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August 25, 2009 9:02 PM 8/25/09
Hang on kids this one’s going to be a long one...
So things have still been stressed since the noncation but they’re getting better. Frankly I’m trying very very hard not to whine about my life because a lot of people (a number on my friends list for instance) have things a lot worse than I do.
It doesn’t feel right t complain about stick feet when others are buried up to their necks in quicksand.
Moving on...
Finally got a proper stereo in both my vehicles so I have music and radio as needed again. Yay! It’s nice being able to listed to WPR again as well as a clean USB feed from the iPhone. Though I’m going to need a new mount for the stereo in the truck - it broke one of the “ears”.
Speaking of music people need to go here: ( http://seananmcguire.com/albums.php ) and order Red Roses and Dead Things while they’re still being shipped by the artist. In addition to being a wonderful singer and songwriter she is also a newly published author as well. I’ve pre-ordered her first book Rosemary and Rue which I fully expect to be both as light and dark as her music. :-) Money well spent.
Speaking in particular of her music I must admit that it inspires images in my head. (So far Tom Smith is the only other filk artist to do that.) She inspires images so much so that in my mind I’ve already hashed out music video ideas for four of her songs. Unfortunately three out of the four require actual filming of her and her shadow The Fox Lady while the fourth is stop motion Tim Burton style. When I get a chance I’ll write all those out and send them to her as I have zero resources to make any of those happen. (I’ll send Tom a few as well - I think I’ve got Starlight and Saxophone worked out in my head finally.) Maybe they can find people that have the resources to get them done.
Still have been unable to get those around me to see that faith is a wholly internal thing and can’t be even freely given to others let alone forced upon them. *sigh* I’ve stopped being a “born again pagan” why can’t you guys stop your stuff?? (Note: This was a rhetorical question as it’s likely my threefold return for something I did in the past. Likely the “born again pagan” stuff itself.)
More house repairs - this time in the appliance area. The fill valves on the washer are leaking into the tub. Fortunately I’ve got the part ordered and it’s an easy replacement. Right now I bypassed the problem by putting brass garden hose valves on the fill hoses so we can shut them off after use. (The main valves in that area are really really old galvanized ones that leak unless 100% on or 100% off.)
Of course replacing those valves means replacing the pipes attached to them most likely. I’d love to re-run all the plumbing using fresh copper but that’s not likely to happen. I may buy it piece by piece and put it in place before swapping over to it once it’s all complete. Regardless it’s not a cheap proposition.
Other not-cheap propositions are things like tires for the hatchback. I found a set of four online for about $250 shipped which is cheaper than local sources but once you add in mounting, balancing, and recycling the old tires it’s not that big a deal. I’ll probably just buy one to get me back on the road.
Haven’t been riding the bike the last couple of weeks not only due to weather but due to needing a new helmet as both of them have suddenly developed problems. The modular’s ratchet mechanism has died so I’m doing the old trick where the knight’s visor immediately falls back down after he lifts it up. My original helmet’s ratchet is also broken but in such a way that if I lift up the visor the right side pops out of the clip and flops around. Worse yet I don’t have $400+ for a good helmet so I’m going to have to buy another one that is similar to the inexpensive ones I’ve already got.
I will have to buy a new seat cover for the motorcycle this winter. I currently have duct tape marks on some of my pants after riding on hot days. Not very flattering when it’s on business pants at the office.
I did find some interesting things on the web for my vehicles though. For the bike and the hatchback they make sealed beam conversion kits that will allow me to put standard replaceable bulbs in there or even LED ones which last at least half a decade or more. I bought the kits for the hatchback a while back but haven’t installed them yet. Concerned about using the brighter halogen bulbs with the older wiring. I’ll likely put in relays with wires that will handle the current. A little extra wiring but much safer.
Still haven’t gotten the fence done yet. We have until the 16th of September so I’m not panicking yet but I really need to get moving on it. I wish I cold marshall up a group of people to help me motivate on this one. I’m just so blah lately.
One example of that is that I have done _nothing_ about the dead herbs in the pots from when we went on noncation. They’re just sitting there dead. I’ll try and empty them this week sometime.
Made boiled stuffed peppers the other day and it dawned on me that I could continue cooking using the leftover sauce when I was finished with the peppers. So I browned a pound of ground beef and peeled/sliced some potatoes and made a layered casserole similar to my mother’s Lazy Man recipe. Cooked them for several hours in the slow cooker until the potatoes were soft. It tasted wonderful but left a mess on the bottom of the slow cooker due to the already cooked sauce burning a bit.
Neither me nor my wife have been working out really. In fact we haven’t been really active since we came back from Montana. I blame myself. I’m usually a motivator on this stuff and I haven’t been better than a slug lately.
Part of that I think is that we’ve been watching more TV that usual. My wife is big into Army Wives and I’ve been recently captured by Warehouse 13. (Warehouse 13 is very interesting to me because it has the feel of a paper RPG that my friends and I used to play called Stalking the Night Fantastic. That was fun! The GM in question combined it a bit with another game from the same creator called Fringeworthy. The two together was kind of like Warehouse 13 meets Stargate. Some bizarre things in those late night games. I will never look at marshmallows the same way again.)
The other thing that is a problem is that we’re in a chaos state again. We clean up a couple of things here and there but we’re overwhelmed by it all and tired from work and family and other sundry things and we’re just not able to handle the stuff. For instance I managed to get all the technical books moved out onto the shelves in the garage and other books onto the shelves in the library in their place but we still have a bunch of stuff in that area to get organized.
I think all that stuff not getting done is part of the reason why the house still doesn’t feel like...ours...to me yet. It still feels like we’re renting and the landlord is right around the corner waiting to throw us out. I know that’s not the case but still it feels that way.
Winter is coming soon enough as well so we need to get all this done before then. Especially since I’ve got several winter projects I want to get done.
Winter projects...let’s see...
I want to get the Microvax II at least reconfigured into one BA23 chassis. Totally doable with the Unobtainium SCSI controller I have in a box. I also want to get the PDP 11/04 into the same rack that the Microvax II is currently in. Just once I want to get the RA82 drive spun up and running but that’s highly unlikely. Both those systems mean something to me. The PDP 11/04 was a rescue that would have likely gone into the recycler. It’s also nice to own an actual PDP system which was something I always wanted. Likely though I’ll have to network boot it if I can as getting a disk set up for a system that old is pretty tough. I’ll have to look into that.
Still working on how to power all this stuff. Once I get some more stuff organized in the garage I may put out a Freecycle call for any working 12V lead acid batteries. If they don’t work then I just take them to Walmart to be recycled for free but if they work then they go towards building a battery bank. How to charge that bank is still another issue but I have quite a few ideas on that front.
Speaking of the garage I’ve decided that since I recently bought a projector (800x600 resolution only but will work for DVDs) I’m going to get another post and a very long 4x4 timber and put both posts on the sides of the seating area. This will give me a place to put a pull down or motorized projector screen between them for movies and videos and such. That will strengthen the center support in the garage and get the post out of my way from the middle of the room.
Other winter projects include re-doing my jon-boat. I need to file the paperwork here pretty soon to get the title transferred. I don’t think I’m going to be able to buy my friend’s tri-hull but that remains to be seen. I might buy his then put some work into the jon-boat to get more money out of it when I sell it. Like maybe a trailer among other things. The thing is that the jon-boat is just my size really and I’m not done with what I want to do with it. For instance I want to re-paint it this winter as well as try to figure out my dual-pod electric motor design. (Which oddly I didn’t come up with - my friend who owns the tri-hull did.)
There’s also some innovative solar heating things I want to try this winter that will hopefully reduce the need to run the gas furnace out there during the day at least. (Can’t just turn it off now that I’ve got computers running out there.)
Need to get a 1TB hard drive for one of the Qube boxes so I can at least back up some of my stuff. I’m backing the financial records up to a thumb drive but I really need to clean off a bunch of things so I have space on my Macbook. And I really need to get the DLT unit running so we have long-term backup on all this. I’ll likely need a 1TB for just myself and my wife’s stuff then another 1TB as an rsync point for all the severs and stuff. I’m thinking of moving to a centralized NAS setup for most of my storage here but the cash just isn’t there yet.
Cash always seems to be the problem. It’s always something.
It’s late and I’m finally running out of steam so goodnight all!
Hang on kids this one’s going to be a long one...
So things have still been stressed since the noncation but they’re getting better. Frankly I’m trying very very hard not to whine about my life because a lot of people (a number on my friends list for instance) have things a lot worse than I do.
It doesn’t feel right t complain about stick feet when others are buried up to their necks in quicksand.
Moving on...
Finally got a proper stereo in both my vehicles so I have music and radio as needed again. Yay! It’s nice being able to listed to WPR again as well as a clean USB feed from the iPhone. Though I’m going to need a new mount for the stereo in the truck - it broke one of the “ears”.
Speaking of music people need to go here: ( http://seananmcguire.com/albums.php ) and order Red Roses and Dead Things while they’re still being shipped by the artist. In addition to being a wonderful singer and songwriter she is also a newly published author as well. I’ve pre-ordered her first book Rosemary and Rue which I fully expect to be both as light and dark as her music. :-) Money well spent.
Speaking in particular of her music I must admit that it inspires images in my head. (So far Tom Smith is the only other filk artist to do that.) She inspires images so much so that in my mind I’ve already hashed out music video ideas for four of her songs. Unfortunately three out of the four require actual filming of her and her shadow The Fox Lady while the fourth is stop motion Tim Burton style. When I get a chance I’ll write all those out and send them to her as I have zero resources to make any of those happen. (I’ll send Tom a few as well - I think I’ve got Starlight and Saxophone worked out in my head finally.) Maybe they can find people that have the resources to get them done.
Still have been unable to get those around me to see that faith is a wholly internal thing and can’t be even freely given to others let alone forced upon them. *sigh* I’ve stopped being a “born again pagan” why can’t you guys stop your stuff?? (Note: This was a rhetorical question as it’s likely my threefold return for something I did in the past. Likely the “born again pagan” stuff itself.)
More house repairs - this time in the appliance area. The fill valves on the washer are leaking into the tub. Fortunately I’ve got the part ordered and it’s an easy replacement. Right now I bypassed the problem by putting brass garden hose valves on the fill hoses so we can shut them off after use. (The main valves in that area are really really old galvanized ones that leak unless 100% on or 100% off.)
Of course replacing those valves means replacing the pipes attached to them most likely. I’d love to re-run all the plumbing using fresh copper but that’s not likely to happen. I may buy it piece by piece and put it in place before swapping over to it once it’s all complete. Regardless it’s not a cheap proposition.
Other not-cheap propositions are things like tires for the hatchback. I found a set of four online for about $250 shipped which is cheaper than local sources but once you add in mounting, balancing, and recycling the old tires it’s not that big a deal. I’ll probably just buy one to get me back on the road.
Haven’t been riding the bike the last couple of weeks not only due to weather but due to needing a new helmet as both of them have suddenly developed problems. The modular’s ratchet mechanism has died so I’m doing the old trick where the knight’s visor immediately falls back down after he lifts it up. My original helmet’s ratchet is also broken but in such a way that if I lift up the visor the right side pops out of the clip and flops around. Worse yet I don’t have $400+ for a good helmet so I’m going to have to buy another one that is similar to the inexpensive ones I’ve already got.
I will have to buy a new seat cover for the motorcycle this winter. I currently have duct tape marks on some of my pants after riding on hot days. Not very flattering when it’s on business pants at the office.
I did find some interesting things on the web for my vehicles though. For the bike and the hatchback they make sealed beam conversion kits that will allow me to put standard replaceable bulbs in there or even LED ones which last at least half a decade or more. I bought the kits for the hatchback a while back but haven’t installed them yet. Concerned about using the brighter halogen bulbs with the older wiring. I’ll likely put in relays with wires that will handle the current. A little extra wiring but much safer.
Still haven’t gotten the fence done yet. We have until the 16th of September so I’m not panicking yet but I really need to get moving on it. I wish I cold marshall up a group of people to help me motivate on this one. I’m just so blah lately.
One example of that is that I have done _nothing_ about the dead herbs in the pots from when we went on noncation. They’re just sitting there dead. I’ll try and empty them this week sometime.
Made boiled stuffed peppers the other day and it dawned on me that I could continue cooking using the leftover sauce when I was finished with the peppers. So I browned a pound of ground beef and peeled/sliced some potatoes and made a layered casserole similar to my mother’s Lazy Man recipe. Cooked them for several hours in the slow cooker until the potatoes were soft. It tasted wonderful but left a mess on the bottom of the slow cooker due to the already cooked sauce burning a bit.
Neither me nor my wife have been working out really. In fact we haven’t been really active since we came back from Montana. I blame myself. I’m usually a motivator on this stuff and I haven’t been better than a slug lately.
Part of that I think is that we’ve been watching more TV that usual. My wife is big into Army Wives and I’ve been recently captured by Warehouse 13. (Warehouse 13 is very interesting to me because it has the feel of a paper RPG that my friends and I used to play called Stalking the Night Fantastic. That was fun! The GM in question combined it a bit with another game from the same creator called Fringeworthy. The two together was kind of like Warehouse 13 meets Stargate. Some bizarre things in those late night games. I will never look at marshmallows the same way again.)
The other thing that is a problem is that we’re in a chaos state again. We clean up a couple of things here and there but we’re overwhelmed by it all and tired from work and family and other sundry things and we’re just not able to handle the stuff. For instance I managed to get all the technical books moved out onto the shelves in the garage and other books onto the shelves in the library in their place but we still have a bunch of stuff in that area to get organized.
I think all that stuff not getting done is part of the reason why the house still doesn’t feel like...ours...to me yet. It still feels like we’re renting and the landlord is right around the corner waiting to throw us out. I know that’s not the case but still it feels that way.
Winter is coming soon enough as well so we need to get all this done before then. Especially since I’ve got several winter projects I want to get done.
Winter projects...let’s see...
I want to get the Microvax II at least reconfigured into one BA23 chassis. Totally doable with the Unobtainium SCSI controller I have in a box. I also want to get the PDP 11/04 into the same rack that the Microvax II is currently in. Just once I want to get the RA82 drive spun up and running but that’s highly unlikely. Both those systems mean something to me. The PDP 11/04 was a rescue that would have likely gone into the recycler. It’s also nice to own an actual PDP system which was something I always wanted. Likely though I’ll have to network boot it if I can as getting a disk set up for a system that old is pretty tough. I’ll have to look into that.
Still working on how to power all this stuff. Once I get some more stuff organized in the garage I may put out a Freecycle call for any working 12V lead acid batteries. If they don’t work then I just take them to Walmart to be recycled for free but if they work then they go towards building a battery bank. How to charge that bank is still another issue but I have quite a few ideas on that front.
Speaking of the garage I’ve decided that since I recently bought a projector (800x600 resolution only but will work for DVDs) I’m going to get another post and a very long 4x4 timber and put both posts on the sides of the seating area. This will give me a place to put a pull down or motorized projector screen between them for movies and videos and such. That will strengthen the center support in the garage and get the post out of my way from the middle of the room.
Other winter projects include re-doing my jon-boat. I need to file the paperwork here pretty soon to get the title transferred. I don’t think I’m going to be able to buy my friend’s tri-hull but that remains to be seen. I might buy his then put some work into the jon-boat to get more money out of it when I sell it. Like maybe a trailer among other things. The thing is that the jon-boat is just my size really and I’m not done with what I want to do with it. For instance I want to re-paint it this winter as well as try to figure out my dual-pod electric motor design. (Which oddly I didn’t come up with - my friend who owns the tri-hull did.)
There’s also some innovative solar heating things I want to try this winter that will hopefully reduce the need to run the gas furnace out there during the day at least. (Can’t just turn it off now that I’ve got computers running out there.)
Need to get a 1TB hard drive for one of the Qube boxes so I can at least back up some of my stuff. I’m backing the financial records up to a thumb drive but I really need to clean off a bunch of things so I have space on my Macbook. And I really need to get the DLT unit running so we have long-term backup on all this. I’ll likely need a 1TB for just myself and my wife’s stuff then another 1TB as an rsync point for all the severs and stuff. I’m thinking of moving to a centralized NAS setup for most of my storage here but the cash just isn’t there yet.
Cash always seems to be the problem. It’s always something.
It’s late and I’m finally running out of steam so goodnight all!