So Hell Week was quickly followed by Fire Week here in Southern California, as several pillars of smoke rose at once into the sky. There was the Airport Fire down in Orange County, The massive Line Fire over near Big Bear that looked like a volcanic eruption, and the Bridge Fire near me in the…
It’s a hot one. Like seven inches from the midday sun. For the last week. Day after day of heat so bad it makes you want to slap the people who were whining about the clouds and pleasant weather back in June. I’m gonna have to take out a second mortgage for the electric bill…
It was a whirlwind week leading into the Labor Day weekend with everyone trying to get everything off their desks before the holiday, so work was chaotic most of the week until Friday. One of the great things about working in California is that for the most part, everyone pretty much agrees that the weekend…
The week started out peacefully enough until I walked out onto my patio and noticed something was missing — several things, actually. All of my young pea plants had been pilfered in the night, but by who or what I didn’t know. My anger was tempered by the promise of a mystery and I immediately…
Well the Olympics are over and I get to replay the same quadrennial nonsense that I always do: casual dismissal prior to the games, followed by growing emotional investment as I watch more and more events, followed by a crash after the closing ceremonies. You’d think I’d learn my pattern and change, but it’s my…
In the growing quest to finally turn one of my Raspberry Pis into a multi-functional machine, I installed Calibre and Calibre-Web on the Pi 5, along with a FreshRSS installation. I initially was going to use Docker to do this, but I could not for the life of me figure out how to get Docker…
I forgot to do a wrap-up last week, because I got side-tracked with what started as a simple image gallery post. As I began typing out the context for the pictures, it transformed into a full-blown essay about the history of the Mojave. This past week saw the arrival of another heatwave or Heat Dome…
It turned out to be an eventful holiday week. The 4th of July was the usual: make some burgers & dogs, watch Independence Day, and listen to fireworks until about three in the morning. Oh, and there was a heat wave in progress, providing the veritable cherry on the cake. We went to a Dodger…
And so here we are, at the end of it all in June. It’s a cliche at this point, but my god does time slip on by so much faster the older you get. The first six months of this year might as well be a blur, so I’m hoping that writing down a weekly…
A lot of travel this week, limiting the amount of interesting things I could accomplish this past week. I was in Kansas City, MO for a good deal of it and overall it wasn’t too bad of a time. I stayed at the 21C hotel and you know you’re in for something less than ordinary…