Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

New Alarm Clock Design
October 10, 2006
alarm clock

Nana is on vacation this week, so Berta is home with the kids and sleeping in late. This means I can sleep in a little, but it has caused some issues with our alarm clock. The most aggravating thing with our alarm clock in the new house is that it seems very loud. Combined with the size of our new bedroom, and the "across the room" philosophy of forcing someone to get out of bed to turn off the alarm, I'm sure that the neighbors hear our alarm for a good 20 seconds before someone turns it off.

Our current alarm actually has two separate alarm times. Each of the alarms has a different chirp pattern and pitch. This is interesting because at the old house we had always used one alarm for Berta and one for me, and although Berta's alarm went off before mine, I wouldn't wake up for it. I suspect that's due to me becoming conditioned to respond to only one of the two alarm sounds. I've read a bit about alarms that gradually get louder when they go off, instead of creating an ear drum-piercing siren at the onset. And perhaps instead of a chirping siren, the alarm should use music or some other noise to gently wake us us. Maybe this is also the solution to the neighbors being affected by our alarm.

But while I'm thinking about improving my alarm clock, let's go completely high-tech.

Back Into It
October 09, 2006

I told Berta that I was pleased with the business of the weekend, but I’m not sure she understood what I was talking about. After all, we’ve been busy every weekend almost nonstop since Spring, so why would being busy this weekend please me? Because it wasn’t all work.

Saturday, out of the blue, Bob called. He says they’ve found a buyer for his house, and he’s got to move out by Tuesday. He had called Dave and Jenn a month ago about taking his roleplaying stuff so he wouldn’t have to haul it to Idaho or Utah or some sadly distant and obscure mountain state. Of course, Jenn grabbed the miniatures and then they were never heard from about the books. So he called me.

I had a ton of boxes left over from our move, and was glad to pass them on to someone who could use them. Bob and I packed up the roleplaying books into some filing boxes I brought, and tossed them into the van with the long table that we used to play on in Bob’s basement.

The best part, apart from talking to Bob again after so long, was that he found my Warhammer Quest set! All of the tiles and books and miniatures were in the case, all labeled and ready to play. I was pretty upset about having lost that thing, and was equally glad to have recovered it. Seriously, that box represents a $200-$300 investment in cash, and the painting job that Berta and I did on those minis isn’t something I would want to have to do over again. I’ll have to take pictures of them to post, because they’re awesome.

Weekend Planning
October 06, 2006

I have a couple of development projects on the burners. I’ve resurrected BAStats for my coding play time, and there’s another project that I’m not talking about yet, but it’s going to be huge!

BAStats is running pretty well. The tracker has been running here for the past week or so, and the stats are pouring in. I will soon need testers for the plugin, at the very least to start gathering a dataset to play with before everything is complete. I’m going to have data folding done today. Or that’s the plan, anyway. If I do finish that, then I’ll build an installer (it needs two new tables), and the tracker component will be ready to deploy.

Sick From School
October 04, 2006

Yesterday when I got home from work, Abby was asleep on the couch. This is pretty abnormal for her, since she’s usually “on” from 8am until 10pm, non-stop. She woke up groggy around 7pm, complaining of a headache. We gave her a bit of kid’s Motrin, and she seemed to improve.

Abby had a high fever this morning when she woke up. She was bit bit more sluggish than usual, dragging herself out of bed to the living room where she crashed on a couch in front of the TV. She didn’t seem enthusiastic about breakfast, but that’s pretty normal. I gave her another spoonful of Motrin (she really doesn’t like that stuff), and it took the edge off of her fever.