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I just finished watching on Amazon the first episode of “The Hunters” and I was surprised by how violent and how dark the story is. I liked it very much. I will have to watch the series first season.

I made dinner today for just Susie and I. I made dinner as I waited for Safeway.com to bring the groceries. I had set the time to 5-9PM for a cheaper delivery fee. I had to turn down a beer with Mariah as I had to be here for the groceries. Corwin was out already. So it was chicken Kiev (frozen, but one of my favs), with baked beans (can and also a fav) and green beans (frozen) and wilted on the stove with butter and garlic with salt.

Before this I took a short nap. Sleep is still hard to get with me ending at midnight or later and starting at 6ish each morning. I drank all but one cup of the coffee today.

I answered the phone and was surprised by the clear voice that I remember from Central Michigan University lectures in 1982, Dr. Peter Koper. Pete is the one connection we still have to CMU. We see him and Marie, his wife, every few years. We wanted to update each other. We are all getting older, but we are all still going and very happy to talk to each other. The Kopers have been isolating, and their extended family has so far made it through the emergency. It was so nice to hear that strong lecture’s voice. The books for Dr. Koper’s class, Ancient Literature, are the only college books that I still have. I still read my copy of Hesiod once in a while, translated by Richard Lattimore. I like Hesiod’s “Works and Days.”

Work ended with me signing-off the technical design for the conversion of open reverse logistic documents. Yes, I suspect you dear reader could careless. But, it is the details that keep the money flowing at the shoe company. Even reverse flows must work.

Before that, we finally discovered the root cause of the problem that caused me to hear from way-to-many-directors, and today vice presidents were starting to get involved. Ongoing for more than a week! Ugly! We had the data owners of the data we were trying to read, add various made-up data, and check if we could see it. We then varied this through various scenarios to find the cause. It was much like my debugging of microcontroller wiring. Redo the wiring and recheck them. It is all fixed now, and we discovered that they needed to “cast” the data for us to format our system can accept. Actually very basic, if the system had given us an error.

Before that, I had many meetings, most Zoom, and many crises of the moment. Lunch was fried hamburgers. I made them while Susie enjoyed a bit of attention from the dentist. Installation of the crown the manufactured for her last night. Dr. Packam, our dentist, has his own machines to make crowns.

Susie got going this morning and got the one cup of coffee from the pot I did not drink! I started at 6:45ish, having slightly overslept. I had a meeting with the data extraction and reporting team at 8ish.

It was a hectic and frustrating day as much of what I said is in the manuals and things I have fixed before and should not happen again on new technology. But as they say, “what was old is new again.”

Work is no disgrace: it is idleness which is a disgrace. –Hesiod

It is reported today that more than one-thousand thirty people died from the virus in the USA.

I went with a prayer today, Mother Teresa Reads The Prayer of Saint Francis.

The first meeting on Tuesday is with the data migration team in India and here in Oregon. It starts at 7AM, making the morning a rush. This is followed by various meetings and status meetings. I spend most of my time listening and trying to work through the email, text, and messages from last night and this morning. It is crazy as you try not to be “that guy” who has to ask for the question to be repeated or answers the wrong question. This happens too much now as we have too many Zoom meetings.

Today was a crazy rush. I had soup for lunch, from a can, while I worked through meetings and status. Susie got going, and I got her coffee; I drank almost the whole pot and made her lunch. Susie asked for a grilled cheese. I quickly, rushing, produced a near-perfect grilled cheese. I fry it in butter. I learned to add some water, covering tightly, to the pan when it is hot to steam the sandwich. This gets all the cheese melty and excellent. Not too much to make the bread wet. I cut it in half and then into quarters. Susie likes to take smaller bites.

I took Susie to the dentist and executed all the rituals, including masks, promising we are well, and having our temperature taken. I was just below normal, 97.6, and Susie was coldish with 97.1! Today Susie endured getting a temporary crown. The final crown is being manufactured at the dentist’s office–I saw the equipment last time. There is a CNC machine that will make the replacement tooth from the computer scans Dr. Packham, our dentist, took of Susie’s tooth and mouth. The soft carved tooth is then baked in a kiln tonight to finish it (it hardens and shrinks to the final size–20% reduction). Susie get her new tooth at noon Wednesday!

Aside: Dr. Packham and I talked about replacing the software that runs the CNC to make Dungeon and Dragons figures. We could even harden them. The CNC is locked down to software changes, and the license is clear–don’t mess with it. But it was a cool idea!

While Susie was at the dentist, I had an emergency meeting on fixing the problem that has been running for a week. The problem is causing some escalation in leadership. The technical team, called BASIS, was not able to show. So we just talked a bit on Zoom until the dentist called. I got Susie, who was very tired.

I then slipped out to get a prescription while Susie rested a bit. My emergency inhaler ran out–pollen! I bought lots of candy and then was told that Halloween is cancelled this year. I bought face shields and PPE clothing. I am still checking if we can do anything. I have the candy in the garage–far away from me!

I finished my meetings and started to read for a bit to unwind–the chaos was getting to me. I finished The Memory Called Empire. It was one of the best SciFi that I have read in a while. I like space opera and this story was a movie playing in my mind. There is only one novel so far, book 2 is in pre-order for a March 2021 release.

I got going again and my boss and another architect was ready to try to fix the problem. I tried to help Sandeep, the architect, and my boss to find a solution. We managed to find some help, but could not resolve anything.

I then cut up onions, carrots, celery, potatoes, and defrosted some beef roast. I made my goulash but this time as a beef stew. I felt that I wanted to use some of the veggies that were getting oldish. Stew was a good answer. Susie had quiche for dinner, I made that on Sunday, and later a small snack of goulash-stew. I had too many bowls of beef goulash.

Another aside: I had an issue cooking the goulash as it started to burn. I had not put enough fat and water in the pot. I managed to save it by scrapping the almost burned items off. I just managed to save it. The water and stirring fixed it.

While almost burning dinner, I stated back on figure painting, and Scooby-doo is brown now, and the gang has painted hair. I also filled and adjusted the bases last night–they look better. I will shade the bases to match the color assigned to each gang member. Today I received the Hot Wheels Id version of the Mystery Machine from Amazon. Interestingly, Hot Wheels now come with RFID tags so you can track your playing with them on the Internet! All of this is for my copy of the board game Scooby-Doo Betrayal at Mystery Mansion.

I bought a copy of “Dracula, Untold” on my Apple and watched it. I like this version. It is near Halloween and so I wanted at least one scary, sort of, movie. That made me a bit late on writing tonight.

I am tired tonight so just a little painting and blogging.

The death rate has returned to the August 2020 level with over one-thousand thirty people in the USA expiring from the virus today.

You Are My Anchor is a 2020 choir work by David Wesley. I really have enjoyed his work.

The morning started as usual at 6ish with reading email and checking messages. I then started meetings and getting Susie ready for her hair, nails, and etc appointment with Zerida. The morning was full of status reports and requests to fix some things.

I ordered lunch from Gyro House and sent a message that I still miss them on the order’s extra notes. They wrote on the box that holds the lamb gyro that was delivered by GrubHub, “We miss you more!” Lunch was great and the spice garlic sauce burned so good. Any vampire that got within ten feet of me was a goner!

I continued to try to fix things and had a workshop meeting where we tried to get a complex connection from an Amazon S3 storage used by a Hive connected to connect to by a special ODBC driver to another database on a totally different hardware and design to create a virtual version of the data and provide meta-data about the data. Yes, funny that we ever got this to work. Oddly, it was a security setting and not a technology issue that needs to be fixed. We almost had it working again.

So it was a strange day at work as I tried to get things fixed. We are closer to having items fixed now. More to fix on Tuesday.

I made dinner of chicken Kiev (frozen), steamed corn (frozen), and stuffing (from a box). Very basic and still quite good–simple sometimes is just good.

I had Roll20 Dungeons and Dragons today. We had five players plus me for the Mad Mage’s Maze. They fought off the giant crushing hand and then found the “hand of the king” from long ago late dwarf king that opened the doors. Instead of the great treasure, they found a gate to another part of the maze. They went through, fought some ghouls that tried to ambush them (Cory, their wizard, fireball-ed the ghouls into dust), and then faced a huge spell casting abomination they found in the evil spider goddess temple. The druid was knocked out from a massive set of hits–the dwarf cleric healed her a combat round later. The evil creature then split the rogue off from the rest of the adventurers with a force wall and tried to take him down alone, but the adventurers dispelled the force wall. They killed it with range attacks. The abomination’s allies, banshees, tried to stop the adventurers. They were driven off.

The dark paladin tried to destroy the altar and was covered in swarms of spiders. Another fireball, and soon the battle was over. One of the banshees that escaped then attacked again, and they heard her scream, nobody died–one can die from the banshee’s scream. The adventurers, nearly out of spells, decided it was time to rest.

So that was today. I have some figure painting so I will try to stop early tonight.

More than five-hundred twenty people died today in the USA from the virus.

‘Tis a Gift to Be Simple seemed a nice song as we come to the last full week of the election!

I did not get dressed until 1ish this afternoon. Susie and I met Mariah and watched the 49’s crush the Patriots at The Rock pizza place. It was a slow day.

I started about 9ish this morning and did the dishes, laundry, and made a quiche for brunch. This is my best breakfast quiche. I first cook some bacon and let it get a bit cool–usually while I am getting the rest set-up. Take a frozen pie crust, take five or six eggs, and beat them with a few drops of Wiltshire Sauce, a pinch of cayenne pepper, bacon–four slices broken up into bits, some generic spice mix like “Italian” but keep this light and a cup of shredded swiss cheese. I add some small pieces of frozen broccoli to the pie pan before pouring the mix into the still frozen pie crust. Place on top thin slices of tomato to get a professional look—Bake in a preheated oven at 350 for about 30-40 minutes. It will be lightly brown on the surface.

I had a piece, and then Mariah called so change of plans, off to The Rock. I shared a nachos with shredded brisket. Susie had a small pizza, ham, and pineapple. We had adult beverages.

I brought a bottle of hand sanitizer. It looks like a booze bottle. It was funny to bring-your-own-sanitizer (BYOS!?).

We managed to watch the Patriots give up 30 points to their one touchdown (and failed kick–how do you miss one of those) until the close of the third quarter.

We got home, and the same car was parked in front of my house. No plates. We were asked by the police, after a car was stolen and abandoned on our street for three months last year, to report any car shenanigans when they happen. The car without plates had been on the street for two days, so I reported it, and the police were here in twenty minutes and looked into it. My neighbor apparently has a car, this one, with no plates. The car is back in his yard, and I was sorry to cause some trouble, but we don’t want shenanigans again.

I then read some more of The Memory Called Empire. The characters in the story are interesting, and the description of an empire that uses poetry to encrypt their communication is just fun.

I also cleared off my work table. It was cluttered and covered in parts for the 3D printer I was building. Winter is here, it is freezing, and I want to paint figures again–cold and rain mean figures and model and robot work. I will return to the printer build when I have a long weekend as it is not working that, like painting of model building, that is easy to start and stop.

This takes me to a game I bought some time ago but have just punched Scooby-Doo Betrayal at Mystery Mansion. This is a lighter and, in some way, better implementation of Betrayal At House On The Hill board game. It is also for kids and light-hearted play. I got it to play with Susie and to just enjoy it. I am just learning the rules.

I managed to purchase the whole gang of figures to replace the paper standees. I am getting them primed white now. As these are cartoons, I am going with the older painting style of using white as the primer. I will use oil paints for the shading. This is what I did with the Star Trek figures, and they are bright.

It feels good to be back to painting.

It was reported that more than four-hundred thirty people died from the infection today here in the United States. Our rate of infection is now the highest we have ever seen.

I went with Shalom my Friend for our song this evening.

Tonight ended with Susie and I finished dinner in the local Red Robin. We returned from dinner there. It was so cold, me just wearing a sweater, that my teeth was chattering. The winter winds from the high desert are blowing strong. The winds are much colder than the air temperature coming from the cold desert east.

We went to Red Robin after I drove back from Portland. Susie had been home all day and wanted to “do something.” Movies are usually Saturday night gig with some bars with live bands as an alternative. Not possible now with Covid-19 running out of control again. So Red Robin. There was a twenty-minute wait for a table! We sat in the running car until they called us on my cell to tell us they had a table for us.

Susie was thrilled to get her “Southern Comfort Manhattan on the rocks with two cherries.” I had iced tea (which I forgot makes me freeze in the winter). Susie had the “petite Banzai Burger plain” (Teraki sauce on a hamburger with only cheese and pineapple on a bun). I had their version of a Cobb Salad.

I left Portland a bit late. I had driven with Evan in Air Volvo (the name of my XC60 Volvo) to Mox Boarding House that morning. We had played three games, and the last one, Scythe, ran over a bit as we played with less combat. I have played the Japanese (purple) maybe once before; thusly, I had to be careful as I did not know the faction very well. Evan went with Saxony (black) again. I completed all the enlistments, upgrades, building, mech production, and completed objectives, which meant a longish game. I won with a score of over 70+. Japan scores huge if given a chance to play a long game–I have lost to Japan a lot on the Fenris Campaign version of the game. Evan had trouble playing Saxony as efficiently as I ran Japan, and I was able to win.

Before Scythe, a game of Vindication ended early and sent us to play a game of Scythe. We drew the game’s fast ending (please consider that the ending conditions for the game are drawn at random and continue to be drawn as players score more honor-victory points) that the game ends when one player owns four areas than anyone else. This is easy to cause. I rushed the game as it gave me an easy win over Evan. Please understand that Evan did this to me a few games back when he was still learning the game.

Vindication is an excellent game, and I strongly recommend it. I was involved with Marc, the game designer, in early test versions of the game. I am so happy with how well the game plays and looks!

Before this, we played a long game of Concordia. We had a new player, another Michael, and it became a learning game. Michael quickly grasped the rules and play. I was happy to see Evan, who only learned this game a few weeks ago, explaining the game too. We played an excellent three-person game, and Michael (not me) wiped the board with us. It is the danger of playing a learning game that you lose to new players. I tied for second with Evan and more than ten points behind Michael–not quite a spanking.

The day started about 9ish, as I had a hair cut with Zerida at 10. I managed to be on-time, and after getting my hair put back to order, I picked up Evan at the park where he plays Pickle Ball. The other players wave and smile at me. Evan told him about our board gaming.

I slept well, but I am reading a new book and keeps me from sleep as it is a space opera styled book, and it is hard to put down. Yes, I so far really like A Memory Called Empire. It is a Hugo Award winner.

More than seven-hundred eighty people in the USA died from Covid-19 today.

I found this instrumental Corvid-19 version of Let My People Seek Their Freedom. This is Methodist Hymnal #586.