Adaptive Curmudgeon

We had a “new cat situation” so I needed to make a cat house for the kitten. Frenemy the Tomcat wonders why I didn’t make a cat house for him.

Could I make a house entirely out of scrap wood I’d salvaged from pallet stock? I expended a ridiculous amount of labor. I wound up with this starting pile of material. I wasn’t displeased.

However, Mrs. Curmudgeon likes buying cat stuff from Amazon. I narrowly intercepted her en route to buy a second flat pack cat house. It was a close call. My plans for a zero budget cat shelter went out the window. Also Mrs. Curmudgeon politely requested I not “nail together some garbage that will be sitting by our door for a decade”.

Good point. I gave up and bought real wood. Almost like a normal person.

Mrs. Curmudgeon viewed my desire to build a cat house (rather than buying one) as if I were carrying around a lance looking for a windmill. The pressure was on. It had to be nice.

I “scrounged” a half sheet of 3/4″ plywood and perfectly good foam insulation from my “stockpile”. I was looking forward to “testing” my new miter saw and this house was going to be built like a brick shithouse!

Instead of knocking together a two by four cube, I used the pocket screw jig I’d bought to build my miter saw table. This is far too nice for any cat. Heck, it’s too nice for me.

I made it taller, so a water & food bowl can sit underneath.

The internal walls are 3/4″ plywood (with a nice finish!). The insulation is 1 1/2″ thick foam.

If I’m going to build a cat house it’s going to have internal walls. I split the footprint into two sections. One section is insulated where the cat hangs out. The other is the cat’s front room, where it’ll keep its boots and greet guests. That side is insulated on the floor and external wall but not the wall where the two external “doors” will be.

I designed for a front and a rear door. So the skittish kitten (who is already no longer skittish) will always have an escape avenue. I found my other cats always hated retreating to a place with only one entrance/exit. They only go in there when it’s bitter cold outside.

However, if you put a “hallway” with a front and rear door then if a threat (likely in this case the annoying Frenemy alley cat) gets in that hallway the cat is still pinned. Solution? Two levels! A front door with access to the lower level and a rear door with access to the top level. Anything that gets in there will have to maneuver while the threatened kitten could scoot away easy peasy.

Here’s the upper and lower entrance to the cat’s main quarters. I put a plywood floor between the two levels.

Here’s a top down photo. See that the entrance side has two levels?

The internal wall was fun to make but a PITA to install.

Did I radius the upper corners of the entrances? You’re damn right I did!

Sadly, this caused sadness. My very very old Sears jigsaw is just about dead. I think it’s at least 50 years old! It lasted long enough to build an entire boat(!) but nothing lasts forever. I think it’s about to give up the ghost. If anyone wants to contribute a handheld jigsaw I’ll name it after you and explain to my cat that a virtual human on a thing called the internet helped build the cat house. 🙂

The internal wall is not merely plywood. I wanted to insulate but it was a tight fit for 1 1/2″ foam and then 3/4″ plywood. I compromised with 1 1/2″ solid wood (really just some scraps of 2″x6″); which has “doorways” that are radiused too.

Notice I painted it? Hell yeah; two coats, inside and out! If you’re going to waste labor building something, it ought to be painted. Two coats of paint took way longer than you’d expect but it did look nice.

The outer wall was 1″x6″ tongue and groove. Way too nice for a cat but I wanted to try it on my miter saw. I reasoned that I could make the corners flawless and thus skip putting on trim.

You don’t know what you don’t know. What I now know is “flawless corners” is a PITA. You need trim! In one instance I screwed up so bad I called it a night as soon as I saw how I’d nuked my material (don’t fret… there was a smaller area where I could use the board).

I’m glad I painted the inside before I blocked it off with the outer wall. (This is the lower level entrance. I think it’s fairly predator proof.)

The siding went on pretty fast. I have a cheap Harbor Freight  nailgun I’ve hardly used. I had to buy it for one project where it was unavoidable. I finally got to test that on a self directed project.

I had hoped to not need trim but it sure looks pretty. I trimmed with 1″ x 4″ scraps I ripped to narrow strips.

Even better when painted. (Notice the rear entrance is up high… it goes to the second level.)

Then came the roof. I was actually worried it was too insulated. It’s a zillion times more well built and insulated than our house! I decided to forgo overbuilding the roof.

I used the last bit of 3/4″ plywood and found some shingles left over from redoing a part of my roof like a million years ago. I even found sheet metal roofing screws which I’d saved for who knows how many years. It’s not the perfect use of a sheet metal screw on an asphalt shingle but I think it’s “up to code” for a cat shelter.

(I was low on paint so I didn’t paint the underside of the roof, which will probably haunt my dreams but no cat will ever care or notice.)

Now it’s setup near our door. The kitten, of course, doesn’t give a shit. He’s sitting on my chair. (In his mind it’s his chair.)

Those eyes… that’s the look of a cat that is fixin’ to commit mayhem any second now.

Yep, that’s it. He found a bag of treats and went full maniac.

Here he is attacking the dog. (Don’t fret, the dog is the size of a freight train, she can handle it.)

Happy Memorial Day y’all.

A.C.

I’m only human. Look at how damn cute that critter is. Of course it manipulates me. It gets what it wants.

I already have a cat. It’s an elder cat and it’s been ordered to stay the hell out of the house (not just me, but also Mrs. Curmudgeon says so). We live in a climate that’s like Greenland but with better hunting. Then what?

I cycled through several solutions over the years. I started by outfitting a “stall” in the chicken coop (complete with a cat door). That worked well until I eased out of the chicken hobby.

For years after the chickens (the damn cat will live forever!) I made makeshift structures from straw bales. I made a new one every winter. Straw is a great insulator and cats like them but I spent all winter fretting over heat lamps. I worried I’d burn the farm down. (The chicken coop had heat lamps too but that’s part of the “joy” of winter chicken coops and it’s maintained daily. The straw bales just felt like a wick about to blow.)

Another note, I maintain for the cat (and apparently all the cheeky elements of the nearby forest ranging from cute chickadees to infernal skunks) a heated water bowl. It never freezes. Water is key!

It was all very cheap and ad hoc and stupidly labor intensive… like me. What we needed was a cat house.* In January 2023 that’s exactly what we bought. We (and by “we” I mean Mrs. Curmudgeon who has a lot more sense than I) bought a GDLF Outdoor Cat House Feral Cat Enclosure 100% Insulated All-Round Foam Weatherproof Solid Wood Large Size for Multiple Felines 34.5″ L*21.5″ W*27.2″ H.

We paid about $150 for the object. I was appalled at the cost but I’m unreasonably cheap. It came as a flat pack from God knows where. It’s made of the cheapest materials known to man. On the other hand, it held up for 3 winters. The elder cat for which we bought it seems to like it.

Inexplicably, the same damn thing is now $100. Why is it $50 cheaper? I’ve no idea! Nothing is cheaper in 2026 than not-inflation adjusted 2023 except apparently cat shelters. Such are the mysteries of buying shit that was made in China.

Anyway… it works. The elder cat is our responsibility and the shelter took care of its needs. I’m not as gruff as I sound, I care about the damn cat. Many of the coldest nights of very cold winters I slog my ass out into the gloom and check on a heat lamp crammed in the wood box and the heated water bowl (which is a miracle). Mrs. Curmudgeon is not worried. She stays happily nestled under warm blankets by the fire. My worried mind is never correct. The shelter does its job well. I’d find our asshole, annoying, ungrateful, wretch of an elder cat curled up and snoozing though the worst of blizzards.

This year, I upgraded. I swapped the fire hazard heat lamp for a battery heating blanket. It works great. The lamp never worked great except when dangling from a chain in a chicken coop. It also tends to blow the bulb which is why I always ran more than one lamp for the birds. With only one lamp I fret it’ll go out on a -35f night and I’ll find a cat-sickle the next morning.

There is another cat. “Intruder cat” is not my responsibility. He’s a stray. I don’t like him. He doesn’t like me. Sometimes he’d try to kick my cat out of its shelter. That’s not OK! I’d remind him that I own a boomstick.

Don’t get all “internet” on me; I didn’t shoot him… but I sure as hell chased his ass off the farm with implied violence. Over time, “Intruder cat” made peace with our cat and got renamed “Frenemy”. He wanders off for months at a time; which I like.

“once you have paid him the Danegeld. You never get rid of the Dane.“

Because I didn’t nut up and blow Frenemy to kingdom come, he repaid me with more hassles. He got lucky somewhere and dropped the resulting kitten into my life. It became my problem.

I tried to name the kitten “Half check” and keep him outdoors. It’s not a bad idea. However, the little beast has the ability to teleport. He’s now called “Schrodinger”. He lives inside the house. He bosses everyone around.

Before he moved inside (and only grudgingly consented to let me live in his house) I was building him a shelter. In my defense, it is a hell of a shelter.

Here are some photos:

Frenemy teaching his kitten Schrodinger life skills… like stealing food meant for our cat.

“See here boy, watch the horizon for threats while I feast on this loser’s food.”

A perfectly good cat house. Plenty of room for two cats. With indoor heat once it’s winter.

The kitten was a fast learner. I thought I had photos of him and our pre-existing elder cat sharing the shelter but I couldn’t find one. I was happy with this arrangement but the kitten soon learned to teleport.

This is the super awesome, incredibly insulated, luxury cat condo I built. It was done after Schrodinger learned to teleport. The elder cat stays in his accustomed (and heated!) house. My structure is like a bad real estate deal in China; looks awesome but so far has never hosted a tenant.

I’ve been fiddling with my files. More cute cat photos will ensue.

A.C.

*Am I the only one that has a different association with the word “cathouse“?

Last fall, God decided I was too calm and contented. I needed another cat to “stir the pot”.

Therefore, a kitten spontaneously generated in my woodpile. It’s almost certainly the offspring of an asshole Tomcat that hangs around sometimes. There’s no sign of a female cat, nor any other survivor kittens. The Tomcat ain’t answering questions.

I’m not sure if our kitten is the sole survivor of a disaster or he’s a lucky explorer who completely cast off mom and siblings. I presume he followed dad into a cold windstorm. I don’t know if this was an act desperation or a stupid thing a kitten did for no reason. His odds for survival were small; but once I heard him meowing from the woodpile he’d won the game of life. The world is his to conquer. Just ask him, he’ll tell you.

I was doomed. The critter took over our household! It was immediately “adopted” by Mrs. Curmudgeon and I followed suit. You can’t fight the power of cute! We fed the stray kitten and once you do that… you’ve got a cat.

I asserted the little cretin would be an “outside cat”. I posted about it in October:

• Well That Didn’t Go As Planned
• Pics Or It Didn’t Happen: Kitten Edition

Of course it didn’t stay an “outside cat”. Somehow, and I still don’t know how, the little bastard learned how to break into our house.

Our house is a drafty old run down farmhouse so there are lots of nooks and crannies. I’m shocked that a damn cat can ingress and egress but mice and such break in constantly (and some chipmunks, leading to the Chipmunk Battle of Spring 2026). I thought I’d patched any hole that would allow something as big as a kitten to pass. Apparently not.

I tried. I really tried. After tossing the critter back outside a few times and having it rematerialize in the house I gave up. I have no idea how the beast was doing his magic.

It’s less that it could get in through some hole and more like it could teleport. Besides, if God decided I needed a cute cat, who am I to complain?

Mrs. Curmudgeon and I spent the Christmas holiday with the little devil purring contentedly one lap or the other. It napped with me by the woodstove; heated by wood cut off my own land (at great physical effort). I couldn’t help but like him.

Sometimes it freaked out and tore through the house; attacking everything in sight. I even like that too. It terrorized our 100 pound guardian dog, who rightfully could have eaten it in one gulp; but now they’re friends.

My theory is the kitten was helping us avoid becoming complacent and immobile during the cold winter. Regardless, the kitten did (or has or continues to) make itself inevitable.

• The Christmas Cat Attack
• Video Representation Of The Cat Attack
• Obligatory Cute Kitten Photos

All that stuff is the background to a project I started in November, abandoned all winter, and finished last week. I set out to make a cat shelter (basically a doghouse for a cat). It was meant for the “outdoor kitten” lest he freeze his little balls off in the winter cold.

We have a similar shelter for our old retired barn cat. It is a very nice shelter. It has electric heat!

For a while the old cat and the kitten got along and shared the shelter. I took my time building a second shelter. It would be larger and more insulated and have a dual level “escape exit”. What feral kitten wouldn’t want an escape exit? (Partly I wanted to “learn” construction skills with tongue and groove wood.)

I was too slow. The kitten go tired of having a roommate. He elected to level up. He teleported inside our house! I don’t know how he did it but he did.

So I quit the project and let the cat nap by the fire. I got busy making sawhorse jigs. I’m easily distracted.

Anyway, I finally got the structure built. I have excuses for the delay. My shop is usable but unpleasant in winter. I’ve been through many weeks of travel and two colds. But mostly, the kitten was already in the house and snoozing by the woodstove, so why rush?

It’s an impressive, overbuilt, foolishly engineered cat shelter. It’s setup and ready to go. Our kitten could teleport outdoors and move in… but right now he’s asleep snuggled against our guardian dog. Knowing my luck that shelter will wind up occupied by something else. Disco wielding squirrels? A wolverine? Anything is possible.

I’ll post photos tomorrow.

Join me today as I skate on thin ice. I’m going to recommend a book that’s enjoyable fluff. I have an ulterior motive I’ll mention at the end.

I recommend Beware of Chicken: A Xianxia Cultivation Novel by Casualfarmer.

Is it an excellent work of literature? Nope. Is it deep? Nope!

Then why read it? Because it’s amusing, because it’s OK to read literature’s equivalent of “junk food”, and because it’s good natured. That last part is important. There’s enough doom scrolling & dark foreboding out there. We all benefit from things that have not a single word about America’s corrosive politics. Read about the damn chicken… you’ll be glad you did.

Also, craftily hidden in the humor and fluff is a honest and surprisingly meaningful concept. (More on that later.)

Get your posturing out of the way now. We all know you’re way too smart to read fluff. You plan to read good stuff. You’ve got a copy of Meditations but you haven’t gotten around to it. You tell people you liked Ulysses (but you’re not fooling anyone, nobody liked Ulysses… not that I know because I didn’t even pretend to read it). You might have enjoyed Atlas Shrugged and wish someone would chat with you about it, but every time you mention Ayn Rand people get skeeved out. Fine, you read deep stuff too.

Now put your ego away and read some crap… but pick the better of the genera. Please. Because I want to talk about it and nobody will understand why I’m blathering about a talking rooster. (Go ahead and make a joke about “cock”. You know you want to.)

First of all this is a “cultivator novel”. I didn’t know what “cultivator novel” meant when I started reading. It’s a genera that would have caused my high school teacher, who is part of the idea of Edna Campset (the Grammarian / the Inspector in my Squirrels draft) to toss my ass out of the room.

That’s ok. We’re all adults here and we’ve got nothing to prove. Most of us have watched stupid shit on Netflix so why not read something that’s stupid on the surface but mildly deeper as you ponder. Also, cancel Netflix, those guys suck.

You just have to accept the book is what it is. And then have fun.

I’ll muddle through a rough explanation. Cultivator novels “follow a pattern”. The protagonist starts weak and gets strong… often inhabiting new bodies over time or progressing spiritually. This is usually pasted over a Medieval / Fantasy setting with some monsters; Fae or Dragons or Demons or some shit. Swords are required. There are magic potions. You get where I’m going.

The levels can be ridiculously pedantic. I mean like they hit you over the head with levels of progression.

I think this is a generational thing. It’s definitely a “youth” thing. What do I know? I’m a geezer and it’s their genera. I think younger generations effortlessly default to thinking like a video game, or Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying, or Pokemon(?), or Magic the Gathering. This doesn’t break their willing suspension of disbelief that a guy has “leveled up” or has “hit points” or “mana” (I feel like like that’s a Magic the Gathering thing that’s everywhere now). Anyway “digital / game kids” rock through “cultivation” like nobody’s business but I, an older mind from the analog age, took a bit of coaxing to roll with it.

The “cultivation” backdrop is often a combination of Asian “mythology” with swords and sorcery. Sometimes with an AI or a video game framework… because why not? I didn’t say it was Shakespeare!

Of course the main character cultivators can be nerds. They gradually grind out enormous power. I presume the audience is nerds. Nothing wrong with that. Harry Potter was a bit of a dweeb at first too. He didn’t get to be an awesome wizard on day one… he had to get bullied by Malfoy a bit to make the story work.

Nothing is subtle. It doesn’t have to be. We live in a world where actual grownups watched two decades of Marvel Universe. (I’m so old I liked Zorro and the Lone Ranger when I was a kid… at least the horses were realistic.) We’ve all enjoyed stories where a dude in tights get his ass pummeled by a supervillain who’s got a flying robot or some shit. Then, when the chips are down, the superhero gets his awesome on. He beats that dang robot and he’s now an even awesomer leveled-up superhero. It’s in every movie that wasn’t ruined by a girlboss that started out perfect because of shut-up-for asking-about-it.

You watched Iron Man fight Thanos over a magic glove. You’re not too adult to roll with a cultivator novel.

It does get extra funky during fight scenes. I mock it like this:

“The evil wizard that just attacked is a level 4 beastmaster! He has six minion weasels that are sentient, poisonous, and weigh 200 kilos each. One just tore my warhorse in half! The wizard himself can blow a mountain down with his left nostril!

But I’ve got a chance! The wizard doesn’t know I’ve got a potion of ‘weaselploding’ and I haven’t skipped leg day in 286 years!

I sneak behind him and perform my special move ‘super, ultra, extremely graphic, disembowel’! It works! The wizard’s head flies off and the weasels flee in terror.

I have now leveled up to ‘galactic brass balls’ level. I will never die and I can see infrared! Girls will like me now.”

I said to roll with it… this ain’t Hamlet. Enjoy the ride. Be happy.

One more thing, buy several books. They’re super fast reads. It’s just for fun so I tend to crush a book in a night or two.

These are the books in that series that I’ve read so far:

• Beware of Chicken: A Xianxia Cultivation Novel
• Beware of Chicken 2: A Xianxia Cultivation Novel
• Beware of Chicken 3: A Xianxia Cultivation Novel
• Beware of Chicken 4: A Xianxia Cultivation Novel

Clever titles eh? There are several. I’ll read the rest sooner or later. I should also mention that there’s a whole bunch of back to the land homesteading in it too. (Which I love!)

Imagine Little House on the Prairie but occasionally they get attacked by monsters.

You might want to use your kindle. I know we’re all outliers and we want to stay as analog as one can be. But there’s no point being foolish about it. Unless you use a flip phone and a FAX you might as well accept E-books. They’re good on the eyes, cheap to buy, and don’t clutter the house. Also, one reads cultivator novels like you eat Pringles. Just rip it open and blast through volumes. You’ll pay for the kindle itself in one 5 book series. Or don’t, read any way you want and it’s still better than drooling in front of the TV.

Now that I’ve outed myself as a reader of fluff (sometimes), I’ve set the stage for the discussion I really want. A main character in the ensemble cast is a rooster of uncanny nobility… yes he’s a cock… go ahead and laugh.

I like that character. He makes me happy!

Fa Bi De (that’s the name of the rooster) is not merely a launch and go cardboard cutout. (Wonder about the name? The book is vaguely Chinese style as written by a dude in Canada. Also it has to do with the nickname Big-D.)

Fa Bi De gains sentience. I wonder sometimes how much sentience I see in people in the real world. Fa Bi De immediately endeavors to self improve. Way to go! He does all the shit we should do but (generally) don’t!

Unlike the realm of the book, our “real” world is a crushed, battered, simulacrum of a better, more spiritually based one. The rooster does not have our cynical, limiting, defeatism. He legitimately shows the process of self-realization.

Sure, it’s a silly novel and the talking spirit animal was meant to satirize the genera but it came out better that you’d expect. I find it rather inspiring. The author accidentally (?)  created the best example of “show don’t tell” I’ve seen in years. Fa Bi De acts, thinks, behaves, and endeavors… better than us. It feels good!

A rooster deliberately seeking wisdom is the secret sauce that Tony Stark and his ilk never found. Maybe it’s just too much to ask of a CGI movie?

It’s all about the chicken. That’s why I recommend the book.

It’s worth a read, especially for that character.

I had some stuff about which I wanted to blog. Thoughts of import I was eager to put to text. Alas, life had ideas of its own. Sometimes the best you can do is “ride it out”.

Here’s my update of “riding it out”.

Not long after I returned from my travels, I picked up a cold. I’ve been sniffling along with that for several days. Nothing serious but I find it hard to think when ill. No thinkin’ means no bloggin’. These things happen. Sometimes they have to happen.

Another thing that “had” to happen was a hardware upgrade. I acquired Starlink to overcome my rural ISP’s um… decline. The decline was as predictable as the sun rising in the east.

I had shitty DSL some years back. Then some fund somewhere dumped what I called “Obamabux” on my rural county. I didn’t ask for the boondoggle but I did benefit from it. Improved service was deeply appreciated if not a wise capitalist use of funds.

However, “investing” in the finest infrastructure isn’t “investment” if it’s just pissing tax dollars away. I think it was a grant or whatever. Eventually, the ribbon ceremonies are over and the big cash infusion is depleted. Monkeys are left in charge after the money flow has passed. The system reverts to the mean.

I’m not saying my county is as far down the rabbit hole as South Africa (Los Angeles?). We don’t strip the copper from buildings! But a place as sparse as mine doesn’t always have the best human resources. Nor do we have hordes of people demanding (or paying for) huge bandwidth. We’re on the spectrum of “ignorable”.

The fiber optic that was laid (probably with great subsidy) to my homestead is just as good as it ever was, but the local workforce to maintain it just can’t keep the plates spinning. It got worse and worse but only gradually. Inch by inch the enshittification continued. I hardly realized how terrible it had gotten. Finally, I pulled my head out of my ass and made the change.

It is better to adapt than complain, and it make sense for me to outsource my service to literally anywhere more populous and advanced than where I live. I went for two way satellite on the grounds that a call center in Bangalore and a low orbit satellite is better than Gladys at the local ISP who talked the boss into hiring her grandson Hunter… who is barely capable of installing Windows but impressed Gladys who still can’t operate her TiVo. I’ve had too many conversations with “Hunter” and wanted out.

Elon, you magnificent bastard, I hope you build more rockets with my monthly payment. Keep it up until NASA itself weeps in despair at their fallen status as “rounding error”!

I haven’t yet mounted the antenna to the roof. Right now it’s propped on a woodpile. It runs about 300% faster than my local ISP.

A second “had to happen” event is some brush-hog work. I have a place that’s weeds 7′ tall. It’s a mess! Given my cold, I wasn’t physically fit enough to do much, but I hitched my brush hog to the tractor and ran around in circles as best I could. There’s a nearly empty Kleenex box in my tractor! Ick!

I did more than nothing, which is good enough. It’s an ideal biological window for such things. Right now that species of weeds are “easy pickings”. I can (and probably will) get back in there in June but by then it’ll be a real battle. Getting the upper hand now is wise.

While I was grinding back and forth and squinting through bleary eyes, I had the radio on. It is the absolute peak of “spring fire season” and the radio wouldn’t shut the hell up about it.

There’s a period of time when the grass is all dead from winter and new healthy grass hasn’t “greened up”. It’s pain in the ass. If the dead grass dries just right and there’s an ignition in just the worst spot and if there’s a stiff breeze to drive it… all hell can break loose.

The trick is to hang tight until things green up. It’s only a brief window. Just cool your jets and wait it out!

Adding to the drama, there was a big windstorm last year. It knocked down a lot of trees. Much but not all of it is cleared up. A fast moving fire of dry light materials could touch off the far heavier and difficult to extinguish fuels of downed timber… and that would suck.

I say it would suck because I’m not an asshole and I don’t like unnecessary destruction. I wonder if the opposite is the case in other minds?

Part of why I was brush hogging a bunch of tall but very burnable weeds was to eliminate (reduce) a risk. I turned a hazard into a not-hazard. The area I “managed” wouldn’t burn if you napalmed it now. Yay me!

After brush hog work I did some disking. The radio kept bitching at me that I ought not be doing stupid fire stuff. Which is annoying because anyone stupid enough to set off fireworks and pour gas on shit and generally misbehave ain’t gonna’ listen to radio warnings. Hell, there are people that fuck up and start fires that burn their own house trailers down. If “all your shit is gone” ain’t enough warning what is?

As I worked the tractor and sneezed thought my cold, I realized I had it all wrong. If you listen to the radio just right… it’s more like the people who benefit from fire funding are stroking a giant hard on. They’re hoping for the “big one”. They want it to happen!

I don’t think they’re going to get their wish. Thank God!

The grass is already starting to look green. It’s not overly dry. Things aren’t too bad. I think the “once in a lifetime” combination of spring fires borne of light fuels touching off big hot fires in blowdowns… just might not happen. It’s too wet.

Shucks! There might not be an orgy of spending. How sad!

I wrote some of this a few days ago. Since then it’s gotten a lot warmer. Also the wind picked up. If some fucknut creates an ignition today… yowzah!

I still have the cold but I was loading shit in my truck for a dump run. Then the wind went ape!

My Starlink antenna blew off the woodpile. Whoops. I’d better mount that better.

I gave up on my outside activities. Set the Starlink right and went inside to ride out the storm. I’m typing this as it happens.

What a doozy! The gusts are crazy. But now it’s raining. Huzzah!

There goes the last dream of a budget builder of a fire. I didn’t rain much but it doesn’t take a lot to “green up” vegetation. I think everything is going to be OK.

I’m glad because it’s still windy.

Whoa! Now I’m on generator power.

No shit. It just happened.

Grid went down, generator fired up. Nice to pass a real world test.

I guess it was REAL WINDY… somewhere.

I’m going to post this asap. Also, take a moment to savor this post:

You’re reading the random thoughts of a dude typing on a cheap computer using a whole house generator during a power outage. The post was sent directly from a hole in the power grid to satellite because the local ISP can suck it.

Everything about the situation amuses me. Country boy can survive!

Have a good day y’all.

As I wrote this Red Barchetta: Part 2 I thought about my rural life and how they’re pushing self driving for urban crowded streets. This is because driving on urban crowded streets sucks, but it’s a hard challenge. It’s possibly the worst place to try mixing unusual vehicles.

My daily driver is Dodge Ram 3500 dually; truly a Goliath machine. I regularly pass one horse Amish buggies. We’re on the same road. I wave to them. They wave to me. We have no enmity.

Say it again; the biggest truck you can buy (non-commercial) and a buggy from 1830 already share the road.

I’m a rural guy, I pass all sorts of weird shit on the road; like farm tractors and combines. Combines are enormous! It’s no big deal to us. ATVs and snowmobiles zoom around in the ditches adjacent to the roads. We don’t care. It wouldn’t be weird to pass a combine, an ATV, and a horse drawn buggy on the same road.

It’s not the same in a city. A horse and buggy clopping down the Strip in Las Vegas would wreak havoc! Imagine a tracked tractor pulling a big ass planter. Imagine the planter towing a bulk tank of anhydrous ammonia. Imagine the farmer’s kid following up that rolling assemblage with a side by side to get Dad back home. All of this driving right over the shit the horse just left! I’ve already seen that. Rural places can and have tolerated diverse machines forever.

To us it’s just a road and we just use it. Hay wagons and tractor trailers and horse buggies and motorcycles and dump trucks and people out walking their dog… all at once. There’s less bullshit. Cities will fight over “zoned for self driving” lanes (which is really the feeding frenzy over who gets to control how many millions of dollars of “technology funding”). Think about how much they’ve pissed away on cycling lanes. Cities will vomit forth reams of regulation, all sorts of licensing, official software updates(!), all the things government does to fuck things up.

For the hinterland self-driving is already “good enough” technology. A self driving car trundling down a rural two lane blacktop isn’t any weirder than a horse. I hope ti happens. I don’t want to see lawyers and politicians fuck up another bright future. I know people like to stampede over cliffs whenever a new idea appears, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In the long run it might be fine. Perhaps some day I’ll toss a recently shot elk into the cabin of a self driving vehicle? Wouldn’t that be a hoot!

Of course, I’ll still keep my truck and motorcycles!

[This is a follow up to a post from two weeks ago.]

I rode a driverless Zoox in Las Vegas. I wanted to see if “self driving” hype is for real.

First observation, I hate that self driving cars are intended to look like shit! CEOs of self-driving (and most EV) companies just hate pretty things. It’s like some douchebag in a suit kicks in the door and screams at engineers: “Make it look like Tupperware fucked a Lego and then birthed a lunchbox.”

Looking at that gimped out loaf of bread on wheels I secretly hoped it would suck. I like operating real machinery. I savor the skill of driving my vehicle well. It’s not just about getting from A to B; I think a lot about freedom. Also, a dude that willingly rides a motorcycle in the rain isn’t chickenshit about risk in traffic.

So that’s the first thing. A driverless car is a mirror. It shows you yourself. Your initial reaction to driverless cars matches how much as you like or hate driving.

The Zoox completely eliminated any pleasure I’d get from piloting my own vehicle. It eliminated any stress I’d get out of the same activity. People’s opinions about “self driving” are predictable and grouped. Commute in miserable city gridlock? You’re likely to go all in on “driverless”. Ride fast, know how to use a clutch, like to explore off road, or enjoy polishing chrome? You’re likely to detest the idea.

Anyway summoning a Zoox on the Las Vegas “strip” was a pain in the ass but that’s only because I’m a Curmudgeon. You need a smartphone surgically implanted in your head. (I’m exaggerating but only a little.) You need the app installed. You need to let the app know banking info. You need to let the app know location info. You you need to spread your cheeks for the probe, etc…

That shit pisses me off but it’s normal. Everyone else already lets their smartphone know everything. So Zoox is no different than the rest of the modern world.

Next thing is it was a pain in the ass to summon a Zoox to a useful location. It came only to certain places and would drop off at only certain places. And it would come only if was damn well ready to do so. Otherwise I’d say “please pick me up” and it would say “fuck you, I’m busy” and that was that. (It was more polite than that but only a little.)

I finally managed to summon one to pickup point A. I was a few blocks away. It bitched at me. “You’re not at Point A, you’d better fuckin’ run.” I ran. I got there in time.

The pickup point was jointly positioned for taxis, Uber, Zoox, and (I think) valet. When the Zoox showed up it only opened for me (or rather my phone). This is where it became so much better than mass transit like a bus.

I looked around the pickup point. One dude was so drunk I thought he’d barf. Another one reeked like he was birthed by Cheech and Chong. A couple was nearby, semi-drunk, half dressed, and not far from doing it in the streets and scaring the horses. Public transport necessarily involves a scrum of dipshits I’d rather avoid.

Self driving is a partial solution to the low trust society we are creating. You know what ain’t happening on a Zoox? This:

The machine drove smooth. Perfect actually. I’m going to say it was probably safer than a human.

When a tipsy woman stepped across the median on the strip(!) it slowed down and gave a wide berth. It should have had a recorded message to simulate a taxi driver: “Get off the fuckin’ road ya lunatic! I’m drivin’ here!”

We were locked in a little bubble of “safe”. Compared to light rail or a bus it’s a clear win. There are no meth heads, freaks, and murderers in the vehicle you hired for yourself. This may be the thing that makes them rise in popularity until they eat Uber for lunch.

Once you’re in a Zoox you’re in it. The doors close and you are no longer in control of anything. It’s a prison on wheels… but a nicely appointed one. The AC was great. There was an audio stream and you could pick your own music or turn it off.

Obviously, it could get dystopian fast. It doesn’t have to be a James Bond supervillain’s plan or HAL refusing to open the pod bay doors. Our existing commercial infrastructure is already evil. Corporations will do to you what you allow them to do and it’ll surely be annoying. “Our records show you were near the riot last week. You’re going to the nearest police station to explain why you’re an insurrectionist.” “As a white male, you will pay more for this ride.” “Records show you haven’t paid your taxes this year, you’ll be transported to the authorities.” “We have detected a MAGA hat, the ride stops here and you must leave the vehicle. Hater!”

How about this terror: “While you ride please enjoy this mandatory infomercial about our favorite brand of toilet bowl cleaner.”

All of that sounds ridiculous, but you were there in 2020. I don’t know if there ever was a “norm” beyond which things are “unthinkable” but there isn’t now. “Please provide your vaccination identification to complete this ride”.

When you’re not in control you’re not in control.

It would absolutely improve the life of people who can’t drive. Old people need to get to WalMart. Kids need to get to school. Maybe we can coax the fucknut with six DUIs out of his car?

How about special situations where you’re temporarily unable to drive? Zoox would be perfect to get a drunk back to their hotel. There have been times when I’ve needed a doctor but was in no shape to drive. Zoox might be perfect for “feeling bad but not ambulance bad”.

We’re still focusing on dweebs commuting to cubicles when there are so many possibilities. If I wanna’ go backpacking in the middle of nowhere, why not a driverless ride? One trip to drop me and my gear at the trailhead. A different one to pick me up on the other side of the ridge two days hence.

Could one be mildly hardened against civil unrest? Driverless supply of materials to cops? Or cops themselves? Driverless evacuation of injured people from mass accidents?

It already recognized it as a plastic prison; lets explore that idea. Consider cops using one. If you’ve The Joker in handcuffs you need a squad car to handle him but many times it’s a lesser issue. A tweaked Zoox could haul a low level dipshit college student protester or some dickhead who got in a bar fight. A self driving vehicle could haul a minimum risk offender straight to the jail for processing. During riots use a fleet of them, toss jackoffs in the vehicle, hit go, and line up the next vehicle. It takes care of that person completely and humanely. It gets them out of the crowd without depleting cop manpower. Right now we aggregate hyped up radical spazzes in a big handcuffed herd. It’s almost the worst possible way to defuse angry mentally ill whackjobs. Perhaps fifteen individual Zoox cars with a single dipshit in each would be better? A ten minute ride with nice air conditioning and quiet (and most importantly separation from peer pressure) might allow a person some cool down time?

Conclusion, driving on the road felt like a “solved” problem. At the moment it’s limited in scope but that’s just while it goes through growing pains and the rabid lawyer phase. Think of the limited scope as any other vehicle that limits it’s range of motion.

Zoox is a personal trolley car that runs on rails of software.

I didn’t hate it. The Genie won’t go back in the bottle. The machine drives well enough. It sure as hell beats riding with a seething mass of humanity on a bus. It could be used for evil.. and it will. It can be used for good… and it will.

What matters most is the degree to which the technology is voluntary. In a perfect world, passengers of driverless cars should have nothing against human drivers. Rednecks and gearheads rolling around with 33″ Super Swampers or restored Studebakers would have not reason to bitch about driverless cars. They could (and should) happily ignore each other; even on the same road.

Will they? Of course not! Americans are not mature enough to peacefully let both solutions persist simultaneously. I’m not sure any human society is that mature.

A.C.

I’m back!

I’ve been “on the road” much of the last six weeks. I posted in dribs and drabs when I could but technological hurdles finally got the best of me. Eventually I just called it and went largely off line.

I regret lugging heavy laptops. They were mostly for naught. Quixotic efforts to keep my smart phone on a leash are a greater hassle every year and this year might be a tipping point. To me a phone is a phone; at best a toy for playing in someone else’s sandbox. Meanwhile, a computer is (if one is so inclined) a tool for creation. I see now that most people do not create and therefore have no idea what I’m talking about. I can do just about anything I want while traveling in my personal vehicle (cash is fine), but once you’ve been separated from your vehicle (such as by an airplane) everyone hangs on the infernal glass slab and avoiding it gets hard.

I’ve been in something like ten states and a province. I learned I was wildly incorrect about the borders of certain Canadian provinces… though nothing dramatic happened.

I’ve used every common form of transport. I’ve gone several thousand miles each, in all sorts of technology; my truck (which is now in the garage for “Dodge-related minor repairs”), commercial flights, and (notably) a cruise ship. Despite my best efforts I couldn’t avoid the “third party” bullshit methods of transport commonly inflicted on the traveler; shuttles, busses, Ubers, taxis, a self driven car, urban light rail, some sort of pointless casino tram, airport trams, those Jetsons moving sidewalks, and lots and lots of walking. So much walking. Lots of fuckin’ walking.

Hell, I even paddled a kayak.

Was it worth it? Yeah. Travel is usually good. I did some for the purpose of attending to needful things. That which needed doing is done for now. I did some in happy exploration; which is definitely more my style. Some of it was simply because I got a chance to do a thing on the cheap. Regardless the reason, travel is good for you, provided it’s not overdone. Overdone, it’s brutal.

Overdone was definitely on the horizon. I was beat when I returned. We’ve all been there. Travel a glass of whiskey, the first sip is bliss but in excess you’ll hurl your guts out.

In keeping with my personality and finances… I did everything on the cheap. Extremely so. I didn’t quite hobo my way around the nation clinging to a boxcar* but I didn’t dig a debt hole and throw myself into it. (*Speaking of which, I was always of the opinion that most men dream of a bit of “hobo-ing” just like every young boy thinks he’d like to be a pirate. I’ve since been informed the two are not analogous. In fact nobody under 40 even knows the word “hobo”.)

I think I’ve got “travel” out of my system for a while. I’m back in my comfort zone and I feel like staying there. I already cancelled the next (much smaller planned trip). I had visions of returning to my icebox home climate to find it in full springtime glory. At first I thought I’d jet away on a nice motorcycle / camping trip. Then I thought I’d sneak away for a simple easy overnight camp. Then I looked at my bed and reasoned “it’s cold out there… I own a house for a reason” and slept for most of three days.

One last thought. A man goes through eras in life. I think I’ve entered a new one. I found myself sitting quietly, observing, thinking, pondering. Like the world at large is a puzzle to be observed but a scrum that no longer needs my participation.

I’ll explore this more as my head has time to level. All I can say is that I’m happy that my fellow human can run about like monkeys doing stupid shit; gambling, and drugs, and drinking, and sex, and profligate spending, probably a dozen other things I’m forgetting to mention. But I was of a mood to sit under a tree and contemplate. As a younger man I’d have picked my favorite vice (drinking) and gone at it with professional level abandon. Now, in a different phase of life, it feels different. Dear God, did I somehow attain wisdom? How pretentious of me!

Anyway, I’ll report more later. But for now I think I’ll catch up on sleep.

Thanks for waiting for me.

A.C.

I’ve been on sojourn in the land of the Lotus Eaters. It has been as excellent and odd as any sojourn should be. Nothing makes me happier than a rambling journey.

My plans to blog mid-trip didn’t play out well. Also my home ISP is “in flux”; so even when I return to my little muddy homestead I’ll be “offline adjacent”. These things are additive not concurrent. I’m at least three days out, or more; only then will I get to the challenge of “offline adjacency”.

So, I am coming back… just not yet. Odysseus won’t have to drag my ass back to the oar-seat and chain me down. I like my oars. Lotus is good but I was made for venison. Rest is excellent but I was never meant to be idle.

As a Major Tom with the wherewithal to pull his head out his ass and key the damn microphone, I’ll get back eventually. In the meantime I appreciate your patience.

Until I resolve some technical issues I’m super off line. See y’all again when I get my shit together.