Ennui and AI

Greetings Earthlings!  Long time, no write.  The days have held much ennui.  It's still cold, it has rained enough to keep things wet.  I went looking for photos to post, and they are few and far between.  Things are that boring.  

Yesterday the sprinkler guy was out for the annual turning on of the irrigation system.  The visit did not go as expected.  Zone eight is not working - that's the zone with the Arbivitae that look really awful after a winter of the deer eating them, and the giant trees that impinge along the path, along with the rhodies and the boxwoods.  Craig, the sprinkler guy, went looking for the valve boxes to see if the problem is with the valves or the solenoids.  There is actually a wire that goes from the sprinkler controller, through the ground, and is wired on to the valve.  Unfortunately, the valve boxes are not visible.  There are eight valves, for the eight zones.  Craig found one valve box with two valves on one side of the house. The other six are missing.  They're somewhere, most likely under the ground, buried - or perhaps they're under the deck.  Craig has tasked us, the home owners, with the job of following the wires from the controller to see if we can find the missing six valves.  I can not tell you how little interest I have in doing this.  It will involve butt scooting along the ground digging a trench along the path of the sprinkler wires.  Remember, vast swaths of the yard are covered with volcanic rock.  Unpleasant does not begin to describe how awful this is going to be. 

Between this and the ongoing malfeasance and perfidy of the republican party I am cranky, nay in a horrible mood.

Here are my paltry photos from the past week or so. 

As I previously have mentioned, the trees did not shed their leaves last fall.  That made for heavy snow loads when the snows started and they still had leaves.  When we returned from Tucson, most of the trees had lost most of their leaves except for the Dogwood.  Is this not pitiful?  We're really hoping the tree is not dead.  Taking that out would put a big hole in the tree barrier between us and the neighbors we're not friends with.

Almost a sunset from the recent past.

A sunny (cold) day.

The rabbit, chowing down.

A blog I used to read a lot, Technomadia, put up a post today that was a conversation between the blogger and the Bing AI.  It's a long read, but it's sort of spooky how human the AI sounds.  What's also interesting is the ability of AI to generate photos that are not real.

The photo was generated based on this prompt, "Cinematic, off-center, two-shot, 35mm film still of a 30-year-old french man, curly brown hair and a stained beige polo sweater, reading a book to his adorable 5-year-old daughter, wearing fuzzy pink pajamas, sitting in a cozy corner nook, sunny natural lighting, sun shining through the glass of the window, warm morning glow, sharp focus, heavenly illumination, unconditional love --ar 16:9."  The twitter thread is here.  From what I read, it seems that AI is making people look older than they should, and it's still not good with hands.  However, at first glance, it's fairly credible.  So, from here on out, question whether anything you see is real.  

There was also a walk up the hill later in this day.  It's still pretty dang chilly.

Other than this, I have zippity doo-dah all to say.