Slushpool, the Bitcoin mining pool I use, is diverting a fraction of our hashrate to the Ukrainian military. So far a little over 10 BTC (about $400000 USD) has been sent their way. If you want to donate anything directly, the Bitcoin address is:

bc1qkd5az2ml7dk5j5h672yhxmhmxe9tuf97j39fm6

The UPS for our NAS and Bitcoin node died this week. I think it was a delayed reaction to all the brownouts and surges of the recent power outages. I replaced it with a little APC BE850G2, which has a great form factor for use on a shelf top

Random clouds I saw last weekend

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Finally got around to upgrading my home desktop OS to Fedora 34. So far it's all good news. Wayland graphics seem much faster and 4k support works well. Big SMB speed improvements. Printer detection and setup was the fastest ever. I never liked pulseaudio, so I'm happy to see it replaced with Pipewire. Overall it makes my old 8th gen Intel NUC8i7BEH feel fast and new again.

We put a yard sign out today. Lots of others in the neighborhood already but one more can't hurt

We baked some brownies this evening

I thought I had a lot of leaves until @pixelthinking showed me his driveway 🍁🍂🍃

I spotted this strange little creature sitting on a Nandina bud while I was doing yard work this morning

Susan planted a small perennial dianthus today to fill in an empty spot in the front yard

There were Xmas cupcakes at the office today. Then I looked at the calendar and saw it was National Cupcake Day

Can't have a birthday without a chocolate cake and here it is... 🎂

This Macaw said "hello" to us when we visited Irving Feed Store last week searching for bulk wild bird seed

Sampling switches for the new keyboard today. I picked up a set of 14 samples with both Gateron and Kailh switches. As I expected, the Gateron green feels best but Kailh white box is runner up.

While inventorying old documents today, I stumbled onto this large, dot-matrix printed copy of the Dallas Personal Robotics Group's original logo from 1984

GoodReads says I've fallen behind on my 2021 reading goal, so I picked up a few used John Brunner paperbacks. Most of these are late 1960s era and should be quick reads

It's National Apple Pie day. I was too lazy to bake one this year so I bought this at Sam's. What's more American than apple pie and giant warehouse stores?

Centaurea cyanus growing along the street in our neighborhood

Fall really hung on for a long time this year, since we didn't really get a frost until well into November.

Hit 10 miles on this evening's ride for the first time. Still loving the new bike! 🚴‍♂️

After. Atmos replaced the ancient gas meter at our 60 year old house. Not sure how old the gas meter was but the window was so cloudy it was nearly impossible to read

I got up at the crack of dawn to ride before the temp got too high. I finally rode the full length of North Campión Trail. Round trip was just under 23 miles. Saw 1 coyote, 1 bunny, 1 large skink, and the usual assortment of birds and squirrels. Also saw one very big snake. It didn't look like the Cottonmouth I saw on the last ride. Based on pics of local snakes, I think it might have been a Speckled King snake

Lizards in love

Our project this evening is making a cherry pie

I visited Dallas Makerspace Saturday with @pixelthinking for the first time in several years. I was surprised to see one of my old art projects, Calrad the Robot, still exists. He was a little beat up and his top hat, custom made by Houston milliner Amberry Jam, appears to have been lost. I straightened him up a bit, his head had been twisted around backwards. He should be good for another 15 years now.

The space is huge these days. We saw a lot of people around but no one I remembered from olden times.

I saw that today was National Chocolate Milkshake Day, so we went out after dinner in search of a milkshake. Creamistry was our first choice but they had a half hour wait. Marble Slab Creamery was our second stop and had no line at all

I tried some Brave Robot ice cream today. It's made without cows. Instead they genetically modified Trichoderma​​​ reesei​​ fungi to secrete the whey proteins found in real milk (but without cholesterol or lactose). It's still a low volume production process, so it's pricey but I thought it tasted reasonably good

daffodil

I stopped at Salazar park after lunch today to enjoy the view and catch a few Pokémon

I've been playing with a new civic hacking / citizen science app called Litterati. It's a bit like playing Pokémon Go but you catch real litter instead of virtual Pokémon: 1) Wander around until you spot some litter, 2) Photograph it with the Litterat app, 3) Drop the litter in a trash can or recycle bin.

The photo is geo-tagged and tagged for material type, form, contents, brand, etc. All that data goes into an open and freely accessible database that can be used by anyone. City governments, NGOs, and researchers are already using the data for all sorts of cool projects.

I noticed there was almost no data for the Dallas / Fort Worth area yet, so I'm trying to add some. You can get the app from the Google Play store for free (and I think it's available for Apple phones too)

I'm off today for Juneteenth and noticed it's also National Vanilla Milkshake day so...

I'm going to continue wearing a mask for a while

It's the Starbucks Thank You Grackle

Listening to a little live music at the office Xmas party

We did a long overdue upgrade to our fiber service yesterday. Frontier replaced our 10+ year old FIOS hardware with the latest tech and we upped our speed to 500Mbps 🎉🚀

Any guesses on what species this is? I think it's a paper wasp but not certain. It's been hanging out in the back stairwell at the office for over a week. I thought for a while it was dead but it moved a few inches today.

First full charge in my Bolt since the battery upgrade. Max range is looking good. ⚡⚡⚡