Blackcap Blog

Published at 15:40 on 24 June 2015

I see Cliff Mass is now backpedaling from his earlier pooh-poohing about the abnormal warmth and low snow levels ever since last autumn implying ominous things about the coming fire season.

It’s just as well. His earlier dismissal was based on the assumption that fires would only really be a problem east of the Cascades. That’s indeed normally the case, but this is far from a normal year, and there have sometimes been truly epic forest fires on the west side.

And the first one of the season is already under way, in June, far earlier than such things normally prove an issue.

Published at 19:38 on 23 June 2015

When I noticed this, at first I thought “WTF?” — it’s obviously a preposterous assertion, as anyone with much experience in the US West (where private lands have been clearcut, strip mined, and overgrazed routinely) can see. In my own state, it’s typically obvious when one moves from private to public timber lands: the public lands — while often still abused — are abused less harshly, typically much less so. Political pressure on the agencies that manage said lands has caused restrictions on the worst logging practices. Private corporations, in contrast, exist to maximize shareholder profits, not to cater to the public’s political preferences.

Moreover, the bit about “patience” is bogus. The chief factor in determining ability to invest in any business is personal wealth, which in a class society is not distributed equally. So the private lands will be owned disproportionately by a wealthy elite, who in many cases won’t even live anywhere near the resource lands themselves. The incentive will exist to do precisely the sort of things the Pacific Lumber Company did in redwood country when they were bought out by corporate raiders: liquidate assets and maximimize short-term profits. The investors won’t care about what’s left in their wake; they’ll have taken their profits and moved on to their next profit-maximizing venture.

I was away from the article over the weekend, and came up with two theses as to how anyone could come up with such an assertion in the first place:

1. Inexperience, coupled with ideological bias. If one is biased in favor of capitalism, and one has little or no actual personal experience in a natural resources economy (say, because one works in some big East Coast city), then one would have both the motive to make such a proposition and be largely shielded from any contrary information as to how preposterous one’s assertion actually is.
2. Kleptocracy. In a kleptocratic state, it’s actually possible private ownership could come out on top. The backroom deals giving access to exploit public land might be less certain than a title deed giving one possession of the resource lands in perpetuity, so the motive would exist to extract as much as possible as soon as possible from the public lands. This would be the case if the state is kleptocratic yet relatively stable; in an unstable kleptocratic situation the value of land titles themselves would be questionable, so the incentive would be to plunder as quickly as possible regardless of ownership. Also note that in a kleptocracy, the government is much less subject to public pressure than in a less corrupt society, eliminating the chief mechanism by which public lands get steered toward wiser management.

And lo, when I checked today, I see the article cited was authored in Russia by two Russian economists. Mystery solved.

Published at 23:13 on 29 March 2015

It was definitely more expensive than my first choice, and even then it was still a little rough around the edges (I had to keep entering and reentering my name and address, despite there being account parameters for both).

It just wasn’t mind-blowingly bad, like TaxAct. And I didn’t have to wade through pages and pages of mind-numbing bureaucratese to figure out what to do with the tiny amount of LLC loss I have each year.

I shall see if the 18-page return it generated turned out to be correct or not. (I never got it right the times I tried.) If so, the $75 or so I paid will have turned out to be money well spent (because that’s still cheaper than hiring a professional tax preparer to figure it all out).

Published at 07:08 on 21 January 2015

Random stuff, because I’m still very much alive despite not posting much here recently:

Charlie Hebdo. Yes, their cartoons do have a well-established history of being crude and insensitive. That’s absolutely no justification for the violence (though it does help explain it; justification and explanation are two different things). There is no right to not be offended. What probably sucks more than the loss of life, however, is that France does not seem to be taking the same moral high road Norway took after their recent terrorist attack. There’s way too much talk of “war” happening in France. Neither Al Qaeda nor terrorism is a country with a defined land mass (the first is a non-state actor, the second is a tactic), therefore it is is pointless to wage war on either. I’ve discussed this latter point before, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Construction at home. It’s was a week of not really having my home to myself, because I’m having the carpet replaced with hardwood flooring. And it looks like this disruption is going to last longer than expected, because the adhesive used to attach the stair tread really stinks, so I’m now coping with that issue for at least a week after the work ends.

Durian. Speaking of strong smells, I did finally have time to treat myself to a durian smoothie in celebration of moving and defeating the bedbugs. It was every bit as satisfying as I remembered, and now that the experience is fresher in my mind the addictive urge resurfaced. I actually tasted an almond aspect to it this time, which I believe is a first. One of the joys of durian is that it never tastes quite the same twice.

Sometimes, it’s best not to even try. That’s a statement that will make every motivational speaker cringe, but it’s true. One’s plans must be at least somewhat realistic. Consider the fate of the Kalakala. This historic vessel was “saved” from its fate of housing a fish-processing plant in Alaska by being towed back to its old home to await historic restoration. Alas, that latter part of the plan was very expensive, and funds to perform it never materialized. The vessel ended up bleeding its owners white in moorage fees year after year. Its current owner has decided to end the financial bloodbath and recoup at least some of his losses by scrapping it. If it had been left in Alaska, it would either still be a fish processing plant, or be sitting there abandoned (because in a rural area the moorage would be cheap or free and the cost to tow it south for scrapping would exceed the scrap value). It would, in other words, be waiting indefinitely for the right restorer to show up.

Sometimes, one has to try harder. Realism again. It’s a fact of life that some misfortunes, like bedbug infestation, are extremely difficult and expensive to manage. The “experts” will tend to lie to you about the effort and expense required in an attempt to manage the shock value. Absent being one of the lucky few who resolves the problem with minimum effort, the effect of the lies is to draw out the process, because instead of making the full effort needed, weeks and then months get wasted on half-efforts. It’s a lesson I learned the hard way battling scabies, and one I put to use again last year on bedbugs. I hit them harder than the experts recommended, and planned for the initial treatments to fail (which they did). I took stronger precautions than recommended to prevent infesting my new place. I might still be battling them if I hadn’t followed that strategy.

Published at 20:53 on 29 November 2014

It happened this morning. Normally that would be the big weather deal of the day, but not this time. As often happens here, the snow was facilitated by arctic outflow winds coming from the BC interior via the Fraser River Canyon.

A little after 8:30 AM, the outflow winds really kicked into high gear, going from strong and gusty to gale-force. The power went out shortly thereafter, and stayed out for the rest of the morning. Thankfully, my old place (where I was packing at the time) was well-insulated enough that it didn’t get excessively chilly inside very fast, despite the winds and frigid temperatures outside.

When it did start getting uncomfortable, I decided to run an errand to Poulsbo, where I then ate lunch. By the time I got back two hours later, the power was back on.

The wind was noticeably less severe in Poulsbo. Apparently it was a localized phenomenon restricted to areas close to Puget Sound, which was acting as a path of least resistance for the arctic outflow. The National Weather Service apparently didn’t see it coming, as no advisories or warnings for high winds were issued for this area.

What surprised me is how some people didn’t see the snow coming. Even if they hadn’t been listening to the weather forecasts, yesterday Mother Nature was shouting her own warnings. It was a day of pelting cold rain that got colder hour by hour. It was, to me anyhow, a classic “this rain will change to snow” type storm.

Maybe there were wind warning signs, too, signs I missed because I haven’t lived on Bainbridge Island for that long. I will say that we do really tend to get the winds here; the water gives them ample opportunity to rev up speed before they hit the island. Maybe in a few years I’ll learn some sort of sign that an arctic outflow wind is going to end up strong and damaging, like the more typical southerly storm winds can be.

Sorry, no pictures yet. My cameras are now packed.

Published at 10:25 on 19 November 2014

If it wasn’t the case that:

1. Most people react adversely to their bites, and
2. They breed like crazy

Then bed bugs would be more of a “meh” thing. I’d probably crush them when I found them but I wouldn’t turn my life upside down waging war on them.

Most people are really squicked by the concept of parasites, but they’re no big deal if all one gets is a very light, asymptomatic infestation. The majority of people, even in the wealthiest nations, harbor demodex mites on their bodies and don’t even know it.

Unfortunately, most people do react adversely to bed bug bites, and even for those of use who don’t, we don’t want guests or neighbors to suffer or for our homes to end up like this (which they will if the bugs are allowed to breed unhindered).

So, it’s war.

Which for me is moving on to the “move, and have the moving van fumigated between here and there” phase.

I’d like to be a little more certain of how well the bugs have been knocked down by the two existing treatments my apartment has had before I move, but then again, said uncertainty is precisely the reason I’m having the moving van fumigated in the first place.

Published at 18:17 on 3 November 2014

At 2:30AM last Friday I awoke to use the bathroom. I had fallen asleep on the couch in the living room, as I often do. As I turned on the light, I noticed something crawling up the backrest of the couch. “It looks a lot like the pictures of bedbugs that I’ve seen”, I thought.

A quick check of Wikipedia confirmed the worst. Interestingly, the next morning I found the story of someone else who had a very similar experience.

I’m not pussyfooting around with home remedies, however. This discovery is one I’ve dreaded for a long time, because bed bugs have a reputation (doubtless very well-deserved) of being extremely difficult to get rid of. It’s one situation that the services of a professional exterminator are required.

I’m not that impressed that the exterminator chosen by my landlord has chosen to spray instead of use heat, which based on my research has a better record. A friend who battled the same problem (different source, she got hers from an infested neighbor’s apartment last spring) had good luck with this type of exterminator, however.

I may opt to pay to have a heat treatment done anyhow, just to be safe and help ensure a sure kill. I’m almost certainly going to pay to have all my belongings loaded onto a big moving truck and taken to Seattle to be fumigated. Again, just to be safe.

Like most port cities, Seattle has a firm that specializes is fumigating possibly infested goods by the truck-or-container-load. They gas the whole container at once, so there’s no worries about an infested container re-infesting your recently-sanitized possessions. People moving out of a bedbug-infested residence are but a small subset of those who need such a service; I spoke to one of their agents and it’s a completely routine job for them. They process dozens of loads an evening. No advance appointment needed. Time will tell if they’re as good as the rave review in this article.

What I dread most of all is this (a) taking months and months (with bed bugs, it sometimes does), and (b) taking “hitchhikers” with me and becoming into the new member of the HOA who brought the first-ever load of bed bugs into the building.

Realistically, though, the real horror stories typically start out with the victims either living in denial despite increasing signs of infestation, often trying various mostly ineffectual (or even outright counterproductive) home remedies. The professionals are only called after a several months, at which point they struggle for months to get a severe infestation wiped out.

Then again, it certainly didn’t help in my case that I’m one of the approximately 30% of people who do not have adverse reactions to bed bug bites. I never had an itchy welt at all despite being fed on regularly for at least a month. If I had, I would have probably suspected something was very wrong in my apartment a whole lot sooner.

Published at 08:57 on 17 October 2014

It’s not a complete surprise to me that there’s many abandoned homes in such places.

What’s hard for me to understand is how all the furniture inside them was also just abandoned in many cases. The houses might have been doomed by a location that is no longer considered desirable, but all that furniture still has some value and it’s really not that difficult to move furniture. One would think that would be done.

The family mementos are also a surprise. Those people had relatives, and things like framed photographs are easy to take.

It’s not the first time such things have struck me as odd, and it’s not just abandoned residences, either. I’ve also been struck by how many abandoned furnishings are evident in photos of derelict commercial and institutional structures in Detroit.

Published at 08:20 on 8 October 2014

Per this:

• The Tri-Cities would be the relationship I entered just because he had some money and offered me a home away from my parents, with whom I was bickering endlessly and sharing living quarters with had become most unpleasant. I knew it was not at all that good a match and wouldn’t last at the start, and I was right.
• Seattle would be a lifelong on-again, off-again, on-again romance. First and for a long time absolutely smitten, then disenchanted by subpar mass transit and housing choices, then further disenchanted when I realized how a chilly the social climate was there (particularly in comparison to the Bay Area). Then, finally, realizing that, despite all that it’s probably at this stage in my life the best achievable choice, provided we don’t shack up together and I just live in the neighborhood and visit him regularly.
• The San Francisco Bay Area would be a quick fling, motivated as more by my disenchantment with Seattle than anything. There’s still lot I find to like about him, but overall I learned he’s less good a match than Seattle was.
• Portland would be the dream romance I had often fantasized about that, excitedly, eventually manifested itself in reality. And which was in fact pretty damn awesome in most respects. Alas, it was also pretty damn awful in two critical respects: my grass pollen allergies, and the absolutely horrible local job market.
• Vancouver would be the dream romance that’s never happened.
• New York City would be a famous celebrity I had lunch with once, a celebrity that has a somewhat formidable reputation as being vain and snobbish, but someone I found to actually be a genuinely interesting person who I really enjoyed interacting with, despite being way too different to ever even think about having a serious relationship with. I still have his contact info and plan on getting in touch with him for another long lunch some time; I’m sure we’ll enjoy it as much as we did the last time.

Published at 17:38 on 25 September 2014

I wanted a second fountain pen for my desk, so I can keep the first one I bought a year ago, a Pelikan Pelikano, in my pack to have handy at work.

I’m still a total cheapskate about such things, so I did some searching and found that Overstock.com sells discontinued models Parker Vector pens for very reasonable prices. The one I got was $12, about $8 less than I paid for the Pelikano. And darned if the new, cheaper pen doesn’t write even more smoothly than the old one (which in turn is much better than the one I used in college).

As a further plus, the traditional blue-black ink is readily available for Parker pens in the USA. (Not so for Pelikan pens, at least if you use cartridges.) Being able to use that ink color midway between blue and black (something not available for ballpoints) was one of the things I liked about writing with that old Shaeffer pen.

I’ve heard some griping about their shipping, and they were on the slow side to notify me that it had shipped, but it ended up getting here two days early. So, no bad experiences here.

And that’s probably going to be the extent of my collection. I have more than enough stuff accumulated in my life, and two fountain pens are definitely all I need, and probably bordering on overkill. I don’t write all that much.