Independence Day! Duck And Cover! Them Bullets Gotta Come Down Somewhere!

So, turned 70 last Monday. Joy. Except for the Bear coming through at zero-dark-thirty it was a SSDD day. Well, except SWMBO took me to Red Lobster for lunch where we spent $70 on shrimp. That was fun! She's still the best date ever.

Walked the Silverdale Mall afterwards and didn't see one thing I couldn't live without. Which says a lot about where am these days. Seems I have the bucks; no longer feel the need to spend it all. What a weird place to be in life. Don't get me wrong, I have TONS of projects that we'll be spending on, but I'm not in that "gotta have it!" place anymore. Maybe I'm getting old.

But there is that new Yaesu FTDX10 Compact HF/50 MHz 100W SDR Transceiver ... ($1400.00 ON SALE!) But I probably ought to get a better antenna. A multi-band yagi and rotor. I mean, I do have a tower and it should hold more than a couple of 2-meter/440 antennas.

And we're thinking of Starlink. This DSL crap is really getting old. High initial outlay and $30/month more expensive than what we're spending now; but maybe worth it. We do a lot of Youtube, Discovery+ and Wondarium. Not to mention the Roku stuff SWMBO watches.

Today is July 4th and around here there has been an awful lot of "practice" explosions. People testing their fireworks. Shooting into the freakin' air! Dorks!

OK, I admit. I've been sitting on this post for almost 2 weeks now. Got busy and when I'd remember I hadn't done anything here I didn't want to get out of bed to finish it.

The guy that was dating SWMBO when I stepped into the picture almost 40 years ago called her out of the blue and wanted to bring his wife and daughter to stop by and get caught up. Cool. They were hot and heavy way back when and he even got her preggo (which she lost to miscarriage (bummer)). Good thing i have absolutely no jealousies of her life from before US. None.

So, they've been visiting for the last 3 days. Turns out they live over in North Bend. He brought his black-powder rifle and pistols and we've been out back shooting some. (He handed me a loaded pistol and I looked at him and said "Aren't you glad I'm not the jealous type?") Was fun.

But it has been a hassle cooking/making 3 meals a day for 5 adults. And the cleanup!

And I'm kinda tired of hearing sea stories or health issues. Nice guy but he'd be the rock star of the Old Folks Home.

Anywho. Enough. We went down the the USS Turner Joy (DD-951) the other day and I got on free because I'm a shipmate. Was fun walking around and telling stories from the last deployment and seeing my Sick Bay again.

Was adding their daughter to my NAS so she could watch movies on her laptop and the damned thing gave me that updating circle for a minute (way too long), rebooted, and all the drives came up empty. Damned thing forced me to choose a raid type and reformat! AAAAAarrrrgggghhhh!! Fuck! Fuck Fuck!

Yes, I have everything (or mostly everything) backed up (except the actual Backup directory (go figure)) and can rebuild the NAS; but that's damned time consuming.

So, I'm almost convinced to just set up a raspberry pi with a couple of 5-tb drives as a NAS and go that way. Wouldn't use as much power. Take up less room since I could hang it on the wall behind the tv. Hmmm... One drive for movies and one for tv stuff. Hmmm. May have to futz with the power some... I already have the pi4 set up with KODI...

Want to give a shout out to all you folks I "follow" and get your posts when you post. I don't stop by your sites much; but I do read your posts when they show up in my e-mail.