travels and images

WEEK 15 2015

Last Week- Sun- Mon- Tue- Wed- Thur- Fri- Sat- Next Week

Picture of the Week

MAIN PAGE

Oxnard Weather Underground

Lancaster Weather Underground

Martinez WeatherUnderground

Thirteen
Years
Ago,
This
Week
2002

Twelve Years Ago, This Week, 2003

Eleven Years Ago, this week, 2004

Ten Years Ago, this week, 2005

Nine Years Ago, This Week, 2006

Eight Years Ago, This Week, 2007

Seven Years Ago, This Week, 2008

Six Years Ago, This Week, 2009

Five Years Ago, This Week, 2010

Four Years Ago,
This Week,
2011

Three Years Ago,
This Week,
2012

Two Years Ago,
This Week,
2013

One
Year
Ago
This
Week
2014

Saturday 11 April March 2015

Saturday - Just doing some chores and work around the house.

I bought a "Shark Bite" adapter to repair the rear hose bib in the yard, and some concrete blocks to replace the collapsing old tomato bed side boards.

Loading, unloading into a wheelbarrow, unloading in the back yard the 18 blocks is all I dared do in one day, on top of the other stuff. I'll get another 18 tomorrow, then start some excavation and earth turnover.

At 89 cents each they're pretty cheap. I'll paint them the same color as the house/trim, and they will probably look OK. I'll also put bricks as a cap, and put down a path of bricks around it - the bricks have been sitting on the patio for the last year. I noticed, last fall, some cracks in the patio, and a few weeks ago it finally occurred to me that it was the weight of 500 odd bricks that was probably to blame!

They are mismatched, so a real wall would be hard to do (plus tough on my hands) but used as pavers a rustic look will be easy to achieve :-)

Friday 10 April 2015

Friday - More nice weather.

I meant to go for a nice long walk, but various errands got in the way - bank stuff in preparation for tax day and whatnot.

A little got done on the app side, mostly cleanup stuff, getting rid of all the cruft that built up when I was trying to fix things.

I also wrestled Win7 into submission. Apparently it was something related to system update - killing process that fixed things. Which is too bad - automatic updates have been fine, since I only rarely use the partition for anything serious. It's too bad that Microsoft can't, after 20 years, get it right yet. Ah well.

I took the biggest piece of tank furniture that I'd added the other day out of the tank. Stumpy loved it - a fake branch/root ball that he would crawl under and mess around with. But it was a drowning hazard, it's shape made it possible to get him wedged under it.

My friend Tim took the family to Disneyland a while back, and I got a postcard. It's 3D - tilt it just right and Minnie appears and gives Mickey a kiss, upon which his eyes roll up in some sort of rodent ecstasy...

Postcard on the fridge.

Thursday 9 April 2015

Thursday - Nice weather.

I went to the stores and did grocery shopping in the morning, then mowed the back yard.

Then, more debugging stuff. I finally figured the problem out: same one as I had before, a separately threaded process not syncing with the main thread. Easy enough to fix, though it breaks the separation between model and controller. Not that I care at this point, I just want to finish and ship.

We have to pay the State of California $800 again, for the 'privilege' of being a corporation here, on the 15th.

Since S is out of town, visiting with family, I went to the Boy Scout troop meeting for her. The troop has fallen on hard times, they are essentially down to a single, pretty senior, scout. It's a vicious circle, the families of prospective scouts visit, see there's no-one for their child to hang out with, then join a different troop... Kind of sad.

I was tasked to stop and pick up cupcakes on the way over, at WinCo. And WinCo, at 7pm is...well...bad.

I wanted to watch some streaming video in the evening, after the scouting meeting, but the Roku couldn't keep a lock and kept rebooting. Hopefully it's on Time-Warner's end, not my Roku failing. Though I think I've another in a drawer somewhere.

Instead I read the next installment in the Thursday Next series, Book #17, The Well of Lost Plots, by Jasper Fforde.

Wednesday 8 April 2015

Wednesday - Windy and blustery. There were reports of light rain in the valley, but I didn't see any rain at my place.

Worked about a half day on the app, before quitting in frustration. Objective-C is almost impossible to debug. This is the 4th version of the app, the 2nd after the major change in specifications, and it should be easier than this.

Did a 20 gallon water change in the turtles tank, changed filters, added some tank furniture that R&S had found at a yard sale. He seems happy, becoming most active in the evening. Suzy is interested, and bats at him as he swims about.

Suzy and Stumpy.

Book #16 was Lost In A Good Book, by Jasper Fforde (Thursday Next #2). Thursday, an officer specializing in keeping people from changing the plots of books in an alternate Britain, gets sucked into the world inside books, and becomes an agent there...

Tuesday 7 April 2015

Tuesday - Overcast and windy.

I mowed the front yard. Some friends said they were going to come by, but I haven't heard from them, so... It is Easter week, after all. And as long as I don't overdo it I'll be OK, it just takes longer..

Book #15 was The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde. This is the first book in a fun, kind of crazy, series. It's hard to describe, the Thursday Next Wikipedia page gives an idea of how it works. Recommended, if it's to your taste (goofy in a very British way).

I'd seen a recommendation for it, and discovered that the LA County Library had an e-copy. Actually an e-copy of the first five books.

I hesitated, because last time I tried one of their eBooks it was a real pain. But now you can just go through your Kindle account and Amazon, and it's pretty painless.

Monday 6 April 2015

Monday - Not much to say.

It's cooling down, they're predicting a storm blowing in, though not a big one.

Working on the app. Just a grind, bug hunting again. At a certain point the updates to the game values become almost arbitrary, and I can't figure out why. It's almost impossible, yet I can see it happening...

The Windows 7 side is acting up again, the svchost process running and using up all the RAM, for hours on end. For now I'll just turn off that partition, because I don't want to get enmeshed in debugging Windows in the middle of debugging my own code....

Sunday 5 April 2015

Sunday - A nice day, no complaints....

I'm not doing a lot of programming the last couple of days, trying to let the hands recuperate a bit.

Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: Off Anacapa in a near calm, 2008.

Last Week- Sun- Mon- Tue- Wed- Thur- Fri- Sat- Next Week