Hello again, my lovelies.
I wish I could tell you with a straight face that I did all kinds of stuff this evening. Instead, I got home around 5. Patricia was cooking dinner but had some stuff for me to throw into the green bin. Good times.
We were hungry again by 8:30 or so, so I cooked a couple deluxe grilled cheese sandwiches. Cooked onions first and threw in a bit of spiced paprika in the frying pan. Lightly toasted some bread and put some margarine on the outside of the slices before putting some fried onions, real cheese and a couple of those sandwich savers pickles inside the sandwich. Grilled each sandwich for 5 minutes or so and voila! A nice sammich.
I have a Frank deadline this week. I should have spend some time working on an article tonight. Darn me.
I was supposed to record another podcast with Jordan Bonaparte Tuesday night but that has been postponed till Thursday night. We will discuss another unsolved Nova Scotia murder. Which one will be revealed in due course...
I am going to call it a night. Never mind. Not using that old joke again. Tomorrow, or next time I write that is, I will tell you about an old friend who died last week. He was a lovely man I have discussed here on the blog before. I will rehash that and share my thoughts about his passing, soon.
See you then.
Bevboy
Monday, August 26, 2019
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Post 3901 - Sunday Night Stuff
Hello again.
It is getting late. I will keep this short.
Patricia remains unwell. They sent her home from work on Thursday. She stayed home on Friday. And while we had planned to go to the Valley on Saturday, we pretty much stayed put. We went to nearby Tantallon but that was it.
Today was us laying around wasting more time. I did spend some time downstairs opening up a few more boxes. Nearly all the boxes have been opened up. Now it remains to go through the boxes of wires and things and decide which ones are worth keeping. I could throw out nearly all of the stuff without looking but when they packed up our stuff months ago, they pulled out the power cords from some devices. I have the devices, but the power cords are nowhere to be found. A perfectly-good soundbar is useless to me because they frigging put the power cord in one box and the soundbar in another. Many weeks after I began this journey I have yet to find the powercord to that soundbar. I presume it is in one of those several boxes of similar cords and cables and whatnot.
Little things like this drive me nuts. What were they thinking when they decided to separate the cord from the soundbar, anyway? Why does a person do such a thing? Sigh and double sigh.
Another work week beckons. I will respond to its clarion call in under seven hours. I think I will turn in. 5:30 comes too early.
See you tomorrow.
Bevboy
It is getting late. I will keep this short.
Patricia remains unwell. They sent her home from work on Thursday. She stayed home on Friday. And while we had planned to go to the Valley on Saturday, we pretty much stayed put. We went to nearby Tantallon but that was it.
Today was us laying around wasting more time. I did spend some time downstairs opening up a few more boxes. Nearly all the boxes have been opened up. Now it remains to go through the boxes of wires and things and decide which ones are worth keeping. I could throw out nearly all of the stuff without looking but when they packed up our stuff months ago, they pulled out the power cords from some devices. I have the devices, but the power cords are nowhere to be found. A perfectly-good soundbar is useless to me because they frigging put the power cord in one box and the soundbar in another. Many weeks after I began this journey I have yet to find the powercord to that soundbar. I presume it is in one of those several boxes of similar cords and cables and whatnot.
Little things like this drive me nuts. What were they thinking when they decided to separate the cord from the soundbar, anyway? Why does a person do such a thing? Sigh and double sigh.
Another work week beckons. I will respond to its clarion call in under seven hours. I think I will turn in. 5:30 comes too early.
See you tomorrow.
Bevboy
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Post 3900 - Yes! Finally!
Welcome to post 3900.
Sort of.
As I have pointed out before, I have miscounted the blog posts over the years, several times. At first, i was inconsistent in the numbering convention. "Blog post 101.5", for example. And several times I re-used blog post numbers, purely by accident.
But let's be civilized and call this post 3900.
I had to have a nap when I got home from work tonight. I am reduced to that now. Napping so I can take on the evening and stay up to a decent hour before falling asleep again. If this is what getting old is like, then I... actually, it's not that bad. Sleeping a little extra.
When I was a teenager, I would often sleep in until 10 or 11 on a Saturday morning. One time, Dad walked in on me and asked me why the hell I was still in bed, at noon on a Saturday. As I had not been drinking or carousing the night before, I did not have a logical answer for him. I am not sure if I would have one now, other than I like to sleep in on the weekends.
Patricia returned to work today. But she called me around 9:45 and told me she had been sent home. She was holding on to the wall on the way to the lady's room. The executive director saw her and told her manager and director. They corralled her when she emerged and told her she looked unwell and to go home. I believe a cuss word or two was used. Not by Patricia. She was told to stay home on Friday, and to gauge things on Monday.
This attitude is in sharp contrast to how things used to be done in government. I remember well seeing people dragging their sick arses in to work, infecting everyone in the office, because if they were taking "too much sick time", their bosses would take great delight in raking them over the coals. They would be made to feel like, uh, feces, if they took "too much sick time". While I don't want people to abuse the sick day privileges they have, sick is sick; and if you are sick, then you should stay the, uh, heck, home. It is much better today, by and large, than it was all those years ago.
I am sounding like an old man. "In my day...."
Anyway, I was granted a bit of time to drive her home. We stopped off to get a couple groceries on the way home. I dropped her and the food off and returned to work. I did not want to miss the pizza party at lunch time!
After work, after the nap I mentioned, I cooked some of the salmon we got today, on the barbecue. Turned out really well. There will be leftovers on Friday.
I am only 100 posts away from blog post 4000. Should I do something special? Let me know.
I am going to call it a night. It's a... sorry, I have already done that joke.
See you tomorrow, I hope.
Bevboy
Sort of.
As I have pointed out before, I have miscounted the blog posts over the years, several times. At first, i was inconsistent in the numbering convention. "Blog post 101.5", for example. And several times I re-used blog post numbers, purely by accident.
But let's be civilized and call this post 3900.
I had to have a nap when I got home from work tonight. I am reduced to that now. Napping so I can take on the evening and stay up to a decent hour before falling asleep again. If this is what getting old is like, then I... actually, it's not that bad. Sleeping a little extra.
When I was a teenager, I would often sleep in until 10 or 11 on a Saturday morning. One time, Dad walked in on me and asked me why the hell I was still in bed, at noon on a Saturday. As I had not been drinking or carousing the night before, I did not have a logical answer for him. I am not sure if I would have one now, other than I like to sleep in on the weekends.
Patricia returned to work today. But she called me around 9:45 and told me she had been sent home. She was holding on to the wall on the way to the lady's room. The executive director saw her and told her manager and director. They corralled her when she emerged and told her she looked unwell and to go home. I believe a cuss word or two was used. Not by Patricia. She was told to stay home on Friday, and to gauge things on Monday.
This attitude is in sharp contrast to how things used to be done in government. I remember well seeing people dragging their sick arses in to work, infecting everyone in the office, because if they were taking "too much sick time", their bosses would take great delight in raking them over the coals. They would be made to feel like, uh, feces, if they took "too much sick time". While I don't want people to abuse the sick day privileges they have, sick is sick; and if you are sick, then you should stay the, uh, heck, home. It is much better today, by and large, than it was all those years ago.
I am sounding like an old man. "In my day...."
Anyway, I was granted a bit of time to drive her home. We stopped off to get a couple groceries on the way home. I dropped her and the food off and returned to work. I did not want to miss the pizza party at lunch time!
After work, after the nap I mentioned, I cooked some of the salmon we got today, on the barbecue. Turned out really well. There will be leftovers on Friday.
I am only 100 posts away from blog post 4000. Should I do something special? Let me know.
I am going to call it a night. It's a... sorry, I have already done that joke.
See you tomorrow, I hope.
Bevboy
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Post 3899 - Now!
Hello again, my friends.
I feel just awful that I haven't been writing regularly lately. I have many reasons, but they don't amount to excuses. Busyness. Tiredness. Lack of things to say. The same things, over and over again. But, those things have never held me back before, so what gives?
I am still unpacking boxes that were in storage for a few months. Still finding things I had forgotten I owned. I know, last year, that I got rid of a few flatscreen monitors, but others have taken their place and are waiting patiently for one of the two active ones I have, to go kaput.
Computer thingies. How could anyone outside of a duded who owns a computer repair shop, have so darned many computer thingies? Keyboards. Mice, both PS/2 and USB based. Keyboards, but just this one Model M keyboard. I just unearthed a 32GB SD card, still in its original wrapping. What the deuce did I buy it for? I don't know. But it was only about $14 at a local store so I "had to have it".
And the books! Where did they come from? It is as if the big books mate with other big books and produce lots of little books. Like, my Tom Clancy's and Lee Child's got together and begat all kinds of John D. MacDonald's, Rex Stout's, or Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's.
My home office has been rearranged since the flood. I keep my two computer desks side-by-side, with the much smaller desk behind me. It is where I keep my television and do Frank research mostly. Doing it this way means I only need one computer chair. I threw out the extra one this morning and some guy scavenging for garbage day scooped it up.
I officially have enough scanner to last me for the rest of my life, assuming I live to a ripe old age. When this one croaks, I can press one of several others into service. And my laser printer, when it goes to that great recycling depot in the sky, has a twin brother I can use at a moment's notice.
A lot of redundancy. Maybe too much of it.
I have yet to open every box. I am hoping to achieve that goal later on this week. I am hoping that whatever I find, I don't need and can toss out.
We still haven't resolved the issue with the couch that was in two pieces, and then three. We are hoping to get that out of the way in the next week or so. We both want this crap behind us.
The flood of 2019 is mostly a memory, but the aftermath, the clean up, has been time consuming and troubling. I don't know how I had managed to cram so much stuff in this room before. It is the same size; it did not shrink. But it has filled up faster than it ever did before. I do not have an explanation for why. Perhaps some law of physics got bent and now nature is punishing me for owning so much stuff.
Let's go with that.
Tomorrow night Patricia has a thing after work. I can go to the archives or the library without guilt that I am holding her up from something. I can spend some time researching an unsolved murder or missing persons case. Something relaxing...
I will call it a night. It's a night. Take care of yourselves and I will get back at you... tomorrow?
Bevboy
I feel just awful that I haven't been writing regularly lately. I have many reasons, but they don't amount to excuses. Busyness. Tiredness. Lack of things to say. The same things, over and over again. But, those things have never held me back before, so what gives?
I am still unpacking boxes that were in storage for a few months. Still finding things I had forgotten I owned. I know, last year, that I got rid of a few flatscreen monitors, but others have taken their place and are waiting patiently for one of the two active ones I have, to go kaput.
Computer thingies. How could anyone outside of a duded who owns a computer repair shop, have so darned many computer thingies? Keyboards. Mice, both PS/2 and USB based. Keyboards, but just this one Model M keyboard. I just unearthed a 32GB SD card, still in its original wrapping. What the deuce did I buy it for? I don't know. But it was only about $14 at a local store so I "had to have it".
And the books! Where did they come from? It is as if the big books mate with other big books and produce lots of little books. Like, my Tom Clancy's and Lee Child's got together and begat all kinds of John D. MacDonald's, Rex Stout's, or Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's.
My home office has been rearranged since the flood. I keep my two computer desks side-by-side, with the much smaller desk behind me. It is where I keep my television and do Frank research mostly. Doing it this way means I only need one computer chair. I threw out the extra one this morning and some guy scavenging for garbage day scooped it up.
I officially have enough scanner to last me for the rest of my life, assuming I live to a ripe old age. When this one croaks, I can press one of several others into service. And my laser printer, when it goes to that great recycling depot in the sky, has a twin brother I can use at a moment's notice.
A lot of redundancy. Maybe too much of it.
I have yet to open every box. I am hoping to achieve that goal later on this week. I am hoping that whatever I find, I don't need and can toss out.
We still haven't resolved the issue with the couch that was in two pieces, and then three. We are hoping to get that out of the way in the next week or so. We both want this crap behind us.
The flood of 2019 is mostly a memory, but the aftermath, the clean up, has been time consuming and troubling. I don't know how I had managed to cram so much stuff in this room before. It is the same size; it did not shrink. But it has filled up faster than it ever did before. I do not have an explanation for why. Perhaps some law of physics got bent and now nature is punishing me for owning so much stuff.
Let's go with that.
Tomorrow night Patricia has a thing after work. I can go to the archives or the library without guilt that I am holding her up from something. I can spend some time researching an unsolved murder or missing persons case. Something relaxing...
I will call it a night. It's a night. Take care of yourselves and I will get back at you... tomorrow?
Bevboy
Sunday, August 11, 2019
Thursday, August 8, 2019
Post 3897 - Late Thursday Night.
Title pretty much says it all. It is past 11 on Thursday night.
My earned day off was supposed to be tomorrow, but I was asked to postpone it until the 12th to help out the team, and I agreed. It was a long day at work, and it is late, so I will probably be dragging my arse a bit in the morning. Patricia, who is off work this week, has agreed to buy me breakfast in the morning at one of our fave places.
Say, a guy at work has been singing the praises of a sushi place off Lacewood Drive in Clayton Park. It is called Tako Sushi and Ramen on Parkland Drive. We went there after work on Wednesday, and it lived up to its hype. Excellent sushi. Even the miso soup, which I usually find too salty, was quite nice. I thanked my co-worker this morning. He reported that he and his wife had been there last night as well. They must have left minutes before we arrived! Small world!
So, we got home that night. By 7:30 or so, during a playback of last week's episode of Nova, about the planet Jupiter, I began to doze off. I toddled off to bed "for a few minutes", but didn't really get up again until Thursday morning. That's why you didn't see a blog post last night. Slept through it.
Friday is nearly here. I have to get up in like 6 hours. I think I will toddle off to bed, like I did last evening.
Talk to you tomorrow, my lovelies.
Bevboy
My earned day off was supposed to be tomorrow, but I was asked to postpone it until the 12th to help out the team, and I agreed. It was a long day at work, and it is late, so I will probably be dragging my arse a bit in the morning. Patricia, who is off work this week, has agreed to buy me breakfast in the morning at one of our fave places.
Say, a guy at work has been singing the praises of a sushi place off Lacewood Drive in Clayton Park. It is called Tako Sushi and Ramen on Parkland Drive. We went there after work on Wednesday, and it lived up to its hype. Excellent sushi. Even the miso soup, which I usually find too salty, was quite nice. I thanked my co-worker this morning. He reported that he and his wife had been there last night as well. They must have left minutes before we arrived! Small world!
So, we got home that night. By 7:30 or so, during a playback of last week's episode of Nova, about the planet Jupiter, I began to doze off. I toddled off to bed "for a few minutes", but didn't really get up again until Thursday morning. That's why you didn't see a blog post last night. Slept through it.
Friday is nearly here. I have to get up in like 6 hours. I think I will toddle off to bed, like I did last evening.
Talk to you tomorrow, my lovelies.
Bevboy
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Post 3896 - Tuesday Evening
Ha! Two days later, and you're already getting a blog post. Tell your friends!
I have gone through 11 or 12 cardboard boxes. A couple of them contain CD's. I have no room for them any more. They are all going to the thrift store in the coming days.
I may have found someone who wants to take the lashed-together cardboard boxes off my hands. They are cluttering up the recoom something fierce.
And this morning I threw out with my recycling, five large clear plastic bags full of the wrapping paper they used to fill out the cardboard boxes.
One thing I used to have two of, which I cannot find any more: cassette players. I want to digitize a few audio cassettes. I found the best way to do that was to play these cassettes on an old-fashioned (1980's era!) cassette player, at about a 50% volume and use my computer's sound card to record the result. I seem to recall unearthing one of those players recently, but darned if I can find it. I will keep looking because I know you want me to.
The unearthly humidity that has been plaguing us in recent weeks seems to have fallen off a titch. I am actually relatively comfortable this evening. Which is great, given that I have fried two hard drives lately.
The desktop I am using to type these humble words has been running hot lately as well. A day or so ago, I usb powered laptop fan and plugged it in and put it next to the area where the desktop is getting hot. It has helped cool it off.
I cannot wait until September, when it is cooler.
I am going to turn in. A long day at work tomorrow, followed by more unboxing and other fun stuff.
When will this all be over?
See you tomorrow.
Bevboy
I have gone through 11 or 12 cardboard boxes. A couple of them contain CD's. I have no room for them any more. They are all going to the thrift store in the coming days.
I may have found someone who wants to take the lashed-together cardboard boxes off my hands. They are cluttering up the recoom something fierce.
And this morning I threw out with my recycling, five large clear plastic bags full of the wrapping paper they used to fill out the cardboard boxes.
One thing I used to have two of, which I cannot find any more: cassette players. I want to digitize a few audio cassettes. I found the best way to do that was to play these cassettes on an old-fashioned (1980's era!) cassette player, at about a 50% volume and use my computer's sound card to record the result. I seem to recall unearthing one of those players recently, but darned if I can find it. I will keep looking because I know you want me to.
The unearthly humidity that has been plaguing us in recent weeks seems to have fallen off a titch. I am actually relatively comfortable this evening. Which is great, given that I have fried two hard drives lately.
The desktop I am using to type these humble words has been running hot lately as well. A day or so ago, I usb powered laptop fan and plugged it in and put it next to the area where the desktop is getting hot. It has helped cool it off.
I cannot wait until September, when it is cooler.
I am going to turn in. A long day at work tomorrow, followed by more unboxing and other fun stuff.
When will this all be over?
See you tomorrow.
Bevboy
Sunday, August 4, 2019
Post 3895 - Limping Along
And... another week has gone by.
What a week. What a couple of weeks.
I took a sick day nearly two days ago. I am glad I did. I ended up sleeping until nearly noon. Maybe I was over doing it. I would get home from work and eat and unpack a minimum of five boxes of whatever in the recroom. 35 or more boxes a week. There were a lot of boxes.
Several weeks later, most of the boxes are emptied out, replaced by dozens of cardboard boxes lashed together with twine. I have learned knots designed to keep bundles of cardboard and the like together. I have gone through nearly a whole thing of twine, but there is plenty more where that came from. I am hoping that within two weeks' time to be finished.
And the packing paper. My goodness, the packing paper. I have stuffed more packing paper than I thought possible, in to several large clear plastic bags. I will have to do more such stuffing in the coming days. The recroom is over run with such paper, and the many many bunches of cardboard boxes.
Some boxes contain things that I must sift through at a more leisurely pace than this process will allow for at the moment. That is about 10 boxes so far. Those have been put aside until such time as I have the time to do so. I do not look forward to that.
Yesterday we did a run to a local thrift store. The backseat was full of several boxes of contributions: Books. CD's. Even old music cassettes, which they politely refused to accept. They showed me a big dumpster, though, and we tossed them into it.
The couch remains a major sore point with us. The mover back in May took it apart to make it easier for him to transport it on to the moving truck. He claimed that the instructions for putting it back together were stored in the manifest or something. They weren't. When we got the couch back, it was still in two pieces. I complained to the restoration company. They sent someone out, and then it was in three pieces. Two more pieces than I wanted the couch to be in. The last several weeks have been alternating silence punctuated by an email from the company offering us pitiful compensation for the couch. We could never replace the couch for that amount of money. The insurance company that is underwriting the entire enterprise is not happy either. This whole thing with the flood and the moving stuff out and the restoration has been going on since March, nearly a full five months now. We are losing patience over this process and want it over. Yesterday.
Last week, a bit of a calamity. I had to reboot my Plex Media Server. When it came back up, one hard drive would not mount. I found the drive and it was hot to the touch. Literally fried. That makes two in the last couple of weeks. I deployed a fan from the laundry room and it has been running non stop for days, blowing admittedly warm air on the other hard drives in an effort to keep them cool enough not to over heat in this stifling weather.
I researched the heck out of this. I discovered a linux tool called ddrescue. As long as the computer the drive is attached to can "see" the drive, which it could, then this utility can run against it. It has been running for three days now and harvested a whopping 7GB off a 2TB drive. At this rate, it will need about a year to copy the contents from the failing drive to an image file on the destination drive. The computer is running full time and is starting to run hot, itself.
The humidity has been killing us. We are irritable with one another. We cannot wait until September gets here and the really nice weather arrives.
So, that's about it. The previous two weeks in a nutshell. Working. Coming home and sweating my bollocks off unpacking boxes and bundling up empty boxes and stuffing packing paper into bags. Then, frying a couple of hard drives for good measure. Yippee. Yahoo.
I feel awful for not writing more frequently in recent weeks. It has been one thing after another, conspiring against me to keep me from sitting here and saying hello. I do hope to improve, and soon.
You all take care of yourselves. I hope you are all well. I think about you. I worry about you. And I hope the feelings are reciprocated.
Talk to you... tomorrow? Yes. Tomorrow!
Bevboy
What a week. What a couple of weeks.
I took a sick day nearly two days ago. I am glad I did. I ended up sleeping until nearly noon. Maybe I was over doing it. I would get home from work and eat and unpack a minimum of five boxes of whatever in the recroom. 35 or more boxes a week. There were a lot of boxes.
Several weeks later, most of the boxes are emptied out, replaced by dozens of cardboard boxes lashed together with twine. I have learned knots designed to keep bundles of cardboard and the like together. I have gone through nearly a whole thing of twine, but there is plenty more where that came from. I am hoping that within two weeks' time to be finished.
And the packing paper. My goodness, the packing paper. I have stuffed more packing paper than I thought possible, in to several large clear plastic bags. I will have to do more such stuffing in the coming days. The recroom is over run with such paper, and the many many bunches of cardboard boxes.
Some boxes contain things that I must sift through at a more leisurely pace than this process will allow for at the moment. That is about 10 boxes so far. Those have been put aside until such time as I have the time to do so. I do not look forward to that.
Yesterday we did a run to a local thrift store. The backseat was full of several boxes of contributions: Books. CD's. Even old music cassettes, which they politely refused to accept. They showed me a big dumpster, though, and we tossed them into it.
The couch remains a major sore point with us. The mover back in May took it apart to make it easier for him to transport it on to the moving truck. He claimed that the instructions for putting it back together were stored in the manifest or something. They weren't. When we got the couch back, it was still in two pieces. I complained to the restoration company. They sent someone out, and then it was in three pieces. Two more pieces than I wanted the couch to be in. The last several weeks have been alternating silence punctuated by an email from the company offering us pitiful compensation for the couch. We could never replace the couch for that amount of money. The insurance company that is underwriting the entire enterprise is not happy either. This whole thing with the flood and the moving stuff out and the restoration has been going on since March, nearly a full five months now. We are losing patience over this process and want it over. Yesterday.
Last week, a bit of a calamity. I had to reboot my Plex Media Server. When it came back up, one hard drive would not mount. I found the drive and it was hot to the touch. Literally fried. That makes two in the last couple of weeks. I deployed a fan from the laundry room and it has been running non stop for days, blowing admittedly warm air on the other hard drives in an effort to keep them cool enough not to over heat in this stifling weather.
I researched the heck out of this. I discovered a linux tool called ddrescue. As long as the computer the drive is attached to can "see" the drive, which it could, then this utility can run against it. It has been running for three days now and harvested a whopping 7GB off a 2TB drive. At this rate, it will need about a year to copy the contents from the failing drive to an image file on the destination drive. The computer is running full time and is starting to run hot, itself.
The humidity has been killing us. We are irritable with one another. We cannot wait until September gets here and the really nice weather arrives.
So, that's about it. The previous two weeks in a nutshell. Working. Coming home and sweating my bollocks off unpacking boxes and bundling up empty boxes and stuffing packing paper into bags. Then, frying a couple of hard drives for good measure. Yippee. Yahoo.
I feel awful for not writing more frequently in recent weeks. It has been one thing after another, conspiring against me to keep me from sitting here and saying hello. I do hope to improve, and soon.
You all take care of yourselves. I hope you are all well. I think about you. I worry about you. And I hope the feelings are reciprocated.
Talk to you... tomorrow? Yes. Tomorrow!
Bevboy
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