Been busy the past week... seasonal parties, Winterfair shopping & baking, work, all that kind of stuff. Blogging has kind of taken a back seat; even when I've had something to say, it's usually come to me while I was away from the computer, and either I'd forgotten it by the time I got home, or I just didn't find time for writing.
Bad idea of the week: chocolate covered tobacco. Just thought I'd toss that one out.
Computer weirdness of the day: during last night's thunderstorm (which started at 2 AM on the dot), power flickered and the server logged a UPS event pair (on battery / back on line). Just over an hour later, the server rebooted... not a clean shutdown; a reboot as if someone had kicked the reset button. The workstation (on its own little UPS) and the new server (no UPS) kept running happily. Eh?
SVR special appearance: apparently I made the Channel 4 (KRON) 5:00 news last Saturday (the 17th). That morning, I was in the big hobby shop in Gilroy, talking to a small group of robotics hobbyists, one of whom will be field-testing the latest version of Humball's motor controller; while we were talking, somebody came in with a TV camera, working on a story on the vanishing hobby shops. I ended up delivering an off-the-cuff version of my crafts-above-the-kindergarten-level rant for the camera, and later heard that I'd been on the evening news.
Maybe I should add the "As seen on TV!" logo?
Incidentally, I don't believe the "Blame the Internet!" faction. The fabric stores vanished before online retailers had become common... and a lot of things (especially fabrics, but also craft / hobby tools and materials) are best bought in person. I think what's going on is that there's not enough of a market for these things to support more than a few retailers nationally, so the selection of products ends up concentrated in a few catalog / mail-order / Internet superstores. Anyway, shopping locally and buying by mail order isn't exactly a new phenomenon.
Continuing on this sidetrack: for things that do have enough volume to support many local retailers, the local retailers tend to be incompetent. Just try walking into a computer store and getting useful information on the products... and the manufacturers don't exactly help, what with the fancy shiny packaging that's heavy on k3w1 graphics and light (at best) on technical specs. Buying computer stuff from a local retailer requires two trips to the store: one to see what they have, and another to buy it, after doing research on line.
Winter arrived a couple of hours late, or at least we had a couple of hours between the official arrival of winter and the actual arrival of a big storm. The rain's been pretty darn impressive at times... and then we had that thunderstorm last night. This is not conducive to gardening (though it's not raining at the moment, things are just way too wet).
Too wet for gardening, too crowded at the malls, and I don't think this is really going to be switch-over-to-the-new-server day. Maybe I should do some decluttering in the living room. Getting the sewing table cleared off would be a good start; it hasn't been available for sewing (nor for wrapping packages, etc.) since late summer.
Tuesday: helping my mother with computer stuff, probably including shopping for a new one, plus any client panics that come up. Wednesday and Thursday: probably work. Friday: TBD. Sunday: the traditional hangover hike! I hope the weather cooperates; I don't tend to have a lot of takers for that hike on rainy mornings, even if it is tropical rain.
Time for gocery shopping. Then some living-room decluttering.
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