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a new cabin and a minor cellphone crisis Tuesday, June 15 2021
Gretchen got up early this morning so she could drive out to our cabin site north of Gloversville to watch the pre-built pieces of the building be assembled on the foundation, which was already in place.
Throughout the day as I waited for a record consolidating script to run, I tinkered some with my old Mac Mini, which I think was the first generation with an Intel processor. The Mac Mini had been given to me more than ten years ago so I could develop software for Macintosh in Objective C, and I haven't used it for well over half that time. Yesterday I'd tried to upgrade its processor from an Intel Core Duo to an Intel Core 2 Duo only to find the damn thing was totally dead (and may well have been dead before I attempted the upgrade, perhaps due to capacitor failure). But at some point today while I continued fucking with it, it started working again. Perhaps the CPU socket or memory connectors are a little flaky. And then I realized that the processor I'd bought for $10 thinking it was a 64 bit Core 2 Duo was actually just another stupid 32 bit Core Duo. (The eBay seller had said Core 2 Duo, but had I looked up the part number I would've seen it was just a regular Core.)
Late in the day after work, I gathered up some tools I thought I'd need and climbed under the Subaru to address the fluid coming from the leaking hose. I managed to break through the rust and loosen the hose clamps using an impact driver with a 5mm socket (though one of the clamps required some WD-40). I then tried to remove the hose, though I could only remove one end of it. And when I did, of course, a trickle of coolant came out of it. I was initially able to capture this, but at some point I thought the trickling was over. Then of course it started up again and some of it landed on the side of my head near my right ear. I also got a speck of rust or oily grime in my eye, a highly unpleasant thing to happen.
Meanwhile I was listening to YouTube clips of wacky court proceedings and suddenly I heard the sound of someone trying to have a voice conversation with me over Facebook. I never accept such calls, but I still wanted to see who was calling me. And then Joe, the builder guy based in Gloversville, called to say some woman had found Gretchen's phone in the Colonie Mall (just north of Albany). So that person was the one probably trying to call me via Facebook. It turned out I was right.
In the course of sending text messages (over Facebook Direct Messages) with the person who'd found her phone, I learned that the phone had been abandoned on a table in a place just inside the Colonie Mall where there are some chairs. The person who'd found the phone was the husband of the woman I was chatting with, whose name was Daphenie. I described Gretchen and said she was probably waiting for her car to charge at a charging station nearby. Daphenie then walked to a nearby charging place, but that was the Tesla-specific one, where only Teslas can charge. So I looked on the map to see where nearby ChargePoint stations were. There were several nearby, so I gave Daphenie the address of the nearest one. I also sent her pictures of the Bolt's temporary tag and of Gretchen's face. Meanwhile, Daphenie said, Gretchen's phone was almost out of juice. I was wondering how this mild crisis was going to end when the phone rang with a 518 number (the Albany area) so I immediately answered it. It was Gretchen, and I had Daphenie's cellphone number, so they could work things out on their own (and nobody would have to be driving up to Albany to retrieve the phone). I could finally climb into the tub and wash the antifreeze off the side of my head.
The problem with Gretchen's drive to Gloversville in the Bolt today was that there had been no place to charge at the newly-erected cabin. So she'd been forced to wait for hours in Albany as the car slowly charged. It was after 8:00pm before she finally made it home. Gretchen didn's say much about Daphenie other than that she wasn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier and that if she'd just turned in her phone to a Colonie Mall security guy, the crisis would've been over within only ten minutes. Gretchen had realized she'd lost her phone minutes after leaving the Colonie Mall lounge area and had immediately returned, and then asked a security guy if anyone had found a phone. She'd also asked a woman cleaning a bathroom, and that woman had called into the main security desk, all while Daphine was running from one charging station to the next looking for a brown-haired middle-aged lady or perhaps a Chevy Bolt.
As for the assembly of the cabin, Gretchen had had a great time watching it all be bolted together in just a few hours. The ground team had all been a bunch of Black guys with Caribbean accents, communicating efficiently with the White crane operator using universal construction site hand signals.
Our new cabin today, soon after the crane had moved the last pieces into places. Photo taken by Gretchen with the phone she subsequently lost and then recovered.
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