What’s Happening?
Here it is November, and we are still in St. Joe. What’s more, it looks like we might be late leaving here in spite of the fact that the weather is getting distinctly chilly. When we went out this evening to get some milk (after procrastinating all day), around 9 p.m. it was 28 degrees, and predicted to get down to 20 before morning! Phil made a remark about hoping the pipes in the motor home don’t freeze….
Meanwhile, the pipes in the house are a definite problem, and are the main reason we’re pessimistic about leaving by next weekend. (We had planned on a target departure date of the 15th, but I have to go back to the ophthalmologist that day so he can verify the drops he gave me for the glaucoma he diagnosed yesterday aren’t causing any problems like an allergic reaction.) The plumbers will be here Monday to tear up the basement floor and replace a broken pipe that was causing some leakage onto the basement floor. If that goes well, we could still get on the road by the end of next week, but we just can’t predict.
At the same time, I’m scrambling to get ready for an event at the ISM in Second Life on Thursday, but Wednesday we’re going to Beverly’s house (in Kansas) for Sherlund’s birthday, so it appears I’ll be working late tomorrow to build the screens and seating for up to 50 attendees. The thing I’m talking about is a simulcast of something called “Stanford Metaverse Meetup”, organized by Stanford University research director, Henrik Bennetsen. As the title implies, the “real life” component is taking place in California, with a speaker (Mike Liebhold, senior researcher with the Institute for the Future) who will take questions both from the people he can see, and from those whose avatars are at the venue on the roof of the Vehicle Assembly Building on Spaceport Bravo. This is the first time I’ve tried something like this, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out.
Oh, and also at the same time I’ve been talking with one of the museum group, who happens to be a podcast producer in Real Life, about starting a podcast for and about the museum and the SciLands. Several people have already agreed to be interviewed for that, but other than working on the format outline with Jaime via email, that will have to be deferred until Henrik’s program is over.
I’m also trying to get the web server working again. The old G4 tower I had used has a bad network card, and after I upgraded the OS to Leopard (hoping it was just a corrupted driver or something), it wouldn’t even boot, so rather than fool around with that I bought a Mac Mini yesterday. Now I’m trying to find the backup files for the wiki, but the Apache server is working ok and I successfully upgraded the firmware on the router, so as far as I’ve gotten that task is going well.
No, we haven’t yet finished unpacking, and the bookshelves and closet storage things aren’t built yet. Those will just have to wait till Spring, it looks like. The house is mostly livable now, at least, but it will likely take several more months of work before we can really consider ourselves “settled” into it. But at least once the plumbing is fixed we can just lock it up and leave. Maybe next week! Cross your fingers for us.
