So it’s been a little while since I last managed to have an accomplishment like this. My day was actually pretty mundane. I went to bed late last night and got up at the normal time, so I was a bit on the really tired order when I got home from work.

Seeing as how the MZ Online bit went live, I just kinda hung around and didn’t do much tonight. Sure, I worked on small bits and pieces here and there, but nothing drastic or really time-consuming. I did manage to file all the paid bills and whatnot, so my upper desk area is much less cluttered. And that’s a Good Thing.

Today while at work I ended up assisting in a ballast replacement, which is normally an innocent enough experience. After all, it’s just a ballast; not rocket science. Everything’s color coded. Long story short, this particular fixture was wired for an older style (still T-8) ballast that’s more expensive (and not on hand). So after much tinkering around and hypothetical work (and ultimately rewiring the posts), no progress was made (aside from half of the fixture now works). Given the simple nature of how these things are normally wired, I’m almost convinced at this time that the replacement ballast isn’t of the right type/size, even though it claims that it is.

So it’s left to the maintenance man. Not that big a deal to me — I was just acting as a bit of a side consultant on what to do with it. That was about as exciting as the day got there.

I ran into this amazing story of sheer ingenuity. All I can say is that it’s a good idea in principle, but perhaps has crossed the line just a bit (especially once the bill got over $5,000). It’s basically a home-built waterslide on the side of the mountains in Tennessee, that is longer than 535 feet! Incredible. And to see the pictures, there was some significant thought put into the process. They even have a liability waiver.

Supposedly they’re having a party on Saturday and will be taking some video clips of people riding the slide. That should be good stuff, so I’ll have to keep an eye on it in the meantime.

I also installed the latest Thunderbird tonight. At first, I was a bit disappointed due to some of the GUI changes. But it didn’t take me long to get things looking a little bit more like I prefer them, and all was good. There are some nice features that I’m pretty sure I’ll like once I get used to them a bit more (like the alternate row highlighting in message lists), and it just seems happier overall.

One thing I’m not real stoked about at the moment are some of the icon changes. I was a religious user of the Netscape suite for many years prior to my jump into Thunderbird, so I’ve been looking at the same style of icon for many years. And they’ve changed. Not necessarily bad, but it’s a bit disorienting at least for the time being.

Anyway, short of that, I’ve got nothing that new to report tonight. I’m trying to come up with my weekend to do list, but I’m not sure exactly how that’s going to work out (especially if it rains on Saturday) since I need to mow the lawn at some point in time, preferably during the weekend.

So all that (not much) said, I’m heading for bed. Until next time…

“Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.”
– Oliver Herford (1863-1935)

–MZ