I have been pretty quiet about it, but the last 8 months I have been playing the role of trustee of my step father’s estate. It has been an enormous quantity of work, and one of the perks is that I get to pay myself.
Continue reading →Time to retire
(My other blog that is…)
When I began my journey on the internet back in the 1990’s, I signed up with a small-ish ISP at the time, Best Communications. One of the “benefits” of their ISDN service was the inclusion of a domain for my email.
At the time, I had an English Mastiff, a giant of a dog, named Astro – from The Jetsons, and of course that domain was gone. However, there was a twist, the name of Astro before he was adopted by The Jetsons was “Tralfaz”. Surely, this was a meaningless name dreamt up by the scriptwriters to make the episode work, it was a good choice in the early days of the internet.
Continue reading →Car Shopping
As I age, I am increasingly finding it less and less comfortable to fold myself into my current car, a Honda S2000. I wouldn’t have noticed this if I hadn’t spent a few months with the use of my Step Father’s Jeep Cherokee after he passed. A compact SUV, it was comfortable to drive, and I found that I enjoyed that.
Continue reading →Goodbye Google Drive File Stream
Way back, in September 2017, I was happy using Google Drive to put some of my documents. It was reliable, and if not as feature rich as Dropbox, my go-to solution for syncing between computers, I did get a block of storage free with my Google Suite account.
Continue reading →54 and Counting…
54 down, ? to go…
Today marks the completion of my 54th trip ’round Sol, a time for reflection, celebration, and looking to the future. Not to wax philosophically, but with what is certainly the greater fraction of my life gone by, it is a bit of an eye opener.
There are good things to be thankful for. My health remains good (even though I could stand to lose some weight,) I am doing meaningful – if highly stressful – work, I have a wonderful family, my wife and our two fur kids, and finally, it could be a lot worse.
Continue reading →A very sad thought …
As I am finally getting my stepfather’s estate in order (it is largely in the hands of the realtor now) I have begun bicycling again. I dusted off my mountain bike, a 2014 vintage Specialized Crave that I enjoy riding, but I find that I don’t do as much offroad riding as I thought I would.
Prolly because my fond memories were from nearly 20 years ago, when I was much more mobile, and in far better shape. Ah, the joys of late middle age.
Continue reading →Bread Making
In the last installment of bread making, a new hobby, I was just beginning on the adventure of making sourdough bread.
I followed the “sure bet” recipe for Rustic Sourdough from the fine people at King Arthur Flour, and it came out well. However there were two deficiencies:
Continue reading →Music Collection Grooming
Music has long been a big part of my life, beyond just my (admittedly waning) guitar playing, I have been an avid collector of music. From my early days of buying LP’s (and kicking myself when several moves in the 1990’s caused me to donate my vinyl collection) to being an early adopter of the CD format while I was still in high school, my collection, while not huge by some standards, remains quite large.
Continue reading →The New Year
2018 is done, dead as the Dodo. Good riddance. Sayonara, arriverderci.
2019 is finally here. Cue the trumpets, the accolades, the … whatever. Regardless, 2019 will be better than 2018. It has to be.
Things I will do to improve myself:
Continue reading →Saying Goodbye to 2018
Upfront Matter: To quote the illustrious Sterling Archer, “2018 can eat a big bag of dicks.” Seriously, this year has been trying by many measures. As I look back, there are some nuggets of positives, sprinkled among the shit-sandwich that was the year 2018, but by and large, I am going to be glad to see it in the rear view mirror. Continue reading →