Springtime advances

Aggravation

I took out a loan from my 401-k to finance a small business opportunity. I took out a sixty-month loan.

A small windfall came my way so I paid the next year's worth of payments in one fell swoop.

Then I got a message from Fidelity that I was in arrears on my payment.

I got on their chat line, and even though I used twelve coupons and the payment was registered January 5, 2024 and each coupon was individually written out for the month it was to be applied I was informed that while I could pay more, I could not pay ahead. That I had to make the minimum payment EVERY month (by the calendar regardless.

Pisses me off. I am paying the funds back to myself. I am 9 months ahead in my payments and Fidelity tells me that I will be in default and, presumably, my credit rating will shit-the-bed.

Pay attention to when events turn out better-than-expected

It is easy to take-notice when reality falls short of expectation. That is when we go looking for problems.

It is harder to take-notice when return on investment exceeds expectation and to look for root causes.

For example: Our Regia juglans (English/Carpathian walnuts) have never really produced very many nuts. I attributed it to various twig borers that caused the ends of the twigs to die in mid-summer. The nuts grow on the ends of the twigs and if the twig dies...no nuts. I could spray but choose not to.

Last summer, we had a bumper crop of Carpathian walnuts. Like five times more than our previous best year.

It may be that some parasitoid wasp that attacks the borers finally found our property. If that is the case, then I simply need to not kill any nectar plants that enable those parasitoid wasps. Based on where the trees are, those plants could be spearmint, horseradish, clover or raspberries.

Sidenote: research suggests that parasitoid wasps live three times longer and presumably lay eggs on three times as many pests when they have ample nectar vs no-nectar. There is a compound-interest effect. More eggs laid means a higher population of parasitoid wasps next year and so on, and so forth.

Another change was that I raised some replacement pullets for Sprite last year. I put the temporary pen in the shade of the walnuts. It could be that the additional fertilizer of the chicken poop was what the walnuts lacked.

Or maybe it was some other cause that I am not aware of.

Regardless, it is not hard to NOT spray the spearmint and raspberries. It is pretty easy to add a little (100lb N/acre actual) fertilizer beneath the walnut trees.

Spring advances

Our violets are blooming like crazy.

I saw daffodils blooming on M-50 on the north side of the road (southern exposure).

Picking at the zit (Castes)

Frankly, I am not trying to sell the idea of "castes" even if it looks like I am.

When a large satellite is about to drop out of orbit we are often given a trace of where the satellite is likely to make land-fall. There is often a large amount of uncertainty as the yarn-ball path has a delta to either side of the nominal path.

Presumably, some tiny amount of propulsion is saved to increase the likelihood of the satellite ending up in an ocean rather than Bejing, Manila, Mecca or Los Angeles.

I see "Castes" as a relatively high-likelihood end-state as we go into high-entropy re-entry. Admittedly, like a satellite, there is a very long trace of "high-likelihood" impact sites.

One tiny bit of anecdotal evidence. We seem to be self-organizing in that direction. Consider the warrior-caste (also known as Scotch-Irish) whose caste was disrespected by the progressive-political caste. What happened? Military ecruitment fell into the septic tank and remains there.

I try to add value with my posts. If "castes" are where the devolution of our low-entropy, high-trust society impacts then how can it be managed to minimize the collateral damages?

Weight-lifting notes

Squats dropped from the program.

Dead-lifts retained. 10 repetitions of 135lb with no straps for warm-up.

Four sets of 6 X 225lb for the main event. Approximately five minutes recovery period between sets. Calf-raises during recovery to use the time productively.

135lb X 10 shrugs for cool-down.