High Peaks Region

High Peaks Region

This terrain map shows the high peak region in the Catskill Mountains.

I have respect but lack compassion towards animals

I have respect but very little compassion towards animals.🐶 They are not humans, even if many are incentivized through food, shelter and other rewards to behave in ways that comfort us. 😍

Animals have an important part of the ecosystem that we all depend on 🌎, livestock produces food🐖 and fiber🐏 and pets give us companionship🐈 and provide other services like deterring mice🐀 or retrieving birds while bird hunting.🐦 Domesticated animals have special needsโ™ฟ that only humans can provide due to their breeding.🏠 It’s important to respect their natural needs to maximize profitablity and success with our relationship with animals but our relationship to animals shouldn’t be about caring or love.

Many today think that domesticated animals should be considered a special type of property, and people who fail to maintain them🔎 should be punished more severely than those who fail to maintain other equipment such as an automobile or their house. 🚗 But I think we should be more worried about the waste of finite resources not infinitely reproducible animals.

Domesticated and bred animals are simply organic matter that took energy and labor to construct 🐓 – yes people should maintain them under the right conditions like any other piece of machinery – but they are indefinitely reproducible 🔧 through animal husbandry. They are no more special than any other type of property and indeed I would argue that as organic matter that will rot away in the soil, they are less important than many other types of property.🍗

Being watched as the sun set

I am starting to bounce back ๐Ÿ˜

When it’s been years since you’ve had a wicked cold, it’s easy to forget how much a cold can throw one for a loop. But today, unlike the other sick days I took from work, I’ve been really laying back, trying to get as much sleep and recovery as possible, as I want to be as close to my peak come Sunday into Monday.

I really would like to be over the cold ๐Ÿค’ before Sunday so come Monday I’m in good shape to get back and be pounding the pavement hard with my data work. I actually want to be healthy enough to go to the library on Sunday to run some lists, ๐Ÿ“œ get caught up on the things I didn’t get done when I was sick as a dog ๐Ÿ•โ€๐Ÿฆบ on Thursday and Friday. I did end up doing work those days, but everything was slower as I was in a bit of brain fog, hacking up mucus left and right. And it really is the busiest part of the campaign season, and I’m running lists and writing code left and right.

I am feeling like I am 80% back by this afternoon, ๐Ÿšดโ€โ™‚๏ธ and really almost want to get out for a bike ride this afternoon or at least get some fresh air. It’s such a beautiful day, and while the nose running ๐Ÿ‘ƒ and congestion ๐Ÿ˜ค have let up a lot, but I feel like if I overexhert myself today I am going to just end up collapsing. You know, I feel like I have so much energy โœŠ but I really don’t as I recover form the cold. Maybe I will go down to the park for a bit later on the bike. I was trying to find the chain lube, โ›“๏ธ but I’m not having much luck on that. Tomorrow, I plan to go to Walmart as many pantry is getting bare, and whole wheat pancakes, fried onions, brussel sprouts, eggs, and mixed vegetables gets tiresome after a while. I finished off the last of bananas I had yesterday, ๐ŸŒand you know what I’m really craving — grape fruit. ๐ŸŠ At the same time I kind of don’t want to rush out to public places, lest I spread this nasty cold around.

It is what is is. ๐ŸŒž I don’t have a fever, my temperature this morning was only 97.1 F. ๐ŸŒก๏ธ I came back on the COVID test. I do need to schedule my COVID and flu booster. A completely beautiful autumn day and I’ve spent half the day in bed, just playing with my phone, ๐Ÿ“ณ trying to get back over this cold so I can move forward again with life come tomorrow. Going rain and cold tomorrow, but if I’m feeling fine, I’ll head to the library ๐Ÿ“š๏ธ and I’ll work down there, after going to the Walmart to get bike grease and all that other stuff I need. I was originally planning to go shopping on Thursday evening before heading out to Madison County early on Friday, but as it seems with the weather and the sickness, that was not to be. ๐Ÿฎ

Took apart my laptop this morning, and got the fan unstuck ๐Ÿ’ป๏ธ and checked out replacing the power port. Doesn’t look as easy as I thought, but I would have been good I think if I had gotten a big enough power supply to replace the one that broke. I think I have to pull the motherboard to get access to it, and I don’t want to do that. I bought the 45-watt power block, which will charge things when the laptop is off — abit slowly — but nothing when it’s running it’s not enough power. I goofed but it was only a $10 mistake, and I should be getting the new one delivered from Amazon tomorrow morning, so I should be back in business. ๐Ÿ”Œ I’ll keep the slow charge one for at home, as a backup, as it works to charge the laptop but only slowly when it’s off.

I’m glad the fan was just stuck and I was able to free it up but I doesn’t look like that is particularly diffiicult to replace. โ˜ข๏ธ With the fan running again, the laptop is running much cooler — around 30 to 35 C compared to 60 to 80 C. I should have opened it up and fixed it sooner as the high temperatures are really bad for solder joints and capacitors, though the laptop is 8 years old now, and I’ve been talking about replacing it for some time now — though it’s more then sufficent for my needs with a 1 GB SSD plus a 1 GB HD and 12 GB of RAM. I don’t care about processor speed as most of my GIS and data stuff is more disk IO and memory intensive then processor intensive. And hopefully it won’t feel so hot on my lap. ๐Ÿ’ป๏ธ

Yesterday I worked the bulk of the day at Five Rivers. ๐Ÿฆ…๐Ÿž Beautiful day for sure for working out there, and I went for a lunch time walk, but boy did I feel sick. I was blowing my runny nose non-stop. ๐Ÿ‘ƒKept it together and worked until around quarter of six, came home and collapsed. I was just so tired, though sleep hasn’t come easy when I’m constantly coughing my brains out. ๐ŸงŸ It’s just been no fun. But at least once I get the proper power charger ๐Ÿ”Œ with the fan working on my laptop, hopefully things should be good for some time into the future at this point. And next weekend I can get out camping and riding, or so I hope. ๐Ÿฅพ ๐Ÿ•๏ธ I just got to take it easy one more day, do some reading and looking out the window ๐ŸชŸ at the blue skies all will be good when my charger comes tomorrow and I stock up on groceries. ๐Ÿ›’ I probably will skip the whole-wheat homemade pancakes and all the onions for a while. ๐Ÿง… Although, what to eat?