Casa de Fruita

From yesterday:
Plans for tomorrow:
Bring in the garbage cans
Finish programming the Comcast box
Watch the two football games on the Tivo. I have chips & dip
Probably need to restock the freezer.

- I brought in the garbage, though it took a while because both the garbage and recycling trucks were way late.
- Programmed th Comcast box as well as possible within its parameters. Tivo lets you schedule to record a series which is not currently on its list of upcoming shows, Comcast does not.
- Watched the Seahawks/Dolphins game consuming half a family sized bag of Lay's classic chips and half a jar of French Onion dip to which I had added bacon bits. And called that lunch.

Drove out to Milpitas and Ranch 99 market, but the only frozen stuff I bought was a box each of coconut and durian popsicles.  Also a flat of frozen shiu mai. They had longons! I bought about 4 lbs. And nice big apples at $1.49/lb. Small bananas, I got some 1/4 green ones for later in the week. And grapes were on sale too. They had no frozen ha gow, so I bought some fresh ones and put those in the freezer for later. Also got a pack of cha shu bow.

There were tons of moon cakes on sale at exorbitant prices. I asked the cashier when the festival was, she said there was not festival, they just always sold moon cakes. WRONG. There was a woman from one of the high end moon cake companies standing by her display, I asked her and she said it was this Tuesday, the 15th. Yes! Wish I had someone to moon.

After stuff was put away, I watched the Raiders/NOLA game, sans chips/dip. Started out all Saints, ended up in a cliffhanger win for Oakland.

Delivered was the 100-pack of gun glue rods, and the compost bin. It only took a few minutes to set up the bin, half the battle was deciding where to site it. It just barely fits on the back retaining wall. It's basically a mesh tube with a solid cover and no bottom, held in place by 4 stakes. I shoveled the compost from the original tub into to bin, and while it had almost filled the tub, it barely made an impression in the bin. That had the effect of turning the compost, which was part of the plan, and I did see a couple of live worms in there. I should get another container of them from OSH. The directions which came with the bin were exactly what my sister had told me. So yay!


Still needed milk & frozen dinners, but since I was hungry I had dinner first, a beef thing and a durian popsicle, then went to Safeway and got what I needed, plus one ripe banana (theirs were small too) plus a pair of kiwi fruit, and a kiwano melon, aka small fruity weapon. And minced clams, for the dip which I was going to have with the chips as I watched the 49ers game.

Home, put everything away, was not hungry anymore so I watched the game with cola but not chips. I watched the Comcast DVR recording and got used to their slightly different controls. And was jazzed to see the upscaled UHD image. They don't do true 4k, but they do a solid 1080p, which is sharper than 1080i, but FF is not as smooth. The Logitech remote needs some buttons added (soft keys can be programmed into it) for skip forward & back, CC and letter keys (A,B,C, D). Not tonight.

Meanwhile, overnight the Tivo in the bedroom started to behave itself. But now that I know I want to keep the XFinity box, I'll put the livingroom Tivo back into the bedroom and put the bedroom Tivo back on the shelf, and maybe eBay.

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Totally forgot. First thing in the morning, email from someone in VA who claimed she phoned and left voicemail, but didn't, with a contract to do web and photo stuff, content curating. Sounds like fun, and the contract is 6 months at close to my regular rate. It's at Apple in Santa Clara. Must be a startup they bought. Once she saw my web and Flickr pages, she put my application in.

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Plans for tomorrow:
Maybe I'll schedule a Tahoe tour. I can get a free overnight one from San Jose or Cupertino with my Chase card rewards.
I really ought to play the piano some

Powerless

Last weekend we were told and given written notices that between 8:30 am and 5:30 pm the power to the neighborhood would be out as transformers were upgraded. I had it on my whiteboard.

I was about to get out of bed at 8:35 when it went out. My PC starts automatically at 6:30 am and grabs any new email so I went to see if the UPS would do its job. It did gracefully turn the computer off after 3 minutes.

Don't need electricity to brush my teeth, shower, measure my Hgl, take meds, or eat a banana and a hard boiled egg. The radio in the shower is on batteries so I was able to listen to that for a while.

It was a miserable day outside, lots of clouds, less than 60°, so I put on jeans instead of cutoffs and found a long-sleeved shirt. Loaded my laptop, tablet, camera & 2 lenses into the dino pack and drove to Sunnyvale Caltrain.

There was not a single available parking space in the garage, or in the three overflow lots.

This tells me two things:

1. Employment is at an all-time high
2. But not in Sunnyvale

I drove to the light rail park-n-ride I'd used Sunday, took light rail to Mountain View and Caltrain from there to SF. Hopped on the E train, a series of historic trolleys which Muni's web site said only ran on weekends.  There is a stop right in front of the Exploratorium at pier 15.

Totally atypical for SF, the sun was out, it was warm with a nice breeze. I hung around outside for a while then bought a ticket and spent a few hours amongst the many exhibits. Not a lot of good photos, because the whole place is designed to do things hands on. Many of the exhibits did not work, and a few needed better signage to get you started on just what to do with that string, electric motor and plastic canning funnel. But it was a drop in the bucket to all the ones which were well done.

At about 2 I was getting hungry, so I wended my way to the end of the building where they had an alleged restaurant. Total FAIL. Only three items on the menu, with an "order here" position attended by someone who was doing something else and could not be bothered. None of the items appealed to me. At the register I found a KIND bar and a jar of apple juice.

When I'd seen everything, I got my pack out of the locker and then saw there was more outside. Another half hour outside, then I had to go all the way back through the exhibits again to get to the exit.

Then I remembered TCHO chocolates had a factory next door, and yes, it was on Google maps.  But it turned out to be long gone, and the space is now a parking lot.

I would have liked to stay longer, maybe even go to the baseball game, but OCD set in, so I took the E train to Caltrain to Light Rail to my car & home. Turns out the switch to Mountain View was a good call because the express train doesn't stop in Sunnyvale.

Home, uploaded what photos I took here.

Looking at them, there is one pair which is interesting. The flooded a room with yellow light, which made everything look monochrome. Here's a picture without a flash:


And with the flash:


I played some Ingress, captured the three portals within range of the front of the museum, but was only able to link two of them. Caltrain doesn't work very well because the train is too fast and on my phone Ingress GPS is off enough to put the station portals mostly out of range. And most of the few that I did hack gave me nothing. 

The express at 5:12 was packed. Despite the conductor's PA system rant about there being seats up in the front, people were in the aisles and in the doorways. I'm pretty sure the conductor assumes there are seats available when there are none. CalTrain has no reservation system, and no way of showing from the outside of the car what is available inside. And there is no indication they think this is a problem. Outside of rush hour it isn't.

Watched PTI on the Xfinity box. And NASA's Unexplained Files. Two major improvements over the Tivo - the video is a notch better, and for the first time in forever, PTI played without any audio dropouts or video artifacts.

Dinner was a Marie C port cutlet with apple slices, dessert was a half a pound of longons (ลำไย lam yai if you are playing along in Thai). And a coconut popsicle.

Plans for tomorrow:
Wing it.
I was going to go to a Ranstad company job session, but it turns out it's an accounting firm. And it seems that my enrollment in the NOVA center has run out.
I could use more stuff for the compost bin, maybe I'll visit the recycle center for that