I’m a Lousy Bachelor
Greetings everyone.
My lovely and talented wife — you know, the smart half of the couple — is off visiting her mother and won’t return for a couple more days. I have been a bachelor for a week or so at this point, and I hate it.
Even Tinkerbelle hates it. She’s bored, as there is only one human available to follow around and make demands of.
And what have I done? Not nearly enough, I assure you. The big thing was that I had to work with FedEx to shepherd this through customs:
That is Anne’s new toy, a Harpejji. I’ve mentioned it before, I believe. It’s the love child of an electric guitar and a piano. This one has 24 strings, but there are two other sizes with fewer strings. It has electric pickups, like a guitar, but the notes are (kind of) layed out like a piano.
It’s plugged into an amplifier and played by taping the strings between the frets, but I suppose you can strum if desired. You can bend the strings as well, of course, along with various other guitar playing techniques. Oh, and you play it with it on a stand. It’s not something you can carry around as it is pretty heavy.
Anne is the resident expert on it, so if you have questions I will have to forward them to her. Or you can visit marcodi.com to order one for yourself.
The problems with delivery were complicated.
First, they gave us a delivery day and missed it by almost a week. For reasons unknown their initial delivery estimate had no basis in reality.
Then, once it finally made it to the west coast and crossed the border, it kind of got stuck in customs. It turns out that we had to pay sales tax but not duties. That’s fine, but it took a while to get FedEx to tell me anything useful about how much to pay, and even once that was done it took still more time to get their processes to kick it loose and onto a delivery truck.
And of course their delivery window only says “Before 8pm” on the day, which means I was stuck here until it arrived, since a signature was required and I was the only one here. (Tinkerbelle was not going to sign for it, even if bribed with dog biscuits.)
Anyway, the new toy is finally here and Anne is looking forward to playing with it.
What else have I done? Well, I reviewed a book for a friend and sent him a pile of comments. That was fun.
Oh, and I cut into the “mystery box” that I mentioned last time.
“What was that again?” I hear you ask, well…
This is the extremely tiny ensuite bath that was attached to the main bedroom when the house was built in 1960. It’s been remodelled a time or two since then, I am sure, but we’re going to do something a bit more drastic than a simple remodel. What you see in that photo is everything. Once you’re in there you don’t even have enough room to turn around, and it’s just silly. We’re going to combine it with the other bathroom and create a larger, nicer space. Something that we could actually live with when we are 80.
Anyway, the mystery box is just to the left of the sink and right of the toilet. It’s covered with tile and has an outlet on it facing the sink. There is no way inside it, and no obvious reason for it to exist, other than if the vanity had gone all the way to the wall it would have been a deep area back there that is hard to get to. But the problem is that it could also be hiding something that we’ll have to worry about with the renovation we’re planning.
So the plan was to cut a hole into the cabinet and have a look around.
Here are the photos of that little excursion:
First I removed the doors of the vanity, then I cut a hole in the vanity which exposed a sheet a plywood a couple of inches deeper in. So I cut a hole in that as well, and in the end it got sealed back up.
And what did I find in there?
Pretty much nothing, as I hoped. There’s some very poorly done wiring and some framing, and that’s about it. I saw nothing that would affect our remodel plans.
So that little job is done and off the list.
I’ve done some other things as well, of course. I picked up a new set of glasses that I am still adjusting to, and did some simple shopping. I’ve also been researching new WiFi mesh routers, since our existing ones are getting a bit long in the tooth and no longer keep up with the gigabit fiber optic connection we now have. And I have researched how we can donate a car to support the local SPCA. We really don’t need two cars at this point, and the residual value left in the 2005 Honda Element is pretty low, so we can get rid of it at any time.
And of course I’ve walked the dog — she enjoys getting out and looking for other dogs (and occasionally people) to bark at.
Oh, before I forget… a while ago I shared something about AI and how I am not particularly impressed by it. One of my college friends — thanks Kerry! — shared this with me:
That’s a scholarly article discussing how ChatGPT and other LLMs are bullshitters, along the lines described by this famous book:
It’s pretty funny to think of it that way, but it is entirely correct in my opinion.
And just yesterday I listened to a long podcast on a similar topic:
That interview is also interesting for the guest’s thoughts about high tech companies and their attitudes and issues, as well as the general idea that the AI bubble is going to pop. It’s long — well over an hour — but I found it worthwhile if AI is a thing you ponder.
Beyond that, I have had the usual, boring life I always do, but turned up to 11 because Anne is not here.
She’ll be back on Sunday though, and things will go back to normal, whatever that means.
Take care!