Posted inSports

Oregon State football now is a delight to watch, thanks to Coach Shephard

What a difference a year makes. And a new head coach makes. I've enjoyed watching all five games Oregon State has played this football season. Even the two games they narrowly lost at first. And especially the three games they've won since, including their Pac-12 conference opener yesterday against Colorado State in Fort Collins. JaMarcus Shephard has brought much-needed fresh energy, positivity, and enthusiasm to the OSU sideline -- the only place I've seen him, aside from post-game interviews. I can't remember the name of the previous Oregon State coach. Whoever it was, he was fired last year after a…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Home life

Our Personal Liability Umbrella Policy just went up 76%. Here’s the State Farm explanation.

Inflation is a problem. Prices are rising. I know this. Still, it was a big shock when I opened up a renewal certificate from State Farm insurance recently and saw that our Personal Liability Umbrella Policy would cost 76% more than last year. Wow. That didn't seem like inflation to me. It seemed like highway (well, insurance) robbery. So I phoned our State Farm agent and asked for an explanation. The agent also was shocked, since he isn't the one who sets State Farm rates. He said that quite a few of his clients have been complaining about the increased…
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Posted inWeb/Tech

Claude AI and I team up to surpass Apple real person technical support

A few days ago a new M5 powered MacBook Pro arrived from Apple. I bought it because my 2019 Intel powered MacBook Pro couldn't handle the new Golden Gate operating system, also known as Mac 27 OS, I believe. I hooked the two laptops together with a Thunderbolt 5 cable, then expectantly fired up Migration Assistant on both computers to perform what, in the past, has been a straightforward transfer of my old computer's files to the new computer. Only problem was, Migration Assistant churned away for a couple of hours, never getting past the "starting up" message. I consulted…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Let’s give a lot of love to election officials: my takeaway from today’s Salem City Club talk

Paul Gronke is an expert on elections. Not what the outcomes will be  in the next election. That's the job of Nate Silver and other prognosticators. But how election officials go about the business of managing our country's elections. Today Gronke gave a talk at the Salem City Club about the work of an organization he's associated with, the Elections & Voting Information Center that's co-located at Reed College and Portland State University. My main takeaway from his talk was that election officials deserve a lot of love from us citizens. Theirs isn't a thankless job, thankfully, but it is…
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Posted inSports Uncategorized

Oregon quarterback Dante Moore was revealing run or pass by his foot placement

Unbelievable. But true. Thanks to Oklahoma State players who revealed one of the secrets to their unranked team's huge upset 38-31 victory over #6 Oregon last Saturday, we now know that Dante Moore, the Oregon quarterback, was telegraphing "run or pass" by his foot placement before the ball was snapped. A painful illustration of this was the first play in the game against Indiana last season in the playoffs. Moore threw an interception that was returned for a touchdown. The screenshot above shows Moore's foot placement, which screamed "pass" to the Indiana player at the bottom of the screen who…
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Posted inSports

Instead of disappointing me with a soul-crushing defeat late in the season, this year Oregon football did it early

The title of this blog post is the only bright spot I can come up with after #6 Oregon lost to unranked Oklahoma State 39-31 in Stillwater, which has to be one of the happiest places on Earth right now -- given that this was the first time in FBS history that a team which had lost ten games in a row defeated a top 10 team. Oregon was a three-touchdown favorite. They were lucky the score was this close, since 14 of the Ducks' 31 points came courtesy of the defense. Oregon was outplayed in every aspect: offense, defense,…
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Posted inCars

After four months of owning a Tesla, driving another car feels like being in a Model T

OK, for those who want to nitpick the title of this post, I've never ridden in a Model T -- which stopped being made by Ford in 1927. I'm just using the Model T as shorthand for a car that is technologically unsophisticated compared to the 2026 Tesla Model Y Premium that I got last May. In previous posts about the Tesla (see this blog's Cars category), I've described why I like it so much. Way more than any other car I've driven in the 61 years since I got my driver's license. Yeah, I'm old. What I haven't talked…
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Posted inSports

Football is strange: I felt better about OSU’s loss to Houston than U of O’s win over Boise State

So how is it that as a fan of Oregon college football teams,  after watching Oregon State fall to Houston yesterday 33-20, and the University of Oregon defeat Boise State 34-27, I felt quite a bit better about OSU's loss than Oregon's win? Must come down to expectations. Since Oregon was ranked #2, with a quarterback rated as the best in the nation, I figured that while the game wouldn't be an absolute blowout (Boise State always is tough to play), the Ducks would handle the Broncos without much of a problem. Well, Boise State was a heck of a…
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Posted inPhilosophy Science

Lindsay Clancy hung jury shows absurdity of believing in free will

Today the judge in the Lindsay Clancy murder case declared a mistrial, because the 12-person jury couldn't unanimously agree on a verdict. Eleven jurors thought that Clancy was innocent of the first degree murder charge -- which seemed to be an absurd charge, given that she suffered from postpartum psychosis when she killed her three children. One member of the jury reportedly told the foreman that he had doubts about Clancy's guilt. That should have led him to vote with the other eleven jurors, since they were required to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Clancy was guilty of first…
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Posted inCars

Best description of Tesla Full Self-Driving I’ve ever come across

I"m a big fan of Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised). It's what tilted the scale in favor of my getting a 2026 Model Y Juniper last May. Taking a test drive and trying FSD out convinced me that a Tesla needed to replace my Subaru Crosstrek. Since, I've been using FSD 95% of the time. Tesla keeps track of that stat automatically. It feels strange to drive the car manually, which I mainly do when parking, especially in a parking garage, given that FSD sometimes handles parking fine, but sometimes does decidedly weird things. It's kind of difficult to describe why…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

A very strong El Nino means upcoming warmer weather for Oregon and maybe more precipitation

El Nino is coming. A story in the Oregonian describes what El Nino is and what its usual effects are. An El Niño event occurs when central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean temperatures become unusually warm, shifting weather patterns across the globe. Historically, El Niños have caused severe heat and droughts in parts of Asia and Australia, warmer and drier conditions in Canada and the northern United States and heavy rainfall and flooding in California and the southwest U.S. Ten days ago the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center said that there's a 90 percent chance the upcoming El Nino…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

My 1966 high school graduation speech describes the United States in 2026

I had one semester of college French. So one of the few French sayings I know is Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. "The more it changes, the more it is the same thing." That was the thought I had after I found my 1966 graduation speech at Woodlake Union High School (go Tigers!) in central California yesterday. My wife and I just had our carpets replaced, so everything had to be taken out of drawers and cabinets. Then replaced. When I was putting an unorganized pile of my early writings in a somewhat more organized state before…
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Posted inCars

Here’s 20 reasons why I’m liking my Tesla Model Y Premium more than any other car

Having gotten my driver's license at 16, I've driven lots of different cars in the past 61 years (from that you math wizards can figure out how old I am). This makes the title of this blog post a huge endorsement of the 2026 Tesla Model Y Juniper -- a car I'm liking much more than I thought I would after I leased a red model about nine weeks ago. In mid-June I listed some of the things I enjoyed about the car. Here's an updated list, now that I'm considerably more familiar with my Tesla. In no particular order...…
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Posted inSports

Spain deserved to win the World Cup. Pleasingly, Trump hates Spain.

It took several hours of dedicated concentration, keeping the focus on a clear goal, not being distracted by extraneous goings-on. I could be speaking about the Spain soccer team's marvelous 1-0 win over Argentina in the World Cup final today, but actually I'm referring to me. Because I exhibited world-class television-watching discipline in how I managed to leave our house at 12:30 pm, half an hour after the final started, returned home at about 3 pm, and managed to watch all of the recording I'd made of the World Cup final (except the halftime show) without learning the outcome. Didn't…
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Posted inSports

Today I became a soccer fan. Thank you World Cup!

I had a breakthrough in my soccer watching today. My habitual joke -- which isn't really a joke because it's been true -- is that the only way I can watch soccer is record the match, then fast forward at triple or quadruple speed until I see the score has changed, then go back a minute or two to see how the goal was scored. Something changed today. I started watching my recording of the England vs. Norway World Cup quarterfinal match and didn't feel an urge to fast forward. Yes, I did press the 30 second advance button a…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

Mention of possible Salem data center on Facebook stirs up fears

While lots of people, me definitely included, find AI models like Claude (my new cyber friend) really helpful and interesting, the data centers that make AI possible are viewed with considerably more skepticism. For good reason. Data centers typically consume huge amounts of electricity, need lots of water to cool the massive amount of computer servers, make plenty of noise, and in general have become a flashpoint for communities who don't want them to harm the quality of life of residents. So it wasn't surprising that a post today on the Salem City Council Forum Facebook page stimulated numerous concerned…
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Posted inFood and drink Salem

Royal Thai restaurant in south Salem has a great Pra Ram entree

I love Thai food. But I'm picky when it comes to what I order. Being a health-minded vegetarian cuts out a bunch of Thai dishes. I don't like green or red peppers, so that's another no-no. And while I like curry dishes, I prefer entrees with rice. So Pra Ram usually is what I order at Thai restaurants. Googling its origins just now, so I could sound knowledgeable in this blog post, I was surprised to learn from a seemingly reputable source -- Claude, my favorite AI model -- that Pra Ram is viewed by some like Chop Suey, a…
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Posted inCars

Warning: ask me how I’m liking my Tesla Model Y Juniper at your own risk

You know how it goes. Sometimes before arriving at a social gathering, a wife or husband will say to their partner, "Be sure not to mention _______ to Kurt; once he starts talking about this, he never shuts up." That _______ could be fishing, golf, a trip to Europe, his job, or anything that Kurt finds way more interesting than anyone else at the party. So you've got to be careful in choosing conversation topics around him. At all costs, avoid any mention of his passion unless you enjoy listening to monologues. I sympathize with guys (and gals) like Kurt,…
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Posted inEntertainment Uncategorized

Beowulf movie is a 2007 hidden treasure that I just enjoyed

I have no idea how I learned of the 2007 Beowulf movie, which I never saw back then. I use Apple's Reminders app to keep track of movies and streaming shows that seem enticing. Beowulf has been on that list for quite a while. I just got around to watching it. Enjoyed it a lot. It was worth the $3.95, I think it was, that Apple TV charged me to buy the movie. Couldn't find a free way to stream Beowulf, though maybe there is one. It features some excellent actors: John Malkovich, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright, and…
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Posted inCars Home life

If you’re a Tesla owner, beware of Tesstudio

Buyer beware. That's always good advice. It's especially good advice if you're thinking about buying something from Tesstudio, which sells Tesla accessories and has horrible customer service. My tale of Tesstudio woe hasn't reached a conclusion yet. But I've learned enough about the company to make me want to get this blog post warning out into cyberspace as soon as possible. As a new Model Y Juniper owner, I was concerned that the large glass roof would heat up my car too much in the summer. Actually, I've learned that this isn't a major concern here in western Oregon, as…
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