morrowlife

Is this the flower picture Loyal Reader Number Five wants me to post? I have no idea, although I know the picture came from her. Thanks, LRN5, and let me know if I got the right picture. It was definitely in my Blog Fodder folder, as she suggested.

Anyway. Hot day today. It’s almost 8:00 in the evening and it’s still 96 degrees out. That’s just not right. Fortunately, it’s also not usual around here. I checked the ten-day forecast, and it should be back into the low sixties at night within a couple of days. In the meantime, the scorching weather is at least keeping the pool warm (link question: given how deep the water is where those people in the background are standing, what are the chances this girl is just standing on a surfboard that’s lying on the sand?). I just checked, and the water temperature is 85. Not bad.

Nothing much else to report. LRN5 has been interviewing most of the day, so Loyal Reader Number 12 has been here with the family. LRN5’s still not home yet, and I don’t think we expect to see her for a couple more hours. Long day for everybody concerned.

Time to do other things. See you tomorrow.

Or is that smiling crawler? In any case, here’s another cute picture of Loyal Reader Number Twelve. Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number Five, who is certain she sent me a beautiful piece of Great Art featuring flowers, and who wonders why it has never been featured on the blog. Unfortunately, I’m not exactly sure where it is, but I’m looking hard for it. Don’t worry, LRN5. I’ll find it and put it here Real Soon Now. Just keep shooting that Great Art!

The blog is back! And better than ever. Or at least no worse than before. Whatever.

We had a great campout. Clark Fork is a beautiful place – about 6,000 feet in altitude in the middle of a beautiful Redwood forest. There’s a pretty little boulder-strewn river running through it, with a beautiful waterfall under a bridge right by the entrance to the campground. We hiked around the water a little bit, but Loyal Reader Number Two was the only one whose shoes permitted him to do a little wading. Other than the numb feet, he enjoyed it. The water was clear, the boulders were picturesque, and the setting was spectacular.

We also drove up to Sonora pass, which is over 9,600 feet in altitude. The road up there is quite steep for the last 3,000 feet of altitude, and it was a nice drive. I’ll remember to post the picture I took of the Loyal Readers in front of the sign up on the top.

We also drove up a pretty rustic dirt road to the top of another mountain. The only thing up there was a trailhead for a walk to Sword Lake, a hike we weren’t equipped to do. So we drove back down. Maybe we’ll go up to the lake next time.

And there definitely will be a next time. Clark Fork: highly recommended. Check out the pictures I’m planning to post on the HRVA website Real Soon Now. Also the Great Art soon to be featured on this blog.

Otherwise, the weekend was quiet. We spent some time on Saturday afternoon relaxing in the pool and spa. Sunday was pretty well occupied with my missionary meeting, church, another missionary meeting, two home teaching visits, and Standards Night. Throw in a couple of meals there, and the day was packed.

Tomorrow was supposed to be our trip to the ball game in San Francisco, but we need to have LRN12 with us, so we’re canceling the ball game. None of us are big baseball fans anyway, and we’ll be much more comfortable at home.

And it’s time for Home Evening to start. See you tomorrow.

Here’s possibly the last Alcatraz picture. It’s a nice view of The Rock, but it kind of looks like the people down there in the corner are starting to doubt they’ll make it alive. Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number One, of course.

Started my vacation today. The back is in such sad shape that I had no choice. I’ve been sitting around all day with a heating pad against my back. Sigh.

But the campout must go on! We start tomorrow. There seems to be at least an even chance that I’ll be called for jury duty tomorrow, but they told me I can just call them and get rescheduled. Must … remember … to … call.

In any case, though, there will be no posts on Thursday or Friday. We don’t think we’ll even have electricity Way Out There, let alone Wifi. My Loyal Readers will just have to manage for a couple of days. Besides, maybe I’ll finally get some new Great Art.

I have a new candidate for worst music video ever. Although that other one will be hard to beat.

And with that, have a great weekend! See you on Monday.

Here are the ruins of the Alcatraz lighthouse way back there in the background. As far as I know. Photo once again courtesy of Loyal Reader Number One.

Ouch! My back is killing me! I seem to have pulled a muscle in my upper back a few weeks ago and it hurts like crazy. Not all the time, but whenever I twist or tense that muscle in any way, it feels like I’m being stabbed in the back. Come to think of it, maybe I actually am being stabbed in the back. Better check into that.

Otherwise, it was a quiet day. I have an employee problem or two, but nothing to write home about. The morning drive was a little slower than usual, making me slightly late for my first meeting of the day, but the afternoon was right on schedule.

Only one more commuting day this week. I’m taking a vacation day on Thursday and Friday is my off day. We’re going camping at a place called Clark Fork. It’s supposed to be very nice, although it appears they don’t have any hookups. I need to find the time Thursday morning to buy a new trailer battery, and we’ll be just fine with that and the generator. No air conditioning for us, though. On the other hand, we could always choose to stay at one of the many commercial campgrounds in that general area if Clark Fork doesn’t work out.

I’m delighted to hear about Loyal Reader Number Five’s weekend job. Congratulations! I’m sure something good for weekdays will turn up soon too.

No progress on the Gardenville front today. I’m trying to rest my back and The Dukes of Hazzard are on TV, so there just wasn’t any opportunity. Maybe I can get a few things done during the vacation.

Here are some birds in the ruins of Alcatraz. Note the cute little baby. Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number One.

Well, my boss is back and things are pretty much back to normal at work. Which is both good and bad. It’s been nice being in charge, but it’s also nice not to be in charge anymore.

Good weekend. Remember all those things I needed to do? I did manage to add chlorine to the pool and even swim for a little while. Otherwise, pretty much nothing got done from that list. Loyal Reader Number Two and I spent a couple hours Saturday morning helping a ward member move, and then Loyal Reader Number Four and I bought a pavilion for the deck and she, LRN2, and I put it together on Saturday afternoon. We’re delighted to have it and hope to make the deck a little more hospitable in warm weather.

Which we’re getting this week. It’s supposed to be in the low hundreds pretty much every day this week, and it’s only going down to the mid-sixties at night. Not so cool.

I noticed last night that I had forgotten to turn Larry’s Samba server back on when I updated the operating system. It turned out to take about three hours to get it working again. When I tried to turn the server on, I discovered that the configuration tool had disappeared from the menus. Searched around for it on the Interweb and discovered how to launch it from the command line, which I did. It appeared to work until I tried to save the configuration, at which time it gave an error message and didn’t set anything up. I tried for quite a while to make that work, including trying to manually set up Samba’s password file, but none of that worked. During my deep web searches, I learned about a tool called Swat, which is a web-based Samba server configuration program. I downloaded it and spent about an hour getting it to work. During one of my numerous web searches on the subject, I discovered that it comes configured to not work. You have to go into its configuration file and set a flag to enable it. Now why do you suppose the people who made this tool would assume people would download and install it but not want to run it?

Anyway. I finally got Swat working and then had to search around in its documentation for how to get it to set up a Samba server. It was extremely non-obvious, of course, but I finally got it working properly. The really frustrating thing is that Samba configuration was simple, straightforward, and reliable two versions ago, but it’s a nightmare now. This is causing me to have serious second thoughts about using Linux, I must say. It’s a constant uphill hike.

Anyway. It’s working now and things are once again fine. Except that I don’t have Cron jobs updating Larry’s software on a regular basis. And I don’t have the HRVA’s email set up either. Maybe those two items will be a little easier to get working. But I doubt it.

I’ve been reading a couple of books about starting a company. The first is titled, “You Need to be a Little Crazy,” by Barry J. Moltz. Moltz is apparently a Zen Buddhist (or Zen Buddhist wannabe) who has started three failed companies and now writes books about how to start companies. It has some interesting moments but also is a little heavy on both trite and discouraging comments.

The second book is called “How to Start a Business in California,” by the editors of Entrepreneur Magazine. It was written this year and appears to have some pretty solid information on navigating California’s unique requirements, along with some basic how-to and why-to stuff for potential entrepreneurs. There’s also a CD-ROM (which I haven’t looked at) containing a bunch (199, to be exact) of forms. I expect to find this book a little more useful than the first, but I can’t say I haven’t gotten anything out of the other.

Still need to come up with task lists for both the web side and the gaming side of the business. Not to mention getting WaterLogger online. There’s plenty of Business to do.

I also want to start doing a little swimming a few times a week before it gets too cold to get into the pool. I could enjoy a little aquatic exercise. I’m thinking Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, with a possible Friday bonus. Strong like bull!

Past time for bed. See you tomorrow.