1/5 - Some ship blew up, flea beetle problems

Note: This had been something Jake had seen from the glass house.  Thinking about it more, and checking the geography, there's a better explanation.  There's a mountain just north of Port Hibernie that has a popular hiking trail to the summit.  The main thing to see from there is the last sunset of the year.  It doesn't quite work like that, as the sun just goes below the southern horizon - so the last sunset is pretty much the last sunrise, at noon sometime in October(?)  But there's a spectacular view at a certain day/time, and often the clouds roll in for the winter soon after anyway.

Jake and friends had climbed the mountain to see the sunset off to the south west.  This particular mountain, as I've confirmed from topo maps and google earth, has a view of one of the fjords to the north.  The sun setting puts the power ring coming up to the east, but since it's sun-facing, over them.  Need to give more thought to when and how that all looks.  

Anyway, the rest had headed down, and Jake was about to follow, when he saw the beam of green light out of his peripheral vision.  He looked fully back/north, saw the beam converge some and settle, and realized it lit up a ship out to sea, visible through the mountains gap and out the fjord.  He saw what happened, and no one else from his group will have.  For that matter, it's not clear how much they even heard, since there's a good chance that trail will go down toward Port Hibernie, putting them in sound shadow pretty quickly.   

So the others that saw/heard it weren't in his group.  Which still fits.  Other people, in other places, may have seen or at least heard the explosion. 

 

A bit of excitement today.  Off to sea, some ship went kablewy.  I was working outside the glass house, enjoying a bit of moonlight, truth be told, when there was a flash off to the northwest.  I looked in that direction and saw a spot of bright light and then a lit-up cloud.  It must have been 20km off shore.  Someone said it was Uaen.  A dozen drones took off right away, and a couple of coastal protection ships too, but there doesn't seem to have been much left to rescue.

Otherwise, the flea beetles have gone nuts.  Had to fire up the spray bots - the usual bug hunters can't really do anything about flea beetles.  They're too small and fast for the bot to lock on, and it's almost a waste of power to fire a laser at them.  Hector took some plant soil samples to check for larvae, and they're planning to lay down nematodes again when that shipment gets here.  But it's too early to find larvae.  I told him that, but have microscope, will travel, or something. 

 [note: you know better than this.  It would be dusters and vacuums for flea beetles, not sprayers.  fix this] The spray bots are always a pain to work with.  The bug hunters don't really ever break down, but the spray bots seem to gum up their sprayers a couple of times a day.  I've spent half my time the past two days backwashing spray nozzles.  We have a hectare in small brassicas and another in young lettuces.  A bad flush of flea beetles will turn all of that into compost.

Speaking of compost, the building toilets are acting up.  Typically, no one else will notice (or do anything about it) until we get messes on floors.  Ew.   It's too late for anyone to do anything about it tonight, but I reported it.  Usually it takes someone a few days to get out here to fix it anyway.   

And, speaking of a few days, Jessica is heading to the capital for exams in a few days.  She's pretty nervous.  We're all really proud of her though - she's got a good shot at a mental surgery slot.  She thinks she might even do well enough to have a string to pull and get me a chance at the university.  Not likely, I think.  But she says times have changed some there.  Guys sometimes get in.  I'm guessing they're from rich families.  But I can probably visit.

[Note: this last bit makes for a bit of a time problem.  Jess needs to be in the program sooner, maybe.  From the time of the explosion to the time Jake needs to get out of town is only a month or two or three.  Need to come up with a reasonable timeline for everything.  The Uaens won't have waited forever to deal with their drilling ship getting blown.  They probably will have known approximately where it was.  By this point, Jake will have opened the amulets a few months ago, and it will be affecting his dreams.  One of these other logs has him waking up to his room floor cleaned, one of many odd things happening.  But realistically, how long for the amulet to start training?  

In general, I'm realizing I need a good timeline.  But, as it turns out, the timeline tools out there aren't really up to the task.  It looks like I can do what I'd want in Tex/LaTex.