Happy New Year (almost)
I’ve tried, and mostly failed, to post more this year, but I’ll keep at it. Frankly, there’s more to occupy my attention and time up here in the hinterlands. Late Spring into Early Fall is all about work, yard work, and fishing. The rest of the time, it’s work, yard work, snow management (when that happens), heating management (all the time, split wood to re-split and re-stack, 40# bags of pellets to move around, etc). I’m not grumpy about this, we have a good life up here in Maine, we’re both more relaxed and … happier.
Dog Walks
WInter dog walks make life more challenging. I have to layer up for the temperatures I expect, offset by the speed and energy we can put into the walk. For example, today, I didn’t have to put on my snow/ice cleats, because that all melted yesterday, leaving only small patches to navigate on our normal 2.5 – 3 mile route. It was 38° F out, and I knew I would be pretty cold at the start of our walk. But I just put on a zipper sweatshirt over t-shirt and jeans, and … yup, by a half mile into the walk, I had the sweatshirt tied around my waist to keep from breaking too much of a sweat. It’s a balancing act, when it’s cold out. I might could have gotten away with shorts today, but …
It was colder last week – we had 6″ of snow on Christmas Eve. Our walk on Christmas day was fun for Georgia – so hard to find scents to track when everything’s covered up.
Technology
Not a lot new going on, hardware-wise. I’ve been living with an Apple full size keyboard with numeric keypad for my regular work the last few years, and my wrists are a bit tired of it. So I was shopping the other day, and came across a Logitech ergonomic “ERGO K860” keyboard on the shelf and decided to give it a spin. Already glad I did, it’s much less stressful on my wrists and forearms. It’s wireless (Bluetooth LE or a dongle), and with a touch of a button can be shared with up to three systems – I’ve got it configured for the Mac and for the Windows box, both via bluetooth. So far, recommended.
As noted in a previous post, I upgraded the FreeBSD boxes (at home, and in Maryland) to 14.1 in late November, and everything seems solid and stable. Next up, upgrading to 14.2 sometime in the coming month.
Marcia’s big holiday gift this year was a bunch of stuff from Accuquilt. She previously had one of their tiny setups, now she’s got one of the bigger ones, and a bunch of the die sets that should make a chunk of the scut work of getting fabric ready to assemble into quilt blocks a much easier process. My gift was a new Apple watch, since the old one suffered from two problems – no more updates to the software, and battery life was becoming terrible. We both avoided the temptation of a new phone this year.
I did repurpose a very old Intel-based Mac Mini (16G RAM, 4 core i5) to be a ProxMox server for a variety of home lab purposes. Right now, I’ve got six VMs running on it – one FreeBSD, one Ubuntu, and four Red Hat. Not a barn burner, but it meets the need. Previously I was using 1 year eval-licensed vSphere from one of my professional organization memberships, but since Broadcom purchased VMware … everything is changed. Oh, well. I find ProxMox (https://www.proxmox.com/en/) very interesting and capable.
Entertainment
The Chronicles of St. Marys – a series of books by Jody Taylor. Seriously Recommended.
QI – ITV show available on BritBox (and some on YouTube)
Great British Bakeoff – Older shows available on the Roku channel, the last several series are on Netflix
The Mandalorian – We’re trying to get into this one.
On YouTube, the best of the channels I follow, in no particular order:
- The Charismatic Voice – opera singer and vocal coach listens/comments on rock and metal.
- Inheritance Machining – home machine shop, intricate work, good fun.
- Michygoss – Michele rescues dogs, mills logs, and builds cabins, forts, sheds, etc.
- M539 Restorations – buys and lovingly restores BMW automobiles.
- Sarah -n- Tuned – mix of car builds and reviews.
- Bad Obsession Motorsport – Project Binky (when they can be bothered to put up a video).
Winding Down
Marcia asked me today, “Why are you still wearing the orange sweatshirts for walking the dog? Deer season is over…?”
“It’ll be easier to find the body before spring if I slip and fall on the ice.”
She nodded in agreement.
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