A Sunday, no better and no worse

I was about to write to Duncan McGeary and ask him whether he's read the article about Amazon in the New Yorker, but I see that he already read it.

Mrs Elliott is away in the Sandwich Islands. Me, I did stuff today.

WARNING WARNING WARNING 

Sometimes I write just for the pleasure of writing.

Nothing that follows here is worth reading. 

Move along, move along.

Okay, on your head, then.

IN THE COOKING DEPT. The remains of my first-ever smoked duck simmered overnight in the slow-cooker along with carrots and onions and peppercorns and other tasties. This morning I separated everything into three (3) categories: duck meat in a bowl for use on salads; carrots and bones and onion into the trash; the filtered broth into measured Baggies for future stews and soups.

HOUSEHOLD DEPT. The second refrigerator in the garage needed some cleaning. Cat's litter needed changing. Trash and recyclage and glass needed tubbing and hauling to curb for tomorrow's pickup.

IN THE IT DEPT. I did stuff on Mrs Elliott's staff's computers: security and updating and backing up. I wanted to make sure that every computer in the office were supported by healthy battery power supplies -- the things you count on to keep the company and network and phone system running if a falling limb cuts us off from Pacific Power's sweet, sweet electricity. Yep, it's as exciting as it sounds. I'm getting sleepy just reading about it.

IN THE ELECTRONICS TECH DEPT. KPOV's station manager asked me to take a look at one of the digital recorders that hosts can check out to do interviews with folk. The headphone jack on this one was dead. Turns out that there was a loose thingummy inside that needed re-soldering. The Googles showed me that this was a Known Issue with the product, and some kind soul already posted a nice step-by-step "how to fix" page on the Internet. Very helpful!

I actually found this project a fun little challenge. I am no hand with small assembly. The model cars and HO-scale trains I built and painted when I was a kid were nothing to brag about. They looked like the work of a palsied man in his 90s who had severe macular degeneration. But I managed to take the thing apart, effect the repair, reassemble it, and -- wonders of wonders -- find that the thing 1. still worked, and (b) no longer had the dead-headphone problem.

Of course I will never let the station know that I followed published instructions: I prefer than they think I am Really Smart. (No one from the station except Sven and Michael Anthony read this blog. And I know they can be counted on to keep my little secret.)

 IN THE SOUND PRODUCTION DEPT. I did some sweetening of some show promos for KPOV's show, The Point. ("Sweetening" means to make them sound better; "The Point" is a show on weekday mornings from 9 to 9:30. Why am I explaining all this to you? Oh yeah -- because I produce the Friday Point show!! Tune in or listen online at kpov.org. I do Central Oregon's least-professional weathercast.)

That's enough for a Sunday! It is time now to listen to music (Django Django's eponymous album on the hi-fi) and sip some bubbly. Look out the window! the sun is shining, pet the cat, enjoy the day.