Goals and victories review (Jun 09)

Goals:

(Recreation and fitness)

• Blue belt done
• Green belt done
• Brown belt
• Climb an Adirondack high peak progress
• Complete my electronics project (the WSG)

(Work)

• Rewrite polarimeter software 
• Complete next experiment (HAPPEX-III) progress

(Home)

• Organize shed progress
• Repair house exterior

(Financial)

• Reduce debt y y n n y n – - – - – - / N
  (y(n) means we did (did not) meet my specific debt reduction goal in the given month; final Y(N) means we have (have not) met my goal cumulatively in the months so far)

Victories:

• Purple belt second tip
• Blue belt
• Rewrote Compton polarimeter decoder software
• Blue belt first tip
• Recovered from pneumonia
• Performed at Gilbertsville, Syracuse May Day, Cortland May Day, Oneida Plant a Row for the Hungry garden, Sudz tour in CT/MA
• Got rid of Stairway to Nowhere and much other trash and yard waste
• Blue belt second tip
• Green belt
• Replaced basement door
• Cleared brush growth near Bilco door
• Polarization measurement with new electron detector
• Finished removal of concrete hazard to navigation

Higher priorities have put the electron detector software rewrite on hold; I’m counting them as progress on getting the experiment done.

Another month, another failure to organize the shed. Rain, end of school events, weekend away at the Sudz all contributed. I did start the job, a little. (And I did a lot more on Sunday, but that’s July.)

House exterior work is officially off until next year. Maybe I should have set a more vague goal. The chunk of concrete has been broken up and hauled away, but giving myself exterior work credit for that is not something I can allow myself to get away with twice. Also, I’ve made progress on painting the study — it’s slow going, but one wall was done aside from scraping up paint that got on the floor. (In June. Two walls are done now.)

“Progress” on the high peak climb means I’ve done some research, decided on a pair of peaks (close to one another and not a big descent/ascent to get from one summit to the other, so people usually do both), and made campground reservations. The trip is on for this month.

We had an expensive month (for instance, replacing four tires on one car — a month after replacing four tires on the other car). Didn’t meet the financial goal for the month, and we’re behind on the goal for the year. The good news is Heather gets three paychecks this month, so I’m optimistic about catching up.

I am somewhat amused…

by Facebook group listings like this one:

Group: Americans for Mark Sanford
Size: 3,391 members
Type: Common Interest – Politics
New: 136 Fewer Members, 32 Wall Posts

And that “Fewer” number keeps going up.

Not that some of the Faithful aren’t holding the line:

May I say that NOW is not the time to close this site. Now is a time for EVERYONE to realize that we ALL make mistakes some that seem bigger than others, but mistakes none the less. Now may be a time to change the name to Americans in Prayer for Mark Sanford. As Governor Sanford stated in his address to the South Carolina State House,”The law of God is there to keep you from destroying yourself, and I broke the Law of God” If we are ever to see men like Ronald Reagan in the White House again we MUST all pray so in times of weakness… the Holy Spirit will protect them.

How very Christian, to so forgive a man, as long as he’s a Republican. But… a “mistake”? No, sir. Forgetting to pick up milk on the way home is a mistake. Screwing your Argentinian lover behind your wife’s back while publicly bleating about the sanctity of one-man-one-woman marriage isn’t a mistake. It’s a choice. Sanford chose hypocrisy as did Vitter, Craig, Ensign, Gingrich… the list goes on.

The Democrats may have their Bill Clintons, their Eliot Spitzers, their John Edwardses. What they don’t have is a staked-out position on the moral high ground, lecturing their inferiors about traditional, strait, allegedly Biblical family values while having illicit affairs. They may be liars and cheaters, but give them this: they achieve nowhere near the hypocrisy of a philandering conservative Republican.

This day and that

Father’s Day is the third Sunday in June, so the latest it can be is the 21st, which it what it was this year. That puts it two days before the 23rd, which was my parents’ anniversary… and is ours.

This is a favorable conjunction from the LOOT LOOT LOOT perspective, especially since Heather forgot she was going to hold back some of the stuff until the anniversary and gave it all to me on Sunday, so today she had to go shopping for more.

Fourteen years… going pretty darn well so far!

I have no idea if this is true, but I did it anyway

“If you’re on Twitter, set your location to Tehran & your time zone to GMT +3.30. Iranian security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut down Iranians’ access to the internet.” Cut & Paste & Pass it on

The heres and theres

So:

A week ago Friday we went to my niece’s high school graduation in New Hampshire. We drove there during the day, attended graduation in the evening, drove about an hour back in a Syracusewards direction to Lowell, Massachusetts where we had a hotel room reserved, spent the night, and returned home Saturday. My other sister was there from Houston too. Good to see them again, however briefly. But there was too much to attend to at home to stay away longer.

Between karate, piano lessons, the Sudz, and various end of school year activities, things were hectic generally. Beginning with Monday (20 days ago) and continuing through last Wednesday it was: Karate, karate, karate, piano, Sudz, Sudz, Sudz, karate, karate, karate, piano, NH, MA, off, picnic + karate (sequentially, not simultaneously), karate + piano (likewise), karate. That last was belt graduation, when Kenny got his brown belt. That puts him in the advanced belt ranks. Wow.

Saturday morning I worked on painting the study. There’s way too much stuff in the study to move easily, especially since there’s nowhere to move most of it, so I’m shoving things away from one wall at a time and painting that. Then it was back to the dojo again — with a stop along the way to check out a neighborhood’s garage sales, and the second one I went to turned out to be staffed by an older woman whose two assistants were a brother and sister who are in Kenny’s karate class. At the dojo I did an hour and a half of “boot camp” which I fully expect to feel for the next couple of days… and this is Fitness Week coming up.

After lunch Kenny and I went to Fleet Feet and bought two pairs of running shoes, which we inaugurated this morning with a 1 km run.

This afternoon our friend Maria had her 60th birthday party, and Wild Blue Morris along with the Bassett Street Hounds danced.

This brings you up to date on my wild and glamorous life.

Oh, there it is

The second time I looked over the Champion Plus I discovered I’d overlooked the chisel.

Later I stumbled across the wood saw.

Just now, thanks to this site, I found out it has a straight pin (and I learned where to look for it).

I think I’ve found everything now.

(It’s called a Champion Plus because it has more tools than the Champion. Both models now are retired. Neither is to be confused with the SwissChamp, which has even more tools.)

I knew I bought the wrong knife

Back in the army again

Four years and about seven months or so. That’s how long it took from the time I bought Swiss Army Knife #6 to the time I lost it. No idea where or how, I just discovered one day it wasn’t there. Of course around the same time I lost my sunglasses, and found them weeks later in the bottom of my knapsack, so it could turn up again.

It hasn’t though, so I decided to buy #7. And #8.

REI Outlet was having a 20% off one item promotion, and they had several SAKs listed at prices well below what I found elsewhere even before the 20%. They didn’t have the Explorer, though, which I would’ve liked even though it’s really a bit bulky and heavy for the pocket… but wait, they had the Economy Climber with most of the blades of an Explorer. But no Philips screwdriver or magnifier; for those you’d need something like the Champion Plus which is definitely too big and heavy for a pocket… but could live in your bag… hmm, so if I bought two knives, one for the pocket and one for the bag… right.

So now I have twice as many knives to try to keep track of. On the other hand, I probably won’t lose both simultaneously, so won’t go knifeless again (knock wood).

I don’t see either the Climber with rough scales nor the Champion Plus listed on the Victorinox web site. The latter, as someone says in the comments on the REI page, is kind of an odd name, since it has fewer tools than the SwissChamp (no wood saw, pliers, or pin). But it’s not as bulky as I’d expected, though fatter than my old Explorer Specialty Plus.

Four and a half years is way better than I was doing about a decade ago, though still well short of the time I hung onto my first two SAKs. I can shoot for my old record, right?

ETA: Oh, wait, the Champion Plus does have a wood saw. They don’t show it in the photo and I missed it the first time I checked, but it’s there.
ETA2: Hm, maybe REI Outlet prices weren’t so great… amazon.com seems to beat them. Oh well.

s’udz

The S’udz went well.

7 dancers and a musician toured as the Binghamton Morris Men. Of those, one was from the Binghamton area. One from Ithaca; two from Syracuse; one from western Massachusetts; one from Concord, MA; one from Maryland; and one from Maine. Two dancers were able to dance only limited amounts due to injuries, so we usually borrowed at least one dancer from Newtowne, with whom we toured during the day Saturday, and at the show dancing that evening we borrowed a Bouwerie Boys member (who started ages ago with Binghamton). The other five of us did every dance that day, and as we were touring with only one other team, there were a lot of dances. Weather was excellent. Food was good. Beer was excellent. Good campfire singing Friday night, but both nights I got to bed before 1 am.

At least 3 Priuses parked at the campsite. Mine made the ~450 mile round trip on one tank of gas with some to spare, about 54 MPG.

Skeuddcvz

The Suds, as it is sometime spelled, is a men’s morris event, held annually by the Bouwerie Boys near Falls Village, Connecticut. It was my first event with the Binghamton Men, back in 2002, and I’ve been back since but not recently — I’m not quite sure when was the last time. Maybe 2006?

I’ll be going this year, this upcoming weekend. The BMM will have just six dancers and one musician, I think — which is better than it was looking for a while.