Catching Up

For a person who posts like a maniac when I travel in circumstances where time is always compressed, I have the hardest time staying up to date on posting when I'm at home. I think about things I want to be posting and then get caught up in nothing particularly important and then the day is gone. So this is going to be a general catch up on the last few weeks.

Is Your Dishwasher Blowing Up?

Recalls of food products - happen all the time. Automobile issues - recalls all the time. Dishwashers? Not so often...in fact don't know if I've ever heard of one...at least until a week ago when we got a notice by snail mail telling us of this big ass problem with a power cable in our dishwasher that has the potential to blow your machine up and burn everything you ow down to the ground! Okay they didn't use exactly that language but they did use dire language and told you to stop using your machine in bold type so it obviously was important - but not important enough to communicate via something other than snail mail. We're now waiting the some two weeks before the part will get her so we can get it back. THE HORROR OF IT ALL HAVING TO WASH OUR DISHES BY HAND! Someone of Fox News should be shouting outrage over this.

Back Hiking

The recovery from the pneumonia has been a bitch with lingering symptoms. I went on line (Yes! Self-diagnosing web sites - the hypochondriacs best friend ever!) and found it is not unusual for the post illness symptoms to last for a month or more. Yet I am definitely not sick and I have up hiking again. As often happens in our neck of the desert during this time of year, we've had some snow and that means 'snow hiking' one of my favorite things to do.

Our IT Transformation

I was checking to see if I'd written anything about all our transformations in computing and media. I saw I posted only 4 times in November. That's pathetic. Any way we're doing all kinds of things to move into the 21st century. We got rid of satellite and cable TV, brought in really high speed internet, got Roku devices and over the air HD TV. We're getting a home server so we can back up all our data in one place and a VPN so we can access our files when we travel and a media PC for one of the TVs to access other content. We have a Sonos sound system now to access our music.

A lot of this is all supposed to be easy plug and play type of stuff. None of it has been. There are all kinds of issues between this device and that device and Wife's deadbeat laptop that has been doing weird stuff since the day she bought it and my MAC which seems to have issues coordinating with just about anything that isn't MAC. The server arrives today and it will replace Wife's laptop as her main computer so that will be a relief since we have been expecting it to die at any moment.

A Quiet Holiday But A Holiday

Through the intervention of a UN crack negotiating team, Wife and I have managed to come to a mutually agreeable set of terms for what the heck we are going to do during the Christmas season when the children and their families are not here. That is most of the time now with everyone all over the world. 42 years of living together is clearly not close to enough time to be work these type of things out organically. Thank goodness we were recognized as a potential world hot spot danger soon enough that the UN took us under its wing. This means we have decorated, we are meal planning, there are gifts bought and under the tree. Unfortunately the seasonal music has been thwarted as the Wife's laptop keeps dying every time she tries to connect to the Sonos and the MAC and Sonos refuse to talk to each other. Hopefully when the server is in today and we can get Wife's music over to it, we will have overcome that problem.

Good Problems From Semi-Retirement

We met with our accountant the other day and as we expected found out that we'd made much more money from my part-time working than we'd budgeted and had to pay out a bunch of taxes. This is not a bad problem.

Hopefully will be reporting on our holiday festivities next.