Always amazed when this script works every new year.

Went to Sneaky's yesterday for a visit. Saw the gun shop he's working at part time, ran some drills against steel in the back yard, saw the donkeys, managed to get a jar of pickles. You know, typical farm day stuff.

Today we went to the range and since it's the first, I declared it "first guns on the first" day. I brought the first gun I ever bought (G23) and the first gun Don bought (P85). Jason brought some 60s .22 that was his first purchase (or pretty close, he couldn't seem to remember exactly what he bought first). The G23 was typical Glock, but snappy as hell in 40. Forgot how hot that round is with the full power 180gr stuff. The P85 was way way better than I remember. Trigger is good, sights are junk, but being all metal and with a really heavy slide it's very mild recoiling. Ugly, blocky, clumsy... but a fine plinker.

The woman's car picked up a nail, actually two. The first place said they couldn't fix it so I took it to where she got the tires and they said they might be able to fix it, but the patches would over-lap and likely leak. Ugh. So... new tire time. They pro-rated the treadwear warranty or something and it cost $60. Not the end of the world and safer than running on dual patches. Also, the Kia doesn't include a spare tire, so there is also no tire jack. My idea of pulling the tire and bringing it in failed; didn't want to have to pull the van's jack out again. It's such a pain.

More things breaking, my hair trimmer started acting up and they started tripping the GFI breaker in the bathroom. Nothing obviously broken or loose inside, so it's time for a replacement. Lasted 15+ years, that's good value right there.

The carry ammo in the G26 is getting old, the copper jacket is actually starting to tarnish. Time to rotate.

The original batch of quail are in the new hutch at Maxwell's place, and the next (2nd) batch of babies is starting to hatch and are happily exploring the new brooder.

Just shuffled this VM around in a weird way. The old "web1" host was a KVM based VM on the linux box. I took the Workstation based backup VM, copied it over to the MBP and fired it up renaming it web1 and using the web1 IP (and enabled the auto certificate stuff for the web site). Then started the old clone up and now they're back to syncing and running and.... well we'll see if it all really works.

So far.... working?

core server and web server are now on the mbp15 mac, backups are still on the windows PC. I toyed with the pi system to be the core, but it's OS is so funky that it's just not worth it, plus I can't shuffle VMs around if things are on the pi. Containers anyone.

Also finally putting my keys everywhere so I can stop with all the password typing.

Last thing to figure out how to move is the 'documents' server that hosts all the doc repos and the backup targets. That might be a use for the pi.

Picked up one of the BORAII pocket holsters for the LCRx. With the snake load it in this is a great gun to have along when working in the brush/woodshed/etc. Smaller than the 410, but reasonably potent vs. snakes. I didn't want it just hanging out in my pocket without anything protecting it so this should work. I might trim it down a bit, it's hard to get out and I'm not trying for a quick-draw here (hopefully).

The neighbor randomly texted me and said he had a squirrel for me. He shoots them off his fruit trees and out of the garden and just tosses them in the creek. I said he should give them to me so I can make something out of them. Finally he's on board with that. Kristen, not so much.

Once I get a few more I'll try one of the recipes in the book.

LED dome light replacement bulbs are installed, and what a huge difference it makes. Very crisp white light. I got the 20 pack which was cheaper than qty 2, 4 packs (I needed 5 bulbs) so even if they have short life I've got plenty of spares.

Taking way longer than I thought it would, there are like a zillion little parts and some of the connectors look the same... but aren't so I had to pull 16 of those rotating fasteners out and swap them. That set me back a bit.

Troubles aside, it's done. We also got the heavy 3 drawer filing cabinets moved in with the assistance of the neighbor.

The ceiling fans are down, replaced with these LED lights. We left the fan (which was the best looking of the 3) in the waiting room which turned out to be a good thing. It's so warm/humid that I had the windows open and the fan going while working on the book case. It's that much not winter-like here right now (this week anyway).

I had my first 1-on-1 with Yaron the other day and told him I think my time as an SE is coming to a close. It's just getting too hard to hear in meetings and stuff. Also, I'm bored and tired of the gig, but I didn't tell him that part.

Wanted a snack/lunch today that wouldn't fill me up and I decided to try something new at Sheetz. This is their grilled chicken wrap, so sorta a burrito, but I left off the cheese and funky sauces. With just grilled chicken, lettuce, pickles and BBQ sauce it was probably almost healthy? Tasted pretty good.

This weekend was mostly getting the woman's office moved. The scary part was cutting down the doors so they would fit now that the floor is 3/4" higher due to the carpet. I cut each door 3 times, just taking thin 1/8" slices off and then test fitting. I got them close enough they don't drag on the carpet but you also can't see light under them. A pain, but it meant that I don't have to install the extra threshold blocking thing to make them more sound proof.

You can see the cut line along the bottom, and the guide is 5 1/8" from the line, that's how wide the saw is to the blade. Worked pretty well, but did scratch up the door where the saw drug along it but she had paint to touch them up.

Some photos of the office, although she's moved a bunch of stuff around since I took these and it was "done".

My reward for all that work... some valentines themed sixlets from the dollar store.

First fire of the season. It's going to be in the 50s/20s all this week so it's time to give the heat pump a rest and turn some oak into BTUs.

The neighbor got a second squirrel, and you can't really tell in the photo here but it's at least 50% larger than the first one. That first guy was a juvenile I suppose, this guy was a king. His nut sack was huge!

We had some leftover lamb rack from the other day so I chopped it up and put it in some of the fancy ramen. Yum.

Installed the old laptop at the woman's office up in the cabinet where the cable modem and router are, have it connected to my hosted VM and it's doing DDNS services so I can ssh directly to it by name. The encrypted partition is still good (with a manual mount and password so if it's stolen it's useless) so I can do an off-site backup of everything at the house to the office. Finally, an off-site to replace the one I lost when I lost my cube at work.

They're doing well at about three weeks of age. Haven't lost any, but do have the 2 cripples. One is getting better, one... not so much. But who knows.

Looks like they renamed the blue flavor from "oriental" to "soy sauce". Same taste, now 25 percent less racist. :)

The old ramen picture looks like a picture, the new ramen picture looks like CGI.

The birds have been getting so fast and learning to fly that they keep escaping when we've got the brooder open to clean. I was standing on one side while the woman was on the other, but they can still jump past. Instead of using a piece of cardboard to block half the door, I made this counter-weighted screen that gets popped in and blocks half while you work on the other half. Next brooder will have 2 compartments and 2 doors. Move the birds into one and clean the other, then next time shift them back and clean the dirty side. Way easier.

First thing this morning I cranked out ravioli with the dough and filling we made yesterday. Sweet corn, one of the best fillings.

Also cranked out some pretzels with the dough from yesterday. These turned out good enough to share with Sean and Jason at the range today. I'm going to order that malt powder the recipe comes with, I've gotten good enough at forming at it won't be wasted with the fancy ingredients.

One of the devops people at Bandwidth went to Russia (for vacation) and brought back some chocolates to share. I had one that had some funky black mask logo on it and it was gross, so I brought this one with the squirrel home for the woman. She's not been brave enough to try it.

Sparing yesterday, and I may have broken my toe. It's sore, swollen and this morning it was turning colors. Maybe it's just bruised, we'll know over time.