Saturday - blue and sunny weather, despite earlier predictions of rain. A bit like Bilbo's going away party.
My friends had rented one of those "Moon Bounce" things for all
the kids expected. Not as expensive as I would have thought - under a
$100 for a day. And well worth it - the kids loved it and spent most of
their time in it. Even the one-year-old guest of honor spent some time
in there, amused and puzzled that the skill of walking, so recently
acquired, seemed to have disappeared! It was a nice party all around,
family and friends showing up and enjoying life!
Maybe I'll get a copy of the birthday girl enjoying her first cake, and post it. Heh.
Friday 5 December
2003
Friday - the CD burner in my work PC has failed. The
light on the front was blinking continually, the door would not open,
and when I went to Windows Explorer there were no CD or DVD drives
shown. After a lot of swapping cables, changing power leads and such, I
isolated it to the CD burner itself being bad. When disconnected the
DVD drive worked again.
After work I headed on down to San Diego. The usual Friday traffic, so
about a four hour drive, or a couple more "Fellowship of the Ring"
tapes. Tape 6 seems to have problems, but I managed to get it to play
all the way through. It was just a little foggy down there, not bad.
Thursday 4 December 2003
Thursday
- dinner was at the Tokyo Steak House, at the request of a small boy,
for his birthday. Not much else to report here - it's been a fairly
quiet week.
The optical mouse, and the cat'e eyes, have much the same glow - kind of eerie:
Obligatory blog cat picture.
Wednesday 3 December 2003
Wednesday
- picked up some birthday presents for a friends daughter on the way to
work (empty stores). Little round stuffed critters: a frog, a chick, a
pig. What I did not know is that they make sounds, and those sounds are
motion activated. So I'm driving to work and listening to the radio and
come to the rough patches through the ongoing road work. U2 is on the
radio...
"...and you give yourself away...you give yourself...RIBBIT RIBBIT
...and so I can't live, with or with- CLUCK CLUCK CLUCKRIBBIT
...with or...OINK OINKCLUCKRIBBITOINk..."
I thing it improved the song, but maybe thats just me.
Tuesday 2 December 2003
Tuesday
- feeling better. Out shopping for Xmas and an upcoming birthday. I
found what I wanted in a store, but the clerk there sent me across the
street to another store - "They have a better selection..." he said. They didn't, actually, and there were long lines, but he meant well and I thank him for the thought.
Put a CD burner in the rebuilt computer. It's a christmas gift for
someone, built from assorted spare parts accumulated through the year.
Actually I have two boxes to build - old Pentium 233 class machines,
but more than adequate for email and light duty web stuff. Anyway, one
is done, now for the other...
At work they were using a large crane to lower generators into the the
emergency power building. Kind of cool to watch - big green diesel
electric units that barely fit on the back of a semi-truck picked up
and dropped down onto their pads ( no roof yet in the building). At one
point several people who had driven up in the little electric golf cars
were watching the proceedings...all they needed was the little speaker
and you'd swear they were at the drive-in. I tried to take a picture
but the car-camera batteries were dead.
Monday 1 December 2003
Monday - too tired to post after work.
Sunday 30
November 2003
Sunday
- a nice day. I didn't actually do much - reinstalled system on a
computer, put up the Christmas lights. I had some help with the latter
- my friends 9-year old son (almost
10) helped out a lot. Not much else going on. Pizza for dinner. Still a
bit under the weather, but well enough to go to work tomorrow.
I need to start on my Christmas cards. Last year I did them, then
misplaced them, and just didn't send many out. So, I guess I'm owing a
few.
Picture of the Week
Photo Notes: The family Thanksgiving table, as photographed by my brother - pre-turkey, but note that there are olives and pickles out...
Travels and Images
