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WEEK 10 2014

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First Post, 17 March 2002

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Three Years Ago,
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2012

One Year Ago,
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2013

Saturday 8 March 2014

Saturday - Another nice day, though it was cool enough that the central heat kicked on in the early morning. Since I was feeling a bit better, the back not hurting, I decided to do a bit more excavation and layout on the little planter foundation. By the time my friends called for lunch it was pretty well laid out and had the base in. I need to put in a level layer of sand of 1" or so, and level the foundation course, then we're ready to go.

I did have to go pick up some more base, so I picked up a bit more sand and another twelve blocks or so. That should be enough, I think.

Lunch was at Mahli's, with my friends. They had a interesting morning - they did their yard sale rounds, and on the way home their car just died at a stoplight. It has power, and gas, but (apparently) no spark. They had to have it towed six blocks or so to their house. It could be the coil, or an ignition chip in the circuit, or something like that. Since my friend recently bought another old Mercedes, an '83 Super Diesel, they still have another four cars, so it shouldn't impact things too much :-)

I'd planned to keep working on the little wall, but my back had stiffened up by the end of lunch, so tomorrow or sometime next week I guess.

In the evening I went over and we watched a movie from Netflix. The second Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey, A Game of Shadows. It was a DVD, but the salesman said that all standard DVD's are up-interpolated to HD now, and it looked pretty sharp.

They'd called the local Costco manager, and "Dale Carnegied" her (their phrase) and they'd arranged for an overnighting of a new remote to replace the one with the dreadful key bounce issues that came with the TV. It's much nicer.

My friend says that honest compliments for the work being done by managers and workers is so rare that it leads to sometimes extraordinary results - she'd called a gas company worker's manager last year rand reported that he'd done a wonderful job on a bad gas line or something at her house - and he was nominated for "Best Worker of the Year" by his company and got an award and cash prize.

Thinking back on it, the two or three times in my life that my hard work was publicly recognized always left me sort of stunned, so, yeah....

I guess the President jetted off to Florida to golf, while Russia gets ready to invade the Ukraine. I guess there isn't much he could do, it's in the Russian sphere of influence after all, and he obviously doesn't want to do anything, and probably wouldn't have the stones, so...why not golf?

As one wag put it: "#Ukraine: POTUS is closely following events from the green, via Putins tweets".

Friday 7 March 2014

Friday - Still warm. Crazy weather, though not really. AV weather is variable.

In other news, the dental specialist couldn't find anything too unusual with respect to the molar that was bothering me.. The post is a bit short, but not amazingly so. The gum looks good, there is no cavity or crack visible in the X-ray, though this guy was honest enough to admit that not all cracks are visible. There is no apparent abscess, but apparently those are always visible either. It isn't sensitive to pressure, raps, heat or cold, right now anyway. Just the same as always... His best guess was a deep abscess, and we'll just wait and see if it comes back.

The Table of Books Read, so far, this year, is therefore:

#1 A Talent For War (Alex Benedict #1)
#2 iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide, 3rd Edition
#3 The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce #1)
#4 The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag (Flavia de Luce #2)
#5 A Red Herring without Mustard (Flavia de Luce #3)

#6 I am Half-Sick of Shadows (Flavia de Luce #4)
#7 The Dead in their Vaulted Arches (Flavia de Luce #5)
#8, The Judge of Ages (Hermetic Millenia #3)
#9 Rising Tides (Destroyermen #5)
#10 Firestorm (Destroyermen #6)

Thursday 6 March 2014

Thursday - A nice sunny day, a bit breezy. Went out for a walk for the first time in a while, still a lot of puddles in the unpaved roads to the west of home.

I forgot to mention - picked up the Girl Scout cookies from Tim yesterday. I'd sent the money earlier, via mail to his daughter, because I can still remember being in grade school and what a big deal it was to get a letter of any kind.

We also talked a bit about dentistry. He's dubious about some of the work the new dentist wants to do, which aligns to my opinions as well. Friday I've an appointment with an oral surgeon there about the bad molar, but I think I'll hold off on any more work for now. Maybe try a 3rd place?

One thing I needed to do on Monday was to update my iPad and OSX boxes. How I despise the new iOS 7. From the beautiful and elegant to the boring and pedestrian. And then the pointless changes - a grey background behind the stuff in the docking bar, for example.

"Hey", they must have asked focus groups, "Would you prefer the bottom third of the background image you personally chose for you iPad, or a dull gray band an inch and a half high that can't be removed?"

I suspect they didn't listen to the answer. Or maybe, thinking they are themselves as Steve Jobs (who was obnoxious, but a genius), and didn't bother asking. Just atrocious.

I was talking to Dave about iOS 7, how it felt like someone had maliciously vandalized one of my possessions, like having my car keyed. He agreed: when he'd updated his iPhone they'd changed and modified things almost at random, with no improvements in anything he used, and some downgrades. Gah.

I still need to upgrade the MacBook to Mavericks, but I need to back stuff up first. Also Parallels wants to sell me ver.9, I'm not sure if that is required or just marketing on their part. It's a good product, but I'm not one to upgrade unnecessarily....

Kirk, who recently got a Surface tablet, demonstrated it to me the other day, while I was helping him with homework. It actually seems pretty snappy, and he's been able to put everything (except AutoCad) on it that he wanted, after borrowing an external CD/DVD reader from me.

Book #10 was Firestorm:Destroyermen (Destroyermen #6), by Taylor Anderson. The fight goes on....

Wednesday 5 March 2014

Wednesday - Down to Ventura, to confer with Tim and Dave and do some preparation work on the upcoming job. Mainly scheduling stuff, and deciding on some documentation.

Checked on the boat, dry and tight, which was nice. Even a comfortable temperature inside, which suggests that my worries of overheating in summer are probably well founded. The little refrigerator didn't have any visible effect on my electric bill, but I strongly suspect that it might set up a positive feedback loop in summer, heating the cabin, then running more to keep itself cool, thus heating the cabin more....

Home in the late evening, exhausted, and hit the sack.

Tuesday 4 March 2014

Tuesday - Spent hours updating my on line accounts for an expired credit card. Bah. Worked on the app a bit, but spent a lot of time doing bills and other beginning of the month errands, since the weekend was a loss.

I hear that my friends old Series 1 TIVO is giving them problems intermittently. They're grandfathered into a lifetime no-payment system on the old unit and have been understandably babying it (and it's tiny hard drive) along but of course it's more than 10 years old and doesn't understand HDMI, Ethernet, or streaming, etc. I gifted them my much newer Premiere XL system - I haven't used it in months - and they may subscribe using it.

Monday 3 March 2014

Monday - I see Putin has totally outmaneuvered Obama in the Ukraine. Not a surprise, he was able to fool Bush and his (very smart) advisors so Obama and his team of second and third raters is a complete pushover. Oh well.

I imagine, on top of the other foreign policy failures, that it'll be an interesting couple of decades dealing with China and the other pugnacious countries around the world now. Blood in the water at the end of 75 years of Pax Americana. Japan, South Korea and the Phillipines must be shaking in their boots as they contemplate relying on us for any sort of security.

Sunday 2 March 2014

Sunday - Still didn't get out into the yard. I'm kind of dragging again, maybe the drugs haven't knocked that infection down.

An amusing end to the TV setup story of yesterday. We had dragged the monster of an old entertainment center out to my friends porch in the early evening. S then put it on Craig's List as a free "Curb Alert", and moved her car so that people could drive straight up to the porch. I mocked her optimism, but bright and early, about 6am, my friend's dogs started barking. She looked out and a couple of guys were there with a truck picking it up (with difficulty, I'm told)! So, in less than twelve hours, S was proved right and I was, I admit it, wrong.

Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: Peach blossoms in the rain.

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