The gazebo didn’t just blow over.  It blew over and mangled itself.  I am so mad.

The gazebo blew over.

Living in the future kinda rules.  Earlier today I was in the cellar.  My wife was in the living room.  I was feeling a little chilly, but when I went upstairs it felt wicked hot.  It was warm enough in the living room that I was having trouble catching my breath.  I asked Jen if she was okay with me turning down the heat.  She was.  I opened up the Nest app that lets us run our thermostat over the home network and dropped the temp a few degrees.  10 minutes later I got up to leave the room and I noticed something on the thermostat display.  It was an error message.  Our central air system had gone down within those 10 minutes.

So instead of waiting an hour or two to actually notice that the room temperature was too low, we knew there was a problem within minutes.  Like I said, living in the future kinda rules.

So we put in a call to our HVAC company and an hour or so later a tech was here.  The problem was with the AC, not the furnace.  We went outside to look.  He was unscrewing a panel on the side of the unit, telling me what his guess was, when he jumped back a bit.  “Woah, you can’t be in there,” he said.  I walked over next to him to see what he was talking about.  There was a little pile of shredded up leaves in the unit, and a mouse poking his head out from underneath.

The source of our problems was a tiny, adorable little rodent who ate through a wire inside of our AC unit.  The little sucker was so cute it was crazy, but now he’s homeless and our AC is back up and running.

I bet the cat hates when I get a new iPhone.

Hipstamatic, hipsta-kitty. Shake to shuffle.

Also, the first WordPress.com post from the new phone? I think so.

And one more for luck.

That didn’t take as long as I expected it would…

My wife and I are both proud owners of a pair of brand spanking new iPhone X’s.

Lightning quick review:
The FaceID works perfectly, and it’s really fast.
The lack of a home button is taking some getting used to, but it’s not that bad.

There you have it, my quickie review.

I will say that Apple pissed me off a bit yesterday.  My latest backup of my (now retired) iPhone 7 Plus was corrupt so I couldn’t restore the new phone.  I had to start from scratch.  I expect to be annoyed at little settings issues for weeks to come.  Stupid corrupt backup.

Here’s the inaugural photo!

I was supposed to go see the Letters to Cleo/Blake Babies show at the Paradise in Boston tonight. I can’t go. When the tickets went on sale I was trying to get five but ticketbastard would only sell four at a time. I got my four. Four tickets for five people. I was trying to get a fifth when one member of the group, my beloved wife, backed out. Okay, I had four tickets for four people. Somehow I never communicated that to my brother. He thought he was the odd man out and made other plans. We didn’t catch my utter failure until yesterday when it was too late to do anything about it.

John, I am so sorry I screwed up.

Larry and Mike are still going, and now they have two extra tickets. I don’t know if they’ve found anyone to take them yet. I hope so. I hope the bands rock like they did 20-25 years ago. I hope Mike and Larry and whoever they get to go with them have a freakin’ blast. I’m sorry I can’t go.

My step daughter was inducted into the National Honor Society tonight.

Why?

Because she is absolutely brilliant. She is as super smart as super smart gets. If you’re reading this, she is smarter than you. If you’re not reading this, she is smarter than you. If you exist, she is smarter than you.

I might be a little biased here, but she is smarter than all of us.

Congratulations!!!

So the Rhode Island Comic Con yesterday was the biggest clusterfuck I’ve ever been a part of.  I knew it was going to be a mad house and a mob scene, but they people running it had no clue what they were doing and they were screwing over paying customers left and right through sheer incompetence.  I was equal parts royally pissed off and embarrassed for them.

Having said that, the things we were actually able to get in to, and not shut out of because of stupidity and incompetence, were actually really enjoyable.  We saw Jason Isaacs (aka Drako Malfoy’s Dad) do a “panel” all by himself without a moderator.  He was excellent.  We saw an Avengers panel with Sebastian Stan (aka Winter Soldier) and Paul Bettany (aka Vision) that was okay.  Neither one of them seemed terribly comfortable with the situation, but they did all right.

The last panel we saw was the best.  It was Star Trek the Next Generation with Brent Spiner (Data), Gates McFadden (Crusher), Jonathan Frakes (Riker), Marina Sirtis (Troi), and Michael Dorn (Worf).  Who was the moderator for this lovely gathering, you ask?  None other than William Effing Shatner.  TJ Hooker.  Denny Crane.  Captain James T Mutha Truckin’ Kirk!

You would not believe what a shit show of a clusterfuck this place is.

But…

This panel is Star Trek the Next Generation and it is moderated by William Shatner.

It’s also 10 minutes late already and they have only sat six rows. The room holds 1,000 people.