lee.ourand.me: Posts

📝 Post May 11, 2025

Weeknotes 32

More pickleballin’ this week. Won 3 of the 7 games I played. I’m getting better, slowly, apparently!
After spending way too much time thinking about motorcycle helmets, think I’ve landed on what I’m going to get: the LS2 Advant X. It’s one of only a handful of helmets sold in the U.S. with both DOT and ECE 22.06 safety standards.
And now I’ve moved onto overthinking other motorcycle safety gear: gloves, jacket, pants, boots, and learning about CE ratings for motorcycle garments.
Did some more farm working this week. Primarily helped till up the soil where the rows will soon go.
Our magnolia tree has begun its spring time leaf dropping. Magnolia trees go onto my list of things to avoid whenever our next housing search happens.
Le Mans MotoGP week. I did some French baking for the occasion, making some baguettes and some macarons. Baguettes are comparatively easy peasy. Those macarons were about a 7/10 pain in the neck. The French gods apparently saw fit to reward my dedication with the first French MotoGP race winner since 1974!

Masks, when medical, and used to slow the propagation of a global pandemic: bad

Masks, when used to conceal identities of government agents aprehending and disappearing judges and political opponents of the President: good

May 10, 2025

📝 Post May 04, 2025

Weeknotes 31

Started motorcycle helmet shopping / researching. This is another one of those areas where the U.S. regulations seem comically inadequate when compared to most other developed counties. Europe’s ECE certification seems much more legit than the U.S.’s self-certified DOT rating. The U.K. even publishes how every helmet fared in their testing. One nice thing about these ratings is that in dispels the common “knowledge” that more $$$ = more safety. Some of the safest helmets on this list cost ~10% of their Shoei and Arai counterparts. Unfortunately, this seems almost unknowable for the U.S. market.
Did a little more farm work this week. We put up a fence. And I only cut myself on the freshly-cut garden fencing once. That stuff is as sharp as it is unwieldy.
New driver’s license arrived in the mail. Everything looks good this time. 🎉
Downloaded and played through the new Raptor Cliff’s course in Walkabout Mini Golf. Enjoyed this one a lot more than their last installment. It’d been long enough since I last played, my VR nasuea returned toward the end of the course.
The running progress continues. It’s getting warm enough, that it doesn’t feel like I’m actually progressing much. My Apple Watch VO2 max calculation assures me I’m getting slightly better.
Voted in the Democratic Primary for VA’s next Lt. Governor, Attorney General, and all that. It’s remarkable how little information lots of these candidates put on their election websites. Most of the sites I visited basically were just lists of kind of braggy personal accomplishments, and absolutely no mention of policy positions or priorities they’d like to tackle in the jobs they’re ostensibly trying to get.
Watched my first F1 race in a long time at Väsen. As it always seems to do, it reminds me how much more enjoyable MotoGP is in virtually every way. I just don’t understand the popularity discrepancy.

📝 Post April 27, 2025

Weeknotes 30

Went to the DMV on Monday to fix up the litany of mistakes they made the last time I renewed my license. Address fixed, organ donation status restored, and class M motorcycle license is back, baby!
I (kind of) bought a bike! Found an NX500 for sale in Charlottesville. Went to check it out, and it’s, indeed, sweet. Continuing my DMV issues, we noticed the VIN on the title is missing a digit. (Aside: my inner computer programmer is screaming. How are there no validations on VIN numbers at the DMV, which are always 17 digits long?) So, I put a deposit down, and the seller’s working on getting that mess straightened out.
Spent some time re-organizing our shed to make room for this impending motorcycle ownership. It’s downright roomy now!
Our fence is beginning to show some signs of aging. So thought it’d be a good idea to stain it to protect it from the elements a bit. Just winged it, and bought a couple gallons of stain, and went to work. Burned through those 2 gallons after staining about 10% of the fence. Did some math to figure out how much stain I’d need to complete the whole thing, and it’d cost more than replacing all the fence pickets with better quality pickets. New strategy: let it go! I’ll just replace it after it looks sufficiently horrible.
MotoGP race at Jerez this weekend. Quartararo got pole position, and managed an incredible 2nd place finish in the race today. More of this, please. Having 6 Ducatis in the top 6 is getting very old.

🔗 Link April 25, 2025

Wisconsin Judge Arrested, Accused of Shielding Immigrant From Federal Agents

Time for centrists to migrate some goal posts yet again and insist that arresting judges isn’t fascism, and everyone saying otherwise is just being alarmist. Rinse/repeat ad infinitum.

🔗 Link April 24, 2025

Americans Believe Russian Disinformation 'To Alarming Degree'

Color me shocked!

Gullibility appears to cut across party lines, with respondents identifying as Democrats just as likely as Republicans to believe at least one of the 10 false claims.

Yea, ok. Go on… Let’s read the very next paragraph:

Republicans were, though, more likely to believe Russian disinformation claims than their Democratic counterparts, with 57.6% falling for at least one Russian disinformation claim, compared with just 17.9% of Democrats and 29.5% of people who didn’t identify with one particular party.

Oh! So Democrats are not “just as likely as Republicans” to believe at least one of the 10 false claims. Both-sidesism is just incredible.

🔗 Link April 23, 2025

Hegseth orders makeup studio installed at Pentagon

Bringing masculinity back.

📝 Post April 20, 2025

Weeknotes 29

Spent a little time playing around with the MASH stack. Still very much learning the basics of Axum (and everything else in the stack, for that matter). It’s obviously very less “batteries included” than Rails. But it’s got some neat features that suit Rust quite nicely. The with_state function pairs up with Extractors in such a simple way. I’m impressed!
Upping my running mileage somewhat. Up to ~10k distance this week. Progress is slow, but these legs are returning to form bit by bit.
Finally completed my porch renovation project with a hefty dose of help from my dad. It’s comically over-engineered, but if a tornado ever strikes, our porch is going nowhere. This is the sturdiest porch east of the Mississippi.
Speaking of my dad, he just acquired a new motorcycle, which I gave a spin. For whatever reason, it re-ignited my need to have a bike. I haven’t owned a motorcycle since ~2011. So this coming week’s projects include: fixing a DMV snafu that resulted in my class “M” motorcycle license vanishing from my license on my last renewal, and potentially acquiring a bike. Currently eyeballing the Honda NX500.

Cats—first and foremost—are machines for turning cat food into eye boogers.

April 20, 2025

🔗 Link April 17, 2025

Historians: Quibbling Over Exact Definition Of Concentration Camp Sign Of Healthy Society

Time and time again, history shows us that caveat-laden arguments about what is or isn’t a concentration camp only occur in countries with sound political systems. When people are splitting hairs over the specific methodology and intent behind mass detention and human rights abuses, that’s when you know you’re looking at a vibrant, civilized society. It’s as true today as it was a hundred years ago. Civilizations are healthier when citizens are raising trivial objections to the use of the term ‘concentration camp’ on the grounds that their neighbor’s rendition to an oversight-free mass prison still technically exists within a legal framework, at least on paper.

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