Murphy's law of camping

The bottom line is that you *will* forget something. All you can do is hope it's not important. This past weekend, I managed to forget the pump for my air mattress... and dish soap. Neither mattered much, fortunately. In the past, I've forgotten blankets, my drums, tent stakes, (all) toiletries... and once, just once, toilet paper.

But another truism for any lengthy trip away is that something will go wrong in your absence. When I was in Arizona, my cats came down with a massive flea infestation. This time, I was hit with a double-whammy; first a critical machine at work went down no more VPN!), then a machine at home went haywire -- within hours of me leaving town.

The work machine turned out to have several things wrong with it, apparently related to an upgrade I completed just before I left. After much cursing at the software, everything seems to be running smoothly.

Unfortunately, the machine at home, pizzahut -- which among other things houses my entire photo archive -- was more problematic; I spent several hours on Sunday fighting it. The machine has been slowly dying for a while now, and unfortunately, despite its importance, there have been more important problems -- like the roof replacement, family obligations, a totally unreliable laptop, divorce attorney fees, and well, the mighty powerful urge to um, eat.

Anyway, things are back up again, and the weekend's tally came to 1422 images in some 13 gigs. At this rate I'll be out of disk space in another couple of months. And then I'll *have* to do something..