If it weren’t for the honor of the thing, I’d skip writing anything today – it’s been busy and I’m exhausted.

The high point of the day was lunch with our friends at Eric’s Deli Cafe. The food was, well, it was Erik’s – we’ve been going there for more than 35 years, and it hasn’t changed much in that time. Good, filling, and simple. But seeing our friends in person instead of on-screen was a nice change!

I decided to resume ripping my DVDs to put them on my Plex server, so I spent a lot of the day fighting Handbrake. So far, even though I’ve installed libdvdcss according to the best instructions I’ve found, Handbrake doesn’t see it, so I have to use MakeMKV to actually rip the DVDs. And I haven’t been able to get subtitles properly included in the MP4 files that Handbrake creates. The good news is that using my M1 Mac mini to do the conversion to MP4 is fast – if I use “Super HQ” mode, it converts at 4x speed; if I use “Fast” mode, it converts at 12x speed. I’m hoping to figure out what’s up with the subtitles tomorrow when I’m awake!

We attended a Mensa event this afternoon: “An Afternoon of Language and Laughter with Richard Lederer”. I’ve been reading Lederer’s columns for years, mostly in the Mensa Bulletin, but I’ve also seen him in Toastmasters Magazine, the AARP Magazine, and probably elsewhere; this was the first time I’d had the chance to hear him live.

The session was a lot of fun (if a bit disorganized); he divided it into three acts, with Q&A between. It will be on San Francisco Mensa’s YouTube channel sometime soon. I found that he’d given a presentation on Fascinating Facts about Our Presidents last year, and I’m looking forward to watching it.

I had to dig through some of my files last week to figure out when we’d had the electrical and plumbing systems upgraded; it wasn’t easy. The drawers were stuffed, and the folders weren’t well-labeled. I did find what I needed, but I had to pull out all of the folders having to do with the house in the process.

Today, I spent the time to put those folders in better order; I also got rid of paperwork that I didn’t have to keep (like repair orders for the roof we replaced years ago). While I was at it, I looked through some of the other files in the same drawer and realized I didn’t really have to keep my Windows XP install disk any more!