I am not even remotely sympathetic - 25 May 2023

The founder of the Oath Keepers extremist group was sentenced [today] to 18 years in prison for orchestrating a weekslong plot that culminated in his followers attacking the U.S. Capitol in a bid to keep President Joe Biden out of the White House after the 2020 election.

It was one of the most consequential cases brought by the Justice Department, which has sought to prove that the riot by right-wing extremists like the Oath Keepers was not a spur-of-the-moment protest but the culmination of weeks of plotting to overturn Biden's election victory.

Reported by ABC News.

Smoke has passed - 21 May 2023

Earlier this week, we had smoke in metro-Seattle that came from the forest fires in British Columbia.  At this writing, winds have blown the smoke to the interior, to central Washington, and cleared the air around Seattle and the Salish Sea.

If you look closely at the photo, there is a golden haze in the air, almost like a tint from an artist's brush.  This should set off alarms as those rhodies should be white, not off-white, and the evergreens should be a richer green and not be that brownish.  Smoke in the air.  This is early in the season for fires to be this big.  And the fires in Alberta are worse than those in BC; the BC fires just happen to be close to the border.  Not a good sign for 2023.

Trouble, right here in River City - 21 May 2023

Far from troubles made up in the mind of a con artist, I have been having technology troubles for the last couple weeks.  About the first of May, there was a Mac OS patch that was distributed.  Now, I need to be clear that I can only claim correlation and I am not asserting causation, but my add-on disk failed at this time.  I use a USB "sidecar" disk because I have far more photo and music data than will fit on the SSD integral to my MacBook Pro.  For a while, I used an outboard 2 Tby drive, then I upgraded to a 4 Tby drive.  After the patch, the outboard drive became unreadable.  I struggled with this for a while and finally decided to rely on Time Machine backups.

I reformatted the outboard drive.  Fortunately, I had just upgraded my Time Machine drive so that I could back up both the integral and the outboard drives.  I thought myself lucky and then I started up Time Machine to recover the contents.  It worked well for a while, then Time Machine complained that the outboard drive was case-insensitive and I was trying to restore Mac Photos files with mixed case. 

I stopped at this point because we had some traveling to do.  When I got back, I tried to restore again and got the same error from Time Machine.  I bit the bullet and re-reformated the drive to be case-sensitive.  OK, should be solved.  Unfortunately, by this time, it had been about two weeks since the original failure, and Time Machine no longer has backups that are pre-failure.  I have tried repeatedly over the last week, and I just cannot get Time Machine to cough up a pre-failure copy of the outboard drive.

I have been in a bit of denial, but cold truth is cold truth.  I was starting to think about how I could restore files from my off-site backup.  You have a three-level backup strategy, right?  A primary, a local backup, and a remote backup, yes?  Well, I do.  I have lost files before and I plan never to do it again.  Then I had a flash of insight.  I had replaced the 2 Tby outboard drive with a 4 Tby outboard drive toward the end of 2022, and I still have the old 2 Tby outboard drive.  It is not a whole backup, but it is better than dragging 2 Tby from my off-site backups.  

I am now in the process of copying over from the 2 Tby outboard drive to the 4 Tby outboard drive.  When that is done, I shall start recovering the last six months of data.  I am very annoyed at Apple, but I have a plan that I think will work.

Photo: we are in the midst of the rhodedendron season.

Travel to the Following States is Restricted - 9 May 2023

The headlines get ever worse.  Texas and Florida have been States of Concern for over a year.  Florida recently achieved Do Not Travel status when the legislature - led by the so-called governor - passed an unrestricted-carry law for firearms.  No license required, no safety training required, no background check required.  Texas achieved Do Not Travel with their string of (endless?) mass shootings, including the most recent shootings by a white supremecist in a shopping center.  

Today, Louisiana achieves Do Not Travel status with the shooting of a small girl who was playing hide-and-seek, straying into the neighbor's yard.  The neighbor promptly shot her.  Fortunately, she survived, but rampant firearms are not a joke.

I will not travel to or spend money in Texas, Florida, or Louisana until the state leaders demonstrate that they value life.

Cat photo for soothing purposes.

https://people.com/crime/louisiana-homeowner-accused-shooting-14-year-old-girl-in-the-back-of-head/