As we wrap up 2019, a look back to what the ending year brought.
Looking back on 2019
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The New Fangled Tech
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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.
Goodbye Google Drive File Stream
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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.
54 and Counting…
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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...
Bread Making
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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:
Photo Management – 2017
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As a quasi-serious photographer, I have at multiple times posted about the trials and tribulations of photo management, here, here, and here as I struggled with the zigging and zagging that Apple has done on native photo management on OSX. The net result was me going all in on Adobe Lightroom that I got as part of my Photographers Bundle from Adobe. It is an amazingly powerful package with many...
The Lawn
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For the first time in my life, I have a house with a yard that I take care of, or, more importantly that I care about. Something about a $700K house. One of the factors in our selection of this house was a safe, sane yard for our dogs, at the time an epileptic greyhound, and his older brother, a well aged greyhound. The small back yard had a pretty decent piece of grass, my lawn, and I have put...
Back in the Saddle
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The downside of working full time again is the dearth of time to exercise. Little over a year ago, spending some down time between jobs, I was able to get out for lengthy exercise sessions every day. That included typically 3 bicycle rides a week, often up to 30 miles at a through. Alas, that freedom to get out and pound the pavement was severely curtailed with a regular job. I still did get out...
More VTA Observations
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Schedules Capital of Silicon Valley? Perhaps. But on April 10th, the VTA changed the schedules of the buses and light rail trains. Here we are, two and a half weeks later, and they still haen’t posted updated schedules at their stops. How freaking hard is it to print 50 or so posters of the new schedule, and get them posted? Seriously. And the changes? They moved the times ahead 3 – 5...
Music, on Vinyl, and cheap sleeves
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I am going to admit that I am mostly streaming my music (and I pay for Apple Music and Pandora), so when I come across something I really like, I go out of my way to buy it. Being an old fart, and having inherited a decent stereo with turntable when my Father in-law passed, I try to buy on vinyl. I know that it isn’t as crisp as a good digital copy, and that in a blind hearing, I probably can’t...