Personal
Personal reflections, comments about things I've been doing, etc.
Racking Cider
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 21:06
Today Kim and I siphoned off the cider from the first firmentation jug into the second. We will give it a few days to settle and then bottle it. We poured off a glass to see how it came out, and we're very pleased.
Two Giant Steps Sideways
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 11/11/2008 - 16:27When I was a kid, we had a small black and white television with rabbit ears antennas. We could receive three stations, an ABC affiliate, an NBC affiliate, and a CBS affliate. The CBS affiliate also broadcast on a UFH channel and we could receive that as well.
My father had been an amateur radio operator in his younger days and there were plenty of books about radios around the house. I read various books and in my teenage years made an antenna out of junk from the basement, that we put up in the attic. With it, we managed to pull in another television station from 130 miles away.
Some evenings, my mother would go out to sewing circle, a time she and her friends would get together, work on the sewing that needed to be done for the family and talk. On these nights, she would ask us to copy down the weather map from the evening news. I guess she trusted our rendition of the weather maps more than she trusted our recollection of the weatherman’s predictions.
She would look at the weather map and make decisions about the coming day. Was it likely to be sunny enough to do laundry and hang it out to dry? What did the coming weather tell us about the chores to be done in the garden?
That was probably forty years ago, and yet it came back to me as I checked the weather online. Yesterday was a nice sunny day. It has been clouding up a bit, and I wondered if I could get another load of laundry dried outside before we got rain again.
We are renting a small house, and don’t have a clothesline, so I hang the clothes on various lawn chairs and other places outside. It has worked well enough for us, and we almost never use our electric clothes drier.
Some of this is because of my desire to live a ‘greener’ lifestyle. Some of it is due to our tight financial situation and my intrinsic frugality. We’ve saved quite a lot by rarely using the electric clothes drier.
Since Kim is working full time in Hartford, and my work is sporadic and often from home, I can do many of these sort of tasks around the house.
Over the next several weeks, I expect I shall have to do much more of this. The various oral antibiotics that has been taking to fight her Lyme disease just hasn’t been working. She’s been feeling pretty miserable, and today, the doctor prescribed another round of intravenous antibiotics. Hopefully, it will be approved by the insurance company and will help her feel better soon. However for the next several weeks, I’ll have to do more of the tasks, especially if they involve any sort of lifting. One giant step sideways.
As she was off at the doctors, I was meeting with some lawyers about some of the complicated legal situations surrounding our efforts to downsize and start over. Between the different legal proceedings going on, there are at least six lawyers involved, and depending on how things progress, could get resolved easily, or could get more protracted.
One the one hand, I am hoping that it will all just simply get resolved and go away. On the other hand, I’m not sure that is in the best interest of many of the parties involved. Today, I met with two lawyers, to help them understand the details, at least from my perspective. This will result in additional negotiations between lawyers, more filings in court, and the outcome is unclear. At least, it felt like the two lawyers got a much better understanding of the issues and provided another giant step sideways.
So, now, I’m back home, trying to get a little writing done, and figure out how to be prepared for whatever comes next.
Another Random Day, IPv6 and NaNoWriMo
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 11/10/2008 - 23:21Today was another day of random geeky and NaNoWriMo stuff. I helped configure a Windows 2008 Server. It provided a good opportunity to test out some more IPv6 stuff.
Out of the box, Windows Server 2008 seems to be working with IPv6 and I briefly connected via IPv6 from the Windows Server 2008 server through a couple IPv6 tunnels to my Linux box. I access both web pages and used SSH. Google Chrome and Firefox both connected to the Apache web server that I have running and PuTTY, a windows client that supports SSH and IPv6 connected to the sshd on my linux box.
Unfortunately, the IPv6 tunnel that the Windows 2008 Server seems to be using is slow and flaky. I kept dropping connections. I want to see if I can find a better tunnel for the Windows 2008 Server.
This took, traveling, and random house keeping tasks took up much of the day. I did manage to visit my quota of blogs today, but didn’t end up leaving as many comments as I normally would. I also managed to get a little farther in my novel. It is going well, but today I didn’t even make 1,667 words, let alone what I figure I need to do to make up for lost time. Tomorrow, I have some personal issues to deal with, but hopefully I’ll get more interesting writing done, both here and in the novel.
November
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 11/01/2008 - 09:02Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit. For all the saints, who from their labors rest. Four more days and the election will be over. It will also be the anniversary of when Kim and I were married and the anniversary of Fiona being baptized. I will be in Washington to cover the election returns. NaNoWriMo, and of course, the top EntreCard droppers of the month. November will be a busy month.
As a kid, we were told to shout Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit out when we first got out of bed at the beginning of each month. Now, as an older blogger, I like to start the first blog post of each month that way. It ties blogging back to the stories of childhood, and that is important, I think.
Today is also All Saints day. It is a holiday in the Christian tradition that I greatly honor. It is a reminder of all the saints that have gone before. For All The Saints (Sine Nomine), is one of my favorite hymns typically sung on All Saints Day or the Sunday immediately following. I flip to an online hymnal to find the words and search for a quote to add, yet the hymn is full of so many wonderful verses. So, I’ve chosen two which capture for me some of the spirit of the hymn and of All Saints Day.
O blest communion, fellowship divine!
we feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
all are one in thee, for all are thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
and hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Yes, the strife is fierce, especially as we lead up to election day, and the election warfare has seemed very long indeed. Over the next few days, we will be doing our final push of what we can to get out the vote. There are difficult questions. Where do we spend our time? Do we drive up to New Hampshire as a key battle ground state? Do we call from our homes or at gatherings? Do we focus on races that are more local, like a very important congressional race in the neighboring district, a key state senate race a district or two away, or a state house race in our own back yard?
For me, I plan on voting first thing on Tuesday. I would think about voting earlier, but Connecticut is part of the minority of states that do not have early voting. After voting, I plan on poll standing and talking to voters who have not thought enough yet about the state legislative races or the questions on the ballot. Then, I will hop on a train down to Washington where I will blog the election returns from NPR studios.
There is a group of bloggers that will be there and I’m honored to be part of the group. Some of the bloggers are writers I have read for a long time and have great respect for, such as Liza Sabater of Culture Kitchen, Faye Anderson of Anderson at Large, Jill Zimon of Writes Like She Talks, Laurie White of BlogHer and Jill Foster doing Mobile podcasts from Utterli. There are several other bloggers that I look forward reading more of and then getting to meet in Washington.
It has seemed strange to go down to Washington to blog. After all, I can probably blog better from my office at home. I have many more resources at hand. Yet there is something special about gathering with other writers. This leads me to two other topics for the month.
National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo starts today. I’ve been to one NaNoWriMo kick off dinner, and I expect that over the coming month I’ll find a few chances to gather with other people trying to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. I wrote a novel last year for NaNoWriMo. I’ve done a bit of editing of the novel and it sits quietly on my hard disk waiting for more editing or for me to decide what to do with it next. It will have to wait. Soon after I finish this morning’s blog post, I will start writing my 2008 NaNoWriMo novel. This year’s novel has the working title ‘Starting Over’, which will be a fictionalized semi-autobiographical recounting of my divorce, career change, foreclosure on my house and bankruptcy.
As to the top EntreCard droppers on me during the month of November, several of the blogs are ones that I regularly read, and I suspect are found on many similar lists, like Worldwide Travel Blog, Shepard Family Values, verITableLIFE, and Turnip of Power, which is running a Social Networking Contest. I’m normally not a big fan of all the contests designed to get links back to a website, but Turnip of Power is a very good blog which I enjoy reading.
Some of the other top droppers for October include rambling stuff with a beautiful picture of a hammer dulcimer at the top of the page, Weather for Headphones, which is a great title for a blog, and Kitchen Retro. Kitchen Retro has lots of great memories from yesteryear. The author of Kitchen Retro is also participating in NaNoWriMo this year, so we’ll see if they remain a top dropper during November.
Other blogs include Technically Easy and Random Ramblings.
So, with all my shout-outs for the beginning of November completed, it is time to begin “Starting Over”. Wish me luck. If you want to read parts of the novel as I write it and offer constructive comments, please let me know.
Fermentation Lock
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 10/30/2008 - 10:49
This is a brief video of the fermentation lock on our carboy full of Cider. It has been going for about four and a half days.
