…how wonderful “American Gods” is.
The second season of the television version of Neil Gaiman’s classic starts next month and it appears that they’re replaying the first season on channel 352,526,233 of the local cable system tonight.
Damn, is it wonderful!
So NSFW that it’s not even funny, but wonderful!
I had also almost forgotten what it was like to sit on my ass and just watch some wonderful television for a few hours.
Filed under Entertainment
Part of it’s the definition of “Los Angeles” – for those not familiar with the area, the “Los Angeles Metro Area” is bigger than some US states. In addition, there’s a lot of variety in the geography of the area. “Los Angeles County” has everything from beaches (at sea level, obviously) to mountains that go up over 10,000 feet. Those mountain peaks get snow quite often in the winter, and there are multiple ski resorts up there within an 90 minute or so drive from downtown LA.
But in the actual city limits of “Los Angeles” it’s a bit odd to see actual snow. Most of the city limits are below 3,000 and we only get cold storms that dust those low peaks every few years. But they make for fantastic picture postcard photos.
Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Weather
Literally & figuratively, a picture from yesterday.
Disappointed to see some reflections from inside the office showing up in this image, but such is life.
The storm outside was cold – there was snow down to about 1,200′ in some areas, including the Malibu hills in Calabasas, about five miles to the right and behind us (southwest), as well as at our construction site in Santa Clarita.
The storm inside was hot – I haven’t been that angry or upset in a while.
But both passed, and now we can move on to the next, latest, and greatest crisis.
Like, I’m pretty sure that a polarizing filter on the lens would eliminate those reflections, but how do I get one for my iPhone?
Filed under Photography, Weather
After being obsessed with a huge project for weeks (ever since we got back from Kansas City at New Year’s) and spending pretty damn near every non-critical moment (i.e., The Long-Suffering Wife’s cancer treatment came first, then my paying job, then Chiefs games, then “The Project”) slaving away it, I’m finally over the hump and can move back to other things.
It’s a really weird feeling. Almost like I’ve forgotten how to not be going at 50K RPM 24/7/365.
Literally. Every. Single. Day. Family taken care of? Check. Not at the office? Check. Chiefs not playing right this second? Check. Time to get to work on “The Project.” Until at least midnight, often later. All weekend. Every day. Every weekend.
Because there was that hard deadline coming up. Can we get it changed or rescheduled? No. But I’ve got these other issues and my wife… No. But… NO!
So — I didn’t quite hit the deadline. It was due Monday morning, I finally got it done last night. There’s some angst over that, but I’ll deal with that. Or, more to the point, they’ll have to deal with it.
*breathe* (again) Repeat as necessary.
I’ve heard it said about writing a book that, “A novel is never finished, merely abandoned.” (I searched for the quote, found a lot of variations – YMMV.) Ditto for this. As it winds down my brain keeps coming up with, “But you should have…” and “You forgot to fix…” and “Wait, this is still…”
Whatever. By definition, it’s done.
For the observant, this might also explain some of the subtext in the last seven weeks’ posts. Yes, it’s been an ordeal.
It’s behind me, and if the next ordeal starts tomorrow (it will!) then I’ll deal with it on its own.
So tonight I felt guilty about sitting in front of the idiot box for a couple of hours and surfing my Twitter feed. You can take the boy out of the Catholic Church, but you can’t always take the voices of those nuns out of the boy.
I’ll survive. I’m sure I’ve got plenty of other things that still have to get taken care of after I take a breath.
Shit, are my Christmas lights still up??!! (They are.)
Filed under Paul
Then there are the days you don’t get out of the hangar AT ALL until you’re locking up way after everyone else is gone – the compensation being that you get to watch this honkin’ huge full moon rise behind China Doll!
Filed under CAF, Photography
I escaped from my office for a few minutes today during the audit – the clouds following the front were piled up high over China Doll.
Now, it’s almost midnight (AGAIN!) and it’s time to get back to the number crunching.
Filed under CAF, Photography, Weather
It’s not a bug – it’s a feature!
It helped me finish marathons.
It helped me though grad school while holding down a job and being a parent and a husband.
It kept me in a job that I didn’t like much wile I was a single parent.
Tonight (with a little help from my friends) it helps me at least get close (closer? close-ish?) to giving the auditors what they want at 8:00 tomorrow morning.
But I’m definitely going to need a nap tomorrow night!
00:07 Friday morning (Okay, it’s Thursday night…)
I just finished writing (what is now) last night’s “Too Many Numbers” post, the process of which was way, WAY too stressful.
Too tired, too many computers (five right now, counting the iPhone and iPad which I’m using to pull up data), too many screens (seven total), too many numbers…
And suddenly I see that my website directory has vanished. The directory on my local hard drive which keeps all of my working files for my website as well as the original copies of all of the pictures I’ve posted for the past five years or so, as well as the backup documents and…
But that’s okay because it’s on Dropbox! I can recover it! Yeah for Dropbox!
Except that Dropbox isn’t showing ANY of those files in its deleted files list…
Crying starts to sound like a perfectly good option…
There was a power outage today – did that fry something? I’ve gotten an occasional error message from Win 10 that the primary SSD hard disk is doing unexpected things – did that fry something? Do the gods just hate me?
From somewhere a calmer brain takes over. A quick search of Dropbox for the directory name shows that it got moved to be a subdirectory of another directory. It’s now sitting under a directory that used to be next to it alphabetically on the list of directories. Which makes me think that I’m using too many mice, trackballs, and Apple Pencils on too many computers on too many screens.
I wonder if I didn’t point, click, and drag on computer B when I was looking at computer A and computer B did exactly what I told it to, i.e. take this directory and move it and drop it on top of this other directory, which translates in most OS’s as “move this thing into that thing.”
I need a smarter and less literal computer. And an antidote for adrenaline.
23:40 Friday night (not Saturday morning yet!)
Oh, and I had the sense while I was waiting for my heart rate to stop resembling a hummingbird’s to pull out a 6TB external drive and let it run overnight, copying everything off to something less dynamic than DropBox.
When did you run your last full system backup to an external drive?
Do I owe someone that? Do they owe me that?
My brain is swimming in an unnatural and toxic stew of accounting numbers. And this is just the prep for the audits. The real thing doesn’t start until next week.
Filed under Paul, Photography
 | firesmith on Proof Of Life – August… |
 | momdude on Back Yard Blooming |
 | lmratliff on Back Yard Blooming |
 | Jemima Pett on Forever Home – One … |
| momdude on Twenty-Five Years |
 | berich56 on Twenty-Five Years |
 | Ronnie on A Magnificent Sunset Out Of… |
 | Ronnie Willett on Sunset Conjunction 2026… |
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 