I’m looking out the window into our back yard, where we have several big flower bushes with hundreds of flowers in bloom. It is spring… except for the little fact that it is pelting down snow at the moment.

Snow… in lower mainland B.C…. at the end of March. Did someone forget to send the memo out indicating that it is spring? Any time this sort of thing happens, I really wonder about the whole “global warming… the sky is falling! We are all dooooomed!” mantra. Sure, it is just one isolated incident, but as an individual it is really hard to accept that the world is markedly warmer when I’m looking at snow falling at the end of March.

Ah well… back to watching the flowers droop under the increasing weight of the snow. I’m exaggerating, of course: the snow is melting as soon as it hits the ground, but who knows? We could be entering another ice age as I speak.

I promised earlier that I would post some pictures and information regarding my home office “refresh”, and this post is my attempt to fulfill that commitment. I’m basically done, and I’m happy with the change- happier than last year.

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I just completed a completely unnecessary and unintentionally expensive upgrade to my main gaming computer. Of course, this means it is time for something to unexpectedly break and need replacing.

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I am in the midst of another office cleanup. Unlike last year, I don’t think I’ll bore / shock you with too many pictures. But as I shuffle things around, I have to occasionally shut down the network- including the server that provides this website. I expect the outages to be fairly brief: so far, there have been three outages of under thirty minutes each. But you have been warned.

One thing that is different this year is that I am attempting to dispose of a vast quantity of outdated/no longer used computer bits. I have four chassis, three of which have partial or nearly complete PCs ranging from a pentium III to a dual processor Athlon. There are also three CRT monitors, a stack of hard drives, another stack of network hubs and cards, and several boxes of “miscellaneous parts” (including RAM, sound cards, and other odds and ends). Most of the stuff is over five years old, and I can’t honestly tell you why I’ve held on to it other than it is hard to dispose of.

I plan on renting a truck later this week to cart it all to the Goodwill electronics recycling depot: they reuse what they can, and break down/dispose of what they can’t use. The scary thing is that I need a truck… I’ll probably post a picture or two of the loaded truck once it is all done. And probably a picture of the finished re-org: the “in progress” pictures would be truly frightening.

The final chapter… the nail in the coffin…. the slow, inexorable decline into oblivion: I’m there. I went to the optometrist today and, horror of horrors, I need bifocals.

Naturally, since I’m a geek, I can’t just get ordinary bifocals and be done with it. No, I’m getting progressive lenses, and even then that isn’t good enough. To satisfy my cravings for technical superiority, I’m getting wavefront technology progressive lenses by Hoya. What this basically means is that the distortions traditionally associated with progressive lenses are reduced by a much more complicated lens.

None of this diminishes the fact that my eyes have betrayed me yet again. I can expect continuing degradation in my vision for at least another decade before my vision “stabilizes”. There are no signs of glaucoma or other more severe issues so really this is just a bit of trivia directly related to my advancing middle age.

This isn’t any kind of real surprise to me: my eyes have been getting progressively worse since I turned about 30. But there is something rather depressing about hearing the word “bifocal” in conjunction with my own vision. Next on my list: a cane, so I can wave it at the kids as I shout at them to get off my lawn.

I’m 44 years old today. I can’t complain about the day so far: my lovely wife gave me two (2!) XBox games for my annual “I’m older but still alive” celebration- Mass Effect and the Half Life 2 Orange Box collection, both of which were at the top of my list of “want” games. How cool is it to be married to someone who will give you games this good for your birthday? And my Mom gave me a very snazzy shirt as a gift- I’m feeling pretty spoiled.

And apropos of nothing…isn’t it neat that an online encyclopedia (Wikipedia) has first-rate information on computer games that were released within the last couple of months? Both of those links above are from Wikipedia, if you didn’t notice. The world is a wonderful place!

My brother Dennis and his kids Dustin and Jhillion dropped by yesterday and we had a good visit for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon. I guess calling Jhillion and Dustin “kids” is becoming increasingly inaccurate: both of them are old enough to vote now. Bizarre: it is becoming increasingly obvious that I’m getting old when my younger nieces and nephews are in university and working for a living.

What will I do today? Well, most likely I’ll power on my work laptop sometime today and see what horrors await me there. Maybe I’ll have a celebratory beer later… or possibly something stronger

First, I should explain the above reference. Moe, the bartender in the Simpsons, once referred to Homer as being “fancy” for calling his garage a … garage. When asked what it should be called, Moe responded “A car hole”. My closet has been the place I throw clothes I’m not currently wearing for the last several years, so calling it a “clothes hole” seemed appropriate.

The basic organization of my side of the closet hasn’t changed since we moved from Alberta. To be honest, there really wasn’t much organization to begin with: one small section for “work” clothes, one section for sweaters and shirts, and one section for “other”. Unfortunately, much of the space in this closet had become cluttered, confused, and generally unhelpful for the purpose of actually locating anything to wear. Golf shirts that I wear at work were mixed in on the shelf with T-Shirts I wear at home and not hanging on hangers where they belonged, because the hangers were all occupied by pants that hadn’t been worn in years. It was like someone had taken all the clothes from a Salvation Army drop box and thrown them willy-nilly onto various hangers, and then pushed me into the room and said “get dressed- you’ll look marvelous”.

There was one other set of factors that led me to the conclusion something needed to be done: much of the clothing in my closet was no longer something I would wear. “Stuff I wouldn’t wear” fell into two basic categories:

• pants with waist sizes that mocked my now portly midsection
• other clothes that I was keeping more because of fond memories than out of any expectation I was going to wear the item again

It was time to take action.

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It is now 2008. In two more years the Winter Olympics will almost be open here in the Vancouver area. Irene and I will hopefully have a trip away from the area planned so we can avoid the traffic and endless “Olympic this” and “Olympic that” nonsense.

But what about now? Let me tell you about the incredibly fast-paced, party a minute life Irene and I live. Irene got off work early yesterday afternoon. She came home, complaining of a sore throat and feeling tired. We went to have a nap. I woke up at around 8:30 PM and watched TV, then went up stairs at midnight to wake her up and say “Happy New Year, honey”. She got up and had a snack, and we chatted for half an hour before she went back to sleep. I puttered on the computer until 3:00 am and went to sleep as well.

Yep, party a minute here at Casa del Adams

Happy New Year, everyone!

Irene and I opened our gifts a couple of hours ago. We both received lots of wonderful things, but most of all we got the best gift of all: each other.

Each year at Christmas time I like to take a moment to reflect upon everyone who is not so fortunate, or who as I often do lacks the will to see their good fortune for what it is. I’m so very lucky. I’m basically healthy, as is everyone in my immediate circle of friends and family. We have enough for essentials plus a great deal of non-essentials.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I am sitting here in the gathering dark as our short winter day comes to an end. We had a serious wind storm here during the night and into the morning, and around 9:30 am or so our power failed. It is a bit past 4:00 pm now.

According to the BC Hydro outage phone system message, 180,000 people in the Lower Mainland are without power. I guess falling branches and swaying wires caused over a thousand separate power “incidents”, one of which was ours.

The power has flickered on for a second or two twice now: once at around 2:00 PM, and again just now. I am made increasingly aware of my dependence on electricity as the light gradually fades. I’ve gathered some candles and an oil lamp, but I’m saving those for when it becomes fully dark: another hour or so now.

But this lack of electricity is doing more than just making it dark. I have food in the fridge, but the left over pizza needs to be heated before I would want to eat it. The food is still okay in the fridge- but another four or five hours and I’m not so sure if I would trust much of it. We have a gas stove, but it is a modern thing that uses electricity to start rather than a pilot light…so there won’t be any cooking there, either. Of course I can’t watch TV, but the other things I usually do like read are becoming problematic as it gets darker. I spent the afternoon reading a book or two, but that is no longer possible: books don’t emit light, and my eyes can no longer make out the words on the page without straining. Thankfully our gas fireplaces both use old-style pilot lights, so I have those for heat.

So, I’m writing this on my laptop. It still has a couple of hours of battery power, and emits light so I can still read it. But of course, I can’t actually post this: no internet connection.

In less then ten hours, the loss of the trappings of our modern technical civilization has rendered me hungry and bored. If this were to last 24 hours, I’m not sure what my condition would be. I guess I would make do…

Power came back on at about 7:00 PM