It's been a while

I have been watching the world go by, and deliberately holding my fingers (which seems to be a metaphor for tongue) in order not to become strident, shrill, or outright nasty.

This may turn into a rant, I'm not sure yet.  Then again I may save the rant for late at night when nobody is listening.

It is now part way into February.  February is usually a BFD month for us - Already we've lost a couple of days to snow (although that was never a part of the plan.)  In not too many days I will turn 72 (or 28 by Grandpop Rudolph's reckoning....) and I am not liking it.  I don't feel like I'm 72 (most days) and I try very hard not to behave like someone that old - but some days I just can't escape it.  On the day after my birthday I will have been married to my first wife for 46 years - something many people (including ourselves from time to time) would never have believed possible - and I find that it is all good.

And of course I still go to work every day.  Some days I'm actually worth more than I cost - other days they should make me pay to let me in.  I've been having a good deal of fun with code lately, finding new ways to do things with fewer instructions, less messy code - it keeps my head either on straight or shaking.

I discovered Google Hangouts, and resolved to set up an area for my brothers and I to get together in a video chat, since apparently that's the only was some of us will see the rest of us.  Looks like a nifty tool - be interesting to see if it works as I impute that it does, and if it doesn't it will be interesting to see how long it takes me actually to figure out precisely how it does work.  Either way, I won't get bored.

My Kindle library is growing - I may not live long enough to read everything that's in it - I get emails every day from a couple of places that keep track of what's available, and Amazon puts out a fair amount that is free, and I try to get as much of that that looks interesting as I can.

I think in a separate piece I'll talk about the new stuff I have discovered that works so well.

Google amazes me - I have switched to Chrome as the browser of choice, and have discovered various apps and extensions for it that make it more useful - nearly an entire working environment is available from the browser itself including rudimentary office applications (and, truth be told, it is all I really need - Word has over the years grown into everything for everyone, and has so many buttons, widgets, fladgets and such that I can't use it whout looking for stuff that I used to know where it was....  With Google Docs, there's a lot that I can't do - but over the last several months I have not found most of what it won't let me do to be all that useful.

There are things that work with Chrome and Android devices that work so well that I finally have a place to stick important stuff that I can reach from my office, from any PC, and from my android devices (Phone and tablets.) Now, whenever I start up Chrome, whether it be on my phone, a tablet, a laptop or a desktop, it knows who I am and presents me with whatever environment I left last.

Listening to Ray Bryant playing  Slow Freight and enjoying it.  I keep music here at work, and happily the folks around me like it (or they just don't want to tell me I have no taste....)  Music makes life better, don't you know.

Last night I met a group of German speakers that meets each week somewhere nearby, and I have been enjoying the social evenings with them, although to my chagrin I find I don't speak as well as I once did (or as I think I once did) and most of the folks there are not from the area where I lived, so my accent and dialect cause interesting misunderstandings - but it sure is fun!

Well, I just talked to a nephew I have not seen in at least 20 years - and got a video chat on my tablet by dumbing into how it works. Now I have to get a desktop working with that.  Looks like Google Hangouts is more useful than I would have imagined.

I gotta go home.  I may pick this up later, or I may decide it's rant time later.  You'll be able to figure out which has happened.

Aging

I am getting old. Actually, I think I already got old, and somehow managed not to take note of the fact as it was happening. I have another birthday in a few weeks, number 67. In another three years I will be 70. My grandfather was old at 70 - I am not ready to be old, but I'm almost 70.

Phyllis and I had dinner with our youngest child, her husband, and their 6-month old - and we had a great time. It was a relaxed pleasant evening, with lots of laughs, some supplied by a cheerful curious baby and some by silly adults. There is something about spending time with our daughter and her husband that makes gloom go away. I'm depressive by nature, and after some time with Liz, James and Sammy my whole day seems brighter. For one thing it is impossible to be anything but happy and silly with a happy baby. For another, our youngest child is so great with us, her wonderful husband and the rest of the world.

I guess one thing that helps is that with her in command of her quarter of the world, we can relax secure in the knowledge that the world is a better place with her and her husband in it - and the child is just a bonus.

For myself, I should open a chapter of the Procrastinator's Society just for me - I am so far behind in just about everything that it is really not good for depression. I have a bunch of computer hardware cluttering up my house, some of which arrived a year ago that I have not yet assembled and put to work, and it needs done. My part of the basement is a disaster area, needs stuff cleaned up, thrown out, upgraded, overhauled and generally sterilized, cauterized and replaced. I need to do it and do you think I can get my arse in gear to get started? I dome home at night, and end up in front of our (admittedly lovely large LCD HD) TeeVee, read mail, write things once in a while and generally become immobile, eventually going to bed, and get up tired in the morning to go to work. I can't retire, and really don't want to yet, but my energy lever is subterranean these days, and it is pissing me off!

Maybe tomorrow I can at least get that RAID array into Arnold (all my PC's have names, and Arnold is the big server downstairs that does the mail and such....) and get Home Server loaded and get the network restarted in a functional manner.

But I did get some neat stuff for when I get It together - some good wireless toys, a print server or two (USB) that will make some of our remote printing and scanning awhile lot more flexible - and a few things that are just neat toys that I'll have fun with.

The weather is supposed to turn to absolute crap - I should have gone out on the motorcycle last week on the one warm day, because between snow and frigidity the weather is conspiring to keep me off the bike. Doesn't help that my knees are at least 30 years older than the rest of me, either....

Maybe I'll take off a few hours Wednesday and go over to see Liz & Sammy - and let the baby make me laugh some more. I forgot or maybe never noticed just hos delightful babies can be - when we had them around here that were ours, we were too busy trying to make sure we did things right and that everything was in order - with Sammy, that's Liz and James' problem - we can just enjoy Sammy, make faces at him and laugh with him.

I guess I'm not so depressed any more - at least until the weather report comes along in a few minutes.

G'night, y'all.