The Mandelbear's Musings

Went out for a walk this morning by Los Gatos Creek; a little shorter than usual, because of some lingering discomfort from yesterday's leg cramps. It seemed to get better rather than worse as I went along but I didn't want to push my luck.

It was oddly different knowing that I was going to be walking there with a friend in a couple of weeks. I don't get to do that very often.

After that I went shopping. At Guitar Showcase I got a gig bag for our Casio keyboard, so that it would be easier to take to Consonance to be borrowed by the assorted keyboard players on the guest list.

After that I went to Fry's and picked up the APC 1300VA UPS they had on sale ($20 mail-in rebate). It's a little smaller than the 1500VA one I picked up a few weeks ago, but it'll do for the bedroom. Like the larger one, it can be permanently silenced, which means I can use it for the facehugger and the alarm clock as well as the computer, and not have to worry about getting rudely awakened by a screeching UPS.

(As an aside, this will free up the 420VA supply again; I'll probably put it back on Nova, the fileserver. That should give me about an hour's worth of uptime on the router and network gear.)

I also wanted to get 4GB of RAM, but discovered when I got up to the cashier that they'd given me 2GB. Don't know whether I misread the ad, or they just wrote me up for the wrong item, but it'll wait. It's not really all that urgent now, and it'll only be cheaper next time.

added: After Fry's I went first to Bed, Bath and Beyond, basically just across the street, to look at curtain rods. The plan is to be able to curtain off part of the living room (the part with the couch and bathroom access) to provide a little extra privacy for the guests we're expecting for the wedding.

After that, I went over to Southern Lumber to buy wood for cutting boards: my usual wedding present. It took a lot of looking, but I finally found a piece of nicely-grained maple that will make two cutting boards.

Finished the loop by stopping off at BevMo for gin. Made a second, briefer shopping run to Safeway for ground beef, grated cheese, and tortillas so the Wolfling could make tacos for dinner.

Went in to work this morning, intending to make up for the three days I hadn't exactly planned on taking off, only to discover that today was a holiday. Oh. (I remembered that Monday was a holiday.) I'm not complaining -- I still had some shopping to do.

Did that. Will say no more, since everyone I bought presents for is reading my LJ.

The gadgetry I ordered for the Younger Daughter's science project arrived today: an electronic compass module and "brainstem" controller from Acroname. They mostly cater to robotics hobbyists. I don't feel too bad about helping the YD with the hardware and programming (though I'll make her look over my shoulder enough to understand how it goes together) because the actual science will be in the comparative user testing. (The project is, as the astute reader has no doubt already deduced, a talking compass for blind people. The talking will be done using flite on a Debian-based laptop.)