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WEEK 50 2020
Last Week- Sun- Mon- Tue- Wed- Thur- Fri- Sat- Next Week
Saturday - Typical weather. Windy.
Keeping busy. Did some research on external optical drives, for the yearly backup, since I can't find my good Blu Ray burner. Burners are now down to about $25-$150, depending on the features you choose, and the disks are down to about a dollar. It sounds like the M-disk format is the best long term, but Blu Rays in general are better than the old D VD's. I'm up to about 250GB in user data these days...
For now I may just put it on some flash drives. These aren't archive quality, but since everything is on two spinning drives right now it isn't urgent.
Doing various chores around the house. I put up a shelf in the west bedroom, but the plank needs to be painted, and the garage hasn't gotten warm enough to do that. I'm also not happy with the brackets, they seem a bit flimsy for a full shelf of computer books.
Book #57 was We Are Legion (We are Bob) (Bobiverse #1), by Dennis Taylor. This was amusing. The premise is that a guy pays for cryonic death services, gets hit by a car, then wakes up 200 years from now. 'Wakes Up' as in they destructively scanned his brain tissue, and put it into a computer program. He's now property, but destined to be a starship pilot. Things get rolling from there...
Friday - Mostly overcast, very windy.
I caught just a glimpse of Jupiter and Saturn through a rather hazy gap in the clouds. Saturn looks to be perhaps a moon diameter (0.5 degrees) from Jupiter now.
The weather is supposed to continue like this for at least a week.
Winds were officially gusting into the high 30's, but it blew a panel right off the garden enclosure, I could hear it banging against things late in the evening, and went out and brought it into the garage. So, maybe more like 45 or 50mph?
The good news is that it's rather warm, lows are in the 40's, so not a lot of house heating is needed. I did drape a tarp over the air conditioner in the front room window, which reduced the draft there by quite a bit, not that it was huge.
I ordered a new auger motor for the pellet stove from Amazon. I'd have ordered directly from Mountain View Hearth but it'd be over four weeks for delivery. I'm not sure how good the quality of the Amazon unit is, I read the reviews and picked as best I could, but it's a crap shoot. It should arrive before Christmas. I haven't disassembled the stove yet, so it's available in the case of an emergency cold snap or whatever.
I also ordered an ingrown toenail kit. It might work, though I am dubious. Still, I want to avoid going to the doctor's during the Covid crisis (which I doubt the severity of, but it doesn't hurt me too much to stay home if I can fix things easily and cheaply).
Book #56 was The Merlin Gambit, by John F. Carr and Dietmar Wehr. This is a sequel to H. Beam Piper's Cosmic Computer of 1963. Piper didn't copyright his books, leaving people free to add to the "future history" as they want, so this is the sequel from C&W. It was OK, very similar in 'voice' to the original.
In other reading I worked some exercises from the Swift book from Big Nerd Ranch, still only about a quarter of the way through. The Swift Playground does allow quick testing and evaluation of things, though it's also fairly easy to crash. I have to say that I'm not impressed with the 'canonical' string comparison for Unicode - it strikes me as a recipe for bugs and hacking.
Thursday - Typical weather. Overcast for the last few days, no amateur astronomy, even if it had been warm..
Worked on finding out how to debug the pellet stove. It went out twice last night, so it's time.
Mountain Hearth actually has a good page on identifying your exact model, and on auger testing.
For the record: it is SN:79521, which makes it a post-2002 Whitfield Advantage II-T Classic.
Testing does require taking the stove apart, so until my back is a bit better it'll be electric and propane heat I think.
Worked on the app a bit more.
Texted a friend's daughter and wished her a Happy Birthday. I'd
sent her a card a while ago, but am not sure if it arrived.
Wednesday -Typical weather.
I threw my lower back out, bending down to feed the cat in the early AM. Sheesh. Didn't do much around the house or office after that.
Watched the SpaceX Starship SN8 test hop. Wow. They got off the ground after an abort in the morning, and the flight was very nearly flawless, but they had an engine out, due to low pressurization apparently, just before landing and so there was a rapid unscheduled disassembly of the vehicle. SpaceX considers it a success, and will no doubt fix the engine out for next time.
Book #55 was Old Nathan, by David Drake. This was not the Military/SF genre book he usually writes, but rather fantasy set in 1840's Appalachia. Good though the ending story just sort of came out of nowhere.
Book #54 was Violent Peace (Lenson #20) , by David Poyer. This takes place after the end of the world war with China in Overthrow.
Tuesday - Typical early winter weather.
Working on the app mostly.
Watched the SpaceX Starship SN8 test stream. There was another abort.
I found an internet stream in 4K from LabPadre that I can watch on the big monitor in the office. It's quite a difference. The Lab Padre and Overlook Horizon guys are fun to listen to, though after a while it gets a bit annoying. I've never actually listened to "channels" on YouTube before, never even occurred to me before this.
It was actually a bit windy and cloudy out, so no real urge to work outside, even though as winters go it is fairly mild stuff.
Unloaded the last seven bags of base from the truck.
Book #53 was Overthrow (Lenson #19), by David Poyer. Poyer basically follows five people
Anyway, World War III turns a bit nuclear, but in the end mainland China has to sue for peace.
Monday - It's OK, weather wise. A
normal winter day..
I use the little electric heater to take the edge off temperatures in the master bedroom. It has a thermostat, but it cycles on/off constantly, it is actually rather annoying. Maybe a small oil filled heater, without a fan, would be better.
There is a conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn coming on the 21st. Though it's been cloudy lately I have been able to see them getting closer - perhaps a bit more than the width of a full moon now.
Took some more bags of base out of the back of the truck.
Sunday - Pleasant.
No shopping at WinCo in the morning, with S out of town. I could go, but there's nothing too urgent.
I did go by the little market and pick up some milk though.
Book #52 was Forged
(Alex Verus #11), by Benedict Jacka. It was good, much the
same as the preceding, wherein the protagonist juggles multiple enemies
and friends at the same time...
