There's not really a lot to update. I ended up buying a 2026 Honda Passport TSE in August last year, it's got about 7000 miles on it now. I decided to get this very light gray color rather than the dark blue that they offer, mostly because the gray is almost like a pale sky blue. The Toyota trucks & SUV's all have high-strung 4cyl engines & the Passport still has a solid V6 with a 10 speed transmission - no CVT to worry about. Of course it is technically an American car since it's made in Alabama. That means the fit & finish aren't all that great, a few little loose plastic trim pieces here & there, and of course the fuel economy isn't all that good either.
Of course the first car I really drove regularly was my fathers 1979 Jeep CJ7 and I always miss it in some ways. Every time I've considered getting another one like it, I remember how unreliable it was & decide I could just light the money on fire & be better off. The Passport though, is basically the Jeep I always wanted. It's got a 6cyl instead of a 4cyl, it's automatic, selectively AWD, incredibly comfortable, and has all the nice bells & whistles that go into a modern SUV.
Come around November I finally got my Lexus too. After an 11 month wait, I now own what is probably the only IS 350 F-Sport in this configuration. The thing is so unique, I'm actually a little afraid to drive it for fear it'll get smashed up. I took it in for the 6 month service recently and it only has 3000 miles. I gave the key to the concierge and waited a few minutes in the little sound proof box for the service advisor. He opened the door & the first words out of his mouth were, "How in the world did you get them to build this thing without a moonroof?" I thought for a moment & replied, "Persistence."
Our good friend John H. was involved in a rather serious crash in his 2004 Mazdaspeed MX-5 that Chris had given him, and because I hadn't been driving mine very often I sold mine to him in January for a very reasonable sum. While the AC system is abysmal in the summer heat, I'm happy to say he's still very much in love with it and has thankfully not had many mishaps. Because it's sat quite a bit for the last 3 years, some bits of rubber & minor emissions related issues cropped up for a while, but otherwise continues to be a solid daily driver.
I've rediscovered my love of target shooting & have purchased a couple of range toys. Of course I won't be posting photos or videos of any of them here but I've really enjoyed spraying "Freedom Seeds" all over the range. Not that I would ever disrespect Father John, but I've also rediscovered my love of double-action/single-action pistols over the venerable Browning 1911. The best news for me though is I can buy ever DA/SA gun on the market today & still not spend more than about $10K. If I were into DS1911's I could dump that much into just two guns.
You know I still haven't gotten around to updating buckley to fix the archives, the entries are all safe in the database so it's not a rush. Still we're 10 days into August & when we roll into September it'll happen again so I best make a reminder for myself. At least I can say I'm over the cold entirely now but it sure seemed to hang on for a while. I didn't even go to work on Thursday because of a headache I couldn't get rid of, so I pretty much did nothing all day. Here's hoping next week is better.
It's been a long time since I made lasagna so I pulled out my old recipe & got to work. I made a smaller batch & abbreviated a bit of it - normally I use 3 types of meat, veal, beef, and sausage - so that I could make just a half-size pan. The two of us couldn't finish a whole 2lb lasagna in a week - as it is I don't think we'll finish this one but it sure tastes great. I've often considered trying my hand at a vegetarian lasagna but I have a concern about soggy vegetables, and I'm not sure that broccoli and pasta sauce taste all that great together even though they're both technically vegetables.
Work on Project Virgil continues. I struggle through design paralysis entirely too often as I ask myself: "Is this too many buttons?", "Does this order make sense?", "Maybe this check-box should move left a few pixels", "How do I communicate the difference between this option and that option?" Considering the length of time it took to outline the functions, I shouldn't be in a rush to get through the design and build. I guess that means I'm a typical First-World American and I expect instant gratification.
The Lexus should get here this week or next & Chris has said he wants to sell the Volkswagen to make room for it in the garage. He's had that car for such a long time I wonder if he'll end up regretting it. Of course it's his to do with as he pleases & it saddens me to see it go. He's right though - we don't drive it enough & it really needs more care than he wants to give it anymore. I think he'd rather put his time & effort into sorting out his 1997 MX-5 and I don't blame him one bit. There's far more parts we can find for a '97 than for a '74 SuperBeetle and he'll have a lot more fun doing it. I'll switch from the Subaru to the Lexus 350 & so he can just start driving the BRZ instead of his Miata every day. That'll give him more time to spend time working on making it better.
Normally I do my grocery shopping on Friday but because I wasn't feeling well I decided to put it off - I went today instead. It slays me how I can spend nearly $200 on 3 bags of groceries. Not the little throw-away bags, I don't use those. I'm one of those annoying people who brings their own bags & insists on bagging everything myself. I use the self-checkout and I don't care how busy it is. I'm doing it myself. I got sick of the kids just throwing everything in the same bag with no rhyme or reason. Tossing cans in with bread & potato chips. If I'm spending $200+ on these groceries, I'd like you to be more careful about how you pack them. As I was walking out of the store this afternoon I passed by the florist who asked me, "Would you like some complimentary flowers? New ones have come in & these bouquets have to go." So of course I replied, "Yes, thank you very much."
A nice vase of flowers in the kitchen makes the entire place feel happier, and of course the smell is divine. :)
The week was more stressful than usual because of in-person meetings & social interactions which I'm not good at. We had a nice lunch at least, but I was expecting us to be meeting to discuss a particular project or topic. Turns out, it was just lunch. I was unable to avoid the urge to just go back to my desk & continue working on the projects I have in-progress on the Jira board. I did learn some things about cow-orkers that I hadn't known before & I guess such things do make for better understanding of perspectives.
I haven't updated much this week because of all the work on various projects. To be perfectly honest, the joints in my fingers hurt from typing so much. I've been typing almost non-stop as part of my job for 30+ years & it's taken a toll. I had to do a hard branch of Project Virgil due to threading issues. Basically, start over from scratch on the UI & work my various methods & ServiceHandlers into it. My days are fairly strictly scheduled for very good reasons & I decided to sacrifice blogging time for coding time.
Wasn't feeling well last evening after dinner & had a 100+ fever by the time I went to bed. I took some cold meds to keep the fever in check & got some sleep. Fever burned itself out around noon today & I'm doing a lot better. That's why I have the time to update, I did get some chores done today despite being sick but I had to trim it down a bit as I just don't have the energy.
My Samsung phone has been pretty crappy since the new OneUI update so I stopped at the store for my carrier & bought a Motorola Razr 2025 folding smartphone. I must say I'm quite satisfied with the reduction in size, this thing actually fits in my pockets, AND, in the front pocket of my bag. I give it probably a week before I drop it, that's why I still have the old one here.
Lastly, today is the 1st of August 2025 & the Lexus IS350 F-Sport that I custom ordered in December of 2024 should be here in 15-20 days. For some reason I'm still not ready to believe they're going to deliver it this month, but I've had multiple conversations going back the last couple of months with the dealership which could best be summed up as: "Dude, where's my car?"
I'm very much looking forward to lunch tomorrow.
-Kate
[ Update ] : The archive function isn't working as it should right now. I anticipated this because I didn't fully test Buckley with proper month/date rollover testing & just started using it. It isn't that important since views will be so low & I knew the archiving section was going to be janky. Will fix.
So just after I remark about how cool the weather has been the temperature goes up over 110F for the entire next week.
It's okay though, we're almost to August and the Equinox happens near the end of September; That's when the days are still blazing but the nights cool down quite a bit. I don't really mind the heat so much myself but it really does a lot of damage to the paint & plastics on the cars.
Of course I spent more time on Project Virgil yesterday & tonight. I also rewrote a couple sections of Project Sentinel to improve thread stability - less crashy when switching between streams & killing a child doesn't murder the parent too. That's the thing about writing every day is that it gets boooring because almost every day is the same. At least I can report the construction noise is reduced the last few work days & the offensive paint odors are gone as well. I hope it continues this way but I know it can't last. I'm still stuck in the same general vicinity of a troll who has to talk AT FULL VOLUME ANY TIME HE SPEAKS. I swear he must have hearing problems. Or everyone in his family does.
My manager actually works hundreds of miles from me on a daily basis & is only ever in town a few times a year. Tomorrow is a team lunch & meeting event that I'm not thrilled about attending but will force myself to be there anyway for the sake of staying informed. They always provide a very nice lunch and it's good to get everyone in the same room for an hour or so at least a few times a year just so we can remember what everyone looks like.
It's almost time to get ready for the morning so I'll leave it there.
Here's my favorite song for the last year or so. Enjoy
Today I had the salmon Caesar salad for lunch & Chris had his usual. Jason was our server & he's a nice kid. Lots of familiar faces again & the food was superb as usual. I did the grocery shopping on Thursday this week so Chris could drive the Subaru to work on Friday because it's been pretty warm here & his little MX-5 hasn't got great A/C performance in the summer. Not only because it's a convertible but because it's 27 years old & has the OE compressor. It's a bit long-in-the-tooth as they say. Thankfully it's been a little bit cooler here this summer than last; over-all it's been rather mild with only a few days so far over 110 dungarees Frankenstein as AVE says. With any luck we're ~3 weeks to Lexus delivery & he can drive the Subaru every day.
It's just after 11PM here and I can hear the hoonigans out there on the 101 racing up & down the freeway. The 101 is over a quarter mile from my house, that's how loud those engines are screaming. To my not-trained-ear it sounded like a Ford Mustang was racing a sport bike. Having owned & ridden a BMW F800GT motorcycle, my money is on the bike. I enjoy a sporting drive as much as the next person but having spent time in an actual race car on an actual race track I understand the limits of the average driver & that it's simply not safe for anyone to be hooning around too much on the public roadways. The kids on those bikes down here though...holy moly do they take chances.
I'm juggling back & forth today between Project Virgil & Project Sentinel and to be perfectly honest with you my eyes are getting blurry. I've spent a lifetime banging out code but the last couple of months have been brutal. Not only do I have personal projects left & right but there's so much scripting & testing to be done at the office that I'm going to need a vacation in short order. Maybe after the new car gets here we can spend a weekend in Flagstaff or take a drive to California to tour a museum. I'd love to see if I could get a tour of Jay Leno's Garage out in Burbank.
A good friend is on a business trip out East & drove up to Maine for a weekend excursion. It's a beautiful part of the country. Here's a pic he sent:
It's getting late so I'm going to press this page, make some last minute updates to Virgil & Sentinel & then I'm calling it a night. Sweet dreams.
I've officially shut down sandman and stopped dev work on rambler; nash is the main dev workstation now & this update will come from there. Many updates for Project Virgil today, dozens of changes & three solid commits. I still haven't found the right vim color theme for the terminal but I'm getting by, I'm not sure I want to sully this box with vscode. I think I'll keep rambler around as a little chatbox for IRC and just remote desktop into both of them at the same time. Keys are exchanged & there's network storage so it's simple enough to move things around.
Today was a pretty productive day. I put together the framework for a new discovery tool that I need to develop in order to facilitate absorption of some external equipment. I have to pull in their design & replicate it as best I'm able while making it conform to our legal & contractual obligations. I'm going to call it, "The Probulator". I got a couple of training things out of the way, and a couple of issues updated & logged. I started work early so I left a bit early & got my grocery shopping done today. Now I don't have to rush around tomorrow to get everything done, I can go a a slower pace.
I need to try to stay on a specific schedule because it helps me keep focus. When my schedule gets off, I seem to get overwhelmed easier & feel like I'm always late for something. I've made it a point today to remain on task and it feels nice.
A moment of reflection occurred today sparked by a fruit.
There are three sort of people when it comes to things like a peach. The type who will pick up the peach, inspect it for worms, then begin to eat it without a concern. Another type will inspect the peach & then wash it off to make sure that any pesticides, dirt, or other cooties linger on the surface of their tasty snack before dining. The remaining sort (the category I fall into), is to inspect it, clean it, then slice & prepare it in the most efficient manner to enjoy. I'm not sure what any of that means or if it's even remotely accurate. I don't mind doing a little extra work to make an experience more enjoyable.
Good progress on Project Virgil today. It's really nice to see a concept of so many years come to life a little at a time. Tomorrow is my Friday & I might just do a grocery run after work instead of doing it on Friday. That'll give me more time Friday to work on it & see how much progress I can make.
Someone scheduled a meeting at 8AM so I figured I'd go to bed early & make an update while I listen. I doubt they'll need me for this anyway just yet.
Yesterday at work I got some good things done, two projects effectively signed off, only final paperwork to complete. Of course it's just July so we still have three months of sprints before things calm down a bit, but right about now is the start of budgeting for next year so we're all going to have to get spun up and ready for that too. At least it's a predictable pattern of abuse. :)
Last night I wrestled entirely too long with XRDP sessions to my new Linux system, pretty embarrassing to be honest. Of course it was DNS. It's always DNS. If certain applications can't reverse look up their hostname they simply refuse to do the needful; sort that out and viola, the curtains are raised and the show may begin.
I took a minor diversion from Project Virgil to set up the new workstation. I probably should have started up again today but then did another side quest to port Swann-Sentinel to C++ and it did not go as expected. I spent too much time in QT Widget hell & may trash the concept entirely because it just feels too fat. My original goal was to go with CSS/HTML/JavaScript but the persistent threading issues I have with Python made me try C++ on a lark. I have all day to reconsider that.
Oh wait, they do have a question. Yes, in fact, Oracle/Alma/Rocky & RHEL Linux are all 100% binary compatible. I will be able to port their applications with aplomb.
While I love the Subaru because it's sofa king fun to drive
I must confess to longing for the more comfortable ride and seating postion of the Lexus.
At least this meeting is finished. Let's hope today is glorious!
I spent the entire day yesterday working on projects and setting up the development environment on the little Beelink system only to tear it down and start over with a different release of the OS today. I was going to make a note about it but I spent so much time on it that it was time to just go to bed & do more today after work. I'm going to go from Oracle Linux 8.10 up to Alma Linux 9.6 and see if I like it. The development environment should be about the same, but it'll give me a fresh perspective on another distro.
Today the office was fairly quiet in the morning & I were able to get quite a bit of things finished; there were some problems on the release I put together last week but they got sorted out today. Of course as the old book goes, "If you give a mouse a cookie...it's going to want a glass of milk.". As expected they were full of further requests today (including several of which I had already informed them I would not be able to resolve), and I had to gently show them the door. I was asked to build a framework, a release candidate, and deliver a baseline production unit #1. Baseline means Baseline. The only specs I had were a that they wanted a basic dev stack for python & C/C++. They got exactly what they asked for and pretty much nothing else. I warned them it was going to be like this if they weren't specific but they didn't listen.
In the mid afternoon the contruction workers started painting in one of the new areas and the smell overwhelmed me. I felt nauseated & started to develop a headache so I moved to the freezing office downstairs which is so cramped that it must be similar to what it's like working in a submarine. Only one person can walk down any aisle at a time & there's barely enough room to turn around if you go the wrong way. It's right next to the server room & it's cold as heck in there; to the point I have a battery operated/electric jacket.
Much work has been done on Project Virgil but production grade code is a long way off. I just have to make some progress every day. Now I'm going to listen to the rest of the Carmudgeon Show while I get things ready for work tomorrow. Let's hope it's a glorious day.
