Altivo

Tomorrow I have to put in what amounts to a full day at the gallery, demonstrating and just watching. But then I'm done until the last day when we have to pick up our entries and help break down the show.

So far only two responses to my invitation for other fursuiters to join me at the library on November 15 (the eve of MFF) to help entertain at a family reading night party. Neither seems able to make it in time, alas. For anyone on my friends list who plans to arrive at the Hyatt on Thursday before 4pm or so, my boss is offering dinner to you if you are willing to make a fursuit appearance that evening from 6:30 to about 8 pm. I am willing to run shuttle from the Hyatt up to Harvard for the event, and then return you to Schaumburg after.

Hee. I've made it onto the top page of rankings for returns to the us_furries team on WCG/BOINC. Look out, cabcat, I'm creeping up on you from below. But... I'm probably slowing down. The Pentium III machines I've been running are just not reliable enough. For some reason, the BOINC software tends to stall on them. It doesn't lose results, but it can lose hours of time until I notice and restart them. I'm not interested in constantly riding herd on these machines, so the most troublesome ones are going to be dropped once they finish the result sets they currently hold. The most reliable pluggers are the two Alpha processors, which may be slower but they never quit or stall. They just keep chugging along like the tortoise in that famous race... The largest point counts come from the two Pentium 4 class machines, of course, but they require more fiddling as well to keep them going.

Sooo... Gary took off for a Civil War recreation event up in Wisconsin this morning and won't be back until Monday morning. I'm not used to being here by myself for that long a stretch, and it feels... weird. He often goes into Chicago on Thursday to take his mom shopping and to the doctor, and stays overnight, coming back Friday. I have to keep reminding myself that he won't be back tomorrow because it means adjusting my routine to accommodate taking care of all the critters here all the time. Normally I can rely on him to do a big share of that.

So, tomorrow I'll probably be turning horses out an hour early so I can muck stalls before going to work. ;p Otherwise I'd have to do that first thing after getting home from work, which is even less fun than doing it at 6 am.

Had my handspinning study group this afternoon. We're working on flax yarn at the moment, and I managed to complete a nice one ounce sample in time (i.e., at the last minute) so that was good. Turned in the last of my show entries, but that doesn't mean I'm done. I have two shifts as gallery sitter, an appearance as a model in a fashion show, and two shifts as a demonstrator. Also, Monday morning I go in to help with the judging for the spinning portion of the show. (We have an outside judge coming in, but I'll be helping to take notes and match up entries with the proper forms and comment sheets.)

BOINC was raining credits today, as seven of my first ten work units completed. Four of them were accepted immediately (125.11 credits) and three were left "pending" (137.18 credits) for some reason. I assume they'll all be accepted eventually though. These were all SETI@Home, which has smaller work units so they finish up faster. One unit for Einstein and one for ClimatePrediction are still running on my desktop at work, but those are going to take a while because they're huge. At woodychitwn's urging I signed up for World Community Grid's AIDS research unit as well, and joined the us_furries team. That will run on my desktop at home. Thanks, Woody for the pointer. And thanks to corelog for some tips that have helped me consolidate my management of the four machines I have running.

Rain passed through briefly this morning, but it was a beautiful clear afternoon, and I'm probably going to take a peek outside at the stars before going to bed. For anyone who doesn't know, Venus is a brilliant morning star just now. Look for it in the east an hour before sunrise. Yes, I know, you probably never get up that early unless you've been up all night. But it's worth the effort. You can go back to bed afterward if you have nothing better to do. As of yesterday, there was also a chance of some northern lights displays for the next couple of days. Check for those in the north around midnight local time. A clear dark sky is needed unless you live quite far north (like maybe North Dakota? or Canada or Alaska?)