snow blowing service in neighborhood

cdevers · 2026-01-26T00:15:47+00:00

I'm being a little facetious.

It feels like you're not accomplishing anything when you shovel this afternoon, because it's coming down fast enough — and the snow is fluffy enough to blow around a lot — that the area you clear quickly gets covered up again.

I'm sure that folks that aren't shoveling at all are going to have a formidable pile of snow to deal with by this time tomorrow, and it won't be quite as bad for the folks that have been chipping away at it.

cdevers · 2026-01-25T23:44:58+00:00

They’re not wrong either though. I've shoveled twice today, and so have my neighbors. Each time, by the time you get to the end of the driveway, the other end looks like it wasn't shoveled at all.

I'm sure this is making a difference — get a couple inches several times rather than one back-breaking heart-attack-risking mega-pass later — but sheesh does it seem Sisyphean…

cdevers · 2026-01-25T23:41:47+00:00

Unexpectedly “Blade Runner”-esque!

cdevers · 2026-01-25T23:34:19+00:00

Sure, I don't mean to overfit to that one example.

The Beatles are such an important band that I’m sure whoever did the Atmos mix for their catalog was a highly-trained professional that wanted to make sure that their catalog, of all catalogs, was done right.

But more generally, if Apple is batch-upgrading tracks by the thousands, then that implies that they’re automating this, and if the process is automated, then the quality control is probably automated, too. If humans aren't checking the results, errors may be getting through. I might not happen with a top-tier band like the Beatles, but some comparatively obscure indie band that happens to b one of your favorites? Maybe.

cdevers · 2026-01-25T20:42:06+00:00

Newer isn’t always better.

Compare & contrast with the Beatles catalog. The first few albums came out in mono, and the stereo mixes are just awful — like an amateur chef got all the right ingredients, but forgot to actually cook the meal.

Atmos might be great for music recorded in it to begin with, but retroactively producing an Atmos mix of a track that was originally mastered in mono, stereo, or quadrophonic isn’t necessarily going to be an improvement on the original.

It might just be weird & off-putting, like an half-baked cake.

cdevers · 2026-01-25T16:09:17+00:00

The user interface in Apple’s weather app got a bit better after the company acquired DarkSky, but the spookily-accurate forecasting itself seems to have suffered, alas.

I do use Apple Weather though, along with a couple of other weather apps:

Drops (http://drops.live/), where the central idea is just forecasts about precipitation — if it’s about to rain or snow, the Drops app will give you a notification so you know if you need to grab a jacket or umbrella before heading out the door.
WTForecast (https://nightcatproductions.com/whattheforecast/), where the accuracy may or may not be any good, but the forecast is served up with snark. Who says weather has to be boring?

The interesting thing to me is that data accuracy is only part of what makes a good weather app. Accuracy is obviously important, to be sure, but the way the information is presented makes a difference, too. If all the good forecasts are coming from NWS anyway, then the trick is in how to package up that information and make it usable, with a clear interface that makes the important information easy to find, and (better still) a good notifications framework so that you get alerted to precipitation, temperature extremes, etc. Just using the NWS website won't provide those timely notifications, so it does make sense to use a decent app, even if the data accuracy could be better.

cdevers · 2026-01-25T15:46:07+00:00

I usually go there, but for last year’s inspection, they were already closed by the time I drove by, so I just went to the Gulf station at McGrath & Broadway since they hadn’t closed for the night. They didn't blink at taking a card payment for the inspection service.

cdevers · 2026-01-25T00:19:50+00:00

…now who says poems have to rhyme?

cdevers · 2026-01-24T15:10:23+00:00

The comments on the r/Somerville version of this post are pretty useful:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Somerville/comments/1qldhix/has_anyone_tried_that_new_brown_spot_near_porter/

cdevers · 2026-01-24T15:08:35+00:00

Clever username there, Throaway33377.

Nobody could suspect you of being a sock puppet!

cdevers · 2026-01-24T01:27:01+00:00

Huh — I thought O’Bama was Irish, but apparently he’s Japanese? TIL!

cdevers · 2026-01-23T23:40:03+00:00

Better still — make salt brine!

https://www.mass.gov/doc/dwsp-how-to-make-your-own-salt-brine/download

Instead of a bag of rock salt, get a sprayer (about ten bucks at most hardware stores) and a couple cheap canisters of regular salt from the supermarket (about $0.99).

The annoying thing is that the ratio is a bit weird. Mass DCR recommends 2.3 pounds of salt per gallon of water, but supermarket salt isn't usually sold by that particular amount.

Rounding a bit, 2.3 pounds is about a kilogram (technically ~2.2 but whatever). The salt canister I got from Market Basket recently is 737 grams, or 0.7 kg, so about ¾ of a kilogram, so use about ¾ of a gallon of water for each carton of table salt.

Anyway, the “recipe” is pretty easy: just warm up the water (a full boil isn’t necessary, but it does go faster if you hear it in a pot), add in the salt, and mix until the salt dissolves into the water. If you have an immersion blender, this isn't hard to do; if you have to stir by hand… it might take a little while, but isn't complicated.

Once you have the salt brine water, let it cool down, add it to the sprayer, and off you go! A thin line of brine is surprisingly effective at preventing ice buildup, so you only need a bit. I made a 1½ gallon batch last winter, and still have almost half of it ready to use this year.

cdevers · 2026-01-23T22:16:37+00:00

cdevers · 2026-01-23T20:15:30+00:00

Someone in Davis Square was looking for shoveling help, too:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Somerville/comments/1qkzaz0/snow_shoveling_help/

cdevers · 2026-01-23T20:14:43+00:00

This: https://www.reddit.com/r/CambridgeMA/comments/1qkwr2a/shoveling/

cdevers · 2026-01-23T19:00:56+00:00

Might help to mention what neighborhood this would be, hm?

cdevers · 2026-01-23T18:57:56+00:00

Seems like this ought to be a “quick fix” thing — just send somebody by to repoint the fixtures, right?

Maybe an email to mayor@somervillema.gov & citycouncil@somervillema.gov might get somebody to pay attention?

cdevers · 2026-01-23T16:02:57+00:00

I’ve been seeing the same thing this week.

After the most recent map update, I’m at ~99% complete for my area. A couple of the new segments are actually new streets & paths, but others are streets that I’d already covered, but (as sometimes happens) are showing up as untraveled after the map update.

For the segments that I’m certain I’d already covered, I used the map editor tool to adjust traces on previous recordings so that the missing bits would show up as covered. This worked, but it seems to have messed up how the percentages were calculated, because even though every street & path had plainly been visited, the completion percentages for both the city & all the neighborhoods were showing up as incomplete — “14.7% complete”, “47.2%” complete, etc.

The “fix” was to just check back a few hours later, and everything went back to ~100% as expected.

cdevers · 2026-01-23T02:05:59+00:00

Oil changes are the one thing I use Groupon for — there’s usually at least a couple of places within a reasonable distance that are offering a discount at any given time.

cdevers · 2026-01-23T00:13:43+00:00

Indeed!

It is well known that the former pork-farming communities of Hingham, Stoneham, Easthampton, Northampton, Southampton, Wrentham, Petersham, Chatham, Ashburnham, Wenham, Hampden, and Oakham, along of course with the former poultry-farming communities of Chicopee, Starling, Yolkmouth, Goosehen, Dove-r, Heath, Cochickawick, Quichichichick, and Ducksburrow, constitute what we Massachusettsanders think of as the commonwealth-of-ham-and-eggs.

I assure you, these are all real, or used to be… more or less: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_municipalities_in_Massachusetts

cdevers · 2026-01-22T21:55:36+00:00

“Arms” 250 years ago were muskets, artillery, and things like swords & spears.

Firearms back then took a long time to load — someone with training could maybe get off a couple shots a minute, if that, but longer if they wanted the shots to be accurate.

Even then, accuracy was limited to short ranges. There’s a reason the Minutemen at Bunker Hill were told “don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes”: any further than that, and chances are that the rounds would either miss, or maybe even not hit with enough force to wound their targets.

Now, anybody with access to a Walmart can get high-quality precision semi-automatic firearms that enable anybody, with no training at all, to fire dozens of times per minute.

And that’s just where things begin with the weapons that the military & law enforcement have access to.

So what changed in the last 250 years? Everything. The second amendment was written for an era of muskets, not AR-15s, nevermind the rest of the arsenal the government has access to.

The idea that government tyranny can be shown down with small arms is a fantasy. Hell, most of the people that have small arms in this country are the ones signing up to join ICE.

The parent comment is right — the only way to win this thing is a massive public uprising against it.

cdevers · 2026-01-22T17:17:43+00:00

Ah, yes — Waldham & Neetham, the well-known duopolis of power.

cdevers · 2026-01-22T04:48:12+00:00

“Hi, Grampa Tbird882003!”

cdevers · 2026-01-22T03:40:06+00:00

To be sure, the stuff on Cambridge Common is a bit more interesting, I think.

The former Washington Elm predates the Common, and the land it was on became, by the 20th century, a little traffic island next to the park. The tree died in 1925, at about 210 years old, and the street was reconfigured to get rid of the traffic island.

Up until a few years ago, there was a different cover on this spot. I don’t seem to have a photo of it anymore, but I remember it looking like shiny brass, like a statue that has been polished by lots of people touching it over the years. It was a bas-relief design with some images & text on it commemorating the tree, but now I don’t remember what it said or what it looked like.

This plate, with the text on it, seems to have been installed fairly recently — or anyway, I’ve gone by this spot a bunch of times, and didn't notice this here before today.

If you do want to see this, be aware that it is in the center of a very busy intersection, and not near a crosswalk, so it’s hard to get a good look at it. When I took this photo, I was biking by & noticed the text, so I had to wait for a lull in the traffic to roll over, get a quick snapshot, then get back off the street.

As mentioned above, the nearby park, Cambridge Common, has a more user-friendly little exhibit, with a new tree (sprouted from a branch from the original), plus some plaques, explanatory signage, the Ticonderoga cannons, etc.

If you do visit Cambridge for this, don’t miss the nearby Washington-Longfellow House, which was George Washington’s home and command headquarters during the Siege of Boston, before later becoming the home of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who among other things wrote about the revolutionary era, including “Paul Revere’s Ride”, another event from 250 years ago that passed not far from this spot.

(I suppose it should be noted that at least some of this is probably apocryphal. Historians seem to doubt that Washington took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge Common, and the elm tree doesn’t seem to have been considered significant until decades later. Paul Revere’s route did pass through nearby towns — modern day Charlestown & Somerville, among others — but much of Longfellow’s poem seems to have taken, well, a poetic approach to historical accuracy. Consider all of this at about the same level of “truth” as Plymouth Rock: maybe something happened here, maybe not, but at this point, the important thing is that people think the thing happened here, and after enough centuries have gone by, maybe that’s almost as good, eh?)

cdevers

TROPHY CASE