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needs to pretend it's something substantial
Friday, October 22 2021
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
Part of the problem with working on this application I work on is the sheer level of complexity and the many things that have to work correctly in order for it to work at all. Today I was working from home and was seeing the 401 errors that had deviled me last time I'd worked from home, on Wednesday. Now it was looking like the problem really was related to where I was working. But then I remembered, right, I need to be on the office VPN in order for the backend to talk to the datatabases it is pointed at. That was the source of the 401 errors, which, because I'd been so riled up about SSL certificate problems, I'd been mistaking for an SSL issue. Happily, though, by the end of the workday I had it all figured out and had accomplished what I'd set out to accomplish for today. But not before a spike of kratom-initiated anxiety forced me to lie down in the bed for a time. (Normally alcohol in fast antidote to this problem, but not today.)
Meanwhile Gretchen was driving back from New Jersey as has been her pattern for some weeks now. She got stuck in traffic along the way and called me, wondering if I wanted to go to the Adirondacks without her. I would've preferred she come, but obviously that was up to her. When she finally arrived at about 5:30pm, she was pretty sure she didn't want to go to the Adirondacks. She'd just been in the car for two and a half hours and the prospect of two more was not appealing to her. So she ended up staying home, and the dogs and I went in the Bolt up to the Adirondacks without her. We had to stop at the Electrify America charging station in the parking lot of the Albany Walmart because there'd been no time to fully charge the Bolt after its adventures in New Jersey. This gave me the opportunity to do some last-minute grocery shopping. I got two "everything" (as in the bagel) french breads and a six pack of some sort of Guinness (now that I've found the pinnacle of hazy IPAs, I've gotten a little sick of them).
At the cabin, I fired up the generator and did a few little chores, especially applying drywall compound where I'd damaged the downstairs bathroom wall trying to install a toilet paper holder. I also slowly filled the inter-stud void in the wall beneath where the sink's hot and cold water taps emerge. This was so I could then spray foam around the plastic hoses those taps were connected to, making it so they would stay firm and not flop around so much. Nearly all the plumbing in the house was done with plastic pex hosing, and there's no solder used anywhere, not even with the small amount of copper pipe used near the well pressure tank and boiler. Pex might work okay, but its floppiness is aggravating in the places where it burrows to the surface and needs to pretend it's something substantial.
I couldn't get the boiler working, so I attempted to kindle a fire in the woodstove to make it a little warmer in the house. But my half-assed attempt quickly flamed out. It didn't really matter; I had a nice blanket and two warm dogs happy to join me underneath it on the futon (which I dragged out to the dining room area). Unusually, the night sky was clear and fully populated with stars.
I'd bought a half gallon of apple cider at the Walmart while waiting for the Bolt to charge because sometimes I like to use it as a mixer with gin (my favorite form of booze) and now is the season to drink it. But when I fixed myself a drink tonight, there was something wrong with it. It tasted like candy, and not in a particularly good way. It turned out the apple cider I'd bought was caramel flavored. I had no idea that such a product existed, and that caramel was something I had to know to avoid when buying cider. It's not surprising, though, being that we're in America, where everything has to taste like either candy or hot wings, and that I was shopping at Walmart serving an especially working-class demographic (which is probably a common pattern to cities, where there are always much better shopping options available for effete coastal elites such as myself, so long as they don't need to charge their America-hating electric cars at an Electrify America charging center).
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?211022 feedback
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