A slight glow filled the room from the monitor screens. The images were reflected in his glasses as he moved his head, first showing server data from Europe, than a live webcam feed from Hawaii. The monitors were mounted all the way to the ceiling and out to several feet beyond his desk. On the left wall, he paused at the report on DNS outages, then his eyes caught a change in the count of trusted systems versus untrusted. Over in the right side of his desk, at eye level, his gaze rested a video camera feed. The video showed a living room with a closed door.

After the loss of tomatoes in the summer of 2016, I brooded over the squirrel’s victory and plotted for my revenge. I was determined to have a garden and the fruit of my labors, keeping them out of my foes paws. How to proceed, that was the challenge.

As the summer of 2016 changed to fall, we started getting rain, lots and lots of rain. The drought finally broke in our area, and I felt some despair as I saw all of the new growth. I knew that my garden would need to stand against an onslaught of new squirrels, hungrily looking for fresh food for their conquests.

It’s time for the third chapter of my book along with a note about my writing. This chapter focuses on Marie Wilson, a semi-retired software developer. She and her husband Joseph live just outside of Boulder Colorado, in a house designed to be off the grid as much as possible. With her background in software, she believes in redundant systems so she and her husband are fine when the 2038 bug starts but who knows what will happen as time goes by and the bug isn’t fixed?

This last weekend, as I thought about things to do for the Fourth, my husband became the recipient of some free peaches from a local roadside stand. The person at the stand offered the peaches because they had been out of honey for the last few weeks. My husband was delighted and figured I would also enjoy them.

I was at an autism support meeting a few months ago and there was a question about ideas for getting autistic children to sleep. I have my own problems with insomnia and I have gradually built up some techniques I use to improve my sleep. They don’t always work, but perhaps something might help others.

I am publishing the second chapter of my serial book, “Year 2038 Bug”, you can find it at the link included below. In this chapter, I introduce the character Jake, a software developer in San Jose. He and his roommate and coworker are monitoring servers for problems with the Year 2038 bug when things don’t go as expected.

This Memorial Day I am taking time to remember people. In particular, I remember  family members who served. My mother’s side of the family has had a strong interest in their history and so I have documentation of earlier generations. As I browsed my collection, one article stood out. It is from October 1945, and is an article about four members of my grandfather’s family who served in WW II. My grandfather, his older brother and two of his younger sisters all served. My grandfather served as a doctor in the Army, in Europe as part of the 42^nd Air Repair Squadron.