Maintenance

Someone in an apartment below mine had a leakage problem, so a few guys from Maintenance came over, rearranged my bedroom, broke a hole in the wall, and found a leaking pipe; I was in the living room examining an application while this was going on. I’m told that an actual plumber will come to fix the pipe, maybe today or maybe Monday. So it goes.

The Red Queen’s Race

No amendments appeared this week, and I dealt with both of the amendments I already had. I wrote an Office Action on my own for one of them; the other was an Appeal Brief, in response to which I had written an Examiner’s Answer, which my supervisor signed off on once he got back to work. I then posted it to a second supervisor, who signed it, after which I posted it for credit, and copies will in due course go to the applicant and the Board of Appeals. I have for the moment outrun the Red Queen, and have no amendments.

I also finished an Office Action on my oldest Regular New case, and then did an Office Action on another Regular New case. I also have one Special New case, so I’ve been searching for prior art relevant to what’s claimed there.

My Father’s Birthday

The other day would have been my father’s birthday, and he would have lived to celebrate it if he had managed the ninety-seven years which his own father spent above the earth. As it is, he hasn’t been with us for more than seven years. I meant to post something on his birthday itself, but things ate up time, and it was past midnight by the time I was through with work and exercise and dinner.

My father and I had considerable conflict over the years, both of us being all too prone to pride and anger, but we did in the end reconcile. I hope that during the last few weeks of his life, after a (presumed) series of mini-strokes left him mentally incapacitated, he thought well of me with whatever remained of his mind. (Some part of him was left, and the last time I saw him, he could speak in grammatical sentences and with his typical cadences; the trouble was that his sentences did not relate coherently to each other, or to what was actually going on around him.). Whatever his faults, he brought me up in a house full of books, and made great efforts to have me educated. Rest In Peace.