Orb Designs

  • 3 November 2019

    Take Two

    I was four paragraphs into the first pass on this post when I managed to hit a stupid combination of keys on the Apple keyboard and moved backwards three links. Whoops, I thought, and went looking for the auto-saved draft. Um, not there? Sigh. Okay, take two – I wonder how much this iteration is going to vary from the last?

    Fallen

    Fall is finally, properly, here. Six weeks in, and we finally got two consecutive nights below freezing. We’re due for another frost tonight before it warms up just a shade. Also, for the first time, the snow icon made it into the long range forecast on my phone. Of course, “long range forecast” is just an effusive waste of characters when what you want to say is “lie.”

    I got the outdoor water delivery systems winterized today. Yesterday, I repaired the motion detecting light outside the garage door. Wait, did I say “repair?” I mean replaced, with modifications. The old fixture wasn’t new when we bought this house in 2003. And it was hardwired. And it was positioned badly, in the far corner of the front of the garage, where it was partially blocked by the substantial crepe myrtle. Additionally, a moderate wind would use that tree to continuously fire the motion detection. So, due for work even before I learned that the plastics were going and one of the two light sockets was gone, on Hallowe’en evening.

    In replacing the fixture, I moved it to front and center on the garage. I mounted a switch in the garage so that we could turn it off entirely without going to the breaker panel in the basement. And bonus – the LEDs draw 25 watts when active, as opposed to the dual 100 watt halogens that were continuously cycling in the elder unit.

    Kitchen progress

    Little progress, but: I’m going to be fabricating one new bank of cabinets whole, and I’ve got the measurements for those, so I can do some sketches and gin up a material’s list in prep for purchasing, then fabrication.

    Bookish

    I’ve been reading the Liaden Universe books from Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. I’d read some of them in the past, out of order. I now have ALL of the books (21 of them, I think), and I’m following one of the many suggested reading orders (this one’s from Baen, and probably originates with the authors, so there’s that. I like them a lot.

    Winding Down

    Our condolences to the family and friends of Sgt. Nathaneil G. Irish, 23, of Billings, Montana, who died on Oct. 27, 2019, of a non-combat related incident at Camp Taji, Iraq.

  • 27 October 2019

    Capclave

    I missed y’all last weekend because I was at Capclave 2019. This year’s Guests of Honor were Robert Sawyer and Martha Wells. They’re both authors whose work I love a lot, and I enjoyed hearing from them both in multiple panels. The three day weekend was full of author interviews and readings, celebrations and analysis of much loved works, and much on the minutiae of the SFF writing, editing, and publishing biz. My two favorite things were these: the panel for 25 Years of Babylon 5, and seeing all the wonderful folks I get to spend a few days with each year.

    Next year is going to be a big shindig – the 20th anniversary of Capclave, with lots of extra special guests, many of whom I’ve seen over the past few years. Should be a hoot. I also learned that the 2021 WorldCon, host to the Hugo Awards, etc. will be held locally (in DC)! Yay! The web site: https://discon3.org/.

    Homework

    The two weeks, and parts of this weekend have been filled with paying-the-bills work, but there’s more to come on the home front: We’re going to do some remodeling in the kitchen. I’m going to build a couple of new bits of cabinetry, and new doors and drawers for the whole of the kitchen. Then we’ll paint out the lowers in a royal blue, and the uppers in a light tone of some type. Pictures as they’re worth sharing (but the work hasn’t started yet, so there’s not much to see, yet.

    Winding Down

    DoD reported no new casualties in the last week. That’s the only good news I’ve got from downtown.

  • 14 October 2019

    Columbus Day

    Yup, like it or not, the questionable “discovery” of the “new world” by Columbus is still a Federal holiday here in the land where some are free, and some are brave. Since my employer follows that holiday schedule, I was off work today. Yay? Certainly, especially since I didn’t have to travel to Columbus, Ohio, to celebrate. Don’t get me wrong – I’m in Columbus a couple of times a year for work, and enjoy the friendly people and good food a LOT! But it’s a long drive, and I do have to be in the office bright and early tomorrow morning.

    We marked the day by going fishing at Centennial Lake over in Ellicot City. No actual fish disturbed the act of fishing, but it was a really nice early Fall day. Overnight lows in the mid-40’s (F) mark this time of year – it’s just possible we’ll see a high 30 before next weekend.

    The Other Part

    The other part of the weekend was cleaning. I did a major cleanup in the workshop side of the basement. There’s still more to do, but piles of wood dust and shavings in dark corners on concrete eventually lead to bad smells and mold. Mostly remediated at this point. Yesterday I cleaned much of the top floor of the house, and it’s better now, too. I’m just too cheap to turn to a service.

    Now, my office is still a mess, but a light dusting and vacuum pass did wonders there, too.

    Capclave 2019

    Capclave is just about here – it starts on Friday afternoon and runs through Saturday. Our small literary SF/Fantasy/Horror conference is in it’s … twentieth year next year, it appears! But that’s next year. This year we have Martha Wells and Robert Sawyer as Guests of Honor, and a bunch of other authors, editors, and publishers in attendance. Capclave has always had a wonderful feel for me, and it makes me happy every year. Can you join us? Please do!

    Winding Down

    Whew. DoD reported no casualties in the last week. I expected some, given the ill-advised “decisions” issuing from the “chief of state” affecting parts of the world where our troops are in harm’s way.

  • 6 October 2019

    Continuation

    Yep, it’s been two weeks since last time. A week ago Saturday we went out to Centennial Lake and spent the morning fishing. I caught one small bass, 13-14″ long:

    A small bass (fish), caught on Sept. 28, 2019 at Centennial Lake in Maryland
    A small bass, caught on Sept. 28, 2019 at Centennial Lake

    I’ve also been doing a lot of reading: Clarkesworld, Forever Magazine, Alan Dean Foster’s Icerigger Trilogy, Neil Gaiman’s Don’t Panic, and not least: everything I can reasonably lay hands on by Martha Wells and Robert J. Sawyer in advance of this year’s Capclave (where Wells and Sawyer are GoH!!!).

    This weekend I managed a fair bit of yardwork out front – cleaning out the beds and preparing to winterize the whole joint. Fall is here, overnight temps are going to be regularly in the low 50’s and high 40’s now.

    Computing

    I’ve been spending a fair bit of time diving into the depths of Red Hat’s latest Enterprise Linux offering, and wrapping my head around more effective automation using Ansible. Good fun, but after a fairly static run of years (in terms of system management), a lot of things have changed under the hood, and there’s a bunch to learn. So I’m reading a bunch of manual pages to supplement the formal documentation.

    All the while, I’m still running FreeBSD, Ubuntu (on PC and ARM hardware), CentOS, Windows 10, and MacOS. So I keep all the mad skillz sharp by changing up platforms several times a day. Assume nothing!

    Winding Down

    No new casualties were reported by DoD in the last two weeks.

  • 22 September 2019

    Last of Summer

    According to the calendar, tomorrow is Fall. According to the forecast, Summer looks to be in an extended run. We did have two nights last week drop into the high 40’s overnight – but highs for the next 10 days are supposed to be in the mid- to high 80’s. So, summer, still. Unless, y’know, the forecasters are wrong. That would be so unusual!

    Mysterious Absence

    So, yeah … no post last week. I’ve got no explanation but sheer laziness. This weekend was a bit more of the same. We did make it out fishing at Cash Lake yesterday morning for a few hours. No fish, of course. But relaxing right up until I cast while twisting my torso. That gave me a muscular tweak under the lower left scapula that continues to vex me.

    Reading

    My read of the last week is the biographical Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams & the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by some bloke named Neil Gaiman. At the moment, it’s free for $AMZN Prime members. And it’s a jolly good read, full of stuff I knew about Adams and H2G2, and MUCH other stuff that I didn’t. Fun.

    On dead trees, I’m most of the way through a long-delayed re-reading of Cliff Stoll’s The Cuckoo’s Egg. Good stuff if you like 80’s computers and tracking down a cracker with a penchant for military computers that have crappy security policies applied to them.

    Winding down

    Our condolences to the family and friends of Sgt. 1st Class Jeremy W. Griffin, 40, from Greenbrier, Tennessee, who was killed in action on Sept. 16, 2019, by small arms fire when his unit was engaged in combat operations in Wardak Province, Afghanistan.

  • 9 September 2019

    Goodbye, Mikey

    Our friend Michael Lindsay, husband to Linda Rose Payne, father to Dylan and Kiera, died on August 31, 2019. He was a talented voice actor, and a seriously funny and fun dude, even when in massive pain, which he was, a lot. I’m gonna miss him.

    Mainly in Maine

    Yes, again. With some lovely weather, visits with usually distant family members, and some moderately successful fishing.

    Brian captured a small mouth bass on Cobbosseecontee Lake in Maine. Caught, weighed and released.
    Brian captured a small mouth bass

    We ended up with 6 or 7 bass between us, all weighed less than two pounds, all released back into the lake after getting weighed and measured. Eleven hours on the drive up (traffic problems), ten hours back home on Saturday. Lexi did really well this trip, and she went for a short swim in the lake, from and to shore. No jumping off of boats for that little dog anymore. Mostly, though, her job was to stand and watch, then run and bark, at the squirrels and chipmunks that frolicked tauntingly in front of her the whole time!

    Lexi watching for squirrels and chipmunks out the windows and doors of the camp on Cobbosseecontee Lake in Maine.
    Lexi watching for squirrels and chipmunks

    Now back in the DC groove, and trying to get caught up. It’s amazing how much chaos an unmonitored week can generate.

    Winding Down

    Our condolences to the families and friends of these fallen warriors:

    • Sgt. 1st Class Dustin B. Ard, 31, from Hyde Park, Utah, died on Aug. 29, 2019, as a result of wounds sustained while engaged in combat operations in Zabul Province, Afghanistan.
    • Sgt. 1st Class Elis A. Barreto Ortiz, 34, from Morovis, Puerto Rico, was killed in action on Sept. 5, 2019, when a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Kabul, Afghanistan.

  • 1 September 2019

    Two Thirds Gone

    The eighth month is over, and the hottest temps around here are beginning to fade. It’s a three day weekend, *and* I got out of the office a bit early on Friday. So I got the lawn mowed when I got home that day, leaving the weekend for relaxation and a bit of inside chores. Lexi, however…

    Lexi the chipuggle mutt, lying on the bedspread wearing socks on her front paws. Her head rests on those paws, with a worried look on her face.
    Lexi, socks, bed

    Lexi just lays around on the bed, worrying about kids setting off firecrackers on holiday weekends, and wearing my socks to fend of the coming of Winter.

    Still in holiday mode, but it’s going to be Labor day tomorrow. Is Labor paying attention to what’s being done to them, in their name?

    Winding down

    No new casualties on the DoD site, so that’s good. Back to reading for pleasure.

  • 25 August 2019

    September-ish

    After several miserably hot days, we’ve had a couple of days transplanted from mid- to late September – highs in the mid 70’s. Lovely weather. Earlier in the week, we made it down into DC to meet up with Pat and Nathan. They were in town from California, and found some time in their family-full schedule for us. A lovely late afternoon and early evening, we had. First, a couple hours at the Philips Collection, including their wonderful, moving, and occasionally horrifying exhibition: The Warmth of Other Suns: Stories of Global Displacement. The exhibition uses art and narrative to bring the migrant crisis to our first world senses in a very powerful way. We also got through part of the permanent collection before it was time to head over to supper at Urbana. Superb Italian and Italian-adjacent cuisine. Food and good company – what a joy!

    While some of the heat returns, starting on Tuesday, we shouldn’t get back up into the 90’s according to the forecast. But then, forecast is an eight letter word meaning lie.

    I took advantage of the cooler weather to get caught up on the mowing, this weekend.

    Lexi Rests

    Lexi the mutt, resting on the couch, eyes freshly opened due to preparation for a picture being taken.
    “Why u wake me 4 a pic?”

    Lexi basically has two speeds: on and off. The on state is hard to capture without significant motion blur, although sometimes she’s standing still at high alert, watching some article of wildlife invading our yard. (Note – our “yard” comprises all that she can see, and expands significantly when she’s looking out from the upstairs windows!) Then there’s off, or in the parlance of particle physics, “resting state.”

    I use the physics terminology because sometimes it seems she can transition from one state to the other without passing through any intermediate stages. Impressive for a dog of 10 years or so…

    Winding Down

    Our condolences to the families and friends of these fallen warriors:

    • Master Sgt. Luis F. DeLeon-Figueroa, 31, of Chicopee, Massachusetts, died on August 21, 2019 in Faryab Province, Afghanistan, as a result of wounds sustained from small arms fire while engaged in combat operations.
    • Master Sgt. Jose J. Gonzalez, 35, of La Puente, California, died on August 21, 2019 in Faryab Province, Afghanistan, as a result of wounds sustained from small arms fire while engaged in combat operations.

  • 19 August, 2019

    Dog Days

    So, mid-August, and we’re in the “dog days of summer”. It’s been humid, hot, and unstable. How unstable? A storm that blew through last night racked up over 70K electrical discharges over a single hour. Most of those were elsewhere, but enough were nearby to freak out the little disturbed dog. Also with the heat, and fitting in with the origins of the phrase, I spent much of the weekend entrapped by lethargy.

    Yes, yes, I was up early doing patching work for production systems on Sunday. But outdoor chores? Not this last weekend. It was just … miserable. Theoretically, it should be much better starting on Friday (which is its own brand of unusual for mid-August, but oh, well, any port in a heatwave). I did roast coffee and make a batch of killer salsa (thanks, Kat, for the peppers to fill in the role that our garden failed this year)!

    Hugo

    So, every vote counts, right? For both the novel and novella categories, I voted for the well-deserved winner. Seriously, congrats to all the nominees, finalists, and winners in the Hugo Awards, celebrated last night at Worldcon 2019 in Dublin, Ireland. I did a LOT of reading in the last year, and before I nominated and before I voted. None of the wonderful writing disappointed me.

    But I have a LOT of fondness for the superb wordsmithing skills of Mary Robinette Kowal (Best Novel, The Calculating Stars, in the Lady Astronauts series) and Martha Wells (Best Novella, Artificial Condition, in the Murderbot series). Just wow. Read ANYTHING by these talented people and enjoy. No. Let me amend that. Read everything they’ve written, and everything they will write in the future. I know, I know. You can thank me later. See this Hugo site link for all the winners.

    Winding Down

    Our condolences to the families and friends of these fallen warriors:

    • Gunnery Sergeant Scott A. Koppenhafer, 35, of Mancos, Colorado, died on August 10, 2019, in Iraq, after suffering fatal wounds while supporting Iraqi Security Forces.
    • Specialist Clayton James Horne, 23, of Atlanta, Louisiana died on August 17, 2019 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as a result of wounds sustained by a noncombat related incident.

  • 11 August 2019

    Better Than The Alternative

    Still busy, that is, and that’s better than the alternative. Yesterday was given over mostly to food work – a new big batch of salsa, with only tomatoes out of the garden. Everything else came from the store, sadly. I roasted a pountd of coffee. I also made a batch of my potato/spicy sausage concoction, 10 meals worth. That’ll see me through the week.

    Today: shopping, clean the shower, patching day for some systems at work, lunch, and lawn. And I’m a bit whacked. Time to get back to the office tomorrow, and spend the week recharging for the next weekend’s worth of chores.

    OS News

    On the computing front, I’m starting to move on to Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 8 (RHEL8). There don’t seem to be the same underlying massive changes that version 7 brought – no amount of sheer disruption similar to that brought by systemd. Note about that – I can (and must) live with it. There are even features that I shudder to say that I like. But it breaks the UNIX “small tools doing things well” paradigm so very, very much. Anyway, back to RHEL8 – it has a better built-in system for keeping optional subsystems — from the Apache webserver, to PHP, to Python, etc., etc. — more current and easier to work with. I have work to do…

    Reading

    I just finished up Charlie Jane Anders’ All The Birds In The Sky – it’s a complex story that includes some comfortable old ideas, just to suck you into the story, but then it gets weird (in a good way). Magic vs. technology, and not in a good way. Some of the sub-plots resolve precisely as telegraphed, but I didn’t see that ending coming, so … good? Recommended.

    In other venues, I’m waiting to see how my voting aligned with the Hugo Awards. Tick, tock.

    Winding Down

    No new news from DoD – good. News from most of the rest of the world: floating between weird and sucks. But Al Yankovic is touring, so something is going right.