Done Since 2018-01-29

Just about the last thing I did at Conflikt was to annoy my back, probably by twisting around to pick up my gig bag from under and behind my chair. Took a cyclobenzaprine, two naproxen, and a hot bath before going to bed. It was a lot better by morning, but I still very sensibly called for a bellman to help. This was especially sensible given that the suitcase I shared with C was still very heavy. A massage (thank you, N!) and some time with a heating pad when I got home also helped.

I didn't manage to see the lunar eclipse Wednesday morning; N and g told me they caught about 15 seconds of it before a cloud covered it. There's another one coming in July.

technoshaman pointed me at Mycroft, the open-source alternative to the Amazon Echo, et. al. We have four Echo Dots in the house, although the last one isn't set up yet; the advantage of Mycroft over Alexa, Siri, and Google is that it can interact directly with things on your local network. Everything is local, it doesn't save what you say or track what you search for. I went and ordered a Raspberry Pi 3 and a microphone array, so that I can install Picroft on it. I'll let you know next week how well it works.

I also relocated my WiFi repeater to give a better signal to the room over the garage. That has the unfortunate side-effect of disconnecting my laser printer, which was attached to one of its ethernet ports. I tried to replace it with another of my routers, a Linksys WRT54G, but it wouldn't connect to my network as a client. WTF? (Many articles say that client mode, at least, is possible. Haven't managed to do it.) It turns out that bridging a WiFi connection to ethernet is a black art. The eventual solution is likely to involve routing rather than simply bridging. Wasted a day and a half on that.

I missed guitar practice yesterday, too. Grump. Wednesday was interesting -- Neither N nor g could go, so I had a private singing lesson. Fun. Sang two of the songs I usually do solo: Keep the Dream Alive (which would actually work really well with backup) and Riverheart (which is very much a male solo).

We need to get almost everything cleared out of the garage so that the builders can work there. That was originally supposed to involve putting up a metal shed by the side of the house (between the propane tanks and the ramp). As it turns out, the shed I'd ordered was shipped in three boxes, one of which didn't arrive. I found that out yesterday. Fortunately, I had already ordered a plastic greenhouse to go behind the garage; it went up in an amazingly short time Wednesday afternoon. Yesterday I ordered a pop-up tent, which is supposed to arrive Wednesday sometime. Should have put the greenhouse up next to the house; I may try to move it.

( Notes & links, as usual )

River: Ask me Anything

I've been around here for a while, for various values of "here" that predate Dreamwidth, LJ, the Web, and even Usenet. But a lot of you reading this are relatively new, so to borrow words from chanter_greenie et. al.,

I would like you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

As Sooj's song says, Ask Me Anything.