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egen.bsky.social
Entropy Generator
@egen.bsky.social
150 followers 0 following 1.7K posts
I am following 200+ via browser bookmarks, not using Following here.

Snarky geek, skeptical to the bone, too many interests, too little time. TTRPG+Nature+Law+Wx+Computers+Misc junk.
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egen.bsky.social
This is why odds keep getting janked even higher for lotteries.

Lower chance to win = more rollovers
Rollover = higher pot next week
Higher pot = more people buying tickets
More ticket sales = more revenue to government
In addition to what govt gets from the taxes on the prize

#powerball #lottery
Estimated Jackpot is $1.50 Billion Cash Value is $689.3 Million
December 19, 2025 at 11:38 PM
egen.bsky.social
Heaviest rains going into the areas already flooding due to levee failures. Then they'll go east into the mountains, dumping water all the way. And that water will run off into the still-raging rivers, which drain right back to this same area to empty into Puget Sound.

#wawx
A map of river water monitoring stations that is overlaid with weather radar. A band of bright yellow with dark red and pink, indicating areas of heavy rain, is approaching from the left (west) into center of the map where it is starting to intersect with colored circles indicating the location and status of river monitoring stations. Over half of the circles are colored either black for record level flows, or dark blue for > 90th percentile flows. Gray circles are no data which usually means damage to the equipment or power/data transmission problems. White circles are "not ranked" by percentile of current flow relative to that station's history. It's a lot of words to say the picture is showing heavy rain moving into an area where most rivers are already or near record levels of flooding.
December 17, 2025 at 8:45 AM
egen.bsky.social
Check wsdot.com/Travel/Real-... before heading east out of Seattle-Metro.

49 miles of US 2 are now closed due to multiple washouts, mud+landslides and debris on the road, flooding and all that.

This is not an easy, quick fix. #wawx #flood
Map showing US Highway 2 in Washington state, from the town of "Index" (yes it's actually named Index) through to Leavenworth. The map does not show the mountainous terrain, which is sort of implied by the twisty-turning squiggle-path that the highway takes. 49 miles of the road are marked Closed (black and white coloration) due to road washouts, fallen trees or debris, mudslides and landslides and flooding.
December 16, 2025 at 10:35 PM
egen.bsky.social
For those who want to follow crests or simply learn more, the USGS website still has the stream monitoring open to the public. URL dashboard.waterdata.usgs.gov/app/nwd/en/

You can zoom around, click sites for the latest readings, and so on.
Screen clip of the USGS National Water Dashboard. This shows an area from roughly Tacoma, Washington to just south of Seattle city proper, east into the mountains and west to Kitsap County. River gauges are shown as colored circles, with plenty of gauges labeled black for "all time record" or dark blue for > 90% percentile, and some aqua-blue for 76-90% percentile.
December 16, 2025 at 2:15 AM
egen.bsky.social
The river levels are not just from heavy rain over Seattle Metro. They're heavy rain across the entire Central-Western Washington state that all drains into the same rivers which all wind up back in Seattle Metro, picking up that heavy rain, and then empty into Puget Sound. #seattlefloods #wawx
Map showing a section of Washington State, specifically the mountainous region east of Seattle. It shows the North and South Forks of the Skykomish River merging (on the far right), then traveling west following a valley that includes US Highway 2 (which is now flooded, too). The Snoqualmie River is shown draining from mountains south/off the map, it flows north to combine with the Skykomish to form Snohomish. That's a huge chunk of land and all of the water runoff ends up in this one river, which then has still more land to drain before it hits the ocean.
December 16, 2025 at 2:00 AM
egen.bsky.social
There's a big residential area just west of the levee break and long stretches of retail, industrial park/distribution centers, and corporate buildings to the north and northeast.
The Green River flows north, past Tukwila and joins another in-flood river headed to Seattle #seattlefloods
#wawx
Satellite view of map showing the area south of Seattle city proper where the Green River is flooding after a levee break. I-5 goes north to south along a ridge; to the east/right side of I-5 can be seen the dark green of the ridge descending down into the flat plains area. Green River flows north at this point and is threatening all of the buildings in that stretch up to and past 405.
December 15, 2025 at 10:40 PM
egen.bsky.social
One of the few things an online company can do that's worse for their reputation than not confirm email "signups" is to then relentlessly spam-bomb the email victim. Modgents.com is up there with the right-wing fundraising scare emails in terms of spam filter saturation. #spammer #diediedie
Four spam filter screenshots each containing 7 unread emails labeled spam are combined into one image. All 28 emails are from the same domain of modgents.com. All but 1 email is from a woman's first name @ modgents.com. The one exception is from founder@modgents.com. The account spammed this user twice on November 28th, three times on November 29th, five times on November 30th, four times on December 1st, four times on December 2nd, four times on December 3rd, three times on December 4th, once each on December 5th and 8th, and then once (so far) on December 9th.
December 10, 2025 at 3:53 AM
egen.bsky.social
Every Keter resin planter I've ever had has developed leaks from the drain.
(left image) Drain sealed shut with silicon cement and new overflow-level hole drilled
(right image) Once the drain clogged and the planter filled up with water. The bowing out warp is still visible years later.
Closeup of the lower drain area of a black resin planter. There is a small plug in the a recess in the lower center. Glimpses of clear sealant are visible behind the handle of the plug. Immediately to the right is a new faucet-type drain consisting of black pvc-like material with a green-topped shutoff valve. The tube and valve are wide enough to allow inserting flexible tubing into the reservoir, through the valve, for a total drain via siphon. The new drain is about an inch higher than the original drain. The original drain was low enough to totally empty the reservoir when opened. The new drain is at the top of the interior reservoir so as to drain only "overflow" of the internal reservoir. This allows the gardener to top off the reservoir and then not have to drain it before a major rain. View of another planter, from the top. The rectangular shape is marred by a bowing-out of one side, about an inch, in between two crossbars that were intended to prevent exactly what. The top of a black pvc pipe is in the left-hand third, with a reservoir water-level indicator poking out of the top; the indicator has two plastic "seedling leaves" on it. The soil is dark with lots of visible white perlite. There are 13 seedlings planted so far, I believe the 6 across the back are petunias and the other 7 are a blend of Zinnia marylandica (probably "Profusion") and maybe native Salvia coccinea sage.
November 25, 2025 at 12:32 AM
egen.bsky.social
nerd #datenight 30-some years ago
Back when you spent a month's takehome pay building your his-and-hers computers from scratch and dual-boot meant days of BBS-crawling looking for Linux drivers
Receipt totalling $1,403.17 for items such as Pentium-200 CPU, two 32 megabyte RAM chips, heatsink, two motherboards, and so on. The top portion showing the store and date is missing.
November 24, 2025 at 11:43 PM
egen.bsky.social
(Is gardening FOR birds OK here?) "Living wall" hummingbird+pollinator buffet - runnerbeans + cardinal climbers. Zinnia at base. The support is coated 2x4 hardware cloth suspended from deck above, ziptied to the side post for extra support. Hours of entertainment for < $5 in seeds 🪶
A 4ft x8ft foot piece of green-plastic-coated hardware cloth of 2"x4" sizes hangs from top to bottom of the image. The underside supports of a 2nd story deck are visible at the top of the screen and the screen goes up on the outside of the supports. A brown deck support post runs up as the right-hand side of the photo. Large-leafed vine-type plants (scarlet runner bean + hyacinth bean + night-blooming morning glory) are climbing up the cloth, with some smaller frilly leaves visible (the cardinal climber) twined in amongst everything. The photo is taken from "behind" the green wall, underneath the deck in full shade that is caused in part by the thick growth. The sunny-side is facing away from the camera. The vines are growing out of a wide black planter of which only the top few inches are visible. The hardware cloth is zip-tied to the post at two points, one near its base and the other about halfway up. The leaves are moderately thick with only a little light getting through the wall-of-green.
November 24, 2025 at 10:54 PM
egen.bsky.social
"You had one job" engineering failures - Old photograph, undated (not mine). These apartments used to flood out every few years so they installed the wall. I think the story was pumps failed.
Caption: "Hidden Valley Apartments in Dickson flooded early Thursday morning forcing several residents out of their apartments and into a Red Cross shelter. (Photo: Chris Gadd/The Herald)" Description: Depicts an apartment building, two stories high with what looks like 6 or 8 units on each level. The back area is enclosed by a brick or concrete wall that looks about 3' high. The ground outside the wall is grassy with a tree emerging from the left-hand side of the image. Inside the wall is water that looks to be 2-3' deep, with patio items floating. The wall has held water in, preventing draining, and flooded the first story apartments.
November 24, 2025 at 9:37 PM
egen.bsky.social
"Living wall" hummingbird+pollinator buffet - runnerbeans + cardinal climbers, as seen from behind. Zinnia at base. The support is coated 2x4 hardware cloth suspended from deck above, ziptied to the side post for extra support. Hours of entertainment for < $5 in seeds 🌱 #feedthebirds
A 4ft x8ft foot piece of green-plastic-coated hardware cloth of 2"x4" sizes hangs from top to bottom of the image. The underside supports of a 2nd story deck are visible at the top of the screen and the screen goes up on the outside of the supports. A brown deck support post runs up as the right-hand side of the photo. Large-leafed vine-type plants (scarlet runner bean + hyacinth bean + night-blooming morning glory) are climbing up the cloth, with some smaller frilly leaves visible (the cardinal climber) twined in amongst everything. The photo is taken from "behind" the green wall, underneath the deck in full shade that is caused in part by the thick growth. The sunny-side is facing away from the camera. The vines are growing out of a wide black planter of which only the top few inches are visible. The hardware cloth is zip-tied to the post at two points, one near its base and the other about halfway up. The leaves are moderately thick with only a little light getting through the wall-of-green.
November 24, 2025 at 9:12 PM
egen.bsky.social
It's that season again: Surf Scoters, Bufflehead, rain, and rainbows #pnw
A faint rainbow arcs upwards from the lower lefthand corner of the image to fade out as it approaches the upper right corner. The base of the rainbow is gray-colored water, behind it is the hill of an island. The bulk of the background is uniformly grey overcast-foggy-ish sky. A spruce tree is mostly off the right-hand side, with some branches showing in the picture.
November 6, 2025 at 9:51 PM
egen.bsky.social
Sparing a thought for the @ferries.wsdot.wa.gov ferry operators trying to thread their way through dozens of orca, while passengers dash around trying to get the best views and freak about collision. Image courtesy of @orcaconservancy.bsky.social East Passage webcam #psws #orca #srkw 🦑
A ferry boat is in the center of the screen. Upper righthand corner has timestamp of 2025-11-02 11:08:01. At the bottom of the picture, just to the right of center, can be seen the back and dorsal fin of a surfacing orca.
November 2, 2025 at 7:19 PM
egen.bsky.social
More post-dam-removal good news: Fish wasted no time hauling tail upstream. Chinook salmon return to Upper Klamath Lake (pin on map) and Klamath headwaters after dams were removed in 2024. 🌿🦑
archive.ph/7NVsj
Map showing the border of Oregon and California, with the Pacific Ocean to the left/west. A pin marker is in Upper Klamath Lake in the upper right, south of Crater Lake National Park and north of Klamath Falls. The river's path does not show up on the map, but it winds all around and then enters the ocean between Crescent City and Redwood National + State Parks.
October 30, 2025 at 2:25 AM
egen.bsky.social
It was in the Artists' contracts (I pasted an excerpt above). Also in the Dealer's room contracts -
October 25, 2025 at 5:23 AM
egen.bsky.social
The AX Chibi contract also forbid helping run a similar event ("Japanese culture event or convention") for TWO YEARS after appearing at their con. Unless they gave permission.
October 25, 2025 at 5:21 AM
egen.bsky.social
Captured by the OrcaConservancy East Passage (Burien - just south of Seattle) at 18:21 Pacific Time - which would be far too late to be one of today's SpaceX launches?
The exhaust plume of a rocket is crossing the sky. The background is uniform greyish late afternoon overcast and the exhaust catches the setting sun and stands out. The timestamp on the screencap is 2025-10-19 18:21:21 (it is Pacific Time but not indicated as such)
October 20, 2025 at 1:58 AM
egen.bsky.social
From the early 80s computer staff room corkboard ...

And ppppbbbttth on you, I am still getting paid to maintain systems running ADA and PASCAL even today, 40+ years later.

alttextbot seems to not be working, sorry.
A yellowed-with-age single page titled "Real Programmers . . " followed by a list of bullet points all beginning with "DON'T" and the first one is "DON'T eat quiche"
October 8, 2025 at 10:48 PM
egen.bsky.social
Why I hate using Google Drive/Docs/etc reason #2821: Popups for undocumented things that block access to needed icons, can not be moved, and can not be dismissed except by clicking an undocumented option
Snippet of a screen capture where the formatting commands such as Bold, Italic, quotes, and so on, are blocked by a popup window saying "Highlights ready" and giving only one option, "Update"
October 8, 2025 at 6:08 PM
egen.bsky.social
The San Juan Clipper peeled off around 13:10 from following the T123s when they were approaching Gold Beach (Maury Island) and went down the Narrows. Judging from the track, they found something worth hanging around and watching for some time:
Track of the whale watching boat named San Juan Clipper. It shows blue (normal/high speed) coming in from the north on East Passage, slowing down (yellows-orange-red) to go into Commencement Bay, slow loop in the Bay as the T123 orca hunted, ate, then moved back into East Passage heading north.The track then suddenly reverses as the boat stops tracking the T123 orca and goes back west into Dalco Passage, around the tip of Pt Defiance and down the Tacoma Narrows, stopping a bit south of the bridge and slooowly pacing south then back north. The sustained slow tracks are a good indicator of the boat following a whale or some other interesting thing.
September 25, 2025 at 9:14 PM
egen.bsky.social
They are slowly moving north up East Passage, and judging from the position of the WW boats, are still off Maury Island just south/west of Port Robinson.

Big picture is to give context. The two small yellow icons (ptr+circle) in the center are Puget Sound Express whale watch boats.
Map showing the eastern tip of Maury Island (not labeled: Point Robinson), with two small yellow icons in the center depicting the whale watching boats. The orca are between the boats and the Maury Island Marine Park. The yellow circle means the boat has not changed position in a few minutes so the marine traffic viewer can not assign a direction arrow. The orange diamond icon between Pt Robinson and the mainland is a channel marker and often frequented by sea lions so sometimes viewers get to see Bigg's orca hunting around it. Today's pod is T123 and they are T)ransients aka Bigg's.
September 25, 2025 at 8:56 PM
egen.bsky.social
LinkedIn's new T&Cs & policies expand their data sharing, definition of "Affiliates", and data-for-our-AI policies. Might want to check and confirm you've opted in or out of stuff that matters to you -

From www.linkedin.com/help/linkedi...
For members in the EU, EEA, Switzerland, Canada, and Hong Kong On November 3, 2025, we’ll start to use some data from members in these regions to train content-generating AI models that enhance your experience and better connect our members to opportunities. This may include data like details from your profile, and public content you post on LinkedIn; it does not include your private messages. We rely on legitimate interest to process your data for this purpose. You can opt out anytime in your settings if you’d prefer not to have your data used in this way. Learn more.
September 25, 2025 at 2:49 AM
egen.bsky.social
For when my brain can't math: one of my worksheets when to start chilling bulbs and when to pull and pot up if I want blooming flowers for Christmas. Aka "start those hyacinths NOW" #pnwgardens 🌱
Worksheet with columns as dates 1 week apart - Sep 1, Sep 8, etc through March 9. Color is used to indicate the periods of Minimum chilling time, Optional Chill window after Minimum, Growth Periood, and Bloom period. Rows show how starting on any particular date looks in terms of when the bulb has reached minimum chill, when it's reached optimal chil, how many weeks it will be growing and finally what weeks it may be blooming. There is a black border outlining the block where columns for Dec 15-22-29 intersect with planting dates that can result in blooms during that period.
September 17, 2025 at 5:05 AM
egen.bsky.social
yes yes Zillow, we get the idea ...
List of Features for a house listing: Has view: Yes View Description: Water Has water view: Yes Water view: Water
September 7, 2025 at 4:45 AM