Willem – Page 75 – Willem's Planet

November 9, 2021November 10, 2021

Tuesday/ my iPhone setup is done

My temporary lock screen until I can find a more personalized one. (Dial from a 1950s Stromberg Carlson 1543 rotary phone, one of the most popular desk phones ever made).

The easy data transfer method (to set up my new phone) shown in yesterday’s picture stumbled, and I had to give up on it.

So I did a full iCloud backup of my old phone*, and an iCloud restore to the new phone, and that worked out fine.

*The backup took a while. Could it be that I have that many apps, and that much data? I wondered. It turned out most of the 22 Gb of backup data were photos, even though I had marked photos as excluded from the backup. I also deleted the 5,000+ pictures I had on the old phone, and deleted them from the ‘Recently Deleted’ folder as well, but they were still swept into the backup. They made it onto the new phone into the ‘Recently Deleted’ folder. Ah well, no harm done. They will disappear from there in 30 days.

There is still a little work after all the apps & data had been transferred to the new phone, to make sure everything is good to go.
• Check if home screen, main apps, phone contacts look OK.
• Log onto e-mail accounts, messaging apps, credit card & banking apps, and check that the Apple Wallet is set up correctly (vaccination card was missing).
• Request a new QR code for my Washington State vaccination card to put into the Apple Wallet.
• Connect my Tesla’s key card to the new phone.
• Download my preferred Siri voice onto the phone.
• Use iTunes on Windows (I have no Mac or MacBook) to sync my CD music collection into the Apple Music app & add my PC photo albums to my phone’s photo albums. It’s a known issue that the artwork for the CD albums sometimes get scrambled with the sync. All right, so I could not have that. Deleted all 4,105 synced songs and the Apple Music app (! – to get rid of invisible files & indexes). Downloaded the app back to the phone, and did the sync again. Issue solved.

Below are pictures shot with each of the phone’s three lenses: wide angle, standard and close-up.
(Note: These are 2560×1920 pixels. The blogging platform automatically scales them down from the original 4032×3024 pixels).

November 8, 2021November 9, 2021

Monday/ here comes the sun, and my phone

There was sunshine all day.
My new iPhone was out for delivery, and I had to wait for the FedEx guy to show up before I could venture outside. He showed up shortly after 1 pm.

The iPhone Xs (on the left), is transferring its information & settings over to the iPhone 13 Pro that came out of the little black box. I will go and take a few pictures tomorrow with the spiffy three-lensed camera on the new phone. The 13 is noticeably longer and thicker than the Xs, which I hope will still be OK.

Sun always follows rain .. mural art that I had found yesterday on the corner of Pine St and Third Avenue. The Columbia clothing store that was there is all boarded up and closed.

November 7, 2021November 7, 2021

Sunday/ darkness comes quickly

There was a break in the weather by 3 this afternoon, and I went down to Pike Place Market just to get out of the house for a while.
It is skull cap, scarf and glove time: 44 °F (7 °C) with a little wind chill.

Here comes the marine vessel (ferry)**Tacoma** from Bainbridge Island— it must have been the 2.55 pm sailing. The crossing is about 35 mins, and the time stamp on this photo was 4.38 pm*.
*Which is really 3.38 pm Pacific Standard Time. I forgot to turn off the Daylight Saving Time setting in my big Canon DSLR camera (it has no built-in Wi-Fi).

Upstairs from the viewing deck at **Pike Place Market**. The Mountain is not out (Mount Rainier), but there is a little blue sky. Finishing up the waterfront space that opened up with the demolition of the Alaska Way Viaduct is coming along. That speck at the top left is a Delta Airlines plane on the way to Seattle-Tacoma airport.

Now I walk down First Ave. for a bit. Here’s the **Seattle Art Museum**. See the 3-D optical illusion/’please slow down’ island in the intersection? I like it, but I wonder how many motorists notice it.

**Qualtrics Tower**, formerly known as 2+U and 2&U, is looking good, sitting on its massive V-shaped pillars. Its 37 floors were all leased out by September 2019, but I’m sure it has yet to fill back up again with workers and tenants.

There is a variety of ‘Welcome Back to Your Seattle’ signs adorning the lamp posts in downtown. This one is cute.

I like this one, too. A leaf happened to be stuck right on the swoosh line running around the Space Needle and skyscrapers.

The ten-story building (at **400 University St**, on the southwest corner of the city block with the new Rainier Square Tower), is now complete as well.

Hey! Macy’s the store is gone, but the building is there*, and so is its iconic 160-ft tall star. If I’m not mistaken, it was switched on early this year.
*A real estate firm bought the building for $580 million earlier this year.

These lights lining Fourth Avenue came on just as I turned around (and just in time to better see those approaching e-scooter riders).

I was aiming to catch the No 10 bus at the old Convention Center building, but it rumbled by me while I was still a block away from the stop. I didn’t want to wait 20 mins for the next one, and ended up walking up to Capitol Hill.

Here’s Broadway. It’s 5 o’clock and the sun has been gone a good 15 minutes. A fat rat scurried away from me up ahead and disappeared into the little bit of greenery on the sidewalk.

November 6, 2021November 6, 2021

Saturday/ Daylight Saving Time: does not save Time, does not save Daylight

It’s that time of the year again in the United States, when we attempt to outsmart the universe.
We have to set our clocks back by one hour tonight.
Can we please pick one time and stick to it?

As David Policansky writes in The Washington Post: “The people of Fairbanks, Alaska, show that it is possible to adjust to very early sunsets or very late sunrises. There just isn’t much advantage in shifting daylight around when you have only three hours and forty-two minutes of it on the shortest day. But in the Lower 48, in the mid-latitudes where most of us live, we complain”.

The Uniform Time Act of 1966 allows states **not** to observe Daylight Saving Time. That’s why residents of Arizona and Hawaii do not have to adjust their clocks twice every year. My vote for Washington State: Just Say No. Stop observing Daylight Saving Time.
[Infographic by the National Geographic at nationalgeographic.com]

November 5, 2021

Friday/ the week looks better

What started as a bad week for the Biden Administration/ the Democrats, looked much better by late Friday night.
There were good October jobs numbers out this morning, and the Housed passed the $1 trillion infrastructure bill that includes transport, broadband and utility funding, sending it to the President’s desk.

531,000 jobs added in October to the US economy.
Writes Neil Irwin for the NYT: ‘Employers are paying more to get those workers, it’s worth noting. Average hourly earnings for private-sector workers were up 0.4 percent in October, and are up 4.9 percent over the last year. That is high by recent standards, but probably a bit below the inflation rate in that span. October inflation numbers are not out yet, but for the 12 months ended in September the Consumer Price Index was up 5.4 percent.’
[Graphic from the New York Times]

November 4, 2021November 9, 2021

Thursday/ the earthworms are happy

It rained most of the day. It is November after all, and so it rains a lot.
We are also coming out of a very wet October.
The rain gauge at Sea-Tac airport recorded 5.76 in of rain in October, two inches more than the average of 3.76 in.

Living dangerously (a meal for robins and crows): an earthworm on my lawn that is just beginning to green up, along with other unwanted little greenery. Earthworms are invertebrates and lack true skeletons, but maintain their structure with fluid-filled coelom chambers that function as a hydrostatic skeleton. The earthworm eats a wide variety of organic matter and the digestive system runs the length of its body.

November 3, 2021November 3, 2021

Wednesday/ a rough Election Day

From the homepage of The Washington Post.

Tuesday was a rough odd-year Election Day for Democrats, not boding well for next year’s mid-term elections. Trumpist Republican Youngkin won the Virginia governor’s race. Democratic governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy, barely won his race.

Why has President Biden’s support, and that of the Democratic Party in general, been declining?

I guess it doesn’t help that the pandemic is dragging on. Republicans and their supporters fight the vaccine and mask mandates, though.
People don’t know, don’t care, don’t believe— that we have now lost 750,000 Americans. That’s more than the population of Alaska, or Vermont, or Wyoming.

Should the Democrats ring the alarm bell and finally pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework & Build Back Better legislation?

Maybe it will help, but maybe not much. Paul Kane of the Washington Post writes ‘If history is any guide, Democrats will pass this massive agenda in the weeks or months ahead — and it will have little to no impact on their political standing in next year’s midterm elections’. He mentions several cases where the party in power passed transformative legislation aligned with its values (Obama 2009: Affordable Care Act, Trump 2017: Tax Cuts), only to be pummeled at the midterm elections thereafter.

November 2, 2021November 2, 2021

Tuesday/ the third shot

It’s been six months since I had my second shot, and so today it was time for the third one*. The pharmacist put a Spiderman band-aid on my arm afterwards. They must be gearing up for the influx of 5-11 year-olds that will come in for their shots from tomorrow.

*Pfizer’s booster shot is the same dosage strength as their primary series. Moderna’s booster dose is half the strength of its primary shots.

Big Pharma: “The third dose is recommended for people with certain preconditions”
African person: “Which preconditions?” (Sign says ‘Africa needs vaccines’)
Big Pharma: “Wealth”
[Cartoon by Swiss cartoonist Patrick Chappatte]

November 1, 2021November 1, 2021

Monday/ a closer look at Climate Pledge Arena

Sunday was a beautiful blue-sky day.
I took the No 10 bus to Westlake Center, and from there, the Monorail to the Space Needle, so that I could walk around Climate Pledge Arena.

Just departed West Lake Center on the monorail train. Look for the Space Needle in the distance.

Arrived at the Space Needle. Climate Pledge Arena is just a short walk away.

I walked through the Seattle Armory building on the way to the Arena. Originally built in 1939 as the old Armory Building, it housed the 146th Field Artillery and its half-ton tanks. It now houses a food court and a little bit of some entertainment for families (games to play and a few TV screens).

The trees are bare — and the shadows are already long, even though it’s only 3.15 pm or so! The Pacific Science Center in the distance.

Food vendors at Seattle Center are connecting their offerings to the new Seattle Kraken franchise.

All right, here is the first view of the Climate Pledge Arena, this from its southeast corner.

Looking back at the Space Needle. The Arena and the Needle were both conceived and constructed for the 1962 World’s Fair.

Rounding the corner to the side facing 1st Ave N in Uptown, the neighborhood just south of Queen Anne. The roof **looks** heavy and is heavy: 44 million pounds or 22,000 tons (20 million kg or 20,000 metric tons).

Mt Baker (10,781′/ 3 286 m) is up north in Washington State near the Canadian border. The mosaic artwork is by artists Laura Hadad and Tom Drugan. That would be the Stanley Cup, and ribbons and rainbows morphing into tentacles, lashing at an ill-fated wooden ship on the oceans.

The center support beams, seen from 1st Ave N.

These black window frames (and window panes, I think) from the old Key Arena were salvaged and reused.

From the north side, one can stand on a low wall and peer into the bowl with the ice-rink bottom. The enormous LCD screen (46 ft wide by 25 ft high) is playing clips of local interest, and commercials. Just a few hours later, at 6.00 pm, the Seattle Kraken took on the New York Rangers right there on the ice. The Kraken lost 1-3.

Almost back to the corner where I had started.

Looking back at the Arena, as I enter Seattle Center park to walk back to the Monorail station.

Beautiful Art Deco entrance to the Armory building.

And here is the monorail train that will run back to Westlake Center. It’s just 1.3 miles, and there are two trains, so they arrive and depart every two minutes or so from each end.

Arriving at Westlake Center, and peeking through the skylight before stepping off the train. On the right is the new 58-story Rainier Square Tower, 850-foot (260 m) tall.

October 31, 2021October 31, 2021

Sunday/ happy Halloween

A belated ‘Happy Halloween’ to everyone.

It’s still scary out there. Final approval for the pediatric version of the Pfizer/ BioNTech coronavirus vaccine is expected here in the United States this week. It’s 10 micrograms (a third of the adult dose) and intended for kids aged 5-11 yrs old. Children older than 12 get the adult dose.
[Picture Credit: NBC/ The Today Show]

October 30, 2021October 30, 2021

Saturday/ a geomagnetic storm

It’s too late now, but I should have driven out some dark elevated area outside the city (Seattle) to see if I can spot some aurora borealis light resulting from Thursday’s X-class* solar flare.

*X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength. Flares that are classified X10 or stronger are considered unusually intense.

We’re in Solar Cycle 25, which started in Dec. 2019. (Extensive recording of solar sunspot activity began in 1755). Each solar cycle lasts roughly every 11 years. The Sun’s magnetic field goes through a cycle after which it completely flips: the north and south poles switch places. Then it takes about another 11 years for the Sun’s north and south poles to flip back again.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare — as seen in the bright flash at the Sun’s lower center at Sunspot AR2887 — on Oct. 28, 2021. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares and which is colorized here in teal.
[Picture Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory]

The Carrington Event was a powerful geomagnetic storm on 1–2 September 1859, during Solar Cycle 10. A solar coronal mass ejection hit Earth’s magnetosphere and induced the largest geomagnetic storm on record. The associated “white light flare” in the solar photosphere was observed and recorded by British astronomers Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson. The storm created strong auroral displays and caused serious damage to telegraph systems.
Auroras were seen around the world, those in the northern hemisphere as far south as the Caribbean; those over the Rocky Mountains in the U.S. were so bright that the glow woke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning.
People in the northeastern United States could read a newspaper by the aurora’s light.

October 29, 2021October 29, 2021

Friday/ walking along Broadway

I took the No 12 bus to the hairdresser today. We only got to 51°F (11°C) today, but the rain had stopped, and I walked back home from there. Here are a few pictures.

Pay to park, and pay by phone only. I guess the city saves money by not installing parking meters, and I guess you cannot park here if you don’t have a smart phone :). At the back are two new apartment buildings going up. One is at 1400 Madison Avenue, a 7-story, 365-unit apartment building with retail.

The ‘Knights of Columbus’ building at 722 Union St. Before it was sold to real estate investors in 2018, it belonged to the Catholic Church’s namesake and largest lay organization, a fraternal order founded in 1882 to support church programs and serve charitable causes. This building from 1913 held notable lunches, dances and other events. The gym and swimming pool in the basement were used by servicemen during World War II. It is getting rehabbed and retrofitted to withstand earthquakes, and the two parking lot parcels adjacent to it will be used for constructing apartment buildings. (Note to new owners: that red entrance canopy needs to go).

Tuesday Nov. 2 is when the election for Seattle City mayor and other positions take place*. Nikkita Oliver (pronouns they/them) runs against Sara Nelson for a position on the Seattle City Council.
Says local public radio station KUOW on their website: Nikkita Oliver is an educator, attorney, and activist who wants deep systemic change to move the city further to the left. Sara Nelson is a small business owner who thinks the current City Council is already too far left and needs to move closer to the center.
*We vote by mail, so many votes are already in; mine is as well.

There are lots of empty storefronts in the city. This Broadway State Bank building opened in 1913 (see photo below). In recent years it housed a Tully’s Coffee and a Starbucks Coffee. This Broadway & Pike Street corner is a little rough, though. Just a few weeks ago while I walked by, a guy that was on drugs or mentally ill— or both— rolled around in the street, resisting attempts by a Good Samaritan to drag him to safety. The police showed up just a minute later.

Here’s a 1937 photo of then-Broadway State Bank, constructed in 1913. I’m sure business from the auto dealers nearby was still booming in 1937. About its construction, the Seattle Times wrote in 1913 “Absolutely fireproof” and “Built of steel and concrete, with cream glazed brick finish”; “the new Broadway State Bank will be one of the finest in this rapidly developing district.” (Information obtained from the Capitol Hill blog).

Just half a block up on Broadway, and what have we here? Well, an 8-story, 118-unit apartment, retail, and institution building (community center) under construction. The Seattle-in-Progress website says ‘Project includes renovation of the Atlas Building and Eldridge Tire Building. Atlas Building façade to be rebuilt. Eldridge Tire Building façade to remain’. Looks to me like ‘reconstruction’ and not ‘renovation’.

A fake/ gag poster for Seattle mayor. (The two candidates in the Nov. 2 general election for Seattle mayor are Bruce Harrell and Lorena Gonzalez). And who or what is McSweats? Urban Dictionary to the rescue: ‘McSweats is the ill-desired after-effects commonly felt after gorging on McDonalds burgers to unnecessary extremes’.

October 28, 2021October 29, 2021

Thursday/ soaked

It has been a good day for pluviophiles: it rained all day around Puget Sound. We had recorded 1.58 in. by early evening here in the city, says NWS Seattle @NWSSeattle on Twitter.

Update Fri 10/29: The final numbers are in. For Sea-Tac, it was a daily record-setting reading of 1.99 in. on Thursday. It was the wettest October day since the all-time wettest day in Seattle history (5.02 in. on Oct. 20th, 2003).

Here’s the view from the WashDOT camera over the **Tacoma Narrows Bridge**, today. The pair of suspension bridges connect the city of Tacoma with the Kitsap Peninsula, and carry State Route 16 over a strait in Puget Sound.

October 27, 2021October 27, 2021

Wednesday/ two beers at Two Beers

I had a picture of my vaccine card ready as we stepped into Two Beers Brewing Co. in Seattle’s industrial district, tonight. As of Monday, proof of a coronavirus vaccination —or a negative test— is required at most indoor businesses in King County.

Checking for one’s proof was done at the counter serving the beers, and even then it was very cursory. The place was busy and they seemed a little short on staff, as is the case in most places these days.

The first of my two **Pilchuck pilsners** by Two Beers Brewing Company: a Czech-style pilsner, hopped with Saaz and Perle hops (5% ABV). Saaz is a “noble” variety of hops, named after the Czech city of Žatec. Perle hops are a well-rounded German variety.

October 26, 2021October 26, 2021

Tuesday/ Denny Way construction

Here are a few pictures that I have taken today— of the ongoing construction on Denny Way.

I’m on Melrose Avenue up on the terrace, overlooking Interstate 5 towards the south. I believe construction on those twin 45-story apartment towers on 1200 Stewart Street have topped out. (In the left corner is the 545 Redmond bus, running from 6th Ave & Royal Brougham St to the Bear Creek Park and Ride in Redmond).

A telephoto view from Melrose Ave and Denny Way taken at the top of the I-5 overpass. Looks like the 1,179 apartment units of **1120 Denny Way** are ready for renters to move in. I was hoping the Space Needle would still have the Seattle Kraken flag on, but no, the flag has had its turn on the Needle for now.

Now I’m on Denny Way, looking up at the **1200 Stewart Street** towers. From this angle it looks as if they are leaning in are conspiring with each other.

The 42-story apartment tower called **2014 Fairview Avenue** is just about complete, as well. There’s a bright rainbow in the distance. I hastened around the block to get a fuller view, but by then it had already faded a little.

Making my way back on the south side of Denny Way. The new building on the right is the 44-story, 393-unit apartment tower at **2019 Boren Ave**. The brick building on the right is the **Puget Sound Notion Building**, designed by Seattle architect Louis Svarz (1886-1976) and constructed in 1930. It has a lecture hall and rehearsal studio and was used by the Cornish College of the Arts, but Google Maps says the building is now ‘Permanently Closed’.

October 25, 2021October 25, 2021

Monday/ TSLA’s big T market cap

Hertz said on Monday that it would convert more than 20 percent of its rental fleet to Tesla’s electric cars by the end of next year, an announcement that helped propel Tesla’s stock value beyond $1 trillion for the first time.

Tesla’s stock closed at $1024.86, up more than 12% on the day and giving the company a market value of $1.03 trillion.

The Wall Street Journal notes that the market caps of the biggest nine automakers need to be added to get to Tesla’s market cap.

Yes, Tesla sells 1/10th the number of cars that Volkswagen does, but it will deliver double the cars this year, compared to what it had delivered in 2020. And the stock market bulls argue that Tesla is technically not a car company: it’s a technology company.

October 24, 2021October 24, 2021

Sunday/ a bomb cyclone

A very large ‘bomb cyclone’ storm system in the northeast Pacific Ocean generated an atmospheric river of rain that hit northern California today. Most of the West Coast had storm winds and rain as well.

There are reports of flooding and mudslides from California, but the good news is that the storm has brought the 2021 wildfire season to an end.

The bomb cyclone: a powerful, rapidly intensifying storm associated with a sudden and significant drop in atmospheric pressure, that occurred over the northeast Pacific on Sunday. We had blustery conditions and rain here in the city in Seattle, but not nearly as much rain as northern California.
With those 30-50 ft swells, I hope there were no containerships in the area. One near Vancouver Island had lost 40 containers overboard, a day or two ago, even before the storm was around.
[Still from Accuweather video clip]

We had reports of fallen trees and power outages on Sunday around the city, but late afternoon it was quiet and there was a nice sun-break. This is Republican and 16th Avenue at 4.18 pm as I went for a walk.

October 23, 2021October 23, 2021

Saturday/ Kraken 2, Canucks 4

Well, that was disappointing, and we will file this one in the ‘Too Bad’ folder.
It would have been great for the Seattle Kraken to win their first-ever game in their new home, but it was not to be. The home team was up 2-0, but in the end, succumbed to the Canucks with 2 goals to their 4.

Here it comes!— the very first goal for Seattle Kraken on their brand-new home ice rink. With just 3.2 seconds remaining in the first period, Seattle Kraken defenseman Vince Dunn scored for the home team.

October 22, 2021October 22, 2021

Friday/ Climate Pledge Arena opens

The new home of the Seattle Kraken (ice hockey team) opened today, officially. There was a concert tonight: the first live performance of Coldplay’s brand-new album, Music Of The Spheres. This was the band’s first arena show in nearly five years.

The crews now have 12 hours to turn the arena into an ice hockey rink for the first home game of the Seattle Kraken (against the Vancouver Canucks).

The new Climate Pledge Arena with the intact roof and windows of the old Key Area (architect Paul Thiry; built for the 1962 World Fair). Private equity groups invested some $1.15 billion in the facility’s make-over. The arena will use on-site solar panels and off-site renewable energy power to be powered 100% by renewable energy.
[Picture Credit: Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times]

Workers dug an extra 15 feet downward to form a new arena floor some 53 feet below street level. In addition, the steeper seating grade now makes for double the seating capacity that the Key Arena had.
[Picture Credit: Oak View Group]

The ice rink will not have the traditional center-ice scoreboard, but dual scoreboards, one on each end, and high enough not to interfere with the sight line of the spectators.
[Picture Credit: Daniel Kim/ Seattle Times]

Wow. This wish-I-was-there picture of tonight’s **Coldplay ‘Music Of The Spheres’ concert**, tweeted by Ross Fletcher@RossFletcher1 on Twitter.

These are stills from the live-stream. The ‘spheres’/ planets and the lighting looked great.
[Source: Amazon Prime Video livestream]

Coldplay front man, vocalist, rhythm guitarist, and pianist **Chris Martin** (44 yo). Coldplay are a British rock band formed in London in 1996.
[Source: Amazon Prime Video livestream]

South Korean boy band **BTS** (make that SUPER-boy band), also known as the Bangtan Boys, also beamed into the concert.
[Source: Amazon Prime Video livestream]

October 21, 2021

Thursday/ my vote is in (for Seattle mayor)

ANYWAY, even though the bad president isn’t sitting at the top of the ballot this year, the results of the November 2 election will determine the future of this bright little capitalist jewel that none of us can really afford to live in.
– The Election Control Board of the very progressive, ‘alternative’ online newspaper ‘The Stranger’

I filled out my little bubbles on my ballot for Seattle mayor and other officials, and walked it down to the drop box on Broadway yesterday afternoon.
I voted for the candidate that will I believe will try harder to clean up the graffiti and trash from the city’s streets, and that will not further gut the Seattle Police Department (‘defund the police’).