caption: not exactly as shown

We loathed to spend the money but we were sick of buying $79.00 Umbrellas where we would only get a year - maybe two out of before they broke and were worthless.

This we we decided to go big. real big and we splashed out for an 11 foot cantilever umbrella from lowes that showed up today.

It’s a big sucker. The box was 88lbs of umbrella. And of course there were problems and it took me a good part of the day to get the thing up.

• Problem number 1

The first issue was when I opened the box I realized I needed 250lbs of play sand that was not included in the purchase. And boy, what a mess. The base is 4 hollow compartments where you have to add some sand, then some water, then some sand…rinse and repeat

You try juggling a little plastic container with one hand and a 50lb bag of sand with the other and see how you do. I had sand everywhere.

Most of my day was spent cleaning up the sand and even after cleaning up I still feel like there’s sand everywhere.

• Problem number 2

The 2nd problem was placment. I got the thing assembled and the realized that where I thought would be able to place it won’t work. The deck was 12 feet and this is 11 feet. But, with the base it’s really about a 14 foot span.

One more thing I didn’t realize until it was much too late. So, I had to disassemble the entire thing and re-place it to another spot and now I think I might have to put it back where it was because it’s more versatile there for protecting us from the sun for the entire day.

• Problem number 3

Due to the sand, and the fact that it’s 88lbs of stuff to return, plus another 200 pounds of sand filled patio base means that well – we are keeping it. I highly doubt I would see a refund for this. We’ve bought this.

I may have to spend some time taking this thing apart a few more times so we get the best sun protection on our back deck which seems to always get sun it’s been a good purchase and hopefully we will be able to spend a nice summer outside without cooking to death.

It’s 2021 and we can’t seem to survive the day without them - our devices.

I was reading about the new apple iMac and all it’s available colors and how thin it was and it dawned on me that that iMac is now just a screen on a fancy alumuinum stick

Over the years the stuff has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller that it’s hard to distinquish an iMac from an iPhone except for OS and screen size.

I’m actually writing this on a desktop computer, but I could be writing it on my Chromebook or tablet or even my phone. Unless you have very specific needs, computers and chips and ram and hard drives don’t really matter all that much because they are just tools to get the job done.

Most of my computing needs is just writing and exept for ergonomics I could use almost any device to get my writing published.

We’ve come a long way from when the PowerBook G4 was released and the thought of having a computer that’s only an inch thick was mind boggling.

Now picking a device is more like choosing ice cream flavors. Whatever you pick, it will be just fine.

I have been a little obsessive lately about backups. Specifically, my photos like the one you see above of my little one as I do not want to lose them due to some cloud failure.

I had thought about storing them locally, but I really don’t have the time to fiddle with hard drives and backup software and RAID settgings so all the hard drives will go on eBay and I will go all in on the cloud as there are apps for every cloud server that will backup my photos automatically.

I’ve gone a little overboard as I have my photos backed up on Google Photos, Google Drive, Amazon Photos, MEGA, OneDrive and pCloud and IceDrive. I defintely don’t need all these but except for pCloud and Google Drive all the others are free when it comes to storage. I had tried Deego but it looks to spammy for my liking with ads and app downloads all over.

I had thought about setting up a NAS using a raspberry pi or even just buying one, but I don’t have time or inclination to do that any more.

I’ve also realized that I really don’t need my camera gear I have as my phone is good enough. In fact I have yet to take a photo of my daughter with anything but my phone as they are that good in 2019.

In 2037 when she’s 18 and I have thousands and thousands of photos I want to be sure I can get to them all and the cloud seems to be the easiest and safest way.

I guess we will see.

There was a time when I had to have ‘distraction free’ text editors to ge some writing done and I have found that all I really need is a terminal.

In fact it’s easier to write in vim than any other text editor to date. It does take some time to get used to to but it’s a pretty easy way to write and edit text.

The best part about writing in plain text is that you can pretty much start with any editor and then finish up with another if you choose.

Just a short post about using cloudflare pages a try for hosting this site vs my previous host which was firebase - another excellent choice.

To be honest, I don’t really see much of a difference between the two execpt for the fact that cloudflare optimizes the images so that’s a big help in reducing the page speed times.

Also, this is just fun to try different hosting plans and see what one suits me. I will give the cloudflare pages a bit of time before I fully commit but for now it’s easy to work with.