There have been some guys doing some sort of remodeling over on the next building this week, and I was curious what it was about.

This afternoon the apartment manager called me and asked if I wouldn't mind if they came to my apartment tomorrow. They're supposed to give 24 hours notice, and this was less, but I have no reason to cause a fuss so I told her it was OK.

What they are doing is to replace all the deck doors. I have no idea why. Mine is fine; it's never been a problem. But tomorrow I'll get a new one, and I'll ask what the idea is.

They're showing up at 8, and she said they'd finish it in one day. I sure hope so.

It's going to be miserable for them, and already has been, because of the heat. It hit 97 today, and it's predicted to be 95 tomorrow, and even hotter over the weekend. l don't want anyone keeling over from heat prostration, so it's a good thing my frig is loaded up with cans of soda.

But I'm in the habit of taking a lot of naps, and tomorrow I won't be able to. My bed is right next to the deck door, for reasons too complicated to go into. (The keyword in the explanation is "bedbugs".)

It should be amusing.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 06:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Well, the official high for today turned out to be 92, not 99 as predicted. But that's still awful, only I was spared.

Me and my 80 pounds of ice have been very comfortable all afternoon. The ice was delivered with my groceries about 11:30 this morning, and I set up my box for the ice shortly thereafter. Most of the ice is gone now but the heat is going, too.

It was overcast most of the day despite being dreadfully hot, what some people refer to as "earthquake weather" (except we don't get earthquakes here). Usually if it's 90 and overcast I expect thunderstorms, but it's clear now and I don't think we'll get one. Which is a shame; we need the rain, and it would seriously cool everything down.

Oh, well; life goes on.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 05:12 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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We're getting a heat wave. It's supposed to hit 100 today, and again tomorrow. I was getting low on groceries anyway, so I just put in an order with Safeway for a delivery tomorrow morning, and I included 80 pounds of ice. I sure hope they don't run out.

But that's for tomorrow. For today, I just have to put up with it. Saturday night we get thunderstorms and then the heat lifts a bit.

It's a bit early for this; it's the kind of thing that happens usually in late July or in August. Anyway, usually it lasts a few days and then stops, and we don't usually get more than five or so really oppressive days per summer. (Last year we didn't get any at all.)

Maybe I'll spend this afternoon sleeping.

UPDATE: The official high, measured at the Hillsboro airport, was 96. (moan)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 01:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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In years past, the only game birds doing the reproductive thing in our yard have been ducks, and in most years I'll see three or four different hens wandering around followed by her clutch.

This year it's been different. Three different pairs of Canada Geese have been caring for groups of goslings. The ducks haven't been around much because they're afraid of the geese.

One difference is that male ducks don't tend to show up to care for the duckies, but the Canada Geese fathers help guard the goslings.

The goslings grow really amazingly fast before they fledge. One evening I saw one of the goslings (not quite old enough to fledge) sillohouetted against a bright background, and it was running rather fast -- and it looked like a dinosaur.

I know; that shouldn't really be a surprise because technically speaking birds are dinosaurs. But it was still rather uncanny. It was the legs that did it.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 03:48 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Over the last few years I've built up a credit balance of more than 9 TB with BakaBT and now's the time to use some of it. And what I'm finding is that a lot of what I want to download, to rebuild my library, isn't on BakaBT because it's licensed by Funimation. I've downloaded Soul Eater NOT and Strike the Blood. Currently I'm downloading both seasons of Railgun along with Vividred Operation.

Strike the Blood and Vividred Operation were on BakaBT. Railgun wasn't. Soul Eater NOT wasn't. Hyperdimension Neptunia isn't. Nanatsu no Taizai isn't. It's beginning to make me wonder why I supported it all these years. Grumble.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 08:19 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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And now my phone will not connect to my wifi hub. Am I suddenly cursed?

My Kindle scared hell out of me last night, because Amazon rolled out an update. It was sitting here, turned off, and suddenly there was a busy-wait graphic on the screen and it stopped paying attention to me.

The Kindle and my tablet can both access the wifi, so that's not the problem. When the phone turns on, it connects to the wifi but fails when trying to get an IP assigned. Very strange.

Not really important, however; I don't use it for anything other than getting AccuWeather updates, and if necessary I can get that across Verizon. (I get a certain amount of digital data per month without extra charge, and this won't even come close to filling that up.)

But still very mysterious. Makes me wonder if Brickmuppet scheduled a trip to Portland or something.

Naah. Must be gremlins.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 08:01 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Here's hoping Ubu Roi isn't being forced to demonstrate how well he can tread water!

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 05:54 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Last night I dreamed I was on Windows Update downloading the latest patches for King's magic spear.

Sometimes I wonder about myself...

UPDATE: I could use a magic spear right now. I have long since disabled "Automatic update" on all my machines, and I routinely do manual updates on Tuesdays when MS releases the new ones.

I usually start with my tablet, since if it gets bricked I won't be damaged. If it survives I do all the others. Today it was weird: I had 14 important updates and 1 optional, so I let it go.

It took something like half an hour to check for updates and then to download them. Afterwards, it stopped with a message "15 updates unnecessary" (IIRC). So I rebooted the computer and tried again, and now it's actually installing them. Sheesh.

My Windows Home Server 2003 took nearly an hour to download and install its patches. It's rebooting now.

My torrent computer took something like 45 minutes to download and install the patches.

The ones that really took the time were security patches to .NET; must have been something pretty serious, you know?

Meanwhile, tracker.bakabt.me is responding to pings, a hopeful sign.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 08:04 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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If you took a cartoon of "Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough" ice cream, and carefully separated out the dough from the ice cream, could you bake it into reasonable cookies?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 06:00 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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