Dysmey Post Archive > Pages for 2007 > End of Year 2007 Edition
Admittedly it has been a very eventful year for me.
I bought a house of my own, complete with lawn and shed. I am comfortably ensconced with my cat Isis and my computer.
Some of the things I wanted to do with the house have been done: I fixed the upper room window with massive water damage. I wired an extra telephone wire into the upper room. I installed a new mailbox in front of the house. I got someone to cut down the two dead trees in the front yard. And I dug up the dead bushes around the house.
But more needs to be done. I have yet to explore under the house, mainly to find the nests of ants that invade from time to time. I need to fix or remove the back gutter because it is dribbling onto the wall and back door. I need to replace the deck, and possibly the patio. The antennae on top of the chimney are still there; they need to go, and the chimney top fixed. And then there is the lawn, which needs reseeded and in some parts filled in to keep it from becoming a large puddle after a heavy rain.
You can tell I am looking forward to next year.
Relenting after years of resistance due to extortionate contracts associated with them, I bought a cell phone. I bought the clamshell-type Motorola V195 on a pay-as-you-go program from T-Mobile. I am satisfied with it so far.
I got a digital television set from my folks. More accurately, I bought it at Wally World in the wee hours of the morning after Thanksgiving, when it was offered cheap; and the folks paid for it. But having it was pointless in a place with no clear broadcast signal; so I subscribed to cable television, since the house came already heavily wired for cable.
The setup was not difficult: Just hook up the existing cable to main wire. I get all the channels that my folks have, plus digital versions of existing local channels (except, for some reason, the Ball State PBS channel) and even audio channels.
The Aspire needs a major rebuild of its steering components. I have had to wait until this coming month to fix this. I have to do this soon, because the ride on the car is becoming scary, esp. during in icy conditions. I already found myself flying off Wheeling Pike several weeks ago. The car came out okay, thankfully; but I am not going through that again.
It is getting more and more difficult to find parts for the Aspire. It has been ten years since the last model came off the line in Korea. It is time to look for another car, I regretfully admit. I am thinking of getting a Honda Fit.
The library board has won a monetary grant in order to buy a set of buildings next to current library and renovate them into a new library. I dutifully drove to Indianapolis to join other board members in accepting the award. (And, yes, I was smiling in that photo!) I will try to make the meeting this Thursday when the appropriate papers will be signed. There has been faction in the town board lately; I only hope they can get along long enough to join in the signing.
On top of my board work I have been chosen as the president of the Friends of the Fairmount Library, the library support group.
I have already gone over the proposed reforms on property taxes, and their threat to the library, in a couple blog postings (here and here), so I will not touch on them here.
Project A, the Web repository, works just fine. In fact, I have decided to pull an older version of the repository off the Web.
Project B, the EPrints-based institutional repository, is essentially complete. It looks nasty when viewed from outside, but that is a domain-resolution issue unrelated to the repository itself.
With the above two projects out of the way, I can turn my attention to resolving the logout freezing issues from Project C. I also await the next release of DAVE, the Windows file and print program for Mac OS X. Only when it comes out can I start the next reimaging, which will introduce Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) to the iMacs.
Finally, all the print job release stations, some with their wireless laptop printing software, are now up-to-date.
What is there to say this year? We still buy cheap stuff from China at Wal-Mart, ensuring poor or no work for the less educated among us. There is rivers of blood throughout the Middle East, with American meddling making things worse. People still say that the person who drives his car alone has Osama Bin Laden in the passenger seat — while ignoring Hugo Chavez lounging in the back. We say this and that, then do the opposite. And you wonder that I ignore the television screens thumping CNN in the library's lower level hall.
As for the upcoming elections, of which I am already tired, we will do very well if we quash those fools from New York (Clinton, Juliani). But even then, I would not even think of voting for Mitt Romney: This is the guy who ran Bane Capital during its ownership of Ampad. Ampad drove Marion paperworkers into the strike of 1994: The factory closed when Ampad ran with its tail between its legs. A pox on Romney!!