In the beginning...

...there was The Word, and then...

Yeah, you know the drill... The Word got changed.

The original plan (as stated by Galina yesterday morning) was for me to pack a car and head out tomorrow, to get both me and Shiloh out from underfoot and to allow paint to be applied to walls without having to worry about dog hair. However, between realizing just how much there is left to do and Galina having developed a rather dramatic case of the coughing crud (causing me to discreetly maneuver at a safe distance in an effort to avoid contracting my very own case), I think my departure has slipped to Saturday morning, together with Galina (albeit in separate cars).

Work came in a couple of hours ago, and just for laughs, I decided to use the 37-inch television as an external monitor. I'm probably going to go to sleep with a sunburn from sitting too close to the screen, but I must say: what a relief on the eyes! (Yes, I could get used to it!)

At the other extreme, I've got my iPad running MultiVista, which effectively gives me just a little bit more screen real estate, which I've been using for my dictionary application.

The document has been sent. The "break" from getting ready to book out of here is over. Back to work!

Cheers...

Set for maximum water!

Back in the days when I used to work with control system hardware and software for a living, the department (all, um, three of us, including one administrative assistant) had a little exchange—a running joke, if you will—that surfaced any time we got to the point where a system had gotten to the point where it was actually going to be turned on for the first time.

"So," my boss would say, "have you wired the system for maximum smoke?"

"That's a big ten-four, there, Rubber Duck," I'd reply, doing my best impression of C.W. McCall (the CB/trucker craze was just fading). Then I'd get all nautical with: "Firefighting party, stand by!"

And then I'd flip the master switch.

The roots of that little exchange went back to an episode that occurred during a system startup in the field, right after I'd literally had my knuckles rapped by an electrician, who told me to keep my grubby, non-union mitts off of my equipment, as he was the only party present qualified (or allowed, depending on your point of view) to do electrical work. As I rubbed my skinned knuckles, said electrician proceeded to connect live 120-VAC power to the motherboard of my system's 8008-based microcomputer.

The resulting smoke set off a fire alarm and I hope to never again hear so many diodes give up the ghost at one time.

Anyway, a little over a month ago (described here), I set about repairing the water line to the hose connection in the garage, and was successful, as far as I went, which unfortunately didn't extend all the way to the valve. I had failed to note a rupture-—due, no doubt, to ice in the line—at the turn where the line went down the garage wall to the valve. And so, today, I finished the job of repairing the line, but when the time came to open the controlling water valve, there was really nobody around to ask if I had set the system up for maximum flooding. I opened the valve anyway.

No leaks. (Hooray!)

* * *As I sit and work with this huge "monitor," I wonder how Amazon video would display on it? (I mean, it is a television!)

Cheers...