Geek Habitat

* I’m feeling much better this week, although I still spent most of the day treading water to keep my head afloat.

* The weather station my parents bought Justin last year, which we didn’t install until several months ago, is working again–just in time to log the changing weather as a cold front entered South Texas this evening. The weather station had inexplicably stopped reporting any outdoor data (wind speed and direction, temperature and humidity, rainfall) on the 11th, and I thought I’d ruined it somehow when I buried some cables for it (so no one accidentally runs over them with our lawn mower.) Now to pipe that data over to The Weather Underground, when I get a chance!

* The weather’s finally going to be cooler, which means I can stop guilt-tripping about the fact that I let my small but once-thriving xeriscaped front garden bed revert to a nasty mess due to pregnancy and caring for a newborn. I’ll just plan on socking away some money to get everything looking wonderful for Spring ‘08–a fitting way to ring in Sara’s first birthday, besides!

* I may not be getting anywhere on the myriad (commercial) web updates I need to make, but I have terrific members on my sites who provide honest, useful feedback whenever I post a, “Hey, gang, can you weigh in on this for me?” post. Transferring those thoughts into action, however? …not working so well, as of late. There’s something about the informal nature of blogging that makes it much less iffy to keep up with actual content updates… figures. I’m half-tempted to install MediaWiki on the primary content-driven site and let my users do the maintenance… it certainly is tempting when I can’t possibly create enough clones of myself to get everything I want done started, much less finished.

* We’re buying me a road bike (as in bicycle, not motorcycle) before the end of the year. I desperately need to lose weight (this is NOT my body, and I miss my real body… and I worked so hard to get it, after knee surgery in ‘05.) My mountain bike never fit me quite right, so even though I actually prefer mountain biking to road cycling, a new road bike was the route to go. That, and when you have limited time, you want to biggest bang for your fat-burning “buck”, and road cycling wins… at least in these parts where real mountains are few and far between. Does this mean I won’t ever get back into mountain biking? Hell no… but I want to be back in shape before I do it, and riding a bike that actually fits my body. So, new road bike in 2007, maybe new mountain bike in 2008? Just a thought. Anyone want a gently used (dings and scratches in all the right places) Gary Fisher Tassajara–red and black, men’s frame? Can’t remember the frame size. It’s a great bike, just not a great fit for this 5′4″ woman.