The Welcome Mat

who were the actors getting the questions?

One of the actors was the guy who plays Aaron Burr, probably the second biggest part in the show. The lady who played Eliza (Hamilton's wife) also was one of the actors. The other three were swing actors/dancers who were part of the chorus, provided background dancing and filled other roles.

I started ripping a lot of my blu rays, im also using a thing called plax on my NAS.... just so I dont have to swap disks out on most of my shows/movies...

So you'll just keep all of your movies/shows on a hard drive connected to a server so that you can play whatever you want without switching discs?

I've got a lot of stuff on my hard drive and on data discs that I've downloaded. More stuff than I'll ever have time to watch.

Any big plans for your birthday Saturday? I'm retiring on Friday and we have a golf outing that afternoon to celebrate. I've also received a lot of presents from coworkers, former coworkers and former students. It seems a bit strange that the end is so close. I've been throwing away or recycling a ton of stuff that I won't need anymore.

Not just that, all my music, files and other things as well. Its setup to be able to lose 2 drive out of the 4 and not lose any data, I can also upgrade the drives for more storage just by swapping them out. I already went through this once, I may start to get even bigger drives soon. Im up to 103 movies on there and many seasons of shows, this all sounds not to useful, but I watch stargate and scrubs over and over again, with 17 seasons of stargate and 8 seasons of Scrubs, thats a lot of disk swapping

The Server im running is linux, but the software im runnning on it to serv my movis/shows is called plex, its free to use and I think they have a server version for the mac and its free. once you install it you can use a lot of devices to watch it all i.e. roku, ios, android, fire tv, ect. If you name your files right it will automatically add all the info needed (actorns, names, synopsis)

I plan on doing nothing... how is the retirement party going?

Sounds pretty good for what you want to do. I've been watching a lot of things on demand, on my dvr or on Netflix and it is all available with the XFinity device I have. I do watch the occasional movie or tv show on dvd, though.

The retirement party was last week on Thursday in Royal Oak and was a lot of fun. A bunch of people stopped in and I had dinner after with my family. We had our last day today and it was kind of a strange feeling when I turned off the lights and closed the door for the last time. I went out and played golf this afternoon with two guys who retired last year and two others who will retire in the not too distant future. It has become an annual thing to go golfing on the last day of school, in part to celebrate the new retirees.

I will need to update a few grades tomorrow for kids who finish online computer work, but am otherwise completely done. I plan to spend a lot of time reading and organizing things at home plus cleaning out stuff I don't need any more. It is going to take a while, though.

I'm in Chicago now for Wizard World. I've picked up a bunch of stuff, but I'm ready to head home tomorrow. I will go through the show floor again to revisit a couple of booths and to make sure I didn't miss anything and then probably leave in the early afternoon.

I'll be going to Japan on September 6th for a couple of weeks. Mostly in Tokyo and Osaka with side trips to Kyoto, Kobe, Hiroshima and maybe elsewhere.

Monday ill be heading to kalamazoo to do work this week, so instead of going to school your going to japan?

That's right. I don't have to go back to school so I can travel in September now. Hopefully there will be fewer travelers.

I am in Japan now. The flight took almost 13 hours and I managed to read 3 books and watch 2 movies during the trip. I am on the train from the airport to Tokyo Station now and then will have a 15 or so minute walk to my hotel. I will be home on September 20th.

Today was my last day before heading to Osaka so I made a trip to Yokohama for the day. It is a pretty nice city. I have enjoyed my time in Tokyo and am halfway through my trip.

How is your trip going?

The trip has been great. I went to Hiroshima and Miyajima on Saturday. I spent today in Himeji and Kobe with two friends. We went to Himeji Castle and then took the train to Kobe for the rest of the day. I also spent one day in Kyoto and the other days in Osaka. I will be heading home on Thursday.

Did you take pictures? what kind of loot did you get there?

I took a bunch of photos and will be putting a lot of them up on Facebook after I get home and sort through them.

I haven’t bought too much, really, in terms of souvenirs. I bought a couple of T-shirts and pins at the Hard Rocks plus a few presents for people back home. My friends yesterday bought me a pair of chopsticks to use at a home and a little tray called a hashioki for them to rest on. Besides that I have the memories and pictures.