Oops

So I started reading a study guide for a job I applied for. I'm astoundingly ignorant on DC electrical. Yes, I haven't had need to use it since college, but its rare for me to forget so much. If colleges actually taught skills instead of whatever it is they're doing these days, folks might have been inventing stuff that mattered. This country might even matter. Instead I'm staring at all this electricity stuff and realizing I don't remember how it works anymore. I feel a degree of shame.

I'm working through the pre-test exam sample questions and visiting online resources. Wikipedia has everything, of course, though not always written in an understandable way.
WISC is better. They have a huge section on explaining how electronics works. Electronics was really my brother's thing, back when we were teenagers. I'm more of a philosopher and art person. Ergo, all the opinions and the photography and statements of "this is right, this is wrong". All artists make decisions and choices as to what is right or wrong. Even with simplest things like the color to paint something or the focal length or the angle. Its the decision making that defines the artist. People with no opinions aren't artists. That's just how it is. You have to believe your decisions are right or you never finish anything.

I want to learn this. There are too many jobs in DC electrical not to learn it. I have the wrong pedigree and language skills for govt. Even if I end up wiring up trailers or motorcycle harnesses, its something.

Siskiyou County (PRK) Votes To Secede

Siskyou County borders Oregon, northwest of Mount Shasta. Its biggest town is Yreka, and has a small population, mostly ranchers, mostly Republican because Democrats like the Easy Life. Those mountains are anything but easy, summer or winter. Issues of water rights and fees for wildfire control (CalFire) have resulted in a general dislike of continuing as a part of California. The county supervisors voted 4:1 in favor of secession, which is technically legal provided the state donating the land agrees to allow it. Since I-5 goes through there, they'll want to get more counties involved.

The North Coast is pretty battered by state laws that do nothing for them, and the interior North is hardly any better off. Cows only grow when there's sufficient pasture, and pasture comes from water. If there's drought, there's not enough pasture, not enough cows, not enough money. Poverty and desperation mix to form rebellion. Secession may only be a cry for help beyond the indifferent state government in Sacramento. It would be interesting if they and several other counties opted to finally form Cascadia. I doubt it will happen, but if it existed I would probably move there. The view is nice, and I kinda liked Ashland, though they need more jobs.

Secession is probably better than paying for Governor Moonbeam's $25 billion dollar water tunnel or his trillion $68 Billion dollar train to nowhere plus early retirement funds for several million crackheads in Oakland and LA. If only we weren't paying taxes to keep those crackheads fed, the economy might recover. Of course, if we stopped these multibillion dollar projects that only seem to benefit the construction contractors, we'd have more money for other projects. I suppose it is possible the delta tunnels will allow the salmon to recover, which could get their numbers back up. That would be a good thing. If the current route for the train to nowhere was scrapped and the original design, running along I-5 as an express that only stopped in LA and SF or San Jose... that would be better. These gerrymandered idiocies are not good for California. We really need more sanity in our world. A well run hotel gets more tourists and fewer complaints. California needs to stop being a slum and start being a well run hotel. Its what the tourists expect. And tourists have money.

Maybe if the state restored all those old passenger rail cars, and allowed the lines to run again, we'd get tourists hopping on and off the trains in various towns for a few hours, for a bike ride or picnic or day at the lake. Local tourists used to do family outings to places like Modesto or Merced, on the way to Yosemite, or the way back. Now those places are full of Spanish speaking thugs and junkies. Who stops there now? California needs to clean up its act. Stop being permissive to evil. Hammer it down. If it were responsible, Siskiyou county wouldn't be voting to leave. They'd ask for help and get it. Maybe if CalFire lowered its rates, since there's not a lot of brush to clean up there, ranchers wouldn't be so angry.

Trash Day After The Storm

It must be Tuesday.

I live in the Sierra foothills, the lower reaches of the mountains. We are less hot than Auburn at more than twice the elevation, but don't get much snow like higher up. This is the sweet spot, basically. Over Labor Day weekend, a long narrow storm swept in stretching from Tracy to Nevada dumping most of its rain here, bringing lightning and thunder along with it. It managed to flash the power with a few hits, but no apparent fires. There was sufficient rain to spread soil and gravel on the various roads, and wash the accumulated dust down the drains and streams. I washed my car on Saturday morning to get the dust off. The rain took off the rest.

The air is clean, no trace of smoke. This above picture I took an hour ago on my walk in the neighborhood. This being the sweet spot for weather, folks retire up here. Some of the people in these houses work, but most are retired. Its 45 minutes to Roseville, and closer to an hour to Sacramento. That's a lot of gasoline to be able to live without gunshots or crackheads wandering the streets. Maybe its worth it, especially if you have children. The rain was apparently caused by an atmospheric river from Hawaii. Though I understand there was a couple tropical storms in the Pacific to provide the moisture. It was very odd how it centered on this town for the majority of its rainfall and then kept creating storms to dump here for the whole day. Very odd. Still, its nice to get clean air. You can see across the valley now, past the Sutter Buttes.

I'm feeling a bit out of sorts, despite the nice weather. The economy up here is really crap. The retired people have what they want and they don't spend much money, so there's few jobs to be had for those tiny trickles. The current president isn't funding much govt spending up here, and with low bidder contracts, those seem to go to people out of town, leaving those of us living here annoyed and frustrated. While I can wax rhapsodic with the best of them, and still love the scenery of my state, the people living here often scare me with their brutality, violence, and lawlessness. Everybody seems to be "I got mine" or "I'm getting mine, get out of my way". There's no inherent respect for others. It's just more of the viciousness of claim jumpers during the Gold Rush. I hardly know what to make of it. I now wonder if the more positive outlook I saw when I moved back up here a year ago was delusion, if it was optimism.

Now that I've read that Men are just as depressed as women, and its considered a disability, does that mean it will be protected like one? Will it become illegal to hire or fire based on "Optimism" since that's discriminatory against Depressed people like me? Hope that happens soon. I'd have way more work opportunities... of course, half the jobs I"m suited for I can't do because they are hiring a skirt, not a pair of pants. I just want to work for sufficient wage to pay a mortgage. Failing that, one that pays the rent long enough to find one that pays a mortgage. Employers that claim they want stable long term employees never pay enough for a mortgage, much less solo-rent. They're discriminating against people like me, who really just want to be left alone. What a pity.

Rain Again

At 4:50 AM this morning, in the dark, it began to rain. Much as yesterday, it was reasonably big drops. Unlike yesterday, my car sunroof was already closed so I could make coffee and just listen to it peacefully. I'm having cheap mocha, which is coffee with cream and chocolate syrup. Not as good as the real thing, but I didn't want to wake Dad with the microwave beeping. Not when we could both enjoy the sound of raindrops at our leisure. The storm overhead is a long streamer of cloud that stretches 10 miles wide but 100 miles long, all the way down to Roseville on the flatland and up the mountain through us, past Downieville and the Sierra Buttes, heading for Grayeagle on the far side.

The rain cloud yesterday was the same. As the storm rises in elevation, the air gets colder and can physically hold less water so it condenses out as rain all the way up the slope to the crest of the Sierras. Ergo, why the west side are wet and the east side are dry. The intensity of the rain comes and goes, but I'm enjoying both the noise and the higher humidity. Glad I did my laundry yesterday.

Happy Labor Day.

UPDATE: After a short break around dawn, more storms formed in Sacramento and while some drift east, others came straight at us so its raining off and on every 10 minutes or so. Looks like it will be dry in the Valley, but wet up here. A good day to take the corners gently. There's been flashes of lightning, rumbles of thunder and I suspect the lights may go off.

UPDATE2: Just got back from the Valley. Its dry and nice down there, with the clouds up here visible beautifully. Unfortunately I was driving so I don't have a photo but it was really pretty. As soon as I started hitting hills, it started raining and by the time I got home it everything is wet and it seems like the pattern this morning has been going on all day. There was a short blackout which affected several of the clocks and shut down my PC and the garage door, temporarily. It was back up and running when I returned, but still. There's also an inch of rain in the gauge out back.

Ironically, there's a 24+ hour marathon of James Bond movies running on one of the movie channels right now. DVR recordings. Moonraker is one of my favorite Bond movies, being the remake of You Only Live Twice or Dr. No, if you prefer. Most of the Bond movie plots are recycled. Only From Russia With Love is based on real events, allegedly by Fleming himself when he was OSS.

Its warm as the rain falls. I've got my window wide open just to listen to drop pound the grape leaves outside.

Secret Awesome Mocha

If you're like me, you enjoy your coffee. If you're not like me, you enjoy your coffee too, but don't care about all the thiamine it provides, something I DO care about. Chocolate is good for male reproductive health, the darker the better, though 60% cacao is about the limit of edibility. I keep it in stock like vitamins and eat about 2 tablespoons of it per day for extra thiamine and theobromine, which are both important nutrients for males. It does nothing useful for women.

If you enjoy hot chocolate, you no doubt are aware that powdered cocoa can make a decent cup, provided you mix it right. I tend to start with quality cocoa, turn into paste in a little milk, add a trace of sugar, a trace of vanilla extract, and milk. If you do it right, no lumps. If you add too much milk, the lechithin which keeps the cocoa powdered will make lumpy bubbles of cocoa that tends to burn in the microwave. This is common knowledge, and not the best way to make cocoa.

The best way is to start with a chunk of baking chocolate, add a teaspoon of salted butter, and heat 10 seconds in the microwave in a coffee cup. Stir until smooth, add a trace of sugar and gradually stir in milk. If you do this right, you make a gnosh at the start and sort of thin it with the milk. The result is thick and coats your mouth completely unlike powdered cocoa. The salt in the butter enhances the flavor a great deal and the final outcome is the best hot chocolate you've ever had.

Now, that gnosh of chocolate and butter? Add hot coffee. The salt in the butter works with coffee too, and the right amount of sugar sweetens it right. I do suggest some cream in the gnosh, about a tablespoon rather than just butter, but if you do that and sugar, the coffee will thicken nicely without needing the burnt and rapidly oxidizing failure that is espresso. I just use strong coffee instead. My version can be drunk more than 3 minutes later.

This is considerably better than Fake Mocha (Fok-ah) made by your Mom, or Mother Fo-kah as we called it at a prior job. I still had coworkers with a sense of humor back then. Good luck finding those now. Everyone is so desperate they'll jump at the chance to skin baby seals for a buck. Good thing we know how to make better mocha for cheap instead of paying $5.50 for one at a coffee shop.

Vegetable Gardening

After Mom passed, Dad and I swore to keep up her garden. He's been doing most of it while I was going to work and helping with the heavy stuff. After my job ended I helped more. Merely keeping it up wasn't that challenging and Mom always looked for improvements. We did too, so have planted various things.

The two of us planted squash and tomatoes and we've been looking after other plants. We originally had lettuce in the greenhouse but once daily temps passed 100'F in there, they were wilted to death so we gave that up and just buy it now. When Fall comes, we'll plant more stuff in there. The big surprise was the squash. Once we lost a pair of trees (oak died first, then the cedar blew over) to termites and strong winds, that let enough sun through to make plants there grow like mad. Since termites don't care for live non-woody plants, the squash is doing great. We've harvested many zucchini this summer, and we ate the first of the big heritage tomatoes last evening on our salads. Very good. Wish we'd planted more.

Despite all the iron, the soil is very productive when you water your plants. The house is in the middle of undeveloped iron ore deposit, fairly common for the Western Sierra Foothills. After all, below us are gold mines, and there's arsenic and tin and silver there too. If you weren't aware, this is pretty common for metals in a metamorphic rock series, much less pegmatites in hardrock, since the silicates tend to concentrate after reacting out the iron and manganese into Olivine and Pyroxene and eventually Biotite and Muscovite mica before Second Boiling bursts and cracks the rock to deposit long crystal quartz and actual metals like gold etc. You see it all over the place where Granite is exposed. If you use Google Earth and highlight Highway 49 in California, you can follow the track of the actual gold to the crest of the sierra, then track Highway 89  to the northwest and follow it over into the Shasta-Trinity area. The rocks change, but the gold is still there.

Where there is water, and careful gardeners, you can grow decent veggies. Raised beds where there's arsenic, but otherwise veggies do fine. Apparently pot growers like it here too, but I'm not one of those. Our grapes are less than stellar, putting most of their energy into growing vine wood since it was up against the fence we rebuilt last year, but next year, if we are careful not to over-prune, it should make more grapes. These are either chardonnay or chenin blanc, based on their size and color. Dad may surprise me with some other varietal, however. It might be Reisling. Serious vintners usually start by buying grapes and making wine, but then start planting their own to lower costs. It kinda doesn't work that way, but that's mostly a matter of the cost of water pumping and the amount of labor needed for a good grape yield per acre. Its not like I want to stay in place and be a farmer, because they always get screwed by govt and taxes and you need decades of investment to repay the loan that bought the place. Grapes aren't a commodity, since there's too much quality variation and too many kinds of grapes which produce very different wines. Its not like rice or wheat.

Down on the flatland, where you can get cheap enough Spanish-speaking labor, you can grow veggies in large enough lots to wholesale at a good price. For the rest of us, planting veggie in our yards? Labor costs are what time we can spare, and yields are usually tied to water and fertilizer spent on each plant. The big upside to growing veggies yourself is pride, sharing with your neighbors, and eating those veggies for dinner. Fresh picked they do taste excellent. I hope the little rain they got last night makes the plants that much happier today.

Rain In The Night

Woke at 1 AM last night needing the restroom. After, I lay awake. At 2 AM it started to rain, huge splashing drops. My sunroof was open so I hurried to dress and rush out to close it. Soaking wet, I found Dad was up closing windows in the house and we both marvelled at the rain. The huge splashed suddenly stopped and we went back to bed. I couldn't sleep and radar showed more storms coming every half hour or so, but what didn't show were short showers every 15 minutes. I don't know if it will rain more today or not, but I wouldn't mind. Its September, and rain is normal for September, at least when I was a kid. I do hope this will be the year that the Pineapple Express kicks in and we get rain for 40 days straight. It was mostly fun. You could justify owning a raincoat and rain boots and a proper umbrella when it was like that. Its also warm, since the rain comes from Hawaii.