Late-Fall motorcycle rides ; Uh-oh at House 2
(posted from home)
(This post covers 1 – 9 December, 2011)
-----------------------------------
Friday, 9 December -
This morning I revisited the slideshow of Africa stills I had created and added comments from Labashi and also made a few changes of my own. I think it's finally ready for distribution.
Mid-day I hopped on the Concours and zipped down to the East York Starbucks. I took along the iPad and wireless keyboard and my blog notes. I enjoyed my mocha and caught up the blog. I also had a long conversation with Chris, a guy who works at the nearby Lowes. Using the keyboard with the iPad made a big difference (compared to the on-screen keyboard) and I see it's very possible to start making blog entries this way. But I have to be careful to make backups on the laptop in case the web site were ever to lose my data.
The temperature today is again in the upper 40's and the motorcycle riding very comfortable-- in fact I saw two other bikes out today.
We watched a few episodes of 'Modern Family'- season one.
-----------------------------------
Thursday, 8 December -
This morning I finally got my laptop back. I needed to figure out how to take put our Africa stills online in a form we can send to friends and relatives. After checking out several options I found that iPhoto has easy import and email functions.
I had edited the photos a bit on the iPad and needed to transfer the files to the laptop. Fortunately I found an iPad app (called "Photo Transfer App") for this purpose. It couldn't have been easier.
I had not been on iPhoto before so took a bit of time to research how to import and edit the photos. That too turned out to be easy. The import was a matter of pointing at the folder containing the transferred photos. Editing (color correction and cropping) were intuitive and emailing was easy-- with a few little gotchas but they made sense once you found them.
I sent test emails to Labashi and we reviewed them and tried a few things to improve them. The original file was over 9 meg and I figured that would be a problem for some recipients since many email servers won't take files over 5 meg. But some judicious deletions of borderline-quality photos took it down under 5 meg.
I then added some comments to each photo.
That afternoon I took the Concours down to Rocky Ridge for my 5-miler (1:50 today). I had gotten a late start for this time of year so couldn't take time to stop off at Starbucks. But the woods were beautiful in the evening light (at 4 pm!!)
That evening we watched 'Somewhere', a Sofia Coppola film. This one is a character study and is rated fairly low on Netflix but we like her work. And that was indeed the case for this one-- we liked it. It's not a traditional movie in structure; it's a character study. But this is another movie that grows on you after it (unexpectedly) ends.
------------------------------------
Wednesday, 7 December -
More rain today. Labashi has decided that the video clips I had done could use some work. She had been a video producer before retiring and had done a lot of professional editing so the bottom line is she's right. I was content to have videos that looked like home movies if they captured something interesting. But Labashi wants to edit out the shaky footage, even if it means a much shorter piece.
She had not used iMovie before so I got her started and sat nearby using my iPad. (See, honey, it WAS worth buying an iPad after all!)
Labashi edited and uploaded six or seven videos by supper time. It had taken me three or four days to do that.
We then went out to supper at Deb's Pizza in Manchester. We like their ham boat and roast-beef boat sandwiches.
------------------------------------
Tuesday, 6 December -
It's Tuesday so it must be raining.... as indeed it was. Tuesday is our take-out-the-trash day and it seems I'm always doing it in the rain.
This morning I had a dental checkup. Since the dentist's office is near Mom and Dad's apartment Labashi went along and we visited them for a couple of hours. I diagnosed a problem with Mom's printer and we had a nice chat.
That evening we were introduced to the TV series 'Modern Family'. When I first saw Ed O'Neill I thought we had made a mistake but the pilot was hilarious. We went on to watch all the episodes on Disk 1. Now we can't wait for more.
------------------------------------
Monday, 5 December -
Today I drove to Chambersburg to work on House 2 a bit. I've had an odd problem with the back door. It's a new door and keeps swelling. I've had to plane it off and repaint at least four times now. When we visited Maypo at Thanksgiving I found I couldn't even close the door (after forcing it open).
As soon as I entered the house I noticed the smell of fuel oil. It was strong enough that I really dreaded entering the basement. I found a pool of fuel oil about six-feet around at the furnace. Fortunately we had left a roll of paper towels and a trash can with liner. I sopped up the oil and washed the floor, then found the problem--- a fitting was loose. Last summer we had bled the line after some work and apparently had failed to tighten it. The problem showed up when we had the tank filled for winter.
I then fixed and repainted the door and headed home, all in all about four hours of work.
------------------------------------
Sunday, 4 December -
Later in the morning I rode the Concours down to the Tollgate Starbucks for my weekly Sunday ride. I took along the iPad instead of buying a paper. I'm really loving this thing. It gives me an excuse to look for new apps and I've read more books and magazines in the last month than the previous six. I particularly like having so much capability right with me, from doing video calls to looking up stuff on maps and in Wikipedia and of course Google. I have music as wekk as the photos and several of the videos from our Africa trip. Very nice...
I rode the Concours home and changed my clothes and then rode the GS down to Rocky Ridge park for my 5-miler (1:42 today). These days it's getting dark by the time I get back home and I'm quite ready to take a couple of ibuprofen and then take it easy. So far the body is taking the walking well and I'm not sore in the morning from it. While walking I listen to the iPod and am currently particularly fond of Sia's 'Breathe Me' and 'Lullaby' and Zero Seven's 'Home' (I'm a Tina Dico fan)
-----------------------
Saturday, 3 December -
Today I spent all day going through the log of our Chambersburg work to figure up our hours and trips. We spent just under 500 hours (actually, just under 1000 man-hours when you realize that both Labashi and I were working) and we made 17 round-trips to Chambersburg for this purpose.
While perusing the log I also uploaded two Thanksgiving video clips for the rest of the family to see on YouTube.
Labashi worked all day in the yard, running her burn barrels. She's an amazing worker and just goes for hours on this. She went down there about 0900 this morning, took maybe a 20-minute lunch break and worked through till dark. She just loves it. And the yard looks great!
I spent the evening catching up and posting the blog.
-----------------------
Friday, 2 December -
Today I took on a project I've been dreading. I had repaired our front pole light a few months ago and it only lasted a month. I had found – with great luck --- the break in the underground cable leading from our front porch to the pole light. This section had been under our old sidewalk and the construction guys had done a less-than-workmanlike job of splicing the cable after cutting it. I found it using Maypo's metal detector and had done what I thought was a very professional job of re-splicing it. But, as I said, a month later the problem was even worse. Where before we had no light, now we had a dead short which flipped the circuit breaker whenever we'd turn on the light switch.
I dug up the splice today and though everything looked fine, I cut it off and tested the wire in both directions. The tests were good! What the....????
It took me awhile to find the problem. Apparently I had pinched a wire in installing the light fixture and over time the pinch became a short. If I had done my test of the wire from end to end before cutting off the splice, it would have tested okay and would have saved me some work. But in any case, now the light works.
-----------------------
Thursday, 1 December -
I spent the morning on the web and then rode the GS down to Starbucks on this beautiful mid-Fifties day. We don't have many of these left this year so I'd better take advantage while I can.
I then rode up to Rocky Ridge Park and walked my five-miler, this time in 1:50-- a relatively slow pace. I'm enjoying the new music I've found because of the Soundhound app on the iPad. I heard a song I liked playing on TV and used Soundhound to identify it. That led to more exploration and then my purchase of five or six new songs. This is SO much better than the old music world.
That evening we watched the Fellini film '8 ½'. Now we need to see it again with the commentary turned on.
********* END OF POST *********
(posted from home)
(This post covers 1 – 9 December, 2011)
-----------------------------------
Friday, 9 December -
This morning I revisited the slideshow of Africa stills I had created and added comments from Labashi and also made a few changes of my own. I think it's finally ready for distribution.
Mid-day I hopped on the Concours and zipped down to the East York Starbucks. I took along the iPad and wireless keyboard and my blog notes. I enjoyed my mocha and caught up the blog. I also had a long conversation with Chris, a guy who works at the nearby Lowes. Using the keyboard with the iPad made a big difference (compared to the on-screen keyboard) and I see it's very possible to start making blog entries this way. But I have to be careful to make backups on the laptop in case the web site were ever to lose my data.
The temperature today is again in the upper 40's and the motorcycle riding very comfortable-- in fact I saw two other bikes out today.
We watched a few episodes of 'Modern Family'- season one.
-----------------------------------
Thursday, 8 December -
This morning I finally got my laptop back. I needed to figure out how to take put our Africa stills online in a form we can send to friends and relatives. After checking out several options I found that iPhoto has easy import and email functions.
I had edited the photos a bit on the iPad and needed to transfer the files to the laptop. Fortunately I found an iPad app (called "Photo Transfer App") for this purpose. It couldn't have been easier.
I had not been on iPhoto before so took a bit of time to research how to import and edit the photos. That too turned out to be easy. The import was a matter of pointing at the folder containing the transferred photos. Editing (color correction and cropping) were intuitive and emailing was easy-- with a few little gotchas but they made sense once you found them.
I sent test emails to Labashi and we reviewed them and tried a few things to improve them. The original file was over 9 meg and I figured that would be a problem for some recipients since many email servers won't take files over 5 meg. But some judicious deletions of borderline-quality photos took it down under 5 meg.
I then added some comments to each photo.
That afternoon I took the Concours down to Rocky Ridge for my 5-miler (1:50 today). I had gotten a late start for this time of year so couldn't take time to stop off at Starbucks. But the woods were beautiful in the evening light (at 4 pm!!)
That evening we watched 'Somewhere', a Sofia Coppola film. This one is a character study and is rated fairly low on Netflix but we like her work. And that was indeed the case for this one-- we liked it. It's not a traditional movie in structure; it's a character study. But this is another movie that grows on you after it (unexpectedly) ends.
------------------------------------
Wednesday, 7 December -
More rain today. Labashi has decided that the video clips I had done could use some work. She had been a video producer before retiring and had done a lot of professional editing so the bottom line is she's right. I was content to have videos that looked like home movies if they captured something interesting. But Labashi wants to edit out the shaky footage, even if it means a much shorter piece.
She had not used iMovie before so I got her started and sat nearby using my iPad. (See, honey, it WAS worth buying an iPad after all!)
Labashi edited and uploaded six or seven videos by supper time. It had taken me three or four days to do that.
We then went out to supper at Deb's Pizza in Manchester. We like their ham boat and roast-beef boat sandwiches.
------------------------------------
Tuesday, 6 December -
It's Tuesday so it must be raining.... as indeed it was. Tuesday is our take-out-the-trash day and it seems I'm always doing it in the rain.
This morning I had a dental checkup. Since the dentist's office is near Mom and Dad's apartment Labashi went along and we visited them for a couple of hours. I diagnosed a problem with Mom's printer and we had a nice chat.
That evening we were introduced to the TV series 'Modern Family'. When I first saw Ed O'Neill I thought we had made a mistake but the pilot was hilarious. We went on to watch all the episodes on Disk 1. Now we can't wait for more.
------------------------------------
Monday, 5 December -
Today I drove to Chambersburg to work on House 2 a bit. I've had an odd problem with the back door. It's a new door and keeps swelling. I've had to plane it off and repaint at least four times now. When we visited Maypo at Thanksgiving I found I couldn't even close the door (after forcing it open).
As soon as I entered the house I noticed the smell of fuel oil. It was strong enough that I really dreaded entering the basement. I found a pool of fuel oil about six-feet around at the furnace. Fortunately we had left a roll of paper towels and a trash can with liner. I sopped up the oil and washed the floor, then found the problem--- a fitting was loose. Last summer we had bled the line after some work and apparently had failed to tighten it. The problem showed up when we had the tank filled for winter.
I then fixed and repainted the door and headed home, all in all about four hours of work.
------------------------------------
Sunday, 4 December -
Later in the morning I rode the Concours down to the Tollgate Starbucks for my weekly Sunday ride. I took along the iPad instead of buying a paper. I'm really loving this thing. It gives me an excuse to look for new apps and I've read more books and magazines in the last month than the previous six. I particularly like having so much capability right with me, from doing video calls to looking up stuff on maps and in Wikipedia and of course Google. I have music as wekk as the photos and several of the videos from our Africa trip. Very nice...
I rode the Concours home and changed my clothes and then rode the GS down to Rocky Ridge park for my 5-miler (1:42 today). These days it's getting dark by the time I get back home and I'm quite ready to take a couple of ibuprofen and then take it easy. So far the body is taking the walking well and I'm not sore in the morning from it. While walking I listen to the iPod and am currently particularly fond of Sia's 'Breathe Me' and 'Lullaby' and Zero Seven's 'Home' (I'm a Tina Dico fan)
-----------------------
Saturday, 3 December -
Today I spent all day going through the log of our Chambersburg work to figure up our hours and trips. We spent just under 500 hours (actually, just under 1000 man-hours when you realize that both Labashi and I were working) and we made 17 round-trips to Chambersburg for this purpose.
While perusing the log I also uploaded two Thanksgiving video clips for the rest of the family to see on YouTube.
Labashi worked all day in the yard, running her burn barrels. She's an amazing worker and just goes for hours on this. She went down there about 0900 this morning, took maybe a 20-minute lunch break and worked through till dark. She just loves it. And the yard looks great!
I spent the evening catching up and posting the blog.
-----------------------
Friday, 2 December -
Today I took on a project I've been dreading. I had repaired our front pole light a few months ago and it only lasted a month. I had found – with great luck --- the break in the underground cable leading from our front porch to the pole light. This section had been under our old sidewalk and the construction guys had done a less-than-workmanlike job of splicing the cable after cutting it. I found it using Maypo's metal detector and had done what I thought was a very professional job of re-splicing it. But, as I said, a month later the problem was even worse. Where before we had no light, now we had a dead short which flipped the circuit breaker whenever we'd turn on the light switch.
I dug up the splice today and though everything looked fine, I cut it off and tested the wire in both directions. The tests were good! What the....????
It took me awhile to find the problem. Apparently I had pinched a wire in installing the light fixture and over time the pinch became a short. If I had done my test of the wire from end to end before cutting off the splice, it would have tested okay and would have saved me some work. But in any case, now the light works.
-----------------------
Thursday, 1 December -
I spent the morning on the web and then rode the GS down to Starbucks on this beautiful mid-Fifties day. We don't have many of these left this year so I'd better take advantage while I can.
I then rode up to Rocky Ridge Park and walked my five-miler, this time in 1:50-- a relatively slow pace. I'm enjoying the new music I've found because of the Soundhound app on the iPad. I heard a song I liked playing on TV and used Soundhound to identify it. That led to more exploration and then my purchase of five or six new songs. This is SO much better than the old music world.
That evening we watched the Fellini film '8 ½'. Now we need to see it again with the commentary turned on.
********* END OF POST *********
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 19:17
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