I was working in the garage and the Jeep Gladiator from down the street pulled up and a young gentleman (Thad is memory serves) was kind enough to return cards that he found in the back of his vehicle. The perpetrator left from our driveway and headed down to their place. It was really nice of him to return those as Sandy didn’t even realize they were gone. Cards were canceled and new ones are on the way. Nothing was charged on any of them.

As I was saying, we’re in process of putting the truck in the garage. Primarily because I don’t want any more hail damage. I’ve actually pulled the truck into the garage before, it barely fits. But if I can back it in at just the right angle, it should fit and allow access to the back for the fridge. I’m skeptical but we should at least try. I pulled out the ladder to access the attic since we already have a pull down stairs.

In order to do that I need to move everything from the west wall to the east wall and generally clean out stuff. I also need to get rid of the garage fridge. We’ve got two out there and just not the room for it.

Sandy and I started the day taking about a 30 minute walk, it was chilly and foggy which is so rare down here that it was neat to walk through. Her leg was hurting so we cut it short but it was nice.

Lastly my watch updated to 6.0 UI. Not sure what the new things are but hopefully one of them is better battery life.

I’ve been having an issue where I get overwhelmed with all the possible things that I could do that I fail to get any of them done. I rocked it today. I got some development work on the XSL done and I’m thrilled that I’m completely understanding what’s going on, it’s all making sense like it’s rarely done before.

Deep cleaned the litter ‘appliance’ and it seems to be working fine. There’s a firmware update for it, I started it about 4 hours ago and it’s up to 95%. How odd. But again it’s now something I understand much better.

And lastly, as the sun was setting at 5:24pm, I decided to have a fire in the barrel. The fire starters that I made from left over candle wax and cotton rounds are simply amazing. I got a fire going and attacked the pile of branches we cut back on 8/6 before we left for our central US trip. This was the first time it’s been wet enough that I wouldn’t worry about starting anything that shouldn’t be on fire.

Thankful for a beautiful day and getting things done.

Sandy’s car and the truck got rifled through this morning. I hate to say it but the best I can figure is that we left the vehicles unlocked which I’m having a bit of trouble with but he didn’t seem to break anything and just rummaged through the cars. He went to Kent’s vehicles and tried the doors and left because they were locked. I’ve got the culprit on video and I gave that to the cops. I’m kind of pissed that the camera didn’t do a better job but half the issue was the damn truck lights up like the 4th of July when you open a door. The bed light kind of blocked the good picture of the crook.

Other than that it was a fairly productive day. I’ve been banging my head against the wall with the XSL project but I finally am making headway with it. I’ve only done part of it but it feels good to make progress and I’ve got a setup for development and testing. I’m going to transform the XML first and then transform it to CSV. While I’m sure that there’s probably a simpler way, this way should work and will do the job we need it to do.

I’m happy it’s Thursday. I have to work on some XSL this weekend but I think I should be able to create the transform that I’m needing in short order. Maybe a good time to see what ChatGPT has to say about it. I know what I need done, just not 100% sure of the syntax.

Should be a nice and quite weekend. I’m looking forward to that. The Cowboys are playing the Panthers this weekend in a game with absolutely no playoff implications. Both team should be worrying about what their draft pick next year is in which case the Cowboys propensity to blowing the game could finally serve them well.

My friends David & Keli gifted us Henry & David pears and apples for Christmas. That’s really nice of them to think of us like that. Next year when I’m back at work I’ll make sure that we get them something to say thanks.

I do enjoy making it to Wednesday. It’s halfway through the week and Thursday and Friday are gravy. Today was good, had to sort through some referral data and it finally makes sense and I know how to return what they’re looking for. Unlike the notes situation although on that front, I found out that Microsoft has an open source XML notepad that could assist in that option if needed. It does make me want to see what XML-Spy has in it.

It was still chilly today, made it to the gym and got my steps and weight lifting in. Had a quick interview this afternoon. People are always surprised by my computer setup and the 10 monitors that I have on my desk. I can’t imagine having less but at least it shows I’m pretty serious about my computer habit. I still want to do a video for LinkedIn called ‘How do you home office?’ which I go though and show what all my equipment and what I do with it. I think it could go viral…

I need to make a trip to visit Tim. I texted him last week and he said that his recovery isn’t going that well. I didn’t ask him what he meant but it would be prudent to see if he’s taking visitors and just go visit. A good excuse to take the truck out for a ride.

It got a little chilly today with a cold north wind. It wasn’t too bad. I took the truck to the rec center and did my walking and weight lifting. Got home and did some work and then decided to get the battery changed in the Xterra. So I pulled the battery out of the car, threw it in the back of the truck along with the two from the truck and headed to Walmart. They got me all taken care of and I made it back home with a new battery for the Xterra and no batteries laying around.

Oh, the Cowboys played last night on Monday night football. It was a good game until right at the end, when the defense finally got the stop they needed with 2 minutes left to win the game, instead they blocked the punt, touched the ball and it was recovered by Cincinnati who finished the drive in the end zone ending even the remotest hope that they could make the playoffs. Sigh… There’s always next year…

I was actually excited to get in and started today, I had the weekend to noodle on the development issue of notes. So I got it started and it works, to an extent Unfortunately there seems to be an issue that LISTAGG can only return a string character of 4000 characters or it bombs with an Oracle error. I don’t think that’s going to work and the only other option that I can see is pulling it out as XML and use XSL to transform it into a CSV. The only problem is we’d have to dig down into a node that’s on the same level but named differently, I wonder if I can refer to node by level number.

I also got a call about another contract that I’m perfectly suited for. It’s a 9 month gig normal hours for eastern time zone, so 7am to 4pm my time. I could be a super asset on that but we’ll see how it shakes out. I feel like I’m letting this contract business get in the way of my education but I do really enjoy things I know like the back of my hand.

The back room is getting closer to complete, it’s doable this week if the spirit is willing.

Still don’t care for them and have been feeling a little off all day. I guess that’s what I get for playing last night. That’s okay, every once in a while I have to remember how good it feels to not have alcohol in the system. It was good hanging with Adrian last night though.

Today was the memorial for Claudia. It was sad and happy at the same time. It was great to see everyone but sad that it was under those circumstances. It was a nice ceremony and I learned more about Claudia than I did in the years I knew her.

Adrian and I dropped Rhonda off and headed to the hill to say HBD to Barry. I met Kelly’s dad for the first time. I’ve known Kelly for 25 years and have heard endless stories about him but it was nice to get to finally meet him.

Adrian and I headed to Whitten’s to watch the last half of the Texas game and they lost. I had a few too many and remembered why I don’t do that on any type of regular basis. SMH, getting old ain’t no fun…

While it was a bit chilly today, I got a bunch done. I had a meeting at work and they said to go ahead and build what we’ll call a ‘note extract’. So this doesn’t just mean standard stuff, this is development. So I needed to do something about working on the laptop they sent which seems to be sized for a kindergartner. Headed to Walmart for a couple of Digital Port cables to fit into the port replicator they sent. I can now hook up my lower 2 HP monitors to the laptop and move the blue tooth adapter. So now I just plug in the work laptop and switch the monitor inputs and use my keyboard and mouse and three monitors (including the laptop screen). While it’s not the best it’s a couple 100% better than it was so I can actually develop. Still need to find out where to put the other work laptop but we’ll figure that out sooner or later. I also have to pull the old server and home the new server into the UPS and all that.

Tomorrow is busy. I can go to men’s breakfast at church, then we have to go to Claudia’s memorial, and after that I should go pay my respect to Toes as he celebrates his 80th birthday. And it’s supposed to be raining and cold all day. That’s good for a funeral. I also have to finish putting the back room together, I want to get that done this weekend so we can start demo on the master bath.