iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 2h

I bought 10 bales of hay today, but they ended up being bigger than usual and with the help of the store owner we barely managed to cram them all into the back of the Expedition. I bought prairie grass hay instead of alfalfa like I used to buy. Alfalfa is very tasty, but it's higher in protein […]

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 19h

Aero Products Research E6-B₄ flight computer. This is a "pocket-sized" version of the E6-B, made of aluminum. I used to have a full-size version, but someone stole it and I never bothered to replace it since the CR-3 is a better device. The front side is similar to […] [Original post on pawb.fun]

The front side of an APR E6-B₄ flight computer. It has a center piece with a metal dial and a sliding insert with a grid used for the back side.

The back of an E6-B₄ computer. It has a stationary section with a rotating wheel that has a clear plastic center that you can write on with a pencil, and a metal plate with grid marks that slides up and down. This is used to do crosswind calculations. The metal plate has two sides, one for 40-270 knots, the other for 200 to 700 knots. It also has a compressability correction chart on one side, and a ruler designed to be used on a sectional or the now obsolete World Aeronautical Chart (WAC).

To solve for true heading and ground speed, first turn the dial so that the wind direction is under the index mark. Use a pencil to make a mark on the clear plastic piece a distance up from the center grommet corresponding to the wind speed; if the grommet is over 100 and the wind is 40 knots, place the pencil mark on 140. Rotate the wheel until your true course is under the index, or place your magnetic course underneath the local magnetic declination (which will display your true course under the index mark). Move the slide until the pencil mark is over your true air speed. Read your ground speed under the grommet and your wind correction angle under the pencil mark. Add or subtract your wind correction angle from your magnetic course to get your magnetic heading.

(Course is the direction your aircraft is moving over the ground. Heading is the direction your aircraft is pointing. If there is a crosswind, you have to point the plane to the left or right to remain on course.)

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

Goats are great. I pick a plantain leaf and offer it through the fence to Cookie and she devours it like it's the best thing ever. Even though there are tons of plantain plants all over their side of the fence that they could eat at any time.

A photo of a man feeding a leaf to a goat on the other side of a fence.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

I love the little footnotes in the Discworld books.

A screenshot from Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett. It is a footnote.

Bad spelling can be lethal. For example, the greedy seraph of Al-Ybi was once cursed by a badly educated deity and for some days everything he touched turned to Glod, which happened to be the name of a small dwarf from a mountain community hundreds of miles away who found himself magically dragged to the kingdom and relentlessly duplicated. Some two thousand Glods later the spell wore off. These days, the people of Al-Ybi are renowned for being unusually short and bad tempered.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

Farrier came by and trimmed the mare while I held her. Normally the goats are very shy around strangers, but I guess she's been here enough times (and they see that the horse gets lots of treats when she's here) so they had to come over and "help".

Surveillance camera photo of a woman leaning over and trimming a miniature horse's back hooves, while a man sits on a stool holding the horse's lead, and three pygmy goats are gathered around watching and hoping for treats.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

Finished reading Night Train to Rigel. That was fun. It was like an early 20th century spy novel set on a train, except this train travels through space. Next I think I'll read Witches Abroad (Discworld #12, #3 in the Witches arc), by Terry Pratchett.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

🎵 When the whip-poor-will 🎵 Whippoors in the wind 🎵 The wind can whippoor back 🎵 Oh nice and chubby baby!

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

Sitting outside, reading and watching the mare.

A horse eating grass with a blue sky filled with contrails.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca. Family Apocynaceae, the dogbane family) seeds & silks. The milkweed pods have started bursting open and there are little tufts of silk floating all over the place.

A milkweed plant. The leaves are gone leaving only the pods, which are dried up and starting to split open, releasing the seeds with their tufts of silk.

A milkweed seed with its fluffy tuft of silk which allows the seed to float a considerable distance on the wind.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

If AIs are allegedly hacking companies on their own now, how long before AI starts providing "vibe coders" with code that has back doors but the "coders" are too unskilled to recognize it?

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

From a Peanuts comic in 1971: "Bob Dylan will be thirty years old this month..." "That's the most depressing thing I've ever heard" Hate to break it to you, Chuck, but Bob Dylan is 85 now...

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

Can you figure out what the first button (upper left) on this smartwatch is for?

A screenshot from a Galaxy Watch Ultra. There are 6 icons, one that looks like a pie chart, a gear, a flashlight, a speaker with a gear, a speaker (this icon is currently inverted color for no apparent reason), and two drops of water.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

She looks like she swallowed a basketball.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

The horse found a tree, also known as an aerial salad bar.

A liver chestnut miniature horse eating leaves off a mulberry tree.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

Reading a web page about the differences between Lego: The Hobbit and the Hobbit movies. "Fimbul never used a phone to call Azog in the movie after he and Yazneg spy on the company." :blobfoxangrylaugh:

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

I hear purring coming from under my chair...

A photo of a cat lying on the ground between two legs wearing beat up western boots. The cat is looking up at the camera.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

After several gross days following the crazy heavy rain storms, we finally get a nice day to sit outside and read while the horse eats.

A liver chestnut mare facing away from the camera and looking behind her with a mouth full of grass. Behind her is a barn with slightly rusty metal siding, and a gorgeous blue sky with only a hint of clouds.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026

Jeppesen CR-3 flight computer The CR-3 (and its smaller cousins, the CR-2 and CR-5) are circular slide rules designed specifically for aviation. They are similar to the more common E6B computer, but they lack the sliding portion used for crosswind calculations. The […] [Original post on pawb.fun]

The front of a CR-3. It has inner and outer dials marked with numbers increasing logarithmically just like a slide rule and is used in the same way, except it loops back around on itself.

The center has various cutouts for calculating density altitude, true altitude, true air speed, true air temperature, and Mach number.

The back of the CR-3, which has outer, middle, and inner dials. The inner dial is transparent and has a rough texture that will accept pencil marks. Pencil marks can be removed with a standard eraser.

Addition is performed by placing the first number above the TC index on the inner dial, then finding the second number clockwise on the inner black scale and reading the answer in the green scale opposite. Use the numbers counterclockwise from the TC index for subtraction. The CR-3 is limited to answer totals between 0 and 360, and subtraction of up to 180; it cannot do negative answers or any numbers higher than 360.

Crosswind calculations are performed by placing the TAS index opposite the air speed, then setting the magnetic course on the green scale above the magnetic declination. (This is required because wind direction is always given relative to true north, while course normally uses magnetic north.) Find the wind direction on the green scale, and with a pencil mark where that line intersects the circle for the wind speed. Read down from the pencil mark to find the crosswind component. Look that number up on the outer scale, and the crab angle will be opposite on the middle scale. Read across from the pencil mark to find the headwind or tailwind component. Add or subtract the crab angle from the magnetic course to obtain your required magnetic heading, and add or subtract the head/tailwind to your air speed to find your ground speed.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026

Spent $160 filling the tanks today. The tanks:

5 enormous plastic animal food bins, with numerous bags of treats stacked on top because I'm constantly buying animal snacks.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

Lincoln got over 10 inches of rain last night and some homes and businesses had to be evacuated due to flooding.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

Windows 11, 26H2 is available. :blobfoxannoyed:

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

I thought my mouse was broken because the cursor was suddenly jumping all over the place. No, it was just a hair stuck on the sensor.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

Crazy amounts of rain last night. Some roads in Omaha are closed due to flooding.

A screenshot of the Digital Storm Total Accumulation output from the NEXRAD radar. It shows a band of very heavy precipitation with some areas getting over 8 inches (20 cm).

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 30/09/2026

Why is there a transporter pattern enhancer at the end of my driveway?

A photo of a GPS survey device mounted on a yellow tripod, sitting in a patch of grass next to the junction of a road and driveway. The lights are on indicating it is in use. There is a large blue garbage bin in the foreground.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 30/09/2026

Where was this rain when we needed it earlier in the year? It doesn't help now, when the farmers are trying to dry down their crops.

A rain gauge showing 2 inches of rain overnight.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 29/09/2026

Just barely managed to get the horse back into the pasture before it started sprinkling. I probably won't be able to spend another afternoon outside like this until Thursday or Friday.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 29/09/2026

I've had several people try to contact me recently on Telegram claiming they found my profile on Barq, but all of them are showing a Nigerian phone number, and they all had recently changed their name and profile photo. Definitely seems like a scam to me.

A screenshot from Telegram with the username cut off. It shows that this use is not a contact, has a Nigerian phone number, registered in June 2024, and is not an official account.

A Telegram screenshot of messages from a Nigerian user. It says that the user updated their photo 5 days ago and their name 27 days ago.

They first sent an image of a furry booping another on the nose, followed by two text messages, "Hii from barq, how're you doing" and after I didn't reply, 6 minutes later they sent "Seems you're busy"

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 29/09/2026

The rain has let up and looks like it should be clear for a few hours, so I'm sitting outside and reading again while the mare eats up more of the driveway grass. I let one of the goats out for a little bit to eat the tree that keeps trying to grow next to the […] [Original post on pawb.fun]

A liver chestnut miniature horse grazing in front of a house with a wooden deck.

A liver chestnut miniature horse getting up close with the camera.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 29/09/2026

So apparently the old version of The Stanley Parable (not the new Ultra Deluxe version) won't work on my computer because it crashes if you have more than 8 cores. I have 24 cores. Gotta love it when your computer is TOO POWERFUL to play a video game.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 29/09/2026

Forecast is for up to 5 inches (12.7 cm) of rain over the next 3 days.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 29/09/2026

We got nearly a ½ inch of rain this morning, then it stopped and I went for my walkies and then shortly after I got back it started raining again. Yeesh.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 29/09/2026

I love getting all ready to do my walkies, I open the front door, and it's started raining. This was a pretty fast moving storm. From the radar I thought I had a good 20-30 minutes at least.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026

Another gorgeous autumn day for me to sit outside and read while my mare feasts on the tastier grass on this side of the fence. The main gate is open, but I know she won't go anywhere. I cut the leaves off a burdock and tossed them over the fence for the goats, who quickly devoured them.

A liver chestnut miniature horse standing beside a gravel driveway grazing in the long grass.

A pygmy goat munching on burdock leaves.

The miniature horse has come closer, still eating grass. The sky is blue and partly cloudy.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026

Someone's hitting the 'nip. Catnip (Nepeta cataria) affects the same parts of the cat's brain that marijuana does in humans. In humans catnip only acts as a mild sedative.

A ginger tomcat playing with a catnip plant.

A ginger tomcat chewing on a catnip leaf.

A ginger tomcat rolling around and rubbing catnip on his face.

A ginger tomcat looking totally tweaked on catnip.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026

Of course the freeways are dangerous with everybody dragging ramps behind their cars.

A screenshot from an episode of CHiPs. A red pickup is in the process of flipping over in a very spectacular accident. There is a very obvious ramp behind the blue car that the pickup just crashed into.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 27/09/2026

The day started out kind of blah, foggy and gross, but at least it wasn't rainy. It's cleared up nicely and there are only a few scattered clouds. I've been sitting outside for at least the past 2½ to 3 hours, with my horse eating grass on the driveway the whole […] [Original post on pawb.fun]

A liver chestnut miniature horse eating grass and dandelions.

A closeup of a liver chestnut miniature horse's face

A liver chestnut miniature horse looking curiously at the camera with her ears up. She's standing next to a driveway with a sedan parked nearby.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 27/09/2026

The more I play the Lego Hobbit, which is based on the Peter Jackson movies, the more I appreciate the Rankin & Bass movie.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 27/09/2026

And he said unto them, He that hath nose to smell, let him smell.

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 27/09/2026

How do they Mount Rushmore? Some kind of double-sided adhesive tape?

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026

I keep finding crickets with their legs ripped off, but in unlikely places like inside the house. There shouldn't be any predators big enough to do that kind of damage in the house. Spiders don't usually rip the limbs off their prey, so they? While leaving the bodies otherwise intact as well? […]

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Captain Packrat @captpackrat.pawb.fun.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026

Castlevania: 40th Anniversary Edition is currently free on Google Play (and possibly Apple).

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