WEEK 50 2013
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Saturday 14 December
2013
Saturday - Working on this and that. Not much to say.
Friday
- Funny thing, I have seen Comet Lovejoy now. The cats woke me up
early, and, as I was up I wandered out to take a glance, and saw the
typical little faint "Q-tip" glow, about where the comet should have
been. The sky was already starting to lighten, so it wasn't too
impressive and I didn't bother to go get a camera, but I can say I saw
it.
I
decided to restart work on the side yard, after waiting a couple of
months for my hands to recover from the pick-and-shovel work. Since I'd
already done most of the grading the first thing to do was to place the
pressure treated end caps in place, and to space them so that the
pavers will slope away from the house and come out even. It turned out
that 116" x 116" worked pretty well.
In the evening I visited with friends, and worked a bit on the app.
Thursday 12 December 2013
Thursday
- Cloudy. Well, I'm officially giving up on Comet Lovejoy photography.
Between clouds, haze, a waxing moon, and the low temperatures it's just
not worth getting up at 4am....
The boss called. Apparently I emailed him an invoice that was blank except for the amounts owed. Heh. Well, I got the important part right....
The
ants and I are still battling it out. They seem to be going for the
sugar coated bait ... but the poison doesn't seem to have any effect.
Which means I'm feeding the little b**tards.
I
got a couple more cards this morning (Total:5, including one from the
local federal Representative to Congress). At first I thought someone
had accidentally sent me two cards. Instead, amusingly they were from
my brother and sister, who don't get along and don't even talk.
They were nearly identical, obviously descendants of a single
original photo. Blood will tell (and I probably talk too much about my
kittens):
If I told them it would probably ruin their Christmas ;-)
The Anker powered USB 7 port
unit arrived, and seems to work well, I can now use my expensive Mac
keyboard with my expensive Mac laptop, and have ports left for the
wireless mouse and the printer, and the occasional USB key drive.
Wednesday 11 December
2013
Wednesday
- Hazy at 3am. Looked out the window, didn't even bother getting out of bed. But clear at dawn, go figure.
I
started getting an error message from the MacBook, telling me that I
had a USB device drawing too much power, and that it was turning off
the USB ports. Which, in fact, it did. Annoying.
Doing a bit of research on the Internet, it seems that the Apple A1243
keyboard is notorious for pulling too much USB power. I'm not sure why
it would - there are no LED indicators or backlights on it, though it
does have two daisy chained USB ports of it's own. Anyway, ordered a
powered USB adapter from Amazon, and that should fix the problem, and
let me print via USB at the same time, which has also
been an issue.
In the meantime I'm using a Microsoft branded keyboard
("Dogs and Cats living together!", as Bill Murray would say).
Here
is a picture of my house's only casualty from Monday night - a frozen
bird feeder. When I took it down I could hear the outraged squawking of
it's avian "owner" from a nearby tree. After it thawed out I put it
back outside.
To prevent this in the future I could wrap some
Xmas lights around it, or maybe some insulation or black paper, or even
bring it in at night (only if the temperature is going to drop into the teens). There is also plumbers heating tape, but that
seems like overkill.
Note the larger ice crystals near the bottom. It was all frozen through however, nothing came out when I tipped it upside down.
It was bitterly cold out. I wore a set of work overalls over warm clothes, and that seemed to help a lot.
Later in the morning I took a screen shot of the temperature:
As last as last night they were predicting a low of 23F, which, given that it was already 25F at 9:30pm on Monday night, and clear out, was ridiculous.
I
was concerned when I heard that the Weather Channel had bought out
Weather Underground, it looks like my fears were justified. People need
to know when it's going to get really cold, and this was just bad
reporting/prediction.
Driving around town in the morning (while
doing a couple of errands) there was a lot of ice on the roads -
people's pipes had broken everywhere. Even commercial properties had
ice in the gutters.
Monday
- Working away on various chores. Bills, Christmas Cards, a few
Christmas Gifts, some belated Birthday cards. Went to the bank, picked up some registered mail from the post office, dropped
off overdue at the library, made a quick trip to Barnes and Noble down in
Palmdale, did a load of wash.
Ants have invaded. Gah. I thought they were gone, but they're back,
this time bringing some really big associates - two or three times the
sizes of the ants I usually see. It's the cold and rain that seems to
drive them in; but they stay for the stray crumbs, so I have to be
cleaner than usual.
Sunday
- Cold, but not amazingly so. I did various chores around the house.
I've been meaning to go see Ender's Game, and Gravity, but a loathing
of public places in flu seasons has kept me away. I can wait until it
comes out on Blu-Ray I guess.
