Jeanine and I are lucky to share a great dentist. In his free time, he relaxes by milling tree trunks into slabs of lumber. Last year, he gifted us a large quantity of spalted beech. Originally, I planned to use the wood to build the desk for Jeanine’s sanctuary, but the exceptional spalting proved too frenetic for such a large piece of furniture in a room meant for meditation and soothing energy. Instead, I used some of it to build a small bench for our mudroom.

As of this moment, my website is being hosted on a new service provider. It has taken me ten days to fully implement the migration, delayed primarily by the release and transfer of my domain name by my previous provider. For most websites, such a migration is not a big deal. Mine, with a twenty-year repository of daily photos, however, is considered quite large (40GB). Moving files of this size proved more than most common tools could handle and often triggered bandwidth or time-out limits on the hosting server. It is difficult to convey the frustration of having a transfer or backup fail after 20 hours of operation, with no clues as to why. I am a hardware engineer by training, and my software skills are modest at best. Suffice it to say that I’m not very comfortable editing PHP files, searching for and replacing old URLs with new ones in my SQL database, or re-indexing the Permalinks on my site. AI proved a helpful guide, but also offered some very questionable recommendations. I hope and trust that I will never have to undertake such a migration ever again.

Update: No sooner than completing the migration, I learned that my website has just exceeded the 262K file limit of a shared hosting environment and must now migrate to a virtual private server (VPS), Please expect several more days of downtime.

Jeanine proudly unveiled her second attempt at an Almond and Espresso Torte with Velvet Chocolate Cream. The first one didn’t make it past the inversion stage; in an instant, it transformed into what she later christened “Mish Mash Moo Super Bowl Dessert.”

As she groaned, “Oh no,” Kyle looked over and asked, “Mom, what’s wrong?”
“There’s a problem,” she sighed.

But Nico, ever solution-oriented, jumped in with a quick fix—sprinkling chocolate chips and pecans across the wreckage to make it taste as good as it looked messy. A fine treat while we watched the Super Bowl with the boys.

Undeterred, Jeanine woke up early the next morning, baked the cake again (a little longer this time), and carefully inverted it on the tray before soaking it with espresso syrup. Success.

The torte was made for a band leader who’d flown all the way from California to Malden, Massachusetts, on his birthday, just to perform protest songs for the Malden Reads program. Jeanine, with her friend Barbara Blankenship, has been developing an idea called “Baking for Good,” a mini-nonprofit that brings baked treats to other nonprofits—either to celebrate milestones or to help with fundraising. This was their second “Baking for Good” project, and since the band leader loves almond-mocha cakes, they knew exactly what to make.

This post was contributed by Jeanine.

I worked with Kyle this weekend to help resolve the frozen pipe problem at his home in Medford. We have a multi-phase plan to address the issue. With any luck, we will be able to fix the problem before advancing to the progressively more invasive phases. Phase one involved taking down a kitchen wall cabinet and removing the drywall behind it. This allowed us to inspect the most suspect area where a great number of water pipes come into close contact with the cinder block outside wall of the basement. Opening up the wall allowed us to figure out where all the water lines run, a critical first step for further work. We replaced the wall cabinet but not the insulation. While this increases the amount of lost heat to the outside, it exposes the water lines to more of the interior warmth. When the weather improves, we will add insulation to the outside of the house to regain the lost efficiency and further increase the water line temperatures.

Today I was on assignment for the Concord Bridge, our local newspaper, to photograph the demolition of the White House. Part of the original Emerson Hospital campus, it is being removed to make room for a new emergency room. I shot from both the ground and the air with an eye to establishing the context.

Kyle shared this photo and map of his running group/route after completing their morning workout. Not recorded was the temperature or wind chill, which was brutally cold. We are informed that he followed the run with a long soak in the hot tub at his gym.

With early morning temperatures dipping into negative numbers, it was a good day to spend indoors. I made use of the time to sort out all of the computer and phone tech issues in the house. This involved updating and optimizing five Apple computers, two of which I had to erase and reinstall the operating system, and two iPhones. I easily spent 8 hours involved with the work, with 80% of the time spent waiting for downloads or reboots to complete. Jeanine was the major beneficiary of the effort as she got a new desktop computer with a 34″ ultra-wide, curved screen display for her office.

In the evening, we joined another couple for a movie night to see Hamnet. If you are looking for a feel-good flick, this is not it. If you are in the mood for an emotional rollercoaster about love, loss, and redemption, then this is your ticket, a really well-crafted story with exceptional acting.

I spent the better part of the day setting up and migrating data to a new Mac Studio computer. My laptop has all but run out of its 4TB of storage, and I prefer to keep my entire photo collection on an internal drive. The new computer is configured with 8TB, which should last for some time. My laptop will now be used exclusively for consulting work and travel.

Earlier in the week, I experimented with some photo-to-sketch rendering software and was amazed by the results. It helps to start with a high-quality photo.

Note to Maya: I need to take an updated professional headshot of you.

When I learned that our good friends who live down the street would be returning from the airport at 1 AM, I joined a neighbor to clear the snow from their driveway. I worked the driveway with my snowblower while she handled the walkway with a shovel. Having cleared our own driveway in four passes over two days, this was my first encounter with the full accumulation of the last several days. It pushed my battery-powered machine to the max and left me feeling no need for a trip to the gym.

Strenuous physical activity has a way of motivating my kidney stones to depart their temporary residence in my bladder. This morning, I produced the seven dwarfs pictured above, ranging in size from 1mm to 5.5mm. Passing kidney stones is no fun, but I would much rather have them outside my body than growing larger inside.

Speaking of snow clearing, the last pass on our driveway was done by Jeanine, who wanted to learn how to operate the snowblower. She did a very good job.

Pictured above is the first piece of furniture I ever made, admittedly a rather ambitious project. I was guided by an article and plans I found in Fine Woodworking magazine. During the ensuing 25 years, I would be hard-pressed to single out anything quite so challenging to build.

Last week, my brother sent me the image below of a nearly identical table built by the father of professional photographer Chris Gotz (https://www.chrisgotzphotography.com/). Either he was the author of the article in Fine Woodworking or was similarly inspired by it. My brother made this connection when he purchased some used turning tools from him. What are the odds? His son’s photographs are phenomenal, and I encourage you to visit his website. It appears that we have travelled to virtually all of the same locations in search of natural beauty. As I looked at his photographs, I felt an unexplainable connection to a person whom I had never met. I believe we are kindred spirits and hope to one day make his acquaintance.

We woke up this morning to 14″ of fresh snow with two more expected this afternoon. The ruler placed in the snow mound on our outdoor bistro table indicates 18″, but there was already a 2″ base before this latest storm started. Clearing all the snow provided a great workout. Digging out both of the boys’ cars proved the most time-consuming part of the job.

Kyle, Nico, and Teddy sheltered in place with us this evening as snow fell throughout the day and night. We watched the Patriots beat Denver for a ticket to the Super Bowl. It is the first football game I have watched all season, and it was quite boring. By contrast, the later game between the Seahawks and Rams was very exciting.

When I was in high school, I did math on a slide ruler and personal computers did not exist yet. The conduit of design communication was an engineering drawing, commonly prepared on a drafting table with pen and ink on velum. Pictured above is the set of 12 pens of various sizes that I used for such drawings. When I came across them today while organizing some drawers in my shop, I was immediately transported to my 11th-grade drafting class, where I have fond memories of perfecting my drawing technique, a skill that still serves me well today.

I have decided to migrate my website to a new hosting service provider. The one I am currently using has been the source of untold technical aggravation over the last 20 years. I am hoping that the transition will go smoothly, but I think it is more likely that it will not.

I would appreciate your patience if I am unable to make new posts for a period of time or if the site becomes temporarily unreachable. In the words of Arnold, “I’ll be back!”