Now We’re Cooking With Gas!

When I was very young, the stove and rangetop were all electric. I well know the spiral pattern of the electric range. A move resulted in a change to gas oven and range. At the time, it scared me – gas was stuff that could explode. Electricity was well-behaved and with rare exception was properly confined in wires and did not leak out. When I moved out on my own, it was again all electric, but I didn’t really cook or bake much. What I did was largely stuff with a slow cooker as that was hard to screw up.

Eventually $HOUSEMATE and I agreed on becoming housemates and settled on (and in) a house, and had to deal with appliances. As the house was simply NOT arranged for a gas stove, electric it was and is. A very nice glass-top affair. Other than being problematic for other than utterly-perfectly flat cast iron (and a bit tricky even then) it’s nice enough. It certainly looks nice. It does the heating thing well enough. BUT… while the electric oven is wonderful, the range is still… well… it’s almost. Very good, yes, but almost.

With the current panic-demic nonsense putting a strain on supply chains (notice how the supermarket is ‘spreading’ things to make the shelves appear full with fewer actual items in stock? And that’s AFTER a normal Summer/Fall/Winter?) I expect things to get worse as unseen (and perhaps unnoticed just now) things mess up supply chains even more. I’m NOT panic-buying anything, but every trip I’ll pick up a bit extra to build up reserves for what I expect could be very lean Winter indeed. I am hoping to be wrong. Looking the fool will be a Truly Wonderful outcome, really. That said, I am NOT betting on all going well. Add in the current rioting and “burn it all down” idiocy of many places… well, I cannot count on infrastructure remaining reliable.

Again, I HOPE I am wrong and that I have the great pleasure of of looking the fool rather than being prescient. Still, even if all does go well, I do live in Minnesota and Winter and Winter storms (and drunken idiots…) happen. It’s entirely possible the electrical power might go out and NOT come back within a short (with in a few hours) time. $HOOTERVILLE has its own power plant, but it’s a “peaking” plant – it only comes on when the base capacity can’t quite keep up. It’s NOT enough to run $HOOTERVILLE by itself without some ‘allocation’ (translation: rolling blackouts) going on.

Thus I recently picked up a dual fuel gas camping stove. It can run on butane or propane. The butane setup is very nice indeed, and I can see the appeal. The propane arrangement needs an (included) adapter and works, but is not as slick. My couple of tests just to be sure everything works and to familiarize myself with it was more revealing than expected. Sure, it is a little gas burner. But even just cooking an egg on it was seemingly so much better and easier than the glasstop it was surprising. The next try (had to check both fuels!) was similar, though it revealed that the (bought new from the smith) cast iron pan was in need of seasoning as it was just a bit sticky and should not be so.

I do NOT see any way to modify the current residence to make gas cooking a common option. I’d want the stove/range by an outside wall and have a vent fan set up to deal with exhaust gasses – the house layout just is NOT made for that, alas. While it’s an older house and decidedly NOT airtight, the best place for combustion products is Away From My Lungs. But, should I ever build new? Gas cooking will be a consideration, oh yes. The electric oven is great. The ideal would be a combination: Electric oven, gas rangetop. I’ve heard such exists. I’ve also heard such are Not Inexpensive.

D

Keep Watching the Skies

Some weeks, months, ago, I went ahead and ordered a small telescope. While I had/have a working 60mm (~2.3in) refractor, and a 6 inch (~150mm) reflector in need of attention, I sprung for a ‘fast’ (fast – f/6.7) 90mm (3.5 in) ‘scope. This weirds me out a bit. I am NOT used to the idea of a ‘fast’ refractor. I still think of refractors as being ‘slower’ than f/8, say f/10 or more with f/15 not being at all outrageous.

Yes, I still think of objective size in inches, generally, rather than millimeters. That probably shows my age – or at least that I learned from older texts. I do recall, for example, being happy to be able to purchase an epoch 2000 star atlas which was closer to true than the old epoch 1950 charts I had been using. Soon I will be better off to acquire an epoch 2050 atlas.

The ‘scope is nice enough itself, though I do find I miss having a right proper finder scope. The ‘red dot’ site (NOT a Telrad) feels wrong to me. The red dot, even on the ‘dim’ setting is WAY too bright. The idea of seeing the sky ‘as is’ is appealing, but the blinding light destroys that. A finder scope, I suspect, would be far better for me. Maybe it’s just that I am used to such. But I did learn with such, can star-hop with such, and have no issue with the optical inversions a Keplerian finder has.

The red dot setup is fine for bright things, such as planets (and I’ve used the ‘scope for Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn so far – and of course the moon) but falls down horribly for about anything else. M13 (Great Cluster of Hercules) can be far too difficult to find with such, and M57 (Ring Nebula) is challenging at best – even if a 90mm ‘scope is.. rather less than ideal for viewing it.

Of course, now I am evern more aware of how lousy the weather is. “Sorry about the weather. I bought a telescope. That means at least two weeks of clouds and rain.” And then $HOUSEMATE got the convertible out of storage…

One planet I’ve recently seen, perhaps for the first time this century(!), but have not through the ‘scope is Mercury. Mercury and Venus were, as they appeared in the sky, close a few evenings ago. It wasn’t until after the closest they appeared that I had a mostly clear sky, but I did at least manage to see Mercury – higher in the sky than Venus. It was somewhat surprising how easy it was to see, once I found it – but I have no illusions that it is a trivial thing. That the Ancients noticed it reveals they had a LOT of time (and NEED) to watch the skies closely. I had to drive to a place of clear horizon to see it, and did not pack up any of the ‘scopes. Note to self: Take binocs next time – even 7×35 would have helped.

It’s a bit odd. Sometimes I feel like the 60mm showed me more than the 90mm. That might be that the f-ratio is more what I expect in the 60mm. It might be that the finder is NOT a blinding red-dot on the 60mm, and it might be that 60mm can beat 90mm when the seeing is crap – and in town, it usually is with everything radiating heat – at different rates.

I will say this… I do miss out-of-town truly dark skies. I miss having a mostly clear horizon. And I might just be getting a case of ‘aperture fever’. That last would be easier to deal with if telescope making supplies still existed as they had in times past. It seems only minor items can found nowadays, which is sorely disappointing. Even Willman-Bell is disappointing now. Anyone know where I can get a couple 8 or 10 inch disks? Heck, 6 inch might be something now. I’d kinda like to make the classic 6in f/8… the 6in I had/have is f/5.2 due to various.. oddities.

As if I hadn’t known

I’ve had the Superbook on my desk for some time now, and yet haven’t used it. Not haven’t used it much, but haven’t used it at all. The thing doesn’t charge the phone, and even when not putting a phone into reverse charge the support shell app(s) seem to drain it rapidly. The shell is awkward and really brings home that even with the shell trying to compensate for it, a phone is not set up to be used as a laptop.

There is also the physical layout. While the thing is nicely thin, a thicker setup that didn’t require any access to the phone for working it, that would allow the phone to be a ‘drop in’ component would be more convenient. As would charging (the Superbook or suchlike itself) by USB – the only issue there is how much power can be moved through the port and is it to be micro or USB-C. I do hope the future converges on USB-C. It’s easier to connect than even compared to having the micro connector the right way ’round. I still like the idea of a laptop-ish terminal that uses the phone as its “brain” and I think its time will come, but nobody has truly done it right yet. Sure, some manufacturers had something that supposedly worked well – for only their stuff. To take off, it has to be “any damn phone” or close to it – and the phone OS has to be up to not being dependent on a touch screen.

What brought the above home was a change in work schedule which results in my having a reason to have a larger tablet or smaller laptop during a break a time or two each week. I don’t have a laptop suitably small, so a tablet it is. I picked up a(nother) bluetooth keyboard with some really nice features. It has three bluetooth options (not simultaneous) as well as 2.4GHz RF option (USB dongle), has keys that can be backlit if desired, and has an integral trackpad. I’m not a fan of trackpads, but they got this one right – it’s “above” the keys, so there’s no annoying click or cursor move while typing. I’d still prefer something running Linux (and my software of choice) rather than Android, but even using the setup once brought home how much better the overall arrangement is than the Superbook and phone.

I suspect I might have the tablet replace the Superbook on my desk – even if I just test this or that with it, it’ll see more use. I do not expect to buy one immediately as it becomes available, but the Pinetab certainly looks like an interesting device. It might be what I really want – if only they’d put the trackpad in the right place – out of the way, above the keys. Then, I don’t need to use their keyboard, I would expect. And while it might be underpowered, my use case is mainly using a word processor or text editor.

As for what I’ll do with the Superbook… no idea. Maybe its fate will eventually involve a Raspberry Pi. I’ve been pondering getting one of those and setting it up as fileserver or such.

No Bambleweeny 57 Submeson Brain

And no atomic vector plotter, either.

The strong Brownian motion producer? Yeah, have that. And now a nice tea set for preparing and serving it.

Last night $HOUSEMATE and I attended the Siouxland Winterfeast, a fundraiser event for the Siouxland Renaissance Festival. We missed it the last couple years due to severe weather – travelling across southern Minnesota and South Dakota in a blizzard is Not Recommended. I’ve been through a Dakota(s) blizzard – I wanted RADAR! It might have been the year before, I am no longer sure, that I missed it due to illness. Anyway, it had been a while and health and weather finally did not conspire against attendance.

There was beer, wine, and of course mead. There was a very good meal. There was entertainment. And there was a silent auction. I purchased a strip of six tickets for five dollars and dropped the half of each into the various jars for the groups of items that were of any interest to me. I enjoyed the compnay and a couple drinks, and then bought another six tickets and dealt with those as well.

After the meal and a couple different entertainers, the drawings were held. It was a rather odd night. One lady won one of the groups… and a few drawings later, had a stroke of luck again. She was, however, not alone. I had the good fortune to win one of the groups I had a ticket in for. And, a while later, won another. See why I said I don’t have the bits that make up an Improbability Field Generator?

Thus, we have a tea infusor, a teapot (I already have a kettle), a couple cups, and some other service items, including a nice wooden serving tray. Also some tea (I’ve been told all the Earl Grey is mine), and a pan of an all too tempting dessert.

Also, there is a sturdy wooden box (not a chest, but close enough) that held a few pirate-themed videos, and a couple bottles of wine, amongst other things. Yes wine. Other auction groups had the rum, and as one of the rums has a reputation for a strong banana flavor (neither of us are really fans of banana), we do NOT feel we missed out.

We’ll Dine by the Sidereal Clock…

When I was Rather Young, I’d read of a book “A Budget of Paradoxes” by Augustus De Morgan (yes, of the Theorem) and in those pre-(public access) Internet days, that meant I was really lucky if the local library had it, and still pretty fortunate if it could be had via inter-library loan (ILL). To my shock, I got a copy of a book printed in the 19th century through ILL, and was trusted with the thing at that rather youthful age.

There were bits about the (at or near publication time) recent polar expeditions, the nonsense of “circle squarers” who wanted to re-define pi to something simpler, and various things – most of which I’ve long forgotten. I could, if I felt like it, almost certainly find the text on Project Gutenberg. One thing I did recall, despite not drinking then and not for many years after, was the Astronomer’s Drinking Song which had the exhortation to drink a bottle (of wine) a day. Particularly memorable was the last verse, about dining by the sidereal clock for that extra bottle a year.

I’m not sure if I read that before or after reading a history of the hunt for Planet X, which Pluto was thought to be, and Clyde Tombaugh at the guidescope on long nights listening to the solar and sidereal clocks drift seemingly in and out of phase (not the case, not a phase difference, but frequency) due to the slightly different timing. The sidereal day is a bit under four minutes shorter than the solar day. A solar day is what it sounds like: it’s the time from the sun is at one point in the sky one day until it’s at the same point (or as close as can be) the next. The “normal” day for people. The sidereal day uses not the sun, but a distant star (pick one) the same way. Since the earth is orbiting the sun, but not the other star(s) – and those stars are also not orbiting the sun, there is a difference.

As for astronomy by eye (whether at the telescope or simple stargazing) alcohol (and presumably any CNS depressant) is best avoided – such affects night vision negatively. Caffeine (and presumably other stimulants) offer a boost. There was an article about such, someone having run the experiment at/on Mauna Kea – though if I recall right, the biggest boost was from oxygen. Hardly a surprise at 14,000 feet!

From:
https://historyofsciencesongs.blogspot.com/2009/02/astronomers-drinking-song.html
which has annotations and corrections.

WHOE’ER would search the starry sky,
Its secrets to divine, Sir,
Should take his glass – I mean, should try
A glass or two of wine, Sir.
True virtue lies i’ th’ golden mean,
And man must wet his clay, Sir;
Join these two maxims and ’tis seen
He should drink he bottle a-day, Sir.

Old Archimedes, reverent sage!
By trump of fame renowned, Sir,
Deep problems solved in every page,
And the sphere’s curved surface found, Sir:
Himself he would have far outshone,
And borne a wider sway, Sir,
Had he our modern secret known,
And drunk his bottle a-day, Sir.

When Ptolemy, now long ago,
Believed the earth stood still, Sir,
He never would have blundered so,
Had he but drunk his fill, Sir:
He’d then have felt it circulate,
And would have learned to say, Sir,
The true way to investigate
Is to drink your bottle a-day, Sir.

Copernicus, that learned wight,
The glory of his nation,
With floods of wine refreshed his sight,
And saw the earth’s rotation.
Each planet then its orb described,
The moon got under way, Sir;
These truths from nature he imbibed,
For he drank his bottle a-day, Sir.

The noble Tycho placed the stars
Each in its due location;
He lost the nose by spite of Mars,
But that was no privation.
Had he but lost his mouth, I grant,
He would have felt dismay, Sir,
Bless you! he knew what he should want
To drink his bottle a-day, Sir.

Cold water makes no lucky hits;
On mysteries the head runs:
Small drink let Kepler tune his wits
On the regular polyhedrons.
He took to wine and it changed the chime;
His genius swept away, Sir,
Though area varying as the time
At the rate of a bottle a-day, Sir.

Poor Galileo, forced to rat
Before the Inquisition,
E pur si muove was the pat
He gave them in addition.
He meant – Whate’er you think you prove
The earth must go its way, Sire,
Spite of your teeth I’ll make it move,
For I’ll drink my bottle a-day, Sirs.

Great Newton, who was never beat,
Whatever fools may think, Sir,
Though sometimes he forgot to eat,
He never forgot to drink, Sir.
Descartes took nought but lemonade;
To conquer him was play, Sir:
The first advance that Newton made
Was to drink his bottle a-day, Sir.

The Pascal-forger thinks, perhaps,
That Newton must sing small, Sir,
Before ten thousand little scraps,
With signatures to all, Sir.
But they’re not worth their count in pence,
As many to one I’d lay, Sir,
That Pascal never had the sense
To drink his bottle a-day Sir.

D’Alembert, Euler, and Clairaut,
Though they increased our store, Sir,
Much farther had been seen to go
Had they tippled a little more, Sir.
Lagrange gets mellow with Laplace,
And both are wont to say, Sir,
The philosophe who’d not an ass
Will drink his bottle a-day, Sir!

Astronomers! what can avail
Those who calumniate us:
Experiment can never fail
With such an apparatus.
Let those who’d have their merits known
Remember what I say, Sir;
Fair science shines on him alone
Who drinks his bottle a-day, Sir.

How light we reck of those who mock
By this we’ll make t’appear, Sir,
We’ll dine by the sidereal clock,
For one more bottle a-year, Sir.
But choose which pendulum you will,
You’ll never make your way, Sir,
Unless you drink, and drink your fill,
At least a bottle a-day, Sir.

So You Get a Severed Head…

There was a Writing Prompt and someone took it and wrote.

Do you yourself a favor and be entertained thereby:

https://undomesticatedfeline.wordpress.com/2020/01/08/special-delivery/comment-page-1/

Still Alive

Monday morning was a trip to Rochester, followed by a bit of waiting, surgery prep. and surgery which lasted several hours. I was at least semi-conscious through a couple critical bits of it. Being awake for the ‘zap’ parts was not the most pleasant thing, though not the worst pain I’ve had.

It was not all smooth going. Evidently my usually low blood pressure was spiking up to 200 (it’s Very Unusual to see it at 130, and more likely to be a bit under 120. I have seen 90’s) and the PVC’s seemed to go away after an ablation.. and then return. They came at things from three different angles and were looking at a fourth but that would put things too near an artery for comfort. However, for several hours post-op it seemed I wasn’t having PVC’s.

I stayed at the hospital overnight and the monitoring showed normal MOST of the time. Around 4 or 4:30 AM I had some PVC’s again (and I could tell by breathing effort going up) but then faded away again. I’m back on the beta blocker, at least for a while. For a while there was consideration of an additional drug, not a beta blocker nor a calcium channel blocker, but as things have turned out so far, that idea was dropped as unneeded.

One other thing was that between the blood work and whatever other information gathered (not sure of all the imaging done during the procedure) from multiple ECG’s and an echocardiogram I’ve been told to discontinue the daily aspirin. Evidently my risk factors are such that the aspirin is more likely to be harmful than helpful. So that’s one less thing I need to take.

New Year’s Eve was spent at a hotel nearby as they wanted me close just in case anything should happen. It was a room. I’ve stayed at better, and a (thankfully very few) worse.

I’m home now. Under orders to be lazy – well, I’m not supposed to lift more than 5 pounds and take stairs slowly for several days. I am supposed to walk a fair amount.

I CAN sleep on my back again, and my breathing is a lot easier at least most of the time. As I truly recover it’s possible things could change – in either direction. There’s no way of predicting. A Thursday meeting with my local doctor (mainly about another matter) had the result of hearing this opinion, after listening to my heart, “Well, it sure sounds like the surgery was successful.”

Diagnosis: Trigeminy PVC; Treatment: Ablation

At my yearly “physical” there was a questionnaire that revealed things weren’t quite right. I recognized some of the questions as seeming to relate to congestive heart failure, but I wasn’t having most of the symptoms. I was having one or two. I realized I was no longer sleeping on my back. When I tried, I felt like CO2 was building up (like rebreathing a balloon, somewhat) – I could sleep on my back just fine even when I weighed significantly more than I do now. Also, while it seemed I could do as much as ever (for my age) it also seemed I was breathing hard to do it. Turbo had to be spun up for almost everything.

I was wired up with a Holter (portable recording electrocardiograph) for 48 hours, had an ultrasound done of the heart (and the ‘EKG’ trace didn’t look quite right, but the imaging technician carefully had no comments on anything), went in for a sleep study (results in, but I’ve not heard them yet. Appointment had to be rescheduled and just as well…) and then wound up with another Holter rig with more wires to get a better picture of things.

What I have is “Trigeminy PVC.” In my case, for every normal beat of the heart, there are two premature ventricular contractions. It’s kind of like for every time a spark plug fires (correctly), there are a couple more weaker tries at making it fire at the wrong time, and those mess things up. There was hesitation in giving me the usual immediate treatment – beta blocker – as that can slow heart rate. That’s usually a good thing. However, my resting heart rate is quite low. I’ve had nurses take my pulse ‘by hand’ as the automation either was complaining it was too low or was simply not believed. More than once, it’s been under 50 beats per minute. Eventually I was put on a milder beta blocker. And now I’m coming back off of it again. And also realizing how much it had been doing, despite my feeling it hadn’t been doing much.

The result of the second, fancier Holter recording was that during the time it was able to record properly (some leads came off while I was at work, so it wasn’t a full 24 hours of good data, but enough) they found 25 PVC events from someplace or places… and 50,000 from one particular spot. The 25 is no big deal. The 50,000? That’s getting addressed. The choices are/were: beta blocker(s), calcium channel blocker(s), ablation surgery. What’s that? Simplified, they snake a cable to the troublespot and zap it enough to burn out the misfiring bit.

The cardiologist I spoke with listed all the things that could potentially go wrong, and pretty much all apply to any surgery. Did seem a bit surprised when I brushed off the bit about ionizing radiation exposure – of course it’ll be minimal as everyone in the operating room wants to use as little as possible. Still said if it was them, they’d go with the surgery. Another source who knows what he speaks of was rather more blunt: “Get the surgery. It’s low-risk, high-success, and the drugs will make you feel like [MANURE].”

Thus, the morning of the 30th I go to Rochester (MN), things get done, I stay overnight, check out on the 31st. But I don’t get to come home. Just in case, they want me close by should anything happen. There’s a hotel pretty much across the street, so that’s where I’ll be for New Year’s Eve. New Year’s Day I get to come home. And then do almost nothing as I’ve been told to not lift over 5 lbs for several days. That might be the most difficult part of all this. Especially if things are really successful and I feel more energetic without needing to spin up the turbo. There might be a week of mall-walking or such just to burn pent up energy.

I Have Been Terribly Remiss

I should have pointed this out the instant I saw it.

Sarah Hoyt has a wonderful Artist’s Conception image of me at work. And you can (if in time – my fault if not) make a backstory for it. Here:

Morning in Goldport