checking in

I was up all night, then slept a few hours in the morning, then I've been gone all day. Just thought I'd check in.

I have more than a few choice words for the process of converting VHS tapes to DVDs. It's rather convoluted and though I've made some headway, I've much to figure out. Just getting the video into the computer was a challenge; it was like those college chemistry and physics tests where they give you more information/variables than you need and you have to figure out what values are relevant.

Then just to add some non-technical problem to the mix, when I went to rewind the VHS tape to ready it for playback, the tape lead just came right off the take-up spool. This is a very valuable tape of Tonto's and fortunately, Tonto did not seem to recognize that I was doing surgery on the tape. I had to open it up to re-attach the tape to the spool. The tape is from 1984 and some of the people in it have died and many have moved on to who-knows-what. The tape contains great memories.

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I got the other half of my mouth jack-hammered (i.e. dental deep cleaning) this past Thursday. I think I'll recover.

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It's been raining much in these parts over the past month. I can't remember the last time I washed my car. Tonto drove it one day a few weeks past and was repulsed by its grunginess. Hey, it's not that bad. In the car, it's just road grit from the air and normal dirt from shoes; no foodstuffs.

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I had not heard about Peng Shulin until his past week. The man has only the upper half of his body left after an accident. I can't even begin to imagine how the doctors managed to complete the loop for his circulatory system.