Down home

[jay]

Friday was spent mostly squinting at numbers on property tags -- there's about 100 mostly-obsolete pieces of NASA computing equipment in my name scattered around Atlanta Hartsfield airport, part of an aircraft ground traffic monitoring and management system that's been up since the 1996 Summer Olympics. My role was as the project manager for the ground traffic system, then a NASA-developed prototype (we actually had to install their initial LAN ourselves -- for several years, many hosts in the FAA tower and airport concourses had a nasa.gov address *).

On the way back to my parents' place, I stopped at the Delta employees' store and bought a new Rollaboard carry-on bag to replace my broken one.

Back at home, the hot water heater had stopped working and was leaking... patgreene was despondent at times.

Meanwhile, I felt a bit guilty at having an evening out, having dinner with my parents and sister and 2-year-old niece. Later my brother joined us and all three siblings went out together to a local bar and swapped life-stories.

Saturday was spent packing, wrapping gifts, reviewing proposals while on airplanes and trying to calm patgreene from a distance. I arrived early at the airport and was lucky to have the opportunity to meet sisterfish125 there for lunch. Apart from her fascinating work, she's bright, charming, a pretty sight and a good conversationalist... a pleasant lunch :-).

Arriving home a bit early, I dove into housework and kid-wrangling...

Today, after church I helped Barbara load her van for her return trip to Oregon, then took her to Hobee's in Sunnyvale for brunch. Then I came home and spent the day mostly online researching water heaters... after confirming that the 13-year-old existing heater was, in fact, defunct. I'd like to get an energy-efficient tankless gas-fired water heater, like those that are commonplace in Europe and Japan, instead of a less-efficient storage tank unit. If I can afford it... the tankless units are also much smaller and can be wall-mounted, but cost 2-3x as much. Time to check eBay...

Comments

[technomom]

Have you checked Consumer Reports? I seem to remember something about recalls on some of the wall-mounted water heaters recently, due to safety issues.

I'm sorry we couldn't meet you this trip - next time! :-)

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I checked, but found nothing. If my eBay bid falls short, I'll have to just install a conventional storage heater -- I can't afford $1K or waiting another 10 days on a different bid.

Hopefully next time! :-)

[sisterfish125.livejournal.com]

I arrived early at the airport and was lucky to have the opportunity to meet sisterfish125 there for lunch. Apart from her fascinating work, she's bright, charming, a pretty sight and a good conversationalist... a pleasant lunch

Awww...Flattery will get you everywhere! ;)
I was thinking earlier that it was nice to talk to someone that was actually interested in what I have to say, for more than the first few minutes. We'll have to try to meet up again on a future visit!

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

I was happy to sit and listen, you have much to say :-). And I hope we can have a future meeting...

[sisterfish125.livejournal.com]

A future meeting is a definite. We just have to plan around thunderstorms, work schedules, and the airlines though :)

Keep me posted on your next scheduled visit, and I'll be there with bells on (figuratively, of course)

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Southern bells?