Category: Family

More Chinese Scanning Happenings – Someone(s) in China has been hitting the blog pretty hard. Again. My guess is the blog is getting sucked up into some LLM. My hope is I’m so entertaining that some guy in China is just going through my backlog. If so, HELLO THERE! Or 你好啊!

Grandniece Happenings – Last weekend, The Wife’s niece and the grandniece showed up so they could do some shopping at the places near Ward Manor. Afterwards, I took the grandniece to the neighborhood park, because it is “awesome”. The grandniece loves running around and climbing on things, but she’s still a little cautious of the highest places. I will say anytime with the grandniece requires vigorous use of muscles and joints that normally don’t get used. And then a couple of days later, my body is very insistent on reminding me that I did such activity. It’s why I buy the large bottles of ibuprofen.

Holiday Decorations Happenings – I hate putting up outside decorations. Well, I dislike putting up decorations overall, but I really hate dealing with outside decorations. The Wife loves decorating, both inside and outside. She has been mildly frustrated with me saying no to outside decorations since we’ve been together. Well, I relented. A little. We have a small magnolia tree in the front. As long as I’m not having to do the hanging, The Wife and MIL are going to decorate it. I think the most I’ll need to do is help with setting up the smart plug so the lights will turn off and on at the right times.

Weight Happenings – I finally broke 270 on my last weigh-in. I doubt it will last with Thanksgiving tomorrow, but the trend has been downward since the Manor went on its current weight loss crusade. I’m very proud of The Wife who is down more than 30 lbs since we started in July. Current Weight – 269.2; Tollgate – 250

Blogshoot Happenings – Borepatch posted about hosting another blogshoot in January or February. I’ve enjoyed the two he’s hosted in the past. Hopefully, I will be able to attend. Got a few things going on during the first couple of months that might limit my availability. If able, I’m certainly taking the Bren, the FPC, and my new/old FEG that has yet to be fired.

There Are No Solutions, Only Trade-Offs – One of my long-standing “projects” is how to store/dispense the enormous amount of cat litter needed to deal with six cats. Copilot recommended the Kane Big Bin, which makes sense. The only issue is lack of wall space in the garage for mounting. So, I need to either figure out how to mount it to a wall rack, mount it to something free standing, or come up with another solution.

On a related note, during my searchings, I came across this Houndsy Kibble Dispenser. A bit pricey, but I will admit, there’s something intriguing about it with the handle dispensing a bowl at a time. Plus, I can see having one of those would solve some problems. Again, it’s a case of “do we want to pay that much” as well as a case of “where do we put it”.

Advent Happenings – Well, we’ve decided instead of stocking stuffers – which is what we normally get – The Wife, MIL, and me are getting three refillable advent calendars. The idea is for the other two to fill the boxes of the recipient. Then, we will all open our advents on Christmas Eve.

Weight Happenings – Well, I definitely paid for my indiscretions on Veterans Day according to the scale. On the other hand, I’m now wearing a size lower in pants. Which means I can now use some of those that I kept in storage. Current Weight: 272.6 Tollgate: 250

I’ve decided to date these entries to make it easier on the stats end to see which posts are being read. Particularly after last week’s sudden spike from places afar, I’m kind of curious which of my writings are being absorbed into whatever LLM the CCP is building.

Testing The Rig Happenings – You know it’s been a slow week when my lead item is that I pulled out my new and improved travel workstation setup to test it and make sure everything interfaces okay. For the short time I ran things, it all seemed to work. I had to do some unplug/plug cables, but fear my fully armed and operational travel workstation.

Writing Happenings – I finished draft 1 of my isekai experiment. I’m going to set it down for a bit and let it percolate while I go work on the fourth installment of the Irregulars. The isekai is challenging because I have an aversion to info-dumping, and it feels like I need to do info-dump to get enough of the protagonist’s backstory to make everything understandable. So, how much do I explain versus how much do I let the reader discover? My original plan was something in the 20K word range, which allows for some world building and exposition. I’m toying with expanding to 50K and really fleshing it out. This is why I need to let things percolate for a bit.

Weight Happenings – The good news is that I didn’t gain this week. The loss was less than half a pound, but I’ll take it. Progress is progress. Especially now that I can change my carry rig to IWB. Next week? Well, let’s just say The Wife and I went a little wild on Veterans Day. Current: 271.4; Tollgate: 250

Halloween Happenings – We were planning on doing our normal Halloween with a table in the driveway and handing out party favor type toys. Unfortunately, I was feeling kind of crappy Friday, and then topped it off with a more stressful than usual commute home. So, we begged off and handed over what we were going to hand out to the next door neighbors.

On an interesting note, I saw a right-hand drive Nissan Skyline on the commute home. First time I’ve seen one of those in the wild.

Internet Traffic Happenings – This is usually a quiet little corner of the blogosphere. The most traffic I’ve gotten has been when Tam or Borepatch has linked one of my posts. I don’t know what was going on last weekend, but I went from ten to twenty views a day to well over a hundred. I don’t pay for stats, but the free version of Jetpack tells me that three-quarters of the views are coming from China. I would like to think I’m becoming a viral sensation in the dark corners of the Chinese VPN world, but it’s more likely that the Derek Ward blog will now be part of whatever LLM China is developing.

Weight Happenings – Down a bit this week, which is encouraging. Last Weigh-In: 271.8; Tollgate: 250

Family Birthday Happenings – Last weekend, we traveled down south to celebrate my great-uncle’s 90th birthday party. Mom’s vehicle recently had an unfortunate encounter with a strip of tire from a semi and it did a number on her cruise control and some other systems. So, we took the Wardmobile down to the party. Which was the first time Mom and The Brother got to ride in the Wardmobile. It was good catching up with relatives we don’t see much. It was a bit of a long day.

Crafting Happenings – The Wife is working on a crochet project that requires the use of wooden dowels to provide structure. The point of this entry is because she had a dowel that was too long and needed to be cut. The proper tool would have been using my Ryobi version of a dremel, but I don’t have any saw blades for it. Could use the hacksaw or the reciprocating saw, but that could be difficult with the dowel stuck into the current project. So, we ended up using my branch cutter. The Wife finished up with a bit of sanding, and all is well. I should get some better heads for my rotary tool.

Monitor Happenings – Due to issues with my office’s network and the fact that I have to facilitate a large multi-day meeting, I got to work from home for the better part of this week. This entailed me doing some rearranging of my desk to accommodate my work laptop. Now, before I went back to the office, I had a work desk with a work setup and a personal desk with a personal setup. For work, it was all the monitors I could cram on the desk. For personal, I just used a Dell widescreen. Since returning to the office, I moved over the wide screen and let my personal desk become kind of a landing spot for junk while I used my former work desk for personal. So, why am I bringing all of this up? Because The Wife got to see me use my big wide monitor for using – Excel. This has made her contemplate changing up her work station. I have a feeling I might be shifting some monitors around in the near future.

Weight Happenings – I ticked up a little bit in my last weigh-in. Current: 276.0 Tollgate: 250

Skull One Flashlight Happenings – As promised, I have a pic of the Olight baton with a neat addition provided by The Wife.

Living In The Future Happenings – The nice thing about living in the future is when your wife is having a bad day, you can grab a few same day items off of Amazon and send her a care package to make her feel better. Unfortunately, then there are days that we get a major outage and all those tech tools and games are suddenly not working. Monday was a very frustrating morning. Put me out of sorts for a good deal of the day.

Craft Show Happenings – Last weekend, The Wife, MIL, and me moseyed on down to the local convention center to attend a craft show. Parking was difficult – in part due to the fact that the county has been doing some major additions and renovations to the convention center. Anyways, they were pleased with the number of vendors and had fun looking through the various stalls. I was hoping there would be a leatherworker there, but no luck. I did see some a stall for a distillery who was selling his own vodka and whiskey. Plus cigars. I miss cigars. MIL was looking over a coin purse that she really liked, but couldn’t justify using it as a coin purse. I helped by informing her I could turn it into a “recharge kit” for her phone since she doesn’t routinely carry a battery or cables.

Portable Office Happenings – The Wife and I keep peripherals for when we travel such as keyboards, mice, portable monitors, etc. The idea is we can set up complete workstations when we’re working away from home. Recently, we decided to upgrade some parts based on some trips we have upcoming. One of those was a dual portable monitor because, dammit, we want all the screens. I was eyeing an ASUS for the longest time, but by the time we were ready to buy, I couldn’t find it anywhere. So, I tried the one Amazon was pushing. Yeah. Small problem. It required its own drivers to work. Guess what I can’t install on the work computer? So, I started the return process. While I was still on Amazon, I saw the ASUS was back in stock. Happy accident? On another note, I found it helpful that Amazon is putting their return QR codes on an Apple Wallet card.

Weight Happenings – The spike from last week looks like an erroneous reading or something. I’m now down to where I expected to be if I hadn’t overindulged after my flu shot. The Wife’s program is going very well. Last weigh in, she informed me she is now below her weight when we got married six and a half years ago. I’m so proud of her. Current Weight: 275.6, Tollgate: 250.

Successful Marketing Happenings – I’ve been semi-interested in Olight’s Baton as a concept. At around a hundred bucks, I really wasn’t willing to drop cash on a semi-interesting concept. Then Amazon’s sale knocked them down around $30. Then they offered up their “fighter pilot” design scheme.

Yeah, I was willing to pay the discounted price for that. Particularly when I have a wife who loves her Cricut machines. The plan is to modify their “fighter pilot” to “Skull One”. I want to put the skull and bones on one side and the Macross roundel on the other. I will post the finalized pics when we get it done.

I will say it was a bit bigger than I anticipated. It’s definitely not something I would throw in my pocket. It feels more like a desk thing. If I trusted leaving expensive things in my office, I would leave it there. Anywhoo, at least it’s an aesthetically pleasing little gadget.

Yarn Happenings (but mainly comments on power stations) – The Wife and MIL got a yarn winder. When they told me, I was thinking of something manual, but this thing’s electrical. Like a lot of things, it doesn’t have a traditional plug, and instead receives power through USB. Anywhoo, they clamped it down on the kitchen bar to test. Which meant getting power to the little device. I have two small power stations – a Jackery we picked up before Hurricane Ian a few years back and an Ecoflow River. For as highly rated as Jackery’s are, mine hates running power through traditional plugs. However, it seems to do fine with delivering power through USB. Which is why we used it for the test. It’s also why I’m not buying another Jackery. I’ll stick with Ecoflow. They seem to handle delivering power through USB or traditional just fine. I might be tempted by Anker’s Solix line. I still want to get a few more of these to complement my big batteries. Currently, if it’s storming outside and the power goes out, I’m not going out to hook up the big batteries. I can hook up a few necessities to the smaller power stations to get us through. The small ones are also easier to throw in the back of the car if we’re doing a long road trip. I have also found out that the end product of the winder is called a “cake”.

Camera Happenings – Shortly after moving in, we added cameras to the front and back of Ward Manor. Later we covered one side. Finally, after an incident where a blue bowl suddenly appeared below our window bird feeders, we picked up another camera to cover the last side. Back in July. Between work and other stuff, I procrastinated on getting it up. Then the Ring doorbell we installed many moons ago started having problems keeping connection to the network. And the video doorbell that came installed with the house never really worked all that great. So, about a month ago, we picked up another doorbell. Since we had Columbus Day off, and both The Wife and MIL were going to be out for lunch, I decided that I didn’t have a good enough excuse to put if off any longer. So, now Ward Manor has all sides covered. Now, if Ring would start putting out batteries that take USB-C instead of Micro-USB to charge.

Weight Happenings – As expected, my semi-bacchanalia came home to roost. I haven’t completely erased my gains, but I’m at a serious setback. I know the program works. I just need to work the program. But this holiday season is going to be rough. Last weigh-in: 280.2; Next tollgate: 250.