Done the last two days (20101129 Mo - 1130 Tu)

[mdlbear]

1129 Mo
  * up 6:30; W=195.2; drugs, nose, teeth; coffee, dishes, eyes
  ~ Kat has a ride (Mikey), so no need to leave work early.
  * conflikt membership for Kat; brunch for all
  $ HSX: $140 to Conflikt for Chaos, three brunch tickets.
  ~ Chaos: flight 817    Depart SAN JOSE CA (SJC) at 7:10 PM 
  * book conflikt flights 0127 - 0131  2 people
    Colleen seemed upset when I told her I was only getting 2 plane tickets
  * book conflikt hotel room -- weekend of Jan 28 Fr, 29 and 30th
    So book room for 0127 Th - 0131 Mo = the usual 4 nights
  @ Tux droid 
  & drop the side-trip to CVS because YD couldn't find the tripped breaker.
    She apparently didn't notice that exactly one had a red square showing.
  @ osewalrus: Link Harvest: Krugman Sort of Gets It
    The Instability of Moderation - NYTimes.com
  @ Daily Kos: Death of American dream, 60 million no sick leave, 132 million
    no dental, 59 million without medical via admnaismith
  : Inherited a Dremel lathe from Kayta via Eileen.
  ! anxiety?  WTF?  Conflikt??  cold?  difficulty breathing?  What bothers me
    the most is that I can't tell what the problem is.
  * ordered new Jawbone Icon headset via Amazon to replace lost one.  Still
    has the best UI of any I've seen so far.
  * bed 11:30ish; snuggle

1130 Tu
  & up 4ish; laundry.  snuggle
  * up 7:45; W=193; drugs, nose, teeth; coffee, dishes
  * buy: bus pass for YD - pretty well used up lunch hour
  * PAY BILLS 
  @ kateelliott: Writing Explicitly: Guest Post by Victoria Janssen
  @ Short Sharp Science: Geek words founded today's English via ysabetwordsmith
  @ Don't Ask Don't Tell report [pdf]
  @ Book review: Being Geek | ZDNet UK
  : Colleen switched from bedside commode to back bathroom!

It's been quite a busy week -- I've been Getting Things Done. Mainly booking our flights and hotel room for Conflikt (and getting Chaos a membership, and all three of us brunch tickets). I was sort of on a roll Monday. And I "inherited" a Dremel lathe from Kayta.

Monday I had what felt like an anxiety attack; it wasn't until sometime late yesterday that I figured out that similar symptoms can be caused by breathing through a straw. Which is effectively what I was doing, thanks to my persistent nasal congestion. Bletch.

The good news for the week -- Colleen has switched from the bedside commode to the back bathroom (the one with the ADA height toilet). She's also switched to the little folding walker, because it fits through the bathroom doors and the others don't.

A reasonable number of links under the cut.

Comments

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

Your daughter may not have realized that the red square on the breaker indicated that it was tripped. Many breakers don't move the handle very much when they trip, which is, of course, why they use the red indicator. But to someone who's never really looked at a circuit breaker before, and has never been told how they operate, the red square could be a label of some kind, possibly a warning - "whatever you do, don't touch this one!"

Be glad you don't have fuses. When my son moved last January, he moved into a pre-war three-family, with fuse boxes. He lives on the third floor, and the fuse boxes are, of course, in the cellar. Since I had to pull one fuse or another when we were re-wiring the place (after cutting an archway in an existing plaster wall), I showed him how to tell whether a fuse needs replacing or not, along with all the usual warnings. I didn't think they still made fuses!

[mdlbear]

Yup -- somehow I managed to avoid upsetting her too much when telling her about the red square.

When we moved into the house it had a 30-amp fuse in each side of the 110v service line. It was one of the first things we fixed.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

How on earth did she manage to grow up in a geek household without knowing about something as basic as circuit breakers? ;-)

[mdlbear]

Darned if I know. Maybe she was always asleep when the breaker blew -- the most common culprit was mixing the toaster and microwave, which means breakfast time.

OTOH it's not really a geek household. It's fanish, but I'm really the only hardware/software geek, despite my efforts to interest both girls in it.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

I thought my son wasn't all that interested, when he was a child. Imagine my surprise when he demonstrated that he'd picked up an awful lot just by watching my husband and me fix, build, and install all sorts of stuff. He still phones me for advice ;-)

And thereby hangs a tale...
He often phones me when he's driving to or from work - he likes to talk while he drives. Last week we were chatting that way, and he swerved away from what we were talking about to ask me, "What does it mean when the steering wheel suddenly gets very hard to turn? Oh, and there's white 'smoke' trailing behind the car. And now the brakes aren't working very well. And the alternator light just came on." I told him to pull off the road. He stopped, and discovered that the "smoke" was steam, now coming out around the edges of the hood, and there was a growing puddle of coolant on the ground. He cautiously opened the hood, and saw coolant sprayed all over the engine compartment, and a broken belt tangled up in the machinery. He then added the information that he had heard a *klunk* just before things went pear-shaped. I figured that the belt had snapped, and the flailing end had slashed a radiator hose.

He had it towed to a repair shop, where they told him that the pulley for the power-brakes pump had broken and flown off; the shrapnel tore the belt, shredded the radiator, and slashed the brake and power-steering fluid lines. The water pump, trying to pump when dry, seized up, which caused the timing belt to break. And the sudden deluge of coolant shorted out the battery. He could buy a newer used car for what it would cost to fix the broken one. I had to admit that I had never heard of a forged steel pulley breaking off the shaft like that...

Inheriting from Kayta

[donsimpson.livejournal.com]

I wanted to ask somebody about the bunch of rocks I drilled for Kayta, for a Dark Crystal inspired outfit, but every time I try to, my eyes clench up and I stall. I'd like to make sure they get used.

Re: Inheriting from Kayta

[mdlbear]

Her younger daughter, Eileen, is staying with us while working on Kayta's storage units. I'll let her know.

Re: Inheriting from Kayta

[donsimpson.livejournal.com]

Thank you.