The weather has been really nice here and in Alameda this week. I was out in the backyard just now talking with my mom and star-gazing. It's very clear tonight and cool but not chilly. Perfect weather. I still don't have a reclining lawn chair. Every year I tell myself that I'm going to get one, but I never get around to it. It would be cool ( Read more... )

It's been a short week. I had Monday off for the Independence Holiday. It was a really warm day today. Fortunately, it was cooler today than it has been earlier in the week. It's cracked triple Fahrenheit digits earlier in the week. I'm also fortunate in that I work in Alameda, where the temperatures average about 20 Fahrenheit degrees cooler ( Read more... )

I hardly ever know where to pick this writing, after a long absence. Things have been so busy for me since about October of last year. Work has picked up for me. I've got a new project going on, upgrading the capacitor bank control software. Today I blew up a neutral current input simulator that I put together by getting the leads on the wrong ( Read more... )

I will clap my hands thrice, thus - full moon! At the third clap, eclipse yourself!
I just came in from the great outdoors. I spent the last four hours or so watching the lunar eclipse. I turned in last night around 10:30 and set my alarm for 2:30 this morning. When it went off, I got up and got dressed and grabbed my telescope. It was a ( Read more... )

Yesterday was a beautiful day. I guess that California has finally decided to get serious about it being summer. We've had quite a spate of unseasonably cool days for the past month or so. Yesterday the sun was out and shining and surprisingly enough, the sky also had some nice cumulous clouds in it, for scenery. The blower in my car has been ( Read more... )

I came in from the back yard at 9:30 PM. I unrolled my sleeping bag on the patio and did some star watching. The nights are getting cooler here. The concrete wasn't too bad, but it started to get a little uncomfortable. I think I've got to get myself a reclining lawn chair. Perhaps that wouldn't be the best idea in the world. As it was, I ( Read more... )

It's been awhile since I've written. There has been so much that has happened. Very often I am too busy to write, and very often I am uninspired to write. I'm not really sure why the mood takes me to do so, or where it goes when I am not under its influence. In so many ways I am such a dilletante. Sometimes, this bothers me, but most of the ( Read more... )

The weather has been really wacky lately. The past four days there have been a string of cold fronts rolling through Northern California. It's been dumping rain and then the sun comes out. The days and nights have been really cool. Sheesh. I'm almost tempted to call it "winter." Today around 11:00 the sky opened up and dumped a torrent of ( Read more... )

It's beautiful and brilliantly sunny again, after that ridiculous cold snap last week. Fortunately, winter doesn't have much staying power here ( Read more... )

Robert called this evening. His dad is dying. His dad went into the hospital for a triple bypass and a valve replacement at the start of December. He was supposed to be out of the hospital sometime around the sixth, and Robert flew to Cleveland with his family to be there to visit and help out with things when his dad came home. He was coming ( Read more... )