boviate.mee.nu
Meanderings and musings.
2020-12-10T15:01:51Z
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Roomba II
2020-12-10T15:01:51Z
More than a decade ago, I bought a cheap Roomba off an overstock deals website that no longer exists. It served me (and then us, when I married) well, but after five or six years its battery wasn't holding a great charge anymore, and we ditched it and returned to vacuuming with an upright vacuum. The Roomba was handy, but it had flaws- being so small, it had a tiny dust compartment, and removing it, dumping it, and reinstalling it was a constant chore. Also it's brushes were constantly getting clogged with hairs and the tool used to clear them...
Boviate
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Honk Honk
2020-01-27T18:05:37Z
There's a family car swap for a few days because one car is in the garage. So my wife is driving my cute little hatchback, and I'm driving a minivan. She was all excited about how easy it is to park my car. Me, I felt like less like I was driving, and more like I was commanding a vessel. "Yeoman, signal a left merge." "Signal left merge aye." "Helm, make our heading I-290W." "Make heading I-290W, aye." Sadly I was both ends of that...
Boviate
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Résumé Thoughts
2019-09-16T21:37:39Z
I'm applying for an internal promotion at work that requires an updated résumé. While trimming it down, I am removing the various retails jobs that I worked at when I was but a callow youth. It feels... good. But I'm mentioning it on my mostly-anonymous blog rather than my social networking site, because many of my friends are still working at retail jobs, and I don't want to hurt any...
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<i>Tendimus huc omnes; metam properamus ad unam. Omnia sub leges mors vocat atra suas.</i>
2019-02-28T18:31:00Z
(We are all bound thither; we are hastening to the same common goal. Black death calls all things under the sway of its laws.) -- Ovid. On my first day of college, I met quite a few people, naturally. Among them were a fellow named Ed and a lass named Tammy. I got to know them, we hung out, time went on as it does. Three weeks before my wedding, I (and my fiancée) had the pleasure of attending Ed and Tammy's wedding. It was lovely. They had a showing of "The Princess Bride" at the reception; that happens to...
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New Job
2019-02-04T19:36:44Z
After five years of working for a Major International Bank, it's time to move on. They've been good to me- the pay was fine, and management was supportive. But the job schedule included twelve-hour shifts every Saturday and Sunday, and that was causing family stress because we just didn't have that much time all together. Plus weekends are when all my friends get together to do things, because we're mostly grown-up now with grown-up jobs. So I got myself a government job. Yay, I'm a bureaucrat now! It's M-F business hours, doing work that I feel helps people. Plus I'm...
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Costume Drama
2018-10-25T20:48:42Z
I'm a member of a book club, and one of the club traditions is that for the October meeting, everyone dresses up as a character from any of the books we'd read in the past year. Well, time kind of crept up on me, tonight was the meeting, and I didn't have a costume ready. Then I remembered one of the books had a character that was a mustered-out Vietnam aviation enlisted man. So I pulled out my old Marine working coveralls and steel-toes, tossed on my float coat and cranial, and I was good to go. It had slipped...
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Sleep Over
2018-10-17T15:14:29Z
Last night I had to work late, came home and got five hours of sleep, and then went back in early for more work. So we decided to have our year-and-a-half old daughter sleep over at her grandparents' house. By all accounts it went well: she went right to sleep at her usual bedtime, and woke up and was cheerful. The problem was at our house. The cat was very upset. She couldn't help but notice that the human kitten was missing and yet we were failing to do anything about it. Shouldn't we be searching for her? How could...
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Run Run Run
2018-09-27T20:44:15Z
This weekend I've got another half-marathon coming up. The good news is, I didn't suffer a stress fracture three weeks ago; the bad news is, I suffered a sprained ankle. I'm going to wrap the dickens out of that ankle and run it out for Chesty. I give it a 30% chance I'm hobbling at the end, but so be...
Boviate
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Blunder
2018-05-08T23:35:37Z
As every educated person knows, the two classic blunders are fighting a land war in Asia, and going in against a Sicilian when death is on the line. But it turns out I stumbled into a third. I made a complicated spreadsheet to help me out with a one-time task. But my boss discovered that I had created the spreadsheet and decided it was useful, so now instead of ignoring it, I have to update and maintain...
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Plugs and Beeps
2018-01-11T21:26:52Z
I successfully tested my snowblower when I filled its gas tank the week after Thanksgiving. Then, when it started snowing in December, the darn thing wouldn't turn over for love or money. I didn't spend much time working on it, because the first substantial snowfall happened right when my sister and her family came to visit, and who wants to be doing small engine repair when you've got company? And then when they left we were hit with weeks of Artic chill, and even with a garage to keep me out of the wind, I was in no mood to...
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Wiring Fun
2018-01-08T22:20:38Z
So, we own a new house. Today I added a new outlet in the basement, to bring power close to our treadmill. There was an overhead outlet in the middle of the basement, which had a hanging florescent fixture plugged into it. The other three overhead florescent fixtures were plugged into switched outlets, but this one was always on. Unsurprisingly, the bulbs in that fixture were almost burned out, but I digress. Before I began wiring I checked that the outlet I was going to pull power from, was properly wire. My tester showed all clear, including the ground. Excellent....
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Dumb Kitty
2017-12-04T02:30:00Z
So I saw this clickbait article headline about how "Some study shows that dogs are smarter than cats!". Now I love my cat, but I confess, it sure seems true for me. Yes, there are stupid dogs. (Chihuahuas, pugs, basically tiny dogs.) But... I present my cat. She loves to play with a particular toy. When all the humans are asleep, she drags it around the house, usually ending up the bedroom so she can jump on us and steal our warmth while we sleep. Then in the day, she pesters me to play. But I don't know where the...
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Kitten Anxiety
2017-09-29T16:32:50Z
Today our baby is over with her grandparents for the day. It's lovely for my wife and I, we can get stuff done without the constant attention an infant needs. But whenever the baby is out of the house, our cat gets super anxious. She's normally an independent sort of cat, but when the baby is away the cat is constantly underfoot, literally. I don't think it's that she likes the baby; rather, while cats aren't as domesticated as dogs, they still experience neoteny, a retention of immature traits in adults. Cat mothers occasionally switch dens, taking their kittens from...
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September
2017-09-22T00:59:37Z
Ah, what a lovely warm spell in mid-September. The trees are turning colors, but the last few days have been gorgeously warm. We met friends at an ice cream place downtown and sat outside. We arrived at seven, so we had great seats as dozens of hipsters showed up. It's a fashionable joint attached to a super-fashionable taco place, you see. And there we were with babies and unfashionable clothing, talking about a book published in 1951. What is best in life?...
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http://boviate.mee.nu//september
Big Money
2017-09-12T20:50:19Z
So, we're buying a new house! It's just across town, but it's larger, to suit our expanding family. The mortgage application process is a nightmare of document production. It took less paperwork for me to sign my life to Uncle Sam at the recruiter's...
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