Month: September 2020

–More FedEx hassles. Seems like NO emails are going through to fedex.com at present. Update: the problem was with the vstat.com server, not FedEx. I’m now reverting everything back to wsf@comcast.net. What a pain.

–Smoke and haze were the worst I’ve ever seen today.

–Tossed the buggy bird seed.

–Spent a lot of time with FedEx trying to sort out customs issues. Got nowhere. Will start again tomorrow.

–Went to Home Depot for CO monitors, door closer, furniture sliders. Installed the CO monitors, which used the 7-year-old mounting plates just fine.

–No ride tomorrow: going to be hot and smoky.

–Added chlorine to the pool, bird seed to the feeder.

–Started cataloging knives. Swapped some Kono khii handles around after removing them via oven heat. Pretty slick.

–Went to Sunrise farmers market for tomatoes, grapes, jam, apples, pears, almonds.

–Took a shower.

–Took a 13.6 mile bike ride.

–Put a dome crystal on the Rolex 1680 (again).

–Made pizza for dinner.

–Had brunch at Friends with Benedicts in El Dorado Hills with Tom Elken. Good food, good time. Bought a banana cream pie at Safeway for dessert.

–Casio AMW320 watch came in. Replaced bezel insert and crystal, not without some trouble. Bezel was really tough to remove. Bezel friction ring was held in place by what looked like two screws. They turned, but did not unscrew. Now I have to find an instruction manual.

–Leica TL2 came in. Pretty darn slick.

–Meeting Tom Elken for breakfast tomorrow at Friends with Benedicts in El Dorado Hills.

–Replaced hearing aid batteries around 9 AM.

–Went to post office to mail Noah’s presents and track down the watch dial from Vietnam that’s been bouncing around West Sac. Turns out the machine (?) read the ZIP code wrong.

–Pool is still 79, as it has been for the past 5-6 days.

–Went to Devon’s Jewelers in Roseville Galleria and put my name in for a Rolex 36mm Oyster Perpetual in turquoise.

–Bought an unmolested 1968 Rolex Day-Date. Hope I can wear gold…

–Bought Super Duper and did a total backup of the Mac onto a thumb drive.

–Picked a bunch of cherry tomatoes.

–Got tomatoes, grapes, jam, apples at Sunrise farmers market.

–I seem to have gotten Mojave installed as the ONLY OS on my Mac (on the HD Data disk). So far, everything works, including Lightroom.

–AQI says 29, but it’s still pretty hazy out there.

–Took Grace shopping for Noah’s birthday to Folsom Premium Outlets.

–Tried 17 different ways of reverting Catalina down to Mojave on the Mac. Total failure so far.

–Rode 13ish miles.

–Spent a while cleaning up Mac and thumb drives, and reviving the Samsung PC–preparatory to reverting the Mac back to Mojave so I can install Lightroom.

–Went shopping at Carmichael Safeway.

–Added (new) bird seed to feeders.

–Got interested in the new 36mm Rolex Oyster Perpetual in turquoise. There’s maybe two available on the net, both > $1,000 over MSRP of $5,600. And a new Ceramic Daytona was seen listed at $29,500. Here comes $30………….  Unbelievable.

–No ride today; AQI, though forecast at 70, was 140. This pattern seems standard. These AQI forecasters need some help.

–Fried some burgers for dinner.

–Went to Sprouts for Hansen’s Diet Ginger Ale and such; Bel Air for apples/oranges/potatoes.

–Made smoked salmon and red potatoes for dinner. Grace ate about half of her small piece of salmon.

–Rode the bike to Black Sails to pick up some coffee.

–All bets off on photo-editing software. Buried deep in a Leica forum thread was reference to RAW Power, an app store photo editor written by one guy. It seems to use a lot of stuff that’s built into Macs. For $40, it recognizes everything (more specifically, does automatic lens correction) and has a great (simple) interface. Who knows what other undiscovered gems lie out there.

–Made dinner:Pasta Queen lasagne and caprese salad.

–Got tomatoes, grapes, pears, peppers at Sunrise farmers market.

–Another no-swim day–pool was at 79.

–Spent a long time last night and today trying various photo apps on Leica C-Lux RWL files. What a mess. Trialed some, bought some, but only one works halfway well: ACDSee. And even that one crops the photo when going from View to Develop mode. Controls are quick and smooth, though. Had to give up on standalone Lightroom–it was starting to act weird on Mac Catalina, and cannot be newly (re)installed. Subscription Lightroom doesn’t do C-Lux either, so dodged a bullet with ACDSee.

–Oops, ACDSee developed some issues too. Now using DxO (purchased), which is expensive but seems worth it. For example, it automatically loads modules for cameras that aren’t built in–iPhone 8 and Leica C-Lux jpeg in my case. Still doesn’t do C-Lux RWL, so I need to decide if I want to go to Lumix for the C-Lux features.

Omega 2503.33 came in (3 days, from Japan). Nice.

–Overcast, cool, smoky.

–No swim: high of 80 and no sun kept pool at 80.

–Cleaned up patio after yesterday’s winds.

–Swam .5 miles in 82 degree pool. Chilly for several laps, then okay.

–Mailed out Shigefusa 180 that I sold.

–Rolex Mk 3 bezel insert came in. Couldn’t mount it, or two others, in the bezel. Turns out at least two of the bezels (don’t remember if I measured all three) are seriously out of round: at least 1 mm bigger in the 12–6 axis than in the 3–9 axis. Just bizarre. There’s an $1,100 tool for expanding/shrinking bezels; don’t know if I’d want to risk trying it on a thin aluminum bezel insert.

–Got 13 sesame bagels for $8 at Noah’s.

–Decided not to ride tomorrow with Tom (again). It has already (4 o’clock) turned “red” outside, due I guess to more smoke in the air. Really miserable.

–Made pizza for dinner.

–Sold Shigefusa 180 gyuto at KKF for $675.

–Swam .5 miles.

–Gettin’ hot, didn’t do much.

–Took a swim; took a shower.

–Went to a couple of strawberry stands south, near/on Jackson. Got lots of strawberries ($8 and $7 for 3 baskets), plus squash and big yummy cherry tomatoes.

–Barbecued burgers, corn, squash. Yowza!

–Took a bike ride to Hagan Park. Nice day.

–Called 42nd Street Camera and finally got them to (manually) send an email with return label. Jerks…

–Took a swim.

–Tuned the sprinklers (turned them way down). Hope all this work results in a nicer lawn with no dry spots.

–Took a swim.

–Finished changing out sprinkler nozzles on the lawn. Will tune tomorrow. Discovered that using the old filter strainer with the new nozzle completely shuts the nozzle. This caused me no end of grief when last I worked on sprinklers, leading me to think a bunch of new nozzles were defective.

–Barbecued turkey burgers and an oto squash from Koreana. Not bad.