Monthly Archives: March 2018

That Was A Short Spring

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I mowed my lawns three days ago.  It was a beautiful sunny Sunday, with temperatures in the 70s and a wonderful little breeze keeping everything nice.  Monday, it rained.  Tuesday, it rained and began to get a bit chilly.  Today had no rain, but it’s back in the low 40s with 20+ MPH winds, and it’s freaking cold!  This winter is never going to end.

Before I continue, I must wish Dad and his bride a happy 7th (?) anniversary.  I wasn’t sure if this was the right day or not, but I had a picture from their wedding show up on my Facebook feed this morning and then saw another one posted by Dianne, so I guess it is!  Sorry, Dad.  You know I’m not really big on remember dates.

The GBB is plugging along, getting ready for the championships in a few weeks.  Hard to believe that we’re already up against it.  I’m not overly excited about the contest this year.  I don’t think we’re all that great, don’t particularly like the music, and don’t have the vacation time that I used to have.  Burning two days off to drive up to Fort Wayne and back doesn’t fill me with excitement, considering that I’ll probably want those two days back in the fall when I’ll – hopefully – take a decent break from work.  I’m planning on spending a week or 10 days in Canada in July, which is nice.  Truth be told, though, I’m really looking forward to what has become a tradition of heading to Michigan sometime in October.  Hoping I’ll have enough vacation time built up to spend a week or two there.

I broke down and bought two Amazon Echo Dots a couple of weeks ago.  They were on sale for $30 each, and I figured it’d be nice to be able to turn my lights on and off with my voice rather than diddling around with my phone while I lie in bed.  I was right.  It’s very nice.  It’s also nice to be able to ask “Alexa” to play a podcast (or a list of them), or to play any of a number of calming noises (ocean, mountain brook, wind in the trees, etc.) or to just roll a little hypnosis at me to help me sleep.  I’ve also gotten into the habit of asking the thing for weather updates or a morning news brief, or to play the occasional game of Jeopardy.

The Dots came on the heels of me finally getting around to hooking up the Ring spotlights that I got for Christmas from the X-Company.  This is also a fun li’l toy for me.  It’s a motion detector with spotlights and a camera over my garage, which alerts me with indoor chimes (also on my phone) whenever it detects anything large in my driveway.  The large thing, as it turns out, is usually me – either leaving for work or coming home from work – and the cats have quickly figured out that, when the chimes sound in the evening, they’re about to get some food.  Other than being woken up by cats, there isn’t much better in life than coming into my driveway and seeing a little feline face (or two) peeking through the front windows at me.  I’m impressed enough with the spotlight that I may actually spring for a Ring doorbell to go with it.  I’ve got to admit that it’s nice to be able to keep an eye on my place when I’m not here.  There is the sporadic annoyance – like during a very windy day a week or two ago when I kept getting alerts because trees were throwing moving shadows across the driveway.  And I’ve been startled a couple of times on rainy nights when the glare of headlights going past on the street set off the motion alert; but through tweaking and modifying the motion zones, I’ve got it down to basically only letting me know when there’s an actual person (or car) in my driveway.

Also good for knowing when packages are delivered.

I have not yet figured out how to network the Echo Dots with the Ring.  For instance, if motion is detected after dark, turn on the lights downstairs.  But I assume that I will eventually.  For now, I’m just exploring the new gadgets and having some fun.

Speaking of fun, I’ve taken advantage of my new position at work to start doing a little bit of coding on the side again.  Nothing major, and I’m pretty much restricting myself to powershell scripts, but at least I can spend an hour trying to automate things without having to worry about my ticket closing numbers dropping.  In the end, the scripts that I write will end up helping my team to take care of things in a few seconds that might take other teams a few minutes.  Or maybe I’ll share the scripts with other teams and show what a great guy I am.

Nah.  I want my team to shine.

By the look on Joshua’s little face right now, I can gather that it’s time for bed.  So I guess I’ve written enough for now.  A warm bed sounds pretty good.

Back to Creation

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Today’s featured image is one that I took in July, 2011, of a couple of cats on my deck.  I have no particular reason for using it.  I just did.

Much of yesterday and this morning was dedicated to website design, build-out, and modification. You’ve probably noticed differences in this’yere blog – hamburger menu to categories, droplist for archives, etc.  I’m currently trying to get a plug-in to work that will allow me to embed files directly from my OneDrive, but have so far not had much luck.  Email has been sent to the plug-in’s developer.

Yesterday, I made some huge strides on getting GoPaladins.com to look more like I want it to look.  It’s now running completely on a BootStrap base, which is something that I’d just started learning about when AT&T dropped the hammer, and I haven’t had the time to fool around with stuff like that since joining the X-Company, so putting the big site on that code is forcing me to dig into it a bit and figure things out – which I enjoy doing.  Still a lot to do on that site if it’s even going to approach the functionality of the old one that GoDaddy broke; but the original was years in the making.  I’m taking baby steps with the new one.

One said baby step was the purchase of a new monitor yesterday morning.  The television that I was using wasn’t getting the job done, and is slowly failing (colors get all wonky, which is not good when you’re designing sites and/or editing photos), so I splurged and bought a 34″ curved display at MicroCenter.  Truth be told, I was considering doing that anyway, in order to make it not only possible but actually preferable to work from home, which I think I’ll now start doing one day a week.  The monitor is wide enough for me to treat it like two monitors, and it’s got software that lets me break it up into different windows – so I can use half of it for a browser and split the other side into quarters for two additional programs (a ticketing window and a remote control window, for example) and not have to spend my time hunting for the stuff that I need.  It’s also at a good height, which is very nice.  I spent 6 hours in front of it yesterday and didn’t have a headache OR a backache.  Money well spent.

Have a rehearsal with the Gwinnett Wind Symphony this afternoon, which should be interesting.  Haven’t touched my tuba in probably 6 months, and we’re playing Schoenberg and some other weird stuff.  Atonal garbage for the most part, but I need to get my tuba chops in shape for an upcoming Easter gig.  The concert, by the way, is next week.

I felt terrible this morning because I woke up convinced that it was Monday and I’d forgotten to go to the one rehearsal that I told the director I would make.  Put me into kind of a funk as I fed the cats, did my potty business, and prepared to take a shower before finally realizing that it’s Sunday.  Once I figured that out, I went back to bed, much to the delight of all three cats.

I’m considering mowing the front lawn today.  Also need to do some laundry.  And maybe try making some cheesy beef macaroni stuff in a crock pot just to see if it’ll work.  Or I could do it the regular way.  Rehearsal goes from 6-8, so I doubt I’ll be eating afterwards.

Well….that ought to do it for today.  Not much to put down here other than the fact that it was in the 30s this morning, which blew me away.  It has since gone up to nearly 70 in the sun, but still feels rather chilly.  I must be getting old.