The ferns are forging forward.

The rhodos (in the shade) are abloom.

And this, I hypothesize, is AT&T fiber splicing equipment (and personnel inside).

Love the tendrils and extra fillips of green on the buds and bud-stems of this red-red-rose.

As usual with my plant photos, I’m trying to focus the way I want, and miss the insects, unless they’re front/center bees or similar. Not delicate spider at 5:30 just off center….

Possibly, you may recall that Goo-Fiber came to our neighborhood last year, and we got powered up in mid-summer. Now, I see the AT&T folks/contractors are playing catchup on the same streets. This is the hookup stage, when people are working in trailers and the back of trucks with the doors open, that delicate work of splicing, I think. In the meantime, there are extra bits hanging here and there. This one has a temporary tether; excess flopping does seem dangerous.

I got distracted into photo metadata and learned a smidge about big-endian (and its opposite little-endian—duh; collectively: endianness), and their distant “friend” circle of confusion.

I think I have spent some time in a circle of confusion, but today I just felt like that was a distant memory.

Without planning to do so, I presently have three active activity trackers. Two kindof agree, and one reports wildly lower counts. The only category all three report is steps. My ancient Fitbit One and my iPhone report similar step-counts, but, providing I remember to carry it all the time, the iPhone will have a higher step-count than the Fitbit (attached to my underwear). The Nokia Steel HR always reports a much lower value each day, like around 20% lower than the other two.

I noticed this variation, and began to watch more closely. I’m pretty sure that if you consider footfalls “steps,” which I think the devices do, the most accurate of the three trackers is the iPhone, the one that consistently gives the highest count.

Your counts may vary.

I can wear the Nokia in the shower, and it gives me a chunk of steps for that (which does’t “fix” the discrepancy, BTW), and sometimes enquires if that time was an “activity.” It’s those rapid little steps to soap, rotate, and bend to get clean?

This is the watering can part of Renoir’s “A Girl with a Watering Can.” I have a soft spot for the painting, as I had a (crappy, not-very-high-res*) copy on my wall as a kid. I particularly liked the blue.

* The National Gallery website has an extremely high-res version of the painting available for download.

Found this on my counter late this afternoon…. We’ve had several padded mailing envelopes arrive in the last few days, apparently bringing this chip and other techno-bits. I’m told this doo-jiggie reports temperature (in F), humidity, barometric pressure. All for well under $20 (I’m told).

Yeah, we keep our house pretty chilly.

The meteorologists all said it would snow today—days ago. I didn’t quite believe them. They were right; I was skeptical/wrong.

However, the mail-dude did get through this morning, and brought my new device. I’ve been wanting something I liked better than my aging fitbit (which seems to wildly undercount my steps these days), and my SIL suggested a cool, tasteful Nokia watch-fitness device. I discovered Nokia would release a new version that also would monitor heart-rate (the Steel HR), and I figured that would be the model for me!

I had to wait some time for it to be released, then ordered it when they finally accepted pre-orders in mid-November…for delivery in “early December,” which I figured was code for about the 14th. I was wrong. Nokia sent an email on the morning of the 5th, saying that my order was shipped. Over on the USPS tracking, they indicated only that a shipping label had been created that morning. That night, though, my package was at a USPS facility. It trickled down over the succeeding days, to be delivered this morning! And I got it set up! Time to walk! Even though the snow was coming down in big wet flakes, we set off. At my slow speed, it wasn’t slick; lucky me!

I was just upstairs, and the white outdoors and on the balcony reflected the light (despite the overcast), reminding me about night snow-light. Meanwhile, the heat’s going and we are toasty warm, with plenty of goodies in the larder. We are good!

I made two short(er) walks today, not even trying to get one app to award active minutes or the other to credit me for walking. [Neither have settings for gimps slow-walkers.] This morning’s adventure was in sunshine, so I get vitamin D credit!, regardless of the apps.

Soon after I began my afternoon adventure, the cloud-cover thickened just a tad…after I took this photo. The leaves are in the swale of the Prime’s rear window.

All day the light came and went, and the rain came and went. Here’s a brighter moment, although there really was some rain when I took this shot.

In the afternoon, we had a mall run to get a new laptop for us so we can hand-me-down the one we arrived here with. Yeah, it’s not new, but nephew #2 is thrilled to have his OWN LAPTOP! He also got a lesson in bezier curves and lathe rendering (if I remember the terminology correctly) from The Guru.

As we drove around the parking lot, thick with vehicles, trying to get to the parking garage, we saw this brilliant rainbow. Then, in the Apple store, we discovered it was (informally) take-your-dog-to-the-Apple-store day. I think I saw six dogs in the store. I daresay none were service doggies. Does it make a difference that this is a mall, but not an enclosed mall, instead one that has shop doors opening to the out-of-doors?

Wow, I get to see through the specially fortified door(way) to the pilot area!*

And at my seat, foot elevated of course, I discover that texting (really IMing) is free, courtesy of Delta. Yay!

* And the protocol on a pilot exiting the cockpit while inflight begins with a call to the head flight attendant. Then, the flight attendants in the front block the entrance from the cabin with a drink cart and turn their attention to cabin activity, highly scrutinized. Then, they call the pilot to exit, and s/he closes the door after exiting the cockpit. Does biz, then calls the remaining pilot from the flight-attendant phone to coordinate reentry, then opens the door to return. You get the idea…many well-executed safety steps….