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WEEK 28 2015

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Thirteen
Years
Ago,
This
Week
2002

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Eleven Years Ago, this week, 2004

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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 July 2015

Saturday - Warming up now, about 90F.

I was going to take a walk, but by the time I was done with various chores it was also windy, so maybe tomorrow.

D said he has a permit for the Grand Canyon for November, though sadly not a cross-canyon permit. Still, a hike down, then a good day hike, then a hike back up should be fun as well.

T says the spreadsheet looks OK, so that's nice.

I was going to work on the app, but the neighbor's were just too loud. It was, after all, Saturday, so I can't really complain.

Book #37 was Spellbound (Grimnoir #2), by Larry Correia. I picked it up at the library, along with the third book, while returning stuff earlier in the week. Correia's stuff is a bit like watching Magnum, P.I.: You know what you're going to get, and it's fun and a quick read. And having 'battle zeppelins' are always the sign of a good book....

Speaking of Magnum, Tom Selleck was accused of stealing water from a fire hydrant, for his ranch the other day. Turns out that he'd paid for the water, it's not uncommon for districts to use the mains via a metered hydrant to sell water to ranches and contractor's.

How the district managed to accuse their own client of theft is a good question. I imagine they'll have to pay him $$ for blackening his name, a big deal to someone like an actor who's reputation is an important part of his business. Particularly Selleck, who almost always plays the 'good guy'.

S is down in SD. She mentioned in a text that her mother's dog was vomiting a lot, and she had been asked to check it out. Ugh. Then again, for this week in 2002 she was looking after my pets, in particular poor Phoebe:

"A true friend will take your sick cat to the vet, and discuss at length the quantity and quality of what's coming out both ends..."

Apple's been messing with their photos app, making it harder to get things into a standard folder, trying to lock in the users. But it turns out that the old XP box sees the phone easily, and will also easily download the photographs without iTunes and iCloud and iPhoto and iGarbage. This isn't always the case according to the internet, often the most recent version of iTunes is needed, but I seem to have been lucky. So now I've ported them all over to the folder structure where I keep everything else.

iPhone photo of an Egret and some gulls, from my walk from Cayucos to Morro Rock.

Friday 10 July 2015

Friday - Warm, but again, mostly nice.

T had called me on Thursday, with some spreadsheet stuff that needed doing, so in the morning I turned on the XP computer, and it wouldn't boot. I'd noted that it wasn't keeping settings or time last month, so rather than panicking I just found a CR-2032 battery and put in to replace the old CMOS battery. Then it booted fine. It already had Office 2007 on it, so I downloaded the files Tim had sent to me from the MacBook to a flash drive, then onto the XP box.

It was a fairly straightforward task, and I was thinking of using VbScript or maybe Vlookup, but decided to go instead with the MATCH and INDEX commands in a formula, and was done before lunch, and put the results back on the flash drive, thence onto the MacBook, and then via email back to Tim. He'll have to vet it, but I think it's OK.

I made a quick run to the library to drop off a book that was due, and went by Home Depot to pick up some Sevin, then back home and back to work on the app. I'm documenting building the app, using Libre Office, so it's taking a bit more time than it would, but should speed up the next app...

Book #36, read at the beach, was The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Leviathan, by Jack Campbell.

Thursday 9 July 2015

Thursday - Warm. I only turned on the a/c for a couple of hours. We even had some high clouds and wind. I had some business at the bank, so I took a quick 3 mile walk at lunchtime to take care of it.

Speaking of wind, apparently there was quite the thunderstorm in the AV while I was at Cayucos. It actually partially broke a branch off the front yard tree, so I'll have to get the tree saw out and cut it off.

The water bill arrived, and I almost hit the 30% reduction, 43 units as opposed to a target of 41, down from 62 last year. Whoot! Though the grass is yellow and not looking so good...

Paid a whole bunch of bills, insurance for the boat and car, water, electricity, etc. Sigh.

Gotta get the app out and start on the next.

Book #35, read over vacation, was The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast, by Jack Campbell. Again light reading, fun, OK for the beach stuff.

Wednesday 8 July 2015

Wednesday - Warm, but not hot. Yay!

I worked on a few things - installed more tomato cages, did a few small yard chores, etc. I had to toss a bunch of fruit and veggies, sadly. It doesn't look like the teenage boy made huge inroads into it all, what a surprise. I guess I could have taken it to the coast...

Someone had tried to call me, and said my phonemail wasn't on, so I had to turn that on. Thanks for nothing, Verizon. Then they suggested that I fix the message, which had an unfortunate pause in it. Heh. Easy to do with the iPhone.

Did I mention getting an iPhone 6? My droid had deleted about half my contacts, and was not reliably ringing on my end. Indeed, we left late for the beach because I was waiting for my friends to call, and they were calling and not getting through. Since my house-sitter was present the whole time I had confirmation that I wasn't crazy or deaf - there was no ringing.

I was considering another Droid, but they had a promotion on the iPhone 6 (the 6s is coming out shortly), so for about $103 and $1 extra a month I'm set.

I went by the library and dropped off a couple of books, and picked up a book on the iPhone 5 that they had. Close enough.

Back to work on the app....

I read a few books over vacation.

Book #34 would be Hard Magic (Grimnoir #1), by Larry Correia. Fun mixture of magic and 1930's detective noir...

Tuesday 7 July 2015

Tuesday - Another hot but not crazy day. Indeed, it was down to 75F by late evening, 10-ish.

I did a bunch of bills, some chores.

I discovered over the holiday that our business mail accounts weren't working. I postponed the irritation of dealing with it until I got home. For some reason IMAP and POP was turned off. I don't know why, I certainly didn't do it, but I turned them on and things work again.

I tried to work on the app, but there were a bunch of updates from Apple to download and deal with. Both Xcode and OSX. The OSX update borked my Apple external USB keyboard, rendering it unusable. As a result I am typing on a 25 cent yard sale Dell keyboard... I just have to keep in mind that the option and command keys are reversed.

This took up most of the afternoon to do. I thought at first that the keyboard issue was something I'd done, or a failure of my USB hub, but looking online it seems like a number of other people were affected.

Monday 6 July 2015

Monday - Hot, but not crazy, under 100F.

I did various chores and errands, but was a bit under the weather. I guess long trips do that to me now. Ah well.

Book #32 was Oregairu, Vol. 3, by Watari Wataru and Book #33 is Oregairu Vol. 4. I actually read these before I left. The season 2 anime is done, and finished roughly at Volume 11, which give an idea of how long things are, at roughly 250 pgs. per volume. I don't think 11 is actually out and/or translated into English yet.

It was sort of an odd ending. As I mentioned, the fun was in seeing the horrible attempts at 'helping' by the protagonist, but he's (kinda) seen the light and now it's focusing on the personal problems of another character, which isn't particularly interesting to me. Also there is a bunch of very Japanese 'truth' and 'reality' philosophical stuff, which again doesn't mean much to me. Oh well.

Sunday 5 July 2015

Sunday - At the coast. Packing and cleaning for the trip back to Lancaster.

Headed home about 11am, arrived about 4pm. House and pets are all good. G did a great job looking after them!

Picture of the Week

The downtown beach in Cayucos, with the pier re-construction under way.

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