Modern Vespa

retirement is when you want it to be, not some arbitrary number someone thinks that's the date. So with proper planning you can quit work anytime.

Can't get gluten free apple fritters

I've got 670 weeks

Mine was 685 weeks ago..

A*bit* too soon for a countdown calendar....

1040, almost to the day here!

And here i was only 8 and a bit ago.....

But i'm still 44 so there's that. 🤪

The school I'm attending online for my bachelor's degree seems to have a pet project of indoctrinating informing their students about Climate Change, which is fine and all. The thing is, as I've had to write various papers about it over the last few months, and I keep running across various versions of the statistic of "100 corporations produce 70% of all global emissions" and the argument that an individual's efforts won't amount to much due to that "fact." So I looked into it.

All of the various articles stating that "statistic" are citing the same study done in 2017. The thing is, the study only accounted for industrial emissions. It did not include emissions from land use, land use change or forestry, or from sources such as landfills, agriculture and farming.

Some researchers have refined the figures to be more accurate, and have estimated (there's that word again) that corporations are responsible for about 12% of emissions, while the other 88% comes from consumption of products. Which means that yes, an individual's attempts at curbing climate change can be effective.

(source)

Apologies for the delayed post, I tend to only visit MV when I'm at work.

I was off work all last week for the Thanksgiving break. I spent Monday at the car dealership getting my wife's car serviced (oil change, alignment, tune-up, transmission service, fuel line service, and two open recalls). Tuesday I'd intended to spend the day doing my school work that was due on Sunday, Dec 1, so that I could spend the rest of the break relaxing. I had to take Digby to the vet for a checkup that morning first, and had planned on doing school work when I got back.

I ate a late breakfast when I returned from the vet and was about to get out the laptop when the internet went out. I opened the app on my phone and check to see if there was an outage in the area. There wasn't, so I chatted with an agent via the Spectrum app to trouble-shoot the issue. They determined that a tech would have to come out and scheduled an appointment for that day between 3 & 4pm.

I thought about tethering the laptop to my phone since I have unlimited tethering and unlimited data, but AT&T's data speeds were painfully slow, and kept buffering. So I used the time waiting on the tech cleaning the living room (which needed to be done, anyway). I texted my neighbor to see if his internet was also down, and he said that he wasn't home, but that he'd seen a Spectrum truck working on the line outside our homes earlier that day, at about the time I lost service. That reminded me that a technician had been working on the line once about a year ago and had disconnected our line and left it disconnected for no reason. So I went outside to check, and sure enough, our line was no longer connected. I took a pic and called Spectrum to let them know I found out why my service was out. They escalated it to a supervisor so that the tech who disconnected me would be "retrained".

While cleaning up, I found a wasp next outside the front door, so I got out the wasp spray and doused it. As soon as the spray hit it, the number of visible wasps doubled. I drenched them all, and got rid of them.

All of the above to say that I was unable to do my homework, and ended up spending almost all day Saturday getting it done.

Forgot to mention, Digby peed in his carry bag on the way to the vet and it soaked through the canvas and transferred to my sleeve when I picked him up to carry him in. Had to run an extra load of laundry when I got home because of it.

Some pics of the day:

I here there's a guy in S. Dakota that might have been able to arrange a rescue...

Wasps are your friends! They are an essential natural pest control.

True, that. Although IMHO yellow jackets (or what I refer to as picnic wasps) are a PITA and Bald-Faced hornets are of the Devil, the fellas monogodo had to deal with are pretty benign. I've painted right up to their nests years ago, and recently even watched a video of a guy pinching a nest off of it's attachment without being stung just by slowly approaching it from above. So they're pretty hard to freak out over if you have them around. What's been uniquely interesting is rock climbing around Indian Summer when wasps get dopey and sun themselves on the rock. It's a balance behind finding a good handhold quickly and being sure *someone* isn't already using it-although the aforementioned dopiness gives humans the advantage.

Same goes for snakes and cats, but none of them are allowed in my house and are subject to being swatted, sprayed, ejected, or eaten (depending on my mood) if found there.

22 work days here… but who's counting?

Chris from CLE

Lake effect snow is pissing me off today. We have 36 inches already and another 18 to 24 expected today. And we got off easy. Some neighboring towns are approaching 60 inches already.

Travel 15 miles to the west or south and there is no snow at all. Literally none. Talked with a guy who mowed his lawn over the weekend. Needless to say not in my town.

Chris from CLE

And here in the snow belt of NY where we often hit the record for the season for snow fall if I totaled up the snow fall since the first of October I doubt we have had six inches!

Did run the snow blower on drive Monday more or less to check it out and we had a carpenter coming and wanted to not have him track snow into the house.

Weird to be in Southern Wisconsin, not a snowflake in sight, with a couple of feet of snow 4 hours north, and your world to the SE. Lake Effect is real.

A very nice, sunny, 60 degree day here in flyover country.

Did a quicky wash job on the GTS, then fired it up for the first time in a couple weeks and headed to the gas station about 2.5 miles away, intending to top the little booger up with a gallon of delicious 91 octane non-ethanol, then head the fifty miles up the Black Hills back roads to my favorite coffee shop hangout.

The GTS ran ok as far as the gas station, but upon leaving and getting back on the 55 mph highway to town, the Vespa wouldn't take more than half throttle before bogging down and refused to go over 45-50 mph.

It would start and idle normally, and move off normally until it began it's bogging trick at one-third to half throttle.

I nursed it back home and parked it, then attempted to start my '81 Honda CB900C, and ride that instead, but the battery was obvious weak from sitting and it refused to start.

I ended up riding my Triumph Rocket to Deadwood....because it always starts and always runs well once its started.....so far anyway.

So now I have to figure out what the Vespa's problem is. It behaves as if it isn't getting fuel.

I wonder it it has anything to do with that 'cat' stuff that I have heard about?

Anyway, I did get a nice ride in today, so there's no complaints there, and it IS the first week of December and we could be up to our asses in snow and/or experiencing sub zero temps, but I need to figure out my GTS's ailment before I can ride it again.

This. That's a lot of packaging for a handful of rubber bands. This is the part of online retail I really don't like. So much useless garbage generated and shipped all over the world.

This has to be the best packaging for elastic bands.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/395790852282

This is the business end of my 3D printer. The nozzle is clogged which was a learning opportunity for some basic maintenance. Yay.
Creality helpfully has gooped over the three connectors you're supposed to disconnect to clear the nozzle with some gummy substance, probably because there's a lot of shaking in operation. It turns out the goop is stronger than the bond between the connector base and the board its on.

Yeah. Plastic packaging bugs me in general. Yeah, on one end it's wonderful..it's cheap,.protects stuff, makes things easier to handle, harder to shoplift, but as a result we use tons of it and it just piles up for the most part. In our word it mostly "disappears" in landfills, but elsewhere it clogs waterways, piles ip in slums and if not making life worse, is a semipermanent scar on the landscape....

I'll try to keep this brief.

My son (28, Down Syndrome) has worked a job at the hospital in the kitchen area for nearly 2.5 years. He got the job through a special year long training program called Project Search that works directly with the hospital.

It's a crap job. He stands in one spot and pulls dishes returned from hospital rooms off big carts and scrapes the leftovers into the trash before sending them down the wash line. Eight hour shifts. He comes home tired and stinking of kitchen, but every morning he wakes up and gets dressed and is honestly eager to go to work. We should all have his work ethic.

Nov 15th I received a call around 11:00am to tell me he was being put immediately on administrative leave. No explanation and his supervisor would not elaborate. I left work to pick him up where I found him sitting by himself in the main lobby. He had no real understanding about what happened.

What happened is they had written him up for behavior that is totally uncharacteristic of him twice in October and failed to either notify me or (his legal guardian) or his designated advocate who is the teacher for the Project Search program and works on site at the hospital.

Rather than involve the people who know him best and figure out A) What triggered his behavior at work and B) What solution could help remedy the situation, they put him on leave.

There was no communication from HR after that. On Wednesday last week, the day before the holiday weekend, I received a call from his manager where he read all of the legally required information to my son over the phone, terminating his employment.

I went off the rails - respectfully - and left the room so C wouldn't have to hear, countering everything his manager said, pointing out the failures on hospital management's part to contact us or address the actual issues.

This has all stirred up a hornet's nest. I wrote a letter that C's advocate is delivering to the hospital's Director of Hospitality Services, hopefully today.

I don't want him to get his job back. It's terrible work and maybe this was the push we needed to find him something better, but this also is not the first time Project Search graduates have had issues with lower level management at the hospital. Hopefully it will be the last.

That sucks. I'll be pulling for him.

I couldn't say it any more eloquently. The heck. Maybe fair game with someone who's capable of understanding and can meet typical expectations...but if you've got a guardian, the communication should be through THEM. It's more challenging, for sure, but it's what needs to be done.

Anyway, fingers crossed that this is a step to something better for him.

Amen to both posts.

Unwanted mystery to be solved. I went to check on my chickens this morning-usually check their food and water, give them some scratch grains or other treats (like today's Dish du Jour, cilantro stems). They have a gravity feeder inside the coop, they're normally a bit messy, but today there was a good pound of feed on the floor. No immediate suspects, unless one of them had a manic episode, but my go-to is rats. I've had one or more a few years ago, finally got them with poison.... There's a horse barn a couple hundred yards away which is my best guess. Out to my compost bin a week ago and something had scattered some diggings outside of it which made me wonder, though no clear holes visible (that too apparently had one many years back based on the hole chewed into it).

Anyway, I was already running late for work, so no time for inspection. I have time this noon for a closer look....

Your son likely gets a lot more out of work than most people, and the lower level employees who have issues dealing with Project Search graduates may not have received training, or may feel uncomfortable around people with downs syndrome. I would suggest that you don't communicate directly with the hospital or management further until you discuss this with an attorney who specializes in ADA issues or workplace issues in general. There is a real reason this happened, and discovery is how it's going to come out. The hospital won't give you information necessary to have a clear understanding of what transpired.

Seamus,that's awful. It breaks my heart when I see someone who wants to work but is denied because of a problem that can be probably worked around. Case in point: I was running a big job for a Plastering company that I had been with for many years. There was a new hire, a very competent plasterer and a heck of a nice guy. A few days into the job, he came to me and asked if he could come in an hour later than our usually start up time of 7:30AM. He was living with a lady with three young children that he loved like his own and whose father had left some years before. The oldest needed to be dropped of at school for gifted children. The alternate for this child was to languish in a regular school where the other children where basically 2 years behind him. Anyhow, he said he would work an hour late every day to get his 40 hour week in. I had no problem with this as I was usually around for an hour after quitting time anyway. However, my boss's son heard about it and made a point to come out and lay the man off when I was doing some warranty work on a past job that was close by. I got back to the job to find this out and was mad as he!! to put it mildly. 1 call to my boss and the man was rehired immediately before he left for the day. I had to explain to his somewhat foolish son, that not only was this plasterer a hard worker, he was easy to get along with, never complained and was very good at his job. I then asked the son how many other people that they employed had all these attributes? The last few years I worked up here in the Charlotte area, I would hear owners and contractors say that no one wants to work anymore. I would then remark, pay them what they are worth, show some respect to them and you'll have all the workers you need.

While I appreciate that, the hospital is very aware of ADA protocols; they work directly with Project Search. That class is taught on-site at the hospital and has been for years.

This is Corewell Health. They have procedures and policies in place and training to support them. With 65,000 team members, they can't afford not to.

I think I mentioned this is going to director level at this point. Some people in lower management dropped the ball, and there really are no excuses.

I'm sure they are aware of the ins and outs of the ADA and someone might not have followed them. What big organizations tend to do, whether or not an employee made a bad decision, is circle the wagons. So the Director is likely to support the current employee, and if what that person did would create issues for them, slow walk that employee out the door.
You deal with this once every how many years? The HR department deals with it every day. You need someone who deals with them as often. And knowing what you know about the way your son was treated, a successful outcome is likely not getting his job back, but finding him a job elsewhere. Whatever was done, the people who did it are still there. And if they're not, you want to know why.

Oh, absolutely. My actual short term goal is for him to NOT work.

He collects SSI, and it's reduced for every dollar he earns working. So at some point, he makes enough money that he's essentially working for free, and I don't want that to happen.

He doesn't need the money, so my hope is to find him some activities he will actually enjoy rather than a job. There are art programs, drumming groups, all sorts of things for him to do. And he isn't bound to them, like he would be a job. He is able to ride a public transportation bus especially for people with disabilities, so it will all work out for the best. And he will begin collecting his full SSI amount.

Since he was let go his knee pain has cleared up as well as his complexion.

It's just crappy how they went about it, and the lack of communication on there part is unforgivable.

It's all about respect and common decency.

Well, sad rather than pissed off...

My mother was all into traditional domestic stuff...baking, and preserving stuff in particular. At her passing last year my sister and I were eating muffins she'd recently made. A lot of canned items we shared from the last year were likely contributed by my sister, so they don't count in the nostalgia, but, she had a century-old pear tree that produced on alternate years, and as usual, she canned most of them and shared them with my sister and I.

I'd consumed them sparingly, but had gotten down to the last pint which I decided to open this morning. I popped the lid sentimentally, knowing this was the last link of the sort, glanced into the jar and noticed fork marks from her pushing the pears down into the syrup. Not unlike a fingerprint.

Telling my wife tonight, she told me our kid just lost the gloves they'd chosen to keep from her things.... not a great day it seems.

1400km

You need to get a filter you can clean like a K&N if you are going thru them that fast. Dusty roads are hell on a filter.

Spyware is real. You are being surveilled on a near-constant basis.

But it's not coming from some shady overseas crime lords. Or, at least, it's not just coming from some shady overseas crime lords. It's coming from one of the largest companies in America.

There is a reason that I have removed Google Analytics and Google reCAPTCHA services from Modern Vespa.

reCAPTCHA, in particular, is insidious. It presents itself as a tool for stopping bots, and millions of websites ostensibly use it for that purpose. But reCAPTCHA is actually a surveillance tool, tracking where you go on the internet. And if that weren't bad enough, it is also a tool used to train its AI models, using unpaid labor from the internet at large. Your labor.

I actually have a few quibbles with the details of this video, as a few of the points are overstated -- such as what exactly Google can extract from your browser via an interaction with reCAPTCHA. However, on the whole, the video correctly points out that reCAPTCHA isn't actually any good at stopping bots.

I should also point out the irony of posting this YouTube video here, since YouTube is wholly owned by Google, which means there's a good chance that this video thumbnail appearing in your browser is contributing additional information to Google about your internet activities.

Dammit.

Many years ago, there was a supervisor for general contractor I worked with often. He was an older man and quite reserved in his speech and opinions - the very opposite of the young me at the time. Over the years we worked on jobs together I looked up to him as a man and the way he handled himself, especially in tough situations. One day when we were all together at lunch time, I asked how he remained to calm and said so little. He told me that if you don't say much, most people will listen when you actually do lend your opinion to a matter at hand. He also said " Don't say anything out loud that you would not want printed in the newspapers". I'm guessing this applies to the internet now. The spying part - yeah, that sucks. It seems like if you are not paying for a product, you are the product.

It's the oil from the breather that makes cleaning it a problem. What you see is mud