Last fall I brought my old Star Fleet Battles board-game p to date. I love that game when I was in high school and college and when I saw that the company was still in business I dove right in.

I picked up most of the modules that were out there, but in the end stopped short of this last bit as I had already spent quite a bit.

I’ve been sad to see how few of the board games and associated companies have survived from that era. I did updated my copy of starfire as well on the theory that I’d regret it if I didn’t and later the company went away (this game is interesting but I’ve never had the time to try playing it).

It has been some time so I’m filling in the last major gap…now I just need to find time and opponents (though I really want to just run through the game on my own a time or two first to refamiliarize thus the time thing)

Here are a few shots from sunset over bay lake.

It has been busy on the work front but not particularly productive on the interesting home stuff front. Got to get that changing now that spring is kind-of here.

I did get my raspberry-pi boards loaded into cases and set up.  I’ve gotten one running a web-cam and taking snaps to a local web browser. I may look at pushing this up to my site at some point to play with…would be kind of cool to be able to drop a camera somewhere and push the result up to the site. Also potentially interesting to play with time-lapse sequences at some point…need a reasonable way to string batches of jpeg images together to make a video for that though.

Need to get pandamallet.com configured and start putting images up there (and any other art-like stuff I can think of). Currently it is just sitting there with the default wordpress content showing. I’d like to use it for more artistic stuff with my main blog being just this sort of chatter and my career blog getting the technical stuff.

Still waiting for my M3D Pro 3D printer to arrive. Not sure all of the things I’ll do with it, but I suspect my first bit of work for it will be to print plastics for a RepRap. Much easier to experiment with a printer I’ve put together myself than to mess with a commercial product. In the longer run, a laser cutter would be very interesting…on balance I can more readily think of 2D cut outs that would be immediately interesting than 3D shapes…particularly when the shapes are a bit rough as I expect the M3D printer to generate.

Looks as if our ‘new’ GPS (a TomTom Start Classic) has reached ‘end of life’ for its lifetime updates. I tried downloading new maps and the app kept restarting with ‘critical update required’. Every time it restarted it gave me the same message (and showed updates available but not accessible in the window behind). I finally found a notice that this model is no longer supported and a suggestion that I look at newer models.

I’m unsurprised by the slightly screwy definition of ‘lifetime’ that TomTom uses but not happy. Lifetime to them is defined as ‘until we decide to drop support’ so the lifetime could end at any time.

I’m seriously considering looking at cell phone mounts and options to use my phone directly as a GPS. The newer TomTom GPS devices cost around $150.00 and use phone data for traffic information so I’m not at all sure that they’re a good match for our needs going forward.

…and we slide down into the cold, dark part of the year…

Alyssa is home (and has been since before XMas and will be until the New Year rolls in). Her boyfriend Jonathan visited over XMas and he’s delightful.

We spent XMas eve at my sister’s house with most of the rest of my siblings and their families (Mark is in Colorado but texted in 🙂 ). Seems as if everyone is doing pretty well to very well. I’m delighted that things are looking good as we begin 2017.

The Christmas decorations have officially been taken down and the tree is on the porch, waiting to be hauled into the woods for its final disposition. This has never been my favorite part of the year as the joy and excitement of Christmas ebbs and there is only New Years before we hit the cold and dark months of January and February. Spring seems far away and it is time to huddle together and do things that don’t involve the outdoors (no skiers here really).

I am looking forward to moving some of my technical sandbox projects forward. I’m putting together the database definitions for the file management tool I’ve had in the works for some time now. I’ve got the VR system up and running in the basement and now need to hit the OpenGL books to start writing code. I have the office in some semblance of order and the Intuos tablet ready to practice some drawing. Plenty to do (aside from work which is plenty busy).

I’ll be off work until next Tuesday as KMC has the whole week between XMas and New Years off this year. Lys is home so I don’t know how much technical stuff will get done (but then I’d rather spend family time while I can). She’ll be heading back to Great Lakes and hold pending C school on the second.

Just read the section of the Chronicles of Amber where Corwin is scribing a new pattern to memories of Paris and chestnut blossoms in spring. A wonderful passage that brings back memories of when I first read it back in high school.

Reading MySQL docs to put the next round of design details in place for the file archive management tool I’ve had on the back burner for some time now…this to be coded in C# as I’m about to be deeply involved in a C# based project at work starting next week.

…while a build runs…my publish to FB/LinkedIn/Twitter has not been working reliably for a while now. I reconnected everything and I’m posting this to check whether things are back in order…with a bonus dose of angry penguin…

I’m sitting here reading C# documentation and watching an installer run so here’s a pretty picture from Disney World…

The contractor installed flooring is all in. Demolition work needed is done. Appliances are actually back (mostly) in place.

Now I’ve got to get the base moldings cut and installed, the transitions from the rooms with newer hardwood in place and finish the office floor.

It is finally starting to feel like the light at the end of this tunnel isn’t a train 🙂

Unfortunately, the motherboard that I ordered for the  VR computer seems to have had flaky memory sockets (I saw a number of reviews reporting similar issues) and I’m returning it. I’ve ordered an alternate (ASUS brand) board as a replacement.

Once I get past my current feeling overwhelmed by the range of issues that must be dealt with I can get back to interesting sandbox stuff.

Got to refinish the top of my desk while the office is ripped apart. I like the desk a lot but it was a bit banged up when we inherited it from the people who had rented our first apartment before us. A good cleaning up followed by a coat of stain and some polyurethane and I expect it will be very nice.

Of course, when the VR machine is together, it will need a place to live. Currently I’m in the process of setting up GFI outlets in the basement and need to grout the area around the drain channel I cut some time ago to ensure that any water that makes it into the basement does not get past the first few feet of floor.

Add in shingling the catio roof and I’m mostly done…