Tag: General

The Summer is coming to a close, the children are supposed to be going back to school. (That rite of passage may again be disrupted due to COVID.)

I’ve got a couple of projects to get done before the Winter, those projects are on hold because of the living room and flooring mess.

There’s no reason to paint the stairs if there’re going to be workmen dragging all manner of tools and things up the stairs.

I can lay in supplies for the projects in the mean time. So at least that will be, in some small way, productive.

The flooring is the last piece of the puzzle regarding the living room, then we’ll have to have the fire suppression system inspected and re-pressurized. The jury is still out on the question of the furniture being replaced. At this point it’s likely that the couch and chair will be, but the rest of the wood furniture may have survived.

As we head back into another heat wave, I’m glad that the ceiling is at least back so that the air conditioning won’t be running quite as hard. My “Martian” special worked but was inefficient as far as insulation went. We’re now fully two months into having this disruption in our lives. Although, there are others who’ve been waiting 4 to 6 months.

Between supply shortages and construction repair crews busy schedules there are a lot of people waiting in line for remodels and repairs.

At the moment, I have a pile of trashed building materials on my front lawn and can’t really even do much in the way of yard work. There’s supposed to be a crew member coming up to pick up the trash and the ladders, I expect he’ll be by when the work is complete. It makes more sense to make only one trip instead of several so I’m not really all that worried about it.

This Summer has been a season of things breaking. My faithful 12 year old monitor gave up the ghost a week ago. While I didn’t want to spend money I’m glad I bought a new monitor. Amazon on the other hand said this monitor had more ports than it actually does. Their description was mostly correct except for this one small detail. Nonetheless, the thunderbolt port was there as indicated, and provided me with a method to connect to the computer.

Amazon’s description said there was a Thunderbolt, DV, and HDMI, port. There was only Thunderbolt and HDMI. I think the copy writer on the Amazon site may have grabbed the wrong specifications. Frankly, it’s probably too much of a pain in the ass to return the monitor and call them on their mistake. Going to the Samsung site told me I had the correct model number and that this unit did not contain the DV port. So word to the wise, cross check Amazon’s description and specifications against the actual manufacturer’s before you click that convenient “BUY” button.

In this case it’s not a big deal, but If I’d specifically needed the DV port it would have been.

The panel itself is very nice and crisp. It’s even convenient to watch movies or TV on.

The new router is working like a champ although there have been some situations where firmware updates on it have caused glitches throughout the WiFi devices connected to it. Nothing particularly difficult to resolve, but as is always the case with computer equipment these glitches show up at the most inconvenient times. I’m enjoying the speeds the router provides. I don’t much notice the difference between WiFi and hardline connections. With the previous router, there was a noticeable difference and if I had to do anything intense, like downloading an OS or watching movies I always connected to the hardline. Now I’ve actually moved devices over to WiFi and been able to decommission some of the network switches.

When I reassemble the living room, I’ll be considering connecting everything WiFi and getting rid of cables that aren’t strictly necessary.

Lately, I’ve noticed that I’m not actually watching what little of the news I used to catch. I’ve even stopped reading the news online. It’s all gotten too crazy for me.

Masks, not masks. Vaccine, not vaccine. Mandated Vaccinations No Mandates. Members of Congress saying that they want to create a two class America over vaccination status.

It’s one thing if the media says stuff like that, you pretty much ignored it because they’re the media, BUT when members of Congress start saying stuff like this, it’s head snapping!

When our government starts asking for vaccination proof, we will be uncomfortably close to NAZI or Communist forms of government. Are we at the point that our Republic is already dead? Are we just scrabbling around in the carcass of what was once a great country? Where does that leave what used to be “Average Americans”?

It’s stuff like those questions that makes reading or watching the News an increasingly unpleasant experience. I’m down to looking at the insanity about once a week unless something really catches my attention. At least I’m not completely uninformed but I can’t be any more informed than once a week.