't already have 100% vote by mail
FROM: An Oregonian (me!) who loves vote by mail
SUBJECT: How easy it was for me to vote today

First, I want to emphasize that you shouldn't believe anyone, such as Donald Trump, who claims that vote by mail is beset with problems. It isn't. For quite a few years Oregon has had vote by mail for every election. Screw-ups are very rare. Fraud is virtually nonexistent. 

With that out of the way, here's a brief description of what I had to do to cast my ballot today in the May 19 primary election. In short, not much.

(1) Yesterday I got an email from Marion County Elections that told me my ballot was about to arrive in the mail.

(2) Today my ballot did arrive. This is the return envelope.

(3) I sat on a stool at our kitchen counter and completed the May primary ballot in about five minutes. I could have done it sooner, but I needed to check the Voters Pamphlet about the candidates in a few races I wasn't familiar with.

Also, I had to spend some time gazing at the name of my wife, Laurel Hines, on the ballot -- first time she's appeared! I also wrote in a few names of neighbors who, I'm sure, would love to serve as a Democratic Party Precinct Committee Person. Or, maybe not.

(4) This year I didn't even need to stick on a stamp to mail my ballot. The Oregon legislature passed a law that requires prepaid postage on every return envelope. This afternoon we went to Minto Brown Island Park for a dog walk along the Willamette River, so along the way I mailed my ballot on the same day I received it.

Bottom line: I have no idea why every state doesn't use 100% vote by mail for every election.

It makes perfect sense at any time, but extra perfect sense in this COVID-19 time. We Oregonians can cast our ballot without coming close to another person. In my case, I did, but it was just my wife -- who soon will have the title of Most Exalted Precinct 788 Democratic Committee Person. 

My top 10 bright spots during Oregon's stay-at-home period

Like everybody else, I'm hugely looking forward to the relaxing of stay-at-home and physical distancing orders that are succeeding in slowing the spread of the coronavirus. 

But amid the distress of so much human misery caused by COVID-19 infections, I've been experiencing some bright spots during the month Oregon's Stay Home, Save Lives policy has been in effect. Here's my Top Ten.

(1) This afternoon I came home from a dog walk to find my wife taking part in a Zoom dance party celebrating her grand-niece's birthday. Naturally I had to grab my iPhone and upload a short video to You Tube.

(2) Before, I never knew that finding toilet paper on the shelf of a grocery store could be such a peak experience. Now I can relax about climbing Mt. Everest or visiting Machu Picchu. 

(3) I'm not a highly social person. But when I encounter neighbors on a daily two-mile dog walk out here in rural south Salem, my enforced soliitude leads me to get all chatty, as if I'd been shipwrecked on a deserted island and finally some fellow humans show up on the beach.

(4) With more available time, my wife has been busy getting rid of stuff that sits around the house with no discernible reason to keep it. So far I've avoided being taken to the dump. (Maybe because I empty the dishwasher once in a while.)

(5) Watching TV in the afternoon has never appealed to me. Now, though, every day I record MSNBC from 2 pm to 6 pm, so I can be sure I won't miss Trump's White House coronavirus briefing performances. Super entertaining! Especially his back and forth with reporters. And his B.S. gets my heart rate up without exercising.

(6) Rather strangely, I'm enjoying The Late Show With Stephen Colbert more than I did when it emanated from the Ed Sullivan Theatre. I like the informality of Colbert broadcasting from his home. Also, seeing his super adorable dog. 

(7) I've always enjoyed going grocery shopping. In these coronavirus times, that Monday afternoon experience is the highlight of my week. I see people! I drive my car! I stand in line at Trader Joe's! Life is good.

(8) Because we let packages get sterilized in the sun for a few hours after they're delivered by UPS, the mail person, or FedEx, getting something from Amazon is a bit like my childhood Christmas mornings. I have to wait to open my presents, and I'm not sure what exactly is in the box. I'm young again.

(9) Our crappy DSL out here in the far reaches of the broadband desert, albeit just five miles from the city limits of Oregon's capital, is even slower than usual. Streaming movies is problematic, so I'm happy that Netflix still sends DVDs through the mail. 

(10) Having medical appointments by phone isn't as bad as I thought it might be. I don't have to watch my doctor spending most of their time staring into a computer screen while they're talking to me -- though likely they're still doing that; I just can't tell that they are.

Nature soothes in COVID-19 pandemic

Working in our rural south Salem property yesterday, I realized that nature is a wonderfully soothing antidote to anxiety about the coronavirus crisis. So I took some photos of our spring-blooming yard and shared them in an Adobe Spark web page, along with some commentary.

Click on the second large image below to open the web page. (The first smaller image is for Facebook sharing purposes.)

 

The poetry of field mowing in our coronavirus era

I'm no poet. Far from it. But I guess I have some poetic inclinations. Just look at the title of this blog post. It's got "poetry" right there in the damn title!

Anyway, what poetry really means to me is feeling something subtly indistinct, yet decidedly real, in an everyday activity. Today that activity was doing some mowing of open areas on our ten acres in rural south Salem, Oregon. 

l use a walk-behind DR Field Mower with the lawn mower attachment. I used to put on the field mower attachment once a year to cut grass after it had gotten really tall by early July. But that was a lot of work, and now that I'm 71, for several years I've been leaving the lawnmower attachment on, raising the blade height as far as possible, and cutting tall grass that way.

That works.

I just need to mow the fields, or open areas, two or three times a year rather than just once. With two blades, rather than the one on the field mower attachment, the mowing goes quicker. And the wheels on the front of the lawn mower attachment mean much less wrestling of the DR Field Mower.

Everybody else in our rural neighborhood uses lawn tractors, or actual tractors, to mow their fields. However, I like the increased intimacy of my walk-behind mower. When we moved here in 1990, for a few years I used a John Deere lawn tractor. It would get stuck in muddy areas, though. And I worried about it tipping over on steep slopes.

This is the just-cut Bamboo Field past the rear deck of our house. The clump of non-spreading bamboo on the right of the photo was planted by me from bamboo that i brought from the house in Salem that I lived in before Laurel and got married in our current house back in 1990.

When I maneuver the mower past it, walking by at a slow mowing speed, I enjoy how the bamboo got transplanted at about the same time as Laurel and I pulled up our connection with where we'd been living before and made the commitment to a fresh life together -- me after getting divorced, Laurel after being single until our marriage.

There'a a lot of fear and anxiety going around these days. Entirely justified. COVID-19 often kills. Or causes people great suffering. Watching the news on television is something I can't stop doing, because I want to know what's going on. Mowing helps keep me sane.

The grass is growing this year just as it does every year. Green and fast.

That's the way it is in April. Next month the grass will grow more slowly. In June, slower still. Then it stops growing at all in the fields during Oregon's dry and warm summer. There's something reassuring about the steady cycle of nature. It's dependable. The coronavirus makes me anxious. Mowing grass makes me feel like I'm doing something real, even precious.

Life comes with no guarantees. I don't know how long how I'll be alive, or how long I'll be healthy enough to keep on doing the field mowing. Sometimes Laurel asks, "Don't you want to pay somebody to do this?" I reply, "No. I enjoy the mowing." This is the next open area down from the Bamboo Field. 

When we moved here, it was completely covered with blackberries. Basically, impassable. We hired someone with a tractor to cut down the blackberries and till up the roots. Then we planted grass and trees. A lot of work, but we were much younger then. 


After mowing this area, which I think of as the Oak Arch Field (a large branch of a massive oak fell off in a windstorm; we left the arch of the branch where it was), I went back to the house to get my iPhone to take these photos. A deer seemed curious about the recent mowing. 

Around here, the deer are almost tame. They're used to people and don't run away. I felt like I'd encountered a friend. Who didn't have to worry about social distancing, pleasingly.

By the way, at the right end of the Oak Arch is where the ashes of Tasha, the German Shepherd Laurel had when we got married, were put. I think of Tasha when I mow around the fallen branch. It was nice of the branch to fall just in the right position -- not over Tasha's ashes, just close to that spot.


Actually there were several deer friends in the field. I believe this is a mother and her two deer children. They were browsing in the tall grass that's on my mowing to-do list for tomorrow. 


This is what awaits me. It's the most difficult field that I mow, because the ground is so uneven. The heavy rains in 1996 caused torrents to flow through this part of our property, leaving a gully that is impossible for me to forget, because the mower bucks like a bronco if I don't guide the mower at just the right angle.


These are two redwood trees that Laurel planted a few years after we moved here and had done away with the blackberries. It seemed a bit crazy to be planting itty-bitty trees some 28 years ago. Now look at them. They remind me that nature knows what it is doing, even if we humans often don't.

We probably watered the redwoods at first. I can't remember for sure. But we definitely have paid them little attention over the years. They simply do what trees do: grow on their own. 

Times are rough for people now in this Coronavirus Era. "Now" though soon will become "Then," leaving a fresh present moment that will be an outgrowth of what we're doing now. There's no guarantee that things will be better, but I believe they will be. 

Mowing today refreshed my spirit. That's the power of being out in nature, doing simple things. 

Apple can't tell me why my MacBook Pro Touch Bar stops working

OK, of all the problems in the world right now -- which includes the coronavirus pandemic -- having the Touch Bar stop working on my almost brand-new 16 inch MacBook Pro ranks fairly low.

But it's still irritating.

That black strip at the top of my keyboard is where the Touch Bar is supposed to light up. offering all kinds of nifty shortcuts, along with basic controls like changing the volume and brightness.

For three years the Touch Bar on my 13 inch MacBook Pro that I bought in 2016 worked perfectly. However, the keyboard had the dreaded problem where you press a key and nothing happens. In my case, the space bar had the problem, which seems to be the worst possible key to go screwy.

So one reason I bought the 16 inch MacBook Pro when it came out last year was to get the old style "scissors" keyboard. Little did I know that I was trading one irritating problem for another.

The Touch Bar worked fine at first. But then it started to become non-responsive. Naturally I Googled this issue and found that for quite a few years people have been complaining about the Touch Bar not working. If I restarted my MacBook Pro, the Touch Bar would come back to life. 

However, almost every day I'd have to do that. So I decided to phone Apple support.

The first time I called I was told that I needed to reinstall the operating system. I told the support person there was no way I wanted to do that. I had an almost brand new computer. I'd installed every update to MacOS Catalina. I hadn't modified the operating system in any strange way. And like I said, my old MacBook Pro's Touch Bar worked fine for three years under another operating system.

So for a few weeks I keep on restarting my computer every day.

Eventually that got old, so I phoned Apple support again last week. This time the person I talked with said that she needed to contact a supervisor. After being put on hold for a while, she led me through two approaches to resetting Systems Management stuff, one of which is described in this web page about the problem. 

That took some finger dexterity, but I managed it. In fact, I managed it twice, since it didn't work the first time, and it didn't work the second time. At least, not for long.

So at the moment I'm changing the volume via the little sound icon at the top of my MacBook Pro's screen. The fingerprint sensor works when I need it, like when 1Password has to open, so I haven't suffered much from not having a functional Touch Bar. And I can always restart my computer and get it back temporarily.

At some point I'll phone Apple support again, assuming the coronavirus doesn't do me in first (I'm 71, so at high risk). It just seems crazy that there isn't some simple keyboard command to restart the Touch Bar when it stops working, especially since this seems to be a longstanding problem for many users of Apple computers.

Apple used to make computers that were virtually trouble free.

Now that iPhones and iPads are Apple's main interests, I've gotten the clear impression that the MacBook Pro is an afterthought by comparison. Things just don't seem to work as smoothly on my MacBook Pro as I've been used to during the many years I've used various models of the MacBook Pro -- which are still ubiquitous in coffee shops.

Toilet paper seems to be big concern of coronavirus worriers

I have breaking news on how people are dealing with the coronavirus here in Salem! And it isn't fake news, though I have to admit  it isn't real news either -- kind of in-between.

My research, using that word as loosely as possible, consisted of my usual Monday afternoon grocery shopping excursions to Trader Joes, the Fred Meyer on south Commercial, and LifeSource Natural Foods.

The only obvious sign of coronavirus frenzy was at Fred Meyer, where I observed some decidedly empty shelves in certain parts of the store. Notably... the toilet paper area.

It was shopped bare, aside from a few packages of what must have been the most expensive brand on the shelves. Hearing people say things like, "Wow, there's hardly anything left here," spurred me to throw two packages of Cottonelle into my cart, since being without toilet paper in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic struck me as worrisome.

Plus, Cottonelle says it is UltraComfortCare and features Cleaning Ripples, something I don't believe I've ever experienced from toilet paper. 

Hey, being 71 I'm at a considerably greater risk should I get the coronavirus, compared to younger people. But at least I'll have those Cleaning Ripples!

Naturally I hadn't thought about where we'd keep the extra toilet paper. Which is why wives were invented.

When I got home from my Tai Chi class today I saw that Laurel had found a plastic container to store the Cottonelle in, along with some paper towels that I also thought would come in handy during a coronavirus outbreak (don't ask me why, because I don't know).

A couple of other largely empty shelves that caught my eye at Fred Meyer today were the bleach section and children's pain relievers. 

Children, however, seem to be escaping the worse of the coronavirus, but I can understand why parents still would be concerned about having some medications on hand. 

I got some adult cough medicine, just in case.

Hopefully the coronavirus will turn out to be less serious than I'm worried it might be. Years from now I'd be super happy to discover the container with the Cottonelle toilet paper in our attic storage area and think, "Why did we ever put this up there?"

Good news is, I don't have a blood clot. Bad news is, Trump still is president.

Being an ardent progressive in election year 2020 means that I'm prone to view everything through the lens of what it means for the prospect of making Trump a one-term president this November. 

Yes, even being tested to rule out a blood clot in my right leg -- which occurred yesterday.

A bit over a week ago I had a physical therapy visit to get some advice on what to do about annoying leg pain. When Michael, the therapist, asked me what caused the pain, I gave this 30-something guy my 71-year-old perspective on health problems like this one.

"Michael, when I was your age, I could figure out why something hurt. Like, playing too much tennis with my questionable serving technique led to tennis elbow pain. But now that I'm the age I am, aching body parts happen mysteriously. I get out of bed the wrong way, or lift a bag of groceries weirdly, and -- bingo! -- pain. Except the pain doesn't occur right away, so I can never be sure what caused it."

Which is typical for us Medicare folks, based on lots of conversations I've had with people about my age regarding their bodily afflictions. 

Anyway, yesterday the pain in my right leg was so bad, I kept thinking about what a nurse at my family physician's office told me a few days ago when I talked with her about my leg pain. Her main concern was a blood clot, so she told me that if my leg is swollen and feels warm to the touch, I should seek medical care right away.

After some Googling of "blood clot leg" and measuring my calves to see if the right one was the same size as the left one (it was), and feeling that both legs were the same temperature, at first I was reassured that I didn't have a clot. Until I read one more article that said sometimes a blood clot can be present with none of the usual symptoms.

Then I got a second leg warmth opinion from my wife. She spent way more time comparing my lower legs than I did, eventually concluding, "Maybe the right one is a little bit warmer."

That tiny maybe got me to thinking that I should go to Salem Health Urgent Care to rule out a blood clot. However, that didn't turn out to be as simple as I expected, even though it was easy to make an online appointment for 2:40 pm with a Nurse Practitioner. And I was seen close to on-time.

She felt my legs, questioned me about the pain I'd been having, and did her own measurement of my calves. She also prescribed a topical NSAID that could replace the oral Advil I'd been taking, but seemingly with less risk of side effects. Somewhat surprisingly, though, she also strongly recommended that I get an ultrasound to make sure I didn't have a blood clot in my leg.

Yes, I was worried about this possibility, as low as the chance was that I had a clot. And it made sense to rule out a potentially fatal problem, like a clot breaking free and heading to my lungs, or maybe even heart. 

But having been a health planner and policy analyst in my pre-retirement life, I also was aware of how legal liability concerns can affect medical care decisions. I'm not saying that occurred in this case, but just now the Great God Google did reveal a number of law firms who have web pages along the lines of "Medical Malpractice for Failure to Diagnose Deep Vein Thrombosis."

The symptoms of DVT can be missed or misdiagnosed.  This can be extremely dangerous because a person may think that they have something simple like a leg cramp or strain when they actually are experiencing symptoms of DVT.  

I was fortunate that the Cardiac/Vascular center at Salem Hospital could perform an ultrasound on my legs later in the day, which avoided an E.R. visit. The "lower extremity venous duplex unilateral" procedure went smoothly, and I enjoyed chatting with the technician who explained what was being shown on a large screen which, pleasingly, didn't include a blood clot.

This gets me to Trump.

Health care is super-important for everybody. When you're hurting, sick, or needing medical attention for whatever reason, getting that care with a minimum of fuss and cost is Job #1 on your mind. I'm fortunate to be on Medicare, which I like vastly more than the private health insurance I had before.

Medicare For All makes a lot of sense. So does Medicare For All Who Want It. So does the Affordable Care Act. 

What makes zero sense is Trump's unceasing effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare -- undoubtedly in part because of that word "Obama," which fills Trump with irrational anger (and maybe envy, since Obama was a much more popular president than he is).

Trump has no interest in making our nation's health care system better. He simply wants to destroy the most conservative approach to providing health care to all Americans, the Affordable Care Act. Since it relies on private health insurance, Republicans like Trump should be embracing the Affordable Care Act instead of trying to demolish it.

The plain fact is that, like me, most people feel good about their doctors and other health care providers, while being indifferent (at best) about their insurance company. So if somehow Trump, or the Supreme Court, succeed in killing the Affordable Care Act, that makes Medicare for All much more likely, given that Republicans have no viable health care plan of their own.

Lastly, Trump's health care incompetence is on full display as he stumbles through a response to the coronavirus crisis. It's evident that Trump cares much more about how the stock market is doing (horribly) than overseeing a fact-based, transparent approach to dealing with the coronavirus.

One big problem that Trump faces is that his incessant lying makes people automatically believe that whatever he says isn't true. Thus his efforts to calm people down about the coronavirus are having the opposite effect, as Catherine Rampell says in a Washington Post opinion piece, "With coronavirus, Trump's lies and his reassurances backfire."

Trump clearly understands that government messaging can move markets; he blames the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for issuing warnings that may have unnerved traders. At his news conference Wednesday, he also scolded Democrats for allegedly “trying to create a panic.” Trump seems not to realize that saying everything is fine when no one trusts you to assess the situation honestly can cause people to freak out, too.

...In this context, it’s clear how Trump-delivered reassurances might backfire — and already have. While Trump spoke Wednesday from the White House, telling Americans that the government has things under control, stock futures fell. Ordering government scientists to clear comments with Vice President Pence’s office, as has been reported, threatens to dilute the value of any soothing words such experts might offer, too.

There is a corollary to the Goolsbee rule on crisis and credibility. It’s one that Goolsbee told me he learned from the late, great former Federal Reserve chair Paul Volcker during the financial crisis a decade ago, when Goolsbee was advising President Barack Obama. Volcker said that the only asset you have in a crisis is your credibility. Hence this other rule of thumb: All normal, non-crisis time should be spent establishing the credibility you’ll need when a crisis inevitably hits.

Would that the Trump administration had done so, instead of fibbing about crowd size and so much else that followed.

My recipe for a fully satisfying car buying experience

Last Friday, one week ago today, I had one of the best car buying experiences of my life. And since I'm 71, I've had a lot of experience with buying cars, many of them frustrating.

Before I share the recipe that was used to cook up my purchase of a 2020 Subaru Crosstrek Limited, here's the final product in all of its "cool gray khaki" glory sitting in our driveway's turnaround area. (Note: I agree that the color is cool, but it sure isn't gray, nor khaki.)

Basic ingredients are simple:
Patience
Good salesperson
Good sales manager

I contributed the patience, after deciding in early November of 2019 that I'd rather order a 2020 Crosstrek to my specifications rather than choose from the few 2019 Crosstreks that were still available, or take my chances on the Capitol Subaru dealership here in Salem, Oregon getting a 2020 model sent to them that was close to the car that I wanted.

Dan Penick

Dan Penick was the sales associate who put together the order. He sat down with me and went over every available option, most or all of which I said "yes" to. The Limited is the top Crosstrek trim, so it had most of what I wanted built-in.

But we added: footwell illumination kit, splash guards, rear seatback protector, LED upgrade to map and dome lights, all-weather floor liners, and exterior/interior auto-dimming mirrors. All were excellent choices.

Kelly Stewart

Kelly Stewart was the sales manager who did his part to make my purchase of the Crosstrek so smooth, along with trading-in my 2017 VW GTI. My wife and I probably have bought at least a dozen cars from Kelly during his various stints with the Capitol Auto Group. So we built on that lengthy history of trust in this deal.

Dan and Kelly were both appealingly low-key and non-pushy. I never felt pressured in the slightest. This is an excellent sales technique, especially if you have a quality product to sell, like the Subaru Crosstrek. 

I'd given much thought to what car I wanted to replace my GTI, so when I headed over to Capitol Subaru last November for a test drive, all I needed was to get a feel for how the Crosstrek drove and how the instrument panel was laid out.

After that, it took me a few days to realize that my best bet was to order a Crosstrek Limited just the way I wanted one, even if it took a while to get the car.

Which turned out to be a bit under three months.

Fine with me. I understand the appeal of buying a vehicle that is on the lot, or readily available. However, as noted above it seemed highly unlikely that Capitol Subaru would be allocated a Crosstrek Limited that was the right color and had all of the options that I wanted. 

Now, here's the timing part of the "recipe" that made my purchase and trade-in so smoothly pleasurable.

(1) Preparation for trade-in offer. My wife and I have sold three cars via the CarMax in Beaverton after getting low-ball trade-in offers from dealers.

This time, I scheduled a trade-in appointment for Thursday at Capitol Subaru after learning that our Crosstrek had come in, and we had an appointment for Friday at CarMax -- figuring that we'd take the highest offer, then pay for the Crosstrek on Saturday.

A few days prior to Thursday, Kelly emailed me, asking for some photos of my VW GTI and the VIN so he could do some advance work on a trade-in offer. Great idea. Because when I took the GTI to the dealership on Thursday, an offer sheet was waiting for me. All Kelly wanted was the GTI key so he could briefly inspect the GTI. 

I'd used the Kelly Blue Book web site to do my own trade-in estimating. Kelly's offer of $18,500 was about what I'd expected for a trade-in offer.

And I'd taken a look at what CarMax was selling 2017 GTI's for with about the same mileage as mine. Subtracting a few thousand dollars for their profit margin, it seemed to me that probably CarMax would offer about the same amount for the GTI.

So I accepted Kelly's offer. That saved us at least three hours of time to drive up to CarMax and get an offer. (A Salem CarMax is slated to open on February 12, 2020, which is excellent news.)

(2) No dickering needed on Crosstrek price. I'd told Dan and Kelly that it'd be good to know the price of the Crosstrek ahead of time, because I detest the usual several hours-long process of making an offer, having a salesperson disappear into a back room to talk it over with their manager, then repeating the process if the price still seemed too high.

By contrast, I also told Dan and Kelly that I trusted them to give us a good discount on the Crosstrek, given how many cars we'd bought from Capitol Auto Group over many years. 

So it was a pleasure to be handed a piece of paper when my wife and I arrived to pay for the Crosstrek that had a $1,765 discount from the suggested retail price of $32,103. This seemed fair to me, being in the neighborhood of the discount that the Consumer Reports Car Buying Service showed for recent Crosstrek purchases.

(3) Purchase took just 45 minutes or so. With both the trade-in price and Crosstrek price settled ahead of time, it only took about 45 minutes for Dan to do most of the work on selling the car to us.

He said that was a record short time for him. Sure, signing papers took about another 30 minutes, after which Dan gave me a brief introduction to the Crosstrek's features, including pairing our iPhones to the infotainment system.

All in all, I ended up writing a check for about $12,000 to cover the difference between the GTI trade-in offer and the discounted Crosstrek price. That wasn't too painful.

I'm enjoying the Crosstrek a lot. In another blog post I'll describe why.

Sure, it doesn't have the speed and handling of my VW GTI, but few cars do. And the Crosstrek has a bunch of safety and other features that the GTI lacked. It's just eight inches longer than the small GTI, so the Crosstrek feels almost as nimble and easy to park in small spaces.

I'm not saying that what I've described is the best way to buy a car, just that it worked well for me.

I can heartily recommend Dan Penick and Kelly Stewart if you're in the market for a Subaru and you live close to Salem. Tell them that Brian sent you. (Maybe I'll get some Subaru swag out of that referral.)

Santa Claus must be impeached

My wife and I find no pleasure in sharing four articles of impeachment against Santa Claus in our 2019 Christmas letter. (Well, maybe just a little bit of pleasure.) 

But we couldn't stand by and let the transgressions of Santa go unmentioned.

Here's how we see the case against Santa Claus.
Download 2019 Christmas Letter PDF

Questions I don't like to get in the checkout line

OK, the title of this post isn't entirely accurate, because I'm talking about questions I get not only in the checkout line, but also other places. 

Like, today this is what I was asked by a bank employee who was handling my deposit slip.

"Do you have any plans for the rest of the day?"

Before answering with a pithy, "Yes," my brain zoomed through a bunch of other responses that had come to mind. 

-- Yes, I'm planning to rob a bank. But you'll be pleased to know, not this one.
-- Yes, but my plans are top secret, so if I told you about them, I'd have to kill you.
-- No, so after you handle my deposit, I'm going to lay down on the floor of the bank and do absolutely nothing until closing time, when bank staff will have to carry me outside, because I have no plans until after midnight and the rest of the day ends.

Only slightly more acceptable to me is this question that I get a lot in a certain grocery store's checkout line.

"Got anything fun planned for the rest of the day?"

I sometimes respond with, "You might be surprised to hear this, but I find grocery shopping to be fun. Of course, my life is pretty boring, so my fun-expectations are quite low."

Philosophically, I'm bothered by the apparent assumption that if I'm not about to do something fun, my day is worthless. The truth is that after I shop at the store where I often get this question, I head to two other grocery stores here in Salem. 

I actually do enjoy grocery shopping, but I'm reluctant to call it fun. It's satisfying. It's interesting. It's something I like to do. But I wonder how someone experiencing a deep depression feels when they hear that question.

Their honest answer might be something like, "Well, life just doesn't seem fun for me right now. What I'm planning to do is just get through the day and hope that tomorrow will be better."

Understand: I like to chat with employees at a checkout line, or wherever. It just seems to me that there's better conversation starters. Such as...

-- How's your day going? (That's open-ended, so I could say horrible, great, or anything in-between.)
-- Hi, hope your day is going well. (Even more open-ended, since it isn't a question.)
-- Hello. (Simple, traditional, probably my favorite greeting.)

Our favorite vegetarian "turkey" is Trader Joe's Turkey-Less Roast

Sorry, Tofurkey. Even though you're based in Oregon, where we also live, my wife and I have come to prefer Trader Joe's Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast to your Plant-Based Roast.

Having been a vegetarian for 50 years, I've tried every variety of fake turkey since they became available. Back in 2006 I bemoaned the loss of a Tofurkey competitor in "Now & Zen Unturkey has flown the coop."

What a Thanksgiving bummer! It looks like this beautiful creature is going extinct. Yes, this could be the last time a much beloved Now & Zen Unturkey graces our vegetarian table.

I had no problem buying this ungobbler a few days ago at LifeSource Natural Foods. But this disturbing page greeted me when I tried to access the Now & Zen web site. And the buzz over at Veggie Boards isn’t encouraging: Now & Zen is no more. Same message here.

Nor is there any cyberspace sign of Green Options, the company that reportedly bought the makers of the Unturkey.

I don’t believe it. In a world where there’s a jillion brands of cereal, how can we be left with only Tofurkey as a vegetarian alternative? The Unturkey kicks Tofurkey’s vegan butt. It’s chewier and has a remarkable crispy skin.

Over on MySpace Veronica isn’t happy about the demise of Now & Zen. Neither am I.

Tomorrow I’m heading to LifeSource to buy another Unturkey or two, if they still have any. I don’t want to have to go, well, cold turkey after we’ve finished eating what’s in the oven.

If there is a vegetarian god, hear my prayer: “Bring back the Unturkey. Quick! Definitely before next Thanksgiving. Put into some vegan entrepreneur’s mind the thought, Now & Zen’s products are too good to be lost. Yours in meatless devotion, Brian.”

Well, there must be a vegetarian god, since even though the Unturkey was never reincarnated, so far as I know, Trader Joe's has produced a meatless turkey that also kicks Tofurkey's vegan butt, for some of the same reasons.

The Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast, like the Unturkey, has a better texture than the overly soft Tofurkey. And I like the breaded crust of the Trader Joe's offering, though it doesn't mimic turkey skin as closely as the Unturkey did.

I bought three Turkey-Less Stuffed Roasts when I saw then in the refrigerated section of Trader Joe's recently. They're a seasonal item, sadly, so I stock up on them while they're available. 

One advantage of the Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast is that it doesn't come in the annoying plastic wrapping which "graces" the Tofurkey. I always had trouble getting that wrapping off. Of course, any vegetarian turkey is going to be hugely less time-consuming to prepare than a real turkey.

Last night I preheated our oven to 375 degrees, got out the defrosted Trader Joe's Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast, placed it on a baking pan, draped some aluminum foil over it loosely, and 45 minutes later had a tasty main course for our Thanksgiving dinner.

I did baste it with two tablespoons of olive oil mixed with 1/4 teaspoon of smoked paprika, an option described in the cooking directions for a Stuffed Roast that's cooked with vegetables. My wife and I ate quite a bit of the Stuffed Roast last night, had it again for dinner today, and there's still enough for at least one more meal for the two of us.

I do have a Tofurkey in the freezer that I bought at Salem's LifeSource Natural Foods this month, since I wasn't completely sure that Trader Joe's would carry the Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast again. But they did. I'm leaning toward cooking the Tofurkey when my vegetarian daughter and granddaughter come to visit us in late December. 

They'll enjoy it, as will I. However, I'll be thinking, "The Trader Joe's Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast is better."

Salem, we need to keep our local hardware stores alive

I'm a guilty Amazon Prime shopper.

Meaning, I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon because the selection is so great, as are the prices, and I usually get what I want in a few days, sometimes the next day. But I realize that local stores are at risk of going under with the steady rise of online shopping.

Hence, the guilt. Because I buy many books from Amazon, and have done so for a long time, I'm still feeling guilty about the demise of Jackson's Books way back when.

However, after reading a New York Times opinion piece about hardware stores suffering from Amazon competition, I had a pleasing sense of it won't be me that drives our local stores out of business, since I'm a frequent shopper at the south Salem Ace Hardware off of Madrona Street.

Still, the story got me worried. Here's how it starts out.

On Ninth Avenue in Manhattan, not far from where I live, there’s a small neighborhood hardware store called Chelsea Convenience Hardware, which is distinguished by its unlikely display of dozens of Russian nesting dolls in the storefront window. Inside, tools and supplies are piled to the ceiling, and when you enter, the owner, Naum Feygin, an immigrant from Boris Yeltsin’s Russia, looks up to ask you what you need.

The “convenience” in the store’s name is no misnomer, for the place is extraordinarily efficient. It is cheaper and faster than ordering from Amazon and offers expert advice that reduces the risk of buying the wrong thing. It is all too easy on Amazon, for example, to buy halogen bulbs that don’t fit your lamp base; Mr. Feygin has spared me many such headaches. And the store’s small size is a virtue: Unlike at Home Depot, you can be in and out in 10 minutes.

Nonetheless, Chelsea Convenience is set to close at the end of November, another casualty of rising commercial rents and competition from e-commerce. The closing is of no great economic significance, other than to Mr. Feygin. But it is a microcosm of the forces reshaping the United States economy, often paradoxically and for the worse. Why is a less efficient, less personalized and more wasteful way of buying screws and plungers — ordering online — displacing the local hardware store?

Tim Wu, who wrote the piece, offers up a variety of answers to that question. A concluding paragraph encapsulates a primary reason.

The fate of Chelsea Convenience shows, in its small way, that business and capitalism can be at odds — that the drive for immense capital gains can drain the life out of human-scale business. For entrepreneurs, the American economy, with its extreme centralization, is becoming more like the Soviet economy Mr. Feygim left behind.

l grew up in a small central California town that had a small hardware store akin to the Manhattan store Wu writes about. It was crammed with items, but somehow the owner could quickly find what a customer wanted amid all the chaotic messiness.

Downtown Salem's Saffron Supply is much more organized than that, but that store is pleasingly old-fashioned. I wrote about it back in 2004 in "I'm the king of the world!" After describing how the Saffron Supply staff helped me replace some plumbing parts, I ended with this passage.

The only awkward moment during my visit to Saffron Supply occurred when, in an effort to express my gratitude while the guy was writing up my purchase, I blurted out to him and several co-workers, “I could never get this sort of service at Fred Meyer or Lowe’s. You better never go out of business.”

There was no response at all to my comment, just a quick glance or two in my direction. I felt like maybe I was treading on sensitive ground. “Oh God,” I thought with more than a touch of remorse, “what if they are on the verge of going out of business?” Then I was brought back to the present moment.

“Would you like a bag?” “Sure, thank you.” My nine dollars worth of parts were put into a paper bag, the top carefully folded over, the handwritten receipt placed inside. It all felt really real. May Saffron Supply survive and prosper, and continue to produce kings of the world.

Along with other hardware stores in Salem. 

A few days ago my much-beloved Stihl backpack leaf blower wouldn't run properly. I'd gotten it in 2006, and have done a crappy job of maintaining it, so I should feel lucky it lasted this long. I decided it was time to get a new Stihl blower.

I phoned the South Salem Ace Hardware. They assured me they had a variety for me to choose from. When I got to the Stihl department at the back of the store, the guy standing there asked if I wanted to talk with the Stihl specialist.

"Absolutely," I said. Less than a minute later a tall lanky man appeared who, not surprisingly, expertly guided me through the Stihl leaf blower options. He told me that he had the same model I was considering, and liked it a lot.

Like me, he was familiar with the leafy deluge that comes with having many large oak trees on one's property.

And he pointed to a slightly less expensive leaf blower model that he said his neighbor bought, but was unhappy with, because it doesn't handle moist leaves very well, while the model he recommended had enough power to blow both moist and wet leaves.

I told him, "I'll buy it." He then said that for the modest price of a gallon of pre-mixed 50:1 fuel, I'd receive double the warranty period. To which I replied, "Great. Let's do it." 

He then pulled the Stihl leaf blower off the shelf, grabbed a fuel can, and took me outside the front door. 

There he added fuel, primed the blower, and started it up, giving me a few tips about how to use it in the process. After paying for the blower and driving home with it, I spent a pleasant 20 minutes or so testing it out, finding that it seemed both a bit quieter and more powerful than my current Stihl backpack blower.

Here's a photo of my new leaf blower friend. I spent two hours with it yesterday, finishing up the leaves that have finally stopped falling in our large rural south Salem yard. (In case you hate gas-powered leaf blowers, I've explained why using one is a necessity for us.)

I'd never buy a leaf blower from Amazon, of course.

But I have bought pre-mixed fuel from Amazon. For some reason I hadn't thought that Ace Hardware would carry TruFuel, but now I know that they do. So that's an item I'll be buying locally from now on. I don't want Salem's hardware stores to befall the fate of most of our book stores, driven out of business by Amazon.

After a string of 13-inch MacBook Pros, I'm enjoying the new 16-inch

I can't remember how many 13 inch MacBook Pro laptops I've owned. Five, maybe? I've used this marvelous computer for so long, they all blur together in a blend of great design, excellent software, and pleasing ergonomics.

Well, my late 2016 13-incher, shown on the right, is a notable exception in one regard: the keyboard. Along with countless (more or less) other MacBook Pro users, I encountered the dreaded repeating keystroke problem about six months ago. 

This common problem was caused by Apple inexplicably changing from a scissors-style keyboard that worked well to a butterfly-style keyboard that didn't -- apparently in Apple's attempt to make their laptops ever thinner and lighter.

Problem is, Apple forgot to make sure people like me could actually type on the keyboard. My problem was with the space bar, which obviously is a key key, so to speak, since it is used after every word.

It drove me crazy to find the keyboard on my 13-inch MacBook Pro inserting two or even three spaces when I clicked once on the space bar. I spent a large share of my writing time deleting the extra spaces, which obviously hurt the flow of my writing.

Some Googling revealed that Apple had issued a notice that enabled owners of malfunctioning keyboards to get it fixed at no cost. People said that often the problem recurred, though. So I decided to get a can of compressed air, turn my MacBook Pro upside down, and spray the heck out of the space bar.

That worked. Probably some specks of dirt, dust, or food had gummed up the space bar key. I then got a plastic keyboard cover via Amazon to keep more junk out of the keyboard, which is why the 13-inch keyboard in the photo above has non-black keys.

When I learned last week that Apple had released a 16-inch MacBook Pro with a different keyboard -- meaning, the same scissors-style keyboard that Apple had gone away from -- I decided to pull out my credit card and buy one.

Not just for the keyboard, though that was one reason. I also wanted to see what it would be like to use a laptop with a considerably larger screen. I've only been using the 16-inch MacBook Pro for a few days, but I'm liking it a lot.

Typing on the new 16-inch MacBook Pro feels better to me. Not sure why. Might be because the keys have more travel. And also because I'm no longer worried about them repeating. Sure, I've got a brand new computer with an old keyboard design, but at least Apple realized its mistake.

The speakers on the 16-inch MacBook Pro are vastly superior to my 13-inch. One of the first things I did was listen to a favorite Cream song on it, and the sound was great.

I'm enjoying the larger screen. Having read that Apple reduced the width of the bezel to fit a 16-inch screen in a 15-inch footprint, I decided to pass on the ridiculously expensive $200 leather sleeve that popped up as a purchase option when I ordered my new MacBook Pro, and ordered a $30 sleeve for a 15-inch MacBook Pro from Amazon.

It fits perfectly. And I'm pleased that the 16-inch machine fits in the backpack that I've been carting my 13-inch MacBook Pro around in.

Lastly, whenever I get a new MacBook Pro I'm much impressed with how easy Apple makes transferring documents, photos, videos, software, and such. The Migration Assistant is super easy to use. It only took a few hours to set up the 16-inch MacBook Pro over our home's wi-fi network.

So far I haven't encountered any problems with the 16-inch MacBook Pro. My sole temporary glitch was a familiar one: getting Gmail to play nice with Apple Mail. I kept putting in my Google password, and it kept being rejected, even though I knew the password was correct.

Eventually I got Gmail working on the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

I then noticed that I wasn't getting all of my emails on the new machine. It took me a while to realize that since both of my laptops were automatically checking for new emails, if one laptop got a message, it wouldn't be downloaded to the other one -- probably because they both were MacBook Pros rather than, say, an iPhone and an iPad.

Once I changed my 13-inch to manual checking for email, Gmail worked fine on the 16-inch.