I will not make a comment about how I'm amazed the journal script works at the yearly rollover like I do every year. Doh!

I just noticed that things flipped back to PST, everything is 3 hours off. When did that happen?

Work on my irons is moving along, getting to at least 75 percent playable shots off the driving range mat. It's gone from 'they're mostly straight' to either they are straight or they're so off as to be unplayable. It's very binary. I guess that's an improvement. The driver is still hot garbage, I'm not even at 5 percent success with it in spite of all the work with Doug at PT. Very frustrating.

Also, I can't use the percent sign, it does some sort of variable expansion. That seems like a bug, let me try to escape it and see if that works. % No, but if I leave a space it works? only on this line, not on the others. Random.

The woman really wanted a new fan in the living room with a 'more usable light'. She looked everywhere for 3-4 months and finally got this one from Wayfarer. Now that she's got it in hand and can look up the actual manufacturer it turns out it's available at Lowes as well, for only slightly more money. So good job on the shopping.

Install was a bit of a pain, I had to climb up into the attic and track down the wiring, it was really wonky as is most everything in the house. It's sorted and 'safe' and now she's got a new fan with both a wall and remote control. The wall control is exactly the same as the hand remote, like literally. They both require batteries and use RF to control the fan like the one I put in the entry porch. The wall switch does have a tiny on/off switch which cuts the 120v supply to the fan but otherwise they're the same. The hand remote is just another of the exact same switch that you cut the wires off of. Lame that the wall switch requires a battery.

Put the OBD2 reader widget in the Jeep, I now have as many gauges as I want to scroll through.

And the fail of the day is I had to join facebook. I'm signed up for a 5 day writing seminar, online... NEXT WEEK! The homework and such has to be turned in on a stupid facebook group, so... here we go. The woman is going to show me how to turn off everything so I don't show up. I don't want any facebook friends.

Survived the big storm with essentially no damage... except the mess in the garage where the woman brought the goats inside 'just in case'.

The neighbors got their mini donkey rescues. They're OK, not as 'cute' as the goats and their poop is much larger. I'm glad the woman doesn't want these after all.

Jason got me to sign up for a 2-gun match at the end of the month, and they don't let you use steel case ammo. That would mean having to use real 50 cent+ 556 out of an AR... but they have a PCC class as well. I technically have a 9mm PCC, so let's use that. The trusty sub2k won't let me down, but it will bruise the crap out of my shoulder and cheek. Rather than suffer, I'm trying this, the recoil pad off the KS7 I kept. It fits over the locking mechanism so I can't fold it but for the competition that doesn't matter. It will dampen the shoulder impact and keep my cheek from eating that closing mechanism on every shot.

I pulled the intake off the Jeep to get to the battery to label the replacement date, and found this. I figured they used the cheapest POS battery they could find, but instead they used something probably better than even I would have picked.

When loading up the photos for the journal, the phone seemed to think it could ID stuff in this photo... Lugs identifies as a dog now? :)

Match yesterday, blew Sean out of the water. Suddenly with the targets not 5 feet away and everyone having to do reloads.... I'm 30 seconds faster across the course. :)

Saw this, thought it was funny enough to grab for the journal:

Got my renewed permission slip from the crown, good until 2029 before I have to pay more 2A tax.

Turned in my day 3 writing homework, one more lecture to go with homework. Making really good progress on my story, money and time well spent.

The woman went for a ride today, first lesson in years. It's at the fancy dressage barn that's 3 minutes away. Handy. Expensive, but handy. We'll see how she feels over the next few days but I think she's going to start riding regularly again.

Slowly replacing the 2mpixel cameras as they die with these new $36 4mpixel wide-angle cams. They're really good so far, no app to config just DHCP and then hit it with a browser. I bought one, then a second, then a third and now just ordered the 4th. They're too good not to have on hand, but so far I've deployed them all as they come in. Had several cams with dead IR, and put one of these in the back so I could steal that narrow angle cam to put in the chicken coop (that had dead IR). The woman wanted to see the new chickens in there, so she actually wanted a new camera. Sorta.

Some sample images:

My 5 day class is over, and overall it was helpful. Sorta fell apart on day 4, I thought I knew were I was going but it turns out there are still holes in the basic parts of my idea. Gotta work on that, but it was very disheartening to learn real-time.

The instructor said I should try the 'save the cat' beat sheet method to organize my stuff, and after I did that I would know if it jives with what I'm trying to do or if I should try another method. You want to see what works, but you don't want to spend all your time learning 'yet another method' and redoing things instead of actually writing. So far, I'm able to use the 'save the cat' thing and it's actually giving me some ideas.

I will sometimes put the cat on a goat back to see if it will ride around, never lasts more than a few seconds. The other day, the cat decided she was going to try to put herself on a goat back for a ride. It was (and still is) very cold out so maybe a warm goat in the sun seemed like a good idea. The ride lasted 45 seconds or so, took Lugnut a while to figure out how to get her off there.

Got the driver grip replaced, it now matches the rest of the clubs. Still can't hit it, but at least it matches and isn't falling apart. 30 year old rubber isn't that pliable.

One of the step hangars must have been made out of non pressure treated wood.. because I figured it's not touching the ground it's probably OK. Well, that's wrong. Ground adjacent wood (1' away anyway) must be exposed to enough moisture to rot. Couldn't get in there with another 2x4 since it was attached by the ends in the old design so I just put a piece between the adjacent steps and screwed everything to that. It works, it just makes the screw pattern goofy.

I would have replaced the whole step instead of just half, but my longest replacement board was about 4" too short so I just chopped the old one at the midpoint where the old and new ends could both sit on the 4x4 post. Once it's painted I doubt anyone will ever notice.

Also fixed the edge of the goat barn. Somehow that outer 12" of roof panel wasn't attached to anything, and those boards under it looked kinda weak. So, I added pieces underneath the supports and then screwed through the whole stack from the top. It's solid now.

Finished the new chapter 1 and filled in more details on some sections. Progress.

Cut a few pages from the hex paper book and made a larger sheet so I can get to serious mapping for the story.

Took the Jeep to the dealership today (the Jeep dealer, not the used car dealer for a change) to get the recall work done. Something about the airbag controller. While waiting I walked down to Hyundai to drop off my drive sheet from last week (didn't work Monday when I would normally turn it in) and the Kia dealer to see if the two open recalls on the woman's car could be scheduled (one yes, the other has no fix yet).

On the way home, I stopped at Panera and wrote 475 words on a chapter, so that's good. When I came out, two chicks were loitering by the Jeep chatting. OK they weren't waiting for me, not even for nefarious purposes, they were just in the open parking spot talking. Still, groupies, that's what I'm telling myself. Spy shot as I put the phone on the dash mount before leaving.

It appears we have another coyote in the neighborhood. This could be a problem.

At Panera working on the book, taking a break and noticed that I hadn't put anything in the journal for a while. Not too much new content in life, just doing the same things over and over (class, writing, guitar, range). That's not a bad thing or anything, just doesn't make for interesting journal entries.

I did move my story map off the white board and onto a huge piece of cardboard so I could make use of the whiteboard again. I want to do more map work and it's easier to do on the board than on paper. I don't have a good eraser anymore, they're all petrified. 12 year old me would be horrified.

I've had these window vents for the van for a month now, finally got them installed while in the garage helping the woman sort out of the paint. We did a dump run and took the opportunity to get rid of all the old paint. She wrote down all the colors and codes, but the dried out/gross/unusable paint wasn't doing us any good in storage.

Those vents are going to be awesome next time I'm camping.