Another Day Not Friday

It felt like it should be Friday all day. Big disappoint dept.: the Friday Bad Movie Night was moved to Saturday, and I am already triple booked. :-(

Nothing to talk about at work, except I got to attend an engineering planning meeting for one of the features of the next product I'll be helping with. Maybe.

I brought a small frozen meal for lunch, in an attempt to have lunch with all the folks who eat in the break room almost every day, but they don't talk to each other hardly at all, and there are ping pong balls flying and a gang playing doubles pool in the far corner making lots of noise. I think I'll resume going out for lunch.

Home by way of Costco, two projects to pick up. The 500 slides scanned to DVD were in, which was a surprise (I expected another week at least) and the posterboard photos for Contact 2014 were there as expected. I went with 11x14 except for one 16x20 of a breaching whale. Last time, 2 years ago, it was all 12x18 and 20x30 and there wasn't enough room for all of them. Also 11x14 cost $10 each as it is. Now I have to go online and buy a bunch of hangers for them. Stick-on plastic ones work fine.

Home, email said Avanquest finally updated CheckDesigner to work with Quicken 2014 (which I bought months ago). Tonight's adventure was putting that on the PC, and updating Quicken, then updating the laptop (it needed Norton and the latest 20 updates from Microsoft) and putting Quicken 2014 on that and downloading the online backup onto it. Laptop is in the bedroom now, hooked up to the charger. I usually run it on batteries as God intended.

Lots for Facebooking today.

On my way home I saw the moon, and it was heading for the sweet spot above the end of my driveway. It was too low to see when I got home, so I set an alarm for an hour, and interrupted my computerizing to mount the telescope on the tripod, install the right angle attachment and a lens, and went out and looked. The moon exactly filled the field of view, full moon , pretty bright. Next step was to try out the camera attachment, which didn't work as expected - the extension tube is the wrong size - but I was able to direct connect the camera. It wouldn't stay aimed, the weight of the camera kept pulling it up too high. But I managed to get a series of acceptable shots, after some Photoshop tweaking for brightness and sharpness. The final one at 1/2000 of a second was the best.

When I got the tripod inside and took off the scope, I saw that the mount could be moved a couple of inches to better balance it, which I did, but there was too much to do (500 slides to organize) and I want to take some pix when the moon is not full. And see if I can get some help at the SJAA on using a telescope lens and extension tube. Orion swore they sent me the right ones for my scope, I just don't know how it all fits together.

Watched some skeleton races, it's like luge except the racer is on her tummy. A much better arrangement, I think.
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
???

Skeleton Key

Watched some of the woman's skeleton finals. The Aussie motormouth color bozo was way annoying so I muted the sound. The checkpoints were chosen for the convenience of the programmer and did not make much sense. Show me speed at every checkpoint, not just one. Show me the curve numbers in real time. Most important, show me the neat artwork on the helmets. One of the Canadians' was awesome, one was awful and the neon-haired American had a great idea but it was poorly executed. A bald eagle can look so much more real and 3D-ish.

Watched some women's speed skating short course, but those gals are huge, or at least they look like Amazons, even the Japanese. When I left it the tiny Chinese gal was still the fastest.

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Boss was not at work, so the time I crashed the database will have to wait till Monday. Silly Cold Fusion setting, methinks. Very tedious data entry now that the one-liners are mostly done. Entering all the steps to test, including EVERYTHING so that people who speak Indglish as a 12th language can automate them. Gah!

Lunch with the gang, we went to Lillie Mae's chicken & waffles, which she just took over now that the soul food house next door is overflowing. Very beautiful waitress but they needed two of her and six more chefs. Our food came an hour after we ordered it.

The joke de jour was we should stop at Costco on the way back so the married guys (everyone in the car except me) could pick up flowers for V-Day.

Left early for a nail appointment. Manager does my nails, she says she can find me a woman, especially if I like Koreans. Which I do. She said she will call me and take me to one of the Coffee Shops Of Ill Repute in south San Jose and hook me up. She said the girls all are born in the US and speak English, but I doubt it. She can guide me with her Viet skills.

Home, stopped at the community center to drop off my $$ for the community Chinese New Year dinner a week from Saturday. They have some sort of dinner every month, I think. I skipped Xmas, because the community is very Christian.

Glad I took that moon photo last night, it's all clouded over tonight and probably will continue that way for a few days. Got a ton of compliments on FB. Also lots of views on Flickr. Boss sent a message asking how it was taken.  Just adjusted it to fit in 11x14 frame and ordered a posterboard print from Costco.

Anyhow, the overcast and threatening rain meant deleting from my calendar tomorrow morning's Capitola photo walk. Too early in the morning for me, and Hwy 17 in the rain is a white knuckle death trap.

Sat down with all the telescope pieces I have, and sort of figured out a way to insert a lens into the extension tube, but not how to attach the tube to the scope. After I finish this I'll look at Orion's web site and figure it out. It will probably be a while before there are clear skies.

Plans for tomorrow:
Michael's and/or Aaron's for poster hangers, slide archive boxes and shoebox-sized boxes for my old B&W negative collection.
3 pm Little Shop first rehearsal
6:30 annual meeting of San Jose Astronomicals.