Month: November 2005

Back To Work

2012-01-08 23:29:23

It seems like I’ve been away for so long, that I got used to being home. I was dreading the fact that I’d have to work a WHOLE WEEK this week. Funny how it only takes a little slip to convince you that what you normally do is way too arduous.

So, i’m back at work after a great Thanksgiving weekend. I actually got some rest, fixed some things on the web site and did some yard work [of course, there’s still more of THAT to be done before the next snow].

The rain has stopped and it’s bright and sunny outside. Of course, that means that it’s just plain COLD outside now. Luckilly, I have a new fleece under-jacket to wear under my leather for extra warmth as well as some glove liners. Now, all I need is warmer boots… and heated hand grips… and a heated seat… that’s all.

But, when the snow comes, and I mean REALLY comes down, I may have to steal Laura’s car. I haven’t yet tried to ride below freezing, although I came close a couple of weeks ago. It was … uncomfortable. Brrr.

And I love every minute of it.

Happy White Thanksgiving!

When we wake up in the morning, we will look out our windows and see that white flakes of frozen water have fallen from the sky and smothered the nearby plants. Yes, you heard me right: snow. Snow now? In November? Where do we live, Montana? Nope. Virginia. Not usually known for its harsh winters, this first snow of the year is unusually early. This doesn’t usually happen in fall, but more towards the middle of winter. Last year, I don’t remember snow until January.

Maybe it’s getting cooler around here – like a Little Ice Age.

So much for Global Warming, eh?

Happy [White] Thanksgiving!

Bye, Bye Verizon!

Well, mostly…

I’m ditching my land line with Verizon in favor of Vonage VoIP. The monthly cost will be less than half of what I’m paying now. And, since I have this wonderful fiber connection with all this bandwidth, I might as well get some use out of it. So – I’m keeping Verizon for my fiber connection – which is really worth the cost especially now that I will be able to save some money on my phone service!

Weathering The Storm [Wilma In Cozumel]

I ran across this post on Divester:

Divester contributor Eric Brodeur has a dive buddy who rode out Hurricane Wilma in Cozumel. Locked in his hotel’s main dining room for three days, his friend nailed pieces of furniture to the walls to reinforce the shutters, “stacked credenzas and other furniture against one doorway to the outside as a barricade to keep it from collapsing,” and generally went without sleep for the duration. What a terrible, exhausting experience. What’s more: when it was all over, his escape from Mexico was equally stressful and chaotic. Check out this, uh, “trip report” on Eric’s blog and be happy you weren’t there.Or, as Eric writes, “if you suffer from ADD, skip the words and go straight to the photos.”

 

What makes this important to me is that the resort in the pictures is my favorite resort in Cozumel: Fiesta Americana. Having stayed there before many times, I’m saddened by the devastation. I am, however, glad to hear of the co-operative nature of not only the staff but also of the residents/tourists when the chips are down.

I encourage you to read the entire post – it’s quite moving.

The Windows Project: Completion

Success!

I have finally done it. I have migrated the entire site to the Windows platform. I tried this once before, but I couldn’t make it work. The server is now running on Windows and IIS with roughly the same performance I was getting with Linux. So – it was fun and I’ve learned a little. I’ve also learned that I really didn’t like the Gallery 2 software that I upgraded the photo gallery to, so I downgraded it back to the previous version. The old version is actually much faster.

Not that there weren’t a few hiccups along the way and that things don’t quite work the same as they did before. At least, though, I can now log in to the gallery and add some more pictures – which I’d lost the ability to do when some Linux patch changed something on my system… couldn’t figure that one out.