morrowlife

Here’s an invitation I don’t think I care to accept. I believe this is a piece of rescue equipment used by helicopter crews to pick up downed pilots or other people on the ground. Spotted on Christmas Eve at the Hiller Aviation Museum, of course. I’m going way out on a limb and including this in my famous Machinery series.

Extreme Short Shrift. It’s Massive Meeting Tuesday, and I don’t expect to be home until very late. I’ll post this when I get home. Will add Great Art and skip today’s links.

Drove the Miata to work today, for the first time in months. The Massive Meeting timing just doesn’t work for the train. The morning drive was quite normal – didn’t take significantly less time than the train but was pleasant nonetheless. I got through a few podcasts but missed the old-time TV shows I’ve been watching. Also didn’t get any work done.

Another beautiful, sunny, warm day. It’s in the mid-sixties and is expected to be that way every day for the next week. I checked the Michigan weather forecast, and they’ll be lucky to get out of single digits this week. My sympathies to my snowbound Loyal Readers. Drop in for a nice warm winter visit!

All is well. See you tomorrow.

Here’s another authentic Wright Brothers aircraft engine (see Thursday’s post for the first one). This one is the real thing, though, and it’s a thing of beauty. Part of my famous Machinery series.

Beautiful, warm, sunny afternoon. Turned the pickup’s heater off and rolled down my window. And I wasn’t even cool. Well, I was Cool. Just not cool. The Weather Channel folks were predicting 65 degrees and I have no doubt they exceeded it. Life in Northern California isn’t so bad after all.

Back into the fifties tomorrow. Brrr.

Let’s see, how was the weekend? Answer: not bad. Friday has been discussed previously. Saturday was pretty low-key. Loyal Reader Number Two and I looked at the Miata’s leaky clutch. It turns out the slave cylinder looks pretty much brand-new and showed no signs of leakage. We opted to bleed the clutch and refill the reservoir and keep an eye on it. If that lasts another year, we’re good. If not, further steps will be taken.

What else did I accomplish on Saturday? Ummm . . . nothing comes to mind. There was a good amount of relaxation, as I recall. LRN2 was invited to a friend’s birthday party in the evening, so Loyal Reader Number Four and I took advantage of the opportunity to go out to dinner. We tried out Lardville’s new Greek/hamburger place. We both had a hamburger and enjoyed them thoroughly. With our coupon, the entire bill came to $7.14. Not bad.

Sunday, is was sustained and set apart as a member of the High Council. I have responsibility for the Spanish Branch and the Young Women, including Girls’ Camp. Combined with the normal High Council duties, like speaking in a sacrament meeting every month, attending numerous meetings, and other duties as assigned, I expect to be plenty busy. I’m really excited about it.

Sadly, I’ll have to be released from the High Priests Group Leadership, which I’ve also enjoyed. You can’t have everything.

Where would you put it?

Work was busy and relatively productive. I’m really enjoying the chance to do more managing under my current boss. And I think things are going very well. Probably. Maybe. Sort of.

Anyway. My new busy nights will be the second and fourth Tuesdays – especially the second. Bloggage will undoubtedly be extremely light to nonexistent those days. My Loyal Readers will just have to stay tough.

Haven’t heard much from Loyal Readers Numbers Three and Five and their respective families. We’re hoping that no news is good news. Tomorrow’s Loyal Reader Number Six’s birthday. Happy Birthday, LRN6!

That’s about it for Monday. See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number One holding back Loyal Reader Number Twelve’s airplane just long enough for me to get a picture. Seconds later, she was buzzing the room. Not part of any of my famous series. I hesitate to call that thing machinery, and I don’t have an LRN12 series, although I probably should. Special cameo appearances by Loyal Readers Numbers Four, Five, and Six in the background.

Not much to write about tonight – my posts for the rest of the week have been voluminous enough.

Put chlorine in the swimming pool. Fed the fellas. Returned a bunch of library books and checked out a bunch of CDs, including several very good Christmas albums. Discovered the Miata has a massive clutch hydraulic fluid leak. Did some reading and a little bit of work. Also got my laptop set up for next week’s Blackberry linkage. Worked on my iTunes music collection a little – getting album artwork and that sort of thing. Not much else. Good day.

Yes, I know it’s a little late for Christmas music. Let’s just say I’m getting a head start on Christmas 2009.

We’ll finish with some toilet news. The creative minds working on the Space Toilet problem have come up with another unique solution. I don’t see why only the astronauts should get such neat equipment, though. They should sell it to everyone! It would be perfect for . . . ummm . . . well, lots of people. Probably.

Today’s Morrowlife controversy: Loyal Readers are invited to suggest terrestrial occupations that could benefit from the Space Toilet Diaper.

See you tomorrow.

Here’s an authentic Wright Brothers aircraft engine. Sort of. Well, it’s an authentic replica of an authentic Wright Brothers aircraft engine. Still cool, though. Part of my famous Machinery series.

The weekend’s here! That’s right, tomorrow’s Off Friday. We have nothing huge going on, so I’m not showing up. Woo hoo!

And the best part is that I have nothing particular to accomplish at home, either. I’m sure we can think of some things that need doing, though. Let’s try right now. Ready? Go!

Ummm . . . I ought to have a look at the pond filter. Maybe check the chlorine level in the pool. Pull Moe’s 200 gigabyte drive and get it sent to Loyal Reader Number One. Clean off my dresser top. Maybe cook a nice breakfast. Possibly jacuzzify (that’s not exactly work, but it can certainly be scheduled, can’t it?).

That’s enough for now. I’m sure other things will come up as the weekend unfolds.

LRN1 reports that the new Mac continues to hum along. He’s still working on restoring data from the old machine. It’s on my Mac’s hard drive, and he’s connected to it and copying data right now. Time prognostication: 50 hours. Yikes. But who’s in a hurry?

Got the terabyte drive installed last night, but not in Moe. Turns out its motherboard has no SATA connectors. So it went into Larry. I’m planning to retire Moe at this point, so I’m sending its above-mentioned hard drive to LRN1. Moe will go into the Ready Reserves. For now.

Anyway. I connected the new drive at roughly 8:00 or 8:30 and started formatting it. By the time I went to bed at 11:00, it was only up to 38%. I presume it’s done by now. We’ll find out when I get home.

Loyal Readers Numbers Five, Six, and Twelve went to Menlo Park today to interview for a job as apartment managers. It seems like a great opportunity and I hope they get it. So do they. This would be LRN12’s first successful job interview.

I mentioned to my boss today that I’ve been spending an hour every morning catching up on email. When I told him I do it in offline mode because ACE hasn’t gotten their free wifi service working again after two years of trying, he told me I ought to use my cell phone as a modem. I mentioned I don’t have a data plan, and he said I should just use my company cell phone. “Ummm,” said I, “I don’t have one.” So he suggested I get one. So I did. My shiny new Blackberry should be available on Monday or Tuesday.

Now I just have to find out whether it will be usable as a modem. Even if not, I can just read and respond to most of my email directly on the Blackberry.

I’m not crazy about the idea of carrying two cell phones, but that might just be how it has to be. We’ll see how things work out.

In today’s Morrowlife controversy, we examine a conclusively proven scientific fact. The controversial question is: Have any of my Loyal Readers actually sung into a karaoke machine? If so, why?

See you tomorrow.

Here’s the original prototype for the F-117. It turned out it didn’t have enough room to carry things like bombs, bullets, and fuel, so they scaled it up a little. Part of my famous Machinery series.

Lots going on, but nothing particularly interesting. But when did dullness ever stop me from discussing my deep thoughts?

So let’s have a look. I finally gave up on Ubuntu’s wretched Wifi handling. I tried the most recent two releases and neither one can do networking worth a darn (please excuse the bad language – I’m really angry here). They can’t handle fixed IP addresses. They can’t keep Wifi connected after a reboot without the user retyping his WPA password. They can’t reliably announce their presence on a network. And they behave differently every time you start the computer. I’ve had it.

And to top it off, the people who are kind enough to provide free Internet-based help are unfortunately not very helpful, as a general rule. With several notable exceptions, they’re either impatient to the point of nastiness or intentionally vague and incomplete in their explanations (as if to say “If you can’t figure the details out yourself, you’re not worthy of Linux”). Thanks for what little you’re willing to do guys, but don’t bother.

And I was so happy with Ubuntu Server’s performance. For one thing, it was three releases old. And for another, I did all my configuration via the text-based configuration files – as opposed to the constantly upgraded but never quite functional GUI-based config programs. Sigh.

So I bit the bullet and installed Windows 2000. It took a good four hours to install, update, load drivers, and configure. But it works right.

That was a pretty bitter pill to swallow. I’ve long been a pretty staunch Linux partisan and I’m still sold on it as a server, but it needs to do networking right, for crying out loud.

On the other hand, pretty much everything else worked right. I just couldn’t stay connected to the network.

Anyway. Loyal Reader Number One is working on configuration issues of his own. The new MacBook is working great, of course. But he went to download iWork ’08 this afternoon and discovered that Apple no longer offers it as a download, since they rolled iWork ’09 this week. I need to rip my disk when I get home tonight so he can copy it.

I wonder how people who just downloaded the software and then bought it online are supposed to reinstall.

Today’s good Apple news: Picasa is now available for OS X. I’m installing it tonight. Maybe LRN1 will want to install it and use Picasaweb to share his Mac unboxing pictures. Maybe.

That’s it for today. I’m planning to install the terabyte drive this evening. Wish me luck.

See you tomorrow.