I couldn’t believe it when I looked at the date of my last writing. It’s been nearly 3 months! So what’s been going on?

Wedding

As I hinted at a few months back, my oldest did get married in May. I really loved how it worked out. It was a small Catholic wedding up at St. Lawrence in Goffstown, followed by a small reception at the Pickety Place.

Puerto Rico

While the wedding and reception were small and intimate, the celebration was a bit bigger. Twelve of us flew two days later to San Juan and spent several days in a large rental house right on the ocean. Plenty of time for swimming, eating, and exploring!

Internship

The day after the wedding, my youngest had to immediately drive back towards Sioux Fall, SD to start his internship at Raven Industries. It was yet another opportunity to be on his own, but this time outside of the school/campus environment. He’s been happy to finally use a lot of what he’s been studying.

He gave me a brief bit of anxiety this past Tuesday when – around lunchtime while I was down at work – he messaged me asking if we could sync up after dinner time. Being a parent, I was curious. When we sunk up, he announced that his work review went very well, they offered him part time work when he heads back to college next month, and extended an offer for him to come back next summer. I was beyond happy for him. No more need to be a math tutor or lab assistant on campus.

Pregnant

Around the same time I’d learned of the Raven opportunities, my oldest and her new husband came by. They had just finished a nice cruise, Boston to Bermuda, sponsored by her office. After hearing about their adventures on her first cruise, she also said that she was having an ultrasound this week. Grand-baby Number Two!

Less Hole-y

The guys who maintain my yard with its weekly mowing also do an early Spring, mid Summer, and late Autumn cleanup. The mid Summer one is usually a pruning, weeding, etc. type of task. After the Spring cleanup, I’d asked if they could fill in the “holes” in my yard.

In the left side yard behind the main mulchbed, there are these two areas where the lawn really sinks. I imagine a quarter century ago when the land was prepared for building upon, they probably removed two really big trees there. When we first moved in, there were already signs that the leftover roots were decaying and as the years went by, the dips got deeper and deeper… and deeper.

Along with their usual pruning, this visit they temporarily removed a bit of the end of the fence and backed a big truckload of fill and top soil. For now it just looks like two big black dirt ovals, but it has been seeded and soon the grass should grow back in.

Tinkering

About 3-4 weeks ago I was watching this video from a channel I subscribe to. It’s host described putting Linux on a used MacBook Air and how it usually went pretty well. I’ve been a long time eBay guy and would often get what looked like great deals on those laptops, but I’d always stayed away. My impression of the MacBook Air was that they got as thin as they are by removing modularity and soldering or gluing everything.

I was only partially right. It’s true the memory is soldered on and not upgradeable, but the drive and wireless are replaceable modules and the battery is screwed in and replacable. The only pain is the ten-or-so tiny screws that need custom “pentalobe” tipped screwdrivers, but a set costs ~$10. The nice thing is that many of the MacBook Air models I was interested in are very cheap because Apple no longer pushes out updates for them.

Within a few days I received a 2015 11" MacBook Air with the Intel i7, 8GB of memory, and a decent battery. I also ordered a fresh drive that was bigger and faster than the OEM one. I still have the OEM drive with its MacOS install in case I’d ever want to go back, but now the laptop is running up-to-date Arch Linux on it. I started with the mainstream KDE desktop environment, but am slowly migrating it back to my nerdy custom setup. Overall it’s like a Linux’y Netbook that’s small, lightweight, and zippy.

Movie

Today was a typical Saturday: laundry, grocery shopping, nap, Mass, etc. but after dinner a movie trailer caught my eye. Great American Family (GAF) channel ran this teaser for a movie coming August 12th.

Folks who know me know that “It’s a Wonderful Life” is my favorite Christmas movie. In this new movie an angel takes a woman six years into the future under the auspices that she was in an extended coma that she just woke up from. At the beginning of the movie she’d just had a baby, her first, and wasn’t sure she’d be good at being a mom and was more concerned about her high prestige, Girl Boss job.

Anyway the video mentioned that it was a re-broadcast of a film originally produced by Pureflix. Wait a minute! I have a Pureflix account which I use a few times a month! I don’t have to wait until mid-Augest to see it. Here’s their trailer for the movie.

It was pretty good. Often their films are on the low budget side, but usually have a good message, uplifting and inspring. Their films are a nice detox from what I usually see pushed out by Hollywood.