November 24th

I started the day playing Warcraft while my iPod finished syncing... it seemed to be running a ways faster, as I'd been expecting the final ~1000 songs to take all day.

The TV antenna is struggling to keep the channels, as its listed as 40 miles range, and the antennae it's talking to are ~39 miles away.  I got into the roof and took out the old antenna, which was smaller than I remembered it being.  I got up on the roof, and bolted it to the pole up there, so it's about 8' higher than it was in the roof.  It seems to be getting everything pretty well, so we'll see how it does over time.

I spent some time getting the screen protector on my Nexus - if you have a house with no pets, you have no idea how hard this can be :o)

In the afternoon, we went to the airfield and took the plane out for a spin, using the Nexus as the inflight GPS.  I'm starting to think I'll keep the Streak as a plane device, as the Nexus can't run OpenFlight GPS, it goes to sleep in Avare, and I almost tore the back off it pulling it off the velcro on the dash :o)  It was a busy day, so I enjoyed doing a bunch of circuits in and around everybody.  Larry showed up towards the end of our hour, so we said "hi" over the radio, but that was about it.

November 23rd

Today was Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving when Americans forget everything they're thankful for and go shopping.  I had won a gift voucher for Apple, so I went to the store in Roseville and picked up an iPod Nano.  I didn't go as the doors opened, so I wandered in there and just bought one.  While it was busy, the biggest problem was parking - the Galleria closed about half of their parking, and had loads of people pointing you in the only way you could actually go, which seemed a little pointless.

I got home and left the awful iTunes transferring music to the iPod.  I need to to some looking into things, as it seems to have transferred everything over in 256Kb/s MP3 format, rather than converting it to 128Kb/s AAC, but what do I know.

November 22nd

I started out playing a little Warcraft, and then went out to make up some shorter battery cables for the bus bars in the van.

Once I'd done that, I did a little bit of cooking for Thanksgiving.  Vic was cooking the turkey and so on, and I cooked Yorkshire puddings (and Toad-in-the-hole for dinner later) and roast potatoes. Vince and Jen came over and joined us for dinner.

November 18th

I did a bit of work on the case for the Raspberry Pi, but then found out that the heat from filing it had melted the levels together, so I just gave up and threw it away.  I need a plan C, methinks.

I vacuumed up the wreckage, and saw a piece of my model kit go into the vacuum cleaner, so I went through the collector and found it.  And a part of the driver's seat unit in the van, so I had to take that bloody thing out again to put it back in.

I went out and spent a long time raking up the leaves from the trees in the front garden, and dumping them in the green waste bin.  This'll be an ongoing task for the next few months :o(

November 17th

It rained on and off all day, so I spent the day playing Warcraft and rattling around the house doing things.

November 16th

We were going to dinner with Gwen, and she drove.  She's just replaced the wipers on her Jeep, and there's some weird screwup where they weren't staying in the arms properly... they ended up flopping sideways.  We managed to get the driver's side to sit properly, and used a hair band to get the passenger side to not fall over and scratch the windscreen.  When we got home, I zip tied them on, so they should be fine for the moment.  I need to replace the wipers on the van at some point, and they seem to use the same mountings, so we'll try and use my old ones, or the new ones that come with my new blades.  Or, more likely, Gwen'll drive around with zip ties on her wiper blades until she replaces them :o)

November 11th

We met Vince for brunch, then came home and cut the grass before going to Cycle Gear to look for a rain suit for Vic.  She wants a one piece to replace hers, that isn't held together with duct tape.  The only one piece they had was a glorified bin liner - she's also hoping for something with a little padding, to keep her warm as it gets colder here.  We looked at other jackets, and of course the only one she liked was a $700 Dainese - a men's jacket, so the armour's in the wrong place.  Oh well, interwebs, here we come.

In the evening, we watched the end of season MotoGP crashfest from Valencia.  Yipe.