Fool Me Once

April 2nd, 2023

Happy Mio Monday everyone. I hope it’s a good one.

27/3 2023

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Good goat times today. A beautiful sunny day. But cold. So cold that it actually started snowing on my way home. Only for a minute or two, then the sun came back. I don’t think there will be lasting snow. But it’s supposed to be spring, cut it out!
Glad I made it out to goat. Wasn’t feeling great in the morning. My ear is still a bit clogged up. And I’m feeling fat and bloated, have eaten poorly and not exercised in a week and a half or so. Sad and concerned about dad and everything. My back and shoulder aren’t good either. Managed to wreck my back by going shopping twice today after goating. Wanted to stock up on Pepsi Max. Remind me not to do that again. Excruciating pain, fun times.
But it was lovely to spend time with the goats. Relaxing in the sun, grazing on the slight greenery that’s coming in. Also spending some time starting at hens that squawked like the world was ending. Sheesh they’re loud.
There’s also a new goat development. A huge new development. Okay, iit’s not exciting or important. But it is kind of a big thing. CLIFFHANGER!
Seriously, nothing important or great, but I’ll show you with a picture later. Need food. And to stretch my back more. URgh.
27/3 2023

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Well, here are the gioat news.
Mia got her eartags.
So yeah, that’s not great news. But it is neccessary. I can’t wait to hear what the people on Mia’s page will have to say about it! Hahah. I get grief sometimes from people who think it’s something I do to the goats to be mean. No one likes the eartags, but they have to have them.
We’ve had the vet over twice in recent times, first the hoof trimming and then Mia being sick (everything seems fine now) and both times she noticed the missing tags and told us that she had to have them. I think we could risk her being taken away, and then I guess she would be put down. So. It was a matter of time. She made it 10½ years without them. But her days of being a rogue goat are over.
Poor girl. Hopefuilly it wasn’t too rough. Apparently she didn’t take it too well at first. Jeanette said that Mia had been mad at her. Despite the fact that Jeanette hadn’t been there when she got the tags. Which surprised me by the way. I wonder if the vet came out and did it. I’d be surprised if the other caretakers who aren’t all as comfortable with the goats managed to do it on their own. But in any case it’s gotten done. Jeanette said Mia wouldn’t let her pet her and she wasn’t herself. I said, well I hope she’s not mad at me too! Luckily, Mia was not mad at me. Probably helps that I come bearing treats. But Mia seemed perfectly fine and happy to me. She has never liked having her ears touched, so that’s no different now.
A little later Jeanette came into the pen with us and she was able to pet Mia just fine, so it’ seems Mia has forgiven her.
I wonder if adult goat ears are more sensitive than kid goat ears. It must be a lot easier putting the tags in kid ears, because you can just hold a kid in your arms. I’m not sure how they restrained Mia when they did it, maybe they put her down on the ground like we did when we trimmed their hooves. I think it’s more stresful for an adult goat to go through it. But once it’s done the tags don’t bother them.
I told Jeanette what had happened to Herman years ago. Remember that? He lost his eartag in one ear and there was a hole. And then one day the whole ear was ripped in two. That was quite bad. Gotta keep the tags in now.
I guess Mia’s original tags were lost over the years. At the old old playground they didn’t tag her, but they said they had the tag in a drawer inside. But this tag she got isn’t like the other tags I’ve seen on goats, and the number is handwritten. Guess it’s a replacement tag.
But here we are. Maybe I should tag my ear in solidarity. Might get rid of the blockage…
27/3 2023

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Some good news about my dad. Theoretically.
He saw the doctor today and was told that he’s fine. So. That’s.. good. No restrictions for him, he’s good. I must say, I’m a little concerned that they’re just letting him off like that. Two trips to the hospital with possible strokes or similar. I am worried it’s an early sign of something worse to come. But I think my dad is somewhat like me in these cases. Not good at pushing back at the doctor or officials. If the doctors says fine then fine, and that’s it. So I guess we just have to hope he really is fine. He says he’s feeling better, although still not back to normal. But doing okay it seems. And he did have those scans and they showed nothing I guess. I forgot to ask about his blood pressure, if it’s doing better. But for now I guess it’s good news. So i’ll try to take it as such. Thanks everyone for all the support and love. I know this year has been a whole lot of grumbles and troubles from my side. Thanks for sticking with me. Man, it’s less than two weeks since my birthday, it feels like it’s already been two months. Did I accidentally set the clock back a month? Or forward? Or what even is time. Thanksf or coming to my TEDious talk.
27/3 2023

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“How could you do this to meeee?! I need so many treats to get over this. So many treats”.
Now’s the time to lay on a guilt trip.

27/3 2023

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HappY Yogi daY everyone. I hope it’s a good one.

28/3 2023

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All I know is I take my medicine, I always take my medicine

28/3 2023

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Mia and Jeanette making good yesterday.

28/3 2023

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Happy Hump Day everyone. I hope it’s a good one.

29/3 2023

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A bit of goat butt parade, sunny side up.

29/3 2023

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Twins 2.

29/3 2023

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I hope today will be a good one. Here’s Vanilje from 2008.

30/3 2023

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Good goat times today. A rainy one. Lots and lots of rain. So it was a time to stay inside and chill. No way to get the goaties out in this weather. Jeanette was suprised I came even. But you know, I need my goat fix. And sitting inside with good friends on a rainy day isn’t too bad.
Looking forwward to spring, though.
Any day now.
30/3 2023

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Aw, Sky. i get it, girl. Sometimes you just need some alone time. She was sitting out in the entryway while Milo and Mia were in the inside room with the hay.

30/3 2023

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I know AI can make an endless episodes of Seinfeld, but AI won’t be truly useful until it can make endless Jerry Stiller / Julia Louis-Dreyfus outtakes.

30/3 2023

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Why don’t you go get us some food and I’ll save your seat for you?

30/3 2023

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My dad had another trip to the hospital today. He started feeling bad. They diagnosed that he was dehydrated. So he got an IV and that seems to have helped, somewhat at least. He says that some new medication he’s been on (from the dementia center) has had him needing to use the bathroom a lot, and he thinks that may have been making him dehydrated. So well let’s hope he can get the meds changed or be more mindful of drinking more water and that it will help. I think he still has some tests or appintments coming up. I do worry about him a lot these days.
My brother hasn’t been well either. Problems with his legs. I think dad said it was something about uric acid in the legs. I may have that wrong, or translated wrong. He’s on the mend. But yeah, both of them have had some ups and downs and doctor and hospital trips.
My back is starting to get back to normal from my double shopping trip on Monday. But by normal I mean the new normal, which means hurting whenever I get on my feet for five minutes and qutie badly when I go out walking. I’m expecting to go back to the doctor after the new physical therapy appointment.
So yeah. 2023 has been quite a decade. So far.
Thanks for listening and supporting. Hope you’re doing okay. Let’s go out for coffe some time, on me.
30/3 2023

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I hope today will be a good one. Here’s Magnethe from 2005.

31/3 2023

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Now how do I get down again…

31/3 2023

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I will not talk about Lauren Boebert and te bible. I will not talk about Lauren Boebert and te bible.
I will not talk about Lauren Boebert and te bible.
31/3 2023

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Happy Caturday everyone. I hope it’s a good one. Here’s Nala.

1/4 2023

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Watching the rain.

1/4 2023

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Everything’s fine.
1/4 2023

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Happy Funday everyone. I hope it’s a good one.

2/4 2023

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Some extra Funday. Back in the good old days when I had a strong back and Mia went viral-ish.
2/4 2023

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goatlog

2/4 2023

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I had some cool dreams last night. One of them was like The Sixth Sense only instead of a ghost it was an AI. There was an AI who didn’t know he was an AI and he was out doing some investigating a society where AIs were mingling with humans but he didn’t realist that he was one himself. I am not even sure I was in the dream. I mean, I could have been the AI guy I guess. Sometimes I have dreams where I’m not sure I’m part of it or if I’m watching basically a movie. A disjointed one that doesn’t make sense. So, David Lynch I guess.
I think I wrote about it somewhere, but recently dreamt a dream with a guy whomst I listen to on podcasts and I thought it was interesting that your brain can take not just stuff you see and live throught but also just stuff you listen to and put that in dreams.
Dreams are kind of like AIs anyway aren’t they?. Like the AI chatbots. They can offer up something that seems real, but they can only really project back what they have learnt from us. An AI chatbot needs to be trained, it needs to digest a ton of information and then from that it can extrapolate a version of that information. If you ask a chatbot to write an episode of Seinfeld, it doesn’t just come up with it out of thing air. It watches all the Seinfeld episodes (or reads the scripts or whatever) and then from what it has learned it comes up with that. If you didn’t train the bot with real Seinfeld episodes then it wouldn’t be able to come up wtih anything that felt like a real Seinfeld episode. When John Oliver asks a chatbot to make an image of him marrying a squirrel or whatever, the chatbot has looked at countless images of John Oliver, of squirrels and of marraiges. And then it comes up with a version based on that information. Isn’t that kind of what happens when we dream? Our brains are trained on all the information we feed to it. Which is our lives, our experiences, what happens to us and what we read and listen to wand watch. And then from that information it extrapolates and serves up a version of it. If I had never listened to those podcasts then my brain wouldn’t have been able to send a dream with that podcasters voice. But because I listened to those podcasts my brain has been trained to recognise that voice, that voice becomes part of the data set that it uses to make dreams from and it presents a version of that voice. Similiarly the AI / Sixth Sense dream. It occurs to me just now as I’m writing this, a couple of days ago I was reading a reddit thread about the best movie endings of all time. And yes, people talked about The Sixth Sense. I have never actually watched that movie. But you know the Bruce Willis twist is so famous that it gets talked about all the time, and so our brains get trained on it and it become part of the data set and that’s probably why my brain did a version of it. I read about The Sixth Sense, AI bots are a big thing right now. So my brain took those things and mixed them into a version of reality. Really, I find this super fascinating. How our brains can come up with things and present them to us. And if you’re good at dreaming, and I think I’m kind of decent at it, they can seem SO real. When you get lucid dreams you can literally walk around in them as if they are reality, and you can’t tell them apart from reality. I suppose in the AI version of that.. it would be like the AI bots using VR. If the AI bots could make Virtual Reality scenes for you, it would be like lucid dreams. Maybe our brains are just.. big AIs? I mean, what’s the difference between artificial intelligence and real intelligence? Once you get a powerful enough processor, is there a difference? Our brains work like computers, I know humans like to think they are so special, but f you give the AI enough power wouldn’t it just .. real? What’s the difference. Human brains have to be trained too. We don’t get born with all the knowledge we have. We learn it.
I wonder if animals dream the way we do. Do their brains serve up images and realities like ours do? Or is it less powerful, is it more like feelings and colours and instinct. I don’t know. I’d love to think of the goats dreaming of a real me. I have no doubt they do dream. I just don’t know if it gets as real as ours do.
Anyway. Sorry for babbling on. Dreams are one of my favourite subjects, and one of my favourite things to do. And the correlation between AI and dreams is really interesting to me. I should go see if I can read up on information on that, train my brain on it.
2/4 2023

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Oh I exercised today by the way. For the first time in 2 or 3 weeks. I’m only saying this because I need someone to tell me I’m a good boy.
2/4 2023

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Here is an AI’s representation of my happy place.

2/4 2023

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That’s all for now.


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A Year To Forget About It

March 26th, 2023

Happy Mio Monday everyone. I hope it’s a good one.

20/3 2023

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Good goat times today. A quiet day. Rainy. Not heavy rain, but enough that it was decided by committee that we stayed inside and chewed cud instead of going out and doing stuff.
I need to learn how to chew cud. Or arrange it so my vote counts for 4.
I spent some good time sitting in the chair that Jeanette brought for me. While the goats scuttled around and occasionaly politely inquired if there was a chance of treats. There usually is.
Hopefully th grass is growing.
20/3 2023

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Make it rain.. treats.

20/3 2023

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Oh boy, I am loving my TENS device. It feels so good. Now again, I am not sure if it really helps my back.. pain. I use it while sitting at the computer, and I don’t generally feel pain while sitting at my computer. Not in my back at least. But the massage it gives.. oh yeah. I tried a session at level 14 out of 16 and it felt goood. It fires electrical impulses into your muscles. Or. Something like that. It feels like you’re getting a message by electric fingers. I love it. And today I did feel like my back was less tense when I was outside. It may just be my imagination or placebo effect or randomness. Can’t say for sure it’s improving my general condition. But the shock massage sessions themselves, feel really good.

20/3 2023

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How do humans sit on these things…

20/3 2023

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HappY Yogi daY everyone. I hope it’s a good one.

21/3 2023

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Heh heh. Heh. No I haven’t seen your stash. Heh heh.

21/3 2023

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You know what they say. If you can’t stand the heat in the kitchen… why don’t you just turn it down? It’s the 21st century, there’s temperature controls in most rooms. Just turn it down to a more comfortable level and you’ll be fine.
21/3 2023

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Happy Hump Day everyone. I hope it’s a good one.

22/3 2023

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There’s gotta be a better way of making an omelette, this is taking forever.

22/3 2023

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I hope today will be a good done. Here’s Medium from 2013.

23/3 2023

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Well, bad family news.
My dad has had two strokes this week.
He’s at home and doing okay under the circumstances. But it’s not good.
He said he’d had ‘strokes’, using the English word. But both times he was rushed to the hospital they apparently didn’t find what was wrong with him or what had happened. it is from his description of what happened and what he felt that they say he’s had strokes. I think the second time it happened when he was at the dementia center place and it sounded like it had been something out of a movie scene, with him collapsing and the other people there keeping him alive while they waited for the ambulance. It is scary. But I guess it’s a good sign that they have let him go home? He’s going to be going back to his doctor and the hospital of course, but for now he is coping. Very tired and weak but at least he’s alive and seems himself, if tired. This week there’s a guy on a podcast I listen to daily who had a stroke and was on lifesupport and it was dicey for him for awhile, although last I heard he was conscious and was recognising family and had most of his memory.. Get well too, Steve. It’s frightening.
But yeah. For now there’s not much to do. He’s going to rest and we’ll see where the doctors take it from here. It’s sad and scary. I felt like he was doing pretty well too, it seemed like the exercise he did at the dementia center was doing him good and he seemed physically better than he’d been in a long time. I hope he didn’t overdo the exercising.
It’s hard to have to face the fact that your parents are real human beings subject to the real consequences of life and all that it has been. I’m sure most people grow up thinking their parents are superheroes who are above it all. But that’s not how it goes. Dad’s birthday is in two weeks. I hope by then he will feel a bit stronger. Two strokes in a few days is a scary thing though, I just hope things don’t get worse.
23/3 2023

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Thank you everyone for the comments about my dad. Hopefully it will be okay. Man, the last couple of months have been poopy. Lots of worries about family and goats. And then my own stuff. Had physical therapy today. Not much progress. Our next appointment we’ll do an evaluation and if there’s no real progress then the physio will refer me back to my doctor for further examination, since he seems to feel there’s not much more he can do. I still feel like.. I haven’t had that much actual physical therapy? But I think going back to my doc is a good step.
I’m just limping along. I feel like my depression and pain are duking it out like that old mechanical toy with the two robots punching each other. Not sure who’s winning.
But thank you all for being there. Love you loves.
23/3 2023

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Think goat thoughts.
Thank you all the for the support and good wishes.

24/3 2023

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Well a little update from my dad. He’s had a couple of scans. He couldn’t remember what they were called, but he was in a couple of machines, so i’m guess it was an mri and something else,, ultrasound or something. But they haven’t really found anything. But his blood pressure has been very high, I think he said it was 200 over something, and it’s still 190 over something, so that and the changes in his brain from the dementia may be to do with it all. Some kind of blood clot or cerebral hemorrhage. He’ll be seeing his doctor on Monday and should probably get some medication for the blood pressure, i don’t know if that’s the blood thinners some of you have talked about.
He sounded a little better today, but obviously still weak and tired. We can only hope for the best for now I guess.
Thank you all again for hte support and caring. I appreciate it. I’m not in the best mental state right now, but just hanging in there too.
Shoutout to my brother for bringing me flourballs (dumplings) from my parents so I can have my soup. I can’t get them in my local stores, but my parents have a little stash in their freezer. Won’t be able to buy any more until next winter probably. If the world still stands by then.
24/3 2023

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Happy Caturday. I hope this message finds you well. Here is Nala.
I am going to bed early today. Tonight Denmark does the daylight saving switch, which means I’ll be able to sleep one hour less. What is infinity minus one?!
In any case, see you tomorrow when we get there.

25/3 2023

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Happy Funday everyone. I hope it’s a good one.

26/3 2023

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My ear is a bit clogged up. I had a lovely long sleep and dreamwalk. Dreamt about Norm from Cheers among other things. Nooorm.
But I have to sleep with earplugs because there is so much noise here and virtually no sound proofing. I have to jam the earplugs right in there. I think the left ear was bothered considerably. Don’t know if it’s an infection or just irritated or something. Ah well. Nouw I have an excuse not to listen to anyone. Tra la la, give me all the fleet balls.
Sorry, that’s my name for flødeboller. Rugbread is my name for rugbrød. I like mistranslating English words into Danish. Like flourballs for dumplings. Doing a literal translation or just using the Danish word as if it was English. Rug means rye, rugbrød is rye bread, but rugbread sounds like a carpet. Anyway, clearly I am sane and setting the clocks dimensionally paralel to fourt demonination of pie worked out well.
Did someone say pie? I heard that.
26/3 2023

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Nobody put Mia in the corner. But throw some peanuts there and she’ll go look.

26/3 2023

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,
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That’s all for now.


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