About time I updated my photo... at the moment I'm rated 8.8 at HotOrNot, with 55 votes... wonder if posting it here will make it go up or down.
Mosquitoes! I've gotten bit about 5 times in the past few days. All this water gives them plenty of places to breed. West Nile virus hasn't been reported yet in New Mexico, though, and even if I get it there's an 80 percent chance I won't get any symptoms at all, if I can trust the CDC, and only one person in 150 gets seriously ill.
I had another cool flying dream the other morning: I guess I was a bird in that dream; I was flying downhill along the river to the bay, building up speed, then increased altitude and turned around back up the hill. When I reached some apartments I was flying sideways, actually almost backwards, and not high enough to clear the buildings, so I flapped my wings rapidly to clear one building... but then I saw out of the corner of my eye I was sure to hit the next building. I resigned myself to it, and felt no pain as the body was left on the brick wall by a door and my spirit continued sailing backwards for a second or two before I woke up. A young woman who was outside the apartment just before I hit had yelled "look out!" either at me or another person standing nearby. I'm not sure if I (the bird) died or just got knocked out.
I "won" a mountain skateboard (dirtboard) on eBay for less than $100 including shipping; I plan to use that to get from Reno to Burning Man, if I can't get a ride. I might even take my WindSkate sail and really make a scene. The Katadyn Base Camp filters I bought look as though they can hold significantly more that the rated 2.6 gallons. As long as they're not too strict at entry I should be able to get by with just those two bags full. I'm sure I can do better than survive on a gallon a day.
Yesterday I cut the power cord on my Dell laptop to see if I could hook up my flexible solar panel to it; I don't yet know if anybody at Burning Man will be providing electricity to charge it with, and anyway I should be "radically self-sufficient". I did something wrong, though; it's a 3-conductor cable, with the small center conductor being the sense line (I suppose), the next one out from the center being positive, and the outer wire of the coaxial being negative. Anyway I redid it this morning and my laptop is back in business; soon I'll check and see if the panel puts out enough voltage. The no-load DC put out by the power supply is 19.5 volts, about the same as a typical 12V PV panel. So it might work.
I'd been looking for months for a retractable keychain. Got a few hits from Google but only from places that customize cheap retractables with your company logo. Then yesterday at Wal-Mart in Deming, while I was waiting for them to test my battery before they'd replace it, I saw one. It was called a "Key Retriever", duh. About $3-something. I've got my keys and lighter on it now, very convenient.
last updated 2013-01-10 20:47:34. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com