Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

So this heatwave we're having helped contribute to the death of the powersupply in my laptop. It runs fine, but only on battery, and that's pretty much exhausted. So until tomorrow morning when I either figure out this problem (it's internal to the machine; at first I thought maybe I'd just blown the transformer) or transplant the drives (which are fine) into another box. My apologies for the resultant lack of posts here, on BME, ModBlog, and elsewhere.

Phil and I fixed the door on the truck today — the tabs holding the window and lock swtich assembly to the door came off and the entire switch assembly fell inside the door and right to the bottom; so we had to dismantle the door and glue everything back together. It's all clamped up right now.

It's funny… Of those two vehicles in the picture, the truck — an $800 beater with a $200 set of used tires and around $2000 in assorted parts to bring it to a roadworthy and slightly customized condition — even though it's currently a very mild lift (4.5″/33″) is the one that gets consistent thumbs up and smiles and head-turns from crowds. I guess in a city of five+ million or whatever Porsches are dime-a-dozen but a fun looking rusty truck is the rarity that brings people back to childhood.

That said, my Porsche, while very nice, is a beater too (a previous owner to me was in a serious accident with it), with the interior (and the rest of the car) in need of a fair chunk of TLC. Even the key (check out the RFID) has long since fallen apart, ha.

Anyway… Rachel and I have been talking about whether Nefarious is better off going to school (since that's the next major decision in her life) in the US or in Canada, and whether she's better off with rural or urban life (there are obvious benefits to each, as well as obvious negatives — I'm assuming, I hope incorrectly, that Nefarious will experience many of the high-IQ-slash-highly-eccentric socialization problems that I had and continue to have, and this can be made both better or worse by aspects of the environment), or whether she's best off with a split life (ie. school season/off season), which adds a whole new level of pros and cons…

But I've been looking at properties, some close (which I won't bother mentioning), and some more remote. There's plenty of just gorgeous ones about a nine hour drive north of here (about twice as far as Algonquin Park to put it into context). Amazing old growth forest, great water, great hunting, good soil, tons of edible food to forage for, etc… There's also wonderful properties for nothing (and that's about what I can afford these days, ha) in Quebec that are very tempting… Thousands of acres of mountains with streams, springs, immense trees, everything a person could want. And when it comes right down to it, I've got very little problem with living off the land and eating moose, deer, bear, and so on (to say nothing of the abundance of fish in unpolluted lakes).

And I could build my tracked sportscar for snow and maybe start a company selling them! I have been refining the design, so now it's fully enclosed and heated — the front looks like of like the back of a 1973 Buick Riviera I think. I'll post a picture tomorrow if I remember…

This billboard hangs in front of my current house:

I don't know if it's a pro-gay or anti-gay billboard. Ezekiel 16:49 (and surrounding text) is regularly used both to point out that homosexuality was not the real sin (or worst sin) of the Sodomites, but at the same time, the “detestable acts” Ezekiel 16:50 mentions are regularly assumed to be homosexual acts (rather than the, at least to me, more obvious explanation that it's a catch-all for the many more blatantly “wrong” things they are accused of). Not that I feel strongly enough to email them.

Well, since I'm being forced by fate not to work today, I guess I'm going to watch a movie and try and go to bed early so I can get up and at it bright and early. But first, I need to register some new domains.