With a fire near Salem, Oregon, our air quality has been over 50 (0 is good, 100 not good) for some time; my throat gets sore, and I have my cough back. No smoke-free skies exist until you reach the Blue Mountains in Eastern Oregon. It has slowed me down as suddenly I need my inhaler.
Going backward, I arrived at the Volvo cave near midnight with a box of chicken from Popeye’s (I missed dinner) and ate that before taking my pills. I saved two pieces for lunch today. The chicken was overcooked and thus extra crunchy–I like that.
I had come from Richard’s house via the usual super-tall on-ramp (scary tall) to the bridge in Portland. At least it is not see-through! Previously, we played a four-person board game at Richard’s: Great Western Trails: New Zealand. Yes, it is a resource management game with most of the action related to sheep. The game is a trail through buildings and hazards you manage to get your sheep through. You build buildings, hire folks, agree to objectives, and have money to buy things. You also sail ships to establish a market to sell your sheep. There are bonus tiles out on the islands that are only available once.
The game, new to most of us, took more than three hours to play after an hour teach by Richard. We had only a few rules look-up moments and none that stalled the game. This showed the excellent flow and design of the game. Great Western Trails: New Zealand contained deck-building elements (these are your sheep herds and other items you run through your hand). Shawn crushed us with a 100+ score by collecting most of the bonus in the islands–something none of us understood. Richard was in the 90s, and I followed closely, with Chris almost catching me. Overall, I strongly recommended the game with only the length of play (three hours for our first game), giving me pause to buy it–sorry I did not get a picture of the game.
I had to travel the TV Highway to Highway 26 to 405 to reach Richard’s. As expected, the Saturday early evening traffic was light (and certainly better than the afternoon traffic). I had a few slowing areas and the usual shenanigan near the tunnel with cars suddenly changing lanes. Portland was slightly dull looking with the smoke and the hills fading to light grade in the smoke.
Moving back to the mid-afternoon, Evan and I had lunch at the Tapatio & Mexican Restaurant near the taphouse and wickedly talented drink makers, The 649. I tried to order a salad and did have an iced tea instead of a beer at the Mexican place. The salad was more like sliced pork on a small bed of greens–delicious, but not really a salad. Next time, I will try the taco salad.
Avery and Stephen were out bartenders at The 649. I had a beer, and Evan ordered another well-made cocktail. I ran late all day, so we were short on time and agreed to play a relatively quick board game, The Architects of the West Kingdom. I have all the expansions, and we play with them. I know all the rules, and I did use the Pirate and the Princess to my advantage and also added adornments to my building for a pile of points. Evan was unhappy with the application of the Pirate (every meeple at the Pirate’s location gets arrested at the change moment) and missed the rules that trip movements. I also was terribly lucky with my building plans, and Evan kept arresting my meeples at the moment I needed to pull back my meeples, and thus I found I could get them back easier. Overall, I had an easy time of it, mostly from luck, and won with a high score.
Before moving to a late lunch and gaming, I was with Susie at her place at Allegiance Senior Care LLC, 9925 SW 82nd. Ave. Portland (Tigard), OR 97223; phone (503) 246-4116. Susie was happy to see me when I arrived around 12:30, and Anassa, the weekend nursing aide, popped Susie into her wheelchair, and then we headed out to the slightly smoking Metzger Park next door.
The smoke did not keep people away, and there were parties here and there. The rec building was in use, as was the shading bench, so we used another one. Leta, Susie’s mother, was safe back in her house; we learned this after I started the three-way FaceTime call. Barb was shopping. Leta’s electricity was back at her home–it was knocked out by severe weather a few days ago. We chatted pleasantly on the bench; Susie seemed to nod off a few times. After we rang off, we went through the park and made our large circle back to the hummingbird house.
Next, Susie decided to stay in her wheelchair for a while. I put on my favorite show, Only Murders in the Building, on Hulu. We are in season two, and Nathan Lane returns as one of the bad guys. It’s always fun to see a comic actor like him place a villain. We are about halfway, and I like how it is written and put together. Everything is obscured by personal relations issues and the usual problems of living in our times, and the murder is likely in plain sight if you can see past the noise. It’s much closer to Sherlock Holmes, but without Sherlock, maybe more Inspector Morse. We managed one episode and then put on M.A.S.H. for Susie and left with a kiss. Susie was sad to have us go–Saturday is a short visit day for Susie–I try to fit a week of stuff into the few hours of Saturday to keep my sanity.
Before all this, I was awake in time to do 20 minutes on the Immoble Schwinn, working myself back to thirty minutes after skipping one day. I then did the morning status meeting; yes, we are working through another weekend. Our director joined me because he needed to speak about some issues. I wrote the blog while following along and continued it after the meeting. It took most of the morning.
I had issues with the 12-inch M1 Apple, 2020, as it is called–The copying of an email sent photos for the blog crashed with the beach-ball-of-death so feared by all Mac users. I had seen issues in Mac TV movies that would not play and other suggestions of a failing hard drive. These super powerful and fast all-memory drives are now just reaching their first-time use by consumers like me. Could the super drives supplied in Apple machines have a limited life expectancy (Not that Apple would use parts that fail just as the warranty ends–April 2024; of course not, they have no history of false obsolescence planning–yes, they do!)?
I have two, yes two, extra super fast and powerful (more powerful than Apple’s drive, in one case) for backups. I use a smaller and faster one for Time Capsule, the Apple backup system. This is plugged by USB-C into the landing station for my M1 in my office. When I plug the laptop to charge and have wired network access, it also connects to the device, and Time Capsule finds everything that has changed and saves it. Time Capsule can restore a system in about 24 hours. Maybe it is faster now, but making it work last time was pretty unpleasant. I had to buy a drive from Other World Computers and their kit to install it and then install iOS on the blank drive to connect to Time Capsule to recover. I lost nothing, but I was sweating it the whole time.
The other 2T (the one I bought when my previous Apple died) is fast and all-memory (about $600 when I bought it). I use this other drive to copy the files from my user ID on the system–just doing it the old-school way: Just copy. I then unplug the drive and put it in a ziplock bag. Next, I put in Air Volvo near the spare tire. I make a copy about every month (but of late, I have been lazy about that). This is the last ditch backup if I take a total loss. With all the storage, I put multiple backups on this drive.
Well, scared, I grabbed the drive from Air Volvo and spent a few hours backing up the data on the M1. I showered while it burned. The drive gets hot when writing so much data, as the thick cover is a heatsink, too. After one issue, I restarted the copy and headed to Susie’s being late. I copied it completed, and I have the drive copy now.
Besides well-learned paranoia about computer storage devices, it was a good and busy day. Thanks for reading.
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