Or, as I intended the title to appear,
Daddy needs er, has new shoes
Except LJ broke using strikeout in post subjects some time back, and there doesn't seem to be any interest in fixing it.
Anyway, we ran errands today, with partial success. We got most of the groceries we planned on, and a few we didn't; I secured aluminum angle for building shelves in the other Digital rack, which we're using as a pantry; and I was unable to obtain LTO1 media for the new-to-me Dell Powervault 110T LTO1 tape drive I was just given, or an external SCSI-III cable to connect it woth, but did find new shoes. The black New Balance sneakers I've been wearing were starting to give up the ghost, and had a hole in the toe I could put my finger through.
Their replacements are North Face hiking shoes, which give me the sneakerlike sole and flexibility I like (albeit slightly more aggressively lugged than the standard running shoe), in more of a low-boot configuration that means it comes far enough up my ankle to be stable even with the three orthotic insoles stacked in it that I need in order to walk more or less normally. By the time all that is stacked up in a regular sneaker, my heel is halfway out of the heel of the shoe, with the obvious attendant stability problems. Several times I've almost fallen because of it.
I think the North Face hikers are going to be a big improvement. They're a little narrower than I'd have preferred, but that should become less of an issue once I get something done about the little toe on my left foot (which may actually be repairable rather than requiring removal).