The Other Don Kelly

Well look at that, it’s December already!

Listening: David Bowie’s “Fame” is on Radio Paradise.

Not much is going on, but I thought I’d check in anyway… It’s been rainy and cold the past few days. We kegged our latest beer today, and we were going to brew today, but since we do our brewing outside these days (where it was, you know, raining), we skipped that part. (By the way, that new Roggenbier has quite a kick: the samples we took while kegging actually left us puzzled.)

The GPX project is somewhat on hold right now, as I’ve gone into several other obsessions: I ran across some python scripts to build an interface, and I got them working. Excelsior! They were part of that Re-Entrant Throat Calculator port to FreeCAD I was playing with a while back. I may play with that a little more, it was fun to mess with it again.

I’m also having more fun than seems appropriate, massaging our budgeting and financial data with Postgresql and JasperSoft Studio. I downloaded this past year’s banking transactions (think ATM and debit card purchase records), put them into a table and, deciphering each transaction description, sorted them into various categories. I then put them into a spreadsheet to help with planning next year’s budget, and I also broke them down into various Jasper Reports graphs and charts — I’m not sure JasperSoft Studio is all that great but I do like seeing what I can make of my data.

By the way, this is what I wrote ten years ago.

We went out yesterday to the Allentown Farmer’s Market, and on the way we stopped at Syb’s Deli for lunch. We sat near the window, and Anne noticed a cute little birdhouse, built to look like the deli, just outside on a telephone pole. (I didn’t see it until she pointed it out.) We asked the waitress about it, and she said they had no idea who put it up — one day it was just there. There were three other little birdhouses that also appeared in the neighborhood at the same time, she said, but these didn’t look like the Syb’s one or any local buildings: they were undecorated, except each of them had “eat the rich” written on it. Here’s a photo of the one outside Syb’s:

We got a bunch of other stuff done yesterday, and then met Judy and Erika, at Stoke in Easton, to plan our Thanksgiving dinner. Today I raked the leaves; it’s cold and windy, and it even snowed a bit this morning, so I figured it was the perfect day for it. Later this afternoon Anne’s quartet will be doing a “house concert” at Jeff and Kristen’s, then we might go out for drinks after dinner, to a new place — new to us, anyway — down by Sand Island, called Artisan.

Yesterday was a completely wasted day — I was tired and headachey from the time I got up until around 9:00. I couldn’t tell if it was a sinus headache, or maybe tension, or dehydration. It felt for all the world like a hangover, but even though we went out Tuesday night I had only one beer; if one beer can knock me out of the game like that, it’s time for me to to hang up my drinking shoes.

I suspect it was the aftermath of the ride we did Tuesday. Anne and I did a solid 65 miles, through four counties and over two gaps: we rode over Blue Mountain at Little Gap and came home by way of Wind Gap, with a lunch stop at the diner there. Not the most difficult of rides, but my nose was seriously draining and I have not done any rides like that in a while, and maybe that was what beat me down. (Anne of course was fine, the weeks I took off from riding were the weeks she spent riding, over New England mountains on a loaded tour bike.)

I would show you the ride’s GPS and stats, but well, you know how that has been working out with Garmin, and that gave me the germ of an idea for my next map project: something that can extract and display my ride data in a frame on my blog. I started looking into it yesterday, and promptly fell down the GPX/FIT rabbit hole. I learned a lot though — mostly that this might be more of a PIA than I figured. Oh well, everybody needs a hobby…

Meantime, Halloween. We had Trick or Treat on Friday, and we had a few friends over to help (they got adult-liquid treats), and then on Sunday the parade came by on Broad Street. Yesterday was pretty subdued, though the library did a cover-to-cover reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in honor of the 200th anniversary of its publishing. Anne was there for a big part of the afternoon, and I went for a bit too, listening through several readers before heading back home. I forgot how sad the story really is.

Here are some pictures from the parade:

Infrastructure Week continues today with some yardwork, only it’s yardwork at Anne’s office: there is a huge mulberry tree in the neighbor’s yard, whose branches were damaging her roof. The roof guy cut a bunch of them off but now those are lying in a heap behind her office, and if the weather holds I plan to go chop and bag them. I suspect I may have to get access via the downstairs tenant’s office, so I’ve been waiting for the weekend, like everybody else.

On my other projects:

Phone: The new battery works great, and it’s like the phone has a new lease on life. The charger port cover seems fine too.

Garmin: This was a bit scary since I had to mess with real electronic parts, but the battery change went off without a hitch. The new battery only holds 1000 mWh, as opposed to 1100 mWh for the original when it was new, but I charged the unit up and then let it run in the backyard, with GPS and the display on, for 5 hours and it went down to 60% charge. That means I can probably go for more than 12 hours on a charge now, as opposed to about 4 hours with my tired old original battery, so I am way ahead of the game. I read online that the new battery tends to rattle in the case, but I shook it and heard nothing. A real ride might let me know more.

The Clock: It’s ticking away in the kitchen right now. I got it at Akroyd’s Hardware, where the guy was apologetic that it was the only one he had, but I was cool — it was exactly what I was looking for.

Light bulbs: What do I want, a cookie?

Anyway, I made tuna & wilted greens in garlic sauce over spaghetti last night, and also got tonight’s round roast going in the crock pot. I brushed my teeth and hit the road with Donna and John, ending up at The Mint where we were joined by Doug & Lori. Much pleasantry and merriment ensued…

I got the new Garmin battery today, the last of my purchase items from Amazon, and I will be installing it today if I can find the instructional video online; the battery came with tools and an instructional DVD, but my laptop’s DVD player has decided it no longer works, so it’s either YouTube today, or I have to email the battery company to get a link to where they keep the video online. There will be some delay I’m sure, but we’re always moving forward…

Several light bulbs burned out this week. I don’t know why, but they do seem to die in clusters, even these newfangled fluorescent/LED ones (some of these actually were fluorescent bulbs, which probably means they’re years old by now). I got all but one replaced, an outdoor one for the back porch light. So, off to the hardware store I go. I’ll be skipping Lowe’s because I am still looking for a kitchen clock and they didn’t have them; if whatever hardware store I hit is similarly lacking I’ll just go to Amazon again.

Also up: food shopping. I’ve been eating like a king the past week, steaks with roasted veggies, ham & beans, etc until yesterday, when it was time for dinner and I realized I had no food. Since I was totally absorbed in that routing program — I’m trying to add a feature, but it seems to be putting up a struggle — I just sat home dinnerless, pissing the hours away until I went out to get some late-night nachos at Brew Works. Oops! So, food shopping.

What’s not on the list? Cycling. I keep hoping that my toe will feel better day by day, good enough soon that I can put anything other than sandals on (I actually wore sneakers last night), but the truth is I have a broken toe and it takes 6 weeks to heal, so I’d better man up and get used to light duty for a while. Maybe in a few more days…

Got up this morning, and pretty much the first thing I did was stub my toe on some furniture. It was the toe next to my left pinkie-toe, and it didn’t hurt too much at first, but walking was tough, and when I put my boots on it was torture. I tried other shoes, the only things I could wear were my sandals. Today is the start of the Trail Summit too, and today’s schedule included biking to Easton in my sandals, riding the canal boat — something I’ve never done, until today — then going on a two mile walking history tour before the return ride. It wasn’t too bad, but I think my toe is broken, and I think I’m going to take a nap.