Altivo

I promised weeks ago to post a photo of the eggs from our ducks, and here, I've finally gotten round to it:



This is two days' production from three ducks, arranged like the circle of chords since I've been practicing again (with Neal and Gary today.) The white eggs are C major, and the blue eggs are G major or G7, the dominant, while the olive tan eggs are F major, the sub-dominant chord... No, I'm not drunk, just being silly here.

Early this morning I succeeded in getting my Literati ereader to upgrade itself to version 2.0 of the firmware system, last one available. Once studied out, the solution was simple enough. The files I first downloaded to perform the upgrade were corrupt. It turns out that with Firefox, right-click "Save link as..." was not sufficient to transfer a compressed tar file unscathed. The same approach using Internet Explorer worked without corruption, as did wget used from a command line. Given an uncorrupted package file, the system was perfectly happy to read it in and perform the upgrade. Now it accepts epub files over the USB cable, either by direct copy or by transfer using Calibre, Adobe Digital Editions, or Kobo Desktop. Quite a few features were added in the upgrade as well, with better display controls, more options for finding and viewing books, and so forth. Dropping a 2GB SD card into the expansion slot gives enough memory to hold hundreds of books, an entire library's worth. I no longer need feel that I mad a mistake in purchasing this. (It's compatible with Nook and Kobo books, as well as ebooks.com and ebookwise.com. Project Gutenberg epub files work well too, and borrowed library ebooks are compatible. In other words, very similar to a Kobo or Nook ereading device, except it has a color LCD display.)

Busy weekend ahead, but I think I'm enough on top of it to enjoy it if the weather holds up.

The new firewall performed so perfectly today that no one could tell I had swapped it in. That's ideal. One nice feature addition, though, is the fact that it has a web interface for monitoring and minor adjustments. Thus I can get at it without having to run cumbersome control software that only works on Windows.

And speaking of such cumbersome software, I did succeed in retrieving the installation file for the old version needed by firewall generation -2, which has now been decommissioned and removed from the server rack. Since it is no longer supported and considered "unsecure" it will now become a toy for me to experiment with, perhaps.

No red-headed woodpecker sightings today, alas. They may have moved on. No orioles yet either, which means those guys are late this year. I've heard at least one grosbeak, but we haven't seen one yet.

One of the new ducks delivered an egg this morning, along with the usual offering from the Campbell. The new egg is smaller, and has a blue shell. As soon as we have two or three of them, I'll get a photo of the contrast.

Signs of the end:

Getting dark by 6:15 pm, even with Daylight Saving still in effect.

Forecast for the next eight days: "Cloudy with a chance of showers, cool temperatures..."

Fall color was spotty, but the leaves are already dropping.

The last load of hay is in the arena waiting to be unloaded.

Hummingbirds have vanished. Cardinals are reappearing at the feeders.

The apple orchards are shutting down one by one.

Piles of pumpkins dot the roadsides, some with signs that say "Self service, honor system" and an arrow pointing to a tin can or other container for payment.

Gasoline prices are dropping fast, at about two cents a day for the past couple of weeks.


Odd contraindication:

The duck we rescued a month or so ago is laying eggs. Today was the fourth day in a row. Obviously she's much happier here than she was living with a flock of chickens. She has a drake boyfriend, and they stick close together, and now, eggs. Good ones. I used two in the muffins yesterday and they were grade AA good. Late in the year for her to be laying, but she's an egg producing breed and must be quite young. Let's see how long she keeps it up.

In other news, the flax I've had in water since Wednesday is done. I drained off the water this evening and left it to drip dry balanced on two plastic milk crates. We'll have to get it hanging in the garage before all this rain begins to fall. I say it's done because I could easily pull out fibers from the stems with my fingers. Remains to be seen how much yield there will be when we hackle, break, and scutch.