WEEK 17 2014
Last
Week-
Sun-
Mon- Tue- Wed-
Thur-
Fri- Sat-
Next
Week
Picture of the Week
MAIN
PAGE
First Post,
17 March 2002
|
Twelve
Years Ago, This Week 2002 |
Eleven
Years
Ago, This Week, 2003 |
Ten Years
Ago, this
week, 2004 |
Nine Years
Ago, this
week, 2005 |
Eight Years
Ago, This Week, 2006
|
Seven Years
Ago, This Week, 2007
|
Six Years
Ago, This Week, 2008
|
Five Years
Ago, This Week, 2009
|
Four Years
Ago,
This Week, 2010
|
Three Years
Ago,
This Week,
2011
|
Two Years
Ago,
This Week,
2012 |
One Year
Ago,
This Week,
2013 |
Saturday - It was a blustery night, the wind howling (literally) under the eves, and rather cold.
I
actually turned the heater on, and woke up with three cats on the bed
next to me. In an apparent order of dominance they sorted themselves
out in this way: (2) Riley, at my chest, (2) Jimmy at my stomach, (3)
Suzy at my feet. Then again, not everything is as it appears. My feet,
where gamma cat sleeps, also has a nice warm afghan tossed across to
keep my toes warm: it must be nice for a skinny American
shorthair.
When I went out to do some shopping in the morning I saw new snow on the Tehachapi's to the north.
April snow on the Techachapi's.
[The drivers were terrible
in the morning, by the way. I saw two stoplights run, one person ignore
emergency vehicles coming at them, three separate sets of emergency
vehicles on their way here and there, and one multi-car accident being
cleaned up at a major intersection. The Poppy Festival is in session,
so maybe that made people crazy, though I made a point of not even
going near the venue.]
Then
is was lunch with friends, and afterwards, I admit it, a nap on the
couch. Waking up about 3pm I was ready to do yard chores - but the wind
was gusting to nearly 50mph, knocking over the lawn furniture, and bits
off the tomato trellis structure. It actually blew down a tree next
door, and they were out chain-sawing it in the breeze.
So, instead, I just did some stuff about the house.
In the evening I went over to R&S's place, and we watched a Wallace & Gromit short: A Matter of Loaf and Death, and then Frozen. Frozen
was technically a masterpiece, the animation fabulous. The story wasn't
very exciting, though in true Disney fashion they managed to kill off
Mom (and Dad) early in the story.
Friday
- not much to say. I was actually a bit tired - I didn't sleep well and the grogginess lasted most of the day. Bah.
I took a walk around lunch time, and that cleared my head a bit. Time for another "found CD" feature:
I had thought it was MLK, but on viewing the image close up, probably not.
I don't recognize the language, either.
Later
I did discover a new gopher hole in the yard, right next to the
planter. It wasn't there Wednesday or Thursday - I'll have to set the
traps again.
T stopped
by, with new bags and a new belt for the old Hoover upright. The little
vacuum cleaner store, in an alley, is near her house and she happened
to be coming over this way so she dropped them off. I usually vacuum
and dust on Sunday, so it was nice to get them. Sort of: who likes
vacuuming after all?
Not the cats. They won't be happy.
Thursday 24 April
2014
Thursday
- I actually was going to do other things, but instead I spent most of
the morning and early afternoon working on a spreadsheet template for
the pipe inspection stuff, since I'm not sure that it got done earlier
and we've a draft report due soon. I'd already entered most of the data
for the longest pipe, but I needed a VLOOKUP table and some formula's
to get the coding done, and then I had to debug that, and my data again. I sent it off, hopefully other eyes will look at it and find any outstanding errors.
Excel 2007 has some nice upgrades over Excel 2000.
I
also talked to T about the report, and he said he'd send me his
draft-so-far, and I'll take a look. He's a better writer than me, and
in the loop with the client, so I don't expect to find anything to
complain about.
I did a
bit more work around the house, and contemplated working on the little
retainer wall, but decided to let it wait until the weekend - my back
is sore, though not as painful as a few weeks ago. No rush.
Beautiful weather, a little cool and breezy, but mostly nice.
I
was emptying my luggage and cleaning things out. In my computer bag I
found: twelve pens, four permanent markers, two highlighters, a
flashlight and a folding knife, and one binder clip. And two toenail
clippers (what the heck?)!
I
put back a couple of pens, a marker, and the highlighters, the
flashlight and the folding knife (with a rubber band around it to keep
it from opening).
I
couldn't find my dirty laundry from the Ventura trip. I finally found
it downstairs, under the desk; the plastic bag containing it was in
punctured by numerous small-cat-fang sized holes.
Yeah, it's a mystery: who would possibly mess with my luggage when I'm not around?
Apropos
of teethmarks: I've moved the charger cables for the iPad, phone and
Nook into the office, where a closed door means the cats can't do
any(more) chewing on the cables....
One of these days I should see if I can repair the cord on the newer Mac keyboard. I miss having working arrow keys.
In
the early evening I received a call from S, who needed another adult to
take part in a Boy Scout review for a Palm badge. That was fun,
obviously the boy was well prepared and deserving, so it was nice to
know he'll get recognized for it.
Wednesday 23 April
2014
Wednesday - Yard work mostly. S
called on Tuesday and said the tomato and pepper seedlings were past
ready-to-plant, so I spent the morning cleaning out the raised vegetable beds, watering,
turning over the soil, and so. Which led, every so naturally, to removing the
cruft that had built up around them, which in turn led to de-crufting a
lot of the back yard. The trash bin is nearly full, and there was a
fair amount of green waste as well. I put a bunch of ewaste in the back
of the Explorer, to drop off.
It was a cool and overcast morning, but warmed up to sunshine and maybe 75F by noon. S showed up around lunch, with
lunch (homemade chicken sandwiches!) and we had a nice meal out on the
patio. And of course we talked about the app.
Then we spend an
hour or so getting the tomato and peppers in, and putting cages around
them. I need to pick up some B-1, and make a few more big cages.
Around
3pm I knocked off, and did some housework inside. By early evening I
was tired and my back was sore, but not incredibly painful. Maybe I can
resume work on the little landscape block planter this weekend?
Tuesday
- Tim called with some requests for the imagery, so I'll change a couple of things and send them off.
The
boys came by and mowed and edged the front and back yards over the
weekend. Apparently they didn't go inside, as the envelope with their
cash was still on the sideboard. It's wonderful not to have that mowing chore
to do, it leaves me a bit of time for improvements and other
maintenance.
I
talked to their Dad. He says they closed escrow on their
new house out in Antelope Acres, and have already started moving stuff.
Yay! Hopefully they can keep up the yard work here, it's more like
seven or eight miles away now instead of two, but I'm happy in either
case that they
found a a place they liked (a newer house on an acre and a half with a
1000SF separate workshop!).
Monday
- Heads down work on the PIR stuff, a ten hour day in the home office.
I want to clear the deck and concentrate on other things.
Sunday
- Down in San Diego.
After a nice Easter dinner we headed home about 3pm. Once again the
traffic was startlingly light. Got into Lancaster about 6:30pm. The
cats, after a few dubious minutes under the bed, eventually came out
and greeted me.
Upgraded Words With Friends to the paid version. I don't mind the ads
too much, but the iTunes Store ads don't have a close button - I
actually have to shut the iPad down to get rid of them! Plus the video
ads burn a lot of bandwith when using the phone as a modem.
So I paid the $3 $10..
We were thinking about upgrading A's laptop, since Windows XP is now
out of support, but it turns out it runs Windows 7 Starter. Remarkable,
for a little netbook with just an Atom processor. It makes me wonder if the
old WinXP laptop I gifted away could run Windows 7 after all?
Amusingly, when we asked the guy at Fry's about upgrading to a newer netbook
he said "They don't make those any more!" I guess it's laptops, then
tablets, with the netbooks squeezed out these days.
I was going to run an Ethernet cable directly from the router to A's
teevee in the family room downstairs so she could stream Netflix
without so much buffering, but the
house layout is weird, and the cable just couldn't go where I planned
to put it, it came out too short internally and I didn't have a
ladder and masory bit to run it externally. And being Easter Sunday all
the stores
were closed so I couldn't buy a 100' cable for the indoors. I finally
ran it to the master bedroom teevee instead (still a bit short!), then
had to
wrestle with a bad Netflix player app on the teevee, then a bad Netflix
player app in the bluray player. I finally ended up moving the ROKU
from the guest bedroom to the
master. Even that seemed to have a bad power cable...
