morrowlife

Here’s a nasty-looking piece of weaponry. Loyal Reader Number One took this picture at Alcatraz. I’m not sure what they planned on using it for. Cannons just aren’t much help at keeping prisoners under control.

Happy Friday the Thirteenth! Nothing bad happened to me today. I think it’s bad luck to believe in superstition. How was your day?

Well, another work week has come and gone. Today was a fine day. I spent some time in the lab, which I have been wanting to do for some time. We didn’t get anything accomplished, but I did learn some. Mostly, I learned that my people have been unfairly villified in the past by people who have sabotaged them pretty badly. I’m ready to fight back.

Good news about the Sable – it appears that yesterday’s garage floor puddle was just water. It’s gone today, so it certainly wasn’t oil. Nobody has any idea where the water came from, but we’ll just keep an eye out and go get the oil leak fixed next week.

More good news! Loyal Reader Number Four has an appointment for the Honda to get its windshield replaced next Friday.

Also, I have one more idea to try on the Miata’s overheating problem. I actually read yesterday’s blog link on this subject and think there’s an idea worth trying – apparently, there’s an “overflow” hose between the thermostat housing and the water pump. If that hose gets clogged, the thermostat doesn’t want to open until pressure really builds up behind it. Other people have reported behavior essentially identical to mine and cleaning out the overflow hose cured it. It still doesn’t explain why it only happens when I’m stopped in traffic, though. Maybe it’s because the thermostat can open partway under normal circumstances, which is enough to keep it cool when I’m moving but not enough for when I’m stopped.

But I still suspect the fans. Might as well eliminate one more possibility before it goes to the shop, though.

I took the 4:00 train today, which has wifi, so I’m actually typing this directly into Blogger on the train. If I can find some Great Art on this machine, I’ll actually post during the trip. There should be plenty of time – the conducter got on the loudspeaker and told us there’s some kind of problem with a train up ahead of us, and we’re going about two miles per hour right now. I’m not sure what the problem was because I was listening to Click and Clack on my iPod, but I don’t expect to be home on time.

Let’s see, what else is going on? The weekend should be pretty busy – I need to work on the Miata’s overheating problem, as mentioned above, build the screen around the air conditioner, swim, relax, wash a few cars, and probably do a bunch of cleaning in preparation for LRN4’s sister’s arrival on Monday.

Sunday’s projected meeting load is pretty low at this point. I ought to go home teach my two less-active people. We haven’t been able to find one couple for several months now, and I don’t know if they’ve moved or not. They had sold their house to a developer, so it’s entirely possible they’ve moved already. It doesn’t really look like they’re gone, but we certainly can’t find them. We also need to see the shirtless guy, who we really like. He lives in an old trailer that lost half of its electricity several months ago, and he hasn’t been able to find anybody to fix it. I’ve made arrangements for an electrician friend to go with me and work on it, so we need to get an appointment. I certainly wouldn’t like living in a half-dark house. He’s just been using extension cords to get light in the dark half, which would drive me absolutely bonkers. I hope we can help him.

Anyway. I think I’ll get back to the iPod now. See you on Monday!

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Two in our yard in Virginia being brutally attacked by a vicious Loyal Pet a few years back. He got better. Photo courtesy of an unknown person or persons, but probably Loyal Reader Number Four. Photo also courtesy of my first junky digital camera.

Drove the Miata to work today. It overheated three times that I noticed. Very annoying. When I sit in traffic, it heats up to its limit and then cools back down. As long as I keep moving, it’s fine. It seems obvious to me that the cooling fan isn’t coming on when it should and then there’s some safety switch that turns both fans on just before it overheats. I’ve tested the fan and it seemed to be fine, though, so I don’t know what’s going on. I think it needs to go to the shop.

Which is too bad, since the Sable needs to go to the shop to fix its oil leak – and a new, serious leak of something clear right behind the engine. Sigh.

And the Honda needs to go to the shop to fix its broken windshield and the dent somebody put in the quarter panel several months ago. Double sigh.

And the Taurus may need to go to the shop too. Loyal Reader Number One reported this evening that its Check Engine light came on twice today. Triple sigh. We may be reduced to walking before long. I’m not sure why this is all happening at once – our checking account balance isn’t high enough to trip the Automatic Car Breakdown function.

Otherwise a quiet day. I got up (just a little late), went to work, worked, came home, ate, and sat down to work on the blog. Just like every other day. It’s hard to be interesting when that’s the sum total of your day. Maybe I’ll do something interesting over the weekend. Yeah, that’s the ticket. I’ll let you know.

See you tomorrow.

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.