This critter trundled across the driveway after a shower wetted the area:
They do some damage in the garden, but we let them alone elsewhere…
Category: Oddities
Who’d’a thunk it?
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Jerusalem Cricket vs. Dust Bunny
Sometimes crickets make their way into the basement. This one, a model that I’ve always known as a Jerusalem Cricket(*) evidently lost a pitched battle with one of the Dust Bunnies guarding the Basement Laboratory:
Jerusalem Cricket vs Dust Bunny – top view A rear view:
Jerusalem Cricket vs Dust Bunny – rear view From the front:
Jerusalem Cricket vs Dust Bunny – front view I deported it to the flower garden outside the basement door, where I hope it can brush off the Bunny’s entrapments…
It may not be a Jerusalem Cricket, because they’re more common out west, but that’s the best match in our bug books and that’s what we’ve always called them.
[Update: (*) It’s most likely a Cave Cricket. See the comments for details.]
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Blueberry Season: Stink Bug Eggs
Mary’s been picking blueberries and freezing them for winter treats, a process that involves inspecting each berry laid out on the tray.
This one failed QC:
Blueberry with eggs – overview A closer look shows some remarkable structures:
Blueberry with eggs – detail Unfortunately, they’ll probably turn into Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs. This is not a Good Thing, because those stink bugs will devastate fruit harvests, including all the apple orchards along the entire Hudson Valley, over the next few years.
They may be Predatory Stink Bugs, which would be unusual in Dutchess County, but not nearly so awful.
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Why Friends Don’t Let Friends Run Windows: Product Pictures? Really?
This email worked its way through the filters:
Dear Business Partner,
We are very much interested in some of your product. We try to contact you online but you are not online so we decided to attach the picture of the product we need to dropbox and put it in your offline. Open the bellow link and download the attachment to preview the product we need:
... dropbox url snippage ... /Product%20Pics.rarLet me know if the product is still available for sale and how much it costs, also tell us the product details.
Regards,
Allen Moore,
Procurement Officer,
International Product BuyersWell, I don’t generally rebuff the humble, but I don’t have any “product” for sale. Also pulling the suspicion trigger:
- To: Recipients <Procurement@Officer.com>
- Subject: Open Attachment For Product Picture
It’s not clear what “attach the picture of the product we need to dropbox and put it in your offline” might mean. Despite the Dropbox URL, the email sported an attachment named
Product\ Pics.rar, showing they come from a different universe wherein every operating system has a native RAR extraction program.Being a dutiful citizen of the Interwebs, I did what the nice man asked:
unrar e Product\ Pics.rarThat produced a single file which RAR described thusly:
Extracting Product Picjpg.SCRAt least that’s what it looked like on the command line. I think they were trying to overwrite the
SCRwith thejpg, as the file name was reallyProduct Pic<U+202E>RCS.gpj, but the Unicode U+20E bidirectional text control character seems to be in the wrong place. I think they wantedProduct Pic.SCR<U+202E>gpj, but I also confess to having no experience with sixth-level Unicode direction reversal rendering.Anyhow, handing the entire RAR archive to VirusTotal produces the expected result:
VirusTotal – Product Pics malware file It’s disconcerting to see ClamAV asleep at the switch on this one, but signature detection has become decreasingly relevant these days.
I opted to not respond to the request..
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Turkey vs. Hawk: Aftermath
Based on this evidence, the hawks seem to be tackling larger prey:
Turkey feathers in the garden Mary found turkey feathers drifting across the garden, with the largest concentration near this assortment, much along the lines of the pile left at our back door. Given the 6 ft deer fence surrounding the garden and the complete absence of yummy debris, we think this wasn’t the work of a land-based predator.
Parents, guard your children…
Along those lines, once upon a time, long ago and far away, we attended a show-n-tell featuring a (rescued) California Condor. The exhibitors ushered us into a tight group and told parents to keep their small children close beside them, because condors attack stray animals and pay particular attention to infants of herd animals. Of course, one couple didn’t get the word (or didn’t think it applied to them) and let their toddler wander off. As soon as the kid got a few feet away from the pack of people, the inert condor abruptly powered up and got weapons lock on the kid; a warning from the exhibitor sent the parents scurrying to
correctcollect their blunder. -
Cash Register: Useless Error Message
This message may be useful, in the sense that it reports something about the internal state of the cash register:
Walmart cash register – buffer full message But the fact that it appears on the customer-facing display means that the cashier won’t see it and can’t do anything about it. I’m not sure if the floor personnel know anything about buffers, either.
The cashier-facing display says: “Welcome to Walmart!”
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Public Facilities Maintenance: Lack Thereof
I have a deep and abiding cynicism about the wisdom of building Special Facilities for bicycles and pedestrians. We very much enjoy biking along the Dutchess County Rail Trail, but I fear the County’s initial enthusiasm and funding will quickly wear off, leaving us with another poorly maintained facility.
For example, the section of trail just south of Morgan Lake (a.k.a., Phase II) opened in July 2009, a mere four years ago. This view shows the North Grand Avenue at-grade crossing:
DCRT N Grand – overview Shortly after the opening, the ADA-mandated vision-impaired tactile pavement strips at that crossing began to deteriorate and, by now, they’re just rubble-filled depressions across the trail on either side of the road.
The south strip:
DCRT N Grand – South ADA Strip The north strip:
DCRT N Grand – north ADA strip Evidently, the Official Personnel traversing the DCRT lack the responsibility / authority / initiative to apply a broom and sweep the pebbles out of the path, much less schedule a repair crew. I suppose I should haul a shovel along on one of our trips and privatize the upkeep; it’s been two years, so further waiting will be pointless.
It’s not as though there’s no Official Traffic, as witnessed by this well-worn informal entrance at the south end of that trail segment:
DCRT Overocker – vehicle tracks There’s an Official Gate just to the left of the trail at that crossing, but, judging from the weeds, it’s evidently easier to stay in the car or truck than get out and unlock the barrier:
DCRT Overocker – vehicle gate Perhaps pebbles now count as tactile paving.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 