Note: There are no pictures this week.
Happy Easter everybody. I hope yours is a good one. Ours will be a little different. Danita and I are going to Ed & Lynne’s as usual. But Ed raised turkeys, so we’re having turkey for Easter dinner. I think this is the first year that ham hasn’t been available. Given the weather forecast for today, I suspect we’ll be hiding plastic easter eggs inside this year.
I went back to work at CASA this week. When we started the computer upgrade project, we agreed we would use Windows 8 Pro and Windows 7 Pro. The reason for the “Pro” versions is that it allows them to encrypt sensitive files, and allows them to back up personal computers. It turns out the office manager is passive aggressive and refused to order the software licenses. Two weeks ago, I ran out of useful work I could do. I don’t really need this job, and it’s against my ethics to make them pay $15 per hour for me to do nothing. I decided to stop going to work. This forced the issue. The licenses were ordered. They came in Tuesday. I went back to work Thursday. This didn’t change the passive aggressive nature of the office manager. Instead of giving me access to the downloads, she burned them onto disk “for” me. She burned Windows 7 instead of Windows 7 SP 1. I spent 4 hours downloading the service pack over their very slow data link. When she burned Windows 8 Pro, she copied the ISO file onto the disk instead of using the ISO file to create the CD-image. She clearly knew this was not the way to go, because she created the CD-image for everything else. Fortunately, I found a way to work around this. Two of the computers need a memory upgrade, which she didn’t order because she was “confused”, even though I sent her a web link. Finally, after forcing me to work every Thursday and Friday, she decided she couldn’t come to work Thursday or Friday, so we couldn’t “clarify” the computer memory upgrade.It’s frustrating to have a small project turned into a major production like this, but it’s nice that the work is optional. I’ll go in next week and maybe one day the week after. If the memory isn’t in by then, I’ll run out of work again and stop going in.
I have two projects in the works for Habitat. Both will take weeks to get going, as meetings must be held and after that hardware ordered.
In the meantime, the weather is getting nicer. I’m spending a little more time on the bike. One of the women who works for Danita has a husband who got very excited about my bike trip to Maine. Don and I were talking about bike trips and started talking about riding the Blue Ridge Parkway. This morphed into a 2-man ride up the Blue Ridge from Asheville, VA back to home. We’re planning to do the ride in mid-July. It should take about 2 weeks to ride the 500 miles. The mountains take a toll. We’re not planning on riding as many miles a day as I did riding to Maine. We won’t be doing any camping. Don isn’t at all interested in camping, and I’m not interested in carrying the weight of camping gear in the mountains. Except for Roanoke, we won’t be able to ride into a nearby town to get a hotel. It’s not that big a deal to ride an extra couple of miles. It’s no problem if those miles go down the side of the mountain. But going back up the mountain the next morning before even starting the daily ride is an overwhelming thought. Fortunately, there are enough hotels, B & Bs, and less expensive resorts right off the parkway to make the trip possible. Because some of the places are popular in the summer time, I’m going over to Don’s house tomorrow. We’ll make our reservations for each night of the trip. Except for the last two days, we should only ride 4 or 5 hours a day. That will give us some flexibility to ride around rain squalls. It should be a challenging adventure. After we finish the reservations, we’ll do a bike ride.
I got the results of an MRI of my brain this week. I was surprised to learn that I had a stroke. It’s an old stroke. I had an MRI about 17 years ago, and it wasn’t there then. It most likely happened during my surgery. But it might have happened while I was on Plavix. Or it might have happened some other time. I guess it’s true what people have been saying about me. I have a hole in my head (a missing tooth), and I’m brain-dead (stroke damage). It’s at least nice to know there’s something more than just bone between my ears.
I hope this finds everybody doing well.