August 4th, 2020
Some of the items in this post seem significant to me.
My previous blog post was April 24, three months ago, and the saga of the mystery computer had just begun.
It didn’t turn out well.
As you may remember, on April 18 Chris and I discovered we’d apparently bought a $1525.99 computer for someone in Santa Clara. We explained our situation to Amazon, and cancelled the credit card.
In a couple of days our credit card company cancelled their payment to Amazon, so we think everything is gonna be OK and we aren’t gonna be out any money. OK? Good. What could go wrong?
We couldn’t convince Amazon to stop delivery. Not a good sign. (More later.)
I spend some time on phone and iPad getting an iPad class-member up and running on Zoom. Could tell we’ve succeeded when she compliments me on my nice red sneakers.
Susan Cochran photo; used without permission
Peggy sends out swimming message, as in OK, gang, time to begin our ocean swims for another year. Feels very good to have this weekly event to look forward to, surprisingly good, actually. No problem keeping social distance.
Amazon hires 175,000 additional people. Instacart grocery shopping and delivery hires about 300,000.
=====May 2020
Amazon locks Chris’s account. This takes us a while to understand. They know fraud’s involved, but they still expect to be paid for the computer. Our Prime Video TV watching is connected to this account — that’s about ¾ of our viewing — and Chris has NO access to hundreds of Kindle books she’s bought. We’re hurting. Andrea loans us her Amazon account for the nonce.
By law, if one acts quickly enough, there is a $50 maximum liability if this is credit card fraud. Chris acts quickly enough but this isn’t credit card fraud. Huh? Howz that? To Amazon the perp, e.g., could be a family member who’s savvy enough to have slimed their way into her account and bought a computer for their niece in Santa Clara. The perp didn’t even need Chris’s credit card number.
We proceed on the basis of there must be something we can do to avoid being slimed for $1500.
Our group swims another day. Water temperature in Santa Barbara is 59°F/15°C, close to the long-term monthly average for April. Long-term data show March and April to be the coldest water temperatures here. Not winter months?! Where my wetsuit covered I was OK but exposed hands and feet went numb and my face always stung. Just 3° or 4° F more and the temperature is much easier to adjust to. But even if the temperature were benign I’m probably not in good enough physical shape to cover the 500 yards we aim for.
Trader Joe’s continues to make my weekly pickup of flower donations for the Breast Cancer Resource Center very convenient and safe. I call ahead and they have them waiting by their back door. If I need any sort if interaction with an employee I try to remember to remove the sunglasses — I don’t want to be completely unrecognizable!
For me! 
Unrecognizable? 
Bad dad jokes are order of the day: What do you call a cow with no legs? Ground beef (Tom Schruben, in Washington Post).
Chris answers a call from a male person who identifies himself as a grandson. He’d been in car crash … at this point Chris says she doesn’t think he’s her grandson and hangs up. The scammers and slime-balls are out in force.
Chris is aware that our black cat Inigo is in the house with a squeaking creature in his mouth. Yikes! A minute later she sees them leave together, so not to worry, I guess. The great gopher hunt in the living room last October was a golden opportunity for Inigo and his dad (me) to bond, but we don’t need a repeat!
https://kingmouse.blog/2019/10/the-great-parlor-gopher-hunt/
Jamile is released from Honolulu jail to a treatment center run by the Salvation Army. Her life is not going well, and it’s a lot more costly in many ways than a paltry $1500 computer.
A pickup from Gelson’s grocery and Chaucer’s bookstore in one quick trip is our big field trip of the day. We don’t enter either store — on arrival Chris calls the number they gave her and items are brought out. These days ya gotta grab your excitement where ya can.
Are those Covid toes I see down there at the end of my right leg?
Guess not. We compare with pictures on the web but can’t rule out Covid toes for several more days. Looks like a nasty bruise but I never figure out its origin.
COVID toes? After a couple of days I start taking photos 
Guess not
Late in May we give in and pay the ransom of $1525.99 to Amazon, but getting Amazon to accept our payment is yet another story. Please don’t ask. This has not been a happy event for us. Much eye-rolling, head-shaking, grumbling, and even a few naughty words.
If I ever do use Amazon Web Services to store my hundreds of GB of photos in the future — and it’s possible — I definitively want to use a separate account.
C and I get tested for COVID-19. We have no symptoms, the opportunity presents itself so we take it. Two or three days later, as advertised, we get letters showing negative results.
=====June 2020
Cannibal Women in the Avocado jungle of Death — ya gotta love that movie title. Well, at least I do. Big stars: Bill Maher, Adrienne Barbeau. IMDB gives it resounding, well earned, 4.8 of 10 (i.e., pathetic).
The character of Bunny and her cute little pink outfits is terrific — well cast and well played! Despite that highlight, this is a low budget movie, with poor acting, cheesy sets, and a lame story. All in all, the movie is wonderfull! (For some strange reason, no one else wants to watch it with me?)
I do a rare check of my spam mailbox. Whoo! Have you checked yours lately?
We start watching ER again — all 318 episodes now available on Hulu (15 seasons beginning in 1994). A New York Times critic strongly encourages us.
On June 21st grandson Mason gets his high school diploma in a drive-by; Nathan Hale High School, Seattle.
My Spam mailbox—Only one legitimate email in here 
Mason at the big moment
Can’t bear following national news closely, but am pleased to catch news about how various high schools perform their graduations. At Santa Barbara High, about a mile from my house, graduates walk all alone across the main quadrangle, past faculty who greet them, and receive their diploma on the other side. (One of the faculty flashes each student with a sign, “You were my favorite student!”) During the entire 9 hours this whole process lasts to get all the graduates graduated, honking and cheerfully festooned cars are driving around the area, even past our house and through the nearby Trader Joe’s parking lot.
=====July 2020
We create list of known HEA (Happily Ever After) or HFN movies we’d like to see (have already seen most of them years ago). Not just any HEA will do (the movies we watch are always very carefully selected!). When we’re in a movie mood we randomly choose from the list with the assistance of random.com. By July 26 we’ve we’ve watched 6 of them.
Our list of HEAs 
Gratuitous photo
File our income tax return file July 14 (didn’t want to wait till the last minute!). Before filing I must have thought that it would feel special, almost as if I were getting away with something, or it would be an interesting experience because of the unusually late deadline or just the crazy times we’re in. But no, I of course wasn’t doing anything the least bit clever by waiting, and I was left with the same old feeling of relief and grumpiness that I always feel right after filing!
Gratifying to see image from sensor I’d worked on in 2005 and 2006, my last years before retirement. This is from the Day/Night band that is a feature of VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite). First copy launched in 2011, 2nd in 2017, another planned for 2021. It’s an extremely sensitive panchromatic band instrument (dishwasher size) that greatly improves nighttime images of the Earth. These new images are sharper and more frequent than current satellite images (740m resolution, and full coverage almost daily).
In mid-July a 20 yr-old niece of son-in-law Peter flies from Boston to North Carolina to party. She returns infected and proceeds to infect her brother who promptly exposed his HS football team. This alarms the town of Melrose, MA and, Kate says, makes the Hickey name mud (it’s a large, well known family in a small town). And what about the other people in airports and on her plane she exposed?
Three years ago to the week Inigo came to live here. Within a few days we saw more and more scenes like the 1st of these 4 photos. Then for the next couple of years we kept them almost entirely separated. The next 3 photos, all within the last few weeks, show some recent progress.
July 2017 
Replacement of my crown on tooth #14 (an upper left molar) is an interesting, enjoyable experience, far more enjoyable than is reasonable.
I’m told beforehand it’ll cost between $1500 and $1700 and I’ll get 10% off if I pay in cash. Ok, I’ll pay in cash but it means the first trip to my credit union in several years. In the credit union lobby I’m the only customer I see. I slip the teller a note detailing to her what denominations and how many of each. I’m glad I remembered to remove sunglasses! I keep telling myself to play this straight, Paul! Yes, you’re a masked guy standing at the counter in a bank slipping the teller a note (at left) and expecting cash back but this isn’t a robbery or a Saturday Night Live skit. I keep hearing this little voice reminding me that this is like bank robbery scenes in movies where at the bottom of the note I would have written “Just do what I say and nobody gets hurt.”
Next day, at dentist’s office, assistant Wendy asks me to move my bangs out of the way so her thermometer gun can have a clear view of my forehead. A first! She flinches when I tell her no one has ever asked me to move my bangs before but I’m quick to assure her I liked that a lot. She looks relieved. Good.
We’re all pretty well masked and covered. Six feet apart is not one of the choices, though!
About 45 minutes later, the old crown has been cut off and the stub of the molar is made ready for the new crown. The dentist then mills my new crown on the spot (well, in the next room) out of a small block of porcelain very close to the color of the waiting tooth. Somehow he got the idea I’d like to watch the actual milling operation — don’t think he charges me extra for allowing me to watch the 13 minute milling show. Two milling heads at once — it’s a good show.
To mill my crown he has to get the 3D image data of my mouth to the milling machine. The 3D data are acquired with a scanner about size of small, hand-held grinding tool and he waves the tip of it around in my mouth for about 10 seconds. (That’s actually the way it seems to happen. Once these images appear on the monitor near me I realize the recent waving must have been the scanning operation.) Accuracy of scanning and milling operations is 20 𝜇m (a little less than 1/1000 of an inch), or about half the thickness of typical human hair.
Remains of old gold crown 
Molar ready for crown 
This is how the mill will cut the block of porcelain 
How the new crown will fit on the old tooth; dark blue shows sufficient thickness between old tooth and outer surface of crown
When I ask for pictures from this cool imagery he says well, not exactly but I can produce screen captures for you. So he rotates each of these 3D objects until I like the view and then does the screen capture and emails it to me. He knows the technology and he wants to make this customer happy. What a deal!
All during my appointment Wendy provides excellent play-by-play of whatever is going on. Very nice. Go out of my way on leaving to thank her for that.
During the various waits of the appointment I have several short periods to admire the woman-running-on-the-beach-at-sunset screensaver familiar to Windows 10 users. New BFF Wendy wants to know where it was taken. The next day at home searching with Google turns up the answ …
Paul! Are you still blathering on about your dental appointment? High point of 2020 so far?! Is there a serious lack of excitement in your life?
It’s in New Zealand, on the very northern tip of the South Island. The big rocks are called the Archway Islands, and the beach she’s running on is Wharariki Beach. (No — I don’t know the pronunciation.) The images show the familiar photo, the backside of the Archway Islands (from the NW), location on a map of the southwestern Pacific, and a detailed map of the northern end of the South Island, New Zealand.
Still haven’t got to finishing up my Christmas cards from last December. Again I ask, where’s all this time I’m spozed to have on my hands?
Spend huge bunch of time on 2019 computer files (two weeks?), and I was just basically pulling all files together into one folder. Spend couple more days trying to bend iCloud and the Photos app library to my will (current score: about 8 to 5, not in Paul’s favor). At the moment I’m syncing photographs via Google Photos, a much simpler solution that may be enough.
Back side of tiny library 
Obverse
Back side (left) and obverse (right) of a very nice, very small, outdoor library. It’s right beside Chris’s personal branch (Eastside Branch) of the Santa Barbara Public Library, a block from our house. Righthand photo shows Chris calling someone inside so they can bring her the book she ordered online.
More and more feel like I’m looking over my shoulder at a cloud (a small cloud) of memory loss, physical loss, cognitive loss gaining on me. I can’t really be sure. But what about that time last week when I couldn’t … and what is that guy’s name who used to … ? My ex-wife is dealing with dementia issues right now. Her dementia is a big deal for me, and of course, it’s a big deal for our children.
Swimming again — mustache definitely interfering with breathing! This terrible situation is probably adding seconds to my time in our 500 yard swim! Shave off beard and mustache?! If I do, gotta get before and after photos.
Finally figure out my photos app difficulty on Mac/iPad/iPhone. Finally! Do I want to assign blame/explanation for this protracted struggle? Any benefit to that? Or would I just get pissed off and frustrated all over again?
I’ll pass on the pissoffedness and frustration. Readers are spared the trouble of reading or even skipping a paragraph. (And thanks anyway Google Photos.) A few naughty words were probably emitted, though.
Digital body armor. Wrist brace, elbow brace on left arm (shown), and similar bracing worn on right arm. I need this armor to ward off wrist and arm injuries when doing a lot of photo editing and manipulation such as what I’m doing right now in this blog post. I have both a mouse and a programmable trackball, one on each side of my keyboard and I switch sides from time to time.
Headline from Santa Barbara Independent, July 24, 2020, “Daily COVID-19 Case Counts Continue to Soar in Santa Barbara County.”
Subheading: “County’s Daily Averages Remain More Than 15 Times State Requirement.” The requirement referred to is a reopening requirement. We’re not doing well.
As of July 31, Santa Barbara County, population about 450,000, has 6167 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 60 deaths. Three months ago these key numbers were 440 cases and 5 deaths. Current doubling time is about 30 days.
Finally trimmed beard a bit. And yes, I miss being called Santa Claus but it’s nice to feel breezes on my face, to eat and drink without nearly constantly wiping off beard and mustache, and to breath much more smoothly while swimming.
I email happy birthday wishes to ex-wife on her 80th. It’s a milestone for me, too. I’ll hit 80 in a year and a half. It’s the 2nd email message I remember sending her since we split in 1980. The first was five years ago on the 50th anniversary of the day we were married.
Both messages to ex were friendly (in case anyone had a question about that).
Our volleyball group (that hasn’t played volleyball in at least two years) has been meeting for dinner once a week for most weeks. One couple of us brings take-out for all 6 of us and we eat on Bonny and Jim’s patio on 3 nicely spaced tables.
Our clothes dryer is not working. The drive belt is probably broken — motor sounds like it’s still turning and humming but drum is NOT making those too familiar thumping and screeching noises. We bought it used in 1990, when we moved here. We must have got a defective machine.
Chris and I buy a new dryer at Best Buy. We also buy beer, gas and groceries. Uhh, not at Best Buy. BIG expedition! Feels pretty good to do ordinary stuff; the establishments are uncrowded, and I feel safe enough. Even introverts like me appreciate (need?) some interactions with others.
Ok, so this is Home Depot, not Best Buy, but that’s Chris’s hand and she’s showing you a new dryer. Close enough.
While gassing up C says this is her 2nd purchase of gas since lockdown began, which for us means mid-March, right after returning from Solana Beach. Say 300-330 miles per tank, and 2 tanks in 4½ months means …
Wait!
How full was tank at start of lockdown? If full, then Chris has burned 3 tanks, if empty then only 2. It’s an N or N+1 situation! My favorite computer programming issue! (You probably don’t want to ask.) This suggests she’s driving at rate of 1800 to 2400 miles per year. Not a lot! (Calculation details supplied on request.)
I continue to be wowed by my new eyes (from intraocular lenses inserted during cataract surgery). For example, without glasses, I can see, in focus, all corners of my computer monitor just by moving my eyes without moving my head! Wow!
>>>>> end of post