Bill Roper's Journal

Thanks to everyone for the lovely birthday wishes.

I had a nice birthday. Aside from writing a new song, I had work to do at work. This included watching a project that I've been involved in and have been pushing since December get merged into the main codebase. This will fix up our JDeveloper build system to be a lot simpler and more maintainable. Different versions of this project have apparently been kicking around for years and this turned out to be the one that pulled all of the different threads together and got it done. Most of the changes were done by the build team -- I just got to keep testing it. :)

In and around that, I fixed a few bugs and managed to find time to duck out for a nice birthday lunch with Gretchen at City Barbeque. Gretchen made plans for dinner that involved pan pizza for us from Lou Malnati's while the kids ate macaroni and cheese, because they are not fond of pan pizza. This worked out nicely. Dinner was very silly and introduced me to at least one song that I am surprised that I haven't heard someone sing at a filk. (I suppose that I could pick it up, but it's not really my style.)

After dinner, K invited me to play one of the Mario games against her on her Switch. Since it was a game that wasn't likely to give me motion sickness, I said sure and we had a good time dodging piranha plants. After that, we all regrouped to the family room where we showed the kids "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". They had never seen the film, but now they know where all of the lines that we quote from it came from.

("Sharp pointy teeth.")

It was a good way to spend the day. :)

Today, I got some laundry and some cleaning done. I also updated the website to include the new song, which was useful, because it helped me find some more software that hadn't been installed yet on the new computer (Notepad++) as well as get my setup for Filezilla completed so that I could get to the website.

We've moved into the "shopping for series" mode on streaming. I suggested that we might try "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", because we like the lead actress on "High Potential" and it's available on Hulu. Gretchen wasn't that impressed by the first episode, feeling that it was very predictable. It reminded me of "How I Met Your Mother" in some ways (I think it's a period thing) and I'd like to try a few more episodes to see how it settles in. We'll see what happens.

We have been trying for a couple of weeks to catch the raccoon who has broken into our attic. Two separate traps on the roof did not help, so the animal control service removed those and replaced them with a single trap that blocked the entrance/exit that the raccoon had been using. When the raccoon came out last night, she went straight into the trap where she could be collected today.

Sadly, this was a lactating female raccoon, indicating a high chance of babies in the attic. We have not yet heard from the babies, who ought to be annoyed that Mama Raccoon did not come back last night, but this isn't dispositive. The guy from the service looked in the high attic today and did not find anything. He will look around again tomorrow. The trap remains in place to prevent anyone else from entering and to catch anything else that might be trying to leave.

Meanwhile, Julie's desktop computer which I cleaned all of the dust out of about a month ago started making more noise again and reportedly had a mild funny smell about it. I determined that the likely cause was the power supply, given where Julie had localized the noise to. I figured that I would be blowing out dust again at a minimum, so I went on Amazon and ordered an air gun that is designed to blow dust out of computers.

It is good that I mentioned this to Gretchen, as she had ordered one of these for me for my birthday. Happily, I was able to cancel my order. I *did* decide to order some case fans, because they are cheap and potentially useful. And then I thought it over and decided that the right thing to do is to replace the power supply.

I dug up specs for Julie's system and went on line at Micro Center and ordered a slightly larger (and semi-modular!) power supply. Mission BBQ had been good enough to send me an email offering me a free sandwich for my birthday, so I went down there and had dinner (sans Gretchen, whose stomach is bothering her) and from there to Micro Center, where I picked up the new power supply and headed home by way of Culver's so that I could pick up some dinner for everyone else. Sadly, they were out of the soup that Gretchen had hoped to get and the alternatives seemed like bad ideas.

When I got home, Julie brought her computer upstairs and I opened it up. At this point, Gretchen suggested that it was a good time to give me my birthday present. And this made sense, because there was a lot of dust. The gun blew it out in a giant puff or two.

I got the old power supply out. The new power supply went in, mostly easily, and only required three connections to be made. None of the modular cables were required right now, so they can be saved for later projects.

And when Julie took the computer downstairs and plugged it in, it powered up and was blissfully quiet. :)

K turned 18 today. How did that happen?

She may be an adult, but she will always be my child.

Thanks to everybody for the lovely birthday wishes. I had a nice day (with a full afternoon of meetings for work) and a pleasant dinner with the family, topped off by the chocolate cake that I'd asked for.

School's out for summer, which makes the kids very happy. Mom too, as she can get more sleep.

Meanwhile, I followed a recommendation from C.J. Cherryh and now have two multi-compartment pill dispenser bottles, which may be sufficient for carrying my prescriptions around with me on a long trip. I may have to take an extra bottle for the metformin -- it's a large pill that I take twice a day. But they look promising.

K turned 17 today. We had a lovely dinner of her favorite home-cooked pasta, followed by a very silly game of Murder We Wrote, which is one of the presents that she got for her birthday. The game is something like a combination of Apples vs. Apples and Clue, where the podcast host gets to pick the most appealing story of who did the murder of a particular character with which weapon as they are presented by the other players.

I ended up winning the game, with the deciding explanation being of how Sasquatch was murdered by a Little Old Lady With Too Many Cats using a Lord of the Rings Movie Marathon. Sadly, the poor creature was groomed to death by the cats while fascinated by his first exposure to both television and Tolkien.

But it was a lot of fun, as was the whole birthday.

Today's is Julie's 15th birthday. She was out of school today with the stomach bug that earlier afflicted K and hit her yesterday, but she is feeling better now, so we will shortly be heading out for birthday dinner. This will be followed shortly thereafter by ice cream cake, just as soon as I run to the grocery store and buy one.

I'd have bought it earlier, but the freezer is, well, full.

Gretchen thanks everyone for the kind birthday wishes. She had a good day, as we got lunch at the place that she wanted (Arby's), and a birthday cake that was a pumpkin pie. :)

Thanks for all the lovely birthday wishes.

I fired up the grill this evening, much to the delight of Ruby the Dog, not just because she got a steak bone after dinner, but because I had to be out in the back yard with her so much while grilling. And she really loves it when I throw the ball, or squid, or rope, or whatever for her. :)

It was a good day.

My brother sent me a belated 65th birthday present, which arrived today, just before my 66th birthday. It is an absolutely gorgeous custom electric guitar and amplifier. I have had a chance to unpack them, but not yet to hook them up and play them, which is clearly next on the list.

In the meantime, I have thanked him profusely. :)

Tomorrow, Julie turns 14. Today, we took her out to see "The Bad Guys", which was a fun little animated heist film, clearly put together by folks who understand the tropes.

This evening, I went to the store and acquired the ingredients for tiramisu, which is what Julie wanted for her birthday cake. K assembled it this evening and it is now in the refrigerator cooling.

Prep work is important!