Daywander
Carol and I went grocery shopping this morning, and came home with the biggest damn apple either of us had ever seen. It's a honeycrisp, which we've had before, many times. However, none of them were ever like this honeycrisp. They weren't labeled "giant honeycrisp" or anything. And while this was the largest one in the display, the others were just about as big. If you don't eat apples very often, you'll find a comparison photo between The Giant Apple and an ordinary Gala below:
Wow. Just wow.
Yesterday, Arizona's governor made masking optional, and allowed bars, restaurants, and gyms to open at full capacity. O dear Lord, the dudgeon; the moaning and the groaning and the predictions that everyone in Arizona is gonna die. Well, the graph of COVID-19 deaths here is down to single digits per day, and over three million people in Arizona have received at least one shot. The state is running some of its vaccine centers 24/7, and now anyone over the age of 17 can make an appointment to be vaccinated. No one knows how many people had a brush with the virus but never even noticed. It might be a lot, mostly younger, and now mostly resistant to infection. We're far closer to herd immunity than anyone in the media or government is willing to admit.
I check that ADHS graph every morning. No one knows why we had the fall/winter surge with mask compliance at 90% here. This tells me masks really don't help much. Some of that may be because masks don't protect your eyes. More may be that the virus does indeed travel as an aerosol, which might be slightly attenuated by a typical mask--but only slightly. No one knows, including our supposed "experts," who say whatever they're told by the people who own them, and lie on demand, all "for the greater good."
The media (and most of our elites) really doesn't want the pandemic to end. It was a titanic ego trip for them, to pump out endless panic porn and watch people obey them slavishly and persecute others who were skeptical. There's backlash brewing: CNN's ratings are in freefall, and the sooner they collapse and go under, the better. Some in the medical community are now calling foul on harassing the general public. Cord-cutting may finish the job that the backlash began: Carol and I dumped cable TV and now keep cable service solely for Internet access. I've been investigating Internet Radio to fill the gaps. The units are basically low-end computers with network connections, and can be had for less than $200. Music is big, but there is plenty of news and weather if you know their IPs. Internet radio is basically the stake hovering over the heart of cable TV/audio, and the hammer is coming down.
Reception of our local classical radio station KBAQ can be spotty. It gets disrupted when a jet flies over the house, heading for the Scottsdale airport. (This happens a lot.) They stream over the Internet, and with an Internet radio, I won't have to worry about multipath or other species of radio interference.
Since we've moved to Phoenix, I've noticed that an entire genre of computer retailers is missing: the box shop. By that I mean a place that would put together a custom PC for you. I had a machine built at Fry's back in 2018, but Fry's is now gone. I had a great box shop up in Colorado Springs. That's where my current (aging) desktop came from. I need a new one, but if box shops still exist here, they hide well. Yes, yes, I could do it myself, and if I must I will. But having done it many times before, I consider it a bad use of my time.
Alas, the Thermaltake case I used back in 2012, their BlacX, no longer exists. That's the one with two SATA drive slots in the top panel, so you can plug barenaked SATA drives into the top for quick backups. I suspect the BlacX was popular in the LAN party era, but like box shops, LAN parties are receding into the misty past at 40% C. Thermaltake does make a 2-slot external SATA dock, which I'm guessing I'll end up using.
The pool water is now at 61°. We bought a new solar cover a few weeks ago. As soon as the water hits 70°, we'll spread it out, and in another week or so the water should be at 80°, which for me is the lower limit of swimming temperatures. Winter here was nice, but it's gone. The pool makes the summers worthwhile.
I tried rereading Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, but the 1968 Dover paperback I have is laid out with such small type that even with reading glasses, it gives me headaches. Ebooks arrived just in time for my old eyes. I also bought the NESFA Press hardcover of Believing, which is a collection of all the non-People stories of Zenna Henderson. It wasn't cheap, but it's a handsome book, and will replace several crumbling MMPBs from the '60s. Oddly, it's not on Amazon. I had to order it direct from NESFA.
And with that, I declare today over. Time to hit the sack. Much to do tomorrow.