One of my least favorite things is the topic of this rant - getting old.
It is something I am doing, albeit just about toally without any grace.
This week, I turned 67. The next day, my wife and I marked the end of our 41st year of marriage. Frankly, I have no explanation for how either of these milestones was reached. I guess I'm just lucky. Somehow I have survived all these years, and my long-suffering wife has found it neither useful nor necessary to kill me.
I am still working full-time - retirement is a happy thought, but it is not going to happen, at least not this year. For one thing, I don't know quite what I would do with myself, and for another the cost of retirement is a definite modification in the direction of moderation of lifestyle - and I am not quite ready to become moderate - I still like to do things that cost money, and my retirement income will be perhaps 30% of my current income - not impossible, but definitely sparse. I must have thought I'd never get old - I definitely did not do much of a job of planning for it. And no, I have no advice for those who've not yet entered their dotage on forestalling my discoveries. As is the case with so many other events in my life, I recognize where I have arrived, but have no idea whatever how I got here.
So I'll work a few more years, put away money, draw my social security because I can and bank as much of it as possible, and when I've been married 50 years, maybe we can both retire and enjoy what years remain in some retirement community like the one into which my parents retired lo these many years ago.
Life is, however, pretty good so I have no complaints. Have a fine day, y'all.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
The bug bit me
I've been down with some naso-respiratory bug for the last week or so. Usually something like this gets me once a year, and I really don't get better, I just get less lousy over time until after a while I stop noticing just how crappy I feel. Usually I go back to work before that, because being at home, the things I am not doing weigh heavily on me.
While at home I got the home network server back alive, using Windows Home Server - and along the way have made most of the available mistakes, because instead of reading the book,, I built a server based on what I know about other windows servers - and this pup is different.... But I managed to emerge with something that seems to work well, satisfies me in terms of recoverable redundancies, and still has enough to be tweaked that I'll not get bored for a couple of months or more.
I cam back to work today, and so far have managed to do nothing at all useful - there were no requests for me, nobody called and demanded something (except that I move my car, about which more later) so I spent the bulk of the day doing the Windows Home Server research that I should have done before starting the build.
I also discovered that I have managed to trash something in my router setup, and will have to put it back to factory defaults this evening and then let WHS reconfigure it so some other stuff will start to work.
I did get my binary robot working - and if you are lucky enough to have the Verizon FIOS connection, you can fill up all the disk space in the known universe far faster than you can categorize what is being pulled in there. I started it up one night, told it to scan the binary newsgroups for Eureka, Hopalong Cassidy (I'm old, so sue me!), Highlander and a few other old TV show episodes - and filled up a 250 gig drive before I got back to check it a day or two later!
I have to learn how to make the filters tighter on Newsbin - or I'll end up deleting 80% of what I pull down. But I guess that isn't a bad problem to have.
So for tonight, I have to get out the book and get web services started so folks can find the place again - and so that I can get in from work and watch what's going on.
I also have to get some other stuff working, or else get myself decommitted from it. We'll see which happens first.
One of the nifty parts of WHS is that it will back up PC's on the network - so I also have a few laptops at home to start backing up. I'll have to record NCIS and watch it later...
I was hoping for a few motorcycle days this week - but it looks like disappointment will be my fate. Maybe next week. By this time next week, I'll have turned 67, and will be starting my 42nd year of marriage to my first (and only) wife. We'll probably celebrate the following weekend, since the days involved are some of the busiest for both of us. Celebration will no doubt consist of dinner and a return to watch the bull riders, although maybe a movie instead - if I can find anything we'd both like to watch - or maybe we'll do a movie night at home, since I have a couple on the DVR that have been there since almost this time last year waiting for a night when we could watch them together without one or the other of us going to sleep. As we get older, energy tends to run out earlier in the evening.
More folks here at work are departing, some I am certain under duress. Alas, some of the departed are those that should have been kept and elevated to better positions - but I guess that's a universal truth, and I've been watching it happen here for a long time. I'd like to work through 2012 (or maybe a bit longer if I can) if only to increase pension amounts, but I'll go earlier if Phyllis decides to retire, too. As long as she works, I might just as well work and soak up the money. Besides, I still want to get that sidecar for my Honda, and maybe get a new cruiser to replace the big Kawasaki before the days for buying those toys are eaten up by reality. I'd kinda like a new Harley - but I'm not holding my breath.
It's within an hour of going-home time, so I'd better get some real work done, or I'll think badly of myself.
Have a good one, y'all - more on WHS tomorrow or the next day.
While at home I got the home network server back alive, using Windows Home Server - and along the way have made most of the available mistakes, because instead of reading the book,, I built a server based on what I know about other windows servers - and this pup is different.... But I managed to emerge with something that seems to work well, satisfies me in terms of recoverable redundancies, and still has enough to be tweaked that I'll not get bored for a couple of months or more.
I cam back to work today, and so far have managed to do nothing at all useful - there were no requests for me, nobody called and demanded something (except that I move my car, about which more later) so I spent the bulk of the day doing the Windows Home Server research that I should have done before starting the build.
I also discovered that I have managed to trash something in my router setup, and will have to put it back to factory defaults this evening and then let WHS reconfigure it so some other stuff will start to work.
I did get my binary robot working - and if you are lucky enough to have the Verizon FIOS connection, you can fill up all the disk space in the known universe far faster than you can categorize what is being pulled in there. I started it up one night, told it to scan the binary newsgroups for Eureka, Hopalong Cassidy (I'm old, so sue me!), Highlander and a few other old TV show episodes - and filled up a 250 gig drive before I got back to check it a day or two later!
I have to learn how to make the filters tighter on Newsbin - or I'll end up deleting 80% of what I pull down. But I guess that isn't a bad problem to have.
So for tonight, I have to get out the book and get web services started so folks can find the place again - and so that I can get in from work and watch what's going on.
I also have to get some other stuff working, or else get myself decommitted from it. We'll see which happens first.
One of the nifty parts of WHS is that it will back up PC's on the network - so I also have a few laptops at home to start backing up. I'll have to record NCIS and watch it later...
I was hoping for a few motorcycle days this week - but it looks like disappointment will be my fate. Maybe next week. By this time next week, I'll have turned 67, and will be starting my 42nd year of marriage to my first (and only) wife. We'll probably celebrate the following weekend, since the days involved are some of the busiest for both of us. Celebration will no doubt consist of dinner and a return to watch the bull riders, although maybe a movie instead - if I can find anything we'd both like to watch - or maybe we'll do a movie night at home, since I have a couple on the DVR that have been there since almost this time last year waiting for a night when we could watch them together without one or the other of us going to sleep. As we get older, energy tends to run out earlier in the evening.
More folks here at work are departing, some I am certain under duress. Alas, some of the departed are those that should have been kept and elevated to better positions - but I guess that's a universal truth, and I've been watching it happen here for a long time. I'd like to work through 2012 (or maybe a bit longer if I can) if only to increase pension amounts, but I'll go earlier if Phyllis decides to retire, too. As long as she works, I might just as well work and soak up the money. Besides, I still want to get that sidecar for my Honda, and maybe get a new cruiser to replace the big Kawasaki before the days for buying those toys are eaten up by reality. I'd kinda like a new Harley - but I'm not holding my breath.
It's within an hour of going-home time, so I'd better get some real work done, or I'll think badly of myself.
Have a good one, y'all - more on WHS tomorrow or the next day.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Tuesday
A week ago I left the office early, feeling rather ragged.
I was right - today I am starting to feel human again. About once a year or so a respiratory bug gets hold of me and shakes its head and bounces me around.
I did see a doctor who prescribed Amoxycillin, which I have taken and continue to take, although I have no real reason to think it has done anything except make my stomach unhappy with me for a time. Mostly I have slept - in my bed at night, then in my chair in the living room during the day. I have always been able to sleep, but when afflicted with some bug or another my sleeping ability increases exponentially. My usual signal that the bug has left is that I can get bored in my chair with my computer on my lap, and not fall asleep and drop it on the floor. I know the but isn't finished with me yet because I still can be sitting here and suddenly note that an hour or more has passed, or that I suddenly really need to get up and go to the bathroom.
Being sick sucks, and it sucks worse as I get older because it stays around longer. For a week now I have not been back downstairs to beat on my Home Server project, although I have gone after the machine using Remote Desktop, it just isn't the same as being right there and putting my hands on the things inside it. Maybe this evening I'll go and do some of that.
I had my annual eye exam this morning, only about two years late. I need new glasses (what's new) and grumbled a bit at the doc who told me that he was in the business because it was a human fact of life that the lens in one's eye stiffens with age, requiring continuous changes to correction, thus assuring him of a lifetime of clients. I thanked him for the educational information, and we proceeded onto more important conversational items - he told me about his new Harley Davidson motorcycle, and I told him the tail of my getting hit last year on mine, whereupon he told me of a similar incident that he had on his. Funny how much stuff there is to share sometimes.
I'm thinking tomorrow may be the last day for staying home. I did start the motorcycle the other day and do a couple of errands on it - and tomorrow is supposed to be perfect motorcycle weather, so if I feel like going out tomorrow, I guess I'll have to feel like going back to work on Thursday. Maybe in the next life I can plan better and be independently wealthy by the time I reach this age.
I need to go and find some lunch. This is a good sign; when I feel really rotten I don't notice missed meals, so I guess I am getting better.
Have a good day, y'all....
I was right - today I am starting to feel human again. About once a year or so a respiratory bug gets hold of me and shakes its head and bounces me around.
I did see a doctor who prescribed Amoxycillin, which I have taken and continue to take, although I have no real reason to think it has done anything except make my stomach unhappy with me for a time. Mostly I have slept - in my bed at night, then in my chair in the living room during the day. I have always been able to sleep, but when afflicted with some bug or another my sleeping ability increases exponentially. My usual signal that the bug has left is that I can get bored in my chair with my computer on my lap, and not fall asleep and drop it on the floor. I know the but isn't finished with me yet because I still can be sitting here and suddenly note that an hour or more has passed, or that I suddenly really need to get up and go to the bathroom.
Being sick sucks, and it sucks worse as I get older because it stays around longer. For a week now I have not been back downstairs to beat on my Home Server project, although I have gone after the machine using Remote Desktop, it just isn't the same as being right there and putting my hands on the things inside it. Maybe this evening I'll go and do some of that.
I had my annual eye exam this morning, only about two years late. I need new glasses (what's new) and grumbled a bit at the doc who told me that he was in the business because it was a human fact of life that the lens in one's eye stiffens with age, requiring continuous changes to correction, thus assuring him of a lifetime of clients. I thanked him for the educational information, and we proceeded onto more important conversational items - he told me about his new Harley Davidson motorcycle, and I told him the tail of my getting hit last year on mine, whereupon he told me of a similar incident that he had on his. Funny how much stuff there is to share sometimes.
I'm thinking tomorrow may be the last day for staying home. I did start the motorcycle the other day and do a couple of errands on it - and tomorrow is supposed to be perfect motorcycle weather, so if I feel like going out tomorrow, I guess I'll have to feel like going back to work on Thursday. Maybe in the next life I can plan better and be independently wealthy by the time I reach this age.
I need to go and find some lunch. This is a good sign; when I feel really rotten I don't notice missed meals, so I guess I am getting better.
Have a good day, y'all....
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Wednesday
I missed choir tonight - whatever respiratory thing is going around I seem to be getting, and it showed up today with earache, scratchy throat, and general malaise. I feel lousy - achy, headachy, tickle cough - just crappy.
I don't deserve this - and so I am visiting a doctor tomorrow to see if it needs an antibiotic or patience. I'm hoping for an antibiotic, because if I get a good slug into me, I'll be able to keep a commitment to sing in another church with our daughter, Elizabeth - if it's a patience thing, she might get to do a couple of solos instead of a couple of duets with me - and she'll have to pick them on Saturday. She's perfectly capable, but I do so enjoy dueting with her, and we don't do it all that often.
Feeling crappy will also keep me from Sammy, our newest grandchild - and he always makes me feel better. So tomorrow I'll dog it in the morning, visit with the doctor in the afternoon and then decide what Friday will bring as far as work goes.
I have spent no time downstairs - Arnold is behaving but I need to get bumping on the mail, web and FTP server aspect(s) of what it has. I also have to get into the router and convince it to play nice with Home Server - and I am still waiting on RAID cards to get the array working before I cover it up and start ignoring it.
I should do the taxes this weekend, and hope I feel good enough - they need to get done, and I fear the feds are going to get a big piece of my butt because I started taking Social Security. The money has been nice - it killed off some old credit card debt, but I didn't reckon with the Feds taxing it on me. Being old is not all it is cracked up to be - trust me on that. I have a feeling I'll have to work even longer than I thought before retiring - unless I want to adopt a monastic lifestyle, without motorcycles, computers, fiber to the internet, etc.
Speaking of fiber - if you can get it and you use the internet, especially for file transfers or remote work, you'd be silly not to do it. I put a bunch of stuff on one bill since Verizon has my cells as well as my landline, internet and TeeVee - and their fiber internet service is so fast that it is hard to saturate it. I put up my favorite robot and started rebuilding some of the stuff I lost in the last big drive crash - and pulled something like 30 gigs off the internet in less than 24 hours (binary newsgroup service mostly, using GigaNews as my supplier, NewsBin as my collection robot, and using all 20 connected sessions) and had NewsBin showing throughput between 18 and 19.2 megabytes per second, on a connection rated at 20 megabytes. Bloody amazing - and even with that extreme internet load my HD televisions continued to work just fine - and it all comes in over one little piece of glass fiber.
And to think that I can remember when a fast print device for a network was an IBM Selectric that ran at 134.5 bits per second....
I should be going to bed, but I'm staying up so my wife can sleep. I have to take some nyquil, and will probably sleep with the TeeVee tonight and off and on tomorrow. Hope this bug, whatever it is, goes away fast - I don't much feel like feeling like this for the next week or so.
Goodnight all - tomorrow will be better.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Home Server Doings
Y'all are probably bored with this, but I'm close to done with it. Arnold the Windows Home Server is once again alive - I have learned a few more things that I didn't know (funny how that seems to come up - something gets screwed up, and I learn something that I didn't know before, usually after breaking something I thought I knew all about.)
Now, I have four out of the five big drives that I thought were dead back alive, but the RAID adapter that was supposed to run the new SATA drives and get me the fault-tolerant storage array that I wanted so that when the next drive croaks, nothing gets lost - that's what RAID arrays are all about) apparently is toast, so I have to go and get another one.
So right now, Arnold is alive with old drives, and I am learning how to make him useful (which may take the rest of my life) and get the music database repopulated and reloaded, and get the media streaming stuff working throughout the house again. I will use one of the old drives to liven up the robot to get the music collection reestablished, and when I get a new SAT RAID adapter and get the RAID array working, I'll make it part of the storage pool, and gradually retire / relocate the old drives into less critical locations - or at least put them to uses that aren't likely to have a bad effect on the overall network.
One of the reasons I write this stuff is to help me be sure I know whatthehell I'm about to do. Sometimes I find I do, sometimes I don't - but the writing always helps.
On another topic, I was off today - I ended up working Saturday here at home, and Sunday night got called in until the wee hours of this morning, getting home again around 4:30 AM. It isn't as easy as it was when I was younger, but it is a part of what I do, to be prepared to take the off-time to correct. I spent some time today looking in and rechecking what I had done, but it was all good.
I think now it is time I went to bed - the morning comes so early, and I have to get one grandson to school before I can take myself to work. I thought that by the time I hit 60 life would be calm and boring, but I reckoned without the help of my children, who have conspired to keep life ...interesting... for Phyllis and myself. Both sets of parents are gone, so we find ourselves in the position of venerated elder authority and foolish parents whom you can't take out without being embarrassed - sometimes both at the same time. It'll keep us young and/or nuts.
I'm going to bed. Next rants will probably be less about hardware, and more about Things of the Heart. Be well, y'all.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
I should have gone to bed earlier.
Last night, that is - I stayed up nearly all night working on Arnold, and discovered this morning that while I was asleep he lost his mind. Motherboard will not allow a boot. Maybe it is time to just break down and buy a damn server and be done with it.
I hate it when things go wrong repeatedly. I thought I had it all ready, and then I tried to add in the RAID array and everything turned to poo. I did not even watch the Super Bowl for sleeping this afternoon, not that it would have made a difference in whatever the outcome would have been. I think maybe tonight I'll swap in the last motherboard and see if it turns to crap again, or if this time it actually does something useful. My patience is waning, and I need to get this server built and working to go forward with the streaming entertainment for the house.
Technology is wonderful stuff, but it has made life rather more complicated than it used to be. Before cell phones there was such a thing as privacy, and quiet time. I'm old enough to remember the time before television - radio was something that required a lot of thought and imagination - but it was actually pretty good, and my imagination was at least as good as that of many screenwriters in the early days of TeeVee. Then there were the obligatory trips on Saturday to the movies, the weekly serial (Sky King, Tarzan, RocketMan and others) that always ended in a cliffhanger to suck you into coming back the next weekend. Several of us from the neighborhood, aged 5 to 8, would get on a bus each Saturday, armed with the price of admission, bus fare, and a soda, and go to the matinee to get our weekly fix. We went by ourselves, rode a bus for 20 minutes, went to the theater alone and returned alone, and nobody ever worried about us because it was safe for kids our age to do those things.
Times must have changed a lot.
What has this got to do with Arnold, the recalcitrant server? Damfino - I think I'm rambling.
Now, it's time to go downstairs and have at Arnold some more, and see whether he gets turned on or turned into a target for my pistol....
Be well, y'all
I hate it when things go wrong repeatedly. I thought I had it all ready, and then I tried to add in the RAID array and everything turned to poo. I did not even watch the Super Bowl for sleeping this afternoon, not that it would have made a difference in whatever the outcome would have been. I think maybe tonight I'll swap in the last motherboard and see if it turns to crap again, or if this time it actually does something useful. My patience is waning, and I need to get this server built and working to go forward with the streaming entertainment for the house.
Technology is wonderful stuff, but it has made life rather more complicated than it used to be. Before cell phones there was such a thing as privacy, and quiet time. I'm old enough to remember the time before television - radio was something that required a lot of thought and imagination - but it was actually pretty good, and my imagination was at least as good as that of many screenwriters in the early days of TeeVee. Then there were the obligatory trips on Saturday to the movies, the weekly serial (Sky King, Tarzan, RocketMan and others) that always ended in a cliffhanger to suck you into coming back the next weekend. Several of us from the neighborhood, aged 5 to 8, would get on a bus each Saturday, armed with the price of admission, bus fare, and a soda, and go to the matinee to get our weekly fix. We went by ourselves, rode a bus for 20 minutes, went to the theater alone and returned alone, and nobody ever worried about us because it was safe for kids our age to do those things.
Times must have changed a lot.
What has this got to do with Arnold, the recalcitrant server? Damfino - I think I'm rambling.
Now, it's time to go downstairs and have at Arnold some more, and see whether he gets turned on or turned into a target for my pistol....
Be well, y'all
ARNOLD Lives!!!
It's 4:45 in the morning. I must get up in 5 hours. I did not go to bed when I thought I might, instead I mauled Arnold a bit more, and he is alive.
The RAID array is not even being seen, but the server is alive and working, and even letting me introduce it to my laptop! Will wonders never cease?
Now all I gotta do is get the data off the old server's drives, then get the RAID array working, then make it available, then take out the old server drives and reserve them, and then, well, probably go to work, dammit!
Weekends should be longer.
Happy Sunday, y'all - it looks like the motherboard is good, and will hold the load.
The RAID array is not even being seen, but the server is alive and working, and even letting me introduce it to my laptop! Will wonders never cease?
Now all I gotta do is get the data off the old server's drives, then get the RAID array working, then make it available, then take out the old server drives and reserve them, and then, well, probably go to work, dammit!
Weekends should be longer.
Happy Sunday, y'all - it looks like the motherboard is good, and will hold the load.
Home server rant continues
Alfred is dead. I killed him. I enjoyed it - the SOB just would not behave. Old motherboards sometimes make life hard, and this one just wouldn't continue beyond ten minutes after bootup.
I reused the case, so Arnold looks like Alfred, but isn't - there's an AMD dual processor motherboard in there, and Home Server is rebuilding as I write. After that, it looks like I scrambled the SATA connectors to my RAID cage, so I can look forward to around 30 hours of RAID array formatting during which time nothing will get done. After that it should be clear sailing and I can start rebuilding my music and video databases for the home network.
If, on the other hand it is still unstable I shall call RAID a bad job and go to conventional storage. I don't want to do that because it is so hard to recover a loss in a terabyte or so of music and such. Some days you eat the bear, other days you're his lunch.
So now it is waiting time. I guess I'll know more in the morning before I head for church.
But I did take a break this afternoon and call an old friend on the phone - one I've not seen since around 1972, but whom I have known since the late 50's. He's a bit older than I am at 75, but our lives have touched several times over the years, both here in the US and during the time I was in Germany, as he was a teacher in a military dependant's school while I was serving in the Air Force and we spent many pleasant weekends wandering around Germany, sampling wines, and generally being single and carefree. I don't recall if we returned at the same time, but he went home to Minnesota and I ended up here in Maryland. We got together in 1972 when I drew a trip of a couple of months to Minneapolis for schooling, but after a few weeks I decided I should bring my wife out, so visiting got somewhat curtailed.
But we've stayed in touch all these years, sharing memories and other friends, and it is a little hard to think of him as being 75 yet I know that he is every bit of that age, just as I am every bit of almost 67 - but those numbers seem unreal to me. I promised myself never to grow up or to get stodgy and set in my ways and I think I've been moderately successful at that - but my knees hurt, my shoulders creak like an old maple tree, and I can sleep wherever I happen to be. But I still love to motorcycle (although I no longer love it enough to go out when it is below about 50 degrees - and I used to ride all year round regardless of temperature) and to go and see things I haven't seen yet.
I just looked at the bottom of my screen and it is now February. It just kinda sneaked up on me. I hate it when that happens! But after February comes March, and by mid-March the weather is getting good for riding once again, and I can count on more and more motorcycle days.
Tomorrow I have to get going on our taxes - it is my least favorite yearly task, and when I can retire I get to do less. Near as I can tell, retirement will come sometime around the age of 74 for me - but maybe not then. I have the rare good fortune to like what I do, and as long as someone will pay me to do it, I might just as well. We still have one of our kids with us, and a grandchild, so the responsibilities will not decrease until she marries and leaves, or maybe just leaves.
Somehow life did not go the way I thought it would when I was young and still knew everything. The path is still changing, and it is anyone's guess where I will end up (although some of the more fundy-oriented folks I know are sure that they know) or when.
It's funny where life goes. I was born here in Baltimore, then moved to Hatboro. From Hatboro I went into the service and went to Texas, Syracuse, Texas and Germany. I stayed an extra year in Germany; I don't recall just why although I have been told a German girl might have had some influence, and when I returned my family was back in Baltimore, so I came here and despite grand ideas of taking a company move or something like that I have been at this address for 36 years. I do a number of things that were too far-out for even science fiction when I was in high school, trying to imagine what I would be when I grew up.
So, what have all these years given to me as revelations?
I reused the case, so Arnold looks like Alfred, but isn't - there's an AMD dual processor motherboard in there, and Home Server is rebuilding as I write. After that, it looks like I scrambled the SATA connectors to my RAID cage, so I can look forward to around 30 hours of RAID array formatting during which time nothing will get done. After that it should be clear sailing and I can start rebuilding my music and video databases for the home network.
If, on the other hand it is still unstable I shall call RAID a bad job and go to conventional storage. I don't want to do that because it is so hard to recover a loss in a terabyte or so of music and such. Some days you eat the bear, other days you're his lunch.
So now it is waiting time. I guess I'll know more in the morning before I head for church.
But I did take a break this afternoon and call an old friend on the phone - one I've not seen since around 1972, but whom I have known since the late 50's. He's a bit older than I am at 75, but our lives have touched several times over the years, both here in the US and during the time I was in Germany, as he was a teacher in a military dependant's school while I was serving in the Air Force and we spent many pleasant weekends wandering around Germany, sampling wines, and generally being single and carefree. I don't recall if we returned at the same time, but he went home to Minnesota and I ended up here in Maryland. We got together in 1972 when I drew a trip of a couple of months to Minneapolis for schooling, but after a few weeks I decided I should bring my wife out, so visiting got somewhat curtailed.
But we've stayed in touch all these years, sharing memories and other friends, and it is a little hard to think of him as being 75 yet I know that he is every bit of that age, just as I am every bit of almost 67 - but those numbers seem unreal to me. I promised myself never to grow up or to get stodgy and set in my ways and I think I've been moderately successful at that - but my knees hurt, my shoulders creak like an old maple tree, and I can sleep wherever I happen to be. But I still love to motorcycle (although I no longer love it enough to go out when it is below about 50 degrees - and I used to ride all year round regardless of temperature) and to go and see things I haven't seen yet.
I just looked at the bottom of my screen and it is now February. It just kinda sneaked up on me. I hate it when that happens! But after February comes March, and by mid-March the weather is getting good for riding once again, and I can count on more and more motorcycle days.
Tomorrow I have to get going on our taxes - it is my least favorite yearly task, and when I can retire I get to do less. Near as I can tell, retirement will come sometime around the age of 74 for me - but maybe not then. I have the rare good fortune to like what I do, and as long as someone will pay me to do it, I might just as well. We still have one of our kids with us, and a grandchild, so the responsibilities will not decrease until she marries and leaves, or maybe just leaves.
Somehow life did not go the way I thought it would when I was young and still knew everything. The path is still changing, and it is anyone's guess where I will end up (although some of the more fundy-oriented folks I know are sure that they know) or when.
It's funny where life goes. I was born here in Baltimore, then moved to Hatboro. From Hatboro I went into the service and went to Texas, Syracuse, Texas and Germany. I stayed an extra year in Germany; I don't recall just why although I have been told a German girl might have had some influence, and when I returned my family was back in Baltimore, so I came here and despite grand ideas of taking a company move or something like that I have been at this address for 36 years. I do a number of things that were too far-out for even science fiction when I was in high school, trying to imagine what I would be when I grew up.
So, what have all these years given to me as revelations?
- Hatboro was a pretty good place.
- Going to college to please someone else is a waste of time.
- Military service, properly managed can be educational and even fun.
- No matter how hard I tried, Germany made beer faster than I could drink it.
- Speed limits are a revenue-producing tool, not a safety enhancement.
- Getting married is easy; staying married is hard.
- Riding a motorcycle will teach you lots about paying attention and being gentle.
- An hour at the pistol range will clear your head better than a week at the ocean.
- My children will do what they deem fit. They do not have to make my failures good.
- When your state is altered, your competence to determine your competence Goes Away.
- Music is wonderful, and cannot be explained - you get it, or you don't.
- Living in a foreign land, learning the language, is more valuable than books
- Foreign languages are different - and you must never translate an idiom.
- I think I'm rambling. Again.
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