Digital Choke Daynotes

"Daynotes" are popularized by a Internet Web site called the "Daynotes Gang" (http://www.daynotes.com or http://www.daynotes.org), a collection of the daily technical and personal observations from the famous and others. That group started on September 29, 1999, and has grown to an interesting collection of individuals. Readers are invited and encouraged to visit those sites for other interesting daily journals. You can send your comments to us by clicking on any mailbox icon.

Yesterday's rain storm (and snow storm in the Sierra Nevada mountains) continued today. There were mostly scattered storm cells today, some of the 'thunderboomer' variety, with just rain and very short periods of small hail. The sky was alternately bright and sunny, then a short time later it would be dark and rainy. And the rain cleaned up the junk out of the air.

The storm has put some major snow in the mountains. At the 6-7000 foot level, they had up to four feet of snow. It was a cold storm, so the snow level got down to the 2200 foot level. At that level there is just a dusting of snow that doesn't stay around very long. In our area, the snow will stick on the ground for long periods of time at about the 3500-4000 foot level. The local ski resorts were very happy. Some were mentioning that they might be able to stay open until the end of the month. SInce this week is Spring Break for many high schools and the local colleges, they are quite pleased at the extension of the skiing season. By the end of the month, though, it will be more spring-type sking. And the runoff, as long as it doesn't happen too fast, will help fill up the lakes around here for summer boating.

Several years ago, we had a lot of snow in the mountains, and then a series of very warm rains came in from the tropics. The local weather dweebs called it the "Pineapple Express", since it originated near the islands of Hawaii. The storms were so warm that they melted all the snow in the mountains over just a few days. The result was quite a bit of flood damage in several areas.

There were some cabins up Highway 50 east of town, at about the 3000 foot level that were near the river. There were some bridges across the river, and the river was so powerful with all that snow melt that it washed a few of the bridges away. And it also caused a mudslide in that area that destroyed one very nice cabin. That particular area has had a string of bad luck. There was a major forest fire in that area that was kept away from most of the cabins, but the spring rain damage didn't help at all. Most of the cabins there have been rebuilt, and they did put in a new bridge. Highway 50 is a major route from Sacramento to Lake Tahoe, CA/NV, so there is always a lot of weekend travel on that road. In fact, my in-laws have a cabin on the river farther up, at about 6000' elevation. The trip home was always very slow through that damage cabin area, as everyone would slow down to look at the damage. (The in-laws' cabin wasn't damaged by the river, even though the back porch is only 30 feet from the river banks. The cabin sits up about six feet above the river, and the other side is lower, so the high water levels didn't cause any problems. I wasn't there during the big snow melt, but you could tell the difference after the big rush of water.)

So, I spent most of today inside, alternately watching the tube and surfing the 'net. My chair is right next to a bank of windows, and the view is quite nice. So I was able to watch the rain, hail, and sunshine throughout the day. We did take a quick trip to the model homes, where we took a closer look at the model of the house that we are hoping to buy. I took the digital camera along and took a lot of pictures of the furninshings and room treatments. Touring model homes is a good way to help determine how you want to personalize your own home.

Then back home again. My wife made a simple dinner tonight of spaghetti and meat sauce, fried red potatoes, and corn, with some home-made garlic breadsticks. It was quite good, and I kept my portions a reasonable size. I've been trying to cut back on carbs and fat, since my weight is a bit high, and my cholesterol is borderline high. I am using no-fat/no-cholesterol butter, and keeping desserts to a minimum. No major changes in my weight as far as I know. I am still on the same belt notch.

Tomorrow is the day we should know about the house purchase. Haven't heard anything from my agent this week, so I'd guess that no news is good news. I'll keep you posted.

Well, it turns out that the first buyer of the house we wanted was able to remove the contigency from their offer, so our offer missed out on the deal. My wife is very disappointed, as she really liked that house. So it is back to the search. We're going out with the agent tomorrow (Tuesday) to take a look at some more houses, including a couple that we have looked at before.

A high priority project at work took up most of my time today. I can't get into specifics, but it involved some manual analsys of some data that suddenly became important to the very top of the organization. I spent about a 1/2 hour in a meeting with high management discussing the issue, and the analysis that can be done, along with the possible future tasks involved in the project. Then I spent another 5 hours doing the analysis, and prepared a preliminary report while watching "CSI/Miami" and the news. I've got to gather a bit more information early tomorrow (before 8am) and get it ready for one of the big bosses. The outcome of all of this should be interesting. I'll share the information at a later date, but right now it is very confidential. (The only reason that I mention it here is that both of my regular readers are way out of state.)

We spent much of yesterday looking at used houses. There were nine of them, including a couple that we looked at before. There were some nice ones in the bunch, but there wasn't one that felt like it had all of the features that we wanted. Our agent (Realtor®) is a very patient person. So, we are still potentially homeless.

But we do have a plan. We are going to rent an apartment for the short term while we keep on looking. There is a nice three bedroom unfurnished apartment available that will let us do a month-to-month rental. We will put most of our stuff in storage, and just move minimal furnishings and stuff into the apartment. That short-term rental will give us some room to find a house we like, not to just find any house that is available. This house will be about a ten-year stay. That's the approximate time until retirement, when we will move into a smaller place up in the hills.

So after all that house hunting with the Realtor®, we did a bit of driving around in different neighborhoods to get a feel for those areas. By the time we got home it was about 830pm. And it was also '24' night, and by the time 10:00 rolled around, I was fading fast. And that's my excuse.

Today at work I was quite distracted with the house search via the listings on the Internet. I did get a few things accomplished, but it wasn't really significant. But I did have a very nice lunch at "Bud's", which has the most excellent roast beef sandwiches. It's real roast beef, a hunk of meat about 20" inches long supurbly roasted to a tender rareness. The 'au jus' sauce is just the right spiciness, and it is all placed on a nice soft french roll. Not the most low-fat meal, but I only do this occaisionally. It is quite tasty, with a bit of Mug Root Beer to wash it down.

I always thought that Boxing Day was the day after Christmas. And that it only lasted one day. Evidently, there are times when this is not true.

Today was another in a seemlingly endless string of Boxing Days. I started work on the garage, and made a bit of progress. I filled up the truck with a bunch of stuff for the local charity organization. I also found a bunch of old horse tack (saddle blankets, etc) that had been sitting out in the stable's tack room for quite a while. It was a bit dirty, but still usable. I took it over to a friend's house that has a young teenage girl that has a couple of horses.

We also went to the apartment complex to do the paperwork to rent a three-bedroom apartment on a month-to-month agreement. It is a really nice and big complex, set in a large area of natural oak trees. It is an upstairs apartment, and it will work out well as a temporary abode while we decide on a house to purchase.

The weather today is nothing like what Tom Syroid (one of the original Daynoters) is experiencing. He lives up in Canada, and a big snowstorm is going through his town. It's probably related to the same storm that went through here a couple of days ago. Today we had a partly cloudy day, with just some brief showers. The air was really clear. The sun would be shining in one area, but there would be dark clouds in other areas. Late in the day, about an hour before sunset, the sun was shining at a low angle through the trees and the colors of the trees and hills were very bright and pretty against the dark clouds of the sky. Up the road a bit was a white crane-like bird: long white neck and bill. It was coming from the small pond up there, probably after dining on the small frogs in there. A few bunnies were hopping around, staying near the berry bushes where they keep safe. And there was a small flock of Canadian geese honking their way overhead. One of those times where you can sit outside and just look around and enjoy the relative quietness of the country. I'll miss that when we move.

Daynotes	a daily journal of our activity	Send us email
Digital Choke	an action that is sometimes needed for your computer; also a short techno-story available here.	Send us email