Things Fall Apart

I have been raking leaves onto the sides of streets over the past two weeks. I have been raking my own yard, with its hugh maple tree and the overhanging trees in my neighbor’s yard. I have also worked on Madre’s yard, which is smaller in area due to its gardens. In all I have been getting a lot of exercise this way. I had to clear out Madre’s yard last night because the leaves would have remained for days due to the rainy weather this morning.

Big objects in my charge have been breaking over the past week.

First, my coat rack broke in two places in the early morning hours last week. There was too much weight from coats and suits that I have not worn in years. That impelled me to cull out those coats and suits, esp. those that no longer fit me. Then I did the same for the shirts in the closet, especially those with starkly visible stains on the collars. It was a lot of clothes that I will not miss, and all have gone to the local thrift store.

Then the toaster fell off the counter and did a head dive to the floor. Rather than risk a fire if I use it again, I will go buy a new one.

Other breakage has occured at work, but rather than go over the details, I will explain the issue behind the breakage. In short, when a newest iMac goes into sleep mode, it stays there; worse, going into sleep mode cuts the iMac from the campus network (based on Microsoft Active Directory), forcing a user to restart the iMac. I have resolved the problem by stricter settings in Mac OS X’s Active Directory client — including hard-wiring the address of the Active Directory server — and turning off both sleep mode and Energy Saver to keep the iMac active on the network. Energy savings takes a lesser place to the network connectivity.

Update

I bought an Oster toaster to replace the toaster that fell off the counter. It’s working well so far.