Random Ramblings

Up and down. Ame's thirty-fifth birthday, and the atomic bombings 80 years ago. OTOH m's return from the US Wednesday, and for some reason I noticed being in a good mood shortly before bedtime. Possibly from getting out of one of my support groups early. Or it could have been something somebody said in the group. Also, my balance seems to be improving a little after finding a test that I can practice against. But I should also find some exercises.

Not exactly a good week for walking either. I skipped Tuesday because (IIRC) I was running late after helping N give Cricket her meds, and had a doctor's appointment after that. Then I did something unpleasant to my right ankle Friday morning, probably on the stairs with an excessively heavy bag of garbage. (Mostly cat litter.) I went to the end of the block and back this morning but didn't want to push my luck. I have no idea what became of my little plastic bin full of knee, ankle, and wrist braces.

On the gripping hand, I have the old household server, Nova, running again. That's notable mainly (only?) because it's still running Mint version 21.3, so it still has Python 2 installed, so I can run my Dreamwidth posting client on it. (I also have it on Raven, but N is borrowing it. When she's done with it I'll be able to upgrade it.)

Nova is headless. I could ping it, but not ssh to it, which turned out to be because it was on the wrong subnet. Fixable by widening the netmask on Nova and one laptop. That was an interesting exercise, though, because I had to do it over ssh (i.e. without a display), which meant that I had to learn the text user interface for Network Manager. Feeling mildly accomplished from that.

Also, m and I had a good rehearsal of Ship of Stone yesterday. The plan is to do one song per day to use as scratch tracks for the next album. My intended recording hardware was not cooperating -- I seem to be missing one of my large-diaphragm vocal mics. May have to fix that. Meanwhile I used my trusty old Zoom H2, which is perfectly adequate for scratch tracks.

In links, last week Mastodon was added to the Digital Public Goods Alliance’s Registry, which is pretty cool. And the World’s first Facebook museum helps users face the future after its hoped-for demise.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Well. Today is my daughter Amethyst's 35th birthday. (I used present tense two years ago, and it still feels right. Past conditional is awkward and just plain wrong. If we can celebrate Washington's Birthday, I can celebrate Ame's.) This time last year her birthday fell on a Sunday, so it got attached to the weekly "Done Since" post. This year she has her own day back, and her own post.

Last year, too, we were getting ready to move to Den Haag; we have been here for ten months now.

G and I just raised a glass in her honor a little while ago, and I've sung her song, "For Amy". I don't seem to have much to say tonight.

"That's ok, Dad; neither do I."

"Good night, Ame."

Welcome to August, 2025!