The COH delivers

Last week Thursday I noticed that there was a leak in the water main leading up to our water meter. It was just a small leak, but we all know what happens to small leaks in the street.

So I 311'd the problem. (I tried to do it online, but it was not possible. They need to get someone from Google to help them with usability) I called and my line was picked up in under a minute. It took no more than 2 minutes to report the problem, and then I signed off.

I was not particularly optimistic about when the problem would be resolve, but was very pleased to see  the City of Houston water guy in the street Friday morning when I was coming home from a meeting. (Yes, a work meeting. It is mostly pro bono at this point, but I hope that will change at some point)

The streets were wet, so the leak was hard to spot. I showed the guy where the leak was, and he flagged it.

The next day (Saturday!) when we came home from Waffles with Waltraud, our street was blocked off (inconvenient) and the main was being repaired!

IT took a couple of waterless hours, but the pipe was fixed.

The street is still a mess, but I hope that will be resolved, too.

So, it is a win for the City of Houston!

Family in town

My brother Mark and his wife Becky were in Texas this past week. They came down to pick up the fez that I brought back from Morocco.

Well, his new grandson and his pregnant daughter may have had something to do with that as well.

We had good, though short visit.

They are already back home in Wisconsin.

(This post is mainly a test of my new hardware)

On Sabbatical

On June 29th, 2012, I sold the company that I was working for - Object Reservoir - to Landmark Graphics, a subsidiary of Halliburton. This was the conclusion of about 18 months worth of work.

This gave me the opportunity to take a sabbatical.

Now, my sabbatical is not a goal oriented sabbatical like some of our good friends engage in. I admire the author of that blog, and read his updates, shall we say, religiously.

My time off is spent in more prosaic ways.

I have planted a garden, and have harvested some beautiful radishes:

I have cooked a lot of seafood, mostly on Fridays, including a lot of soft shell crab:

That takes a lot of butter and oil:

   

but you end up with a beautiful meal:





Since I am not longer driving to work, I am spending a lot more time with Blaze.

This shows what she feels about this:
 

I was also able to drive up to Austin one a whim and see my newest nephew, Oliver:
 

I also grew a beard:
 
but I shaved it off.

I also got a new coffee machine. A Quickmill Achille 0996 spring driven lever operated espresso machine. I will probably write more about this later.
 

The first several weeks have been busy. Very busy.

But I am trying to find a way around that.

More later.

More testing

I am trying to see how well this tablet will work once we start traveling.

There is always a trade off of with verses capability.

I want the performance on a laptop, with the with and flexibility of a tablet.

Maybe I should have bought a netbook

New toy

I just got a Samsung Galax tab. This is just a test to see how well the Swype works on this machine.