http://bolson.org/clock/epiclock.html
I thought it would be really cool if I made a clock with hands but where each successive hand sprouted from the end of the hand before it. The seconds off the end of the minutes off the end of the hours and so on. This epicycle clock does that, but gets kinda messy as things overlap. Not as pretty as I'd hoped.

I finally got my living room turned around and can now watch things on my newly hung projector screen:

So, what needs to be watched large? The movie up there measures about 70" diagonal.

A couple days ago I made this clock.
Now thanks to some clever web hacking (of the sort I've been learning at my job) it no longer assumes you live at my house (important for sunrise/sunset calculations) and lets you set and even bookmark locations to use. For example:
Boston
Philadelphia
Chicago
San Francisco

(and it comes with an explanation now too)

I made you a clock ( http://bolson.org/clock/ ) (Requires Java, or the lesser javascript clock)

In what were for me darker times, Greg Lake's 'I Believe in Father Christmas' quietly became my standard of the season. A wistful song, it's final verse tells us that we sow what we reap: "The Christmas we get, we deserve."

Today, I am reminded that I have not always, and still sometimes am not, all I can be. I don't give as much as I could, which is entirely unfair given that I almost certain have whatever I might reasonably ask for in life. I am healthy, able-bodied, I have food to eat and a roof over my head.

Greg Lake and most of the music he was involved in has passed out of the body of material I regularly listen to. Still, there is this, and each year as I hear it I quietly cry: I still live in fear of getting the Christmas I deserve.

Another year is nearly by. I won't quite make my goals. Single, check (divorce final 2 weeks ago). Homeless, check (sold in May). Broke, not quite. I'm net negative, but close.

Reflecting, there's more I've failed at. Regrets are easy to have, and I certainly have 13 years of Catholic education to thank for my ability to feel guilty, too.

I said after I sold my house that I'd start volunteering with an organization that rehabilitated houses. Hopefully in the spring I'll schedule that in, and make it happen. Hasn't happened, yet. I'm hoping perhaps to interest some of the other members of HackPittsburgh in joining me at least once, as the more people you have, the more you can get done... at least if you're organized.

Similar, but different, I swore I'd make more of an effort to enjoy life, lest I approach the misery I've had before. I've done reasonably, but sometimes I miss. Biking, for example, I find therapeutic. In spite of that, I had fewer 20 miles rides this year than last, and most of those were the 20 miles I can pretty much stumble out the door onto. I've done more biking-as-transportation than ever before, at least.

I also failed at getting out as much as I'd like for railroad photography, but in some way that's constrained by my inability to find others available for it, and my lack of desire to sit in a car in the middle of nowhere by myself for the more interesting things I might see; I could, again, take the pictures in stumbling distance, but largely, I have, and it's old-hat.

2010, like each year before it, offers an excuse to try to "do it better". Here's hoping that I will.

So much in my life is very different to me for what it was just a few years ago; I'd call it new self-awareness, but that's not quite it. I do still feel a bit like someone who's just occupying this body, not the rightful owner of it.

Some things evoke feelings, memories, conditions of days gone past. This past week, walking somewhere, I caught of whiff which seemed familiar. The odor was reminiscent of that of slightly decaying paper, one I know well from spending time in the stacks in the Carnegie Library in high school and college. I've not spent hours on end just perusing the stacks in years, but still, the smell tresspassed briefly, long enough to trigger the memory, then passed.

Monday night I recounted that I wasn't 'feeling' Christmas. There was a brief moment Sunday, with the snow, where it almost felt right. Almost. And then it passed.

Tonight, on the table next to the gifts being wrapped, I opened an envelope. Inside, a check for a dozen dollars and an address on a sheet of paper waited. I pulled out the check, walked to the basement, and grabbed something from a box. As I carried it upstairs, memories flooded back. I remembered Christmas. I felt it.

Reaching the top of the stairs, I found a box, placed the object I was carrying with it, and put the address somewhere I'd find it in the morning.

Tomorrow, after I leave the house and before my morning tea, I'll visit the Post Office, followed shortly thereafter by the ATM across the street.

Friday morning I went down to my basement to check on my heating system, as I should periodically do but haven't been doing often enough, and discovered my oil gauge floating just above empty.

So I started calling around and my usual oil company couldn't get me any until Monday and the second place didn't even pick up the phone but the third place (Amanda's Fuel Oil, 781-396-4200) could get to me Saturday so I said I'd go with it and could I get a full tank and maybe re-prime the pump, please. Then I turned the thermostat down to 50F and went to work.
That night I put on two layers of sweats and holed up in my bedroom with the electric heater. The next morning the physical activity and oven leakage from baking cookies kept me warm. Then about 2pm the oil man came and pumped in 150 gallons expecting to fill a 250 gallon tank. Apparently my gauge is wrong and I probably still had a quarter tank left. Whenever it has just been 'filled' it reads about 3/4. Oh well, still probably better to order a little earlier next time.
But there it is, I was running out of oil but it lasted long enough. Hurray!

coffeehouse is closing in a couple of minutes, but two whacky discoveries:

Yesterday I found that you can heat up small corn tortillas in a pop-up toaster. seriously.

Today I found out that I can mail-order insulin syringes. Huh. No prescription needed. Huh!

d33ann thinks I should write up a wishlist for the holidays like she did. Well first, so many people have been so utterly generous it's hard to ask for anything, even if it's just just idle wishing.

Really the only things I need are stuff to survive. I've put some food-like stuff in my amazon wish list. [eta: it's apparently under my "real" name.] They're more expensive versions of stuff I can get otherwise, and not really necessary. Ignore the listings for non-food, I'm trying to offload possessions not get more. I might use gift thingies to online drug stores and such, for things like shampoo and toothpaste and the like.

This is really just wishing out loud. I don't actually expect anything, and I'm so far managing to survive with the help from you folks and a few programs I've managed to get on so far. (Like the one to cover insulin. Ow. Insulin is expensive.)

According to my thermometer at home, I just biked home in 10 degree Fahrenheit air. The internet says 12F. Either beats my previous record of biking in 13F weather. My toes got tingly cold. If it were much further or colder I'd have to do something about that.

Huh, the dining table I bought of 'parawood' is the wood of the rubber tree, which was considered a lower quality wood but is cheap and plentiful since they used to just burn trees that didn't produce latex anymore. Well, it still looks like good stuff right now. I guess we'll find out over the next N years how it holds up.