Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
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What is a panic attack? According to Mayo Clinic, "a panic attack is a sudden episode of intense fear that triggers severe physical reactions when there is no real danger or apparent cause." The symptoms include pounding or racing heart, sweating, chills, trembling, difficulty breathing, weakness or dizziness, chest pain, and stomach pain or nausea. Some describe the feeling of a panic attack as suffocating and can even be mistaken for a heart attack. Panic attacks can last from five minutes to...
Money, it’s a gas. In a similar fashion to gas, it can also get quite expensive quite quickly. The iPhone for example has risen in average cost more than 60 percent since its launch in 2007. Inflation by contrast since then is only around 43 percent, so while your dollar is worth more, technology still carries a weightier price tag than it used to. Where then can we save some dollars? Are there opportunities when buying tech where it’s safe to save some money, or do “buy cheap, buy twice!” rules always apply? No need to have your credit...
There have been a lot of trips to Glasgow this past week. The Florida grandsons as well as our daughter had to take in the county fair. Those boys were thrilled with the bouncy house attractions after initially being told there wouldn’t be a carnival. “What’s a fair without rides?,” they asked. They’re still young enough to be excited about being very active. So I give kudos to whoever managed to find and bring in the person(s) running those attractions. (I still miss cotton candy on the midway, though. It’s one of my guilty fair pleasures.)...
I must admit that the presence of our grandsons (and now our middle daughter) has kept my attention away from my yard and garden. We’ve been golfing, attended two productions at the Fort Peck Theatre (Always, Patsy Cline, and Suessical, the Musical - we highly recommend this current show), to Kiwanis Park for tetherball (mainly to blow off energy before the theatre), and dining in town quite often. The boys are learning to adjust their hockey slap shots into proper golf swings - mostly. This u...
Chips! Delicious, of course. But the less tasty ones make up the brains behind all but the very simplest of electronic devices. Smart phones, chargers, microwaves and cars alike all use integrated circuits (ICs for short) to perform whatever task they’ve been designed to do. As we know, we’re still recovering from the same chip shortage which has made buying those cars and electronics trickier, even this deep into 2022. This week however, Congress has made moves to help prevent this kind of supply squeeze from happening in the future. Will you...
Last week I had a mini-vacation: I flew to Florida for the purpose of bringing our two grandsons to Montana so they could have their own vacation. They’ll have fodder for the inevitable “what did you do over your summer vacation” reports for school, which starts Aug. 10! Of course, one doesn’t simply fly to Florida and return to Montana the next day. One must also spend a few days recovering from the whole airport/flight experience. I was able to enjoy family time with our middle daughter and her family. I enjoyed several fabulous meals a...
We have a lot to thank the internet for. It enables us to be entertained by cat videos, stream endless music and inflict photos of ourselves holding a fish on everyone else using that dating app. The web as it looks today though is a far cry from what it was like a relatively short time ago. It’s still changing, too. Something called Web3 is on the horizon, and it stands to shake up how the internet is structured on the technical side, while offering greater conveniences to the average user. What then do we need to know about this new i...
As others have noted on the Gardening in NE MT Facebook page, things have been slow in starting as far as the garden goes. We did have a long, cool spring. Very few of my corn seeds came up. Even the replanting was a bust, so I guess I’ll be buying corn later on. The peas are spotty, but are starting to bloom just as the heat hits (peas really don’t like hot weather). I think only one packet of my beans came, and since all the packets “melted” in the rains, I’m not sure which variety I’ll have! (I really should make a garden map each summer...
The ability to capture and hold people’s attention is a valuable asset. Captivating a room, enthralling an audience, or convincing you that one more episode is worth the tradeoff for a ruined sleep schedule. Every silver lining has a cloud of course, and when that captivation relates to the endless stream of negativity available online, we end up suffering the affects of the newly coined “doomscrolling.” Bad news is in no short supply, but how do we avoid getting addicted to it? Has the internet fed our feelings of hopelessness to the point...
We’ve had more rain, plus lots of lightning and thunder, but no hail (knock on wood). With these last storms there have been some power outages, so I’m grateful for our generator. The extra wetness has made weeding easier. I’ve had plenty of grass clippings to put between the garden rows, so I don’t get too muddy doing the weeding. I was even able to dig out a lot of the volunteer grass alongside the walkway between the house and garage. I do hate spraying chemicals around. The garden has reached that stage of development where less weeding...
I love a good thunderstorm. Maybe it’s the crack of the thunder, maybe it’s the sound of driving rain, maybe it’s the bright flash of lightning as it streaks across the sky. Disengaging caveman brain for a moment however and remembering that I am in fact a technology professional, thunderstorms are a major pain in my proverbial. This lightning and the subsequent power outages are awful for electronics and, as we fill our homes with ever more sensitive flavors of such, they can get expensive if we don’t take the proper care. Let’s perhaps c...
Last week, while buying yet more plants from the greenhouse (there was a sale! Who could resist?), a gentleman recognized me and remarked upon my being there. He intimated he was disappointed to see me purchasing plants because “you write a gardening column.” That got me wondering if others think I’m cheating somehow, so I looked up the definition of gardening. It’s the activity of tending and cultivating a garden, especially as a pastime, or the practice of growing and cultivating plants as a part of horticulture. The definition of a garden...
They don’t make ‘em like they used to. Back in my day. Those were simpler times. We’re all, to some degree or another, a little guilty of harking back to a slightly rose-tinted version of something from our past. Before smartphones, before computers, before convenience. When it comes to technology there really is something to be said for recycling the joy you felt when first experiencing something; your first high score or when that first voice-activated doodad blew your mind. Were things ever really objectively “better” though? Are we chasin...
As of Jan 1, 2022, medical and recreational marijuana use is legal in Montana for people over 21. Since weed/pot/cannabis is now in similar standing to alcohol, updated marijuana education and understanding of responsible consumption is needed. People use cannabis - including kids in rural areas. Forty-seven percent of Valley County high schoolers have tried marijuana at least once, but only 23 percent could be described as current users. Cannabis sativa has been in use medically and recreationally for thousands of years and has been...
Not much has changed in the garden this past week. I’m still doing plenty of weeding: all the seeds blown in from the shelter belt trees (I’m looking at you, Chinese elm) are sprouting with wild abandon due to the rains. Those seeds nestled up against what I planted, so weeding involves a lot of crawling along the rows on hands and knees, pulling each tree wannabe individually. I keep reminding myself that this activity helps with my flexibility. Once in a while my brain protests that this is bunk: this activity is ruining my joints. I will say...
Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google. Almost all of us have some kind of relationship with at least one of these companies, perhaps even all four. We rely on them for staying in touch with loved ones, providing entertainment, answering our questions; truly the list goes on and on. As time progresses and tech becomes more integrated into our lives, this will only grow longer. How far does the reach truly go for these technology giants though? Are we unknowingly putting all of our technology eggs into one basket? If we are, is that really so...
We're far enough into the gardening season that only maintenance is needed. Most of that maintenance is boring: mowing, weeding, and watering. The rain helps a lot, but then it is followed by too much wind, which takes the moisture right back out of everything. (It also brings in another maintenance chore: picking up the downed twigs, destroyed bird nests, and tree limbs torn off the trees that litter the mowing surfaces). And now the heat is here. I know it's needed, but it also restricts my...
Technology is great, but it can be expensive to keep up with. It’s also fair that a lot of us as consumers simply don’t need the latest and greatest model of any given electronics; a 2021 laptop is still going to be refreshingly zippy compared to your classic from 2012. The average user browsing the web or running Microsoft Office doesn’t really benefit from that 10% performance boost between model years. What then if there was a cheaper way of getting like-new technology at a discount rate? Something which had most of the benefits of buyin...
For all of the things we secure behind a password, I’ve yet to run into anyone who truly enjoys them. Financial details, our social media accounts, email, streaming services. They’re the keys to our digital lives. What if the end was on the horizon for hurriedly typing things into a box before having to hit that dreaded “I’ve forgotten…” button, though? Will we soon be able to ditch our least-favorite combinations of at least eight characters with capitals and numbers mixed in? I’ve written about passwords on a couple of occasions, bu...
It’s been a busy and productive week for me. The master procrastinator is maybe turning over a new leaf? Probably not. The main thing I’m proud of having accomplished is getting (almost) all the houseplants moved outside for the summer. A few (notably the Hoya vine, the newly started mango and avocado trees, my kaffir lily, and a couple other small ones) will remain in the house where the Montana winds cannot rip them apart. But just moving them outside isn’t the complete job - it’s also then getting the windows washed (both inside and out), a...
With increasing acceptance and information, more people are understanding themselves as and identifying as part of the LGBT community. Part of growing up is exploring what it means to be you and having the pleasure of your loved ones knowing you in your authenticity. Like cisgender kids (pronounced ‘sis’, aka their gender aligns with biological sex), kids who don’t identify with the gender they were assigned at birth know who they are at an early age – even if they don’t have the vocabulary to describe it. Studies have shown that by elementar...
The digital world in which we live, while sometimes daunting in its reach, does bear the fruit of convenience. It also offers secure storage for things we’d rather keep safe from prying eyes and criminals. It’s this security beyond that of a simple pass or card which has led to the development of virtual wallets built into our mobile devices, Apple Pay or Android Pay being the highest profile examples. The evolution of this however is bringing forth the ability to make redundant even more wallet-filling-material. Will the humble leather bil...
I've been struggling with the electric fence not working. We've had both solar units out that are supposed to send the sun's power into the vibes that deter the deer, but neither one has delivered that thrilling tingle (the one that makes me swear) when I touch the wire. Dennis bought a tester which proves both units are capable of sending out the juice. I've walked the perimeter and not found anything causing a short in the system. We even bought an actual six foot grounding rod, of which...
There are enough goldfinches and other birds in the yard that refilling the feeders is now a daily chore. Refilling birdbaths will soon be added to the list. So far I've only put water in one of them, the one that's a full-time fixture in the yard. It's the one not apt to be broken by hail nor freezing water, so it stays out year-round. The other ones (glazed ceramic and colored glass) still need to be brought out from the storage shed. That has been added to my "to-do" list. There was a bit of...
Snoozing. Slumbering. Catching some Zs. Sleep’s an incredibly important part of our lives and often one in which a lot of us will fall short either on quantity or quality. Technology as we know is generally seen as the enemy of this much needed rest, and rightly so. A technology professional myself, I’ve suffered first hand the effects of too much device time messing up my sleep schedule during busier stints. Is there a way though that we can achieve better, longer, more valuable shuteye through technology? Or has it firmly no place at our beds...
