Author: Karel Kerezman

  • Relocated And It Feels So Good

    (You know, except for the exhaustion and aches and pains.)

    We are mostly in the house now. Beds are here, bathing happens here, eating happens here (though no actual cooking yet since most of the cookware and many of the ingredients are over there still). Boxes? Here. Shelving? Here.

    Vacuum cleaner? Over there, awaiting us getting enough more stuff out of the apartment to make it ready for that last pass. Flowerpots? Over there, and we’re still debating where the heck they’re going once they make it here.

    And not a day’s rest in three weeks. But we’re still extremely happy to be here, and not there.

  • Get Ready Get Set Go

    Are we ready? Maybe not, but we’re trying to get there. By day’s end tomorrow, if all goes well, we should be (mostly) moved into the new place.

    But for now, I have to shut down and unplug everything to prepare for the movers, who arrive about 24 hours from now as I write this (right around 9 o’clock).

    See you from the new digs soon, I hope!

  • I Just Wanna Download

    It shouldn’t have been this difficult.

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  • Scenes From Chez Snark: Oomph

    I got home (apartment) from the house (we move next week) after a couple exhausting hours spent assembling furniture (living room TV stand & shelving). I told the lovely Vyx that I’m out of oomph. I’m oomph-free. You could call me Oomph-free Bogart.

    Silence.

    “No?” I asked.

    “No.”

    “Not gonna dignify that one with a response?”

    “I know better.”

    “Aw, I love you too!”

    I am a delight, as you can plainly see.

  • Quick Status Update

    Here we are at March of 2024, heralded this morning in suburban Portland Oregon by… snowfall? Well, kind of. It “slushed” for about an hour. This month I turn 50-something, but I don’t even care about that because the main focus is getting moved out of the apartment and into the house.

    I got the Internet stuff all working, including network drops in the other two places in the house which need them and WiFi coverage for the rest. We’re bringing over stuff one or two bags or armloads at a time, the stuff we don’t want The Movers touching. And they’re due in a bit under two weeks. Yesterday I told the apartment’s management that we’re on our way out (they get the keys back at the end of the lease, mind you).

    We’ve done so much work, and there’s a mountain yet to do, which has left me almost no time for much fun at all. Not even Satisfactory! (Well, not much.)

    I hope this is all worth it in the long run, because woof, I’m exhausted already.

  • Satisfactory: Roundabout Mk2

    So there I was, building a rail line through the jungle, when I reached a point on the map at which it made sense to place a roundabout. As I started in on the build process I’ve used a couple dozen times now (type ’roundabout’ into the search field to see other posts about the development of this process) I realized that the requirements of the approach and exit placement weren’t going to fit the location. I needed an alternative.

    At middle right you can see the connected approach line from the north, but getting that to bear right into the westbound exit was going to be a nightmare. Never mind joining up the northbound exit, the stub for which is shown at lower right.

    At first I thought of doing a criss-cross interchange but I prefer having the option of letting a train loop back around if necessary at every one of these intersections. Still, I figured that an interchange would probably fit this particular location better than a roundabout so I went looking for information on how best to build one.

    I didn’t find that. Instead, I found guidance on how to build a different style of roundabout, approaching it as more of a modified diamond than a rounded square. The difference is largely academic in the long run, but the practice of building it is definitely trickier.

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