Category Archives: Beware of Leopard

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Bunny Sunday

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Or, dare I say, hasenpfeffer? No, we didn’t have that for supper – the rabbits aren’t out and about yet as it’s been too bloody cold! I did nothing special in celebration of a mystical fiction. Instead, I continued to work on the RHCE material through the day.

This evening, we watched the new Doctor Who episode via DVR. The writing on that show remains so very sharp and smart.

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Our condolences to the family, friends, and unit of Sgt. Michael C. Cable, 26, of Philpot, Kentucky, who died on March 27 from injuries sustained when his unit was attacked by enemy forces in Shinwar District, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan.

Change of Plans

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It’s a glorious Spring day out there. But I’m doing none of the things I should be doing on a day like this. I’m not out working in the yard, front or back. I’m not out playing, hiking, or whatevs. Instead, I’m doing quiet inside stuff.

I’ve been surrounded by people with varying degrees of razor throat (aka strep) for the last couple of weeks. Friday morning, I woke at 0300 with my throat starting to act up. I’ve also been battling a mild right ear infection for a couple of days. So, unusually for me, I bailed on work after a couple of hours yesterday morning, and went to the doctor’s office. They agreed that I needed a bit of help over this particular hump, and gave me a standard five day course of azithromycin. Also I got instructions to take it easy for a few days. Sigh. I’m staying out of the woodshop, and out of the yard.

So instead, I’m working on an RHCE course book and listening to prog rock. At the moment, the music is the 1991 Union Tour Live 1991 from Yes, and the RHCE topic is Kickstart files. The life of Reilly, this is mine. Heh, not!

Many Things Accomplished

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Our New Quilt of Many Colours

Our New Quilt of Many Colours

But first, look at the lovely quilt that my lovely Marcia made for our California king. The colors and design are gorgeous (and they pick up some of the colors in the painting over the bed). Awesome!

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I managed to get three coats of finish on the shelves over the two days. I patched some work systems remotely, and tested them once rebooted. I roasted coffee, went shopping, and gave myself a haircut. I walked the dog a few times.

And Congress stole an hour of sleep from me, and the rumour is that I don’t get it back for nearly 8 months … and then without interest. Bastards. And I did the taxes for 2012. Bastards. Balance our checkbook, eh? Bastards.

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Our condolences to the family and friends of  Spc. Cody D. Suggs, 22, of West Alexandria, Ohio. He died March 7 at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, as a result of a non-combat incident.

Terrifying weather…

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Everything is closed … well, lots of things, including the “we’ll not `close` the government ever again” Federal Government. Schools. Etc. Post office is working, and aggressively delivering in case the snow gets worse. Some will have to stick to the roads for it to be worse:

March 2013 snow

March 2013 snow

I shot that just after 8 this morning. As of a few minutes ago (just after noon) … no change. I’d be quaking in my boots … but wait, I don’t need boots, the snow isn’t sticking … and it’s warmed up to 36 degrees F. Yeah. Scary.

Musical … well, everything.

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I’d say “musical chairs”, but a lot more than chairs are involved. Marcia’s got some quilting work coming up that is approximately a billion times easier (using Top Gear maths, there) if she is able to use all the power of her fully operational Death Quilter. Errr, or something like that. But the only place we can do the full build out of her quilting frame is the library, because the other choices are someone’s woodshop, and the living room. So, here’s what the library looked like at 10:30 this morning.

Library before reorganization

Library before reorganization

The blue chairs, the occasional table, and the bookcase move walls, left to right. That table to the right? That’s going into the breakfast nook.  The table that’s in the breakfast nook? That’s going down the stairs, to hold up the embroidery machine, which currently lives on a corner of Marcia’s cutting table. The cutting table? That goes into the fabric room downstairs, once the quilting frame is migrated upstairs. Here’s the quilting frame in it’s original cramped quarters. Marcia and I had already brought the long arm sewing machine  upstairs.

Quilting machine frame in fabric room.

Quilting machine frame in fabric room.

The HandiQuilter frame actually has three 4′ long sections. At the time of initial install, we tried to keep everything confined to Marcia’s half of the basement, which meant only installing it as an 8′ system, and into cramped quarters at that. Marcia headed out to meet friends and I got to work. I prepared the library, then disassembled and migrated the quilting frame upstairs. I also pulled in the boxed parts that I needed to build out to full length. By two in the afternoon, I had the whole thing back together, no left over parts, in the library:

Quilting Machine in the Library

Quilting Machine in the Library

With that done, I did a bit of prep disassembly on the cutting table, and then had a late lunch while I waited for Marcia to get home. She helped me move the cutting table pieces between rooms, then I reassembled that in the fabric room. Then I disassembled the breakfast nook table, hauled it downstairs, and put it back together there. We put the embroidery machine on that. THEN I moved the previously disassembled round table bits into the breakfast nook and reassembled it there.

It was a long day of work, and a lot of stairs, too. We still have to find homes for a few displaced things, but progress on that tomorrow (I hope). Whew!

Twitter-spotting #43

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“@TonikJDK: Fair warning. If I see someone wearing Google Glass I will run up and yell ‘Safe Search off, horse porn!!’”

’nuff said.

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“@tenderlove: I wish name tags were a hip thing. It would prevent many awkward situations.”

There are so many ways to interpret this. My first reading was that he wants nametags on peoples hips, instead of the standard left-breast position. After all, that would prevent the awkward excuse, “No, really, I was just trying to read your nametag, ma’am!” Then I realized that he probably meant hip, as in cool. But really … hip ain’t cool.

Hip was before cool, and hip may be again, someday, but today isn’t the day. Today we have hipsters, which is an utterly different species from the hipsters of yesteryear. Today’s hipsters are, among other things, utterly lacking in hips. You can’t wear skinny jeans much if you have any hips. And, hipsters ain’t hip.

Now, nametags. I’m not in favor of those. I’m utterly terrible with names. Some days I wake up, look in the mirror, and mutter, “Who …?” That’s just one example of how bad I am with names. Nametags would remove most of my excuses, leaving me with just “being a dumbass with a name-forgetting fetish”. And no one wants to cop to that. So down with nametags. Up with confusion and being called Bob!

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Finally, a big thank you to Jeri Ryan, who sent me to PetaPixel’s snowflake post, which led me to http://chaoticmind75.livejournal.com/, where Alexey Kljatov keeps his blog. Wowser!

George Lincoln’s Birthday

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Or something like that.

I neglected to check in last night – I actually stayed off the computer all day yesterday. I checked email on the phone a couple of times, for reasons about to become apparent, but that was all. Woodshop work, and Top Gear UK rounded out my Sunday.

Saturday was a big system upgrade project. We’d been preparing for the event for the better part of a year: endless cycles of build, test, and document. Towards the end I was losing sleep thinking about it each night. Finally the day came, and all of the prep work paid off. There was precious little that didn’t go according to plan, but I did spend about 12 hours welded to the laptop, working remotely. Whew! I was really looking forward to a good night’s sleep.

Around 0100 on Sunday morning, truck and siren blaring by in the road. Sigh, someone’s had a fall, or a stroke, or a heart attack. Then, more trucks and sirens, and still more. Looking out a back window, I saw flames much taller than the house they were consuming,  about a quarter mile away from our place. While the sirens stopped, the engines at full rev running the pumps made the next couple of hours sleepless, too.

I drove past yesterday – the house is gutted, it’s going to be a scrape-off. Good news, though – everyone made it out of the house okay! All the stuff can be replaced, with time and money.

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Wonder of wonders, still no new casualties announced in the last week. Glad of that.

Last Week

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More like: The Last Week. I finished up all of this week’s work yesterday, and did a big hunk of the final week’s worth of schoolwork today. So close I can taste it, this school thing, it will be done. I also did a bit of cleaning here and there, and tidied up the woodshop.

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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

  • Lance Cpl. Anthony J. Denier, 26, of Mechanicville, New York, died Dec. 2, while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
  • Sgt. 1st Class. Darren M. Linde, 41, of Sidney, Montana, died Dec. 3, in Lashkar Gah City, Helmand province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.
  • Spc. Tyler J. Orgaard, 20, of Bismarck, North Dakota, died Dec. 3, in Lashkar Gah City, Helmand province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.