one monkey typing

A) it's friggin cold
B) I decided to try moving my brain into Celsius. Switched everything I could over that only I use. I found that Weather Underground at least has issues with showing celsius everywhere.
C) I'm scheduled to go inspect and probably buy a lathe on Saturday. It's about 900 pounds so not terrible as these things go but I'm thinking carefully about rigging to lift, move off the trailer (using the 2 ton engine hoist that I have). Also documenting the adventure.
D) it's electronic filing startup week, complicated by the government shut-down and extreme cold weather having several state's DoR not showing up for work, so that's all fun.
E) It's supposed to be over freezing Saturday through Wednesday, with rain on Monday. Sounds like motorcycle weather assuming the roads get OK. Especially Tues/Wed after the salt washes off the road.

Yesterday I started digging up sod for a largish patch to move the pink rose to. It's going to take a while. Also started on the strawberry beds. There are a bunch of oaks sprouting in those beds, if they come up well we can move them elsewhere. So much weeding to be done though in all the beds.

A few weeks ago I built a new PC. I'm very happy with it, the old one was really still quite good but it lacked just a couple of things that were getting in my way, and no good way to expand them for a reasonable amount of money. I tend to use machines for many years go the $700 I put into this isn't a problem.

Over this past weekend we repurposed the old PC with a new video card and set up Kate's room as a VR suite with an Oculus headset. It's fun. The PC may eventually get replaced but it's doing a pretty good job for now. The things that were hampering it in the last environment aren't currently that big of a deal here.

The video system at the church is slowly taking shape. Several things aren't working as I'd hoped they would but I found a workaround that I think will do. I would have preferred to do a full HDMI system instead of the IP camera that I used, but IP cams are $250, HDMI ones are $1700.

I went to do audio and take photos at the spring tea at church, and caught up with a couple of people I hadn't seen in a while.

I need to poke the MCO people. I'm putting 30 to 60 minutes a week into editing service audio, have 5 weeks worth burned to CD now, and nobody's touched any of them. I'm not going to continue if nobody's going to use them.

This Friday I'm taking off and spending some time with Dianne Smith to record things at church for us to use when she's away.

My chainsaw decided to get cranky on Saturday while working on a downed branch. So that's another stupid thing that's going to rob me of a couple of hours to fix. And when it decided to not work, the man I was working with on the branch stepped up to try something else and got injured, which really sucked. He's OK but his back is injured.

I'm sort of on track for reading. Slower than last year but that's by choice, I need to do other things. Last year I read 90 books, this year I've set my goal at only 30 and I'm at 14 for the year now. I think this is a good pace that allows me to get other things done.

I really need to decide where I want to go for vacations this summer. A proper tour of UP waterfalls, and a Grand Canyon trip are current possibilities. Work into that also that I would like to build a shop.

Some folks at church have decided to add another 20x40 foot event pavilion to the stable and I was tasked to buy it (not pay for it). The main bits are coming, and I have to go buy the metal pipe at Menards. Then every one of the (30-some I think) pipes have to be cut to length. I want to buy a portable bandsaw for this, and was going to go for the Harbor Freight one, hoping for it to go on sale but it hasn't for a while now. Plan to build a stand as many have for mounting it as a cutoff saw.

I have been adding security cameras at home. Figuring out what works and what doesn't. Some sort of system is desired up in Laurium and I'd like to be able to at least recommend, and possibly install a system there. And I like at least being able to see the driveway on days when I'm working from home (in the basement) for when deliveries come.

No luck with the TV yesterday, including trying to get Walmart to exchange it (90 day limit) but LG is going to repair it.
Unusual service at church today, used all the new AV equipment.
Found an AC adapter for the mouse zapper, so trying that. It's 7.5 instead of 6 volts but probably close enough. I've baited it with chocolate chips 3 times now, with various batteries. The chips are gone each time. I guess it really does need C alkalines not AAs in adapters. We'll see.
Cleaned the fish tank. Cleaned the bedroom, vacuumed there, up the stairs and 2nd floor.
Windows 10 hasn't made me furious yet and it's been 2 days. Maybe there's hope. I'm never getting rid of the Windows 7 image though.
Things still act very slowly occasionally - you'd think that a quad core i7 with 8G RAM would be able to play simple online video when the connection is running full 60 Mbps but maybe that's asking a lot.

Dentist this morning. Pretty uneventful but after a bite wing xray, the dentist decided he didn't like how the crown was sitting, and wants to redo it. No charge since it's newish. But it does mean another 2 or 3 hours in the chair over the next month, and a temporary crown for a couple of weeks.

OK I tried Dreamwidth for a few days, but I don't get it.
It seems like they forked Livejournal's base code 10 or 12 years ago and never did any improvements on it, and they charge almost double what LJ does, while LJ has done a ton of improvements.
Whatever, I'm back baby.

in stream of consciousness order. Click the little doobliy-do to read.
( This got long, and you probably don't care. If you do, click here )

Sunday was a hoot, even the unplanned parts. After church, we (the two kids and I) idled around for an hour or so, then packed up and headed for Detroit, where Jenn took part in a fantastically well-performed concert with the Farmington Community Band at Orchestra Hall. I'm eagerly awaiting being able to buy CDs of the concert later this year.

We helped pack up a little, though the band has things down pretty well. Then we went to Harrison High School to meet the truck and help unload the percussion. A little while later Jenn pulled up and said "Do you have a gas can? Gabe ran out of gas." So Tom and I went to Meijer where there were 20 minute checkout lines, to buy a 5 gallon gas can, then filled it and found Gabe on the Lodge.

Modern gas cans are "safety" cans. You can translate this to "if you try to fill anything but a passenger car with a standard filler lid, half the gas will spill down you and onto the ground." That, apparently, is safety. So the car smelled quite badly for the rest of the day. But the truck rolled again, and everything got safely where it needed to be. And I now own THREE 5 gallon gas cans. One with a maddeningly complex spout that may have to die.

Then Tom wanted to visit a friend a few miles away just for a minute to pick up something. Arrived, person not home. Texted, drove another 2 miles to pick up friend at DQ and return him home. Got thing, took friend a few more miles to get his car. Finally returned home after 9PM. But hey, adventures in all forms, including walking down the side of the Lodge expressway with a can of gas, especially to help out a friend.

In other news, last night I restarted trying to pick up where I left off as a kid learning keyboard. I will try to lose the hour or so I usually spend watching TV and spend it instead on this. I have the old Clavinova that the church threw out, bought a MIDI interface for it, last night I skipped quickly through about the first 70 lessons in the software I bought a few years ago. I am up to sight reading. For some reason this method puts both thumbs on middle C, which is just weird, but whatever. I also found that the torrents have a ridiculous quantity of public domain sheet music, both scans of ancient copies from the early to mid 20th century, and crowdsourced re-done typesets of classical composer works. I'm WAY FAR from being able to play any of that but it's nice to have the stuff there.

I took the day off work to meet up with the church secretary at 10AM to make sure the new PC was going to work for her. The plan was then to work around home from noon or so on.

I packed up around 8:30 to get there at 9, install some software and be ready for her at 10. Missing CDs and other issues made that take longer than expected. Then around noon our pianist showed up and said the new Clavinova would be delivered at 1PM. Since the old one was being thrown away, I gave in at the last moment and decided to acquire it, went home for my trailer, grabbed some lunch. The excitement of the new instrument kept me there until 3 or so, then I went and finished up with the PC. A trip to Menards got some supplies and also a shelf that the pianist requested. When I got back to the church, the trustees and I soon discovered that the sump pump had failed and since it's due to rain, possibly heavily, over the next 24+ hours, I went back to Menards and bought a replacement. That installed, then the shelf built and installed, the secretary back after going out for some appointments, checking that she was very happy with the new machine (and I suspect with the new, much better monitor and keyboard) and I finally got home around 8:20.

I did get one more of the walnut trees that the neighbor gifted us with planted, with 4 more to go. By then it was getting dark.

And now I have a rather large and somewhat sick Clavinova in my shop. I am planning to hold that for a winter project. I suspect bad capacitors in the power supply, and swollen wood in the action on the keyboard. The former, probably pretty easy to fix. The latter, probably the opposite of easy.

The best laid plans.

I've been falling behind on my personal journaling so I'll just do everything in this post.

Got the rest of the Duckon LEDs in today. Wow. The pink LEDs are PRETTY. We only got enough for 10 sets. They're a bit expensive at $1.20 per set instead of about 60 cents a set for the other colors. I think they're probably going to be gone pretty much instantly. I may change my mind and charge a little extra for them, though that involves bookkeeping that I'd just as soon not have to deal with. Most people seemed fine with just charging a flat rate regardless of color.

I somehow inflamed my left ankle about 4 weeks ago riding bike. It's been slowly getting better. I tried riding last Wednesday but it got a little worse as a result so I left off again. It's almost completely healed but I can still feel a bit of weirdness in there so with only one weekday left I'll wait until Monday to try again. I'm getting to where I've had QUITE enough of driving for a while.

I seem to have fallen behind on 3D printing again. Both machines running to try to catch up. Blinkie kit prep is stalled until I get black PLA loaded in one of the machines again. I do now have all of the LEDs counted out into the kit bags, the rest will only take an hour or so total. Need to write and print the instructions though.

It's my own damn fault. I've been neglecting the house while working on the basement, and the result is that the living areas are woefully under-cleaned (marginally ransacked might be a better term) and the basement is now in a state of complete disarray, as I've finished the storage area but we need to now take probably a week and sort/move/arrange/stack all the crud that's been just tossed about in the frenzy to get the shelves moved.

Actually I shouldn't say I'm DONE with the storage area. I'm done with construction. But I think some additional storage devices are in order; half-shelves, racks, and boxes.

And, I didn't HAVE to build that trebuchet. But I figured I wanted to so something new this year, and the basement and house aren't going to get finished before Berzerker anyway, so it was probably better to do it now. Getting the project done early has a few advantages; not rushing at the last minute to get parts, getting time to think out problems instead of just doing something, and there's a chance that the house might get left in anything like a state of order so we don't have to come back to a complete disaster.

It's looking like we're going to leave the dog at home (boarded at the vet) this year, so we can do the shipwreck museum, which L has been anxious to see for years now, and the Pictured Rocks boat tour, which the kids and I have never done. Without the dog, I'm hoping things are a little more laid back. DB is now 10 and capable of running around on his own and following rules (though "trust but verify" is certainly in order).

With some luck, we may wind up coming home from this vacation in better spirits than we left, which is not always the case.