morrowlife

Here’s some actual Great Art made by my mother’s cousin, Robert Irwin, sometime in the 1960s or 1970s. We found it in the Phoenix Art Museum. Very avant-garde stuff for back then. In fact, it’s still pretty inscrutable.

Hats off and hands over hearts for the memory of the victims of 9/11. God bless their families with peace, our troops with victory, and our country with security.

Greetings from Lancaster, California! As discussed yesterday, I’m here for a couple of nights. Enjoyed the drive and the sushi dinner. My room is comfortable and freezing cold (not necessarily a negative for me). On the downside, I had to drive around quite a bit to find a gas station. Finally found one, though, so I’m ready to go for tomorrow. Other than that, I can’t exactly remember how to get to the base from here. But I have a pretty good idea, anyway. And I have Google maps. So I’m not worried. I’ll check in the morning.

I brought four books down here. I can never decide ahead of time which one I want to read, so I just bring them all. There’s no chance I’ll get through them all, of course. I’ve started on one called How to Start a Business in California, by Entrepreneur Press. I’m kind of in the pablum part so far, although there are a few good ideas there. I’m looking forward to getting into the list of things specific to California, which I hope will be less pablumy.

Drove the Miata to work again today and the coolant temperature was perfect again. So was the outside temperature, come to think of it. My arms are slightly sunburned from two days’ worth of open-air trips in a row. Small price to pay.

It’s midnight now and I need to get my beauty rest. See you tomorrow.

Here’s one last picture of Big Sur – where the hills and the beach come together.

Long drive to work this morning – 2.5 hours due to a Miata that went off the road and down a hill – so a short drive home. The Law of Freeway Equalization holds true once again.

The good news from this morning’s sit-fest is that the Miata’s thermal fix appears to have worked! The temperature gauge was a steady as a rock! It was practically a no-trial this afternoon, since the traffic never really slowed down much on any but my first freeway, but I still feel pretty confident. I suppose I’ll have to wait until next summer to verify it’s okay on 105-degree days, but I can be patient. Mission accomplished.

Next up: the suspension rattle.

Let’s see, what else? I still haven’t downloaded the new Great Art. Can’t really explain why not – it ought to be quick and easy enough. Maybe Thursday night after I get home from travel.

By the way, I’m going to Edwards tomorrow for a Wednesday meeting. Back home on Thursday. Bloggage will continue, of course.

Time to help Loyal Reader Number Five get email set up on her laptop. See you tomorrow.

Here’s a particularly seaworthy-looking vessel out on San Francisco Bay. Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number One.

Wonders of Blogger today. I spent the entire evening working on the business. Roughly six hours. Six fruitless, frustrating hours. Six pointless, meaningless, useless hours. But I’m not bitter. Oh wait, yes I am.

The trouble is, I’m trying to get Waterlogged running on Larry. Well, it’s actually running on Larry, but not under Apache. It comes with a mini-server called Webrick, which is working perfectly, but when you want to put a Rails application into production, you need to make it work with Apache. And I haven’t been able to make that work yet. It turns out to be pretty complicated. I’ll get there, but there’s very little practice. I can’t even get it to be able to write into its own log files. It complains that the file permissions aren’t set, but they most certainly are. And then it claims it can’t find its own fast server. Which is most certainly there. Sigh.

On the good news front, Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two and I scientifically verified that the Miata’s thermoswitch was definitely bad. We went to a couple of parts stores until we found a replacement. Installing it was the simplest auto repair I’ve ever done, I believe. The sensor is screwed into the thermostat housing, which is right at the front of the engine without any obstructions. We simply unhooked the wire, put a socket on the old sensor, easily unscrewed it, easily screwed the new one in, and re-hooked the wire. Started the engine up, waited for it to heat up, and verified the fan comes on and the engine no longer seems to have a desire to overheat. Of course, the real proof will come the next time I take the car to work, but I’m cautiously optimistic.

Gotta go to Costco shortly, and I’m starving for lunch, so it’s time to finish. See you on Monday.

Here’s a rare self-portrait. Don’t I look Greatly Artistic? I’d sure like to Photoshop out that railing, though. That would violate my Prime Great Art Directive, though: post ’em like you shoot ’em. With some rare exceptions to eliminate old-camera-induced spots and things. This picture was taken during the campout we took during the month before my Lasik surgery. Hence, the extremely rare (non-reading) glasses view.

Anyway. Late night already. I’ve been working on Waterlogged (not Waterlogger anymore – as I may have mentioned, I’ve been overruled on that issue by my partners). I finally have it ported to Larry and working mostly right, with lots of assistance from Loyal Reader Number One. There are still some bugs that are either Larry’s fault or LRN1’s fault – don’t know which yet. Either way, we can start getting them worked off now. I got the new domain set up on Larry (although at the time of this writing the worldwide DNS hasn’t moved it over from GoDaddy yet – by the time most of you see this, it should be done) with a placeholder page. Now we need to figure out how to make Waterlogged go live with Apache in that space. Tomorrow night, I hope.

Otherwise a normal day. I need to take the train tomorrow, although I’m sorely tempted to drive the Miata. I believe I know what its overheating problem is, and it can be worked around by keeping the A/C on. That saps the power big-time, but at least it can be driven. Need to decide which transportation mode Real Soon Now.

I’m sleepy and need to rest, so that’s it for tonight. See you tomorrow.

Here’s a gratuitous picture of Loyal Reader Number Twelve in her car seat. If that won’t bring in the Loyal Readers, I don’t know what will.

Short shrift tonight. It was Wednesday meeting night and it’s already nearly 10:30 and I need to get up early, as usual, so I don’t have much time to write. In fact, everybody else seems to be going to bed about now, putting the old pressure on me even more.

The Big Meeting at work went fine. We got to see several schedules we hadn’t been able to pry loose from various people before, which was good. There’s a lot of work to do as a result of the meeting, but I think we’re more organized tonight than we were this morning.

Otherwise an uneventful day. Got up, got ready, drove to work for two hours, worked, drove home for an hour and forty-five minutes, ate, chatted with various Loyal Readers, went to my church meeting, met, went home, had a little dessert, and blogged. Bedtime is next.

About the chat. Loyal Reader Number Five has been offered another job. It seems like something she’d really like to do, but the money isn’t what she needs it to be. Still, there seem to be possibilities there, so she doesn’t know what to do. Sigh. These things are never obvious, are they? She has another interview at a similar company in a day or two, and they may be more amenable to paying her what she’s worth, so I recommended she not make any commitment to the other place until after she talks to them. Good luck with your decision, LRN5!

And it’s bedtime. See you tomorrow.