Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Day 4366

I ordered some Christmas gifts on Amazon this morning and within a few seconds after placing my order everything connected with Amazon crashed. Amazon Prime deliveries, Disney+, and the Amazon.com website were all down. This must have been a big service outage because it made the national news. I spent the rest of the day wondering whether my order actually went through, but eventually the problem got solved. All is well and my Christmas shopping is done for the year.

It was really cold when we got up this morning. I had to add a few extra layers before we took our sunrise walk with Dawn. At least the furnace is still working well. I'm thinking of cleaning the flame sensor before it goes bad this year. The furnace always seems to go out on a particularly cold morning when the last thing I want to do is crouch down in the tiny utility room and attempt to fix things before I've even had breakfast. Although it was near freezing before sunrise, things warmed up surprisingly quickly. By the time I finished breakfast and was ready to take my long walk, it was already warm enough so that I could shed a few layers. On the home stretch, I was even able to take my jacket off.

I got a notice today that the Kickstarter project I backed has finally shipped. It was supposed to ship in June, but I suspected it would be late. I'm still wondering whether this advanced computerized astro tracker is going to work. Communications from the Chinese manufacturer have been vague at best. One of the recent messages said to be sure to check my junk mail and answer all phone calls until the package is delivered. Hmm. I can tell you right now that's not going to happen. Evidently I will still need to pay import duties before the package can be delivered. FedEx is delivering the package. I wish it was DHL, but I'm sure it will eventually get here.

The mosquitos in the house are driving me nuts. If I have any exposed skin showing, they will bite me. Most of the time I don't even see the mosquitos until it's too late. These are smaller than usual and very stealthy. Oh, well. At least we don't have problems with ants or roaches this year.

A lot of people I've met on my NASA trips seem to have applied to become astronauts. At least three people I know posted their rejection letters today on Facebook. These people were all really talented, so the criteria for getting selected to join the latest class of astronaut candidates must have been really stringent. Even if I were much younger I don't think I would have applied. My stomach feels a lot more comfortable when it's on the ground. I took flying lessons once a long time ago and spent a lot of time throwing up in the plane. I passed ground school easily, but flunked out of flight school. None of the instructors wanted to go near me.

The sunset was beautiful tonight. I really ought to spend more time out photographing things. At the very least I should get a better phone. There's a lot of beauty out in the park, but most of the time all I am thinking about is how much my feet hurt. I don't think my photography days are over, but it's a lot harder to get interested. If I see something interesting I'll pull my phone out of my pocket, but that's about it. If it weren't for the Santa Paws dogs I'd probably forget that I used to do this for a living.

Humphrey is today's Dalmatian of the Day


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