| August 30th |
We watched the
MotoGP
race from Indianapolis, as it was broadcast on Fox Sports rather than SpeedTV. The commentary
sucked, Scott Russell seems to have trouble thinking of anything useful to say. We had the
usual "while we were at commercial, Dani Pedrosa crashed" and again "while we were at commercial
Valentino Rossi crashed", but it was live - Speed do that when they've had 3 ferkin days to edit
the thing.
In the evening, we barbecued, and as usual, Vince came over to eat. |
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| August 29th |
After generally sorting things around the house, I downloaded the
Hulu desktop,
and it's pretty good. I'm thinking this would have to be part of any media centre I eventually
get around to building. Anyway... when I was at Dave's last week, we watched a couple of
episodes of
Defying Gravity
and sort of ignored it. Now
The Daily Show
and
The Colbert Report
are off for 3 weeks, I've decided to watch it again. I started from the beginning, and watched
it all. It's not too bad, and you can have it on in the background while doing other things on
the computer :o) |
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|
| August 28th |
We spent the day finishing up clearing the office, filling holes in the
walls and patching paint, then moving Vic's stuff in there. This mean that I could get the
formal living room area set up, and we then discovered that the hang glider won't go under
the futon as I'd assumed. Doh. Oh well, We'll get that figured out at some point.
Tilly
loves it, as there are so many places to sit, and she can now run under my desk from one end
to the other.
We got the latest electrickery bill, and thanks to the
solar panels,
have generated more than we've used. Again :o) |
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|
| August 27th |
Christina went home, and I carried on throwing stuff out, eventually
managing to move the rug out of the old office and into the new office space. |
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| August 26th |
Christina and I went to the
State Fair,
where we looked at the various county exhibits, discussed the art exhibits and avoided the
deep fried Snickers bars.
In the evening, I sorted through my various boxes of computer parts and threw out stuff I no
longer need, like serial cables, yards of phone cord and CAT5 cable. This is part of the
office move, so I can hopefully have less junk just in storage everywhere. |
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| August 25th |
Christina went out and Vic went to work, leaving me to get started moving
office furniture. I'd got the first half of the desk moved, and the computer all set up when
Christina came back in and helped me move the other half. In the evening Fred came over and
reminded me to bid on a membership for the
Snowflower
camping group. We'll see if we win in a few weeks. |
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| August 24th |
Vic's friend Christina came up from Monterrey to get away from things for
a few days, and, of course, play with
Tilly.
We barbecued in the evening. Of course, Vince came over and ate :o) |
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| August 23rd |
Having decided to move the office into the living room, the living room
into the formal dining room (where Vic's art stuff is now) and Vic into the office, I started
unloading the bookcases. We got them all moved, and when I went to patch the holes where the
bookcases were bolted to the wall, I discovered that I hate Walmart paint. Well, that's not
strictly true, as the paint's OKish. It's the tinfoil tubs that they put it in - I ended up
having to use pliers to yank the lid off, as the whole thing was bending whenever I tried to
lever it. As the paint's completely separated, it didn't match the wall any more. Well, I'd
talked about painting that wall anyway, so we went to Lowe's and picked up some paint, and I
spent the rest of the day painting. |
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| August 22nd |
I spent the day just catching up with stuff around the house, and people
I haven't spoken to for a while. All seems to be well with the world, so I'll leave it at
that :o) |
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| August 21st |
Dave and I took the train in to San Francisco - he went to work, and I had
almost 4 hours of interviews at the place where he works. I'd like to think it went well, but
we'll see what they have to say. I left him at work and caught the train back to Millbrae,
where I picked up the car and drove home over the next 4 hours - bloody traffic. |
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| August 20th |
I pottered down to Millbrae to spend the night with the family Kelly.
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| August 19th |
Today started off rather earlier than I'd like -
Tilly
was going off at something outside at 3am. I let her out, and she went off again, so I went
and took a look at whatever she was barking at behind the pond - it was larger than the bird she
found last time. I shooed her away, which was strange, as usually she doesn't want to leave
whatever it is alone, and got a torch. Oh great, a skunk. I don't know how it got into the
garden (do they climb? Jump? Have wings?), but I went back to bed hoping it would get out the
same way it got in, having realised that it's not welcome. I figure we were both lucky to not
get sprayed :o)
Later on, I did a little work on the
van
- Dad had pointed out that there weren't any cup holders for the back seats, so I'd ordered some.
They arrived today, and I fitted them. I ordered 4, as these are a lot nicer than the old ones,
and I've replaced the ones in the front, too. |
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| August 18th |
I didn't do much, other than cook some bagel dogs. They're not bad, but
I didn't get them as well wrapped as I'd hoped - that dough is slippery, to say nothing of
hot, when it comes out of the water bath :o) |
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| August 16th |
Today was pretty uneventful, other than the
solar panels
generating their 8,000th KWh. Gee, that's about $700 I've saved, right there :o) |
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| August 15th |
We went to see
Up
on Surewest, as part of their customer appreciation stuff. It's actually pretty good
:o) |
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| August 14th |
I took the
Subaru
to
Autozone
to borrow their OBD II code reader, only to find that they're not allowed to read codes for you
any more - I'm guessing one of the auto service places that charges to read the codes
bribed made a campaign contribution to somebody to stop Autozone doing it for
free. Oh well. I took the thing home and did the diagnostic test, but it showed no errors now.
So, I'll have to wait for that to happen again to get the code from the occasional check engine
light.
In the evening, we barbecued, and Vince came and joined us. |
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| August 13th |
I spoke to the vet about
Tilly's
blood test, and apparently the white cell count is just fine now, so there's nothing to worry
about. Good to know. |
|
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| August 12th |
Today's
Tilly's
2nd birthday - last year I thought it was on the 23rd, which just shows you how sad getting older
can be. For her birthday, we went to the vet and she had blood drawn for hopefully the last time,
and she got lots of treats. |
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| August 11th |
After some running around, I met Vince for lunch. We rode over to the BMW
dealer afterwards, and looked at the latest models. He's talking about getting an R1200GS to
replace his current R1150GS. |
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| August 9th |
Vic was working again today, so I tinkered with the
van
- I've cut the wire from the ignition key to a warning buzzer, and Scotchlocked it to a wire
from the lights. So, now rather than buzzing when it thinks you've left the key in the
ignition, it buzzes when you leave the lights on. I'm sure there's a dumbassed law about this,
but I find a flat battery from leaving the lights on (the
Subaru
turns the lights off when you turn the car off - the Vanagon merely leaves the sidelights on)
to be more of a problem than walking away with the keys in the ignition.
After that, I decided to go and watch Buddy race BMX bikes - he's been on at me to come and
see him race for ages. So, I pulled the
DRZ
out and headed over there to find nobody at the BMX track. I'm guessing they were racing
somewhere else. I did get diverted around
an accident
that was still being tidied up some 4 hours after it happened. |
|
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| August 8th |
Vic was working today, so I tinkered with the
van
- basically pulling apart the gearshifter to try and get the little lights to actually line
up with the indicator above them. I swear, I could have done a much better job of designing
this thing :o) |
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| August 6th |
I started the day by washing the
solar panels,
despite it looking like it was going to rain.
Tilly
and I spent the rest of the day pulling weeds and playing in the garden. |
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| August 5th |
Tilly
and I went to the vet, and they said we can stop soaking her foot. It's looking more or less
done, but they want her to finish the antibiotics, then they'll recheck her blood work next
week (her white cell count was low last time they tested her). |
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| August 4th |
After I'd soaked
Tilly's
foot, I cut the grass. Joy. I had to drain some petrol out of the
DRZ
for the mower, so when I was finished, I pulled it out and rode over to Jeff's. I had been
thinking we'd go and get lunch, but he was too busy. I ended up helping him fix a broken wire
in a turn signal on a Harley (that's been all "gayed out" with running lights, tassels and
chrome), then remove the wheel and mount a new tyre to a GSXR. He's constantly getting
interrupted, so it's a wonder he ever gets anything done :o) I eventually left him to it and
went and picked up
Clerks 2
on sale at Best Buy (I'll risk $4 on a DVD...). |
|
|
| August 3rd |
I soaked
Tilly's
foot (which is much better now) then went to the gym. In the afternoon, we went to the
SPCA
to unload some donated rabbit food, then went to see
G-Force.
It was OK, but not as funny, guinea pig wise, as, say
Bedtime Stories. |
|
|
| August 1st |
I dinked around with the cruise control on the
van,
and set it up as if it were a front wheel drive car - I think I've been going at it the wrong
way by treating it as a rear wheel drive as the engine's in the back, so there's no drive shaft.
Still, you'd think that one magnet set at 2000 pulses per mile would be the same as 2 magnets
set at 4000 pulses per mile, but no, apparently it's not.
The local phone company was having a "customer appreciation" doodah, so I took the van over
there and picked up 4 free cinema tickets - I'm not sure why they feel the need to do this, as
they operate a monopoly, so you can't really go to, say, AT&T. Their service is pretty good
(unlike my experiences with the aforementioned AT&T), so nobody complains.
So here's a question... why do people who shout their side of the conversation into their
cellphones then feel the need to catch their partner up on what's just transpired? "And then
I said..." - I was thinking "no you didn't, I, and everybody else within 300', heard you say...".
Anyway, the van's cruise control worked well enough for me to stop dreaming about kicking it
into tiny little pieces. There's some fine tuning to be done - it looks like the vacuum bottle
might not be big enough, for example, but it works well enough for now. Woo hoo!
Tilly's
foot is looking a lot better - the swelling's gone down, and if it weren't for the shaved bit
and healing hole, you wouldn't know there was ever a problem. If she wasn't such a big baby,
I'd have been able to do it all myself at home. |
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