I have had many hobbies over the years, from video gaming (I was an arcade junky in my formative years in the early 1980’s), music (guitars and guitar playing), shooting, off road motorcycling, and bicycling.
Continue reading →Category: blog
Exciting Weekend
It is an exciting weekend, as my kid sister is moving into the first house she has ever bought. We recently got an inheritance, and she decided that it was time to buy a house.
So, after a little retreat in late September where we had a mini-family reunion, they began looking in earnest. Surprisingly, they have a pretty solid income, and could afford a lot more than I thought (good for them), and they had ample selections to choose from, as the market is a little soft at the moment.
They bought a great older house with good bones, but in need of some TLC. It was owned by a single woman, a retiree who spent her life working at IBM in the south San Jose area. It was an estate sale, and the price was very fair for the area. But the trustee/executor of the estate didn’t have any money to tart it up, so it was largely as-is. Not as bad as that sounds, it means:
- It doesn’t pop, so a lot of buyers will go meh. It had been on the market for a while without attracting a lot of interest or offers.
- You don’t have the superficial “tarting” that is common. A coat of cheap paint, replace the carpet with some cheap rental grade carpet. And a deep cleaning. Sure, those things add to ‘curb-appeal’ but they are not where YOU would have spent the money.
After a month of getting things ready, they are moving in.
And on Sunday, I will go and lend my shoulder to help get them sorted. It will be a good day.
Website (and host) migration time
I have many (5) sites running on a smallish Digital Ocean droplet, using Serverpilot to manage the instances. I originally set this up over 4 years ago. At the time, ubuntu 14.04 lts was the bomb.
Continue reading →Fucking hell – Redirects
Following on from the website migration, there is another tale to tell.
A tale shrouded in the mythos of the early internet. It was the late 1990’s and I had an ISP that provided me my ISDN service, as part of their monthly charge for this “business” class service (at the time it was truly stupendous speed and bandwidth) was a free domain and email hosting.
Continue reading →Kamado Kapers: Brined Turkey Breast
A couple weeks ago, on a lark, I bought one of those Jennie-O frozen turkey breasts, with the intent to cook it on the Kamado. I freely admit that I am not really a fan of the big bird. This is largely due to a confluence of a few factors. The first being that my mother – may her soul rest in peace – cooked a turkey drier than a Monument Valley August afternoon. Bone dry would have been a juicier bird.
Continue reading →Two Months, and 2,400 miles on the 2020 Acura RDX
Rapidly approaching 2 months with the RDX, and it is time for an update. Naturally, the 2 months, nearly 2,400 miles, and plenty of smiles are to be expected with a new car. If you read the forums, this car is the devil, and the infotainment system is a disaster (n.b. – I rented a shitbox Ford focus one with their Sync “system” and truly that was a homeless abortion).
Continue reading →New Car time: 2020 Acura RDX
A while back, I began to consider the idea of moving on from a long term relationship, with my sports car, the Honda S2000 that I bought in 2008, and have lovingly cared for and driven since. It was still tons of fun to drive, a real sports car and perfectly balanced vehicle, but the sitting position, and my creaky, aging body were falling out of love.
Continue reading →Bagel Shop Economics
When we first moved back from Arizona, the hunt was on for a good local bagel shop. In Tucson we were spoiled with Bruegger’s Bagels, and in Chandler with Einstein Bagels.
Continue reading →The Trek Century Challenge
About a month ago, I got a notification from Strava about a challenge for the month of July. Ride 100 miles, and you can earn a t-shirt, and some badging. If you complete 500, or 1,000 miles, you get an opportunity to win a slick bike, and a chance to tour their design center.
Since I have been riding consistently again, I figured why not, so I signed up. At the end of 3 weeks, I had a total of 96 miles, and feeling pretty good about 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 →