alexpgp | A lovely Sunday...

The sun went down this evening as it always does, but it didn't go quietly. I had noticed the sunset coming to a full head of steam as I left the shop, where Drew, Shannon, Huntur, and Drew's school chum Sean had been doing a general cleanup (and where I had been installing Excel on my Win4Lin'ned up Linux box). I really didn't expect the effect to last, even though it takes only a few minutes to get home from the shop, but as I pulled up to the house, there it was... in all its glory.

Precisely the kind of view one would want to enjoy while sitting on the porch with friends and consuming something to wet one's whistle. (One out of three wasn't too shabby.)

In other respects, though, I have to furrow my brow and ask, "Where has the day gone?" A few minutes here, and a few minutes there, and pretty soon we're talking about a day, a week, and a lifetime, but I am getting way ahead of myself. The day did zoom by, though.

One long-standing chore bit the dust: hooking up a water line to the refrigerator. Now, we can enjoy cold-water on demand (wow) as well as a virtually unlimited supply of ice cubes (more useful). I tried also to get our ancient chain saw into operating condition, but have been stymied by the spark plug, which valiantly has resisted all attempts to dislodge it from its place. (If truth be told, the spark plug wrench gave up the ghost, but not after inflicting various types of collateral damage on that ornery plug.)

Galina monopolized the modem link for much of the late afternoon, looking for bargains on eBay. As noted above, I spent some time at the store, making sure the computers worked.

I still need to put together my presentation for the ATA conference. I have much of it blocked out (indeed, I know I have way too much information to present), but the actual nuts-and-bolts slides have yet to be created, and I only have two days in which to do that. More than likely, those two days will be occupied at the store, leaving only some time in the evening to put together the slide show.

The presentation is slated for a 45-minute time slot. If I allow 10 minutes for questions at the end of the presentation and 5 minutes for settling in and a general introduction at the beginning, that leaves me a half hour in which to present the meat of my thesis. This translates into, at most, 30 slides (this assumes that, on average, 1 slide is thrown at the audience per minute, which is a blitz rate). More realistically, the final number will be somewhat less than this, but what that number is will become apparent only after I set the limits on what I want to say.

Now that all that is clear as crystal... it's time to get to work.

Cheers...