Bill Roper's Journal

There are just limits to what you can get done in a weekend, especially when you have two dogs who are anxious to compete for your time. I appear to be Calvin's "safe person" and when he is threatened by Ruby, he will hop up on top of me in my chair looking for protection. This annoys Ruby, because Calvin is now hogging her person. (This is not to say that the dogs do not love the other people in the house -- I just appear to be the household alpha.)

The Christmas tree did not get straightened up in its stand today, because that's a three person job really and I was not going to get that level of cooperation. But one of the tubs of Christmas decorations has gone back to the basement and most of the decorations are actually up which is a good thing.

The driveway was also shoveled by Julie and me in various shifts. Julie does not quite realize that the apron is part of the driveway, but I have explained this to her and hope to have better luck next time. Gretchen suggested that I should fire up the snowblower, which probably would have been the best idea if I already had gas and was sure that I had the appropriate snowblower oil *and* had an empty gasoline container. Maybe before the *next* major snow. Today's was about five inches, which is definitely a depth where the snowblower becomes worthwhile.

I bought more plugins and software upgrades while they are on sale. Now I just need to *do* something with them...

And I cleaned off the top of the bookcase in my bedroom, putting the stuff that had accumulated there away for its safety. I'll need to remember where I put it when I need it. That's the tricky part. :)

Tomorrow, it's back to work and I have a *lot* of things to do. Happily, I updated the password that was going to expire today when I logged in *yesterday*...

We decided to install a baby gate at the top of the stairs to keep Calvin, The Very Hungry Dog (a.k.a., The Appetite on Four Legs; a.k.a. Dr. Chew-It-All) on the first floor which is both much more dog-proof than the upstairs and also not a zone where Sunshine the Cat (a.k.a. What Do You Mean, *Dog*?!) tends to wander. Also, it keeps Calvin from eating all of Sunshine's food. This is all a great theory.

I bought an extra tall gate so that I could get it to hit the flat part of both banisters at the top of the stairs. Unfortunately, this particular gate design has a plastic ramp that sits on the ground and if it is installed so that you hit the banister posts, then the edge of the ramp goes over the lip of the step, which is a Bad Idea (TM).

Ok. Let me install the gate on the landing instead. Except if I put a 36 inch tall gate on the landing so that the foot is in the right position, then it doesn't contact the banister post there. A 30 inch tall gate will work.

The 36 inch tall gate is now tagged to return to Amazon tomorrow and a 30 inch tall gate of the same design is now on order.

I have now failed at two consecutive weekend projects, which is starting to annoy me.

I am going to go get the recording laptop and record some scratch tracks. I *could* do this in the studio, except I would have to do more rewiring under the console and that seems counterproductive...

Today is garbage day, so the trash cans needed to be removed from the side of the garage where I park. Also, the weather didn't suck, which meant that this was a splendid time to unload the van and get all of the Dodeka boxes back onto their shelf. Accordingly, I parked in the driveway after lunch.

I moved the brooms that sit in front of the bookshelf where the gridwall sits and looked at the bottom shelf. There were two boxes of ancient peel-and-stick vinyl tile that had come to the house with us. It struck me that no one in the world really wanted that tile. So I tossed it in the trash, which is now *much* heavier. Then I started looking at other things on the shelf to see what I could dispose of.

Do I *really* need a large box full of Chicon V reimbursement forms? I think not! Or credit card slips for a imprinter? Heck, no!

I did find some things that might be useful that we had forgotten that we had, like some craft boxes designed to be painted that Gretchen had purchased at one time or another and that I am sure that the kids will want to get their hands on. And things that were less useful, but still interesting, like a World War II bayonet.

And finally, there was the bag that contained the rest of my coin collection, removed from the albums that it had once occupied and placed into rolls -- if it wasn't in coin sleeves. The odd coins were mostly in sleeves. A two cent piece, three cent nickel and silver pieces, a half dime, various other very old coins -- although I didn't find the Flying Eagle cent that I thought that I had bought at one time or another. But it's possible that had lurked just out of my price range, much like the St. Gaudens $20 gold piece that I could have purchased for $45 way back when.

It's nice to have found it. Some time, I need to show the kids what Dad used to do for fun.

Coin collecting was a lot *more* fun when you could collect coins from circulation. Sadly, that's pretty much an obsolete practice unless you want to collect a lot of clad coins.

Which I suppose is a valid hobby.

Still. :)

A friend is coming by later this week to work on my pinball machine and (with any luck) get it working again after six years of lying fallow. He asked if I had a soldering iron.

Well, I *have* a soldering iron. *Finding* the soldering iron is another matter altogether.

Tonight, I ransacked the laundry room where the tool shelf sits, hunting for my soldering iron.

I didn't find it. But on the floor, I found an old Archer soldering iron, still attached to its card. I'm going to assume that it works. But there was no solder to be found there.

I went to look in the studio. I threw away several cable envelopes that should have departed a while ago and eventually discovered a spool of solder.

But still no soldering iron. Why the solder was there and the soldering iron wasn't bothers me.

Not enough to keep looking though.

In other news, the low tire pressure light on my dash went off on the way home from the baseball game on Thursday night. This led to my looking for a reasonable place to put air in your tires, which is rather more of a problem than it used to be.

Last night, I gave up and ordered a battery-powered air compressor.

Today, my tires are full.

And I have an air compressor for the next time this happens.

That was a trip. :)

K is in school down at Ball State in Muncie and this is Parents' Weekend, so we dropped the dogs off to be boarded, drove down yesterday, checked into a motel, visited with K over dinner, went back to the motel, got some sleep, picked up K and a friend, got lunch, went back to the dorm, visited with K for a while, took her to Walmart to buy Cheerios (and other things), dropped her off at the dorm, drove home, made an unscheduled stop to buy a stuffed horse, and have just arrived home in time to fall into bed so that we can get up tomorrow and redeem the dogs.

We're tired.

But it was a good trip and it was nice to have some time to shoot the breeze with Phil Midkiff on various subjects. :)

Tomorrow, it's laundry and back into the studio to see if I can work on a few things that showed up in the truck test of the current album on the way to Ball State.

Whee!

I have way too many things to do this weekend and did not get nearly enough of them done today. I'll get back to it tomorrow.

But we did manage to get Calvin the Dog the last of his puppy shots, so that's one thing down. And Gretchen has signed him up for obedience training classes starting next week, which is also good.

Given our experience today, Gretchen has ordered a harness for the puppy, because his collar is not very good at staying on and he is highly resistant to following the leash to get into the car. Or *out* of the car, neither of which is good, but which is better than it will be as he gets larger and harder for me to lift. He is already large enough that no one *else* in the house is going to be able to lift him.

Go team!

I have engaged in retail therapy.

I'll explain later.

I'm going to the Cubs vs. Reds game tomorrow night and decided that I could skip today's game against the Orioles, which meant that I missed a great ending, but how can you know?

What I *did* know was that there were a lot of things that needed to be done around the house. Gretchen and Julie spent several hours straightening things up in the dining room. There are *still* a lot of things in there that need to be dealt with, but I was able to put the table back in the useful position for a table with chairs around it for the first time since the COVID pandemic. We will take this as a win.

I also got two more loads of laundry done, took the two new monitors down to the basement to be installed later this week, cleaned the air filters on the A/C system, dispatched a mountain of bubble wrap in the living room that the monitors had been wrapped in for shipping, threw out a bunch of trash, and threw the ball for Ruby the Dog.

The last was the activity that probably made me and the dog happiest. :) Although there's a *lot* to be said for the dining room cleanup...

It was eighty degrees downstairs despite my best efforts as of a few minutes ago, so I have given up and buttoned the house back up with the A/C turned on. I need to be in the office working tomorrow and I would *much* rather be comfortable.

The new chime came today. Happily, it is just about the same size as the old chime and *barely* fits in the space the old chime was in. (This wouldn't be so much of a problem, but the chime for the alarm system was installed just above the old chime.) It took maybe 15 minutes to get it wired up. When Julie threw the breaker in the basement to restore power, I went to the doorbell, pressed the button, and got a very enthusiastic "Ding Dong!" from the new chime.

I may yet decide to replace the doorbell, but I think I have had enough projects for the week. :)

In other news, I bought K a monitor with a stand that will clamp onto the edge of her desk in the dorm. That is, *if* her desk *has* an edge in the dorm. But if not, it looks like there are slats on the bedframe that it can be clamped onto, so it should be possible to make it work.

Now, I just need to get her a laptop...

Picked up the bass tracks that Jen recorded today and started uploading them into Cubase. The first one I listened to sounds fine, so all's good there. Yay!

In other news, I discovered -- after I managed to unprogram every remote for the garage door opener -- that I had installed the new battery upside down, which explains why nothing I tried was working. Once I fixed that, it worked much better. *Then* I reprogrammed Gretchen's remote so that it still worked, because *not* fixing that would have been a distinctly unfriendly act. :)