Where Am I
At 7AM some morning I rolled out of bed to do an update on Tropical Storm Elsa and the little office machine wouldn’t turn on. So I went out to the living room and the big machine had forgotten it was a computer, so I dusted off the Toshiba laptop that was still a Win 7 box because it didn’t have the power for Win 10.
I went back to the office machine and extracted the data disk, which was hotter than hell and stuck it into my stand-alone USB disk port and managed to retrieve the files necessary for both hurricane and Le Tour posts.
I ordered another refurbished Win 10 box, upgrades for the Toshiba, and today a new power supply for the big box. The power supply is the only major component I didn’t change when I installed the new motherboard.
I will not dwell on the lawnmower problems other than to say I don’t want a lawnmower because I don’t want a lawn. Grass fertilizer is a major source of algae blooms in coastal waterways in Florida. We will not discuss the SUV that was parked on the front lawn of the cats’ house for four days as it was topped by a tenant bringing a 30+ foot demasted sailboat to strip and dismantle. The weather has sucked; the computers have sucked; the lawnmowers have sucked.
OTOH, Honda has given me a “personal assistant” to help me get the airbag inflators in my car replaced. I haven’t done it because the service department of the local Honda dealer is peopled by jerks and the next nearest dealer is a 120 mile round trip if I’m lucky, It used to be 70 miles but then the barges broke loose during a storm last year and damaged the southern-most bridge to Pensacola.
I did get a new keyboard (Velocifire) that I really like. It has mechanical switches, is backlit, and has a rechargeable battery. Now if I can get a consistently working computer to go with it….
4 comments
the bridge got fixed. sorta. enough for 2way traffic if you’re in small car. until the next batch of barges get to go joyriding in a storm, so you might want to hurry before the real storms get here.
personally, i don’t want a lawn because i don’t want a lawnmower. i can mow my current crop of centipede with my kitchen shears and i like it that way.
It sounds like you’re saying that they have opened half of the bridge to two-way traffic. They were supposed to wait until after they had finished building the new bridge before knocking down the old one. I will wait until after the new bridge is built before trying the southern route. They’ll probably put in another two-lane toll bridge, like Garcon Point.
I prefer wild flowers to the invasive species of green that the ‘home owners associations’ prefer. Let’s attract hummingbirds and butterflies, not Toros and Craftsmen.
both the old bridge and new were / are 2 pieces each. they tore down one piece of the old bridge and built the new southbound piece first, and because it’s extra-wide (3 lanes + bike lane + pedestrian lane, or something along those lines), they made it 2-way traffic (narrow lanes, temporary markings), and then tore down the rest of the old bridge and started building the northbound piece.
a reasonably good design… and it worked well… for a while….
some of their construction barges got loose during hurricane sally and damaged it enough they had to rebuild parts of it (and no old bridge left to travel on). the re-opening of the (still only the southbound piece) was iirc just in time for memorial day weekend.
they’re still working on the northbound piece, slated to open in 2022 i think, but we’re back in hurricane season and there are still construction barges out there….
but no, no tolls, so there is that going for it.
the centipede wasn’t my idea, but there’s not enough there to need a lawnmower, and i’ve got enough flower pots, planters and raised beds that some of my neighbors occasionally poke gentle fun at me. i also have hummingbirds, so we’re all as happy as larks here 🙂
Back in the 50’s when I was growing up down here we had crabgrass and sand spurs. It took a while for people to start bringing the invasive species that require too much water and care to support the false dream of midwestern immigrants to the area. first there were golf courses then the disease spread. The centipede can survive in the sand and spread, so it was among the first wave of the introduced ground cover.
I keep trying to grow milkweed for butterflies and the guy who mows the lawn keeps knocking it down. He trained on a golf course and doesn’t understand the beauty of natural growth.
After Sally you would think they would build a ‘cage’ of treated 8X8-inch piling to corral the barges if the wind kicks up, but that’s asking for common sense which is a rare commodity during the reign of DeMentis.