Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🔤SpellBinding — CDIOPSR Wordo: IMAMS

  • 🖼️ xkcd — Truly Universal Outlet #3186

  • Household appliances

    The past few months my hot water heater has been acting up. It would keep making this loud banging sound whenever hot water was used and the tank would need to heated again. After a few loud bangs, the heater would light up with this yellow flame coming out the front. Eventually it would go away. It was probably not safe and has been doing this for awhile. I did some research and troubleshooting, but nothing really fixed it. Sometimes the pilot light would go out and need to be relit, which was not good when I was not home and someone needed to take a shower. Finally, we decided to get the hot water heater replaced. That is the family xmas gift his year, which was installed last week. Not so fun, but at least we have hot water for the holidays and beyond.

  • Hafa Adai!

    My SO and I spent Christmas on Guam: "Where America's day begins". It was a nice 86f/30c down there, where it's 31f/0c up here in Tokyo :( Today is going to be especially cold.

    The flight from Tokyo to Guam is only 4 hours, and our's was awful. The pilot said he'd keep the seatbelt sign on for the first 30 minutes after takeoff due to turbulence, but it was actually on for over 90 minutes, and there was some turbulence I'd never felt before, like being jolted side to side. It was a very rough flight and I will remember it for a long time to come, because I have a very bad fear of flying.

    It's not something I go around telling everyone because it's embarassing, quite frankly. Who's afraid of flying? I've never met anyone else. Folks here with Gopher blogs are open and honest with their mental wellness however, so I thought I'd do the same. I've had aerophobia for many decades now and it's only gotten worse over the past few years. I've resigned myself to the fact that I will never get over it.

    We got in to Guam at around midnight, in heavy rain, and we then had to find our rental car. They "upgraded" me (without asking) to an SUV, and I dislike big cars. It was just real fun driving at night, in the rain, in a truck, on the side of the road I'm not used to, while not being able to see the center dividing line. There weren't many street lights, either. But hey, what's a little adventure while on vacation?