morrowlife

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve, closeup-style. Awww.

There are new LRN12 pictures available, but I don’t know where they are! Loyal Reader Number Five sent a note saying they’re on Snapfish, but she didn’t say where on Snapfish. Several other people have found them, but so far I’m out of luck. I’ll try one more time – hang on a minute.

I found them! They’re great. However, I still hope LRN5 will send them to me – Snapfish wants to charge me to download them. Hopefully, LRN5 will at least be a little cheaper. In any case, I’ve copied one at its low Snapfish resolution. It’s now featured up there on the top of this post. If and when LRN5 sends me the pictures, I’ll update this one to the hi-res version. What a cute little baby!

Our extended weekend trip was fun. The play was cute. It was great to see family. Everything went well. And that’s all I’m going to say until tomorrow. It’s time for bed.

See you on Tuesday.

Here’s the obligatory statue of Lenin in the town square in Leninsk, the nearby town to the Secret Russian Rocket Base, where I used to go pretty frequently. I suppose he wasn’t quite the mass murderer that Stalin was, but he wasn’t too nice a guy either. The Russians sure don’t know who to admire and who to shun. I thought for a while they were figuring it out, but recent world events have them coming down once again on exactly the wrong side of pretty much every issue. I am so glad I don’t go there anymore.

We’re off for four days tomorrow! I’m looking forward to the vacation and seeing family in Utah again. We used to get to visit fairly often when we lived in Denver, but it wasn’t possible during our East Coast years. On the other hand, I really regret that we can’t see my family in Michigan anymore. Sigh.

I had my three-hour interview for my top-secret clearance today. Yikes. I’ve traveled abroad quite a bit, and they were very anxious to know all about it. Fortunately, I never went anywhere in Europe and Russia without a US Government monitor. Nobody can pin anything on me, seeing as how there’s nothing to be pinned. I don’t expect any problems, of course, and it’s heartening to learn that they’re moving so fast on the investigation.

I don’t know if there will be an internet connection there, so blogging may or may not happen. In any case, we’ll be back on Tuesday. See you (no later than) then.

Here’s a rather old picture of various Loyal Readers enjoying an al fresco luncheon during a camping trip. Happy times.

I found the post! Here it is:

– Tuesday –

Thought I’d get started a little early today. I’m writing this on my Palm a few minutes after 9:00 a.m., while I wait for my computer to finish updating itself. They send us updates from time to time, and today’s is a doozy. It’s installing the latest versions of Quicktime and Java Runtime, and they’re both taking forever. I think it’s been roughly half an hour so far, and it shows no signs of finishing anytime soon.

Oops, I was wrong. It just finished. Now I can get back to work. No, wait. The computer has to restart itself first, so there’s another five or ten minutes. I just love Windows. There were a couple of pretty massive updates waiting for my Mac last night, requiring an unusual reboot. The whole process took about three minutes and worked perfectly. Why do so many people waste so much money and time on Windows computers?

Anyway. We’re expecting Dave the landscaper and his associates to finally show up again today. Loyal Reader Number Four got concerned yesterday that they hadn’t been around in several days since the last time she gave them a large amount of money, so she called Dave’s cellphone. It was disconnected. Uh oh. So she called the number on the business card they gave us. The guy who answered claimed it wasn’t him who gave us the business card. Uh oh. However, he thinks maybe his son took some of his cards and was going around with Dave trying to drum up some business. LRN4 asked him to call Dave and have him contact us immediately because we were planning to make fraud complaint with the police on Tuesday.

In the meantime, she looked up the address Dave had given her. It appeared to be phony. Uh oh. Goodbye, money.

However, I looked up the address again and it turns out that he had just given her the wrong zip code. Then Dave’s stepmother (?!) called and promised to come right over. She never showed up. She finally called pretty late last night and promised that Dave would be there today and get back to work on the project.

He better. And he better fix the things he hasn’t done right so far, or there will be no additional payments made and there will be fraud complaints filed. That probably won’t help, of course, but we’ll do it anyway.

Okay, the computer is working again, so I’ll finish this at home tonight.

– Wednesday –

It’s Wednesday go to meetin’ night now, so not much more.

Landscaping update: Dave never showed up. Tony, Dave’s Dad, is working on the project now and has promised to do it and do it right. We’re cautiously optimistic. He had somebody here working on it all day and has promised to continue tomorrow. Progress!

That’s all for now, Vladimir. See you tomorrow.

Here’s the launch of a manned Soyuz spacecraft from Baikonur a few years back. The viewing area for Soyuz launches is fascinating. It’s way closer than for any other launch vehicle I’ve ever seen – so close that the nerves jump a little. You can kind of see the launch vehicle from the where you’re standing, but it’s completely encapsulated by the tower until just before launch and it’s over a slight hill, so you don’t realize how close it is until it starts to lift off. The first clue that something is odd is that you hear the sound at pretty much the exact moment you see the flame. That’s too close. I found myself looking around for a hiding place in case of a failure near the pad. In the absence of a problem, though, the view is awesome.

I wrote a nice, long post this morning while I was waiting for my laptop to update itself and tried to email it to myself from my Palm. I must have turned off the email function, however, because it’s not here.

And I stayed at work until 7:30 tonight, so there’s no time to write something new. If I can find today’s post, I’ll use it tomorrow. See you then.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number One’s new disk drive, shortly before it was entombed (enshrined?) forever inside his iBook. Oh disk drive, we hardly knew thee. But it’s working fine. Am I running out of Great Art again? You be the judge.

LRN1 commented on Sunday that I should report what made him miss Monk (link warning: loud Monk commercial) on Friday night. I don’t think I rightly remember. Oh wait – yes I do. He went over to his battle-axe buddies’ house to spend the night in preparation for the Mega Battle-Axe-O-Rama on Saturday. They went down to Hollister to beat each other over the head with sticks for a few hours. It took pretty much all day and LRN1 had a great time. He’s still a little new to the Art to come off a conqueror in a Major Event like Saturday’s, but he gave a good accounting for himself and had a great time. And he didn’t break any major bones.

Psych (same link warning as for Monk) was really good too.

We all went to a big Chili Cookoff on Friday night. Loyal Reader Number Four won a well-deserved Major Award for her crescent rolls. All the chili was tasty – I was glad I didn’t have to be a judge. Overall, it was a fun way to spend the evening – and it ended in plenty of time for Monk.

Saturday, Loyal Reader Number Two got up bright and early and went on a scout hike. It wasn’t extremely long, but they were in pretty hilly terrain, so it was a good workout. LRN4 and I stayed home and puttered around the house. I replaced the rear brakes on the Sable (it still squeaks – curses!) and we both worked on my computer desk – we put a backing board on it to hide most of the voluminous wiring from view. It looks much nicer now. We also did a few other things that don’t come to mind right now. It was a peaceful, relaxing day.

As opposed to Sunday. It seemed like we had meetings from early morning to late at night. That wasn’t really true, but it sure felt like it. They were all good meetings, fortunately, and I for one enjoyed the day. I was sure tired by nightfall, though.

Spent a little bit of last evening trying to make the HRVA’s email work again. It had been refusing to do so for a few weeks. It suddenly occurred to me last night that the new router was probably to blame. It was. I opened up an approproate port to Larry and – voila! – it works again. Should have thought of that several days ago when I first noticed the problem. Oh well.

It was beautiful and warm today. Went both directions with the top down. Ahh. My hair was a little funny-looking when I got to work, what with the trip being started with it slightly damp. It was nothing a few moments in front of the sink couldn’t fix, though. And it was definitely worth it. Weather-permitting, it will be repeated tomorrow and frequently thereafter. The only trouble with open-air motoring is that it’s hard to hear podcasts. I generally just give up and listen to iPod music instead. I think that additional tradeoff is worth it too.

Time to turn in once again. See you tomorrow.