Gofundme Fatigue

6FPS V3#10 - Photography and More
A Newsletter by Chuq Von Rospach
October 11, 2021

Welcome to the new issue of 6FPS.

Hello from Washington!

Let me open by noting I’ve released a new set of wallpapers for subscribers, so make sure you scroll down to the bottom of this issue and take a look and then go grab your favorites.

Our cars have Washington license plates, we have Washington drivers licenses, we’re registered to vote here, and the house in Santa Clara has buyers and it’s started raining here, so we’re now info fall and life is pretty good.

I have started work setting up the woodshop, or at least organizing it. I’m going to need to bring in an electrician to do some work to update some of the circuits and upgrade the lighting, but I haven’t had time to talk to one and schedule a quote. We have brought in the window blinds people to look at updating some of the curtains, and I’ve started talking to the fireplace people about replacing the missing one downstairs and upgrade the one in the garage. Still on the list are things like getting Tatiana in to see a new vet, and then a wellness/baseline check for the cats as well, and bringing in a furnace team to PM the heating/airco system, and finding a group that services wells to come in and show me what needs to be done for maintenance and verify everything’s working well. The list of things is still long, but slowly growing shorter, and well into phase 2 of a move-in.

I have tried — twice — to get the PODs container in storage shipped north so I can unload it and give it back empty and stop paying for it. Both times, it has been set up, or so I’ve been told, and then the request seems to have disappeared into their systems forever. So I guess I get to call them a third time…

I do recommend PODs as a storage/moving container if that’s what you need, because I have had a couple of friends try the U-haul version and both got notable damage of materials in them, but the PODs management site and back end stuff seems a bit…. basic. I’ll talk more about that once I no longer have a PODs. They still seem the best option to me, but “best” seems to be a nuanced term here.

I finally hit a point where I could take an afternoon and go birding, and it was raining. But there’s a Say’s Phoebe (rare up here) being reported on eBird, and I seem to have a window of opportunity, so wish me luck…

The New Birdfeeder

Speaking of the new birdfeeder, it’s been a great success for me. I can sit and watch it from my office and see all of the interesting birds. the regulars include Dark-eyed Juncos, both Chestnut-backed and Black-Capped Chickadees, a single Spotted Towhee, and three woodpeckers: Hairy (a female), Downy (a male) and Northern Flickers (three, including a juvenile). Also the bullies, a couple of Stellar’s Jays. We also have a couple of species of squirrels, and, oh yeah:

We always figured there were racoons in the area. Now we have proof.

Meanwhile, Back in Silicon Valley

Since last issue, we got our house on the market, and within a week had seven solid offers, all above asking price, and accepted on, so the house is back off of the market, and we are on target to close before the next issue arrives in your mailbox. That will close out the many months of things we needed to do to get moved to Washington, which makes me happy. And it looks like the house is going to a nice couple with a young child, and that makes me happy, too.

Also, IOS 15 is out

I’ve upgraded my phone and iPad to IOS 15 and am pretty happy with it overall, especially how stable 15.0 is. No problems, I like the new widget capabilities coming to iPad, even if placement is — fussy — and it just seems to be working without drama.

I should note that I haven’t ordered a new phone or new watch; still carring the 12 Pro Max happily. I’m a bit tempted by a 13 Pro for the macro capability and the smaller size, but not enough to pull the trigger yet. Otherwise, this might be a year where I’m fine with letting it ride and sticking with what I have. The new phones and watches are nice upgrades, but year to year changes aren’t that big a deal for me. If you’re on an older phone (say, 11 or older), I’d say an upgrade would make a lot more sense, especially with the improved battery life.

Still waiting to see if/when they release Apple Silicon Macbook pros. The semi-plan is that if they do, I’ll get a 14” pro and Laurie will get my M1 Macbook air, making us both Apple Silicon users. We’ll see how we feel once the announcements come out. I’m still on the fence whether to upgrade the mini — it’s really just a file and plex server these days, and I’m not sure it makes sense to do that upgrade at this point. We’ll see….

Since we now have an upstairs work area as well as our downstairs offices (purely for convenience), I needed to shift what was an external drive back to being a network drive so I could reach my images from anywhere in the house. I thought long and hard about moving back to a Synology NAS, and finally realized hosting them on the mini solved the problem for me as well, and was a whole lot cheaper. So that’s what happened…

See you next issue!

What's New from Chuq?

Gofundme Fatigue

I’ve had friends refer to it as Gofundme fatigue, that point where you’ve gotten so many requests to throw some dollars at someone’s special cause that you just start tuning them all out.

I think I hit that point recently, but not because there were too many. I understand why, and it’s rather sad that so many folks need to reach out for help for things — like basic medical care — that really should be something that isn’t a stressful challenge; that is an entirely different rant for a different day.

I rarely respond to these kinds of requests, but I also rarely dismiss them out of hand. Each of them is a person in some kind of pain needing some help past that pain point, and part of me wishes I could throw a bit of coin at each and every one and make it better. That is in reality not practical and I know going down that rabbit hole would end up badly for me personally as well.

Unfortunately, in the last couple of weeks I’ve had a couple of instances that have left a sour taste in my mouth, and that’s got me considering just making these kinds of requests a blanket “nope”.

What happened was that in a couple of these requests that were passed along to me, people came back later and questioned why I hadn’t donated. That right up front annoyed me, but after I explained that I had already allocated my money to other causes, they came back again to start explaining why I needed to re-prioritize so that their cause would get some funds.

I have a budget I allocate every year of funds that go to organizations that are important to me — Bird and habitat protection and advocacy organizations, the Nature Conservancy, wildlife rescue, the local (and now formerly local) humane societies, and the regional food banks top my list. They are organizations that directly touch some of the things that are important for me to protect as I can, and try to act as a safety blanket for those around me that are in need of help. They are all organizations I’ve researched and vetted — for instance, that much of the money they raise goes to programs intended to help their causes, as opposed to funding more fund raising.

If you really want to have a conversation to not end well, I suggest you try to convince me that I need to stop considering the causes that are important to me as important as the causes you think are important. I am willing — to a point — to consider adding your cause into the mix of things I give money to. I am not, for some reason, particularly interested in being told my priorities are wrong and I have to fix them to align with someone else’s priorities.

I will even note that, before one conversation went completely off the rails in non-productive ways, that I offered to make a donation to the cause they were pushing, if they would match that donation to one of my causes in return. I was effectively told that all the money needed to go to their cause (because my causes weren’t actually important).

That suggestion didn’t exactly help their cause. I don’t think they’ll be suggesting new causes to me any time soon.

My reason for bringing this up, other than venting a bit at just how insulting the whole discussion was to me, is to remind folks that we’re all humans, and we all have our life choices, our priorities and the things we hold dear and consider important.

And if you’re trying to get someone to do something for you, you really need to think about that from both sides of the discussion, and denying the validity of how the other person thinks and feels is not generally a productive way to get them to want to help you.

“Yeah, but MY CAUSE IS IMPORTANT!” may well be true. I’m sure it is. So are mine. And if you refuse to accept that concept as part of the reality we need to discuss, we don’t really have much need of a discussion.

If it’d only been one person doing this, I’d have written it off as just one thick-headed being and not worried so much, but to have it happen twice in a couple of weeks on separate causes has me wondering if this is a new trend, and one that’s going to be massively annoying to me. If so, my answer’s going to get very short and brisk, which is “no, I don’t consider any unsolicited requests any more”, which I’d rather not do.

But if my intelligence is going to be insulted like that because I choose not to cooperate, I’m just going to stop being open to any kind of consideration of things like this in the future. I just don’t have any interest in wasting time explaining things to people like this…

So don’t be that person, to me, or to anyone… okay?

Photo Wednesday

Every Wednesday I'm posting an non-bird image from my collection and talking a bit about the image. And on Fridays, I'm posting a bird image as well. So twice a week I'm now starting to share my images again to the world at large with some bit of story about how and why the image came to be.

To see all of these images at full size and read the stories behind their creation, you can visit:

For Your Consideration

Birds and Birding

Health and Fitness

Science and Technology

Interesting Stuff

Recommendations

Two resources I’ve added to my things I use and follow as I start to plan out my woodshop:

  • FineWoodworking: this was one of my go to magazines to read back when I was doing this earlier in life, and I’m finding they’re still speaking to me in ways that I find interesting

  • The Makers Mob: in some ways, it’s Frank Howarth’s YouTube channel that sucked me back into the idea of building out a new shop and getting back into woodturning, and supporting and following Maker’s Mob is a way to support him and some of the other makers as I start this journey again.

See you soon!

And with that, I'll see you in the next issue. I'd love feedback on this, what you like, what you want more of, what you want less of. And if you have something interesting you think I might want to talk about, please pass it along. Until then, take care, and have fun.

6FPS (Six Frames Per Second) is a newsletter of interesting things and commentary from Chuq Von Rospach (chuqui@mac.com).

Coming out monthly on the 2nd Monday of the month, I will place in your inbox a few things I hope will inform and delight you. There is too much mediocre, forgettable stuff attacking your eyeballs every day you're online; this is my little way to help you cut through the noise to some interesting things you might otherwise not find.

Some links in this newsletter may point to products at Amazon; these are affiliate links and if you use them to buy a product, I get a small cut of the sale. This doesn't make me rich, but it does help pay my web site bills. If you use the link to buy something, thank you. If you prefer not to, that's perfectly okay, also.

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