Liberace's harpist

Here's Liberace's harp-playing statue. Taken at the Wedding of the Century and part of my famous Statue series.

Well, March has come and gone. It was a beautiful day today, so it must have come in like a Lion. I don't recall that, though. But it must be true - old wives are never wrong.

Fairly standard day. It's Meetingless Tuesday this evening for me, although Loyal Reader Number Four is out doing a Girls Camp first aid training session.

Loyal Reader Number Two has been feeling pretty sick the last couple of days. Pretty much cold symptoms and a bit of a fever. He has my pity (link warning: sound). Fortunately, he was able to go take his two-day state-required tests yesterday and today in spite of his discomfort. Didn't sleep well last night, though.

I ordered the Apple TV for our bedroom today. I sure hope we love it. It's actually pretty reasonably priced, considering what else is out there. And it's very hackable. I already have my Boxee installation thumb drive loaded and waiting. I'm excited to get it. Should be here about the time the new TV arrives.

Thanks to the Loyal Readers for their comments. Loyal Reader Number One and I have started planning a summer project, as he mentioned. We're going to turn his RC truck into an autonomous vehicle, hopefully with GPS navigation and active collision avoidance. I think it'll be a lot of fun.

Or did I mention that yesterday? Don't remember and don't want to look it up right now - the train's in the mountains and internet connections are spotty. So it stays and my Loyal Readers have to suffer. As usual.

No toilet news or food violence today. We do have a food-related controversy, though. Would you buy this? More importantly, would you eat it? Could you eat it? My answers: probably not, possibly, and definitely.

See you tomorrow.

Traffic control

Here's a great big box that was at the entrance to the camping loop at Dos Reis. No traffic lights. No flashing lights. No traffic control of any kind. Just a big box. Part of my famous Camping series.

Okay weekend. The Saturday trip to Great America was fun, and the weather cannot be described as anything but ideal. I'm glad we went. As soon as we got home, I threw on a suit and went immediately to the Young Women dinner and broadcast. Got home pretty late.

Sunday was pretty much as usual, although I didn't get together with the Branch. Did Girls Camp work instead. There's a bunch more to do.

Also found some time Sunday to put Ubuntu on Shemp and get him set up in the family room. Had a couple of disappointments, though: the Linux version of Boxee doesn't have Hulu access like the latest Mac version does, and I can't seem to make the machine play a DVD. Sigh.

I think I'll put Windows back on and try to be as happy as possible until a better solution comes along. Which will probably be AppleTV, the only solution I've seen so far that Just Works.

Anyway. Loyal Reader Number One and I are working on plans to build an autonomous vehicle this summer, based on LRN1's RC truck. Seems doable. We're pretty excited about it.

Loyal Reader Number Two is feeling under the weather today. Best wishes for a quick recovery, LRN2! And don't heal like your sister, who is still sick a month later. Yikes.

Let's have a look at the world of food violence, shall we? If ever there was something not worth shooting over, it's this. Today's controversy: Do my Loyal Readers think it's worse than this? My answer: The shooting was more dangerous, but the tackling actually hurt someone. In any case, they ought to be settling these disputes peacefully.

See you tomorrow.

Egyptian statue

Here's Liberace's Egyptian statue. Additional comments are unnecessary. Part of my famous Statue series.

Well, another work week lurches to completion. Pretty good week, all things considered. Got a few things accomplished, left a few things out.

Loyal Reader Number Four cut the TV cable today, at least figuratively. No actual cords were cut in the making of this blog.

Anyway. We're tied to the intertubes for our electronic entertainment now. Fortunately, LRN4 was able to negotiate a sweet deal on higher-speed internet for about the same price we were paying before for lower-speed service, and much lower than that lower-speed service was going to cost us without cable TV service to provide a package discount. We should be running at high speed sometime tomorrow. Woo hoo!

LRN4 is quite the negotiator. She should be in sales. Or maybe purchasing. I think I know what her job will be when Gardenville takes off.

Things are otherwise pretty normal. We're heading out to Great America tomorrow morning and then I have the General Young Women Broadcast and Dinner to attend in the evening. Not much else is likely to happen, although the pond really needs to have its filter cleaned. It's Spring Algae Bloom season big-time right now, and I need to give the fellas every advantage they can get. Maybe I'll find a few minutes to get that done. Some of the cars are in desperate need of a wash and/or wax, but that's simply not going to be possible. The following weekend promises to be busy too, but I think there's a much better chance of getting washage done then.

Maybe I should be offering Loyal Reader Number Two a financial incentive to wash a car or two.

Let's have a quick look at today's food violence news: These hamburgers might kill you. I think that counts as food violence, don't you?

Here's an interesting website for my Loyal Readers who are searching for a name for their rock band and a title and artwork for their next album. Here's my first effort:


What do my Loyal Readers think? Try one yourself. It's fun!

I'm struggling to decide whether to keep saving for my English estate or to just buy this. There would be less travel, and I'm sure it's a nice place. Plus, I've always wanted my own gift wrapping room. Still, the English place has its own cricket wicket, and that's certainly worth something.

See you tomorrow.

Holidaire

Here's a great Historic Recreational Vehicle. It was right across the street from us during our recent Dos Reis trip. Quite a piece of work, no? The people had Colorado license plates on their truck. Although I didn't see the plate on the Holidaire, we can assume it also came from Colorado. I have no idea how it got here. It definitely needs to go up on the HRVA website. I didn't speak with the owners for the Holidaire's vital statistics. They were kind of odd. And kind of scary. Part of my famous Camping series.

Sleepy day today. I was up until about 1:00 this morning working on Larry. My stuff arrived via UPS sometime yesterday. I got the memory installed into Joe pretty quickly. It didn't make him run any better, but it will definitely improve things once I get the machine's instability resolved.

Larry was a little more difficult. I got the new drive installed with no problem, but everything I fixed seemed to mess up two other things. Two major problems surfaced - I loosened a couple of connectors up and lost my H.264 codec. The connectors were easy to fix, but the codec was quite hard. Took quite a bit of research and a bunch of trial and error. But it's fixed.

As a special bonus, I discovered that the codec fix for Larry is exactly what I needed to fix Joe's video problem. Well, one of them, anyway.

Anyway. Work was otherwise normal. My boss is expecting to be out next week. His father-in-law is dying, it appears. He and his wife both lost their mothers last year, so this is especially difficult for them.

Let's have a look at today's food violence news: While not exactly mano-a-mano violence, this still has a chilling effect on the entire snack food industry. When I think of what those snack cakes went through, I can't help getting just a little emotional. They probably had no seat belts and airbags, to boot. Oh, the humanity! Or the snack-cakery. Or something.

I need sleep. See you tomorrow.

Five mph

Here's the river at Dos Reis. Keep it slow, folks. Part of my famous Camping series.

Another normal day. My intention was to attend the branch's Elders Quorum presidency meeting this afternoon. Sadly, a late meeting was scheduled at work, and my attendance was required. Hence, no presidency meeting. Went home on the late train instead.

On the positive side, I got a lot of work done.

Loyal Reader Number One reports he still hasn't heard from Apple, either on the application or the internship front. Maybe tomorrow.

As I write this on the train, I don't yet know whether my new SATA cables and other Newegg stuff have arrived at home today. The UPS people said it ought to be here by now. I'm looking forward to trying out the Lightscribe feature.

Otherwise, situation normal.

There's some encouraging Space Toilet news! I definitely think they should follow through with their plans. Someday, I hope to have a famous toilet named after me.

Speaking of famous people, Loyal Reader Number Five has nominated Loyal Reader Number Three as Village Idiot in the English town I'm planning to buy. I would of course censure LRN5 for her impertinence, but I think LRN3 might actually want the job. So I'm just keeping quiet about it.

Other job applications?

See you tomorrow.

Two famous pianists

Here's Loyal Reader Number One with a portrait of the great Liberace. LRN1 is the one on the left.

Extreme Short Shrift. My Tuesday evening meeting went WAY long and it's long past my bedtime.

All is well, nothing is new.

I'll leave my Loyal Readers with this report of what may be the unluckiest man in the world.

See you tomorrow.

Awning lights

Here's the world-famous Bobcat at this weekend's campout. Check out those awning lights. Part of my famous Camping series.

Welcome to the Morrowlife Blog's seven hundredth post! That's a whole lot of Great Art and a whole lot of Marginal Content. And there's more where that came from.

The Blog is back! Pleasant long weekend. The campout was pretty much as I had hoped - pleasant weather, lots of reading and relaxing, and very comfortable. We got home a few hours before it started raining hard, so even the timing was just right.

This was my second visit to Dos Reis. It's a small campground of a single loop with roughly 25 sites. I believe all of them have full hookups, which is rare here in California. It's really nice to be able to turn on the lights without worrying about the battery and run the water without worrying about the tanks.

The campground is on the river and has a boat ramp, so it's populated mainly by fishing people, who are nearly uniformly quiet good neighbors. No loud music and only one hillbilly family shouting nasty words into their cell phone. And that lasted only about half an hour, anyway.

We went to the scout spaghetti dinner on Friday evening, as planned. I think I may have mentioned previously that they hold a spaghetti sauce contest in conjunction with the event, which ensures the sauce is plentiful and delicious. They held a small silent auction, at which I successfully bid on an electric toothbrush. My dentist had recommended one the previous day, so the timing was perfect. I got it for a scandalously low price.

The toothbrush kit actually came with two toothbrushes and a single charger, a huge bottle of Listerine (which my dentist had also praised for its antibacterial properties), a bunch of toothbrushes (including several princess models that will be ideal for Loyal Reader Number Twelve), another bunch of little tubes of toothpaste, and about a gazillion little containers of floss. It was all donated by our friends who run a dental office or two. I have no idea what I'm going to do with all that dental floss.

Speaking of LRN12, she and Loyal Reader Number Five came over for a visit on Saturday afternoon. They've both been quite sick (Loyal Reader Number Six has avoided it so far - I have no idea how) but they were both doing much better by Saturday. It was a delight to have them over.

Sunday was extremely busy, but I did manage to put in a couple hours of work on my downstairs media center PC. The newly-named Shemp machine was unable to take my new video card, so I dusted off another hand-me-down computer now named Joe. It didn't have a working OS, so I got a copy of XP Pro from Loyal Reader Number One, which I got installed. There's lots more configuring left to do, but I think it's going to work.

Some important toilet news came up in my absence: the space toilet is on the fritz again. Suddenly, my desire to be an astronaut has dropped even more. I guess it's better than being in Brussels, though.

See you tomorrow.

Mill pond

Here's the old mill pond at the Science Olympiad. More lions, so I'm calling it part of my famous Statue series.

The vacation has started! I'm in the train heading for home. Plenty of work today, and I didn't get much of it accomplished. No problem. There's always next week.

Lots to do before we start camping. I need to find a new taillight lens for the trailer, if possible. If not, I need to find and install new taillights on both sides. Also need to check the trailer out in general terms. And check the truck's various fluids. Also hope to get to the library and grab a few books (optional - I have several books on the Treo and two new paper ones I received for Christmas and haven't yet gotten to).

Bloggage on Thursday and Friday is highly unlikely. Our campground has hookups but, sadly, no wifi, alas. I'll make up for it next week with extra-high-quality posts. Trust me.

My nephew Joe was scheduled for surgery today. Best wishes and exclusive Morrowlife Concern Rays to Joe. Loyal Reader Number Sixteen mentioned that she was on her way out there yesterday or today. Let's hope we get a status report or two in a day or two.

Unfortunately, we are forced to provide today's toilet violence report: They're hitting each other with loo roll holders. Can't we all just get along?

That's all for now, Vladimir. See you Monday.

Ducks

Here's a happy, peppy duck couple observing their duck friends. Photo taken at Loyal Reader Number Two's Science Olympiad event, and part of my famous Bird series.

Happy St. Patty's day. One of our many meaningless holidays. I celebrated by wearing my pale green shirt. Must honor my Irish roots, don't you know.

Otherwise largely uninteresting day. Got up an hour late, commuted, worked, and commuted again. Evening plans include more fussing with the new remote control and a few more girls camp phone calls. In the event that my other goodies (DVD burner and video card) arrive, I'm sure I'll find time to install and test them too.

Loyal Reader Number One's iPhone application has been submitted. Let's hope it turns out to be a little more lucrative than the Morrowlife Blog has been (still at $13 and holding!). Remember me when you're rich, LRN1! Better yet, support me when you're rich.

The Stereo Stream website is making progress too. There are pretty much just placeholder pages at this point, but that's a start. I expect he'll have a version of the desktop server available for download Real Soon Now.

Speaking of the iPhone, version 3.0 of the iPhone software was announced today. Developers can already get to it, and it will be available to the public sometime this summer. Lots of people have been looking forward to some of the improvements they're putting in, like cut-and-paste (finally!), push email, and tethering. I think the most important change, though, is peer-to-peer connectivity. Why? Thank you for asking! I see Apple subtly positioning the platform as a competitive portable gaming machine - especially the Touch, with its other functions becoming more and more secondary. With peer-to-peer capability, tons of fun new games will quickly become available, resulting in a lot more hardware sales. It'll be interesting to see what comes along. Your opinion?

How about a little controversy? It's been a long time since we've had any controversy. Consider this: Have you ever seen a stupider idea than this? My answer: not that I can recall.

And speaking of stupid ideas, I definitely think my Loyal Readers and I should pool our money and buy this. I volunteer for the position of "Lord of the Manor." There are plenty of "Serf" opportunities available.

See you tomorrow.

Spitting lions

Here are a bunch of spitting lions. Part of the bridge over the pond at CSU-Stanislaus in Turlock, where Loyal Reader Number Two's Science Olympiad was held. Also part of my famous Statue series.

The blog is back. I have no idea how my Loyal Readers survived.

Interesting wedding. The Liberace Mansion was surprisingly nice. It's in a residential neighborhood near downtown, and the neighboring houses are surprisingly . . . ordinary. Maybe even a little rundown. The mansion itself is simply a fairly nice, reasonably large house with a very large ballroom added on in the back where the swimming pool used to be. The furnishings are original, and there's a lot of Liberace's personal memorabilia. Kind of interesting. Groups who rent the place have basically the run of the house. Also kind of interesting in this day and age. Nobody seemed to ruin anything.

The wedding itself was a little unusual in that it was quite casual. The guests sat at the same tables used for the reception, and there was applause and cheering where most traditional weddings might have been more sedate. Presumably, that's how the bride and groom chose to do things, and it was just fine. Traditional ceremonies are getting more and more rare.

It was great to see family, especially Loyal Readers Numbers One, Three, and Fifteen. They're all doing well. For that alone, it was definitely a worthwhile trip. And then there was everybody else too!

No Friday post. There was Wifi in the hotel, but there was no time. Spent the evening with family instead. Don't regret the decision.

Normal work day. Lots to do; did some of it. Couldn't get out early enough for the early train, so I'm getting home at 7:30. Too bad.

None of the cool stuff I've recently ordered was here as of this morning. I'm excited to get it and try it all out. Soon.

Breaking update from home: the remote control and Treo charger are here! The remote works great! So far!

Let's have a quick look at today's utterly disgusting toilet news: consider getting a bluetooth.

And I'm especially gratified to see that my program has already started to spawn spinoff applications.

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

Bridge tester

Here's Loyal Reader Number Two testing his bridge at the Science Olympiad. It held! Check out those safety goggles. Special cameo appearance by Loyal Reader Number Four.

Fairly Short Shrift tonight. Took the late train, and I have to get ready to travel tomorrow morning, so some preparation must take place.

I took a chance today. I've been planning to buy a couple new HDTVs because I couldn't find a video card that could talk to an old-fashioned RCA jack on an old-fashioned tube TV. Well, today I saw an ad for an old-model video card that claims to do just that. It was offered for thirty bucks. I bought it. It also has an S-video connector and two VGA ports, so it was apparently fairly hot stuff when it was new on the market.

The risk is that it won't end up working like I need it to, thus wasting the thirty bucks. My judgment was that it was worth risking $30 for the chance of saving $300. Sadly, it has no DVI port, so it will be truly useless in the event it won't drive an old TV. Fingers are crossed.

Loyal Reader Number One had his phone interview with Apple today. It appears to have gone well. They surprised him with the need to propose a personal project to spend half-time working on, so he needs to come up with some ideas and get back to them. The good thing is that the interview seemed more like a final-decision talk than a screening call. I hope it works out for him. It would be a great summer.

Any news in the education field today? Let's check: Here's a great moneymaker!

Speaking of which, we're long overdue for a Morrowlife financial juggernaut update: I'm up to $13! Exactly! I think I've reached critical mass. I can sense the blog has just gone over the tipping point. Riches are inevitable!

Posting tomorrow is unlikely - we'll be in Las Vegas. Wifi and time availability are doubtful. We'll see.

One bit of bad wedding news is that Loyal Readers Numbers Five, Six, and Twelve are too sick to go. Get well soon, Loyal Readers! We'll miss you.

See you tomorrow. Or maybe Monday.

Buddy

Here's Buddy, Loyal Reader Number Two's first water rocket, on the launch pad at the Science Olympiad. Its identical twin was Skippy. Buddy did better than Skippy, largely because of a setup glitch. They'll never fly again, though. The cleanup crew apparently decided our bucket of rockets was trash, and they threw it all away. Sigh. At least they took third place in their one and only outing.

Perfect weather again today. Near-freezing temperatures overnight and warm and sunny all day.

Odd day. I have one subordinate who constantly asks me to approve unbelievably high expenses. Today, he asked for $700 worth of label-making supplies, which he tells me will be used over the next six months. I decline to believe this. Two days ago, he asked me to approve ten power cords for the lab. When I asked how many he needs to use right now, he told me he needs three. The other seven were supposed to be spares. I approved two spares. I'm going to approve one or two hundred dollars' worth of the label supplies.

I wish he'd quit wasting his time and mine on these ludicrous things. We both have better things to do.

I checked out chargers for my Palm today. I can get a cheap Chinese knockoff for about $3 including shipping, or an official Palm one for about twice that much. I'm going to order the Palm one tonight, based on the numerous negative reviews of the cheap one.

I'm also going to (finally) order the computer remote control tonight. If I can find the one I was looking at a few weeks ago. I had a quick look at Amazon, and can't find it. Need to do a little detective work.

Otherwise, the evening's mine, I believe. Need to get to bed at a reasonable hour and maybe do a little preparation for Friday's trip to the Wedding of the Century. Check the Honda's oil, make my packing list, etc.

Let's check on today's food violence/dog news: They're a bunch of liars. But they're also philanthropic. However, they can be rather strict. Unfortunately, they're just too darn noisy.

There's a new iPod Shuffle! It's smaller than a AA battery and has no controls on it other than a power switch. The rest of the controls are on the earbud cord. It talks. It's aluminum and stainless steel. It has 4 gigabytes. It costs $79. We really need one.

Apple has a way of making all their formerly cool hardware look sort of dowdy as soon as they bring out the next generation, don't they? My first-generation Shuffle was pretty slick, not to mention extremely tiny, when I got it. Now it's just old. Although I still love it. My 80-gig iPod was the ultimate in cool until just recently. I still love it too, but now it's yesterday's news. The funny thing is that I generally like older technology. I just like Apple's new stuff better.

Speaking of which, best of luck to Loyal Reader Number One in his phone interview tomorrow. I'm sure he'll do well, so it will probably come down to whether they think they need his skill set this summer. I hope they decide they do.

A word or two about the Safari 4 beta. I installed it as soon as it came out. There's some good and some bad. The good: The cover flow view is pretty, although surprisingly not as useful as you might think it would be. I prefer to just start with my home page. Which you can make it do, of course. The bad: Putting the tabs in the window's title bar. It's not just bad. It's wretched. I'm used to the tabs being directly above the business portion of the window, and that's where I want them. There was absolutely no reason for moving them. And they're stupid up there. It also seems to be really slow. Otherwise, another hit from Apple.

See you tomorrow.

Flyer

Here's Loyal Reader Number Twelve taking a short flight. Excellent piloting skills.

Extreme short shrift. Massive Meeting Tuesday. I expected to have five or ten minutes to do this, but got a couple of girls camp phone calls and here I am with about two minutes to go.

Normal day. Got up (a little late), drove to work, worked, drove home, grabbed a bite, talked on the phone, blogged, and now I'm off to meetings.

I'll leave you with this: if your dog can't take care of things, sometimes you just have to do them yourself.

See you tomorrow.

Coming down

Here's Loyal Reader Number Twelve coming down the slide. Not my best picture, maybe, but I think it's a good likeness.

Another sunny day, temperature about 60. Sunshine predicted the rest of the week, with highs up to about 70 by Friday. The drought people must be positively giddy. As our current Masters in Government say, never let a good crisis go to waste.

Pretty good weekend, although Saturday was packed, as predicted. I had two ten-minute visits home from 6:45 AM until about 10:45 PM. All the activities were pretty good, though. Loyal Reader Number Two had been worried about being competitive in the Science Olympiad, but he did extremely well. Took second in bridge breaking and third in water rocket flying. Congrats, LRN2!

I played hooky from the branch so I could make a bunch more phone calls for girls camp callings. Got almost everything done. The only real worry item left is our head cook. I haven't been able to make phone contact with the spouse in that case, despite numerous tries. Apparently, he has a difficult work schedule. So do I, so it's tough. We'll get it done, though.

Nothing otherwise new. In today's toilet news, we have an interesting new restaurant. I think I'll skip it. Thanks to Loyal Reader Number Twenty Six for recommending the place.

Plus, they're on the attack! Be careful out there. Or in there, I guess.

See you tomorrow.

Top of the slide

Here's Loyal Reader Number Twelve getting ready to come down the slide. She has to do a few pull-ups first.

Great day at home. First the good news: against all odds, the Miata passed its biennial smog inspection! Not bad for a car with more than 170,000 miles on it. I'll probably get another 170k out of it before it's done. What a great little car.

The other good news is that Loyal Reader Number Two and I got a working water rocket design done. That's a good thing, since his competition with it is tomorrow. Our design is pretty cool looking (we could do lots more in terms of workmanship, but it works great) and it didn't break its test egg! We're still experiencing premature deployment of the parachute, but it's going to have to be good enough as it is. We made two rockets, which LRN2 named Buddy and Skippy. Contest results reported on Monday. Don't get your hopes up, though. We've never been to one of these, so we don't know how well we have to do. It'll be fun just to be there.

Got a couple other things done too, but not much. Attended my two work telecons in the morning, transferred a lot of files to Larry (still doing it, in fact - there are tens of gigabytes of shows to move), a did a bunch of reading and relaxing. Didn't get any cars washed, didn't get the cable cut off, didn't order any TV or Ooma parts, didn't make any Girls Camp callings. Maybe there will be time for some of that tomorrow.

But precious little. Busy Saturday schedule previously reported. I expect to hold to it.

There's some big toilet news today: They're not all that comfortable from the other side. My recommendation: check for your keys one more time before you do anything drastic.

In other toilet news, I've found a home improvement project we ought to consider: the golden toilet.

Have a great weekend. See you Monday.

Slide runner

Here's Loyal Reader Number Twelve running for the slide. Taken at the park on a sunny day in January.

Another busy work week grinds to a halt. Got a few things done. Didn't get a few other things done. Pretty average. I enjoyed it.

Lots to get accomplished this weekend. I have a couple of work telecons to attend on Friday. Need to wash the Miata, Honda, and Suburban. I also need to wash the Ranger pretty badly, but I don't plan to drive all the way out there to do it. Maybe I can find some time to get it done professionally sometime soon.

Anyway. I also have plenty of electronic-type projects to work on. Need to come up with a short-term solution for Loyal Reader Number Four's computer networking problem - it turns out the Ooma Hub doesn't pass its source IP address space through to devices attached to it. It does network address translation instead. This allows attached devices to get to the internet but not see the local network, causing printing and file sharing problems. The short-term solution will probably be to move the Ooma up to the loft and plug it into the router up there. That will leave nothing plugged into it, thus solving my NAT problem.

For the long term, I need to make the make-or-buy decision on the network splitter and get the parts. Also probably need to bite the bullet and buy a bigger switch for the closet. But not right now.

Then there's the television situation. I absolutely must get a remote control for Larry so I can declare him Fully Operational, at which point I think we can turn off the cable. Or maybe we should just turn it off now. Just get it over with.

Then I can start buying the additional TVs and various needed computer upgrades. I suspect I might be more motivated to get the computers done and TVs bought if the cable's turned off. Plus we want to stop spending the outrageous monthly cable fees.

Other things needing doing: adding free web-based content to Larry (I found several excellent HD podcasts, which I've downloaded and need to move), cleaning up a few things around the house, and relaxing. Lots of relaxing.

Saturday will be pretty busy. I have to give a quick five-minute talk at the Branch's Elders Quorum breakfast. Then I'm off to join Loyal Reader Number Two at the Science Olympiad for most of the day. Then there's a Stake YM/YW activity in the evening. That'll pretty much do it for the day.

Oh, and there's a home teaching visit to make on Friday afternoon. Plus numerous Girls Camp callings to issue. Plus all the normal Sunday meetings.

Whew. Looks like I'll need to take my relaxation (link warning: new-agey video with sound) wherever I can find it.

Anyway. Let's see what going on in the Toilet News world: The quality is going way down.

See you tomorrow.

Blue lagoon

Here's a pretty little bit of water up at Clark's Fork. That water is nothing if not blue. Taken during our August 2008 trip. Part of my famous Camping series.

Sunny, rainy day. Sometimes both at the same time. More rain coming through Friday. The weekend looks pretty clear, which is nice for a change.

Nothing much to report. I called Loyal Reader Number Four on the Ooma during the lunch hour. It worked great. I need to do a little stress testing soon - want to see how the calls go when I'm downloading something big, copying lots of files across the network, and watching TV on the 'net. May have to set a fixed IP address on the Ooma and do a little Quality of Service shaping to keep data flowing. Another fun toy to work on!

Otherwise, it's pretty quiet. LRN4 has been looking for just the right formal dress for our upcoming cruise. I have a modest suggestion.

Let's check in with the food violence world: It's getting dangerous out there. Remember: when frozen meat is outlawed, only outlaws will have frozen meat. On the other hand, some people are actually doing something about it. Of course, you can go too far.

See you tomorrow.

Another waterfall

Here are (much earlier versions of) Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two headed down towards the Pennsylvania Waterfall prominently featured in last Friday's post. I have another sneaking suspicion I've used this photo before too. Nobody can prove it, though. Part of my famous Camping series.

No post yesterday. I was sick. Came home early, arriving at about 12:30, and went to bed immediately. While I did get up a couple of times, I'm estimating I got about 18 hours of sleep. And I'm sleepy again already.

Thanks to good old Anon for noticing my absence. I can always count on Anon.

Rainy day today - big time. We're supposed to have pretty steady rain for at least the next five days. I'm predicting the famous California drought will be over before March is out. Of course, that won't stop our Masters in Government from imposing draconian restrictions, will it?

Large puddles abound outside the train windows, and the little creek we go by while we're in one of our picturesque little valleys is absolutely raging. And very muddy.

Family members are starting to gear up for the Wedding of the Century in Las Vegas mid-month. So far, Loyal Readers Numbers Three, Four, Five, Six, Twelve, Fifteen, and I are planning to go, and Loyal Reader Number One has formed an exploratory committee. I'm really looking forward to seeing everybody. Loyal Reader Number Two is pretty sad to be missing everybody.

I haven't seen much going on in the toilet world since our last update. Maybe I should have milked a few days' posts out of that. In related news, though, the sewerage hippos are causing quite a stink.

Non-meeting Tuesday tonight. I should probably be making some Girls Camp calls, but I'm otherwise uncommitted. Maybe I should spend some of the time ordering that remote control I want. Also the extra phone charger.

Later - Ooma got here today! I set it up, and it actually works! Really well! I need to get an Ethernet splitter (if there is such a thing - if not, I need to make one and possibly sell them so others won't have to suffer like me) and an expanded switch for the closet so I can set it up where I want it, but it's currently set up by LRN4's computer and working perfectly. We've ordered our phone number switched over to it, after which we'll turn off Verizon for good. Should take about another month. In the meantime, the Ooma box is hooked up to an auxiliary phone, so we don't have to give the temporary number out. But I'll be happy to give it to my Loyal Readers if anybody wants to try it out. Email me!

Nothing else going on. See you tomorrow.