Wednesday Again

Drove to work again today.  It was a little chilly in the morning, but warmed up during the day. I even turned on the ceiling fans in the library. THEN, it turned chilly again.  It turned DARK! I think it's going to rain!

Don't you just hate people that park their old junk cars on their lawn?



Saw that the other day while walking home from work. Hey, my legs are STILL sore from that little excursion!

Tuesday--Continued

Our Ordereder-Of-Supplies was kind enough to take my request for some cotton swabs "just like the nurse has".  Swabs are extremely useful when gluing books back together. The ones I managed to steal from the nurse's office when she wasn't there are pretty much encrusted with glue, and are not too pleasant to hold in one's mouth.  So what I want were six-inch unsterilized wood swabs. I priced some at the drug store, but they were a buck fifty for TWO.  On the net they are around ten bucks for a hundred. So I asked the OOS to check her catalogs.  Also, I don't have any money.

So this is what I got:



Eight-inch OB-GYN sterile swabs with plastic sticks. GIANT, they are! See the wood ones poking out the side, for comparison.  I'm sure they will work just fine, but they are so HUGE!  Weel, as she said, there wasn't much of a description in the catalog!

Here's an old van I saw whilst heading to the pharmacy after work.  I think it is a Ford.  For some reason I always thought these were nifty.




I've seen this van before, and I thought it belonged to someone I knew. But today I found out it did not.

That is all.

Torpid Tuesday

So much for my unstated goal of walking thirty-five miles to work this week. 

I woke up this morning at six. Turned out I had reset my alarm to 5:30 PM. And not for the first time!

I need a second alarm clock, one for regular getting-ups, and one for special alarms.

Anyway, I got gas, returned a library book, and drove to work. And I got to listen to the DFC.

Saw quite a few bicyclists this morning, too!

Walking To Work Monday

I was in a mood this morning, or rather yesterday, or even most of last week, so I decided to walk to work today. It was around seven miles round-trip, and took about and hour and a quarter each way.

A city that outdistances man's walking powers is a trap for man.
Arnold J. Toynbee 

I wore my watch, the one with the compass.  You will recall, I am sure, the travails of putting a new battery in it.  (Time passes) Or maybe not, as I now see I didn't blog about it! Well, to sum it up, I have two of these watches, one with a compass. The non-compass one is really easy to change the battery, the compass one is REALLY REALLY hard!



On the way home I found this hobby blade handle. Compare the quality with my Excel and X-ACTO blade holders.



That X-ACTO holder on the bottom is one of a set I inherited from my dear grandfather.

Here is a closerup. Compare the knurling on the grips. And what's that blue stuff? Plastic!



Well, that is about it for today!

Used

I was looking around Google image search under my user name and found an odd picture, so I click on it to see why it was associated with my user name. I found that someone had used one of my images (with credit given!!) in a collage of office supplies they had created. Take a look!  My picture is the thumb tacks. I found them in a drawer at work.

Crummy Wednesday

Rant? You wanna hear me RANT???

The other day I took the floppy drive out of the IBM at work and stuck it into my computer, the one with the dead floppy drive.  I was trying to copy an olde Quicken from floppy to flash drive. Don't get me started on THAT!

Of course, in sliding the floppy drive out I found it doesn't QUITE clear the CPU fan. So I had to remove the fan.

No clearance!

Now with a bit a spare room to slide!

A silly little quarter of an inch, if that.

I put the IBM back together at work.  It, of course, did not work.  Dead as a doornail!!

I messed with it and messed with it and messed with. Several hours into the messing I happened to push on the battery a little, and the fan started up.  OK, says I, I must have jarred the motherboard battery.  Now we're good!

Oh, no, we are NOT good.  It wasn't booting up.  I pushed on the battery more, and sometimes it would fan up, as it were, and sometimes not. I plugged and unplugged it several times, and eventually it actually started to boot up.  I even got to the login!  Would not accept my password, though. I pulled out the network cable that I had just borrowed from an old printer I don't use.  Blue crud all over the pins!

Yikes!  I cleaned the network socket with water and baking soda (power off, of course!), dried it, and fired it up with a NEW cable.  It now accepted the login and I was flying!

Or maybe not.  When I shut down, it wouldn't restart. Or when it did, it did the F1/F2 thing.  So, I took a look at the startup configuration.  It looked ok, I hit save, and now it SEEMS to be running ok.  We shall see, tomorrow!

We had a LOT of people in using the computer lab. Of course the lab printer started acting up, and it appears it needs a new fuser.  I can't switch ALL the printers to the library printer, it would take FOREVER! So I just switched the flat-screen Macs, they are pretty easy to switch.

Tons of kids had problems using the computers, that sucks up a lot of time.  One student was using Safari and it kept quitting every time he tried to Google something.  I tried to take a look at it, but he was being so obnoxious I finally told him to go find himself another computer, and I left it for another day.

A parent came in wondering why their child had no textbooks. My bad, I ASSUMED they were using ESL textbooks, which I don't handle.  Turns out they need regular textbooks.

Another parent came in inquiring about a report that their child had been hit by another child in the library.  Well, I didn't see it, but it was apparently on my watch, so I feel bad about that.

There were a LOT of noisy and ill-behaved students running around. It's very hard to concentrate on technical problems with so much disruption. So much different than yesterday, a day that was extremely pleasant.

Well, we shall have to see how tomorrow goes!

Power Tuesday

We All Scream For Ice Cream!

On Friday we drove over to Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor for lunch.

I'm eating!

I love ice cream!

While there we tried to figure out the small print on some Mexican money. That's Diego Rivera, it is a self-portrait.

We also went geocaching (surprise) and found three caches in the mall.




After stuffing ourselves and walking off the stuffiness we drove back to San Diego.  Did I mention Farrell's is in Mission Viejo?  I felt so cosmopolitan skipping off to Orange County for luncheon!

We stopped at Califia Beach so that L. could dip her feet in the Pacific Ocean.  I watched the surfers, and the train went by.

Trains a'coming!!

We drove down the freeway a bit and stop at the Las Flores view point to see the pretty setting sun.

And then we headed home!

NOW It's Precipitating!

It has severely darkened over and is sprinkling as I speak.  It's almost like having weather!

Friday The Thunderstorm

I woke up at 6:20 this morning, which is an hour later than usual. Someone forgot to set the alarum clock.  Funny, I remember hearing the upstairs neighbor's alarm going off. Which usually rings AFTER mine does.

It was pretty much perfectly partly overcast this morning. The Winnebagos are heading east for the weekend.  I don't see no thunderstorms on the horizon, but they are still predicting 90% chance of rain.  It must be our destiny...

This morning is Breakfast Club, so I've been grazing a bit.  Back in the library one of the students brought in these evil things (see below), so I flaunted all the rules and ate one, right there at the circulation desk.  You should have seen the smile on my kisser

Slightly 'shopped...

So, I'm not sure if the picture is actually there, I think work is blocking it.

Speaking of work, I better get back to it!

Thursday Tomorrow?

Wow, it's Wednesday already!  I hear we are setting clocks forward this weekend. Or backward? Fall back? Either way, I'll have Sunday to figure it out.

Had to ferry the wife to the doctor's office this morning.  While waiting I took a picture of the headliner in the truck, as it is coming loose and I just want to document it.  One would think it would last more than five years.  Come on, it's a TRUCK!  Ruggedly built and all that!

I would have engineered some sort of plastic piece to secure it if I had designed it. Just saying, Ford!

Here is my wife coming out of the doctor's office through the rather pleasant mini-jungle-with-giant-stone-ball-fountain, with wooden bench.

I went grocery shopping again after work.  The giant vehicle next to mine had three dogs waiting for their mistress, one of whom was very barky.

 

On the way home I came upon an electric vehicle making a VERY SLOW u-turn on the on-ramp to the 8.  I guess he was losing power and didn't want to get stuck on the freeway. Or maybe he was just an idiot.

Just another instance of stupid driving I saw today. I'm glad I'm perfect!

Oh, and made a detour before shopping to my local Radio Shack.  What can you buy there besides cell phones? Why, fuses, if you must know! I needed a 1.6 amp fuse for a VCR at work. We shall see if that fixes the problem, or if there was something more serious that caused the fuse to blow. 

I also spent two hours at work on YOUR tax-payer's dime to exchange all my loose change from home for dollars. Now we will have plenty of pennies for the next book faire!

Later!