2025-01
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2025/02/01/2025-01/
2024-05-18 Saturday
The Modern People came here from across the sea. Where they come from, they had been punished for what they believe. They say this land has been promised to them by God, and that they and their children will settle themselves all across the fertile parts of the land.
But we live here, as our ancestors did. What of us?
The Modern People say we should sign The Treaty. We will leave the places where we live now, the lands our ancestors knew, and we will be given an area of less fertile land. The Modern People say that we can live in our own ways and make our own laws in our own new land. They say they will protect our right to live there, just as they protect their right to live in their new land. They say that they will look after us. We will have enough food. They will share their Modern Medicine. If our children wish, they may even learn the Modern ways themselves.
Our children and their children will have less than their ancestors had. They will lose the lands our ancestors knew. They will need to rely on the The Modern People who took away the land in the first place. They will need to trust these Modern People not to take more. And more. And more.
But our people will still be alive. We will still be us. What choice do we have? If we do not sign The Treaty, there will be War. A War we will not survive.
2024-05-22 Wednesday
Lt. ________,
I am contacting you on the advice of ________. I was voicing concern regarding a neighbor who, as an act of protest against the bike lane in front of his house at ________, deliberately blocks the bike lane with his waste bins. Pickup day is Tuesday, so starting on Monday night, he’ll place the bins in the middle of the bike lane.
I see no harm if someone wants to protest the system. In this case, one house is forcing cyclists to merge into traffic on a bus route approaching an elementary school. There’s plenty of danger. Often, when I pass his house, I pull his bins to the curb as a courtesy.
Yesterday, he came out of his house and started yelling at me not to touch his bins. I explained that blocking the lane was dangerous and that he could be sued for injury. He yelled insults and vowed to move the bins back to the middle of the lane.
I called Public Safety, but they seemed a bit confused. The desk officer said it is illegal to park a car in a bike lane, but bins? I suggested that deliberately obstructing a roadway and endangering public safety might be a situation that could be resolved by a calm discussion with a uniformed officer. I later learned that CVC 21211(b) covers this situation.
This afternoon, around 3 pm, I saw that he was using yard work as a rationale to place his yard waste bin in the middle of the bike lane. I respect his tenacity. However, if someone from Public Safety could convince him to facilitate a safe roadway, we would all be better off.
Thank you for hearing me out. I can be reached at ________ if you have any questions.
-danny
2025-01-27 Monday
May was a long time ago. I am amazed at people who have the tenacity to stick with the same hobby year after year, decade after decade. I tend to rotate around my interests. What is new becomes old, then gets set aside, and later becomes new again. The Blog is a thing like that. Is it new again? We will see.
My informal goal for the year is to get an ADU built in the back yard. I spoke with cotta.ge last May, and they suggested a good price that I don’t entirely believe, but it gave us a little confidence.
But it is also a huge project: financing, architect, general contractor! And while the ADU rules in Sunnyvale are permissive, they also prohibit short-term rentals, so the initial concept of a guest suite for relatives and others doesn’t work. Also, our lot is on the small side, so we would likely want an attached ADU. At that point, the project becomes one of adding some space to the house while also building an ADU: the ADU gives us more flexibility in expanding our house in exchange for providing a badly-needed housing unit! Back-of-the-envelope is the high rents around here should cover the high construction costs around here, so with any luck we could add a home office / guest room for family “for free” in exchange for becoming reasonable landlords to hopefully reasonable tenants.
I need to sustain the energy to measure and sketch something out and pick up a book on home improvements. I have a vision I just need to find some follow through.
Oh, here’s a test, by the way … I upgraded this blog’s OS and PHP so now I wonder if I can upload pictures without first reducing their size.
Maximum upload file size: 2 MB.
Buhhh, will need to work on that, yet!
. . .
Fix DNS on an Ubuntu VM that was originally built in 2016 … edit /etc/php/8.3/apache2/php.ini and finally systemctl restart systemd-resolved and …
Infrastructure: always a work in progress!
