dickie

A 3-Layer System Pre-Cut Selection + Cut Quality × Perception Factor = Experienced Score FINAL FORMULA Experienced Score = ((Pre-Cut Score × 0.30) + (Cut Score × 0.70)) × Perception Factor Maximum score: 10.0 1. PRE-CUT SELECTION SCORE (0–10) Measures how good the melon looked before cutting. Category Weight What To Look For Field Spot 20% Deep creamy yellow, mature, dry-looking Density / Weight 20% Heavy for size, dense, solid Shape 15% Symmetrical, even round or oval Rind ...

We were not even supposed to be hiking Old Speck that day. The original plan was a completely different mountain. Nice weather. Quick hike. Nothing complicated. Then somewhere along the drive I realized I was not actually heading toward the trailhead we had talked about. I had unconsciously started driving north toward Mount Washington. Not because we had planned it. I genuinely had not even considered Mount Washington as the destination. But Old Speck and Grafton Notch are in basically the ...

There’s a small roadside pipe on Mt. Mica Road in the Buckfield–South Paris area where people quietly line up with jugs and bottles. That’s Cooper Spring. At first glance, it doesn’t look like much. Just a pipe coming out of the bank. But it sits in a place with real geological weight, and the water coming out of it reflects that in a measurable way. Where it comes from Cooper Spring is at the base of Mount Mica, a pegmatite formation that played a role in early mineral discoveries in the Un...

“Message to Pretty” by Love is not a conventional song. It’s brief, fragmented, and intentionally unresolved. Found on Forever Changes (November 1967), it functions more like a passing thought than a complete statement. An Interlude, Not a Narrative The track runs under two minutes and feels unfinished by design. On Forever Changes, several songs act as transitional pieces rather than fully developed ideas. This one interrupts the flow rather than advancing it. It mirrors how a fleeting thoug...

I’ve come to a firm and deeply considered career conclusion: I will never accept a job that has the word “Secretary” in the title. Not now. Not later. Not even if it comes with a corner office, a pension, and a ceremonial pen set. This is not about qualifications. I could probably handle the responsibilities. I can send emails, attend meetings, and look serious while someone says “circle back.” That is not the issue. The issue is branding. “Secretary” sounds like a role where, at any moment,...

How the date of Easter is determined Easter is what the Church calls a “movable feast,” meaning its date changes each year based on a defined rule rather than a fixed calendar day. In Western Christianity, the rule is as follows: Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon that occurs on or after March 21, which is treated as the spring equinox for ecclesiastical purposes. There are two key technical details in that rule. First, the “full moon” used is not the exact astr...

MODULE: WATERMELON SELECTION AUTHOR: dB33p REVISION: 1.0 STATUS: STABLE OBJECTIVE: Identify a structurally sound, high-confidence watermelon. Reject all inconsistent units. FIELD SPOT (PRIMARY SIGNAL) Locate ground contact area. Deep yellow / orange → PASS Pale / white → REJECT No field spot → REJECT NOTE: Field spot confirms maturation time on ground. MASS / DENSITY CHECK Lift and assess relative weight. Heavy for size → PASS Light → REJECT NOTE: Higher density correlates with in...

Lobster Radio Node Current System Documentation Overview Lobster is a queue-driven audio beacon and radio-style automation node. It combines locally scheduled WAV playback with Spotify Connect playback, Mount Washington forecast insertion, system status visibility, and a browser-based control interface. The system is designed around a simple operational model: Spotify runs continuously as the background audio source the loop periodically ducks Spotify and inserts local audio queued WAV fil...

As war expands across the Middle East, the official language remains familiar. Leaders describe their side as defensive, necessary, and morally justified. Their enemies are cast as barbaric, irrational, or genocidal. But from Gaza to Iran to Lebanon, civilians keep dying under bombs, in collapsed buildings, and amid shattered infrastructure. For many watching the region now, the conflict no longer looks like a contest between good and evil. It looks like evil vs. evil, with civilians trapped in ...

Overview (Key Operational Facts) This system is a headless Raspberry Pi 4 audio node used to broadcast mixed audio through a low-power FM transmitter. Core behavior: Spotify audio source using librespot DTMF beacon transmission every 420 seconds Text-to-speech announcement after the DTMF ALSA dmix software mixer allows multiple audio sources simultaneously USB audio interface (C-Media 0d8c:000c) drives the transmitter 48 kHz audio pipeline Spotify bitrate set to 96 kbps Operational tuning:...

Preservation and Adaptive Reuse Proposal Mount Washington Summit, New Hampshire Prepared by: dickie Date: February 2026 Submitted to: Mount Washington Commission Executive Summary This proposal recommends the preservation, documentation, and adaptive reuse of the Edwin Howard Armstrong radio tower site on Mount Washington summit. The Armstrong tower represents a historically significant telecommunications structure associated with early high-altitude radio transmission research and the ...

In October 1937, a small crew of eight men climbed to the summit of Mount Washington to erect a radio tower under the direction of Edwin Howard Armstrong, inventor of frequency modulation (FM) radio. They spent three weeks on the summit and were able to work only five days due to severe weather. What they built became one link in one of the most ambitious radio relay systems ever constructed. This system was the Yankee Network’s FM relay chain. It stretched nearly 300 miles, from Alpine, New Je...

Link: A Brief History of Barbed Wire Fence Telephone Networks This article explains how farmers and rural communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries used existing barbed wire fences as improvised telephone networks. By connecting battery-powered telephones to fence wires, they created cooperative, decentralized communication systems without central exchanges or monthly fees. These networks allowed isolated households to share news, coordinate farm work, and communicate across distanc...

100–119 Core Status / Actions 100 OK 101 YES 102 NO 103 WAIT 104 STOP 105 GO 106 DONE 107 REPEAT 108 CONFIRM 109 CHECK 110 VERIFY 111 READY 112 MEET 113 ARRIVED 114 LEAVING 115 DELAYED 116 CANCEL 117 START 118 END 119 STANDBY 120–139 Assistance / Condition 120 HELP 121 NEED ASSISTANCE 122 SAFE 123 INJURED 124 LOST 125 FOUND 126 TRAPPED 127 STRANDED 128 SEARCHING 129 RESCUE REQUIRED 130 EMERGENCY 131 NON EMERGENCY 132 MEDICAL 133 MECHANICAL ISSUE 134 GEAR FAILURE 135 POWER LOW 136 BATTERY LOW ...

Mount Washington has never needed advertising. The 6,288-foot summit built its reputation through wind, ice, and an ability to humble anyone who approaches it casually. For generations, the mountain has served as a scientific laboratory, a proving ground for winter travelers, a communications platform, and, at times, a seasonal city suspended above the clouds. After visiting the summit during a rare period of calm in February 2026, I found myself asking a simple question: Is Mount Washington ...

Choosing a programming language has always been a learning decision as much as a technical one. The first language you learn or the next one you adopt shapes how you think about problems, how quickly you gain confidence, and whether programming feels approachable or overwhelming. Today there is a new factor that did not exist in the same way before. Programmers are no longer working alone. AI tools are now part of the development process, helping people explore ideas, test logic, and build soft...

(And Why Trump Comes Off Like a Joke. A Bad Joke) The recent comments from President Donald Trump about the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti are striking, not because they settle anything, but because they underscore a widening disconnect between political leadership and the lived reality of everyday Americans. Trump said Pretti “shouldn’t have been carrying a gun”, even though Pretti was legally permitted to do so under Minnesota law. Here’s the thing: when you’re protected by a 24-hour securi...

There is a quiet contradiction inside modern Christianity that few want to name. Jesus came first for the Jews. Not symbolically. Not metaphorically. Literally. He was born a Jew, lived as a Jew, taught from Jewish scripture, fulfilled Jewish prophecy, and told his disciples plainly: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” The gospel did not begin in Rome. It did not begin in Europe. It began in Israel. And yet today, many Christians hesitate to say something simple. Th...

The destruction of large portions of Gaza, the deployment of a temporary U.S. military pier in 2024, restrictions on humanitarian and press access, limited border movement, and parallel diplomatic activity have intensified international concern that Palestinians could face long term or permanent displacement. U.S. and Israeli officials deny any plan to relocate Gaza’s population. Critics argue that the cumulative effect of these developments has created conditions in which displacement becomes ...

The official account of the killing of Alex Pretti does not make sense. Video, timelines, and basic logic raise serious questions. When authorities offer explanations that strain credibility, skepticism is not only reasonable. It is necessary. Public trust depends on truth, and when truth is unclear, accountability must follow. What matters most is this. The publicly available video does not support ICE’s version of events. There is no clear footage showing Pretti approaching agents in a threat...

This is being described as a plan to rebuild Gaza in two to three years. Skyscrapers, new cities, investment corridors, a redesigned coastline. But when you place that vision next to present reality, the story collapses. Babies are freezing. Families have no shelter. Aid is inconsistent. People are surviving in tents, ruins, and open ground. This is not a postwar rebuilding phase. This is emergency survival. Even in stable countries, almost nothing involving government or large institutions ...

For more than a century, postcards from the summit of Mount Washington carried something special back down the mountain. They were not just souvenirs. They were proof. Proof you made it. Proof you stood above the trees, above the weather, above the everyday world, if only for a moment, and sent a message from a place that felt almost unreal. Stamped Among the Clouds, those cards traveled far beyond the White Mountains, carrying thin air, high winds and the romance of the summit into homes acros...

There was a time when noticing was the beginning of understanding. Now it is treated as evidence of guilt. Today you can say almost anything as long as you do not point out patterns. Opinions are tolerated. Slogans are encouraged. Observation is what makes people uncomfortable. Noticing does not argue or accuse. It does not shout. It simply says this keeps happening, and that alone is enough to trigger suspicion. We are told everyone is equal. We are told standards are universal and fairness ...

Reuters reported on Jan. 20 that Israeli forces ordered families in eastern Khan Younis to leave their homes, signaling the first forced evacuation since the ceasefire began. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-orders-gaza-families-move-first-forced-evacuation-since-ceasefire-2026-01-20/ Let’s stop pretending this is complicated. When an army tells civilians to leave an area it controls, that is not a “warning.” It is displacement backed by the understanding that refusal can get ...

There is a conversation the United States keeps avoiding, and the longer we avoid it, the more human damage it causes. It is possible to believe in compassion, dignity, and fairness while still believing that immigration laws matter. Those ideas are not opposites. In fact, they depend on each other. If someone enters the country illegally, they should not be shocked to learn that they may be required to leave. That outcome is not a surprise punishment. It is the legal reality that existed bef...

archive.ph is a free web archiving service that lets you save snapshots of web pages so they remain accessible even if the original page changes or disappears. You can think of it as a time capsule for internet content — a way to freeze a page in time and share a permanent copy of what it looked like when you archived it. What It Is Archive.ph is part of a family of archiving domains (including archive.today, archive.is, and several others) that have been around since 2012. The service doesn’t...

A lot of people confuse freedom and convenience, and it’s not an accident. Convenience feels like freedom because it removes friction. Things get faster. Choices get simpler. Decisions disappear. Life feels lighter. But freedom isn’t about ease — it’s about agency. Freedom means you can choose, refuse, adapt, and accept the consequences of those choices. Convenience means someone else already decided what’s easiest for you. That distinction matters more than most people realize. The Illusion...

There’s a moment that feels almost vertigo-inducing. You realize that voting doesn’t reliably produce justice. You also realize that violence doesn’t produce justice either. And suddenly the two answers you were handed your entire life dissolve at the same time. So now what? The uncomfortable truth Large systems do not exist to be moral. They exist to preserve power, manage risk, and maintain legitimacy. Sometimes justice happens through them. But when it does, it’s incidental ,not stru...

oh, ahoy! For anyone using the Maine eFiling system (Odyssey File & Serve), here’s a breakdown of the current user agreement you see when logging in or registering. Full agreement (official source): https://efileme.tylertech.cloud/OfsEfsp/ui/terms Overview The Maine eFiling service is provided through Tyler Technologies’ Odyssey File & Serve application. Before you can use the system, you must agree to the terms presented on the login page. Those terms govern how you access and use t...

https://efileme.tylertech.cloud/OfsEfsp/ui/terms Welcome to the online services of Tyler Technologies for the State of Maine. Please read this Agreement carefully. It governs Your access to and use of the Odyssey File & Serve application through the Tyler Technologies Internet Site. Your use of the Tyler Technologies Site and/or other Tyler products is conditioned upon Your acceptance of this Agreement. By clicking on the "I Accept" button, You are agreeing to be legally bound by all of the...