morrowlife

Here’s an old bear trap. I wouldn’t want to be the one to have to drag this thing out to the woods and release the bear.

Rough drive this morning. In fact, I never completed it. It turns out there were a couple of problems. First, there was a two-semi accident in the middle of Livermore. That had things snarled up pretty badly. Then a pickup overturned a couple of times in Dublin, spilling several bottles of chlorine on the road and breaking them, which caused chlorine gas to waft gently over the freeway. They closed the 580/680 interchange down for about four hours. I waited in the traffic jam for a little more than two hours and finally decided to give it up for the day. Had a nice day at home, although I spent most of it working anyway.

It was meeting night tonight. I have a Sunday baptism to prepare for, so we discussed the plans just a little bit. I have lots of work to do for that one – the full-time missionaries were going to propose an agenda for the meeting, which they decided not to do. So I will. Sigh.

Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two got the best scores on English and Math, respectively, out of their entire school on some test they took last spring. Today they both received little SanDisk MP3 players as a reward. How nice of them to do that. They both have iPods already, but these little things are really cool and will definitely have a use. They come with an easy-to-see screen, a built-in microphone, and an FM tuner and you put music on them just by dragging and dropping from your computer. And they retail for only $40. I haven’t played with one yet, but I’m tentatively recommending them. I’ll give a full report when I can get one of the Loyal Readers to let me play with his for a little while.

I spent a couple of minutes trying to add a slightly better CSS interface to Waterlogged. I was trying to copy something from the book I’m reading, and it wasn’t a perfect fit. I couldn’t get it to do anything, though. Maybe I need to restart the Mongrel servers after updating the code. I thought you didn’t have to do that with Rails, but I could be wrong, given our setup. I’ll have to give it a try one day Real Soon Now.

Time for bed. See you tomorrow.

Here are Loyal Readers Numbers One, Two, and Four enjoying their books in our campsite at Clark’s Fork.

It’s earlier than my usual blogging hour tonight. Got home at about 7:00, worked on the water softener (it won’t soften water, which is it primary – indeed, only – function), ate, and sat down to blog. The water softener did some more damage to my already-sore hands. Pity me, Loyal Readers. Hopefully, my sacrifice won’t be in vain and we’ll start getting some soft water now.

We won’t be buying any more GE appliances, that’s for sure. So far, we’ve needed repairs on our brand-new GE refrigerator (twice), dishwasher (twice and it needs it again), stove, microwave, and water softener (I’ve worked on it myself twice now). I guess the oven is okay. Never again.

It was the perfect afternoon/evening for open-air motoring on the way home today. And I mean perfect. It was clear, completely comfortable, and delightful. I pity all people with roofs on their cars. And I especially pity people with soft tops who didn’t have them down tonight. Fall is absolutely the best time for convertibling.

The new charger for my RAZR arrived today. It works fine, so I’m completely happy with the phone now. I’m not completely happy with WalMart, though. Their advertising said nothing about the pathetic, unusable charger that came with the phone. It was reasonable to expect a working, US charger, and they didn’t provide it. That’s just one more reason why I hate doing business with those people.

But I love my phone.

Time to move on to other things. See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve helping load the dishwasher – possibly her very favorite activity. Exclusive low-quality RAZR-cam photo courtesy of me.

No time to write about much – Home Evening went a little late, since our activity was in the spa. It sure was nice, though.

Fine weekend. I got a little bit of work done on a few cars – not much more than checking oil and air filters, but at least it was something. Loyal Reader Number Four and I also got the pool and pond filters cleaned. I sliced my finger pretty badly on the pool filter; fortunately, it’s healing quickly. I had been hoping to change the Sable’s brakes again to try to stop them from squealing, which they’ve done ever since I put Napa’s finest brake pads on. I’m going to switch to ceramic pads and see if they help. Anyway, I decided to put it off for another week due to the injured finger.

More news later. See you tomorrow.