Day 2326

You'd be proud of me. Instead of wasting time on Facebook and wondering why nobody was reading the blog anymore, I decide to be productive. I cleared all the water off the roof, along with a huge messy pile of wet catkins that was trapping the water and creating duck ponds that would never evaporate. After the roof was dry and clean, I called the roofer and got him to agree to come out and patch the areas where the elastomer coating was peeling away again. I'll probably have to wait until the rainy season is over before the roofers actually get here, but at least I got the process started.

Since I was semi-successful with the roofer, I  called my watchmaker and asked if the watches he was repairing for me would ever be finished. I hate to bother the guy, since I know he's busy, but he's had three watches of mine for over two years now. He told me that the watches would be repaired by Summer and I reminded him in a friendly way that he told me the same thing last Summer. This watchmaker is very good and I'm in no hurry, but I still think two years is long enough.

The watchmaker isn't the only one who's slow. I took a tape deck in for repairs last November and just got a call yesterday saying that it had finally been fixed. To be fair, these guys did have to custom make a rubber pinch wheel that no longer existed anymore. When I went to pick up the multi-track deck, I dropped off a mastering deck that had the same problems with disintegrating transport belts. Rubber doesn't last forever. The rubber hoses in your car's engine eventually become brittle and crack. The protective foam in camera cases eventually turns into an awful goo. I'm discovering now that the rubber transport belts in tape recorders don't last that long either. I'm sure my Beta SP video recorders are going to suffer the same fate soon. The only difference is that they'll be even more expensive to fix than the audio recorders. Why do I punish myself this way? All this stuff is obsolete.

I was feeling pretty good about getting things accomplished when I returned from running errands this afternoon, but the feeling was short lived. The house felt warm and Dot was panting. It didn't take me long to figure out that the air conditioner had broken. I immediately called my HVAC guy, but they had already closed for the day. I methodically tried to revive the air conditioner by throwing breaker switches, rebooting the fancy WiFi thermostat, and disconnecting the entire system for a while. Nothing worked. I finally decided to try a new air filter, just in case the new thermostat software had some sort of sensor that would shut down the system if the filter got too dirty. The filter actually seemed reasonably clean, but I didn't have much to lose. Surprisingly, replacing the filter worked and the air conditioner roared back to life. This was a disaster averted, since Dot can't handle the heat anymore. I was worried about her. Hopefully the compressor will keep running through the night, but I probably should have the HVAC guys come out anyway. Better safe than sorry.

I had some website updates to finish today and did a good job of biting my tongue when the client suggested a number of things that I thought were silly. I don't fight these things anymore. If you want something that looks a bit clunky or might confuse your customers, it's your call. At this stage of my career it just amuses me that everyone thinks they're a creative genius. Ten years ago silly suggestions would have driven me crazy.

I hope I get to go to breakfast tomorrow. The next wave of severe weather is supposed to arrive around midnight tonight. Maybe the storm will be out of the area by morning. It's hard to tell. The weather forecasts haven't been very accurate lately. Accurate or not, I should have looked at the forecast before I went up on the roof this morning. If it rains, that was a wasted effort.

Lucky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2125

Dash woke up limping this morning. I don't know what happened during the night, but he is definitely having more trouble with his leg than he was yesterday. Maybe he landed hard when he jumped off the bed this morning. Maybe his knee went out of joint while he was sleeping. I'll never know. I've discovered that a lot of weird things happen to the dogs while we're asleep. So now we have two dogs with a total of six good legs between them. This is going to make life difficult. I suspect the only thing worse than having one lame Dalmatian is having two lame Dalmatians.

Dash makes things worse by being so stubborn. He won't poop in the yard, so I have to walk him really slow to his regular place in the park. He'd be just fine if he understood the concept of walking slow, but he'd rather hop on three legs really fast. I still hope he doesn't need surgery, but I suspect that there will be a visit to an orthopedic specialist next week.

I happened to turn on one of my old multi-track tape recorders this afternoon and discovered that the transport mechanism was broken. Damn! I suspect that the rubber belts and capstan wheels have gone bad, but I'd have to completely disassemble the complex recorder to know for sure. Since the rubber belts were suspect, I turned on an equally old mastering deck and it didn't work either. I did a quick Google search for old analog tape machines with the same problem I was experiencing and discovered dozens of people around the world with the same dilemma. In almost every case, their rubber tape transport belts had become brittle, gummy, or simply disintegrated. It was a sad story on Google. Replacement parts were hard to find and in many cases were just as old and brittle as the belts that needed replacing. Oh, all the repair shops that worked on these old analog tapes machines had gone out of business too. I'm fucked.

It's a familiar story. Sometimes it's an old camera. Other times it's a piece of electronic equipment, or even an old car. Rubber is always the enemy. Rubber hoses become brittle and break in old cars. Rubber light seals deteriorate in old film cameras. Rubber drive belts always break or disintegrate in old video and audio recorders. I spent a ton of money replacing all the rubber transport belts in my Beta SP camera and then I had to reluctantly conclude that the equipment was obsolete anyway. Will I go to an extraordinary amount of trouble to preserve a piece of equipment that saw its best days in the mid 1980's? Or will I just walk away? I think you know the answer.

Old dogs. Old tape machines. Old memories. I do my best to keep them alive. It's just the way I'm wired. Maybe walking away is better, but I don't see the point. I like my world to be comfortable and familiar. I wrote and recorded many, many songs using my old 4-track studio. Who cares if I can now buy a much more advanced 48-track recorder for half the price. The old equipment served me well and it was all I ever needed.

I watched a new episode of Dr. Who tonight. Maybe the reason I like this show so much is that it is old and familiar as well. The show has been on the air for more than 50 years. The special effects are better now, but the Daleks and the Cybermen are basically just the same as they've always been. Tonight's show attempted to explain the Bootstrap Paradox where a future event is the cause of an earlier event that happens in the past. The past event then becomes the cause of the future event, which is the past event's cause. Cause and effect become so hopelessly tangled that nobody can determine what caused the event to happen in the first place. It was too complicated for me to wrap my head around, but it was still a good episode.

Dash is sleeping now. He's a bit of a paradox as well. He needs to walk to keep his muscles strong, but when he walks, he limps, causing his muscles to get weak. Do I rest him or keep him walking slowly? It's confusing.

Neo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day