My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on June 28, 2020

Flew on the airlines for the first time since COVID19 to Florida via Baltimore (photo BWI terminal above) last week and thankfully the flights and negotiating the airport was uneventful. Besides a computer glitch which backed up lines on check in, everything else went smoothly. It is yet to be seen if the rise in cases and hospitalizations in Florida (Texas and other states) is going to change the return to a somewhat normal pattern for traveling, but at least as of June 2020 the trip down and drive back went well (Oddity: only one flight attendant working on my Southwest flight from BWI to FLL seemed to be resisting the “wear a mask” policy .. strange?)

Besides the condo cleaning (ugh, really needed Brenda) the closing up for hurricane season and repairing was “as expected.”  When things are old, they degrade .. and I really wasn’t overly shocked at the rust behind the chrome bathtub fitting; there must have had a lot of water dripping behind it? I replaced the cheaper fixture with stainless steel screwed “sturdier handle” that should last longer than the previous one.

One of the security sensor continues to fall off the 3M foam tape so along with replacing the batteries, I added a couple small screws to prevent the glues from letting go again (photo left). I definitely do not like false “door opening” warnings on my phone!

The old Office Depot corporate campus building in Delray Beach is coming down and according to the preliminary plans, a new walk-able 49 acre shopping area may take its place in the Germantown Road/Congress Road intersection. I’m sure it will not happen overnight, but it was good to see the demolition taking place as I’d love having this within walking distance (current demolition and 2018 architectural concept below).

After a few days closing up the condo, I headed to the boat with the full intention of meeting an engine repair guy. While I touched-base a few times, I sensed that he was having second thoughts and making up excuses. Sure enough, after I picked up the parts I had ordered for the heat exchanger and cooling system (ordered the previously), he canceled on me. So I pondered tackling it in the 90 degree heat by myself and decided instead to just do the hurricane preparation for Encore. Thankfully all went well, but I definitely am not used to the high summer Florida heat and humidity … it wasn’t a relaxing time on the boat. Who knows what he future holds?

I headed back to the aging Honda Odyssey minvan (dead battery .. another pain but thankfully I had my tools and jump starter with me). After installing a new battery, I checked in with the Bed and Breakfast (an inside joke) outside of Savannah GA. As always, they welcomed my stopping and it gave use time to catch up on things. Mark has been busy around their new house with a lot improvements. He never stops doing things – probably why we get along so well? Besides the house and his garage workshop projects, he has also been paying attention to his health. I was shocked how great he looked (minus 30 lbs!!!) He is an inspiration for me to be sure!

As usual, Dar and he fixed a great dinner pork on the grill dinner and always make it special adding “green beans” to the meal (my favorite veggie – I don’t get them at home). Mark showed off his “old is new again” Crosley record player (turntable) and re-collection of old albums. Definitely enjoyable to listen to the old pops and crackles of vinyl – who would have thunk it? (Taylor would love it) The conversation never stopped and carried us past midnight .. I slept like a rock.

With all that is going on in the country, it is sure nice to have friends who are caring and reflective of what Americans “can be” if they chose. We need more Jones! Thanks Mark and Dar.

Heading towards home – South to North Carolina boarder

Category: Archive, Friends, Misc, Personal, Photos, Sailing, Travel | No Comments »
Tags: airlines, cleaning, condo1718, coronavirus, covid19, crosley, dar jones, encore, friends, mark jones, Photos, record player, repair, southwest, Travel

Posted By RichC on June 27, 2020

I’ve used the same combination of featherboards on my table saw for years (photo left). I also have a Shopsmith commercial featherboard which fits the smaller table perfectly, but it only works to hold larger sized pieces against the fence on my cabinet saw.

Then there is the temporary one that I made 40 years ago (photo left) and I’ve never bothered to replace it. When I need a hold-place, it tends to be the one I use most often and have a pinched wedge trick to hold it firmly to the table (click for larger). I’ve never bothered to make a new one or even a better way to clamp it in place.

So I’m saving the photo above and will make it a project on some cold and rainy day … if Mark Jones doesn’t beat me to it – lower section of this post!

🙂

Category: Archive, Ideas, Woodworking | No Comments »
Tags: clamping, featherboard, jigs, mark jones, tablesaw, woodworking

Posted By RichC on June 26, 2020

Besides Google’s less intuitive cloud storage, Dropbox was the first cloud service that I gravitated to “back in the day.”  I’ve posted about them before on TechFriday (2015 comparison) and they are still one of the best cloud storage services for the way I work on computers and devices. Unfortunately over the last few years they also have had to figure out how to monetize data storage and this began with offering more storage for more money THEN a little arm twisting by restricting devices. Giant tech companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft (and smaller ones) also expanded in the cloud storage area and could offer bundled services or advertising as a way to offset growing their cloud businesses.

In my opinion, Dropbox found it challenging to compete with the behemoths and have both over-price and “squeezed” their users; instead of growing their user base, they have opted to squeeze those who remain users. I’m not sure how long this will remain?  Many of us who like their excellent cloud storage service found it difficult to justify a pricey storage-only plan (yes they offer other “not really necessary” features too). 

This past week I revisited them since I’m a long time user once again evaluating where I should be when it comes to storing data. The customer service rep was polite and understanding. She was well aware of my predicament in evaluating a monthly amount of money just to cloud store increasing amounts of data … much of it archival in nature. It sounded as if she has had this conversation many times before. My point was that considering I can store tons of data for free on my Miami University Google Drive (graduated from and taught there) or store 1 TB on my OneDrive since I use Microsoft Office365 … or even consider storing more on my Apple iCloud or Amazon Clouddrive for “no” additional dollars (not to mention using Odrive to store on company servers). The point being is that I would not mind even a small fee to have a few more GBs on Dropbox “just for personal stuff” if it would loosen up the device restriction and be competitively priced.

So for 2020, Dropbox continues to remain an overprice “great cloud service” but is off my list. Suggestion: They really should “bundle” their service with someone (maybe Netflix, Walmart, Intuit, Facebook, banks  or a media organization).

Category: Advice, Business, Computer, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: amazon, cloud, Computer, Dropbox, google, microsoft, odrive, office, pricing, services, storage, tech friday, techfriday, Technology

Posted By RichC on June 25, 2020

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Category: Archive, Memories, Personal, Photos, TBT, Travel | No Comments »
Tags: 4runner, annalyn, camping, drew, ellerie, facetime, family, fathers day, hiking, katleyn, memories, put in bay, smoky mountains, taylor, TBT

Posted By RichC on June 24, 2020

By now we all have heard and know about the TRILLIONS we have borrowed and continue to borrow as a nation in deep debt, but few are willing to make any changes to the status quo before this house of cards comes tumbling down. What we don’t really thing about quite as much are the "unfunded liabilities." They make the debt and deficit issue look manageable.

The big unfunded liabilities are federal liabilities are for those of us looking forward to Social Security ($21T unfunded) and Medicare ($32T unfunded). One doubts these will ever be correctly funded, but will come to a head when cuts are forced on recipients or changes to what younger people are taxed or the age they can receive. Everyone knows that "means testing" is going to be a given as some point.

The argument continues to be made that so as long as the US has a growing GDP, we can continue to print and borrow … but even a closer look at those numbers is telling (below). This irresponsible "living" can’t continue … let alone adding any of the proposals by Democrats campaigning for the November 2020 election (Green New Deal, Free college, etc).

Category: Financial, Politics | No Comments »
Tags: debt, debt clock, gdp, government, liabilities, spending, unfunded

Posted By RichC on June 23, 2020

We replaced our rusting “hand-me-down” rebuilt grill from 2016 (thanks Jeff) this year with a new natural gas Weber Spirit S-315 stainless steel grill set up. So far it is a great grill and perfectly sized for our family. For those looking at it, be sure you know that there is some assembly involved if ordering online (photo below).

The new grill came in just in time for the family a couple weekends ago and Taylor and Megan’s visit last weekend. Brenda and I have already used the Weber few time on our own for our expensive but exceptionally tasty Omaha Steaks. The new grill is much hotter that the old cheap burners in the Charbroil (had to replace them every two years). 

I did add the Weber-branded cover and specially sized grease dripping pans with this but haven’t really ever had a good brush for the grates. Not to worry … Brenda gave me a new fancy grill brush for Father’s Day. Thanks dear!

To Do List: On my list of projects is to rework the ugly grill area off of the back kitchen porch. I go back and forth with how big a deal to make it. From a simple clean up and new pad area … to a tie in with an updated patio and stainless steel hood (which is why it continues to remain on the list).

Category: Archive, Holiday, Misc, Personal, Photos, Shopping | No Comments »
Tags: amazon, assembly, brush, charbroil, cooking, cover, fathers day, grill, grilling, weber

Posted By RichC on June 22, 2020

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Category: Archive, Audio, Music | No Comments »
Tags: csny, david crosby, graham nash, live, mp3, music monday, musicmonday, neil young, recording, stephen stills, studio

Posted By RichC on June 21, 2020

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Category: Holiday, Memories, Personal, Photos | No Comments »
Tags: annalyn, dinosaurs, drew, ellerie, family, fathers day, gift, katelyn, memories, photo, tail

Posted By RichC on June 20, 2020

A couple weeks ago I shared an old automotive link from MyDesultoryBlog.com on Twitter and one of my automotive buddies sent me a private message asking about the name of my blog (now nearly 7000 posts). The conversation had me contemplate the early decisions and thoughts .. or lack of thought .. when all of this web-stuff was just getting started.

For me the “archiving” (therefore myarchive.us) process started because I needed to save files for my printing customers after preparing typesetting and art all in one place. We could save the desktop publishing files safely so jobs could be re-plated and reprinted. We started using ,“small by today’s standards,” external hard drives, 5-1/4” and 3-1/2” floppy disks and eventually Zip Drives,  SyQuest carts and the Apple SuperDrive. Like VHS tapes, I have boxes of them without a computer capable of reading the disks, let alone format of the files. Things were changing rapidly back in the late 1980s and early 90s.

As the Internet came to life, saving compress files online became possible. Using commercial services was cost prohibited and even leased server space was costly .. but in the mid-to-late 1990s competition started to drive the cost down and it looked like there might be a way to even market this “archiving” service and make my CPPNET.com client files available online … and digital PDF versions for their customers.

Over time our Consolidated Printing and Publishing Co started to do a little more than just archive the “printed” products on line, but could actually build and host our client’s website. We really should have been much more aggressive, but my conservative business nature of “profitability” clouded the risk-taking side of growing the business even if taking losses. Who knew the Amazon nonprofitable “bookstore” online model would be so successful? (on the other hand, A LOT of upstart DOT.com companies failed doing that?)

Back to the domain names: Obviously in the early days of the InterNET, the brilliance of using the Consolidated Printing and Publishing initials …  CPP … with NET from Internet became our lame domain name – CPPNET.com. One would have thought that I would have been much brighter considering I was registering bushels of domains for people in the early days (and still do it). Thankfully the squatting practice paid off well on several of the domains I registered, held and sold. A few required legal assistance since we were bridging new ground with trademarks, etc. I still think the advice to price a domain at about what the legal cost for a company to fight was sound … thanks again to intellectual property and trademarking attorney Conrad Pitts.

Less descriptive domains were more difficult to challenges so the rush was on to grab the ones that looked popular ‘in the day’ … i- and e- this and my- that in front of a descriptive word were fairly popular. In 2003, the rise of a social network site call MySpace.com elevated the stature of My- whatever … hence setting up our servers which housed “my” customers “archive” files. It is still used for files today, although not the way it was in years past. When I started my blog on that server in 2005, it started as just another “subdomain” space on myarchive.us …first blog.myarchive.us and then richc.myarchive.us. (See web.archive.org Wayback Machine image above)

As the next decades began, it was looking like I was posting daily and that this blog thing might continue.  Subdomains are fine, but this now needed its own name. I realized unlike most “topical” blogs of the day, my personal blog wasn’t exactly on only one topic … it was “desultory” … and so the MyDesultoryBlog.com name stuck.  I registered it in 2011 and moved the WordPress CMS site own smaller server … while keeping most of the linked data scattered across several archived servers (a big headache … to solve someday).

Obviously, this was FAR more explanation that any reasonable person desires to know!

Category: Archive, Blogs, Business, History, Memories, Personal, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: aol, apple, blog, cppnet.com, desultory, domains, myarchive.us, netscape, printing, publishing, richc, superdrive, syquest, wayback machine, wordpress, zip

Posted By RichC on June 19, 2020

Way too often those who maintain their own web servers and computers grit their teeth and cringe when it is time to update and upgrade. A month or so ago I replaced one of my servers (the one this blog is on) and suffered through the anxiety of getting everything working again. I generally follow the principle “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but once everything is up-to-date, am a proponent of trying to keep it that way until something won’t update or work correctly.

This week before getting too busy, I opted to “apt-get” Linux Ubuntu 18. 04.4 with a few packages and security updates … then back up data and update WordPress to version 5.4.2. All is well … I think.

Category: Blogs, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: apt-get, bionic beaver, blog, idioms, linux, phrase, server, ubuntu, update, upgrade, wordpress