Darkoshi

Yay, it's the weekend, and I finished my work for work before midnight today!

It's been very much Spring here the last couple weeks.
Daffodils are yellow.
Pink magnolia blossoms bloomed but they're already gone and replaced by small light green leaves.
Yellow jessamine is yellow.
Bradford pear blossoms are pungent.
Little fig tree leaves are light green and fuzzy.
I wore knee-shorts today and sat outside working for a while. Can do that for now still as the mosquitos aren't out in force yet.

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Catchy headline: Busted Plug Towed Away

I didn't know the giant fire hydrant art installation was called "Busted Plug". I'm saddened to hear it's been moved away... but hopefully it will be put up somewhere else in a good spot.

It had been here since 2001: Busted Plug Plaza, in the same parking lot as the iconic Tunnelvision mural and the haybales mural. I enjoyed seeing it whenever I drove downtown.

Here's a short video showing it from multiple angles: Roadside Buzz - Busted Plug, Columbia, SC
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This "Ra Obelisk" is an artwork here in town I'd not heard of nor visited before. About the hieroglyphs painted on the sides, the article states:
Some of the symbols translate to the titles of Beatles songs “Here Comes the Sun” and “All You Need is Love.” The artist would not give the meaning to the message on the right side, only saying it was an ancient concept and invited others to try to translate it.

That prompted me to try deciphering the right side. The best I could come up with is this:
Peace | The angels are real | They love you

I am not certain that is the message the artist intended; I didn't find a decipherment of the message posted anywhere on the web. I did find that the artist, Richard Lane, died in 1998. That is mentioned in this booklet: Sarah Leverette : South Carolina lawyer, teacher, mentor, ground breaker.

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Another catchy headline: “Flying car” company to enter US market in partnership with Columbia Metropolitan Airport (CAE)

These dandelion heads growing in my yard looked like they'd make good brushes.

The bottles of red and green ink are practically ancient. A part of the ink had separated out into a thick semi-solid layer inside the bottles.

Yesterday was a very nice and breezy day. I sat on Qiao's back porch in the sun for quite a while, working on my laptop. Pollen cones kept falling on me and the laptop.

Later while I was working inside, I heard a loud sound through the open windows, like something metallic had fallen down. I thought the wind must have knocked something down. So I checked the front and back yards, and looked all around but didn't find anything. I finally decided that a falling pine cone must have hit the metal shroud over the chimney.

The rose bush is full of roses and looked beautiful in the late afternoon sunlight. I took photos.

Today when Qiao wanted to drive his car out of the garage, the garage door wasn't working. It would lift up a few inches, but that was all. We weren't able to manually lift it either. Then we noticed that one of the big springs had snapped apart, and that was why it wasn't working. We got a repair person to fix it.

So, that metallic sound I heard yesterday was actually the spring snapping apart! We have a cam in the garage which even caught it on video.

Now I'd like to include that video clip and a rose photo in this post, and also photos of purple pine pollen cones which I took last month (had never seen purple ones like those before!)
But it's too late. Maybe another time, maybe.

flares of bright green growing ever larger
on the tips of the fig tree branches

bright yellows along the fence
and in the flower beds

i do not want to speak of the stray black cat
found dead under the wisteria bush
outside the fence
as i returned from my walk last week

the sky was colorful from the setting sun
the trees in the median were blooming white
the air smelled of pollen
as i walked, enjoying it,
and i planned to walk further
before I noticed that something black by the bush.

The mailbox had many items in it today, surprising me. I didn't check the Informed Delivery page first. One item that was supposed to arrive Monday is still missing; it was again nothing important, a charity appeal. I wonder where these missing items end up. In someone else's mailbox?

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The big lantana bush is so pretty, full of orange, red, and in-between colored flowers. It's as tall as I am. To think that it started out from a few small plantings. There was a monarch butterfly flitting between flowers. A smaller orange butterfly, not a monarch, chased it away... and was still chasing it when they'd flown beyond the fence.

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My mom made an audio cassette recording of her, my sister and nephew when he was one year old in 1993. I recorded it to the computer into an MP3 file. It's cute listening to them from so long ago; I plan to give them a copy. There is absolutely no noise in the recording, no tape hiss or static or anything, and I didn't even have to do a noise reduction on it which is amazing compared to all the other cassettes I've transferred to MP3s.

But after that one, the tape player started making a loud rattling noise when pressing Play, even without a cassette in it. The rattling noise comes through on the recordings too. So I need to open up the player to see if it is something I can fix or not.

Taking an up-close look at this pretty lily in the yard, I discovered a cute little cricket. When I pointed the camera at it, it got nervous and tried to hide.



Video title: Little Lily Cricket
Posted by: Darkoshi
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa2uckCc9ng
Date posted: May 23, 2020




That was over a week ago. This week, I took a closer look at one of the few remaining azalea blooms (the coral red ones tend to last the longest), and again discovered another cute little cricket. Maybe it's the same one? Are they even crickets, or something else?* This one also got nervous and started moving away from my camera.



*They look somewhat like meadow katydid nymphs.

( Cut for size. Click to see photos )

Hey, wait a minute. Why, when I right-click one of the photos in this post and select to view the image, does it bring up a Dreamwidth URL? Is DW automatically copying photos that we post, to the DW servers? It didn't used to do that.

Now that the weather's getting cooler, it's odd how some plants are acting like it's Spring. The pink magnolia got blossoms last month. Now the lantana, which *didn't* bloom for most of the summer as it usually does, is blooming again.

And then I almost went to work without my laptop. But luckily, I noticed before driving off.

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Yesterday I wanted to play some internet radio through my stereo system's speakers, via the audio cable I usually use for that purpose. The cable connects the laptop to the equalizer. The equalizer connects to the receiver via another cable with phono connectors. The speakers are connected to the receiver's speaker outputs, which are the spring-loaded kind that you stick the bare speaker wires into.

I noticed how much white noise was coming from the speakers, before turning the music on. There was also an annoying intermittent rumbling sound. With the radio playing at a low volume, the noise is still audible.

So then instead of listening to music, I messed with my audio system for a few hours. In the process, I came across this term: audio nervosa, which seemed amusingly apt.

The problem seems to be the receiver's speaker connections, not the speakers themselves. I cleaned all the dust out of the receiver's case, but that didn't help. Now I'm using my older set of speakers, which have phono connectors, connected to the equalizer's main-out jacks. The receiver's tape-out jack is connected to the equalizer's audio-in jacks. The laptop audio cable is connected to the equalizer's tape-in jacks.

This way, the speakers are blissfully silent until I turn the music on. A down-side is that I can no longer turn the receiver's radio on with just my remote control; I have to walk over and turn on the equalizer too. Before, I wasn't using the equalizer for the radio.

Another problem is figuring out where to position these speakers. I had been using these to prop up the other speakers (which are smaller and don't have a flat top) up higher, rather than them being directly on the floor. As a temporary solution, I now have the left speaker balanced on an open drawer, to put it at the same height as the other speaker, which is on the same table as the receiver.

A more significant downside is that the receiver's volume control doesn't control the radio volume at all now, and it is fairly loud. How did I not notice this yesterday? Maybe I'll need to change things around again after all, or replace something, or get an extra volume control (amplifier?) box.

Or sheesh, just put it back the way it was to begin with. Maybe.



Update: I now had the idea to connect a cable from the receiver's headphone output to the equalizer's input, as that should be controllable by the volume dial. I'm pretty sure I had done it that way before. But today, I'm not getting any sound that way. Although the sound does work with actual headphones plugged into the jack, but only the left channel... because I'm using a mono 3.5 to large jack adapter instead of a stereo one.. where did I put the stereo one...

Update #2: All fixed now. Found the stereo adapter. Laptop connects to receiver's CD-In jacks. Receiver's headphones-Out jack is connected to the equalizer's Audio-In jacks. Equalizer's Main-Out jacks are connected to the speakers. The receiver's volume control (including the one on its remote) can control the volume for everything. I can even still switch between the laptop audio and the radio with the remote, like I was able to do before. The big speakers are now sitting on top of the smaller speakers which are on the ground; they do have a flat enough surface after all. And no static noise coming from the speakers, woo-yeah!

Pink azaleas:

Three vultures and a crow in a dead tree. The crow seemed to be cawing at the vultures.


Impressive power lines.


I call this the "yellow brick road". Yellow flowers grow in this gravel path, and only in the path, not in the surrounding fields of grass.