morrowlife

Here’s an abstract study of water going over rocks. Feel the love.

I still have a bunch of Great Art on my camera, including all my pictures from the recent campout. Maybe I’ll get them downloaded tomorrow. Or the next day. Based on the above picture, I think I’d better hurry.

No post yesterday. It seemed so much like a weekend day that I forgot all about posting. No regrets, either.

Great holiday weekend. We had people over on Saturday and Monday (enjoyable), Loyal Reader Number One and I worked on his car (no fix, alas – it has to go to the shop again), LRN1 and I worked on my car (new thermostat but no overheating fix, alas – I need to install a new thermoswitch and then it goes to the shop if that doesn’t do the trick), LRN1 and I worked on Mousey the Junkbot (discernable progress, including a totally working breadboard version of the electronics!), I worked on Loyal Reader Number Five’s laptop (changed from non-working status to working perfectly, OS updated, and SpinRite verified!), and . . . that’s about all I can remember right now. But isn’t that enough?

About Mousey. The totally analog electronics work just fine, in spite of the fact that I can’t quite figure out why. There’s a subtlety in the circuitry I don’t quite understand, but I’m figuring it out. Anyway, I’m seriously thinking of upgrading it to digital control after I get the analog version running. I don’t know if I want to build a second ‘bot or just upgrade the first. I’m thinking a single-chip Arduino reading the light sensors and collision switch and driving the motors through a relay. Sounds quite doable and maybe even more interesting than the analog version, since it would be totally programmable. What do you think, Loyal Readers? Or do you even care?

My alarm clock freaked out this morning. It’s one of the Atomic Clock things that phones home all the time to keep the time accurate. It’s supposed to switch into and out of Daylight Savings Time automatically also, and it seems to have done so last night, which makes absolutely no sense. I’m having a Crisis of Confidence in the thing now, so it’s back to the alarm clock store. And this time I won’t be such an easy sell. I’m looking for something really easy to use, not too expensive, and really cool. Let me know if you have any ideas. In the meantime, I’m switching to my old reliable Seiko travel alarm. Whose batteries are of unknown age. So I may not be able to rely on it either. It seems to be working fine right now, though.

Big meeting at work tomorrow. We have a bunch of folks coming in from our partner companies and the gummint, and we’ll be strategizing, positioning ourselves for the future, leveraging our synergies, etc. It will take most of the day, while regular business goes on all around us. Ought to be enjoyable.

Time for dessert. See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number One riding the Los Gatos merry-go-round. I think the missing word on the sign in the background there is “astride.” No side-saddle on this carrousel!

Rode the train today, which turns out to have been a good thing. Loyal Reader Number Five worked in San Francisco today and reported the traffic wasn’t too good. It’s the Friday of a holiday weekend, so it’s certainly no surprise to me.

And the weekend has begun! We’re having people over for a swim party/barbecue on Saturday and going to the ward picnic on Monday. In between, I need to fix a laptop (if possible), get the refrigerator fixed (if possible), try to figure something out about the Miata’s overheating problem (if there’s time), and get Waterlogger on the web (no excuses on this one). Fortunately, I no longer have a Sunday School lesson to prepare. We have a permanent teacher now.

I also don’t have a baptism to conduct tomorrow. Our potential new member kind of dropped out of sight this week. I took the Elders over there this evening and she told us she is still interested in the church, so maybe she’ll get interested in joining up sometime in the near future.

We’re hoping for the heat wave to break Real Soon Now. It’s about 10:30 in the evening right now and it’s still 81 degrees out, so there’s still a long way to go.

What?! It’s 10:30? Time for bed. Have a great holiday weekend and I’ll see you on Monday.

Here’s an old white house. But not just any old white house. No sir. It’s the old white house at, umm, I think it’s the old white house at Hopewell Furnace. I think. Maybe. Does anybody else remember it?

No post yesterday. I went swimming instead. And I’m not sorry. I went swimming again tonight too. But there’s a post today anyway – must show a modicum of concern for the Loyal Readers.

It’s been really hot the last few days – in the 100’s here in Lardville and the mid-80’s in Sunnyvale, and it’s only getting down to the 70’s at night here, which is quite unusual. The good – the pool water is nice and warm. The bad – they’ve turned off the air conditioning at work all afternoon the last three days and they’re doing it again tomorrow. We have some kind of energy-saving deal with the power company, apparently. It’s uncomfortably warm all day. However, to ease the pain a little, they gave us all ice cream this afternoon.

What suckers we are – they broil us alive and we’re okay with it because we get a free 20-cent ice cream.

Which brings me to another point. It occurred to me today that our management has been saying for years that engineers are motivated by challenging work, not by money. However, they also say we need to pay large fortunes to top managers in order to attract them and keep them motivated. Apparently, then, managers are motivated by money, while engineers are motivated solely by a challenge. So what motivates me, as an engineering manager? I’m going with money. Challenging amounts of money. Yeah, that’s it. I can feel the love already.

Little to no progress on the company. I did check last night and found out my web hosting provider doesn’t offer Ruby on Rails, which is an essential component of WaterLogger. I guess it has to go to Larry. That’s not a permanent solution, though, since Larry is really on a residential connection that won’t tolerate much bandwidth. I see two options:

1) Get a commercial line brought into the house. The price might be high (even prohibitively high – I have no idea), but the strength is that I can do what I want with my server

B) Get different hosting for WaterLogger

Need to decide fairly soon, but in the meantime, it’s going on Larry and we’re finding some Beta (or probably Alpha, to be more accurate) testers. Really.

And I need to get to bed. See you tomorrow.

Is this the flower picture Loyal Reader Number Five wants me to post? I have no idea, although I know the picture came from her. Thanks, LRN5, and let me know if I got the right picture. It was definitely in my Blog Fodder folder, as she suggested.

Anyway. Hot day today. It’s almost 8:00 in the evening and it’s still 96 degrees out. That’s just not right. Fortunately, it’s also not usual around here. I checked the ten-day forecast, and it should be back into the low sixties at night within a couple of days. In the meantime, the scorching weather is at least keeping the pool warm (link question: given how deep the water is where those people in the background are standing, what are the chances this girl is just standing on a surfboard that’s lying on the sand?). I just checked, and the water temperature is 85. Not bad.

Nothing much else to report. LRN5 has been interviewing most of the day, so Loyal Reader Number 12 has been here with the family. LRN5’s still not home yet, and I don’t think we expect to see her for a couple more hours. Long day for everybody concerned.

Time to do other things. See you tomorrow.

Or is that smiling crawler? In any case, here’s another cute picture of Loyal Reader Number Twelve. Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number Five, who is certain she sent me a beautiful piece of Great Art featuring flowers, and who wonders why it has never been featured on the blog. Unfortunately, I’m not exactly sure where it is, but I’m looking hard for it. Don’t worry, LRN5. I’ll find it and put it here Real Soon Now. Just keep shooting that Great Art!

The blog is back! And better than ever. Or at least no worse than before. Whatever.

We had a great campout. Clark Fork is a beautiful place – about 6,000 feet in altitude in the middle of a beautiful Redwood forest. There’s a pretty little boulder-strewn river running through it, with a beautiful waterfall under a bridge right by the entrance to the campground. We hiked around the water a little bit, but Loyal Reader Number Two was the only one whose shoes permitted him to do a little wading. Other than the numb feet, he enjoyed it. The water was clear, the boulders were picturesque, and the setting was spectacular.

We also drove up to Sonora pass, which is over 9,600 feet in altitude. The road up there is quite steep for the last 3,000 feet of altitude, and it was a nice drive. I’ll remember to post the picture I took of the Loyal Readers in front of the sign up on the top.

We also drove up a pretty rustic dirt road to the top of another mountain. The only thing up there was a trailhead for a walk to Sword Lake, a hike we weren’t equipped to do. So we drove back down. Maybe we’ll go up to the lake next time.

And there definitely will be a next time. Clark Fork: highly recommended. Check out the pictures I’m planning to post on the HRVA website Real Soon Now. Also the Great Art soon to be featured on this blog.

Otherwise, the weekend was quiet. We spent some time on Saturday afternoon relaxing in the pool and spa. Sunday was pretty well occupied with my missionary meeting, church, another missionary meeting, two home teaching visits, and Standards Night. Throw in a couple of meals there, and the day was packed.

Tomorrow was supposed to be our trip to the ball game in San Francisco, but we need to have LRN12 with us, so we’re canceling the ball game. None of us are big baseball fans anyway, and we’ll be much more comfortable at home.

And it’s time for Home Evening to start. See you tomorrow.