This is the first new blog post from me in four years, and long overdue.
Why blog now?
I enjoy writing and reporting about stuff in my life: astronomy, travel, bridge, wine, photography, network systems.
And Facebook is Dead To Me.
Since my last post, Jane and I have both retired, I opened and closed a weekly bridge club, we cruised half the globe on Seabourn and Crystal (teaching and directing bridge games along the way), purchased a Tesla Model S and drove it to the bridge nationals in Memphis and Las Vegas, and acquired a new telescope mount.
Now I’m in the preparatory stages of opening a new full-time bridge club in Pasadena.
I’ll be working again soon, and working hard. I think I’m going to love it, but with that sense that I need to take advantage of this slow time to do things I won’t get to do as often.
I’ll be building a new website (Drupal 8) for the Pasadena Bridge Club soon. I have bridgemojo.com for posting bridge feature articles, and I’ll plan to continue that.
Our poor WordPress sites have gotten very little love. I’m sure Jane would appreciate a facelift as much as I would. At the very least, I should move them to a new server with a current version of PHP. (I see I really need to add SSL certificates, too.)
I need to build a new mail server and develop the habits of keeping it patched and current. The old one is like a pair of comfy shoes that feels so comfortable even while I know the soles are starting to get holes and they need to be thrown out.
The Pasadena Bridge Club is going to test all of my skills to build and maintain a comfortable, attractive, high-tech (without looking it), full-time bridge club. I should be documenting the process. (How do I support multiple computer screens in different rooms? Working on that.)
During our travels, we did “research” visiting bridge clubs large and small scattered around the world: Spain, Oxford, London, New York, and all around Southern California. I should write trip reports.
I’m going to start with an astronomy observing report. It was my first all-night excursion in about a year, taken while Jane is enjoying traveling in Europe with her sister. Optimistic that we’d be able to do some mid-week observing this year, we signed up for two observing pads at GMARS, the observing site of the Riverside Astronomical Society.
I had a great shakedown night, dusting off the cobwebs of a year’s disuse (and all of the associated software upgrades). I’ll post photos, an observing report, and an update on the new tools I adopted for doing astrophotography in upcoming posts.
Saving that for later … right now I have a bridge game to play in.
Thanks for lending an ear …
— Mojo