morrowlife

Here’s the business end of one of the telescopes at the Chabot Science Center. Part of my famous Machinery series.

Fine weekend, as usual. It’s been cold, cold, cold – almost down to freezing at night and only in the 40’s during the day. Brrrr!!!

Anyway. Got a few things done. Didn’t get others done. Loyal Readers Numbers Five and Twelve were here on Saturday, which was nice. Good visit. No news from Loyal Reader Number Three in the employment department – he’s still waiting for that letter.

Otherwise, all is well. We went to a church building in Tracy on Sunday evening to have a look at their first annual creche exhibit. An okay start, but they have a long way to go before they’re competitive with the big guys in Palo Alto. The good: there were some very nice creches there, they made an attempt to display them nicely, and they had a great bookmark, modeled closely after the one from Palo Alto. The bad: there aren’t enough creches to reach critical mass yet, the displays were lacking the supporting material to really make them classy, and there was no significant attempt to do lighting well, other than strings of Christmas lights artistically placed on the tables around the displays. The ugly: the proselyting-to-display ratio was way too high.

All in all, though, I think it was a good start. They need to grow fast, pay more attention to supporting details, and be sincere, and I think they’ll have a wonderful display in a few years.

Let’s see, did anything else happen on the weekend. Oh yeah, the really great news: the water rocket launcher is working! We tried it out with our flight-model bottle, and it stuck on the tube as badly as the one we tried at our recent campout. I swapped the o-ring with a smaller size, and that did the trick. We’re back in business. Of course, we destroyed our air pump at the campout, so we still have equipment problems. I used the compressor to pressurize it for our Saturday tests, but that’s a little bit of overkill and I fear it could damage something. So we need to either get a new bicycle pump or figure out how to limit the compressor’s pressure.

I’ll say one thing for the compressor – it sure pressurized that launcher fast.

I got all the websites but one transferred over to Godaddy on Saturday. The remaining one is written in Ruby on Rails, and it’s a more complicated transfer, what with multiple servers required to be running all at once. I think I’ll wait until Loyal Reader Number One (who is the author of the site) gets home later this week and solicit his input. We’ll get there.

Todays food attack news: A sandwich assault. Can you get any lower than that? Also today’s great Christmas idea: lousy gift wrapping. I need this. I’ll bet I could find a Loyal Reader or two who could do the work, though.

Time for home evening. See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Two holding a geocache at Anthony Chabot Regional Park. Sadly, the cache turns out to be positioned behind a bush, so we can’t see it. Not my best Great Art. Picture courtesy of the exclusive Treo-cam, and also part of my famous Camping series.

Great news from Loyal Reader Number Three in the job-search department! We think. He called his old employer at the firing range to see if there was any opportunity. They asked him if he had received their letter. He hadn’t. Apparently, they sent him a letter a couple of days ago to see if he was interested in coming back. He’s interested. There are no details until the letter actually arrives, and it may not turn out to be what he thinks it is, but we’re all cautiously optimistic. Best of luck, LRN3!

Okay day at work. I wasn’t supposed to be there today, but we did get the things done that had to be done, so I don’t resent it. Too much.

— Much later —

Had to stop – too many things going on. It’s now nearly 4:00 in the morning and I’m finally just about to go to bed. Yikes.

It all started out when I went to the store with Loyal Reader Number Four and bought a new router. The old one was dying – it crapped out pretty much once a day. It took a little while to get the new one installed. And then my IP address changed. Which killed my websites. Which would have been fine, except that my Dynamic DNS service didn’t work anymore because I had a new router and the script couldn’t find its IP address. Which I couldn’t figure out how to fix.

So I finally bit the bullet and bought hosting on Godaddy. I’ve been thinking about doing that for quite a while. It took quite some time to get the site set back up there, but it’s finally working and I’m going to bed. The remaining sites will move over there tomorrow, after which Larry will live out his life as a testbed. Or something.

No links, no toilet news, no food attack news. Just bed. See you tomorrow.

Here’s one of my two favorite things at the Chabot Science Center – a telescope. This is an oldie. They have several big ones too, but this one just looks cool.

Fine day. Got a couple of things done. Didn’t get a couple of other things done. The usual.

Went at lunch to have a look at a couple of cars. First tried to see a Lincoln MKZ. The nearest dealer turned out to be a thief, so I walked away without even looking at anything. Then I went to the local Chevy dealer to look at Suburbans. They only had a few, none of which was perfect, but I decided to test drive one. They actually told me they wouldn’t let me drive it without giving them my phone number. I won’t give car dealers my phone number, so I walked away.

Honestly. Does anybody wonder why American car sales have evaporated? I have money burning a hole in my pocket and a can’t even get them to show me their cars. The American carmakers have lots of faults, but their dealers are the biggest one. I may have to look at Japanese cars again.

Off Friday tomorrow, but I’ll be at work. We have a software delivery tomorrow. I think I’ll sleep in until 6:00 and go in an hour late. Maybe I’ll get to come home an hour early to boot. But maybe not.

Today’s toilet news: It’s not only Tokyo that’s looking at a toilet nightmare. Washingtonians, be afraid. Be very afraid.

See you tomorrow.

Here’s the view from near the campground at Anthony Chabot Regional Park. Loyal Reader Number Four and I were commenting on what a pretty little green meadow that was. Loyal Reader Number Two mentioned it looked like a golf course to him. Which it was. Part of my famous Camping series.

Yet another berserk day at work. We made it through our financial audit this morning. The folks interviewing us didn’t seem like they had a specific plan, so we just went through a few things and called it an hour and a half. Then we got a nice (and free) mexican lunch. No complaints.

We have one more audit by videoconference tomorrow. Hopes for success are high.

Talked to Loyal Reader Number Three a couple of times this afternoon. He’s still working on the job search and wanted to talk about the latest edition of his resume. Looks good. Let’s hope it does the trick.

In fact, let’s work on focusing some exclusive Morrowlife concern rays on LRN3’s behalf.

Prayer might be a good idea as well.

No Christmas list yet. I really need to put some work into it. Wait a minute – I know what I’ll do: leave it to my Loyal Readers. What do you think I should have on my Christmas list? Remember, we’re talking about me here, so nothing’s too good. Comments, Loyal Readers?

Todat’s heartwarming holiday tale: Man uses candy cane to fend off attacker. Go, and do thou likewise.

See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve being wheeled around at the Victorian Christmas Extravaganza. I believe this was taken before she threw up. So she looks a little grouchy. Picture courtesy of the exclusive Treo-cam.

Extreme Short Shrift tonight. We went directly from work (meaning Loyal Readers Numbers Two and Four had to come out to the South Bay this afternoon) to the annual Palo Alto LDS Christmas Creche exhibit, featuring over 400 creches and a organ concert performed by a well-known local organist, featuring original works by a well-known New Mexican composer and surgeon, who was in attendance and actually performed one of his own works. In addition, the president of the company that made the organ was also in attendance.

The concert was very nicely done. The organist’s work was technically excellent and a beautiful performance all around. The one thing I would have changed is that he tended to abruptly adjust the volume in kind of a jarring way. It wasn’t just an accident because he did it several times. I’m wondering if it was a limitation of the instrument, which he described as “modest.”

And it was – it’s a great church organ but I think it lacks the power to really give the best performance in a recital. Interestingly, the organ company that made it also made the church’s Conference Center organ and did the recent refurbishment of the tabernacle organ. So they’re good and this was a good instrument for its size.

Anyway. It was LRN2’s first visit to this annual exhibition, and he was as overwhelmed as we had been when we first went last year. The creches are beautiful, with lots of original work from all over the world, and they’re displayed incredibly artfully. It’s truly a first-class operation all around. We remembered several creches from last year and noticed many new ones this year.

I think we may make it an annual tradition. Although it’s open for less than a week in early December, and it’s a long drive from home. Still worth it.

That’s it – it’s too late for any more. Check out Loyal Reader Number One’s blog – he’s started posting again.

See you tomorrow.