I am writing this on Sunday, Jan 12. There are no pics.

This has been the week of Argh.

We had Argh weather. First we had snow. Then we had quite warm with rain and heavy snow melt (which caused dense fog). Then we had more rain and very high winds. By Tuesday I was getting cabin fever. The sun was out. But the temperature at 6:30 AM was -1. I rode my bike on the rollers in the morning. It was very unsatisfying. I needed milk. Wegmans is just 10 minutes by bike. And by mid-day the temperature was up to 8, with the wind down to 15 MPH. Normally, that isn’t very inviting. But after a week in the house, it was good enough. The ride was quite cold. 10 minutes of exposure at one time was plenty. But it was a lot more fun than riding rollers in the basement. Here’s some trivia for you. The biggest effect of wind wind on a winter ride is the additional effort required when riding into the wind. With the bike going 10 to 20 MPH, an additional 15 MPH wind doesn’t add to the wind chill all that much. The weather was wet Wednesday, but I got a very pleasant ride in Thursday, with nominal wind and 35 degree temperature. Then it got wet again.

Computers have been Argh. Our new office assistant has been having troubles using the database. I re-did the data entry screens. We’ll see if this is an improvement for her. In poking around, I found we have issued several security passes to residents who aren’t in the database. Fortunately, we know who holds the passes. I could only find a dozen or so missing residents. The community president and I exchanged several E-mails. I suggested a change in office procedures which I don’t think will be very popular with our staff. Lou has been very supportive. It looks like we caught this before it became a big problem, and we should be able to resolve it in a few weeks. To help the staff, I am writing a new program to let them quickly know whether a resident is in the database.

Then the backup program for the assistant’s computer stopped working. I have contacted tech support twice. So far, it’s not working yet. In the mean time, I manually do a backup daily. (Well, almost daily.)

Then I added some new entries to my very long list of passwords. I have a program that keeps my passwords encrypted on my PC and phone. I was synching my phone to the PC when the synch program stopped working. I reset my computer and turned off the phone, only to find the phone wouldn’t turn on again. My favorite solution to that problem is to pull the battery from the phone. (Guaranteed to reset everything.) But this phone has a battery that cannot be removed by the user. A quick web search gave the *almost correct* procedure to force the phone to completely reset and start up. A rather longer search found the error in the procedure I found earlier. After I got my phone running, I had to remove the program and data file from my phone and re-install it before everything was synched up and working.

Danita had an Argh work week. They are interviewing for a director for her group. They had somebody come in this week, which took most of her time Monday and Tuesday. Then she had to go to Godard twice (which is a much longer drive). She was in Godard Friday and left promptly at 4, but had lousy and heavy traffic coming home anyway.

Fortunately, we are having two neighborhood parties this week. We had a Happy Hour Friday, and we are having a concert this evening. Plus, the weather is getting quite nice. Temperatures are climbing quickly and should be close to 50 soon, and the sun is trying to break through the clouds. It’s the best time of all — time for a ride!

I hope this finds everybody doing well.