Four Wins
Friday, July 24, 2026
A Friday Hodgepodge
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Whenever possible, I list three wins at the end of each day. Here are a few from a recent review of my planner.
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1. At our home, a mud dauber built her nest on a glass door facing the back patio, and our daughter noticed that it was possible to see the interior of each chamber, where the wasp had laid an egg.
She has been tracking the development of the larvae by taking photos at night, to avoid daytime glare. Shortly after dinner one evening, she spotted me in the living room, and the following dialogue ensued:
Pumpkin: Dad, are your ready for a larvae update?
Mom: Oh, gross! Let me see!
This is what happens when two geeks pair up...
2. A pet peeve of mine is that, among the choices of messaging, telephones, and email, surprising numbers of people seem ... not good ... at choosing one for the job at hand, or at least seem to have rigid preferences.
I recently had to coordinate my daughter's driving lessons with a text jockey, and needed to make one small change to the proposed schedule.
Knowing that this sort of thing is easier to do by phone, and that it was a good time for that, I called -- and it went straight to voice mail.
So I texted, giving my reason for needing the change and a proposed alternate date. She proposed right back with something just as unworkable as the problem date.
I rolled my eyes at the prospect of having to waste time going back and forth, and not just being done with it.
But then I realized something like use this person's default communication method to propose switching to the appropriate one, and texted back: One of the 18th or 19th can work. Or it might be quicker to do this with a call. I am at my desk with our calendar open now.
The text jockey was suddenly available and, as I expected, we got the issue ironed out in a fraction of the time texting would have required.
I was both pleased and annoyed to wind up getting exactly the alternate time and date I proposed in the first place.
3. Kudos to CVS for their new touchscreen-based system for in-store prescription pick-ups!
It doesn't completely eliminate waiting, but not having to give all the required information when a druggist is finally free helps a lot.
Now, if they can find a way to stop printing receipts that are a mile long...
4. I'll reiterate my recent endorsement of Levi Cowan's Tropical Tidbits hurricane tracking site and X account, which a commenter here introduced me to a few years ago.
Cowan gives 10-15 minute deep dives into the forecast reasoning for Atlantic hurricanes that pose a threat to land, and does so in a way that a layman can easily understand.
His latest -- which you'll find at the recent endorsement link above -- helped me see that Tropical Storm Bertha would likely be a nothingburger for us, and why.
As with any prediction, I recommend continuing to follow updates, of course. For one thing, anyone can make a mistake. For another, tropical weather predictions are often contingent on events that may play out one way or the other. But confidence comes from thorough understanding, and Cowan's explanations will get you as close as it gets for a non-meteorologist.
-- CAV
2 comments:
If you're not already involved, I highly recommend the app iNaturalist. It's a citizen-science app for biology, allowing you to take photos and upload them so they are available for research. Something like a sequence of mud dauber larval progression would be of tremendous value! And if your child is interested in biology it's a good way to see what's around you and where to look for cool critters. I use it with my son all the time; he calls it the "Pokemon Go in real life app". Only downside is you have to be 16 to register.
My son will frequently bring me small animals, or point them out to me, so I can put them on the app. It's been a lot of fun seeing him get excited about biology, and sharing that love with him. For someone like me a free app that allows me to contribute meaningfully to research, collect data in a way that doesn't harm the animals/plants/fungi/whatever, and share my love with my children, the app is a very positive value.
As an aside, iNaturalist has one of the few truly good uses of LLMs that I've seen. They have a tremendous database with a huge number of people contributing identifications for, and they fed that into an LLM to provide help identifying organisms. This means that the database it's built on is honorably obtained, unlike most LLMs (which engage in truly staggering amounts of copyright violations). It's not entirely accurate (I wouldn't use it to identify mushrooms when foraging!), but then again neither are experts, and they only use it as a first rough cut; they still require multiple people to identify the thing before the system accepts it as truly valid. But for a quick "I wonder what that thing is" sort of question it's a fantastic resource!
That is a neat suggestion, and I'll definitely look into it.
My daughter is 16 next year, but my wife -- who handles the home entertainment IT around here -- might be able to get her on it, anyway.
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