Saturday
- a lazy day. Got up late, did a few chores.
I bought a couple of new chairs for the patio, the existing resin
chairs are literally falling apart. These are bigger, and more
comfortable. I even bought cushions, which I suppose I need to remember
to bring in. I'd have bought a lounge chair, but was driving the Probe
rather than the Explorer, and barely had room for the two chairs.
The cats are skittish around them.
Big crowds at both Lowe's and Home Depot. Spring has sprung - gorgeous
weather. It's been a week and the front lawn already needs mowing again.
A loud aircraft went over while I was having my morning coffee. At
first I couldn't find it, but then saw it - the distinctive cruciform
shape of a U-2. They are remarkably loud, reminiscent in sound of an
F-104 Starfighter. Sort of an organ pipe effect from the long fuselage
and low bypass turbojet I suppose. By the time I retrieved my camera it
was out of sight.
Watched the series finale of Battlestar Galactica on the Tivo. Eh. A
pretty cool battle scene, but a somewhat unlikely and confused ending.
Friday
- yeah, 12 hours again. I'm allergic to something down there - lots of
blisters on my left hand, the one that holds the mapper pole that I
tend to lead with in the brush. Too late it occurred to me to wear a
glove on that hand. I must have looked like Michael Jackson, not that
there was anybody there to see me.
Then, back on the road, a stop in Ventura to pick up dirty laundry and then up to Lancaster.
The landlord has rented the rooms downstairs again. Two women. I
met one, briefly - looks like a student of some sort. Drives a pink car.
I see that Zac Sunderland is finally about ready to leave St. Helena. Apparently he had a bad fuel pump, then dropped a bunch of steering gear bits in the drink. Well, there are those that have dropped important/expensive/hard-to-replace bits in the water - and those that are going to. Heh.
Riley, cunningly hiding behind vegetation...
Thursday 26 March
2009
Thursday
- another long day, 12 hours.
I sent my Dad (via sis) a copy of Julian Stockwin's Quarterdeck, Kydd #5,
an audio recording from Britain. He says it has a remarkable case, sort
of a binder for cassettes. I can't quite visualize it, but I'll be up
there in a couple of weeks and see for myself.
My brother forwarded me an email, they lost an F-22 and a pilot, David
Cooley, up at Edwards Air Force Base. A sad day. Flight test is a
dangerous business to be in, but I suppose the rewards are there: to be
known as the best of the best of pilots, flying the finest hardware to
it's limits - and beyond.
Wednesday 25 March 2009
Wednesday
- Arthur C. Clarke had a saying "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Another Clark has come up with a riff on that: "Any Sufficiently advanced imbecility is indistinguishable from malice." Heh. It came up during a discussion I read on the current administrations response to the financial crisis.
Tuesday 24 March 2009
Tuesday
- back at work. Not as long, an eight hour day, but rough cross terrain work. I'm beat.
There was an old moon in the morning sky, as I headed down to Ventura.
Which reminded me that I didn't do my blog picture/post on the Vernal
Equinox this year.
Monday 23 March 2009
Monday
- my sister took off, late morning, arriving up north in Fremont in
good time. I had some chores and errands to take care of, and had a
nice nap on the couch with the kitties. Back to work tomorrow though.
Sunday 22 March 2009
Sunday
- the storm did come in, and we had a windy night. My sister thought it
windy on Friday night, and my friends and I all just looked at her, puzzled, while
getting ready for the LPAC performance on Saturday?.Windy? It had been
a bit breezy,
perhaps, but always under 20mph or so. But it was probably gusting into
the 40mph range on Sunday, with some rain, and hail and rain
during the late morning.
There was a bit of a problem transferring some data from work. I was
trying to move a 300BG set of data from one 500GB drive to another, and
it
kept stalling out. At first I assumed it was the new Maxtor drive,
because
I'd never had problems with the old Acomdata. But at some point I tried
to move the data directly to the HD of a computer, thinking that
perhaps I'd maxed out the USB channels with two big drives - and it
hung up again. I then downloaded and started using a free copy of
Goodsync, to avoid copying data that had already been copied, but it
was annoying having to reset the USB connection on the Acomdata every
ten minutes or so.
After a while I remembered the old trick of cooling electronic hardware
- I used to put a 'blue ice' container on a particularly balky router,
and trying this on the Acomdata's aluminum case worked wonders, as it
then downloaded for the better part of an hour before failing again -
at which point the cooling block had warmed up to near room
temperature! Another cooling block brought us to the end of the data
transfer.
