The journey continues...

Brian Bilbrey August 26, 2012

Rainy Day

A rainy day here in Bowie, Maryland. Not continuous, but some impressive downpours in the course of dropping half an inch of rain. Still, better than what's facing the Korean Peninsula this week. I read elsewhere that they're likely to get well upwards of 20 inches of rain from this storm that's 1,200 miles across... Wow! In other news, everyone here at the Hovel is happy that Marcia's back home, after she spent a week in Michigan visiting with relatives and attending the AQS show in Grand Rapids. I picked her up at BWI last night, and Lexi was dancing…

Brian Bilbrey August 19, 2012

Winding Down Summer

Today I pulled another batch of tomatoes out of the garden. How many? A gallon of salsa, and another lobster pot of red sauce, that's how many. I also dug up all the rest of the potatoes, about 30# worth. Today started with the shopping, then I was mowing from 1030 to 1200, and then gardening and cooking until 1930 - a full day's work. The garden is pretty sad, in truth. Between school and spending two weeks partially under the weather, the garden truly hasn't gotten the attention it deserves. The worst sin: Tomatoes have gone bad on the…

Brian Bilbrey August 18, 2012

So This Happened...

So this happened: Frankly, I've been tempted by BMW ever since I spent a few days driving a 325 while visiting with my folks a couple of years back. But it took this long to execute on the temptation. The Prius was such a sane, safe choice: great gas mileage, some fun bits of technology built in, and ... great gas mileage. But while it is only three years old, it was starting to get rattly and junky - primarily plastic things on the interior failing. The driver's seat starting to come apart. Stuff like that. And frankly, it's not…

Brian Bilbrey August 12, 2012

Day Six

According to the historical records, this is in fact the 7th day. But in this much more specific and present-tense circumstance, this is the sixth day of my summer cold. It was never really a sinus thing, it seems to have skipped from throat straight to ears with only a by-your-leave to the nasal passages. My left ear was pretty plugged for a couple of days, and while that seems to have slightly abated, some of the pressure and all of the ringing is still in the hizzouse. The quality of my focus is suffering, too. I actually took a…

Brian Bilbrey August 9, 2012

Update: Dortmunder

Anthony commented on one of the early pictures of Dortmunder, asking "How does your new computer behave?" Unremarkably is perhaps the best answer - in that there's nothing to remark on, it just keeps ticking on. It's currently acting as my home IMAPS server (dovecot), as well as an IRC (irssi) launching spot that stays connected in a screen session. Agog:~ bilbrey$ ssh dortmunderLast login: Thu Aug 9 17:40:36 2012 from 192.168.1.100[bilbrey@dortmunder ~]$ w 17:41:11 up 25 days, 20:38, 1 user, load average: 0.11, 0.04, 0.05USER TTY LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHATbilbrey pts/3 17:41 0.00s 0.15s 0.04s w...[root@dortmunder pacman.d]# pacman…