I got my practice in last night, went to bed I dunno when, woke up at maybe 11 then went back to bed until 2. My wall clock was ticking but the hands were not moving. How could it be ticking but the hands not moving? When I got up I noticed the second hand ticking but not moving forward. I put in a fresh battery and set the clock.
I packed one more thing, a high voltage power supply that's essentially just some modules in a box, and sad to say, to get it into the box I had, I took the front panel off and the handles off, and hopefully the guy getting it knows how to put it back together.
I took the 3 packages up to FedEx and said, "See you tomorrow!" and picked up too-little packing stuff on the way back. Mainly some foamcore and I got 3 wheels boxes from the tire place. I've got it figured out now: Any wheel box for wheels 18" or larger will work great for shipping 19-inch rackmount stuff. And I need to keep more wheel boxes handy.
I also messed around with a goose. There was this Canada goose trying to figure out how to get under or over or around, the fencing around Fry's. It was there when I was going to FedEx and it was there when I was coming back so I figured, well, let's see how mellow this goose is, maybe I can pick it up and boost it over the fence. I've never boosted a goose before but there's always a first time and hopefully it doesn't bite the shit out of me. But the goose didn't let me get near, and finally flew off over the buildings on the North side of Brokaw. So at least it was well enough to fly.
I got back here, put things away, and headed back out to go to H Mart. I rode up Rogers Avenue AKA Bumville, and saw some messed-up bums, big surprise. I smelled something burning and sure enough passed a bum standing on top of a folded up box, out from under of which was issuing some foul-smelling smoke. He's obviously burned something and wanted to put it out. It was pretty cool actually. I kind of wanted to stop and ask him what he'd burned and then talk about, I dunno, burning stuff I guess, but nothing good comes of interacting with the bums in Bumville.
I wanted to take a look at Fry's in its final apocalyptic form. So I rode in there, through the one opening in the fence, followed a sign saying FIXTURE SALE and rode up to the front and just parked my bike there. I went in, and they had all kinds of things for sale. They had lots of display/dummy drones for sale cheap, and shelves, Fry's shopping bags, their POS machines, you-name-it. There was a friendly guy there and I asked if they have any laser all-in-one printers but he said they were out. There's not a lot at Fry's I'm itching to buy, but it was interesting.
I left and thought I ought to tell Tom Price about the Fry's sale as, knowing him, he probably had no idea it was going on, just a street over from him. And, if I hung out with Tom for an hour or so, that would get me to H Mart a bit later, when it's less busy.
So I rode over and knocked on Tom's door. I think he had to scramble to find and put on the (dirty) pair of pants he had on when he came to the door, shirtless. The guy's got a lot bigger gut than I thought he had, and he rummaged around and found a shirt that just barely covered it. I told him about the Fry's sale, and he was surprised to hear that they were going out of business and having a sale.
We hung out and each had 1.5 beers as he had 3 cans of the lousy stuff left, and talked about all sorts of things. He said he uses Jackson Hewett software to do his taxes, and I told him how I'd done the 1040 or at times, the 1040-EZ, as long as I'd been paying taxes except when I had my tax guy. I told him that I'd sent off about $2700 and the IRS had had no problem cashing my check. He said, "Sometimes the IRS sends me a grand and sometimes I send them a grand". And also, "It's white knuckles before every payday" by which he meant he lives paycheck-to-paycheck.
Since he's so broke, he's been furnishing the building with free stuff from Craig's List. And he reminded me I'd told him about all the furniture that's just left out in neighborhoods with a lot of houses and that I'd found all sorts of stuff even in this industrial area. He's still gonna check out Fry's though.
I also told him to check out Yamaguchi Goro on shakuhachi on YouTube, and Tom told me he's actually studied Japanese in college. His degree, he said, is in "Oriental Studies - Japanese". That's actually really cool. He says he's lost his Japanese but I'm sure he could get it back in no time - I told him some of the things I've picked up from watching Atashin'chi and he knew those things. I had no idea he'd studied something so cool - I guess I just thought he'd studied chemistry or something. He also told me the combo to the lock to the side yard in case I want to use the porta-potty there. There's about zero chance of that, but it's still nice to know.
Tom's also involved in some weird "Operating System 1.0" philosophical thing by a guy named Ken Wilber. I guess the guy's semi-legit but I looked up stuff on this online and it's just ... it makes sense but you can just think a bit and it's all fairly obvious. We compared Buddhisms. He'd followed Nichiren Buddhism and I told him about the Jodo Shinshu Buddhism I follow and all the wholesome hijinx we get up to.
When we were about talked out and the (lousy) beer gone, we wished each other luck and I went up to H Mart where I got sake, some sashimi, fried fish, and a beer. Then came back and ate and drank. The sashimi was really good as it was tuna slices but about 2/3 of each slice was the cut called o-toro.
After spending too much time on YouTube I got busy with a plan I had for today. I took a bunch of stuff off of one shelf, then got into the cabinet where we keep all our plug-ins and took the more "drab" ones that hardly ever sell, and put those on the shelf. The freed up room in the cabinet so I have room for the Tektronix plug-ins we have over in the storage unit. It felt good getting that done. Ken wants me to list some amplifiers or something he has in the storage unit so ideally I pack some FedEx things tomorrow, take them to FedEx, then visit the storage unit.
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