WEEK 47 2013
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Saturday 23 November
2013
Saturday - A little damp and cold, but no longer storming.
Spent
the morning trying to clean, and doing a bit of reading on iOS. For
lunch we went to Dave's BBQ for a friends birthday. Then I came home,
started reading - and fell asleep. And woke up a couple of hours later
with three cats on the small love seat. They had somehow managed to
cram themselves into the small space remaining next to me and were fast
asleep...
For dinner I
went over to R&S's place, where we watched Pirates of the Carribean
and I played with her new iPad 4. The retina is pretty nice, and it's
noticeably snappier than her old iPad 1. She had considered getting the
newest version, but this one was on sale and had the mobile data
connection to Verizon available for less.
Friday
- The weather continues, lots of rain throughout the day. No lightning storms though.
Not much else going on. Working on the iOS thing, and some work stuff, watching some TV.
The
cats continue to socialize. I have now seen Riley grooming both of the
kittens, at length. He's a bit conflicted, and often growls menacingly
while doing a careful gentle job on their ears.
Jimmy and the
dog, Suzy, are best buds, and hang out together. If I let him he'll
follow Suzy into the big cage and sleep on the cushion with her.
Thursday 21 November 2013
Thursday
- A storm blew in, late afternoon. Clouds, rain, thunder, lightning,
hail, the whole shebang. Kind of neat, really. Too warm for snow though.
The
iOS thing I am reading was The Big Nerd Ranch Guide to iOS, on the
Nook. It's the third edition, I was going to wait for the 4th, but it
keeps getting delayed, it's now scheduled for release in January
sometime. It is pretty detailed - the BNR book is one of the very few
that says anything about singletons,
for example, but it's not really a "dip into it and get what you want"
sort of book, you kind of have to start at the beginning. And it's on
the Nook because it was really cheap to get it that way, about $20 for the ebook versus $45 for the dead tree version at the B&N store.
I
missed an opportunity to pick up some Girl Scout treats I'd ordered a
few weeks ago. Tim was in Ventura earlier in the week, as was I, but
neither of us realized the other was... Oh well, I guess we'll get together before Christmas, I'm sure.
Wednesday 20 November
2013
Wednesday
- Back in town, feeling better, doing this and that.
My
friend took the dog to the vet, who said she needed to remain
quarantined from the other dogs for another week. So I've still got
her.
In the evening I tried to take her for her walk, and the leash came off her collar, and awaaaaaaaay
she ran. So, seven o'clock or so, dark, and I'm running down the street
after an untrained dog that doesn't know "stop", "come" or even her
name. A truck was coming around the corner, and thankfully it was a
safe and sane driver going slow. He stopped, and rather confused the
dog let me grab her. At which point the driver rolled down his window,
chuckled, and said "Getting some exercise, eh?".
The leash thing has happened before, I've asked S for a new collar, since this one has issues.
She's
a fine dog, with a friendly disposition. And I'm kind of counting the
days until she's gone. She likes to play with kittens, but she's twice
and three times their weight, respectively, so I'm always worried that
she'll hurt them by accident. Riley not so much: he's mean and he
outweighs her, so she gives him a wide berth.
So if I put her
outside I worry she'll get out of the yard, and if I keep her inside I
worry she'll hurt the cats, if I keep her on her leash inside she slips
it, and if I keep her in her cage inside - I feel bad. Bah.
I've
been trying to get some glimpses of comets LOVEJOY and ISON, without
any luck. High clouds and haze. And now it's really cloudy - may even
rain. In a week ISON will disappear behind the Sun, possibly never to
re-emerge.
I was
reading some iOS stuff in the family room, and had the TV on streaming
Pandora. And discovered that it's kind of TIVO-ish, you can pause and
rewind a song if you want. As well as do the thumbs-up or thumbs-down
thing. Neat.
As I think I mentioned, I finally canceled my TIVO
service, I just wasn't using it. So now I'm down to the disc player and
the TV, two controllers only. I guess, since my friends don't seem
interested, that I can give away or sell the TIVO box. It's a good
product, I just wasn't using it.
Tim
sent me an article on how to clear the cache on a Samsung. It's kind of
neat, and I think it works. He said he was having serious battery drain
problems on his Galaxy III, and this seems to have fixed it. Unfortunately for me, on my Stellar it
didn't do anything about the hidden 2.3GB of files on the internal
storage 'miscellaneous' folder. I suspect lack of RAM is why some
applications don't run properly.
Tuesday
- OTR. Visited with the county contact and his boss for a couple of hours in
the morning. He seems a bit overwhelmed by the GIS update process, I
may want to improve my documentation, maybe even do a "Visual Guide"
sort of thing!
They also want us to finish the Update Forms for one of the repaired channels we'd
visited together, rather than do it themselves, so I've tasked C to do that,
while I finish and polish the documentation prior to invoice and
deliverables delivery, probably late this week. Which will pretty much
burn all the remaining hours on the work order.
Then it was an hour or two discussing this at the office, then a visit
out to the TO I&I site with C, to see how an epoxy structural
repair was going. They were just finishing the up, and I got some good
pictures of the process I think. I was going to look things over with
the PM, but despite talking to him earlier in the morning about meeting
at 11am visit he hadn't arrived by 1pm, so C and I left.
Then it was back to Lancaster by mid afternoon. I was, again,
absolutely exhausted, to the point where it felt like I had the flu, so
the rest of the day and evening was pretty much shot :-(
Monday
- OTR. Down to Thousand Oaks for a visit to the I&I site -
things look good there. Then some office work, and a visit to Dave out
in the field. He was happy to see me - I brought Western Bacon
Cheeseburgers.
Back at the office I printed out the Update Form and a draft Report for
the county on the work I'd done on the Followup GIS task. I'm to visit
with my County contact and talk to them before sending in a final,
tomorrow.
In early evening we got a call from Dave. Seems the contractor had
broken a gas line, and that stopped work. Everyone but Dave and a small
team was sent home, and the gas company was on site. It doesn't seem
like the contractor was at fault - there was a line not shown on the
plans. Still, it slows things down.
Back to the boat, very tired. I'm not sure if it's my health in
general, or visiting that tunnel in TO, but I'm always exhausted after
a site visit.
Sunday
- The cat and the kittens are all
back to normal and healthy now, for the first time in weeks.
It occurs to me that I've had Suzy for over two months now. She was
a pound and a half when I got her, she's over three pounds now. Still
smaller than Jimmy and dwarfed by Riley.
The dog
is still on antibiotics, so twice a day I shove an antibiotic pill down
her throat - which she then spits out. We then rinse and repeat this
process until I lose sight of the pill. Since she is
getting better my theory is that the pill is going down her throat.
Though she may just be healing up on her own.
Book #47 was Trapped (The Iron Druid Chronicles,Book 5), by Kevin Hearne. Not bad, decent escapist fantasy.
Working away on this and that. The side yard paver area, among other
things. I used the little electric chain saw to trim some of the
timbers, and think I'll just slope the whole thing down from the house,
and the little step will be there. It isn't that big a deal.
I also used the saw to cut up the old plastic lawn chairs that had
broken in critical places, to the point where they were unsafe to sit
in, but still to tough to break apart with my hands.
I'll need something less than a cubic yard of base, and of sand. It's
cheaper to buy in bulk, but I'll need to get the little trailer back
for that.
My hands tightened up a bit, but nothing too painful. It might just be the
two months of inactivity, on top of a bunch of typing on the keyboard
for work.
