morrowlife

Here are Loyal Readers Numbers Three and Four fighting off freezation at the wedding on Saturday. As mentioned yesterday.

Normal day. Drove the Miata and, for the first time in at least a few months, came home with the top down. I was chilled but not frozen upon arrival. No regrets.

Met my new boss today. Engineering is reorganizing (prepare three envelopes!) and my real boss is now a very nice woman. It looks like my job will pretty much go on as before. As predicted.

Got a call from the service manager at the Honda dealer. My Loyal Readers may recall that my car was in the shop a couple of weeks ago with transmission trouble. They changed the gearbox oil and pretty much left it in that inconclusive state. Well, it seems they got a call from Honda yesterday, informing them that there’s a known problem with six-speed transmissions, for which there will be a technical service bulletin coming out soon, possibly accompanied by a warranty extension or even a recall. He noted that two weeks ago, they laughed at him and acted like they didn’t know what he was talking about, but now they’re admitting the problem. The good news is that my transmission is going to be rebuilt. As soon as they figure out how to fix the problem, that is. My car’s still very drivable, though, so that’s no worry.

I just finished listening to Love Conquers All, by Robert C. Benchley. What an entertaining book! It’s basically a collection of a bunch of his articles from the 1920-ish time frame. He’s dry and hilarious. One example: he was reviewing Rip Van Winkle, by Percy MacKay, and invited the reader to:

“Just ask for “Rip Van Winkle” and spend the evening falling out of your chair. (You wake up just as soon as you fall and are all ready again for a fresh start.)”

Apparently, he didn’t like it much. Benchley’s book is highly recommended, and I’m on the lookout for more of his stuff (for free, of course). I enjoyed the guy who read the book too.

I’m also working on America Alone, by Mark Steyn (in print form). It’s overdue at the library, so I’m trying to finish it as quickly as possible. Another day or two at the most. It’s basically about the threat to America and the world from radical Islam. His point is that it’s basically too late for the rest of the world to do anything about it, so America is the world’s last best hope. As usual. Recommended reading also.

Time for my Tuesday evening meeting. See you tomorrow.

Here’s another in my famous statue series – the Governor’s pixie. It’s also another in my budding Governor series, so I guess that’s a two-for-one. Now if I could just find a way to get a bird in there too. Great subject, questionable focus.

No post on Friday. It turned out the Loyal Brother-in-law didn’t have wifi. He switched to internet-on-power-lines a while ago, but there was nowhere for me to hook up. So, no post. Sorry about that, Anon.

The wedding was nice. It was definitely aimed at the twenty-something bride and groom, rather than their middle-aged relatives (nonstop loud, obnoxious music for a large percentage of the time), but that’s the way it ought to have been, I suppose. We visited with a lot of relatives, and even if there hadn’t been a wedding, it would have been worth the trip to visit with Loyal Readers Numbers Three and Fifteen.

They’re doing great, by the way. Thanks for asking.

The trips took just about exactly eight hours each way. We took Highway 99 on the outbound leg. It goes through numerous populated areas, with the attendant traffic, which we didn’t enjoy. So we came home on Interstate 5 and enjoyed the peace and quiet of traveling through miles and miles of blossoming orchards and green, velvet-like rolling hills. And no towns. Huge difference.

Got some rain on both legs. Worse on the way down there. In fact, I was worried about it turning to snow on the Tehachapi pass. The temperature got down below 40 and there was some slush on the road, but that’s as bad as it got. Wedding day was warm and sunny – until, that is, time for the actual wedding ceremony, which took place outdoors. It turned cold, cloudy, and windy about half an hour before. The rain held off for a couple more hours, though, and everything went well. Except that the bride and bridesmaids weren’t exactly prepared for cold weather. Poor them.

Otherwise, no problems. I rode the train today and didn’t feel too crowded. Tomorrow’s likely to be a Miata day – it’s going to be warm and mostly sunny every day this week, with no rain on the 10-day forecast. Spring is definitely here – lots of trees are blossoming, the grass is greening up, and leaves are popping out everywhere. Ahhh.

Time for bed. See you tomorrow.

Here’s another entry in my famous Pond series. This one is in Tokyo. Taken with my original lousy Sipix digital camera. Strangely, they don’t make it anymore.

I think I may have mentioned before that that camera is so bad it has a chance of becoming immensely popular. Don’t laugh. It’s happened before. As in this example.

Which brings an idea to mind. Somebody needs to produce a Photoshop/Gimp plugin giving the “Holga effect” to a photo. Shouldn’t be too hard.

Which brings another thought to mind. Have a look at some of the Holga photo galleries. These people do some pretty amazing work with quite primitive tools. Great Art doesn’t require expensive cameras, does it? Except mine, of course.

No post yesterday – sorry about that. The Loyal Mom was spending her last evening with us and we were busy.

Speaking of the Croc Hunter movie, I really like it. It got some bad reviews back in the day, but I think they generally missed the point. It’s just about goofy fun. Recommended.

We’re off to Las Vegas tomorrow! Maybe. Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two are still quite sick and we’re not sure whether it’s a good idea to leave them home. We’re going to make a decision tomorrow morning.

I took LRN2 to the doctor‘s office this evening while Loyal Reader Number four was taking the LM to the airport. He appears to have an ear infection. He has antibiotics now, so there’s hope for a quick recovery. LRN1 also went to the doctor today, but he only got a throat swab, so we have to wait for the results before he goes on the amoxycillin. If he needs it. Which I’m guessing he does.

Anyway. Should we both go? Should LRN4 go by herself (she’s not excited about making the long drive alone, but the wedding is on her side of the family, so she should be the one there)? Should I go by myself (I have no trouble with the drive and would love to be there and to see Loyal Readers Numbers Three and Fifteen along with many others, but I’m second priority)? Should we skip the whole thing? Only time will tell.

We really enjoyed the LM‘s visit and are sorry to see her go. It was just a really comfortable thing to have her here.

I started reading Simply Einstein: Relativity Demystified at the doctor’s office. I’m only a couple of pages into it, so it’s a little early for a review or even a preview, but I’m cautiously optimistic. Could be very interesting. I’ll let you know more later.

Better get to bed. I (possibly) have a long drive ahead of me tomorrow. Friday post doubtful, but I’ll try to use the Wonders of Blogger on Saturday morning. See you then.

Here’s the governor’s air conditioner. This is claimed to be the third commercial air conditioning unit ever manufactured – serial number three. And it still works. If true, that would be really cool. If false, it’s still really cool, since it still works. Although it blows a circuit breaker every five minutes. I guess the governor could afford to have one of his lackeys stand by and push the button all day. That sign on top says “DO NOT TOUCH.” I didn’t touch.

Slightly fuzzy picture due to the fact that they didn’t allow flash. Sorry about that, but I needed to record this important event for posterity. Well, this important machine, anyway.

Extremely Short Shrift tonight. It’s late. So, here goes.

Got up.

Rode the train to work (rain predicted).

Worked (like a dog).

Rode the train home (rain prediction came true).

Got home.

Ate dinner (soup and homemade bread – very good).

Went to Tuesday night meeting.

Got home.

Ate a bowl of ice cream (moose tracks).

Blogged.

Went to bed (currently only a prediction).

See you tomorrow.

Here’s the California Governor’s toilet. At least it used to be, for former governors. The Governator uses other facilities.

Took the day off today. Loyal Readers Numbers Four, Five, and Twelve, the Loyal Mom, and I went to Sacramento and took a tour through the old Governor’s Mansion. It’s a very old building and was in use until shortly after Ronald Reagan became governor. He lived there for three months. The building is beautiful and the tour was very interesting. We even saw the governor’s toilet (see above). The only downside was that the building is being renovated and the entire structure was covered with scaffolding and draped with some kind of protective cloth. It didn’t effect the inside, though.

The day was otherwise quiet. I’ve been spending a lot of time the last few days moving my web server over to Moe, which is now running Ubuntu Server. Its clock speed is less than one fourth as fast as Larry but I think it serves pages way faster now. Ubuntu Server has no GUI, and that has to make a speed difference. The plan is to get everything hosted there, install Ubuntu Server on Larry, move all the sites back to Larry, and install FreeNAS on Moe. We’ll see how long that takes. In the meantime, Morrowlife, Spinfo, and the HRVA are up and running (speedily) on Moe. Do any of my Loyal Readers see a speed difference?

Otherwise, the weekend was busy but undistinguished. We hung around and enjoyed it. Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two went “to the snow” today. I asked the Loyal Mom if she wanted to go, but she declined and said something about getting plenty of snow starting on Thursday. I don’t know what she’s talking about.

It’s supposed to rain the next few days, so I’ll be on the train. In fact, I’m way late for bed, so I’m outta here. See you tomorrow.