Month: January 2025

–Took the BMW on a run to Hooverville Orchards. Jams are $10 now. Got some anyway.

–Finally found a satisfactory cookie consent/policy plugin for my WordPress sites. I must have tried 10 of them.

–Cleaned up the Erie Spider cast iron skillet.

–Won yet another fidget lottery–the third in a few weeks, after years of failure in knife lotteries. The Ns are lower with spinners, but still…

–Took the BMW to Roseville BMW for first service. Smooth, quick.

–A couple of spinners came in. Nothing exciting.

–Watered the Bird of Paradise again, as it was looking a little droopy.

–Pizza Guys pepperoni pizza for dinner. Good, but kind of a hassle.

–Called Vanguard and a rep talked me through sending $56k+ from Ally to Vanguard as a rollover. I sure hope everything was correct–the right account, labeled as indirect rollover, etc.

–Picked up the Sea-Dweller at Ivanov’s. Seems to be working okay, though amplitude is low at ~214. Won’t really know until I wind it after it has run down.

–Got an appointment at 11 AM tomorrow at Niello BMW in Roseville for the initial oil service. It’s an “express” service and should take less than an hour.

–Called Vanguard about the double RMD withdrawal. They said if I return one of them within 60 days, it will be viewed as an “indirect rollover,” and will have no financial consequences. I’ll call again tomorrow to set it up.

–Got a dozen sesame bagels at New York Bagel.

–Played with the Zeiss 50mm/f1.4 lens. I did manage to clean and reinstall the aperture blades, but then kept fussing and ruined everything. Found a much newer one on eBay and bought it (biggest serial I’ve seen until now started with 9; this one starts with 15).

–Bought $1,850 worth of spinners: Unquiet Hands Atrium Superconductor and a Random Fabrications something.

–Silver squirrel came by for peanuts.

–Learned last night that I took my RMD from Vanguard twice: once by check, again by transfer to Ally when I didn’t think the first one had  gone through. Crap. Not at all clear that Vanguard will be able to undo one, as taxes have been withheld.

–Red Baron for dinner, with added mushrooms and bell peppers.

–Bizarre and disappointing: I compared the Zeiss/Contax 50/1.4 to the 1.7 on night shots. The 1.7 is fine, as I knew, but the 1.4, while admirably sharp and all, really distorts the shapes of the globe lights. N of 2, so it’s not a fluke, and it distorted at least two of the lights, while the globes taken with the 1.7 were perfect. Crap.

–Went to the Sunrise farmers market for tangerines.

–Picked up the Rotablade fidget spinner at UPS. What a mess. Somebody used an ounce of Loctite on it, so I needed two pliers to get it open. Had lots of trouble swapping bearings, and actually bent the body in the process. Tossed.

–Made pepperoni/mushroom pizza for dinner.

–Took the Sea Dweller to Ivanov’s Watch Repair to see if they could get it to start up reliably.

–Stopped at Corti Brothers for pizza, Basque Cake, Humboldt Fog cheese, lingonberry jam.

–Polished copper LIC EDC Edamame spinner came in. Pretty nice. Also a knife from Monterey Bay Knives–huge, crude, useless: it has a tab for front flipping, but I can’t flip it. Oh well…

–Walked to UPS to pick up the Contax/Zeiss 50mm f1.4 lens. It did not disappoint. Came with everything, including the coveted “PASSED” sticker. Takes a good picture too.

–Played with dizzinessandnausea.com. Found a site with free photos, so redid all of them.

–Took a shower and shave.

–Went to FedEx on Sun Center to pick up the Rolex 1680. Today was the last day before they shipped it back to Rolliworks, apparently. Would have been nice if someone had mentioned the shipment to me. Watch runs well, though fast. Of all my Subs, I’d still prefer to keep the Sea-Dweller, but it continues to not start ticking until I open it up and jiggle the balance wheel. Off to Ivanov’s, I guess. Certainly not Rolliworks.

–Played around a lot with different cookie consent plugins at dizzinessandnausea.com. Settled for the moment on Complianz, which I had resisted because of the name. Seems pretty straightforward. Still haven’t heard back from Google on my re-submission of Dizziness for Adsense approval.

–Spent a while fixing up dizzinessnadnausea.com so Google might accept it. The hoops you have to jump through to comply with world-wide regulations on privacy, tracking, cookies etc. are many.

–Walked to UPS to pick up some fidget spinners. Got some nice ones.

–Google Adsense turned down dizzinessandnausea.com without really saying why. Some research suggested it needed a “cookies consent” banner, which I added after trying 2-3 different plugins. I also updated the Privacy Policy page. Not clear if that will be good enough or not.

–Went to Bel Air for coffee, milk, cream cheese.

–Took Grace shopping to the Smart & Final at Sunrise and Madison. Much better location, much cleaner/brighter store.

–Discovered that ChatGPT (free version) does a really nice job of “writing” articles for Dizziness and Nausea. So I replaced them all. (Previously they were Google AI (Gemini) with a little Perplexity thrown in.)

–Grace is in a mega mega snit–wouldn’t cook for the second day in a row. Very bad. Another Red Baron for dinner.

–Went to the Sunrise farmers market for tangerines.

–Added air to tires in both cars.

–Got Dizziness and Nausea looking good on laptop and phone by adding a menu to the header. Almost ready to roll.

–Grace got into a major snit tonight over my (mild) reluctance to go shopping at Smart & Final. Not sure what’s going on with her.

–Picked up Contax 50mm f1.4 lens at UPS. Turning the aperture ring had no effect on the aperture. Started to take it apart, ruined it–not that it was in great shape before.

–Crypto holdings are back up. Total money now (without Vanguard) is $523,000, about what it was months ago. And there’s $50,000 coming in soon from the Vanguard RMD. Lots of tempting Rolexes are popping up at Tropical and Lunar Oyster; I’ve resisted so far, waiting to see what the 1680 looks like that’s been at Rolliworks for six months.

–Buying many fidget spinners.

–Spent some time with Dizziness and Nausea last night. Finally looking good, MIGHT be able to keep the Hemingway theme–more phone testing needed. I’ll keep adding articles from Google and Perplexity AI, then submit it to Google Ads and see what they say.

–Spent a lot of time trying to find a workable theme for my WordPress sites. No luck. The “free” ones bombard you with upgrade prompts–almost always a subscription, not an ownership–and the paid ones don’t let you try before buying. The vaguely promising ones mostly use blocks, and I’m just too old to spend months learning that framework. Although: one authoritative site I saw might make it all moot: it said don’t even submit to Google Ads until you have a 6-month-old site with dozens and dozens of original posts. The thought that I could copy 3-4 Google AI answers and start my empire, well…the Adsense landscape has changed in the last 25 years. Duh. Don’t know if I have the patience…

–I WON SOMETHING! Got a DM on Facebook that said somewhat cryptically “Hello winner!” Sounded like a scam, but as I pursued it, it turns out I won a super nice damascus titanium spinner from Indy Thicc. Only $600! Anyway, that’s certainly the first time I’ve ever won anything from the many online lotteries I’ve entered.

–Went to UPS to pick up spinner bearings and spinner.

–Stopped at Bel Air for milk, ciabatta and a lime.

–Work on dizzinessandnausea.com for a while. Found a good SEO plugin without the constant “Upgrade!” nagging, and a separate one to do what the first one doesn’t handle so well at all: meta descriptions. Don’t know what more there is to do. [edit] Oops—turns out the Twenty-Ten theme looks horrible on a phone; the fonts are so small as to be unreadable. Tried the Hemingway theme again and it’s much better–though the sidebar, with “Recent Posts,” doesn’t show up at all. I can try putting TOC in the header–but ads will never show. Crap.

–Picked up Focusworks spinner at UPS. Felt light at first, but spins like crazy.

–Got some tiny reading glasses at Rite-Aid. Same power as the ones Grace lent me (2.50), and stowable in a really small flat case so I can always have them with me without needing to wear them constantly.

–Got a slice of carrot cake and some candles at Bel Air. Took them to Kenny and sang to him for his 81st birthday.

–Offered 400 Euro for the domain icsb-2006.org. Owner countered with 1,500 Euro. Canceled.

–Went back to Twenty-Ten theme for dizzinessandnausea.com. Hemingway is nice, but has some glitches that just don’t appear in an official WordPress theme. Will probably switch out the other sites as well.

–Marie’s chicken pot pie for dinner.

–Got bagels at New York Bagels.

–Took Grace shopping at Koreana Plaza; got myself some Satsumas and Honeycrisps.

–Got all four websites sorted out. It took a “disable comments” plugin to finish them. Back in the day I would have edited WP code to do that, but that was long ago and far away.

–The frog lights are back in business. Leaving them out on the back patio in direct sun for six hours allows them to glow on the front patio for six hours. Cool!

–Didn’t do much today. Played with Hemingway WordPress theme. Nice, but has this big black box in the header with the site title that I can’t figure out how to move or minimize. I can delete it, but then there’s no title…

–Lots of wind today. LA is still burning.

–Walked to UPS to pick up second Addictive spinner. It’s seriously unbalanced (one arm heavier), so trying to return for replacement.

–Made pepperoni/mozzarella pizza for dinner. Good!

–Been getting a barrage of email, texts and phone calls (and site comments) offering to set up my websites. Looks like iWebFusion can get away with low rates because it sells lists.

–Went to see Michelle Hoyt at Sac Eye for followup. She said left eye looks good, has great pressure (10, whatever that means), and that I can stop taking Latanaprost. Further followup (with “premium” refraction) on Valentine’s Day.

–Grace washed my new Amazon microfiber sheets and I put them on the bed. They feel good but are nearly transparent, and will probably last a year.

–Rolliworks finally finished work on the 1680, six months later. Almost $1,900.

–Had my second (left eye) cataract surgery. Seemed to go well, and things are so much clearer and brighter it’s astonishing.

–Made the minimum offer of $250 for the icsb-2006.org domain. Guessing they want much more.

–Folsom Eye Surgery called and set the arrival time tomorrow at 7:15. Crap.

–Made pan pizza for dinner: mozzarella, fresh basil. Couldn’t taste the mozzarella, way too much (cooked) basil.

–Addictive tri-spinner came in ($26). Not bad, less wobble than the Thicc Chelsea bar, but not really compelling. I’m 99.9% sure now that wobble is purely a function of play in the bearing, and cannot be reduced. Physics (which I don’t get yet) says that double wobbles more than tri, which wobbles more than four, etc. Why doubles (bars) are so popular is a mystery to me.

–Contax/Zeiss 50mm/1.7 lens came in. Flawless condition, great ergonomics. I’ll still lust after the 1.4 of ciourse; hoping I can talk myself out of it.

–Took Grace shopping at Bel Air.

–Played some more with websites. Starting to figure out/remember how to set up WordPress. It’s a pretty nice vehicle.

–Replaced the bearings in the Indy Thicc Chelsea. Din’t change much. But the more I play with it, the more I like it. Not the wobble, but the feel and the challenge of getting it to spin smoothly.

–Got the four websites working okay: Dizziness, Drywall, Limescale, Plan Retirement. Tried to install the Kadence theme on Dizziness, and what a disaster. To remove it I had to restore a backup of the database. Don’t know how I’m going to monetize these sites; WordPress design seems absurdly complex now.

–Got the Wilkins knife; very nice. Got the Thicc Chelsea spinner; looks nice in copper, but has horrible wobble, the worst I’ve experienced. Hoping new bearings will work, when I get the bearing tool.

–Finally de-decorated; there wasn’t much to take down.

–Got a bunch of old Adsense sites up and running: dizzinessandnausea.com, planretirement.com, limescale.com, howtopatchdrywall.com. Surprisingly, a solid #2 in terms of domain name value (after planretirement) is limescale.

–Missing 12/21/2024 through 1/4/2025 due to me somehow wiping out the database at Namecheap AND iwebfusion as I was restoring some of my 2011 WordPress Adsense sites.

–Over an inch of rain today, said the Rain Cricket.

–Missing 12/21/2024 through 1/4/2025 due to me somehow wiping out the database at Namecheap AND iwebfusion as I was restoring some of my 2011 WordPress Adsense sites.

–Missing 12/21/2024 through 1/4/2025 due to me somehow wiping out the database at Namecheap AND iwebfusion as I was restoring some of my 2011 WordPress Adsense sites.

–Missing 12/21/2024 through 1/4/2025 due to me somehow wiping out the database at Namecheap AND iwebfusion as I was restoring some of my 2011 WordPress Adsense sites.

–Missing 12/21/2024 through 1/4/2025 due to me somehow wiping out the database at Namecheap AND iwebfusion as I was restoring some of my 2011 WordPress Adsense sites.

–Yet another gray drizzly day.

–Missing 12/21/2024 through 1/4/2025 due to me somehow wiping out the database at Namecheap AND iwebfusion as I was restoring some of my 2011 WordPress Adsense sites.

–Another drizzly day.

–Missing 12/21/2024 through 1/4/2025 due to me somehow wiping out the database at Namecheap AND iwebfusion as I was restoring some of my 2011 WordPress Adsense sites.

–Did a minimal Christmas. Little tree up; played tapes and CDs. Jimmy Dean and Pillsbury rolls for breakfast; ham and grits for dinner.

–Lots of rain today.

–Did absolutely minimal decorating: put up the tiny tree. Thought it would blink, but it doesn’t.

–Missing 12/21/2024 through 1/4/2025 due to me somehow wiping out the database at Namecheap AND iwebfusion as I was restoring some of my 2011 WordPress Adsense sites.

–Dark, rainy day.

–After more practice with the Canon R5 Mk II, it turns out to be a really nice camera. Handles well (with the ebony extension from China); dials are set up as I like them; seems to take lower-noise night shots with some vintage lenses than the SL2-S. All Leicas (except a C of some sort) are going back in the closet.