The Mandelbear's Musings

Well, that was a long month we had last week! Control of the Senate is still up in the air, and the Repugnant party seems to have come out of it largely intact if not stronger (Message of Election 2020: Trump lost, but Trumpism did not), but even with that it was nowhere near the disaster it could have been. I'm still extremely worried about the damage the lame duck administration can, and probably will, still do, and the damage the Trumpist court system will do in the future.

Speaking of the Orange Menace, Cartoons: The descent of Trump - The Washington Post is brilliant.

Here at the North End (former housemate)L has moved out, leaving 24 feet of shelf space in the garage, an empty bedroom in the house (in the process of turning back into a music/guest room), and the Box Room unoccupied and free for other uses (including its original one as a bedroom for N and the kids). (It's complicated.) Stuff leading up to the move made for a very stressful couple of weeks, and I'm glad it's over.

Looking forward to saying the same about 2020.

( Notes & links, as usual )

NaBloPoMo stats: [added after posting]
   1191 2020/11/01--done-since-1025.html
     53 2020/11/01--rabbit-rabbit-rabbit.html
     88 2020/11/02--dump-trump-and.html
    831 2020/11/03--renaming-master-to-main.html
     87 2020/11/04--the-day-after.html
    104 2020/11/05--thankful-thursday.html
    118 2020/11/06--thankful-friday.html
    138 2020/11/07--not-much-of-a-post.html
   1285 2020/11/08--done-since-1101.html
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   3895 words in 9 posts this month (average 432/post)
   1285 words in 1 post today

It's often been said that "there's no such thing as too many books, just not enough bookshelves". When we reorganized the kitchen after getting it debugged, we wound up moving all of the tea-related stuff to the baker's rack. The bottom shelves already had tea in them, but the upper shelves had cookbooks.

We moved the cookbooks, temporarily, into boxes, and I set about thinking about where to put them. The five feet of blank wall in the living room, just to the left of the existing bookshelves, looked about right, so I ordered another Elfa top rail and three standards from the Container Store, which is the only place you can get the stuff anymore.

When I first switched to Elfa shelving, it was before the Container Store bought the company in 1999, and you could still get Elfa components from Ace Hardware. They were cheaper, too, and came in metric sizes.

The only Container stores in the Seattle area are in Southcenter (near the SEATAC airport) and Bellevue. I ordered online and had it shipped, thank you very much, during one of their occasional sales.

Elfa shelf standards have two rows of slots, with U-shaped brackets. (They're mostly compatible with two-row standards from other manufacturers.) They're strong. Single-slot brackets are flimsy. The standards come in two flavors--screwed to the wall, or hung from rails. These days I prefer the ones that hang from rails because you don't have to worry about finding studs.

The rail I needed to put up is 80 inches long. (I should, arguably, have gotten a shorter one. Whatever.) One end was going to end up over the CD towers, and there wasn't enough room for my stepladder there. And besides, I wanted it to line up with the shelves that were already there. That meant using a level and a short piece of rail to mark the position for the right-most and third-from-the-right screws, installing wallboard anchors, dangling the rail from that one screw, and trying to hold it level while putting in the other screw. That's when I discovered that I'd let the level slip, or something, and put the second anchor about two inches too high.

After fixing that, it was just a matter of putting in the rest of the screws. I like using walldog screws for that - they're designed to hold well in drywall. I managed (by pure luck) to get one of them into a stud, close to the left end. So that's good.

Tomorrow or Thursday I'm going to have to go out and buy some boards. Most of my supply of lumber has deteriorated from being left outside several times during various moves. Ugh. *sigh*

So much for the idea of putting a TV on that wall. We've been without it for two years and haven't missed it much.

Today, and specifically this evening, I am grateful for:

• Batteries. We're having a power outage. Hardly notice. I wonder how long the UPS will keep my CPAP up.
• A backup drive that doesn't require a separate power supply. That may be what killed the last one.
• An electric car with lots of range. (It does significantly better in warm weather.) But what in blazes were we thinking?
• Colleen's scooter -- likewise.
• Electric toothbrushes. Teethbrush? The dental tech said that my teeth were a lot cleaner than last time. I have no idea what I'm doing differently.
• Always having something new to learn.
• My family's health and safety. That's not something we can take for granted anymore. If we ever could.
• Being far enough north that twilight lasts a long time.

Got a few things done; a little guitar (in 5-minute noodles, but still -- I need to get my fingers back in shape) and a little hacking (kludged together a script for posting to DW from Emacs, using a bash front end to charm, which seems to be the only available command-line client. I can do better, but this was good enough for last week's post, and this week's). I also figured out why ljupdate.el is still broken: it's using an HTTP GET macro that doesn't handle https. :P

I've brought up over half of our CDs, and gotten most of them onto shelves. The new organzation, subject to minor revisions, is:

• Filk/folk/rock/pop/etc. alphabetical by performer. Last name for people.
• Filk/folk/rock/pop/etc. collections, alphabetical by title.
• Classical alphabetical by composer. Special exception for Gilbert & Sullivan, filed under G.
• Classical collections, alphabetical by performer or title, whichever makes more sense.
• Jazz, alphabetical by performer.
• Show tunes and operas, alphabetical by title.
• Natural sounds, relaxation, ambient, etc. alphabetical by title.
• Christmas music, alphabetical by performer.

The household coined two new words: "rambronxious" (portmanteau, me) and "rambrooxious" (portmanteau, N). These join "rambunct" (back-formation) as a verb. We (finally) have our fridge's icemaker working. The thing was apparently wrecked by having been left to freeze, sometime before 2015 when the house was installed. (What's the right verb for a manufactured home? Not "built", certainly. "Manufactured", maybe.)

Not nearly as productive on the psych front -- the LCSW I contacted last week isn't taking new clients. And there are only a handful of therapists on the island who take Medicare. (No surprise, especially to those following siderea.) So I got stuck, as I usually do.

I did, however have an Insight(TM), which is that I'm still nowhere near recovered from two years of burnout at Amazon. (Below you will find a few links for burnout recovery. Helpful, but not excessively so.) I also started using my happy light. (Yeah; it's a SAD light -- "happy light" is the brand.) And Ticia has been exceptionally cuddly, which is nice.

And one more insight: I figured out why I don't like writing in Markdown or other text formats, and prefer LaTeX or HTML: they're basically physical markup, not semantic markup. In HTML I can, for example, distinguish between a citation and emphasis, even though they both get shown as italics. Given my current set of emacs bindings, HTML is easier for most things; songs and poems are easier in LaTeX with my FlkTeX macros.

( Notes & links, as usual )

I actually got in both walking and music this week, largely thanks to N and I prodding one another. On our Monday walk we worked out the new name for the household: the Rainbow Caravan. Which ties together Rainbow's End and N's new business name (Caravan Massage), and is explicitly designed to continue to fit after our next move.

Ticia has been very cuddly lately; she often lies by my head while I'm getting ready for sleep, and is usually back there when I wake up. She used to do that back at Rainbow's End; I think maybe she's finally comfortable enough in the new house. Or something. She's a cat -- humans aren't expected to understand.

I probably need to re-read "The Game of Rat and Dragon".

I'm still in need of a new phone; I keep coming back to the LG G5. It's still the best in its price range, with 4GB of RAM, upgradable to Android 7, and I like the always-on time display (which means I don't have to launch the clock app at night). The V-20 has a variant on that, but also significantly worse battery life. The thing I don't like about the G5 is the stupid accessory slot, which I'm unlikely ever to use and which completely destroys water resistance. The Samsung S5 (S6 to a lesser extent) remains possible due mainly to features and price. (The S6 removes some features; both are water resistant.) LG and Samsung are pretty much the only brands I'm considering because they're the only Android phones for which AT&T supports WiFi Calling (although I may want to reconsider that, since I'm getting a signal most of the time here). Really wish I'd gotten the S5 instead of the vastly inferior S5 Mini.

Colleen's caregiver called in sick, and she was out last week as well. Grumph.

Meanwhile, I'm continuing to work on shelving and unpacking, though not as much of the latter as I think I should be. (N says not, but if we want to get any work done on the garage we'll have to empty most of it; we may be able to move stuff to a shed, but it still means moving a lot of stuff.)

I'm also concerned about finances, as usual. Plus the usual depression. When I talk to a doctor (and of course I've been putting that off too) I should discuss my meds.

( Notes & links, as usual )

It's been a busy week, with a lot of ups and downs. Question first:

Question: Does anyone in Oregon have the space to put up two or three travelers the night of August 20th, in or near the path of the solar eclipse? (If it's three the third would be Colleen, who needs access via ramp or at most three steps.) Thanks in advance.

Good stuff: We (me, Naomi, and Colleen) went to the Whidbey Island Fair last Sunday - lots of fun. We learned how to identify poison hemlock - see bad stuff below -- and made a couple of useful contacts. The second (of three) pod arrived and was unloaded.

We got kittens! More specifically, Naomi got kittens -- the kids and I were just along for the ride, since the point of the exercise was to get kittens that would be hers. We went to NOAH, in Stanwood, and found two adorable little boys: Bronx, and Happy, who was immediately renamed Brooklyn. The first kitten you adopt from NOAH costs $125; the second is $75. They really want your kittens to have company. Now begins the (hopefully not too lengthy) process of introducing them to the other cats in the household. Followed to re-introducing the two household cats to one another. That will be harder.

We have new floors! Instead of the icky brown carpet, we have nice wood-grained laminate similar if not identical to what we had in the apartment. Good lookingm easy to roll or slide things on, and best of all easy to clean.

I have our laser printer on the network -- it has to be hard-wired, but fortunately it turned out to be easy to set up the Client Bridged configuration of DD-WRT.

The repeal of Obamacare was narrowly averted, so that's good.

Bad stuff: The flip side of Obamacare is that I don't get it anymore -- I have Medicare. I got a call from our mail-order pharmacy, informing me that Colleen's Humira now has a co-pay of over $1000. It was $5 last month, but the free "copay assistance" card isn't available to people with Medicare. Welcome to the American health doesn't care system. There's a "patient assistance foundation", but we're unlikely to qualify now, based on our income.

Also, as mentioned above, we have poison hemlock on the property. Lovely plant, originally imported (by idiots) as an ornamental. Now a Class A (shoot on sight) noxious weed. Whee! There is also something that looks suspiciously like giant hogweed, which is also on the list, but which may not be considering the size and color of the stems. I'm going to have to learn some botany.

... and of course I got distracted making dinner, and never got back and posted this. So it's Monday morning already. :P

( Notes & links, as usual )

Nasty, uncomfortable things!

As my dedicated readers (all three or four of them) are probably aware, Rainbow's End is being sold. It goes on the market, in fact, in a couple of weeks. (BTW, if you want a superb 6-bedroom house in West Seattle, complete with concert hall, ...) In order to present the place in the best light, we have vacated the top two floors, replaced the carpets, and removed the stair lifts. Colleen and I have been sleeping on our sofabed in the Rainbow Room.

Saturday, we moved. Or, rather, went out to a terrific Japanese restaurant in Port Townsend to celebrate the Younger Daughter's birthday, while our moving crew hauled what turned out to be three truckloads of stuff to the apartment. The plan was for us to drive home; pick up (cat) Ticia, (guinea pig) Clea, and (guitar) Plink; come back to an apartment full of boxes; and get settled in. Um..., not quite. In retrospect, leaving Clea at home was the best decision I made all day.

Because the keys, with the all-important fob that gets one into the building and then the elevator, slipped off a box and went through the crack between the elevator and the floor.

Meanwhile, I was driving home. Attempting to follow slightly confusing directions, on a phone that suddenly did not have a visible display! It was particularly confusing because I had missed a turn, and the phone was trying to direct me to turn around. But I didn't know that, either. I pulled off at an intersection in Kitsap that had a convenience store where I could use a bathroom, and switched to Colleen's phone. Fighting, again, with Google Maps, that wanted to direct me to a route it thought was faster, using a ferry. The last thing I needed was to wait an hour or two if I missed the ferry. Of course, I spent nearly that long in a traffic jam in Tacoma.

The traffic jam in Tacoma was where N called me to give me the bad news about the keys. The backup plan was to get buzzed in using the building manager's door code. Which worked fine until I used it too many times figuring out how to keep the garage door open, and said building manager started sending it to voice mail. (I'd thought that it was automated. Nope.) Leaving me outside in the cold, Colleen and Ticia inside waiting for an elevator, and both our phones, plus the litter box that actually had litter in it (we'd sent an empty one ahead), in the van.

After some kind person finally let me in, we proceeded to the apartment. Which is where we determined that we had no phones, no cat litter, and no way of getting back into the elevator after getting them. After meltdown, panic attack, or whatever it was, I proceeded to knock on doors until I found someone who actually opened the door and said they would buzz me in. I arrived downstairs just about the same time as the police, who were investigating an apparent intruder who was knocking on peoples' doors. This is apparently a standard MO for homeless people in the area.

Fortunately, at this point I was well beyond the panic and able to see the humor in the situation, so I had a pleasant conversation with one cop while another went upstairs to knock on my door to confirm with Colleen that we actually lived there.

It wasn't until I got back to the apartment that I took a good look at the phone and realized that the screen wasn't dying, it had just had its brightness turned all the way down. I also figured out that setting up my phone to let people in couldn't be done without having an account set up on dwelo.com. And we had a nice visit from the young lady who had called 911 to report me.

I've lost track of how many anxiety meltdowns I had; at some point I got over the panic and had a nice bout of acute depression.

We have spent the rest of the weekend in the apartment, finding out what's missing and what we have to send back to Rainbow's End to go into the storage pod after all.

Today has been cozy and domestic, sorting through boxes and figuring out which things we actually have room to keep in our apartment's tiny cabinets. And eating veggie, because while I was able to find two cans of crabmeat, the only can-opener we had was a battery-powered one that Colleen had just purchased. Batteries not included.

Oh, and did I mention the scratches I got as I attempted to corner a terrified Ticia and get her into her carrier? Those too.

Meanwhile, here we are.

( Notes & links, as usual )

posted late because my emacs client is flaking out. Probably due to the HTTPS redirection.

Rough week. Feeling doomed at work; things aren't coming together as quickly as they need to, and I'm not seeing things that should be obvious. Getting old, and I don't like it.

I thought leaving the Starport was hard. This is going to be worse. I guess it's like getting old -- I have to do it, but I don't have to like it.

If I haven't grown up by now I don't have to, right?

We've been doing a lot of sorting. Colleen and I have been through our closet (though there's still a lot left) and bookshelves (about half done), and I sorted books in the Great Room with Naomi. We'll probably have to do another pass.

There were a few small triumphs. I managed to track down the lyrics to Naomi's song "Staying Home Tonight", which had gone missing -- we'd performed it back in 2007. Took grep-find on my home directory (including both mail and LJ archives) to find it.

The emacs grep-find function is wonderful. Basically it searches for a pattern in the contents of every file in your current directory tree, and flags every hit the same way it flags compile errors, so that you can visit each one and do whatever investigation or fixing you need to at that point. You can run the same thing on the command line, but then you don't have the convenient integration with the editor.

Back to small triumphs -- Monday we had (new Honda Odyssey) Rosie towed down to the dealership in Tacoma where we'd bought her, to have her blocked fuel line fixed. Got her back yesterday. And I surprised and delighted Naomi last night wth The Pharos Gate, which I'd just finished reading and which she hadn't known existed. Hmm. Should do a review of the series, shouldn't I?

A comment on last week's post has inspired me to write up my journaling system. It looks like what's now called a "bullet journal", but predates the eponymous fad by at least half a decade. Hmm. Should put together an emacs mode, or see if I can tweak org-mode for it.

A Wikipedia dive starting at Irregular Webcomic! #3594 led me to the article on Slouch hat, which in turn led inevitably to the Tricorne and Bicorne hats. Does that make the slouch hat a unicorne?

( Notes & links, as usual )

RainbowCon 1 happened last weekend, and it was wonderful. The guests were Decadent Dave Clement from Canada, and Tim and Annie Walker from the Uk. Programming also included gaming -- I'll get to that -- organized by Naomi's friend Steven Schwartz. Con suite by Mama Colleen. Con chair and head of programming was Naomi Rivkis, and I was Con Bear (my badge read "Ursa Major").

I don't think people knew whether to expect a large house filk, or a small convention. We wanted a small convention, and I think we succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. Attendence was in the low to mid 30s; we were aiming for 30-40. Enough with the stats.

Naomi and I worked out most of the schedule the weekend before. We left it up to the guests which order they wanted to go in, and although we had suggestions for other programming we left the final decisions up to them too. They decided to put Dave's concert on Friday, a Stan Rogers sing-along Saturday with Dave and Tim, and Tim and Annie's concert Saturday night. We had three workshop slots scheduled. I'll get to that.

Dave (with his wife Liz, who had done the driving), Tim, and Annie arrived Monday. Tuesday they all went with Naomi to Dusty Strings, to rent Annie a harp. (The only instruments they came with were Tim's button accordion and some whistles.)

Naomi was jumped by a large djembe, which followed her home. Its name is Rebel.

Tim and Annie needed guitars; one each, plus one they could leave tuned to DADGAD. Fortunately this household has more guitars than cats. They seemed a little awestruck by Snuggles (the Martin O-15); the Applause that I brought out for DADGAD had apparently last been used by Talis.

OK, so that brings us to Friday. In addition to pulling guitars out of my hat I also got the maypole up, with Chaos's help. I'll get to that.

Friday got off to a somewhat late start, so the opening ceremonies sort of tailed off early into the introductory circle. We started, naturally, with "Bigger on the Inside" as an introduction to the house.

During the introductory circle, dinner break, and some of Dave's concert, people were voting for their favorite workshops. They did this by dropping poker chips (they're not just for bardics anymore) into paper bags, with a blue chip representing their pick for the 90-minute slot.

After the concert we finished tallying up the poker chips, and did a little last-minute negotiation with the attendees, which resulted in the 90-minute slot getting sea shanties and kitting out your home studio in parallel, and the vocal and harmony workshops getting combined into one.

The poker chips then re-emerged in the poker chip bardic. Our variant on it has people using their chips in blue-red-white order, but with no need to complete a round before moving on to the next color. Instead, an earlier color jumps to the head of the queue if mixed colors are on the floor. It worked very well -- people had time to think about what they wanted to do or hear in their own time, rather than holding up the next round while they struggled to come up with something.

Saturday we actually had two full tracks of programming during the afternoon. Three at one point, since the Cat game (Did I mention gaming? There was gaming.) overlapped the sea shanty and home studio workshops. The build-a-dragon game overlapped the "sensitive percussion" workshop earlier in the day. The afternoon ended with the Stan Rogers sing-along concert. (We skipped the scheduled critiqued one-shots due to lack of interest, and went for a longer dinner break.)

The evening had Tim and Annie's concert, which was wonderful, followed what was intended as a ball-of-yarn chaos, but after we noticed that there was never more than one person queued up we just passed the ball around.

Sunday started with the Ecumenifilk circle, moderated by Annie, followed by the drum circle, led by Dave. And featuring several of the household's assorted drums and my box of random small percussion instruments that had been left around from Saturday's workshop.

After that was the Maypole dance. Unlike last year (RainbowCon 0 was Naomi and Glenn's wedding) there were enough experienced dancers to keep things running smoothly.

After that was the vocal/harmony workshop, where I had surprisingly (to me) little trouble keeping to my assigned part. Then there was the jam, and closing ceremonies.

Then most of those who were left went out for dinner. The restaurant, 13 Coins, is right across the street from the airport, so even the people who had to catch planes could come along.

Rainbow Con II will be held next year, with guests Alexa Klettner from Germany, and Trickster and King (Ada Palmer and Lauren Schiller, the touring subset of Sassafras. We expect it to be as amazingly wonderful as RC1.

We'd originally thought that we'd move the con to a hotel after it got too big for the house. But we really liked the small size -- it gives people a chance to hang out, talk, and make music with the guests and each other. We may end up capping the membership if it threatens to get out of hand, but it will stay at Rainbow's End as long as we're there to run it.

Note the mood. I try to use the first term that comes into my head, since that's less likely to be overthought and edited. So the combination of Good Drugs and a good cat seems to be working. That, and things going fairly well.

• I am pretty much over my injuries from my run-in with a sidewalk last Tuesday; I have a referral to ENT to get the nose checked out, since it seems somewhat more congested than it used to.
• I am a lot less worried about how little Ticia is eating: As you can see in the notes for last Sunday and yesterday, she has gained back some of the weight she lost in the first few weeks, and since she was overweight to begin with, that's good.
• We have started brainstorming for what we're going to do after I retire (and the household starts bleeding money). Present thinking mostly involves tiny houses, and moving to someplace cheaper after N's kids are out of school.

Lots of links this time. Especially noteworthy are:

• Pack up my old guitar - not only how, but why.
• My dives into CSS frameworks and tiny houses on Saturday.
• www.musicforcats.com - which is in today's notes, but which I wanted to throw in because cats.

I actually did some yardwork this week. I hate yardwork. Especially since a lot of it involves bending over, which is bad for my back. But I do it when I have to. Or when it involves gadgetry, like hose quick-connects.

I'd ordered some quick-connects from Amazon to supplement the ones I got at Home Despot on Sunday; quite predictably they disappeared when our housekeeper tidied up the Rainbow Room. I searched for quite a while. They finally turned up in the first place I'd thought to look: in their own box, hiding under the invoice. *facepalm*

Speaking of quick-connects, I recommend brass. The plastic ones I bought last year didn't make it through the winter. Admittedly, this was because I let water freeze in the hoses -- not something I had to deal with in San Jose. But still.

Naomi and I finally got ourselves into the hot tub, for a good soak and good conversation.

A couple of bad moments, mostly thinking about finances -- I use the "trainwreck" tag for a reason. I'm usually able to get past them quickly, and that probably isn't entirely a good thing. It would be better if they were an incentive to get things done rather than causing paralysis. Grumph.

Or anyway, the last ten days of last month. I finally got around to doing some much-needed maintenance on the computers and their configuration... and figured out why the UPS kept turning itself off -- it must have been doing its periodic battery test... on a totally dead battery. :P

I also got the backup scripts back in operation. I now have a complete, almost-ready-to-boot mirror drive as well as my traditional incremental backup. What, me paranoid?

The Shuttle box I've been using as a desktop system is dead; it runs for a few minutes, then kernel panics. Possibly memory. Not going to worry about it; it's had a good run. I seem to be doing ok with just the netbook for most purposes.

Colleen's caregiver turned in her resignation on Monday, after leaving early Saturday for a family emergency, and not showing up at all on Monday. That's ok; today was going to have been her last day anyway. We've doubled Emmy's allowance.

The YD is just as good a caregiver as May was, and more concerned with cooking things the whole household would like to eat. I'll miss the occasional spicy dish, but that's what sriracha's for.

Colleen is mostly doing better, gradually getting her strength back. The YD is more willing to be firm with her about exercise than May was, so that's a plus, too. Of course she did spend the week with a fever of 102, not eating, and ended up spending most of the weekend in the hospital. (With a UTI, low blood pressure, dehydration, and messed-up blood chemistry.) She's better now, as I said.

The LG washer/dryer combo arrived last Saturday; they couldn't actually install it because there wasn't a 110V outlet within reach. Got that taken care of, and finished the install myself. Not as tight against the wall as it should be, but it'll do. It's nice to have the extra laundry capacity.

Somebody, probably May, didn't close the door to the deck firmly enough, and it blew open. Naturally, out little cat burgler found it and went outside. She hadn't gone far, though; after I tracked her down Naomi coaxed her back inside, looking wet and bedraggled. I doubt she's learned anything from her little adventure, though.

Oh, and the idiot Republicans let the government go into shutdown. Again. The problem with coming up with a string of lies aimed at getting stupid people to vote the way you want, is that eventually they end up voting in stupid people who believe the lies. Oops. Did I mention idiots?

Links in the notes.

Another week gone by. Do people prefer the weekly dumps, or daily dribbles? Inquiring minds and all that.

Worrying news on the job front -- $COMPANY, which last I heard was about to hire me as soon as they got through some back-office stuff, has re-organized. There's a new hiring manager, and apparently he has some concerns. AARGH! I have a new set of interviews on Tuesday. If this falls through I'm unlikely to get anything before my severance pay runs out.

In retrospect it's a good thing I couldn't get a Friday slot -- I apparently came down with a 24-hour virus of some sort. With luck I'm over it now, but I was pretty miserable yesterday afternoon and evening. Went to bed 10:30ish and slept for 11 hours.

In other news, I've done a little music with Naomi, and fixed a mysterious problem I'd been having with my mail reader.

I have been realizing more and more how much we'd been relying on Colleen's support network back in San Jose: Liz (and Marty and Alison before her), Safeway.com, ... Housekeeping, shopping, and driving Colleen places are nearly a full-time job. I'll be happy when the YD gets her license.

Speaking of the YD, she's an official AVON Representative now.

I want a Nexus 7 and a pair of Want. Also want Equator D5 Studio Monitors. Grump. When I get a job, damnit...

Since the Hugos were announced, I've been reading Digger by Ursula Vernon, the winner for best graphic story. Go read it -- it's amazing.

Lots of links, as one would expect for a week's worth.

A fairly busy day; a lot of stuff got mailed. Getting the taxes off, in particular, was a great relief. I walked down to the pond, but the water was too murky to see the koi.

The usual aches and pains; they didn't get bad until evening; I took some cyclobenzaprine before going to bed. I'm not sure which helped more: that, or the shoulder rub I got from T a little before she left. It would be nice if my body would just plain work. That, and my flying car...

The day's link sausage consists of JsonML, a cool markup and templating system that can operate on the browser side of the web, and this heartwarming story about a high school football team going pink to fight breast cancer (link from pocketnaomi).

Colleen's going to be hanging around the house all day, so if you're near the Starport and want to borrow a cup of air conditioning and internet, come on over.

We've been looking all over the house for Colleen's MP3 player, which has been missing ever since she came back from her last Remicade appointment. She wanted me to figure out how to put it into shuffle mode, which I thought I had done.

As it turned out it wasn't in the purple tote bag under the table, which she was positive was the one she'd taken to her appointment. It was in a green Whole Foods tote mostly full of empty Coke cans, which someone had hung up next to the washing machine on one of the hooks we use for bags of cans and bottles to be recycled. There was also a bag of peppermints in there.

I am simultaneously overjoyed that it's been found, mildly annoyed that someone (undoubtedly trying hard to be helpful) would have put it where it didn't belong without looking or asking, and considerably amused.

It was incredibly nice to have Colleen home for a Wednesday, even if all there was time for was the shopping, and a little less than three hours at home. The house misses her when she's gone.

I had originally decided to work from home on Wednesdays, but had meetings in both the morning and afternoon. I did skip my lunchtime walk and spend an hour or so with her instead.

She's in pretty good spirits, considering, and feeling a lot better.

I don't always do one of these, but today there's a lot to be thankful for:

• I have my family, pulling together in a time of crisis. Most especially I have Colleen, with me for over a third of a century, and two children who are growing up into beautiful young women.
• I have, oddly, a son-in-law who loves my older daughter, and who gets along with the rest of the family.
• My Mom is still alive, happily running the library at her retirement home a month shy of her 88th birthday.
• I'm gainfully and happily employed, for a company that gives a damn about society and the environment.
• I have music, and Tres Gique looks as though it's going to work as an almost-real band.
• I have my heart back. Whether from a hormonal shift, a higher dose of Vitamin D, or good deep conversation when I needed it, I do.
• I've had a year on the River; a year of extraordinary personal discovery, deep conversation, friendship, love, profound writing, long walks, and a series of experiences that, while sometimes painful, I have taught me more than words can easily express.
• I have my friends, online and offline. Filkdom, fandom, and random, I love you all. Thank you.
• I have love: people I love and people who love me.
• ... and I am profoundly, inexpressibly thankful that Colleen's health troubles started before we drove down to LOSCON, so that she could be cared for close to her home, family, and friends.

This weekend, we will be having our annual sometime-around-Halloween party at Grand Central Starport, Saturday, November 1^st; you'll find maps, directions, and contact information at the link.

As usual, it's a potluck -- kids, friends, and musical instruments are always welcome. Costumes are encouraged, but not required.

Let's see...

I woke up at about 7:30 after a full 8 hours of sleep, thanks to cyclobenzaprine and aspirin. The neck and shoulder pain from yesterday were mostly gone, and my left eye wasn't glued shut. Good start.

My latest patent disclosure was accepted; now I just have to figure out how to describe it to a lawyer well enough to get it written up. One of my coinventers -- the one with the degree in EE -- will have to implement it, though I might be able to cobble together a simulation.

Had a good walk; took in the hill in both directions, but rather slower than I could have if I were in better shape. Took 1:15 or so.

Joined in a fascinating conversation in the lunchroom. It takes about a petabyte to record all the information you encounter over your entire life: audio, video, and text. How long before that fits on a cell phone?

Got a happy phone call from the flower_cat and a brief, delightful email from cflute that brightened the afternoon even further.

Tracked down the code I'm going to use as a base for one of the projects I'm starting to work on.

Came home a little early to spend some time with the chaoswolf; took her to the train station at 7:00. She'll be getting on her train to Seattle (and points North) in a little while.

It'll feel odd without the Wolfling around the house.

The party here at Grand Central Starport (in San Jose, CA) will be starting sometime around noon (or whenever guests start to arrive), and ending a dozen hours later or thereabouts. It's a potluck. There will be filking. Maps, directions, contact information, and so on are on the household web page.

9:30 -- Quote of the Day

flower_cat: Let the kids sleep as late as possible on a party day."
me: Right. That way we'll have somebody to let the last guests out at 2am after we've gone to bed.
Cat: There's method in my madness...

Yesterday evening was our usual household open house. I've been trying to spend more time out in the living room being (at least a little bit) sociable, rather than retreating to the office and waiting for the geeks to congregate there. It mostly worked, now that I've made a little music-geek's corner with an armless chair, music stand, guitar stand, and tray table for a laptop. Now that Colleen has her EeePC, we had at least as many laptops in the room as people for much of the evening.

Joyce and family came over, and we ran through the songs on the Baycon setlist. It's coming together nicely. We'll have another rehearsal Monday at Joyce's, and again next Thursday after cflute arrives. Those will include more detail work; with a live audience, even a small one, you can't do much more than just run through the songs with a little critiquing in between, and there are more distractions.

We spent a delightful, relaxing weekend with the jenkitty. She got up at some ridiculous hour to fly down from Seattle Saturday morning, and left Sunday evening. We (me, the flower_cat, and the chaoswolf -- the Y.D. wasn't interested in the kinds of things we had partially planned) piled into the van with Colleen's wheelchair and spent all day Saturday driving back from the Oakland airport (which has been extensively renovated since I was last there, and had surprisingly little traffic) by way of San Francisco.

The entire weekend was an exercise in real-time scheduling. We drove along the waterfront, passing up the food paradise of the Ferry Building because of large crowds and a lack of parking, past the tourist traps of Fisherman's Wharf, South on Van Ness, West on Geary past Japantown, and had a late breakfast at the Cliff House. Crab is a house specialty. Yum.

South on the Great Highway to Golden Gate Park, and parked under the de Young Museum. We need more museum time. The textile gallery was showing Turkmen weaving -- wow! The pace and interaction are vastly different when I'm wheeling Colleen around, but it wasn't unpleasant by any means.

After the museum we went next door to the Japanese Tea Garden. This was mostly a matter of Jen and Kat exploring widely while I tried to figure out how to get around with Colleen and the chair. On occasion I failed miserably; fortunately the Cat is still fairly mobile under her own power. No disasters.

Finally, we drove down to San Jose via Skyline Boulevard (as far as Woodside), took a turn past $WORK on Sand Hill Road, and tried to figure out where to have dinner. We'd originally identified a couple of places in Menlo Park and Palo Alto, but it was still too early and the Wolfling really didn't want her sister to be entirely left out, so we went home, let the Kitty take a nap, and headed out to Kobe, our favorite sushi boat place.

The evening was a combination of filking, conversation, and looking at the proofs of the wedding pictures, which artbeco brought over for us to sort through.

Sunday the Kitty slept in while I went out for bagels and Scottish lox, then a walk to the Rose Garden. There was time for Jen to have a bagel before going out "silly food shopping" to Cosentino's with Colleen. Colleen's been shopping there for nearly three decades; most of the staff are old friends. Dinner was huge pieces of lamb (which Colleen pan-broiled with Greek seasoning) with saffron rice and caprese (which I made). Quick, simple, and delicious.

All too soon it was time for Jen to leave. I combined the trip to the airport with dropping the kids off at their gaming session a couple of blocks down Coleman Avenue. All-in-all a delightful weekend; I just wish there was some way to do it more often.

Capped the weekend with a pleasant drive with the Cat.

Here's wishing a happy -- or at least a calm -- Equinox to those who mark it. It seems like a good day to talk about balance.

My life, like my finances, has been significantly out of balance for years. Things are starting to find a new equilibrium, though sometimes I feel like I've finally gotten it all together just in time to be forgetting where I put it.

Things like blog reading and IM usage are still a bit of a problem -- I always tend to do the fun stuff first -- but I'm trying to limit them and have been mostly successful. This week, anyway.

Financially, it's too early to say for sure, but I may have finally gotten both the Cat and I interested in setting up a household budget. Suggestions for Linux programs or locally-installable web applications will be gratefully accepted. (The ones I know about from "apt-cache search budget" on Ubuntu are grisbi, homebank, and equonimize; haven't had a chance to look at any of them.)

I may have been the only one to notice that last night's selection of cheeses was smaller than usual.

Balance plays a part in conversation, too. Last night's geekish conversation in the office was marked by comparatively little of it; people were more intent on making their own points -- repeatedly -- than in noting their areas of agreement and disagreement and moving on to something more interesting. Yes, scanning, printing, and vector drawing programs in Linux are broken. You really only have to say that once. Yes, human interface studies and guidelines are important. But if you dumb things down to match what your study has determined to be the "average" user's expectations, you leave off what may be a surprisingly long tail of users who aren't average and weren't included in your pitifully small study. (It's my blog -- I get to have the last word there.)

I'm blathering. Balance. Right.

(Note: The trainwreck and river tags are for discussion of financial and psychological issues respectively; there will be corresponding filters for non-public aspects of these, but I haven't started using them yet.)

Just a reminder: there's a party here at Grand Central Starport today. The tub is full of drinks (mostly left over from the con suite at Consonance); ice will be added at about 10am. We're ready; are you?