Posted By RichC on December 14, 2015
“Tis the season” that many of us are franticly shopping, decorating, cooking and finalizing all the trimmings associated with December and weeks leading up to Christmas. Perhaps we should be a little be more focused on the reason we celebrate rather than all the trimmings — Christ’s birth! It is easy to get lost in all the preparations than remembering what is really important. I know, easier said than done.
For us, part of the Christmas preparation is sending Christmas cards and our annual Christmas letter to our family and friends, even in the age of social networks and digital communication. It’s probably unnecessary, but spending a little time thinking about what to write, gives one time to reflect on the year. A lot happens.
So if you’re not on our Christmas card list, here’s wishing you a Merry Christmas 2015 and a Happy New Year — click image below for our 2015 Corbett Christmas Letter.
Category: Archive, Holiday, Personal |
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Tags: archive, brenda, Corbett Christmas Letter, drew, family, katelyn, pdf, rich, taylor, tootsie
Posted By RichC on December 13, 2015
Looking at this sunrise photo at the Grand Canyon on a small screen does not do it justice, so click so it’s full-size; that’s a great photo from Drew’s new Nexus 6 smartphone.
Perhaps its not just the amazing view or stunning sunrise photo … but the fact that my “crazy daughter” (as Drew titled his email) is sitting on the rim of the Grand Canyon taking in this view in person. I recall being in Arizona 40 years ago, but do not remember the views being quite this spectacular. This is one place we didn’t travel to with the kids when they were younger … still no regrets, since they can go for a first time now. I wonder if Katelyn has an appreciation for this kind of natural beauty from our family trips and hiking we did when she was younger? I’m so glad they are enjoying themselves — Oh … and before I forget … Happy Birthday Drew!
Category: Nature, Personal, Photos, Travel |
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Tags: beauty, drew, family, grand canyon, katelyn, nature, nexus6
Posted By RichC on December 12, 2015
As I was getting the paper this morning … in a tee-shirt in December … I noticed one branch of our struggling Lilac was confused as to the season. Hard to believe we’re getting ready for Christmas when temperatures are in the 60s.
Category: Nature, Weather |
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Tags: animated, gif, lilac, weather
Posted By RichC on December 12, 2015
Well I really am working on getting ready for Christmas this weekend, but wanted to post an updated photo as the dry-stack brick project in the poolhouse/ garage. As mentioned previously, the floor leveling was the biggest pain in order to level the top of the “walls.” I used an aluminum angle to hold a sand base before placing and cutting the bricks that line the floor. The 3 rear walls are tied to the wall with anchors and eventually the mantle/top will get wrapped with some extra airplane 6061 aluminum — kind of a waste?
With the warm weather we’ve been having I’m not overly excited about finishing up just yet … but at least the insulated chimney is in and I’m almost ready to place the woodstove on the bricks.
Category: Misc, Personal, Photos |
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Tags: brick, heat, poolhouse, projects, shop, woodstove
Posted By RichC on December 11, 2015
Stocks have been in decline as investors wait for the Fed to either “move” or get off the pot this month. Adding to the misery for those who are thinking they are in long “safe” dividend paying stocks, like those in energy, they are nervous too. While the economy is not particularly bad, the deflationary pressure from about every commodity (including oil) is being felt around the globe. Markets are taking a hit and right back where they started the year. Who would have figured that with all the easing from central banks around the globe, the printing of money and political unrest … that oil would be so cheap? As someone who rotated into energy stocks this past year, I can comfortably quote President Clinton in saying, “I feel your pain.”
Updated Dec. 11, 2015 12:49 p.m. ET
U.S. stocks headed for their biggest weekly decline in nearly a month as the price of U.S. crude oil fell below $36 a barrel.
Turbulence in the energy market picked up this week, with the price of oil falling to nearly seven-year lows. Investors have broadly sold shares of energy-related companies as the price of commodities tumbled.
More at the WSJ on the decline in stocks and commodity deflation
Category: Energy, Financial |
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Tags: commodities, energy, investing, oil, stocks, wsj
Posted By Admin on December 10, 2015
I move my WordPress blog to Digital Ocean‘s smallest cloud based Linux server and the move is now complete, I think. Everything seems to be working as it should, although I’ve experienced a couple snags.
All posts have been consolidated (except this one) under the RichC user_id and I’ve updated to WordPress to 4.4. The Linux “swap” as been set on the DO “micro” cloud server to allocate an additional 3GB (or maybe it was 4GB?) of disk RAM which will hopefully prevent “out of memory” errors. Others have had issues when running WordPress on the smallest cloud servers so we’ll see if this helps before upgrading to a bigger (and more expensive) cloud server. Tweaking has been fun … as those tech-types who like to “learn by doing” can attest.
Most images (except the WordPress uploaded media), PDFs, AV and larger content have been moved to independent servers (some on Amazon S3 instance and about 10GBs of archives on one of my company’s servers).
I used both phpMyAdmin to correct user_id, URLs and links from old posts, although I’m sure there are still broken links in the over 5000 past posts and pages.
Screenshot of the “hopefully” stable blog as of December 10, 2015.
Category: Blogs |
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Tags: apache, database, digital ocean, host, server, update, upgrade, wordpress
Posted By RichC on December 10, 2015
20s?? Well for Drew (photo) … for only a few more days!
Katelyn and Drew are in Arizona celebrating Drew’s 30th birthday with his family this week and they sent me a couple photos from the desert and in a hot air balloon flight — beautiful! It is great to see all three kids (Taylor went to England in June), enjoying their vacation time. As I recall, our 20s were just the beginning … the best years are yet to come! BTW … Happy Birthday Drew, a few days early.
Category: Personal, Photos, Travel |
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Tags: arizona, balloon, birthday, drew, family, katelyn, Travel
Posted By RichC on December 9, 2015
For the most part this is really all about testing the latest updates to the new Digital Ocean micro cloud server while attempting to run WordPress 4.4. I’m also using an alternate server for image hosting so that I can continue to post with the long in the tooth and no longer updated Microsoft LiveWriter (I sure wish they would continue with this software???)
Anyway the Farmers Almanac has those of us in the Midwest “snow filled and frigid” as will be much of the country. Are you ready?
Category: Weather |
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Tags: farmers almanac, test, weather, winter
Posted By RichC on December 8, 2015
Warmer forecasts, no production cut by OPEC and inventory surplus is keeping energy prices low and crude oil has moved to seven year lows. The impact is being felt by small leveraged U.S. oil companies who are on the brink of bankrupcy and even creating waves throughout the economy. As I tweeted…
Oil prices fell to their lowest point in seven years Monday, hammering energy industry stocks as many investors bet that heavily indebted produc-ers, having weathered months of low commodity prices, are now at greater risk of going out of business.
WSJ Link
Category: Energy, Financial, News, Social Media |
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Tags: economy, energy, investing, oil, wsj
Posted By RichC on December 7, 2015
After fastening aluminum angle to the floor and leveling the corner with sand, I packed and filled the base with brick to continue adding our old catalytic woodstove to the shop. Then it was time to start the dry-stack walls … until I ran out of spare brick. Thankfully the brick is available so should be able to pick up this week and eventually cut and stack about 70 more bricks. I’m using a drystack technique (fastening to the wall) so that it can all be easily disassembled. Once done, I’ll attach the flue to the new chimney and figure out the cap/mantle area to cover the brick. It will be nice to use some of our piles of wood to add heat to the shop.
Category: Misc, Personal, Photos |
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Tags: brick, pool house, woodstove, workshop
