Friday Notes (Jun 13, 2025)

Hey, how about that, another Friday the 13th. Not that I have ever had superstitions about the number 13 or black cats (or ladders or salt or whatever). Long-time readers may recall that Sister and I were raised without any belief in Santa Claus, let alone other false beliefs. I never had monsters under my bed or a boogeyman in my closet.

But I do sometimes notice things. When I realized I’d publish this Friday Notes posts on the 13th, it caused me to wonder how many other times I might have done that.

Turns out this 50th Notes post is only the second time.

So, double ‘how about that’ — this is the 50th Notes post (a milestone) as well as being a Friday the 13th. For those celebrating the end of the work week, consider it an excuse for another margarita.

My curiosity about whether I’d posted a Friday Notes on the 13th before (and if so, how often) led down a brief but interesting rabbit hole. (Or perhaps ‘briefly interesting’ is a better phrase). It didn’t just tell me this is the 50th Friday Notes post and that I’d only posted on the 13th once before (on May 13, 2022), it also led to this histogram chart:

As you see, only one post on the 13th (not including this one). What I found a bit interesting is that the day of the month seems biased towards later in the month. In fact, I’ve never posted on the 2nd through the 6th (inclusive). The only other days with no posts are the 15th and 29th. And all days with 3 or 4 posts are after the 15th.

The data confirms the bias. The median day of the month is the 19th, and the mean (average) is 18.76. I suspect this is because I don’t around to writing a Friday Notes post until it gets into the month and I start thinking about doing one. One point of these is an off-the-cuff nature so they tend to have a very short lead time (I’m writing this one on Thursday).

§

Getting back to superstitions, my parents just weren’t into that. Or sports or fads. They had simple rural upbringings. My dad’s included a strong dose of religion (his dad was a Lutheran minister just like my dad, and his brother taught theology at a Lutheran seminary). Mom was church organist and choir director (and a music teacher), so our upbringing was very vanilla and simplistic. Very moral with an emphasis on fairness.

Not that I’m complaining. Social media has shown me how blessed I am to not suffer from many of the common modern cultural maladies. I don’t have PTSD or chronic anxiety or crippling phobias, and all things considered I seem pretty well-adjusted and easy going. I have to attribute a lot of that to my upbringing.

To be honest, I’ve always felt a little sorry for kids whose parents lied to them about Santa Claus. I understand keeping some adult realities from the minds of kids until they’re ready to process them, but I never understood lying to them.

§

Last month I had occasion to have a small plastic laundry tub in my sink. I’d filled it with hot-ish water to warm my hands in. When I was done, I just upended it and let all the water drain down the sink. Perfectly normal operation.

Except later I took out the trashcan sitting under the sink to make it easier to put a bunch of trash in and noticed it was wet. Then I noticed a fair amount of water (like maybe a cup) on my kitchen floor in front of the sink.

I didn’t think too much of it — spills and splashes happen — so I just wiped it up and didn’t pursue it further. Until I noticed yet more water under the sink.

Investigation revealed that my garbage disposal had a hole in its side:

No idea what caused it. It appears to have been eaten by something acid or caustic. Obviously, it had to be replaced. Oh, joy.

Turned out the plumber I’d been using for several years had retired and sold his business to a larger outfit (Ron the Sewer Rat, for those keeping score at home). Mike the retired plumber forwarded my email to them, and they contacted me. Gave me a price and mentioned they’d install it for only $350 if I bought a new one myself.

Which sounded fine to me. Turns out the savings wasn’t extreme because I bought a good unit (InSinkErator Badger 500 1/2 HP for $162), but it wasn’t nothing, and I got to pick the unit (and learned a bit about garbage disposals in the process).

Funny thing was that they originally scheduled me for Memorial Day — which at the time was over two weeks off. I thought the date was weird but figured maybe plumbers didn’t get it off. They called me several days later with an “Oops!” message to say they’d made a mistake. The upside was that they had a slot open the next morning.

At 7:00 AM.

I said that was a bit early and could it be 7:30? Which, yes, it could. (I’m surprised anyone is scheduling 7:00 AM at home visits, but maybe that’s just me. I can see 8:00 AM, but in my experience, most home service visits begin at 9:00 AM.)

Of course, I woke up in time, but didn’t get out of bed and fell back asleep. Only to wake up at 7:33 AM. Yikes! Dressed as fast as possible and got to my front door and the guy was standing there waiting. Sorry!

Happily, within a couple of hours, the install (and testing) was complete, and I now have a brand-new garbage disposal. And the homeowner clock is reset until the next thing needs replacing.

§

Speaking of homeowner issues, I was in hell starting in March because the smoke alarms I had installed just last August [see Screaming Ceiling Cats] started experiencing “Smoke Sensor Errors”.

That’s a saga worth its own post (coming soon). Suffice to say for now that three out of the four are in a muffled place (in a closet under some large towels) where they can beep away to their heart’s content without annoying (and usually startling) the crap out of me.

One of the four remains doing its duty. Mystery #1 is why.

§

I’m doing another round of Spring Cleaning and threw out a lot of these:

In one of my cabinets, I do have a drive for them (which I think I’ll keep for the memories), but I realized I’ll never actually use floppy disks again, let alone need to record on blank disks.

As always, it’s mostly the waste that bothers me.

§

Quite some years ago I wrote a post about a frequently used line of TV/movie dialog that has always irked me. The line is, “You gotta believe me!” Usually said by an innocent someone that’s being falsely accused. My response was always, “No. No, I don’t gotta. I need a reason to believe you.”

More recently, another common dialog twitch has begun to annoy me. It’s the word “now” attached to some command issued by some authority figure, typically a commander of whatever applies in the scene. The one I finally noted was, “Check that hallway, NOW!”

The “Now!” always comes after a half-beat pause and is always extra emphatic. It makes me wonder if it actually does anything to speed people up or just annoys those it’s addressed to. It would annoy me. A lot.

I also wonder why it’s tacked on by the speaker. Do they think the person will follow their command too slowly? Or not at all? I suppose it’s just a script-writer’s simplistic trick to confer power and urgency on the authority figure, but I’ve always thought subtle quiet is more dramatic.

§

I’ve mentioned that I’ve been watching old TV shows from the 1960s and 1970s as a calming balm against where we find ourselves now.

But I found that watching old TV shows itself gets old. I lost interest in Ironside (1967–1975) and Spencer: For Hire (1985–1988). Admittedly, the latter is a bit modern compared to the others I’m still watching — and enjoying: The Saint (1962–1969) and Danger Man (1960–1968). Both shows tell generally good stories. Sometimes very good.

I finished The Avengers (1961–1969). The last season, which features Tara King (Linda Thorson), got to be a chore. The writing on these was noticeably bad. And Tara King is presented as a terrible agent (so is Steed sometimes). She’s quite a letdown after the cool and competent Mrs. Peel (Diana Rigg). Some of the later scripts call for her to be easily fooled and easily defeated.

§

We had another fairly mild winter:

Very few lows in the -20s and no highs. Most of the lows were in the +20 to +40 range, and most of the highs were +30 or higher (quite a few in the +60 or higher range)

Just this week I realized that, while I have data from 2013 to present, I’d done very little with overall analysis or visualization. I make monthly Hi/Lo charts like this:

And I make monthly comparison charts like these:

Which include data for a given month from all the years.

But I’d never thought to make a chart like this:

Until this week. The winter of 2018-2019 stands out as chillier than the rest, so I made this histogram:

Compare this to the one above. The difference isn’t huge, but it’s clear this was a more painful winter.

§

A reminder-note to self to try to find the source of this quote:

“At the first sip of the natural sciences you will become an atheist – then at the bottom of the glass, God will be waiting for you.”

It’s cute, but who said it?

Along the lines of things people said, I’ve had a note that when physicist J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) discovered the electron in 1897, he famously said it was useful for nothing. In fact, only attributed to him is that supposedly at his laboratory, “The electron: may it never be of any use to anybody!” was a popular toast or slogan.

§

Watching the old Superman cartoons from the 1940s, I was bemused by the opening:

Not quite how I remember it from the later TV series.

§

I realized recently that I have almost entirely lost interest in theories of consciousness. It’s a topic I explored quite a bit in the context of computationalism, but I came to realize it was an area with lots of theories and competing notions but no real knowledge. The Hard Problem remains.

I know people who have been discussing it online for over a decade, and I sometimes wonder why they don’t get bored of covering the same ground. I sure did. Until some major progress is made, I’ve tuned out of the conversation.

Likewise, although not entirely and for somewhat different reasons, quantum physics. It’s another area we don’t understand and seem to be spinning our wheels on.

I do think it’s pretty funny that growing evidence suggests these two may be related somehow. The mainstream view was pretty opposed to the idea of quantum behavior being important in a hot, messy biological machine. But it’s so easy to forget that chemistry is quantum.

§

I encountered this “poem” recently:

I like what it says. Feel free to pass it on.

§

I was thinking about my musical tastes and realized I like generally like the larger bands — ones with lots of instruments. The standard four-piece group — drums, bass, rhythm guitar, lead guitar — is okay, but I like it more if there’s a keyboard (or two), maybe more percussion, a third guitar, and maybe a sax or something.

That’s why I took to Bruce Springsteen’s band immediately. Or the Dave Matthews Band or the Tedeschi Trucks Band (or, going back a minute, the Grateful Dead). Recently, I’ve been enjoying the Jazz Avengers, an all-female Japanese supergroup of accomplished jazz musicians.

The Jazz Avengers surprised me; I usually like jazz more mellow. (For instance: Pat Metheny, John Scofield, or Bob James.) But they feature four saxophones, a keyboard, guitar, bass, and drums, so quite complex arrangements.

Beyond music with more complex arrangements, I lean heavily towards rock/blues, so people like J.J. Cale, Eric Clapton, Joanne Taylor Shaw, Ana Popoviç, Samantha Fish, Beth Hart, Joe Bonomassa, Walter Trout, the list goes on…

But I’ve long been a bit meh when it came to rock trios: Cream, ZZ Top, Rush, Police, U2. Not that they haven’t done stuff that impressed me (especially U2, which I liked for a long time), but I crave more complex music.

[You’d think classical would be up my alley, but I have no ear for it.]

§

I’ll leave you with this:

A friend sent it recently. It’s a bit on the nerdy side, but the wooden starship is kinda cool. For a while, I thought the saucer was above the glass, but I realized the whole thing is below. I do wonder how well the glass top stays in place. And how stable it is.

§ §

Stay safe, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

∇