Category: Miscellaneous

A Bird in your pocket?

I had clothes drying on the line, and Anya grabbed them just before sunset. She quickly tossed everything into a basket and brought it into the house. A short time later, I got the clothes out of the basket to fold. I took out a pair of Scott’s jeans and … out flies this little bird! No idea how she got in there, and I’m really glad she didn’t seem to be hurt in any way. We turned off all the interior lights, opened the front door, and turned out the outside light. A little following her around and trying to persuade her to go in the right direction and swoop, she flew outside.

Restarting Ford 2110 After Running Out Of Diesel

We found a lot of instructions online for restarting a tractor after running out of diesel. It boils down to following the fuel line out of the tank and bleeding everything. The bleed screw on the fuel filter was pretty obvious – Philips head screwdriver, open it up, let it bubble until fuel flows, then lock it down. The injectors were obvious — and I need to check what size wrench we used. But the middle one … not so much. Figured I’d put a picture for anyone else who has the bad fortune to run out of fuel in their tractor. After bleeding air from the fuel filter, move on to this screw. An 11/16″ wrench to loosen the bolt head and a flat-head screwdriver. From there, move to the injectors. Voila, the tractor goes vroom again.

 

Eclipse

We watched the eclipse — it was surprising how much energy the sun puts off when the moon is mostly covering it!

But we had the totality for just under four minutes, and it was dark … and “sunrise” was everywhere.

Big Bear Valley Eagle Eggs

Since “they” said the first egg was no longer viable on the 7th of March, we wondered when the rest of the eggs would be non-viable … looks like this weekend and Tuesday. Bummer, because we were hoping to see some baby eagles! Ash gets transfixed when there’s a bird on the TV.

Egg Egg Laid Hatch Date Nonviable Date
1st 26 Jan 2024 1 Mar 2024 7 Mar 2024
2nd 28 Jan 2024 3 Mar 2024 9 Mar 2024
3rd 31 Jan 2024 6 Mar 2024 12 Mar 2024

AI Personas

I’ve seen people have a bit of fun with AI personas — pre-prompts that say “be a pirate” or something similarly silly, but you can use the personas to gear answers toward yourself as the target audience too — deeply technical or “explain it like I’m five”.

Although the AI takes “like I am 5” a little too literally — don’t need smart little elves or castles.

The technical pre-prompt, though, avoids getting high level basic facts that you already know.

Amazon Luna Black Friday Scam

This is really silly — we ordered a Luna controller on Black Friday because it was on sale, with the idea of it being a gift for when Anya finishes school for the half. I specifically did not associate the controller with our account. Today, we noticed that the “free trial” had already been activated.

Trying to talk to Amazon didn’t really go anywhere — I couldn’t even get the fellow to understand why automatically starting a free trial (before the item actually even arrives) during a gift-giving season where people are generally buying something weeks before it would be opened was problematic. Evidently there’s no such thing as a Luna controller plus 30 days Luna+ bundle — there’s a controller and a free trial. And the free trial starts when you place your order — not when you get the controller, not when you start using it. Ultimately, they say you’ve got to call back during M-F 9-5 kind of hours when someone from Luna is available.

Not something I’m available to deal with today, but a very odd practice for a company that size. Like no one thought through the logic on this one?!? Buy it on Black Friday, 30 days later is December 27th. So people getting Christmas gifts have three days to check it out?

If they’re offering a free trial to anyone who signs up, why bundle it with the controller??? I could have gotten the controller and just signed up for the trial the day the present would be given.