Apple Time Capsule is junk

For three weeks the Time Capsule has been doing ok, backing up our iMac and networking our printer.  Then today it suddenly loses communication.   Airport utility says "device not found".  Great.   There's a nice shiny green happy LED light on the Time Capsule...obviously it thinks everything is ok.  I click "help" on Apple's airport utility, and enter "device not found".  Apparently nobody at Apple ever thought "device not found" would be a possible topic requiring help,  as the search comes up with unrelated, useless results.

Looking online, I learn more from random forum posters on Apple Support community.  From there I learn how to do a "soft" reset and a "hard reset".  I try both, and.....nothing happens.  Shiny green happy light continues to shine, no reset indicated.

This is ridiculous.

So now I'm forced to do a "factory default reset", since the drive is not responding to the other reset actions.   I had to do a similar reset several times on initial set up as well.  This cannot be how this thing was designed to operate.

We officially started our kitchen renovation yesterday as I began to demolish the old redwood deck in our backyard.  Manual labor like this makes me appreciate higher education...

We're adding 192 ft2 of  space to the kitchen, including a little walk in pantry/office area.  The flow to the backyard should be improved as well, with the back door eliminated from our breakfast nook and a new door added to the expanded kitchen.

We started the process last fall with a refinance, then moved on to an architect for the plans, then engineering work, and finally city permits that just came through.  Spent over $6k so far and haven't built a thing.  Unfortunately that kind of expense is a fact of life in this area of California.  Every cost is double or triple the national average.

A Cool photo

Since the blog description says "a place for cool photos", I suppose I should post one.  Here's a favorite from 2006, looking back over my shoulder while steering around thunderstorms near Grand Junction.  Everything was black and scary ahead, but behind was this glorious display of color and shadow.  It felt like flying into a tunnel.   I never tire looking at clouds, no matter how much flight time is in my logbook.

Dodging thunderstorms in an F/A-18 Hornet at sunset

Random thoughts on middle age...

I'm in my middle 40's and thinking about aging more than ever...
At this age mortality is no longer an abstract concept.  I miss the feeling of endless possibility that came with youth, even as I recall the uncertainty and anxiety of those years.

Am I "over the hill"?  I'd rather think of life as a plateau than a hill.  The initial upslope is youth (growing up/establishing a career/starting a family).  The big middle chunk is mostly flat, with gentle ups and downs (raising a family, working, retiring, grandchildren).  The end will hopefully be a steep drop in my sleep, with little warning or time spent dealing with sickness.   That's a better mental picture than being on the "over the hill" downslope from age 40 onward...

Life has been good.  Although I've seen my share of tragedy, things have gone mostly according to plan.  Freedom from regret is a big deal at this point in life, and I'm thankful for that.  Even small doses of regret can be crushing.  It's hard enough to accept life sweeping you along at an ever increasing and unstoppable pace when you're on the right track...it must be horrible to feel that acceleration along the wrong track.

I feel for people dealing with major regrets during middle age.

Apple TV.....impressed

Apple TV was obviously not designed by anybody remotely connected with Apple Time Capsule.  I set up Apple TV today with ZERO snags.  Simply connected the ethernet cable, digital audio cable, HDMI cable, and plugged it in.  It found the internet, found the iMac, and worked immediately.

That's more like it...

Apple Time Capsule...not impressed

I finally got around to setting up our new wired home network, using an Apple Time Capsule router/network drive (Gen4 2TB).  Cat6 ethernet cables are already in place connecting the bedrooms, den iMac, AppleTV, and PS3, etc.  All that was left to do was connect the cables to an ethernet switch, get a USB hub to connect a few USB hard drives and a printer,  and then hook it all up to the TC.  Simple, right?

Unfortunately, the process turned out to be very "un-Apple-like".  Mimicking a Microsoft product, the TC froze on initial start up and wouldn't unfreeze until I called Apple Support and learned how to do a "hard reset".  After some initial success, the TC continued to suffer one error after another in network connectivity.  It froze again while it tried to update it's firmware.  The internet connection kept disconnecting.  And then the TC drive just disappeared from Finder.  Great.

Reconnecting the old wireless router, I got online and spent a few hours searching for solutions.  I learned how to do a bunch of unnecessarily complex repair work (rolling back the firmware, etc) that reminded me of the worst days in PC/Microsoft land. Finally got the thing working today after probably 8 hours of messing with it...

Civil War connections

Online genealogy research has been getting easier and easier lately, especially with the introduction of the LDS sponsored familysearch.org site.  I like the non-commercial aspect of familysearch.org.  It always irritated me to see commercial sites sell the research products of genealogists who were simply trying to share what they had learned.

Surprisingly, I found familysearch.org to be the main resource in use in the lobby of the actual LDS family history library in Salt Lake City.  Now that resource sits in on my home computer!

Armed with a few notes, family oral history, and names on photographs, I've been finding plenty of interesting facts.  (Interesting to me, anyway, conceding that there's nothing quite so boring as somebody else's genealogy...)   I'm intrigued to learn the type of lives my ancestors lived, and more specifically, where they fit into the greater historical picture of our nation.  I love history, so discovering personal connections seems a natural extension.

Most of my ancestors were Confederates.  Dr. Thomas J. Bennett served as an assistant surgeon for the Army of Northern Virginia, freshly out of medical school at Vanderbilt.  After the war he married a girl half his age and served as a country doctor south of Nashville.  One 3rd great grandfather, Levi D. Jarratt, was a sergeant in the 45th Tennessee and was killed at the battle of Shiloh in 1862.  Another 3rd great grandfather, Winston R. Graham, was a private in the 16th Alabama Regiment.  Winston also fought at Shiloh, but survived the war, fortunately, as the son he had in 1874 is my 2nd great grandfather.

The sole Union soldier I've found lurking in my family history is Byard Hickman.  Byard was from West Virginia but enlisted in the 151st Illinois regiment, too late in the war to see combat.  He went on to an interesting life as a Colorado pioneer and cattle rancher, however.

Perhaps the most interesting tidbit I've found is from a Walker family that I'm not certain about my relation, but the story is worth repeating.  The Walkers, from Nashville, lost two sons in the Civil War.  One to each side.  I can't imagine how that must have felt.

Here's the flag Winston Graham fought under at Shiloh, the regimental colors of the 16th Alabama.

Regimental colors, 16th Alabama infantry