Month: November 2024

–Went to Nugget Market in El Dorado Hills for Margherita pizza. They had barbecued chicken and pepperoni. Got pepperoni. Fine, but not nearly as good as Margherita.

–Picked up Meades front flipper at UPS. Beautiful mammoth tooth scales, but without a clip it’s really hard to manipulate. Frustrating.

–Picked up prescriptions for upcoming cataract sutgery at Rite-Aid.

–Paid State Farm insurance bill for BMW: $647.78. That’s > $100/month.

–Barbecued a turkey. Temperature on the Weber read 200-300; it took 1.5 hours. Used applewood chips for the first (and last) time: tons of smoke, not much flavor. Nice day though.

–Didn’t do much today. Made “dinner” by broiling some sausages and microwaving Kenny’s baked potato.

–Went to Bel Air for bagels.

–Raked the back patio; pulled leaves out of plants. In my first close look in months at the bizzaro succulent from Pot Stop, I found that 3 of 9 sprigs I poked into the soil long ago were dead, so pulled them out. Still don’t know if it’s going to live or just take 3 years to die.

–Played with watches. Looks like the Sea Dweller is going to need service: I have to take the back off and spin the balance wheel to get it going.

–Played with cameras, after the Leica C failed to zoom or focus on a squirrel eating Chinese Pistache berries. Switching over to the D-Lux 7: less zoom than the C-Lux, but slightly better quality.

–Frozen Mega-Bowls for dinner.

–Played with photo editors again. Leaning towards the Apple Photos app that I discovered a couple days ago. Only uses one window, doesn’t require a library, works smoothly, has denoise, etc. My main hesitation (irrational) is that it’s too good for an app I thought was only useful for moving pics between iPhone and Mac.

–Went to Bel Air for milk, cream cheese, and a bunch of stuff for Grace.

–Nice sunny day; stayed inside.

–Gave Grace a little help with photo editing. Was sort of enjoying the weird Lightroom app that I downloaded from the Apple app store last night–partially because I thought it was so much leaner than the stuff I download from Adobe with all the Creative Cloud crap. Then I noticed its size: 6.6 gigabytes. Given that one of my entirely serviceable editors was 50 megabytes, off it went. I know Adobe is intrusive, always watching you, etc., but in what universe does a photo editor APP need 6.6 gigs of space?

–Yet another quiet day.

–Played more with photo editors. Long story short: downloaded the Lightroom app from the Apple store; apparently I bought it in early 2021. For a breathless moment I thought I had a standalone app, but no, it says “Subscribed.” At least it’s WAY smaller than the bloated Creative Cloud stuff I downloaded from Adobe. It’s so much easier to use (see) than DXO, I may stay with it until my subscription expires next September, then think again.

–Rain all day.

–Had lunch at Beach Hut Deli.

–Had the colonoscopy done: no polyps, no more colonoscopies.

–My crypto holdings are doing nicely. Hope I’m able to take some profits before they crash.

–Red Baron pizza for dinner.

–The rain came.

–Finally got Coinbase set up with Ally and Heritage checking accounts as payment methods. Onward!

–Took a shower and shave.

–Started bowel prep around 5:30. Still gurgling at 9:30; still not clear.

–Finally heard from Coinbase that account restrictions have been lifted. Went there and moved cash into BTC, SOL and ETH. Then went to Kraken and withdrew all (same three) to Trust Wallet. Don’t know if I’ll move stuff from CB to TW or vice versa. I don’t want to spook the folks at CB with a whole bunch of transactions–as that might be what caused the initial restriction.

–Vacuumed leaves in the alley prior to rain.

–Deleted all Binance accounts. May get cheap phone and try to set one up again with the new number.

–Vicolo pizza for dinner.

–Went around and around again with photo editors. There’s been improvement since I last did this, but Lightroom still clobbers all of them. Really frustrating. After much re-testing, will go with Affinity for now.

–Ditto with crypto. There are small glimmers at Coinbase and Binance, but no go yet.

–Took Grace shopping in El Dorado Hills: farmers market and Nugget.

–Played a lot with photo editors. Lightroom still kicks butt, unfortunately. Nitro (new from the RAW Power guys) has its attractions. DXO Photolab has an impressive array of controls, but perhaps too many: the jpgs coming out of it are pretty weird. Could be me, of course.

–Had a really good margherita pizza from nugget for dinner.

–Yet another quiet day. Went over to see neighbor Jan Muehlbauer, who’s moving out (husband John is quite ill). She gave us her lemon grass plant, which Grace has used with great success in flavoring meals. And the universe continues to shrink…

–Walked to UPS to pick up Boguszewski survival knife. Pretty impressive.

–Played with photo editors a lot. After some major missteps and confusion, found that DXO Photolab 8 Elite is reall slick. Smooth as silk, infinitely customizable, nice control. Hoping the search has ended.

–Took a selfie with license to try and get back on Gemini for crypto. Got back on, but with big restrictions. I “verified my identity,” which “should only take a few minutes,” but it’s been many hours. Here we go again.

–Paid State Farm $322.81 for Honda insurance.

–Took Grace shopping at Smart & Final.

–Was going to do dermatology and colonoscopy on the same day; Grace said no. Re-scheduled skin check: February. Not happy.

–Consolidating crypto at Robinhood. Turns out the $4k I couldn’t spend at Kraken was an open order for BTC that I’d placed by accident in Kraken Pro a few days ago. it wasn’t going anywhere unless BTC came down to $82k, which will be a while. Took me a long time to find the open order and cancel it. Kraken has great customer service, but the line between Kraken and Kraken Pro is really hazy. I was using Pro because redditors said it was cheaper. (a) I’m not sure it is, and (b) it’s super easy to get lost there. Robinhood is not perfect, but it’s okay for a while. Tried binance.us again, and again got tangled up in multiple logins with the same phone number, which (I believe) would not let me get verified there. Crap. Maybe in a few weeks I’ll be able to get back on Coinbase–but I sort of doubt it. Gemini could also work, but they seem to have dropped me like others for too many accounts under one phone number.

–Went to New York Bagel for bagels, also got a couple sesame bagel dogs which we had for dinner. Pretty good. Then to KP Market for fruit.

–Played some more with photo editors. RAW Power again looks like the only possible alternative to Lightroom.

–Did some crypto of course. Gotta put in some stop-loss for when the bull slows down.

–Took a shower and shave.

–Crypto market is going bonkers; I’m making millions (almost). Things seem to be okay at Kraken, though connecting to banks can be hit-or-miss sometimes.

–Took Grace Thanksgiving shopping at Bel Air.

–Dinner from Jack’s Urban Eats.

–FINALLY got crypto settled. Went to Kraken Pro on a whim, added a couple bank accounts, immediately bought some Cardano (not many places offer it). Given my bank woes on standard Kraken, this was a miracle. So—I moved all my Crypto out of Trust Wallet into Kraken. We be hummin’ now…

–Went to Bel Air for bagels, milk, cream, cream cheese, cookies.

–Red Baron pizza for dinner.

–Yet another quiet day. Took some photos, played with crypto. Pretty much done with Kraken: several attempts to link bank accounts failed. Putting all my eggs in Robinhood for now.

–Quiet day. Spent most of it reconciling/organizing/optimizing my crypto holdings in (eventually) Phantom Wallet. It’s way ahead of all the others in usability.

–Tried to buy BTC on Trust Wallet via Ramp–every account, every card–all refused. Tried to set up Kraken Wallet on the iPhone. As with Coinbase Wallet, it found BTC and ETH, but not SOL. Gettin’ tired of this.

–Abutilon is going bonkers. Even my cuttings seem to be sprouting roots.

–Picked up lemon drops and Cremina Min/Max decals at UPS, and learned that Sonya, who has run the place for 30 years, retired 11/5.

–Slowly getting crypto sites working; making some money on Bitcoin.

–Took the BMW to Home Depot for a Ridgid shop vac, Smart & Final for stuff.

–Got an appointment and instructions for colonoscopy. What a nightmare that’s going to be: almost two days without eating.

–Tried to close crypto.com account on phone. They never sent the final auth code. I just deleted the app. Good riddance–the site was a nightmare of flashing offers.

–Did a little “yard” work.

–Red Baron for dinner.

–Did crypto all day. Having issues with Ally: turns out their savings account allows 10 transfers/statement period (many banks only allow 6). My statement period ends 11/23, so of course everything I’ve done in crypto has added a transfer. Turns out checking accounts have no such restrictions; had I known, I could have moved a ton of money from savings to checking and been done with it. As it is, I’m allowed two more transactions in 20 days—maybe only one, as they are delaying a wire transfer I did today for no obvious reason. Further, I get error messages (Could Not Process Payment) at Gemini when I try to buy with Ally savings OR checking. What a buncha crap. I did manage to buy some Bitcoin with Heritage. ALSO getting issues at Kraken trying to move stuff to my Trust Wallet–some gobbledygook about timing restrictions or such. Super annoying.

–Took a shower and shave.

–Daylight Savings Time ended today. One of the least-publicized transitions I’ve experienced.

–Took the BMW to El Dorado Hills: Bakerie Latte for dessert, Nugget market for apples and cheese. Then McDonald’s Gold River for lunch, Bel Air for milk, cream, mild Italian sausage.

–Decided to move to Gemini: interface is just much cleaner/clearer than Kraken’s. Successfully moved SOL and ETH to Trust Wallet for the switch, but failed several times to move BTC. Put in a support request at Kraken.

–Slow day, drizzly and cool. Played with cameras a bit, revived the SL.

–Tried to watch Raines S01E01 on the TV using VLC, but the subtitles (two different files) kept falling behind the video. After much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I found that the native Quicktime player (a) sees and plays the built-in subtitles that VLC saw but wouldn’t play, and (b) keeps them in sync. So much for VLC. Maybe I have an old version, maybe it doesn’t like Apple silicon, whatever.

–Tried yet again to get Affinity Photo and/or Capture One going. Affinity is quick but not customizable enough; Capture One is plenty customizable but slow. Running C1 without Chrome going (reddit suggestion) seemed to help, but with all sliders the photo goes fuzzy while sliding, then sharpens up when I stop. Very frustrating, as it might be a viable alternative to Lightroom.

–Red Baron pizza for dinner.

–Slow day, feeling kind of down and a little peaked. Wanted to take a bike ride, but it was too chilly. Did some crypto: bought Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana at Kraken. There’s a huge swamp out there of Defi sites that offer outlandish yields for staking and loaning crypto; I’ll stick to Kraken for a bit and see what’s up.

–Downloaded and watched the first Jesse Stone TV movie from 2005. Not perfect, but pretty good.

–Grace is in a rotten mood for no obvious reason.

–Wired $10,000 from Ally to Kraken; it went through in a few hours. Wired another $10,000 to RobinHood, but it was after Ally closed, so won’t be there until tomorrow. Crypto.com accepted my registration, but looks like a circus app on my phone. Will drop. Hardware wallet came in. Finally dawned on me (after reading instructions) that you need two of these, in case one gets lost/broken. Probably won’t use it.

–Picked up colon cleanser at Rite-Aid. Still no word on when the colonoscopy might be.