Monday, July 9th 2018… So much to do, so little time…

Lets see, where do I begin?  A lot has happened in the last 2 months.  There was Fathers day, 2 vacations, an entry door installation, crazy busy at work, some crazy biking experiences, a guitar purchase, some more Qigong training, morning brain fights, and a surreal capital experience (health issue). 

Fathers day was cool, I spent it with my kids at the local gun range shooting the assorted rifles and handgun.  No injuries (thank you).  Last time I went with my neighbor, I got my skin caught in the loading mechanism and sliced my fingers open.  That sucked.  But no issues this time.  We went out to lunch at our local “Five-Guys” for burgers.  Last month, my wife and I  went up to the “Rapids” for a week away and helped my bro-in-law install a pre-hung entry/screen door for his back door.  It went a whole lot better than replacing my front door, that’s for sure.  The other bro-in-law rented a house for the week on Castle Rock lake.  That was nice, it was good to hang with the fam.  A couple of weeks ago, I went with the guys from work on a 25mi bike ride along the I&M rail trail.  That ride really shown a spotlight on a couple of things – first, my bike is woefully inadequate for a long ride.  My front sprocket gears are stuck, my seat sucks, my tires are too small.  My Schwinn bike has served me faithfully.  It’s time to retire it.   Yesterday, my wife almost croaked when she actually looked at bike prices – lol.  She always undervalues things when she first looks at them.  Last weekend we went to Madison and hit the farmers market around the “Capital Square” and the Olbrich Botanical Gardens.  It was a nice, short get away.  A couple of weeks ago, I snagged a used guitar on eBay.  I always wanted a “Blueberry” quilt top.  So, I bid on one and got it.  It’s not a Gibson Les Paul, but an Epiphone Les Paul standard.  It came in yesterday, so I dropped it off at the local music store last night to get it set up – very nice.  Two weeks ago, I went trail riding with my neighbor.  That was an experience.  I borrowed his Trek mountain bike since he didn’t feel that mine was up to the task.  It was very different from road riding.  We did “Cemetery Hill”, “Pipe-Line”,  part of “Hickory Smoked”, and went to both the “M” and base for the first atomic burial sites from the original Argonne Labs.  The workout was very different from the road workout.  This workout was muscle/cardio intensive – short intense bursts with cardio during rest periods.  Where the road run was a long, cardio ride with minimal muscle use.  My ass still hurt from both rides.  I think I need a new seat.  Just another reason for a new bike.  I am listening to a new audio book about Qigong but still need to get up earlier to accomplish it before I go to work.  However, I am constantly fighting with my sleep needs.   So, while I was at the farmers market around the Capital square in Madison, I started getting dizzy.  It really came out of the blue.  I was walking through the throng of people one minute, and the next I feel like I am drunk – without any of the pleasant ramp up.  Just raging drunk with the inability to focus and lacking equilibrium.  Luckily I was carrying my wife’s forearm crutches or I would have fallen.  I was able to make it to a bench to sit.  My wife went looking for water for me.  I was speaking to some folks sitting next to me, about the lack of water.  I see my wife across the street buying water.  Since I was feeling a bit more collected, I walked across the street, drank the water, bought a “Seven-Up” – drank it, and sat down.  By then, I was starting to feel like my old self again.  We then went and found an air-conditioned place to have lunch.  After that, we left the square.  Very surreal!  It’s hell getting old.

-Rat

– As a side note, I went to the doctors and was told I had a bout of Vertigo.  I wouldn’t wish that on anyone!

Thursday, May 15th 2018…Sleep is good…

Been burning the candle at both ends. Got a full nights sleep last night – hooray for me! Now I need about 3 more nights in a row and I’ll be back to 100%. We officially cut the cord yesterday and I dropped off the Comcast paraphernalia at UPS. Now I just need to lay back and reap the financial benefits. I officially hate DirectTVNow and Apple TV. I don’t like the fact that we get blackouts on local TV events. This never happened before on non-sporting events. WTF? On the plus side, I got rid of some cardboard from the basement in the recycle bin this morning. I really need to cut the grass, trim the edges, spray the weeds, and de-weed the beds. Oh, and also trim the bushes.

-Rat

Thursday, April 19th 2018… Boy, now I really miss vacation…

So we got home safely last Tuesday night and its been a friggin’ work marathon. It’s like every day is longer than the last. Update – our last night in Santa Fe, was interesting. We went out for dinner at “La Plazula” at “La Fonda on the Plaza”. I had the most awesome filet mignon – probably the best that I’ve had in the last 3 or 4 years. That’s saying something since I’ve dined in Vegas, Hawaii, upscale restaurants in Chicago. The last steak that could compare was at Caio Bella Ristorante in Shererville, IN. Since then, I’ve been to Gibson’s, Morton’s, Harry Carry’s and Ditka’s and these steaks were no comparison. Now that’s leaving Santa Fe on a high note, plus we were serenaded while watching the sunset over the mountains by a guitar wielding, eccentric, physicist.

-Rat

Monday, April 9th 2018… I made the proverbial left turn at Albuquerque…

It’s my last full day in Santa Fe, NM. Kinda sad that we are leaving tomorrow. I’ll really miss scrambled eggs with green chili salsa for breakfast. Making a fire in the kiva at night, taking photos, and maid service. I think one of the coolest memories I’ll have is going to this little church for a Sunday mass out in the middle of nowhere. The church was built in 1616 and has no stained glass but wood panels that go from floor to ceiling and are hand painted with saints and situations. The place is real adobe with rafters, a stone floor, about 45 pews, and a wood and hand painted alter – all hand carved. The second coolest memory I’ll have is at Bandolier Monument, climbing around the rocks. I think from a culinary perspective the best meal was simple, very well executed and came from an unlikely place – The Indian Art and Cultural center. It was a simple salad with steak which was perfectly cooked to medium rare, a lime dressing (fresh limes), and sliced jalapeños (fresh sliced). Yummy. The museum was very cool also. One thing that I got to do, that I never thought I’d experience was to go to Los Alamos and experience the town. I even did selfies with both atom bombs. Yea, I’m a science nerd. E = mc^2. I know I’m missing the gamma, so sue me.

– Rat

Wednesday, March 28th 2018 … I’m Musing about Go-Live…

So yesterday, I was lamenting the demise of my 3rd favorite program. From a creative perspective, this sucks. About 10 years ago, Adobe put a collective boot up the ass of its users by getting rid of “Go-Live”. It was a Web GUI coders dream. It wasn’t the easiest program to learn, but it was way powerful. In my college career, I learned to program in HTML which at the time was ok but there were GUI tools that could do hundreds of lines of complex code easily. This realization is what drove me to Go-Live. Instead of being flummoxed and confused with complex code, I began using GUI drag and drop tools that programmed behind the scenes and made my wildest dreams come true. It was a programmer’s nightmare or an artists dream. No more crappy rules to remember, structures to mess with, no syntax worries. WYSIWYG drag and drop – that codes. Sweet. But as my grandfather said: “All good things must come to an end…” And GoLive was discontinued in 2007 and replaced by it’s dumbed down cousin – MUSE. MUSE was not nearly as powerful as GoLive, but it came with fairly decent templates that a slightly technical type could use. It still had some of the cool power that GoLive used to have, but it was now neutered and only a fraction of what it once was – I’ll use the metaphor of a “Eunuch”. Now, alas Adobe has euthanized even the Eunuch – MUSE – and gave us “Spark”. Where the hell is Adobe going with this? It’s so basic that that the proverbial “Monkey with a hammer” could use it. Do I want Dreamweaver? Hell no – it’s so complex I feel that I could theoretically send a man to the moon before I could finish a web page. What is the driving force behind this? Lazy Millennial’s with their cell phones and social media??? Lazier technophobic, baby-boomers who are still think that the web is a passing fancy? Gen-X’ers who never really learned the fundamentals of either lay-out or coding, that put no stock in tools to help build websites at home and are willing to just offshore their intellectual property and are solely money driven? Or just bad leadership decisions within Adobe? In any event, I’m just pissed.

-Rat

Tuesday, March 20th 2018… Evening post…

So, here I am working this evening and F4211 is giving me fits as usual. Flipping Planner environment and C code. So, I finally figured out my RatsNest basement dilemma. The issue is that the old Airport utility that manages the apple products no longer works as advertised. With one of the iOS releases, you can now manage Apple routers, much to my chagrin. So, now that’s fixed. I ran the cable for the AppleTV POC and the wife likes it. I ordered DirectTV Now with the free AppleTV for a steal. It really feels like petty larceny, but who am I to argue with a 10B LargeCap Company? So, I finally get to cut the cable TV cord with Comcast – yeah! Now I get honors to also cut the VOIP cord. Heh, heh. I’m going to MagicJack and porting my number. I even get to give back the router for 10$/month and the extra box for 5$/month since I have a Cable modem that supports DOCSIS 3.0. Just need to somehow get 2 more AppleTVs. I guess I can just order another DTV service. I made kind of an interesting email move today going with proton mail. They are a service that encrypts their content and you can get a service with VPN to block the cable provider and keep them from spying on your content. Facebook should learn something.

-Rat

Covered bridge
Covered bridge in Sleeping Bear dunes Michigan

Wow! I just learned how to put a picture in my post. Very cool.

Wednesday, March 7th 2018… “Beware the Ides of March”…nevermind, that’s next week…

So, I have been wrestling with my Apple infrastructure in my basement. It was stable with one Apple router, I added a second and it was just crazy unstable. The whole reason behind this was to create a wifi network/infrastructure in the basement that rivaled my upstairs. Which when actually examining it, it wouldn’t be that difficult due to the lack of signal strength. I am trying to connect the AppleTV in the front room, what a pain. Tonight I need to reset the Apple routers again for the third time. Hopefully, it will work for me. I think I’m just going to order from DirectTV and go with the DirectTVNow on the Apple TV and be done with it. However, I need to some longer cables. Maybe 2 50ft CAT 6 cables. Also been looking at a Gigabit Ethernet Switch – 16 port and manageable. My Router is only 4 ports and is could easily need 4 more. Maybe just look at the Asus ROG Tri-band 5300 instead. That would give me 4 extra ports on the 1st floor by the cable modem. Move the current 5300 to the office via wire to extend the wifi footprint out to the backyard. I actually could use both.

-Rat

Tuesday, February 27th 2018…Will March come in like a Lion or Lamb?…

Brought home my new pedals yesterday but have had no time to play. Also received my 360 UFO IP camera for the basement, the bastards didn’t send a power supply so I had to send it back. Hopefully, I can get another on special. Last night, went to the gym but had to kind of cut it short to get back home to help Vikash. Got to do my 30-30 and push some weights around and do basic stretching. As it turned out, Vikash didn’t need any help but still felt guilty not logging on to lend moral CNC support. He didn’t complete builds and maintenance until 2:30am. That’s frickin’ brutal. On a related but separate note, I just made the cutoff at Costco for the gas pumps. Hopefully our bikes will be ready tomorrow.

-Rat

Sunday, February 25th 2018…Evening post…

So, yesterday I busted out the M5 Synth Pedal and was having some fun. Very cool. I have no idea what pedals I would want to purchase, but I think this one with a Cry Baby will do nicely. I still have the Octavix coming with the Cry Baby, but I think I will find out that the Octavix is probably duplication since the M5 does so much. But I need to find out. I think I still need something like a tube screamer or Plexi – something that does a lot of signal overdrive. I will admit, it’s fun farting around. Was doing some Nirvana rifts and with the pedal, it sounds like Cobain. Fun. I wanted to set up the Apple TV today but my CAT 6 cables are about 15ft to short so I need an F-F Ethernet connector. Ordered it from Amazon. Should be here Tuesday – ha. On a different note, Vikash and I took our bikes in to get them tuned up, flats fixed and checked out at Ricks. They had a coupon so I saved 40$ – nice. Vikash got his for free since it was a Trek and never looked at from a checkup perspective. Lucky guy. We can pick them up on Wednesday. The wife ordered a new fridge, should be here on Thursday. The other one was way to big for the space. This one is counter depth and is more expensive to the tune of about $500.

-Rat

Friday, February 23rd 2018…Can you say Line-6?…

Anyway, got my M5 synth pedal delivered today, can’t wait to bust it out. Last night, I didn’t get to bed at a decent hour 🙁 11:30pm. Ugh, a rough morning and was falling asleep at my desk at 3pm. I hate these crappy builds because they impinge on my social life and free time – every other week: less sleep. I’ll be glad when this is over and we are live. Yes, while it pays the bills, id rather be doing something else with my free time, say guitar or painting. Ha, DV done. Starting PY. Taking my bike in tomorrow morning to Rick’s Bike Shop in Palos Hills. I am going to have him put my new inner tubes on and look at the tires to see if there is any reason my tires can’t stay pumped. Just got an email and luckily, our data refresh has been cancelled this weekend due to concerns with overwriting business configuration. Thankfully, tonight should be an early night, everything is going smooth. I’ll post some new header pictures, artsy-fartsy pictures of my guitar, pedal, and bike.

-Rat