morrowlife

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Two standing on a rock, staring steely-eyed into the future. At Big Sur, of course. We really need to go somewhere else sometime.

It’s 7-11 day! Celebrate with a Slurpee. Or a two-day-old hot dog. Or a frozen burrito. Or my favorite, a nice big cup of hot chocolate with vanilla-flavored creamer. Your choice.

For those few Loyal Readers who may not be able to figure out what I’m talking about, today is the eleventh day of July, the seventh month. Hence, 7-11 day.

Anyway. I’m on the train again this afternoon. The weather has cleared back up and warmed back up. It was quite cloudy, much cooler, and looked like rain yesterday (it didn’t rain, of course), which I didn’t expect. We appreciated the break in the heat, of course. It looks like it will be a little cooler for the next week or so – highs in the 80’s and low 90’s.

The pool has gotten quite comfortable. The water is in the upper 80’s now, which is good enough to step right into. We’ve been in it and the spa a few times already this week. They say swimming pools get as warm as bathwater in Lardville during the summer. We’ll see how it is in August.

Loyal Reader Number Three showed me a cute little computer game last week. It’s called Sumotori Dreams. It’s robot sumo wrestling, it’s small, and it’s fun. After a round ends, the robots lose their balance and try to bow to each other. Very amusing and highly recommended for a few minutes’ relaxation.

Of course, I still recommend Flow as well.

That’s it for today. See you tomorrow, and new Great Art subjects should be arriving soon.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve yet again. Now that’s the look I like to see. Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number Five.

Good afternoon! I’m writing offline on the train today. The going-home train has no internet connectivity, which is really not much worse than the morning train, which has mainly-dysfunctional connectivity. Didn’t ride the right morning train either, having gone to bed way too late last night.

I’m still working on the future software company. The latest idea, which is really just for fun and has no saleability to it at all, is for my own version of Wikipedia. The idea is to make my own Wikipedia with articles about myself, the Loyal Readers, and the Loyal Pets. Any queries on other topics would be passed through to the actual Wikipedia. I’ve downloaded MediaWiki and some documentation and am figuring out whether I can just configure it to pass unknown queries on to another website or whether I need to play with some code. Either way, I think it will be pretty simple. When I get it running, I’ll let the Loyal Reader know so they can help me test it out.

Obviously, there’s nothing to be sold here, but it does help me get my head into some code. Wish me luck.

Other pending projects: software that lets you scan your groceries in when you bring them home and out when you use them. It could be used for food storage or just for keeping track of what you have in the house. We could give the software away and charge for scanning hardware, or make a free version and a pay version with more functionality, such as the ability to print custom labels for home-canned food or other things that don’t already have barcodes. I think there’s some profit there, especially for keeping track of food storage.

Our best current project idea, though, is Loyal Reader Number One’s program to log educational activities for homeschoolers. The great thing about it is that it’s a web application with a server and a database. We could give it away to people who want to run their own server and database or sell server/database services to people who don’t want to or can’t set up their own system. We could do a little networking in our own school group and get a few beta testers. After that, it just might spread a little further.

I now have five people who have accepted my job offers, four of whom are pretty senior. I’ve started the ball rolling towards closing my remaining senior-level requisitions. I’m still looking for junior people, though. Strangely, my boss has no idea (link warning: very small bit of sound – also, this band has health insurance!) how many people she wants me to hire. How will I know when I’m done?

Time to watch some Blackadder the Third. See you tomorrow.

Here’s a view of the campground at Big Sur. I think it looks kind of like an RV industry ad, don’t you? That whole state park was a pretty good camping industry ad, now that I think of it.

No post last Friday. We were having too good of a time. The visit to Mesa was great and the trip home on Saturday was comfortable and timely. We were invited to a friend’s house for a barbecue right after we got home. Since we were just walking in the door, we were excused from bringing anything, so we just had a relaxing, pleasant evening chatting with friends. Sunday was as busy as usual but pleasant. I’d like to have a really restful Sabbath sometime soon, but it’s also nice to visit with people and even the meetings aren’t bad.

My brother-in-law Ken dropped in unexpectedly this afternoon. He was traveling through the area and likes to visit when he’s nearby. We enjoyed his too-short visit. Melanie is coming to spend the week next week, so we were just speculating that he was doing a pre-trip inspection for her. Now that’s service.

And I need to quit already – time for bed. See you tomorrow.

Here’s yet another in my famous bird series. These two fellas are Alcatraz residents. Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number One.

Happy Independence Day! Yesterday! We had a nice, quiet day, culminating in Loyal Reader Number Three and I going to see the fireworks at the neighborhood community college. We got out a little bit late and arrived at the grandstand just as the fireworks were starting. Perfect timing. Loyal Readers Numbers Five and Twelve were with us, and LRN12 definitely would not have enjoyed the fireworks, so bunches of people stayed home and watched a movie (link warning: movie-related music) on TV.

Anyway, the fireworks show was quite good and we were only out of the house for a few minutes or so.

Went to see my brother and nephew in Tucson this afternoon and evening – we just got home a few minutes ago. We went out to dinner at a fairly nice Mexican restaurant. The food was good but the service was pathetically slow. I complained and they gave us a bunch of money off along with numerous apologies. No problem.

While we were at my brother’s house, I had occasion to exercise the zipper on the brand-new pair of shorts I was wearing. It turns out that the zipper was sewn in defectively and it chose that moment to come apart. It took several minutes and Loyal Reader Number Four’s help to get the wardrobe malfunction put back together. In the meantime, my brother was wondering what was taking me so long. Dumb old shorts.

And now it’s time for bed. See you tomorrow, on the last day of our visit to Mesa.

Here are Loyal Readers Numbers Six and Twelve just hanging out. Isn’t she cute? Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number Five, who will be joining us tomorrow.

Greetings from hot, sunny Mesa, Arizona! We got here this afternoon, after a pleasant afternoon and evening at my cousin’s house in hot, sunny Southern California. They’re having a heat wave both here and there, so we’ve been uncomfortably warm from time to time. Loyal Readers Numbers Three and Fifteen’s apartment is comfortably cool, fortunately. It was 113 degrees here today, and it apparently doesn’t get much cooler overnight.

No post yesterday – no connection available.

The trip has been comfortable and easy so far. Poor LRN3 had car trouble today and his hot rod was stuck at the local 7-11 when we got here. He and I went over there to try to either figure its problem out (it would crank but wouldn’t start) or get it towed somewhere. We had tried just about everything we could think of. Finally, I unplugged the coil wire from the distributor and tested it for spark, which was good. I plugged it back in and asked LRN3 to crank it again to test a plug wire, which I had unplugged. He cranked it for a moment and it started immediately. I plugged the wire back in and it’s been running perfectly ever since. My guess is that the coil wire’s connection inside the distributor cap had gotten oxidized and the removal and reinsertion cleaned up the connection. We were certainly surprised when it started.

Lots more to talk about, but I’ll wait until tomorrow for that. XBox 360 is waiting for me. See you tomorrow.