The Time Sink

Well, now... After explaining to a friend how some authors seem to just get too obtuse, obscure or tangential (something I'm all sorts of guilty of, but usually in fun <g>!), I figured I'd better add in a little information about "Puttin' on the Ritz" (construction style)... from Sunday's Blog post. Okay? ...especially since not everyone is familiar with the references.

Way back before I was even born Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers starred in an Irving Berlin-scored film, Top Hat. One of Mr. Astaire's dance numbers in that film was "Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails". Mr. Berlin also scored the Broadway show "Puttin' On The Ritz" which featured the song of the same name (as did the movie Blue Skies). The two songs were sung and recorded by Mr. Astaire over the years and have become a bit of a 'stock in trade' for dancers. ...and Peter Boyle, the acerbic father in the TV show Everyone Love Raymond? He and Gene Wilder donned their "Top Hats", "White Ties" and "Tails" in the movie Young Frankenstein...

Yep, that's the best explanation I have to play "connect the dots" from 1930s soundtracks to a seriously bent comedy and thence to a construction site down the street. Then again, that's how my brain works most days...

Hey! It rained!

Yep, we had some rain here yesterday evening. Remnants of Hurricane Max made their way up California Monday night and let loose some lightning and thunder in our area starting around 0300. ...and while we didn't get any real rain out of it on our area of the valley floor, other areas did. ...and the state received something like 13,000 lightning ground strikes from our mountains south to the Border.

So it was a bit of a humid day, but it never really solidly clouded over for very long. I decided to go blading after I got home from work since the winds weren't too bad and that worked out okay. ...but after I was back and cooling off in the pool things changed a bit: the winds came up and started hitting us with 35mph stuff. Yeah, no fun; do I get out of the pool or just stay on the leeward side of things? Sheesh!

I did get out in between gusts, but not long after I got inside the thunder and lightning and rain started up and lasted about three hours. Man, what a show!

...and speaking of shows: did you watch that airliner make an emergency landing this evening. Nice work there for sure!

Yep, busy, busy, busy. ...both at work and at home. Hopefully it will chill a bit over the weekend and I can play catchup with a few things both here and at home.

Some weeks it's sparse here; this was one of them... Oh, you could tell <g>? Yeah, well... Sometimes life and work and school events and homework and things just leave little discretionary time, or so it seems. This was one of those weeks that turned into "survive until Friday"...

So I slept in this morning. ...and took my time waking up? Damn straight! "Not a Morning Person" has a lot to do with minimal reasoning ability until the various parts of my psyche hook up. ...but once I was sure verticality could be maintained I went blading to make up for all the pizza Thursday evening. Oh, yeah: Thursday. ...or as Janeen and I called it, "Monday, Part IV". Whooboy. ...but that evening one of the local pizza places was donating money to Daniel's school toward their laptop program with each pizza purchase. ...and since Shelley had been working for two days and I'd had such a Fine Week SO Far, that seemed like a good idea, especially since breakfast and lunch had been deferred at work.

Where was I? Oh, today. Yep, I did get some work done even with the late start; the patio is clean again from the windstorm and the 'outside room' is almost transitioned from Sumner to Winter duty: we don't need the misters any longer, and the fire pit is moved out to the middle again (but it looks like I need to splint some more wood).

Another of yesterday's projects was sorting through the 'Piles-O-Stuff' I've accumulated in the last few weeks/months/years for rebuilding machines and networking here in the land of the network with the split personality (I mean, it has Win2k boxes and Linux boxen and an iMac and 2 xP boxes (that aren't connected; those would be the teenager's) and Brad's machine and then there are two instances of network attached storage and ... well. Yeah, it's time to get a handle on the little part of this show that lives on this hutch here in the kitchen. ...and all their offspring and oddball family members that seem to have dropped by and decided to stay. I tell you, sometimes I think I'm running a trailer park...

Back on track... At this point it looks like I'll toss a new hard drive into the Linux box and pull both the HDDs from there for evaluation. I believe one is going to be pristine, but the other will have problems. Hopefully the Home directory there will be intact. At least the last optical backup should have most of what I can use/may need. Oh, and there looks to be enough parts to put another Shuttle up; that could be really cool.

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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"

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