Tidbits for another week - 3/12/2021

Electrical Problems (3/10/2021):

We have overkill in my kitchen: There are four ovens in it. Since I'm not much of a cook (I only cook to keep us from starving), you may not think that logical. However, the number of ovens in my kitchen is not the point of my sad tale. The point is that I had an electrical problem with the small toaster oven (to left of microwave on the counter in the photo, above) which proved to the world that I, who completed a minor in Electrical Engineering back in the late 1950s, am an idiot.

I wanted to toast a sandwich bun for our dinner, last night. I put the bun in the toaster oven, set the controls and started the oven, and left the room. Upon my return, I discovered that the oven was not hot, did not even have glowing digital control numbers showing. I unplugged the unit, re-plugged it. (That's the plug to the toaster oven at the right end of the toaster oven and above it. The other plug to the left of the toaster oven is actually the plug to the microwave.) Nothing. Exasperated, I used a skillet and the range top to toast the bun. As I went downstairs to bed, last night, I took the toaster oven down to our workshop where I intended to check it, later, to see if there is a fuse inside the casing.

This morning, as I came upstairs, I brought our standby toaster oven up from the basement. Later, I stuck a bagel into the standby toaster oven and set its simple mechanical controls. I listened to the hum of the spring-loaded timer as I walked away. When I returned, did I find a toasted bagel? Nope. The toaster oven was (electrically) dead as a doornail. Bah! Humbug! The poor thing had served me well in Albuquerque in the 1980s and had served me well for the first 10 years after my return to Derby KS; but, it hadn't been used since about 2000 - at which time it had been replaced by the newer unit.

A bit later, after working in the yard and kicking back thinking to take a short nap, my idle mind realized what was going on with the little ovens: I had been checking the wrong ground fault interrupter (GFI) unit. I had checked the GFI into which the microwave is plugged. That's logical since it is, physically, the nearest GFI unit to the outlet into which the toaster oven is plugged. However, the electrical outlet into which the toaster oven plugs is actually wired into the GFI unit of the outlet that is to the right of the microwave. Duh!

While everyone is looking at the photo of the ovens, please note that the little woodwork one can see is nice and clean. I started on spring cleaning, in the kitchen, the other day. It took me four days to finish scrubbing all of the cabinets in the kitchen, but they are clean!

Terminology Illuminated (3/12/2021):

The other day I asked that anyone who understood "Lie group" and/or "surfaces of ignorance" let me know so that I could share the Zoom login information to yesterday's Wichita State University Physics Seminar. I needed someone to watch and translate for me. The seminar featured Dr. Shannon Ray, National Research Council Fellow, Air Force Research Laboratory, speaking on“The Purification of 3-Level Quantum States and Surfaces of Ignorance”.

No one took me up on the challenge of translating for me, so I watched the presentation, alone. It turned out to be an interesting talk. Although I understood the math (heavy on tensor algebras), there was a lot of what turned out to be jargon - much of it invented by the presenter and his colleagues. One term that he used in a peripheral comment turned out to be less esoteric than I had perceived or considered: it was "The Bottom Turtle".

In exchanging emails with Ole Phat Stu, a few minutes ago, I was inspired to research "The Bottom Turtle". *Face Palm*  The term is from Yertle the Turtle by Dr Seuss.

Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) has been in the news, much, of late - at least, here in the States. Fortunately, Yertle the Turtle was not implicated in the loud complaints against some of the Seuss books. Who knew it would contain an allegory during a physics talk? Whoo boy.

Personal Tidbits from Hunky Husband and me:

As of Wednesday (3/10/2021), Hunky Husband and I are considered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be "fully vaccinated". We may now meet with a few other people who are also "fully vaccinated", indoors, without masking and distancing. Unfortunately, in our family, being "fully vaccinated" has skipped the generation of our daughters. We are looking forward to their attaining the designation no later than the end of May.

On Friday (3/12/2021), HH & I met with our tax guy. Yikes! HH had, without my having noticed it, until we gathered our tax papers, chosen to skip the Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from his Volunteer Investment Plan (VIP) with Boeing, for 2020. The problem that it presented for our 2020 taxes was that by not taking his RMD (not required in 2020 because of COVID-19), he did not contribute the taxes that he would have had withheld from the distribution.

For 2020, we had under-withheld (Fed & State) by an amount equal to my income from retirement benefits plus social security. (Of course, for 2019 we had over-withheld 1.2 times that much.) HH had left home without his checkbook, so the rest of our taxes will be automatically syphoned off of my checking account.  Fortunately, I am in the habit of carrying a blank check in my wallet and Robert was able to get the routing information off of it to give the Feds and the State Revenuers. (The minute we got home I transferred the funds from my savings. In the meantime, HH had received texts from H&R Block informing him that both sets of taxes had been accepted and would be deducted from the indicated account.)

 

Comments

[Ole Phat Stu]

Here's a real photo of "Turtles all the way down" aka infinite regression...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/River_terrapin.jpg

[Cop Car]

Awww...how cute, Stu. Thank you.

[bogie]

I believe that you meant to say that the daughter that lives in your state should attain vaccination by the end of May. I am unsure when I will be eligible - especially since the government has not made good on its promised J&J shipments for the week and won't make one this week either. When I am eligible, I feel like I should wait because there are people that need it more than I do. I don't have to go to work (WFH), I only go to the dump and grocery store so do not see other people, and I don't have any health issues. I will be vaccinated before September though (barring any unforeseen issues). I am getting my second shingles shot at the end of this week though :)

Under withholding is painful, especially with the penalty that is assessed. Managed to do that one year in the 90's - the Ex didn't have his status set correctly. We put in lots of overtime and had no deductions at all to claim; I was claiming at the higher single rate with zero deductions and Ex was claiming married and one.

[Cop Car]

Well, Bogie, of course I think of local conditions in discussing vaccinations. Hopefully, things get so organized in NH that your populace gets vaccinated promptly. Kansas contains about 1% of the population of the USA; thus, ostensibly, it gets about 1% of the vaccine. The State of KS has divvied up that allotment, to the counties, the rural counties' shares having been more heavily weighted than the urban counties' shares. (Not sure why that is, but that is the way the State government rolls.)

NH's population being about half of the population of KS, you're probably getting about 0.5% of the vaccine. It surely was disappointing that J&J hasn't met their committed outputs, so far. Merck will help that situation - within a few months. Supposedly, as of yesterday, NH had received 0.42% of the vaccine distributed in the USA to date, according to my calculation using data from the NY Times.

[bogie]

NH has done a good job of getting the vaccines distributed that we get. Last weekend, they did 11,000 at the NH Motor Speedway in 3 days. That was the first mass vaccination in NH and consisted of the first shipment of J&J. It is shipments 2 & 3 that we haven't received / won't be getting on the previously promised schedule, nor do we know when another shipment will make it.

Not saying that NH should be getting a higher percentage, just that it is better to under promise and over deliver as to the other way around. And if you can't make your commitment, communicate that sooner as to later (or not at all). Neither the Feds nor the companies involved seem to understand this.

Teachers, caregivers, childcare workers, first responders etc are in the next phase, unless the J&J vaccines show up, I won't be eligible for a while. I have no arguments about the priorities that the NH government has set for who get the vaccines.

I'm not concerned for myself as I am in a good position to wait and under most circumstances probably wouldn't even bother getting the vaccine. Seriously, if it weren't for wanting to visit family in another state at some point, I probably wouldn't get the vaccine, just like I don't get flu shots.