|
|
|
many rounds of Bananagrams
Saturday, October 11 2025
location: 940 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
Today I attempted to implement some code to make it so Meshtastic text message packets could be targeted at specific devices such that they had to be acknowledged by that device in order for the messages to be considered read. Until that happened, though, the message would keep being broadcasted by the meshtastic_bridge.py script. For some reason, though, the only acknowledgements I was getting were from the very same device that was doing the broadcasting, which made absolutely no sense. I asked ChatGPT and it gave me a convoluted explanation and said that what I was trying to do was possible, but it involved additional steps that I wasn't in the right mental space to perform. So I shelved it for the time being, content to not target messages to devices for the time being. It then took awhile for me to fix an error where the code setting the Meshtastic ID for a message was failing because the looked-up device_id in my system was not being found and "WHERE (target_device_id= OR target_device_id IS NULL)" produces a syntax error.
Our guests for this weekend were our nextdoor neighbors back in Hurley, A and her boyfriend J, who were driving directly from Brooklyn (at least a four hour drive). They, along with A's little dog Henry, arrived in the early afternoon with several bottles of wine. J had also brought his guitar, as he is (among other things) a musician and a photographer. Charlotte and Neville lost their minds with excitement when they arrived, with Charlotte running around howling and Neville actually rearing up on his hind legs (something he would never normally do) because he loves A so much. After we gave our guests a tour and showed them to their huge upstairs bedroom, we all sat down for a light lunch involving a vegan quiche and glasses of white wine.
After that we were "burning daylight" and Gretchen wanted us to hurry to the dock so we'd be there while there was still sun shining on it. Because Neville was so delighted by the people who had arrived, he enthusiastically joined us.
Down at the lake, we could hear Ibrahim's kids squealing, shouting, and repeatedly banging things from over at their dock, a place they almost never go. They were down at the lake for hours and eventually relocated to the public dock, which is reachable by a short walk along the shore.
J had brought some pot with him in little professionally-manufactured joints, and all of us except Gretchen partook. I mostly just eat pot and hadn't smoked any in over a year, and the modest hit I took made me cough. It also got me nicely stoned, but it didn't turn me into a paranoid basket case, which I initially feared.
J then wanted to go kayaking and suggested we go together, which seemed like a fun form of socializing now that I was stoned. He initially planned to bring his very fancy (and very heavy) camera with him but then had second thoughts and handed it back to A. We paddled over to the obvious beaver lodge at the entrance to a system of beaver canals in an arm of wetlands that cuts through Joel's parcel and then checked out the outflow bay, chatting along the way about the home owners' association, where our property boundary runs, and about the beavers.
Back at the dock, Gretchen and A were having a grand old discussion punctuated with gales of laughter. But the sun was dropping behind the trees, and the shade was a little too cold to sit around it. J had talked about maybe going for a swim, something he would do in conditions like this back in Scotland (since what we were experiencing is about as good as it gets in the summer), but once the sun was gone it didn't seem like a good idea. On the way back to the cabin, we went along the lake to the beaver dams in the outflow creek and crossed over to the old Boy Scout camp site that still (for some reason) makes Gretchen excited even though it consists of little more than a circle of stones and some crude benches. But in my stoned state, I sort of got it. It might actually be fun to gather there some day with friends and have a huge fire and even spend the night in tents.
We all returned to the cabin and had a nice dinner of mushroom bolognese soup with that bread we'd forgotten last weekend when Gretchen had also made mushroom bolognese. We also drank a good amount of wine. Even Gretchen was drinking! So we all got pretty relaxed and then played numerous games of Bananagrams, which A and Gretchen dominated. (I didn't win a single game.)
A photo I took while stoned and kayaking on the lake. Click to enlarge.
Me kayaking. Photo by J. Click to enlarge.
A and Gretchen on the dock. Click to enlarge.
An arrangement of falling leaves behind the lower outflow beaver dam. Click to enlarge.
Neville this afternoon. Photo by J. Click to enlarge.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?251011 feedback
previous | next |
