breakfast out

I got up this morning and wandered into the living room to greet M&F.  “Happy birthday,” I said.  I beat them to it.

I’m at Starbucks having a complimentary breakfast – not complimentary from Starbucks but from Mom.  “Thank you,” I said.  “What for?” she said.  “Breakfast,” I said.  “You went out for breakfast?” she asked.  “Not yet,” I replied.

We’re also supposed to go out for dinner this evening.  They asked where I wanted to go.  My first suggestion was Cora.  Floyd informed me that it was only open for breakfast & lunch.  I’ve never heard of a restaurant only open for breakfast & lunch, unless it was a in an industrial area or a lunchroom at a company.  My second choice – Denny’s.  Don’t laugh – they always have a chef on duty.  Apparently Mom had a bad meal there once – a deep fried dish – so she turned her nose up at it.  I think I’ll let them decide.  Probably Smitty’s!  Hmm.

cleanup

I’m back from Rosedale, BC.  I brought back a 4×8 U-Haul trailer stuffed full of things, like a band saw, Glenn’s memorabilia, Father’s antiques and collectibles, tools & electrical things, books & photo albums, and various other things.

Unfortunately, everything that was in the shop was covered in a layer of rat poop, dust, grease, and dog urine.  Laura had been looking after the property for two years since Father passed away, and no upkeep was really done in the shop.  I’m now in the throws of finding homes for all the stuff I brought back, but much of it had to be taken to a car wash to pressure wash all the poop and grime off.

The garage here is pretty much full of either things I brought back or the teardrop trailer I’m working on.  My room is also full of stuff from the house.  Laura packed all the stuff up into boxes and stored it in the crawl space under the house.  It amounts to about 20 cardboard boxes of stuff (dishes, photos, Glenn’s collectibles, etc.).  So for the next few weeks I’ll be dealing with all this stuff.

when things go wrong (aka cursed server)

I drove to Rosedale, BC to take care of Father’s house, as I told everyone.  However, on the second day that I was gone, my server crashed.  <AAAAAH!>  Every time I leave, something happens to the computer!  I phoned Floyd to help out.  I guided him through various steps to get it running again.  No go.  I needed the server to update to everyone how things are going there on lesjohnston.ca and here, to post things for sale, to upload pics to share with various people, etc, but the server just would not work.  I got back into town yesterday evening, about three weeks later, and worked on the server.  It’s now running again.  Piece of crap.  It’s cursed.  It only crashes and refuses to restart when I leave town.

on the road … again

This time I might actually make it!

The last time I attempted to get to BC to deal with Father’s house, I got a message from T stating that QR77 wanted to do a live radio interview with a member of our LC bamboo research team – that’d be me this time – so I returned to Lethbridge to make that happen.  The next time this happens may be in a couple or few weeks.

So I’m on the road again, heading to Rosedale.  I should make it there by tomorrow (Sunday) evening.  L is out of the house now, and so it is currently empty.  I’ll be talking with realtors about the property starting Monday.

another back window

I broke another back window – this time not even on my vehicle.  I bumped a long piece of metal sitting on top of the teardrop trailer while trying to catch another piece.  It flew off the front of the trailer and hit the back window of M&F’s car.  <sigh>  I’m at Benchmark now having it wrapped.  They won’t have a window in stock until Tuesday.

decommissioning of ‘allan1’

Yes, all my machines on my little network here are named ‘allan’.  ‘allan1’ is the name of the server.  Anyway, it’s slowly dying.  I got a new machine today.  It’ll take a while to move the server from ‘allan1’ to its new home ‘allan25’, so if the web is down, please be patient.

virus and backup

There are a few entries missing from the Ongoing Letter because the server caught a virus.  Actually, I made a mistake and opened up an FTP service on it without encryption.  I thought, “No one will ever know there’s an FTP site here.”  Stupid.  Within a week, a virus showed up.  I had to reinstate a backup from about two weeks ago.  So, students and others, if your web page is not up-to-date, please let me know.  Those of you who posted something on your own page, “Sorry!”  You’ll have to re-post.  Better to be virus-free than to screw around with patching up an infected server.

my new ribs … and hinge

I posted this yesterday afternoon, then my server hit a snag.  I lost this entry.  I’ll enter it again.  It won’t be as eloquently, wittily, or interestingly put as it was before.

I’ve been back at work on the teardrop trailer (teardrop 1).  Floyd and I looked at length at the ribs I created for the galley hatch several weeks back.  I determined that they weren’t usable.

Read moremy new ribs … and hinge