Seasons
It’s officially winter. Cue Snow from “White Christmas”. We got a bit of snow overnight and are expecting a few more inches during the day. Of course, this makes Hazel’s Herding Ball that much more fun.
Since I was expecting the snow, I took down the outside lights and decorations yesterday.
I also received my first email of the year to buy Portland Sea Dog tickets today. Baseball is coming.
Back to Work
Well, it was back to work today. Lots of my friends still have this week off. I’m good with getting back to work, but I do kind of wonder about having the time off. That would mean foregoing other vacation days or going longer in the summer. Everything is trade-off. Generally a pretty boring day. I cleaned up a bunch of administrative things.
We also reviewed a new Help Desk system. It looks really good, fully robust, and affordable.
New Year’s Day
Spent the day doing some cleaning and a bit of reading. Also went to my eldest daughter’s house to watch a bit of Fry and Laurie. I also spent a bit of time upgrading darktable. I updated to version 4.6.0. Everything seemed fine until I went to import some new pictures. Darktable would then hang upon rejecting the request to access other programs. Apparently, this just took a really long time to set. Upon leaving it run for a while (OK, I admit it, I was working on posting a bug report), the import menu showed up and all is right with the world (or at least darktable). I do have pictures on an external hard drive and probably should switch to a faster drive. Or, maybe I need to convince my wife that I need a new computer :-).
Flu Shot
I got my Flu Shot today (finally). I had to go to my doctor’s office due to insurance. Insurance covers the Flu shot, but only under medical. Most convenient places to get a Flu Shot, bill under prescription insurance. This led to a bit of frustration. However, I am now shot.
Giving Blood
I also gave blood again this week. This is usually a quick and easy process for me. However, this time they had to take two samples for Hemoglobin as the first sample came back slightly low. The second one was fine.
I hopped onto the table, and the needle was inserted. It felt different than usual. Sure enough, the Team Leader was called over. They asked if I was willing to try the other arm. Sure, I said. One of the other technicians stated, “You can’t use the other arm”. The Team Leader simply said, “Yes, we can” (didn’t confront the other tech). The Team Leader inserted the needle and everything was set. So I asked. The Team Lead rolled his eyes and said, if blood hits the bag, we can’t use the other arm. We wouldn’t be sure how much blood was taken. However, the Tech simply had squeezed the blood down to the bag, which is what he was supposed to do. She’s not in charge but likes to think she is.
So, I got a little bit of entertainment with my blood donation.
Posts:
Here is a quick update on other posts this week.
I posted a couple of extra things this week as I can post here and let that be a post on Mastodon. I like this workflow. I retain ownership of the material. I’m not dependent upon any outside provider, but get the social advantages.
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