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Day off...
Jan. 14th, 2001 10:53 pmDrew and I expected Galina to arrive last night, and we took turns as the evening wore on going to the living room window to see if there were any vehicle lights coming down the road from the highway. It was a silly practice, considering that hundreds of cars go down the road any given evening. On the other hand, Galina hadn't phoned or anything, so we fully expected her to blow in at any moment.
Drew called it a night a few minutes past midnight, and I would have gone to sleep myself, except that I ran across Pride of the Yankees, starring Jimmy Stewart, playing on one of the infinite number of channels we get through Drew's dish. At about half-past the hour, the front door opened, and Galina came in, carrying Baby, our cat.
I hadn't heard the car come up the driveway because it got stuck halfway up. I went out to see what I could see, and ended up backing the car down to near where the driveway meets the road, after which I buttoned up the vehicle (old habits die hard) and climbed back up to the house. After the usual celebratory cup of tea, we retired for the night.
The household got up early. I went out to the car while Galina was showering and tried to force the car up the driveway, and got to within perhaps 20 yards of the top. In backing down, the car crabbed sideways and got stuck (reminiscent of the truck a couple of weeks back), but Drew and I were able to resolve this by pushing and shoving the car around a bit. The fact that the car slid around on the driveway almost like a puck on an ice rink tells me that snow tires (or chains) will be at the top of my shopping list next time we go to Durango.
Trying to get the car to the top was a fruitless endeavor. Drew and I tried three times, with no luck. At the end of the third run, we set the brake on the car and got Galina to drive while Drew and I pushed from the back, each of us with a wary eye looking sideways for safe places to jump should the car start to slide backward inexplicably.
The first session of pushing and shoving brought us about half the remaining distance to the top of the drive, at which point Drew broke out a bag of salt and we salted the path in front of the car and laid an old pair of snow chains down in front of the driving wheels. Several minutes later, the car was secure in front of the garage.
After unloading the car, we all ate lunch and I napped for a bit. Then I sat down to write a procedure/checklist on how to do the basic opening and closing chores at the store for Drew and Galina. I did not try to make it long, but it ended up being 6 pages anyway...then again, it's only a draft; I'm sure I can tighten it up.
Segue.
Tonight's episode of The X Files was mildly interesting, being one of those stories where the inhuman (bad) guy is so powerful that the only way to be rid of him is for him to experience a kind of epiphany of self-redemption that kindles a spark of humanity that flares into a fire of self-destruction. In any event, I could not but help make comparisons with the themes and particularly the final scene of Terminator 2 (though the parallels are not exact).
This is the second episode that I can recall of the current season where I have not had to try hard to draw an association between The X Files and Terminator 2. I hope the writers can get over their urges to be cute like this. Then again, maybe I just have an overactive imagination.
Segue.
The computer that did not survive the trip from Houston has been giving me fits. I finally sat down to systematically find out which driver was causing the machine to hang upon startup. Finally, after doing this and that (and sacrificing a chicken...just kidding) I noticed that there was a video device in the system that looked strange. The driver hadn't loaded (probably because I had inhibited the load from safe mode), so I deleted the device from my system and...bingo! Everything starts up just all peachy and stuff. This is a good thing, as I have way too much valuable data on the disk.
(Yes, I know...why don't I do a backup? Good question. I can point to a pile of hardware that I've accumulated for the purpose of doing backups, all of which has become marginally useful as the size of hard disk storage skyrockets. Those 2-GB tapes are a pain to use to back up a 10-GB drive. In the future, I think it will be cheaper to buy two new hard drives when I upgrade storage and simply mirror them.)
Weekends are short when they consist of only one day, but that's going to be the way things are for a while, and it'll be a luxury at that. I leave for Houston on Tuesday to work ISS flight 5A for 9 days straight, and I see by the schedule that I don't quite have the graveyard shift, but it's still close enough to require me to shift my normal hours.
Cheers...
Drew called it a night a few minutes past midnight, and I would have gone to sleep myself, except that I ran across Pride of the Yankees, starring Jimmy Stewart, playing on one of the infinite number of channels we get through Drew's dish. At about half-past the hour, the front door opened, and Galina came in, carrying Baby, our cat.
I hadn't heard the car come up the driveway because it got stuck halfway up. I went out to see what I could see, and ended up backing the car down to near where the driveway meets the road, after which I buttoned up the vehicle (old habits die hard) and climbed back up to the house. After the usual celebratory cup of tea, we retired for the night.
The household got up early. I went out to the car while Galina was showering and tried to force the car up the driveway, and got to within perhaps 20 yards of the top. In backing down, the car crabbed sideways and got stuck (reminiscent of the truck a couple of weeks back), but Drew and I were able to resolve this by pushing and shoving the car around a bit. The fact that the car slid around on the driveway almost like a puck on an ice rink tells me that snow tires (or chains) will be at the top of my shopping list next time we go to Durango.
Trying to get the car to the top was a fruitless endeavor. Drew and I tried three times, with no luck. At the end of the third run, we set the brake on the car and got Galina to drive while Drew and I pushed from the back, each of us with a wary eye looking sideways for safe places to jump should the car start to slide backward inexplicably.
The first session of pushing and shoving brought us about half the remaining distance to the top of the drive, at which point Drew broke out a bag of salt and we salted the path in front of the car and laid an old pair of snow chains down in front of the driving wheels. Several minutes later, the car was secure in front of the garage.
After unloading the car, we all ate lunch and I napped for a bit. Then I sat down to write a procedure/checklist on how to do the basic opening and closing chores at the store for Drew and Galina. I did not try to make it long, but it ended up being 6 pages anyway...then again, it's only a draft; I'm sure I can tighten it up.
Segue.
Tonight's episode of The X Files was mildly interesting, being one of those stories where the inhuman (bad) guy is so powerful that the only way to be rid of him is for him to experience a kind of epiphany of self-redemption that kindles a spark of humanity that flares into a fire of self-destruction. In any event, I could not but help make comparisons with the themes and particularly the final scene of Terminator 2 (though the parallels are not exact).
This is the second episode that I can recall of the current season where I have not had to try hard to draw an association between The X Files and Terminator 2. I hope the writers can get over their urges to be cute like this. Then again, maybe I just have an overactive imagination.
Segue.
The computer that did not survive the trip from Houston has been giving me fits. I finally sat down to systematically find out which driver was causing the machine to hang upon startup. Finally, after doing this and that (and sacrificing a chicken...just kidding) I noticed that there was a video device in the system that looked strange. The driver hadn't loaded (probably because I had inhibited the load from safe mode), so I deleted the device from my system and...bingo! Everything starts up just all peachy and stuff. This is a good thing, as I have way too much valuable data on the disk.
(Yes, I know...why don't I do a backup? Good question. I can point to a pile of hardware that I've accumulated for the purpose of doing backups, all of which has become marginally useful as the size of hard disk storage skyrockets. Those 2-GB tapes are a pain to use to back up a 10-GB drive. In the future, I think it will be cheaper to buy two new hard drives when I upgrade storage and simply mirror them.)
Weekends are short when they consist of only one day, but that's going to be the way things are for a while, and it'll be a luxury at that. I leave for Houston on Tuesday to work ISS flight 5A for 9 days straight, and I see by the schedule that I don't quite have the graveyard shift, but it's still close enough to require me to shift my normal hours.
Cheers...
