A warm weekend with sun and rain.

Saturday AM I went to Tom’s Doughnuts as usual. What was unusual is that I started a fight-a verbal battle thank goodness-after opening the subject of the 75 year lease proposed by Governor Daniels. Pretty much this has been a secret deal, Bush style, that is being ramrodded through by the Governor with much partisanship. All the legislators say they are being “forced” into supporting the deal. It will be interesting to see what the next election brings. Of course, the southern and central Indiana people are not affected much but us up here in the North it will be a different story. Oh well, what do we expect. Anyway, I should have kept my mouth shut at the doughnut shop but I really wanted to discuss the issue and get some other opinions. As it is now, I will just be mad about the whole deal, just as I am about the time change fiasco.

Later, in the afternoon, The VM’s went caching and found three Mr. Incredible caches (3,4 and 5) after much walking. I would guess about 3.5 hours of solid walking up and down hills in various parks near Fort Wayne. We like the ACRES group preserves and there are a lot of Geocaches in them.

We picked up a Travel Bug that wanted to go to Ohio so on Sunday we took it over to one of the Kunkle caches. It rained all day but we just picked a few dry moments to capture the cache and drop off the TB. We spent the rest of the afternoon holed up in the house watching “We have been overhauled” car show.

Dinner tonight was a ……………

Rack of Lamb! That is what I ate tonight, along with a smallish Greek salad, two cups of decaf, some bread and steamed veggies. The lamb was good and I longed for the vinegar mint sauce I used to get in Kirkcaldy, Scotland.

While in Kirkcaldy I stayed in two different places. The first was Dunnikier House Hotel and the second was the Parkway Hotel. I guess I was about one year at each but possibly it was longer at the Parkway since I knew the owner quite well and enjoyed his company. He was a techy type like me. I learned a lot while living in Scotland and I came to love the country but I am sure it is no longer like the rural, isolated Fife it used to be. Anyway, the food was good at both places but the Dunnikier was better. That is where I got the gooood mint sauce.

I have been working on my new linux server but cannot seem to get the PHP and MySQL playing together. It is crazy that they do not compile the PHP to run with MySQL. But since they do not, you would think that there would be all sorts of sites giving directions as to how to get them playing together. Guess what ? There are not a lot of sites disclosing this information. So, it is another battle in a loooong line of battles to get the thing up and running.

I would switch back to MS if they would not have implemented the new licensing scheme and the server prices were a bit lower. The .NET seems like a pretty good way to go.

A new Blog?

I just left the website of Serendipity and I wonder if I really should start a new blog on my headend website. Installing the thing seems reasonably complicated.

I have tried to install pLog and for some reason the wizard.php refuses to run. Any way the ap notes say nothing about the issue which I experienced. I think it may be a MySQL issue.

I have thought of retiring the old Virtual Moore Central Station website and its weblog. Maybe just making it a sub of http://www.charleswmoore.org ( or .com or .net or .us). Writing two blogs is enough and three is ridiculous. Oh yes, the second blog is at Moore Wireless Communications.

Saturday Night & What to do?

Today was a windy, cool day here in NE Indiana. The day was great though because the sun was shining brightly. As a matter of fact the moon is shining brightly too in its full mode. As is the custom I went to Tom’s Doughnut Shop ( notice it is Shop not Shopee or Shoppe as the fancy places like to call themselves) but did not talk with the guys very long. The fumes sort of got to me and I felt I had to leave.

The fumes brings up an interesting aside. The intelligent half won’t let me in the house for an hour or two after I leave TDS because of the “Fumes”. I would call it odors not fumes – a mixture of smoke, grease and doughnuts and coffee – what would you call it? Anyway it gives me at least an hour to wander Menards before going home. Tehn I had to go home to wire up the new living room thermostat.

We then left for the “big” city to go Geocaching. We did four caches and returned home about 1530 hrs and the new thrmostat seemed to be working fine. After a brief respite we went to Menards to get some more electrical stuff like “handy boxes” and pull chains. Now it is time for dinner. Adios…

Wednesday – Another night in GR

Tomorrow at the crack of dawn – actually, before dawn I will be heading East towards Detroit for a meeting. A meeting between customer and the consultant, aimed at disclosing all aspects of the project from A -Z. Normally this is a dot all the I’s and cross the T’s. It could be a short meeting or it could be a long meeting. After the meeting I will make the familiar trip to the homestead for the weekend. Friday will be spent in the telecommuting office all day but it is the home office.

After work today I went to Brann’s and it was almost empty. This is in contrast to last night when it would have taken 20 minutes to get a table. I guess Tuesday is the hot family night in GR. The weather here would be almost balmy if it weren’t for the force 2 wind. The temp is about 40 Degrees.

Today we were involved in a lot of proof reading of document to be presented tomorrow. We have many changes and I am sure the customer will have a few more too. Lunch was spent with the Panasonic Security Systems rep. We were shown the newest CCTV gadgets plus a new CCTV line. Pretty cool. Prices are coming down to the affordable range for general home use. I want one with PTZ and the prices remain high for those units – as usual I want the expensive toy. Check it out!

Sun today & recollections of an old fart!!!

Today was the 17th day in Grand Rapids and there was sun..Before today there were 16 days of no sun. After work tonight I went to Braan’s but it was really busy so I left an ate at Russ’s down the street a mile or so. After I went to B&N to read – the books I picked out were Fedora 4 and Steel Watercraft Building Guide.

I would love to have a sailboat built from steel. They are much tougher that FRP (fiberglass) designs but tend to rust if not well cared for. The major design seems to be the ones from Bruce Roberts. They range from 25′ to 65′ but I could only begin to afford something in the 30-36′ range. The bigger ones just require too many crew.

After reading I came back to the hotel to surf the net, read the grandchildren’s blogs and to write this one. As I write I am listening to summer sounds of crickets and white noise on the HoMedics sound machine I bought at Target for $12. It works pretty well to drown out the strange “hotel Noises”.

The sounds reminds me of when I was 10 years old and sleeping outside the family home in the big walled tent that Dad had. I would pitch that tent just as soon as school was out for the summer – in those days it was April 24th when school was finished for the summer – and sleep on cots for 3 + months. I remember I loved the sound of rain on the tent. I had a wonderful childhood and enjoyed the freedom that sleeping in the tent brought.

Back to work!

Yesterday, I drove up to GR so I would not have to drive up in the morning. The weather was promising to be a mix of rain and snow and I just did not want to handle that so early in the AM. I ate at the usual place AM and I eat at when he is up this way. The baked Cod was good last night and tonight too. For a total price with tip of $8 how can you beat it? This is for a nice sized piece of Cod, baked potato, dinner rolls and salad. The fish is cooked just to perfection with good taste and zero smell. A good place to eat as the service is fast but it is a bit too noisy for my taste.

After dinner tonight I went to B&N to read a bit. I grabbed a book of Fedora 4 and on on “Common mistakes boaters make”. I dived into the Fedora one first and found it interesting for few elemental things I forgot or did not know. Then on to the boat book – it was one of those disaster things with little new knowledge so I lost interest in it and was back at the hotel by 2045.