Merry, er Happy, Easter...

We had a lot of people over for our Annual Easter Dinner. I made a Prime Rib and Spiral Ham. Pam made 'from scratch' rolls, mushrooms, asparagus, 'owl juice', all sorts of Easter celebration stuff. She did these really special Russian egg, individually decorated for each adult in attendance, that she created with hot wax - a very time consuming and creative task...

The Easter egg hunt was before dinner which started about 3pm. It took all day but a good time was had by all - except for Felix the new cat. While I was getting the Prime Rib all setup in the morning, Felix ended up 'eating' the butcher string that it was wrapped in. After dinner, he started acting sick and ended up throwing up all night. Finally, he was able to get the string out and we all have been recovering all day today...

I still haven't been fishing again. The weather, or some other 'festive' activity, has kept me home. I plan on going tomorrow, and hopefully will have some good news to report.

I played in the weekly 9-ball tournament last week and ended up coming in 2nd. There were only a few players, so its no big deal, but I was playing pretty well and hope to do better tomorrow.

The computers and network are all doing well. The gigabit network speed upgrade is doing well and has really helped out. I have been upgrading the Norton virus software on three of the computers. Boy, what fun. I first tried to upgrade the new version over the old ones. In each case, I had all sorts of problems. I finally tracked down the Norton software removal tool and stripped them clean and then installed the new version and all went great. I has gotten much smarter over the past few years and this one is good. I have been waiting for some other companies to come out with the Home Server versions, but so far there is only one and I don't know much about it or its capabilities. We are now good until next November, so hopefully, they will get their act together by then. The Server versions, of such software, are good as you can usually install it on the server and it will pass it down to all the client computers.

We are going to have crown moulding installed in most of the downstairs, that doesn't have it yet, in the next week or two. That is probably the biggest 'visual issue' we have with the house. The painting and general prep for the wall/ceiling joints have never looked very good. So, this should make it all look much better and add value to DaHouse.

Pam's big Top Performer dinner is this Thursday night, so we are looking forward it as it's always a big deal here in DaHo...

Things are Still Warming up here in DaHo...

The weather has been getting warmer, for the most part. That being said, it did snow twice this week but it only lasted for a few hours and its all gone now. Also, there have been a few minor storms come through that had a lot of wind and general nasty weather. The typical temperature daily highs are in the high 40ies and the lows in the low 30ies. Most of the ground water pools that have been around since the melting of all the snow are gone and the ground is very wet and soggy.

I installed two new gigabit network switches and a new gigabit network card in one of the computers that didn't already have one. So, now the network has increased in speed 10 fold from 100MBPS to 1000MBPS. It makes moving all the large recorded TV files around, to and from, the three recording client PCs and the Home Server.

Due to the winds and storms, I haven't been fishing this week, but am planning on getting out there as soon as it clears up for a couple of days. I am all ready to go, whenever it does.

We moved the living room furniture back around like it use to be, with some very nice changes to the whole scheme, so its much nice to watch TV and now provides more room. I like it much better than the other way...

Over Christmas, I got these two little USB TV tuner 'cards' at Fry's in Las Vegas. They had a $50 rebate one each of them, so they were to only cost $5 each. Well, I just got notice back that I missed their 15 day post mark date requirement to submit the rebate by a day and they aren't going to honor them. So, I lost $100 by not keeping better attention on that item... And, what really frustrates me about it is that they are only for HD TV, which we don't use here, so they are worthless to me - Grumble, Grumble...

We lost our final match in the Wednesday night league playoff tournament last week so I am done with the 8-ball leagues. I am sorta glad that they are done with, as they both were pretty frustrating with all the team member issues that occurred. So, now, all I am going to play in is the Tuesday night 9-ball tournament. I played in it last week and got beat like a rented mule. I played the really good new guy, Ben, for my first match and he won 5-0. I got two shots the whole match. Its amazing how good he is. He doesn't do any amazing stuff because he doesn't have to, he is just always in the right position and makes his shots. I am going to like playing, getting beaten by, and learning from him as time goes on. After that whipping, I went on to place 4th in the tournament, which was not too bad, but I still have to keep my concentration up while playing. I seem to have lost it over the winter. I am just playing to play, instead of playing to win - a big difference in the end results...

Our refrigerator is leaking water, which is not good. I just got off of its warranty and I didn't renew it as they want way too much for it, for a product that doesn't usually break down...

Felix is growing fast and getting feistier all the time. He is driving Cali crazy by chasing her and jumping on her. Then, sometimes, she is the one that starts it or tempts him into it.There seems to be almost constant cat screaming from time to time, so we have been punishing him when it occurs. He gets this real 'attitude' about it but is hopefully coming around as he gets older. There is no physical harm in all of this, just 'playing around', but it drives us crazy...

Friday afternoon, we went to nephew Roman's birthday celebration at Gerty's Pizza. Its quite a place. They come around with all sorts of pizza. Some of it quite weird, er unusual, for pizza, IMHO - like sauerkraut pizza. Then, you top it all off with desert pizzas... It was quite an event and a good time was had by most.

On Saturday, we had lunch at Johnny Carino's Italian restaurant, which is becoming my favorite local restaurant. After some shopping, we went to the movies and saw Horton saw a Ho, or whatever it was. The theater was full of sick kids, coughing and gagging all the while, but it was a great movie and we didn't come down with any diseases - yet...

Pam is doing well at work and we are planning on having a big time at her Top Performer banquet next week. Last week she made and took in a bunch of porcupine balls to work for a pot luck. We had this 10# package of beef patties that were left over from the last Dell family day event that she used for them, so I guess they were just coming home, as it were. They are basically meat balls with rice and all sorts of good stuff in them. They were a big rave at the pot luck.

Then today, she brought in a bunch of cup cakes for the Dell St. Patricks day celebration. There always seems that something is going on there at Dell, which is good.

Well, Happy St. Patty's day and that's all there is from DaHo...

Life is good in DaHo...

This weekend had a lot of good stuff happen. A lot of little ankle-biters got resolved - and resolved in a good way...

Storm and family came over on Saturday. While he was here, I got him to help me fix the newly installed Radon crawlspace fan noise problem. I was never able to find the breaker that controlled the electrical circuit for the fan and didn't want to go down there, under the house, and play with hot wires without having someone else there in case that some bad thing happened. Anyway, we went down there and I installed a new X-10 remote switch on it, so now I can turn it off and on from inside the house at will. I am going to set it up in the Active Home X-1o software so it will automatically turn on during the days and off at night so we can sleep without having the hear the noise. In the process of installing the switch, I tripped the breaker and Storm tracked it down, so I now know the breaker also, which will make any further messing with it a lot easier.

The sound 'glitch' on the main living room PC/TV computer has been driving me crazy. Every few minutes, it will cut off all sound for a second or two. At any type of loud listening levels, that is quite irritating. I have spend many hours trying to replace and reload drivers and track the problem down, and since the motherboard in that PC is older, upgrading it would have been very expensive as it would have entailed changing the memory, CPU and lots of other stuff. So, I happened to see this little 'gizmo' called the Audio Advantage Micro, by Turtle Beach. It looks like a little USB thumb drive, but you can either plug in headphones or an optical digital adapter and use it to feed a Dolby Surround Receiver, which is what I wanted to do. And, it was only $25. I got it and got it going, and so far, it is working wonderfully - there are no sound problems at all - Hooray, Hooray!! And, since it is a USB device, I still have the only available PCI slot left to put in a gigabit Network card so I can upgrade the network to the much faster gigabit speeds that we need to move all the recorded TV shows to and from the Home Server storage. If this all holds up, all the technical 'issues' will be resolved this week and all is good with the new Media Center Extender and Commercial Skip additions - which are both wonderful. It is soooo nice to watch TV and have all the commercials go away...

I went fishing again and again didn't get any bites. But, it is still early, read cold, and they will come around. I did get one of my lines caught in the rocks and ended up breaking off a large part of it. In the past, I would have had to replace all the line on the reel spool as it needs to be pretty full to be able to cast properly. With this new hollow fishing line I am now using. I can splice a new section onto the end of the existing line and its as good as new again. There are no knots or glue involved and you can hardly see, or feel, the splice in the line and it 100% as strong as before. These fishing lines are expensive and this will save a lot of money over time. Enough line to fill up one reel spool can cost $50 and you only usually use the top 1/3 of it at all, but need it all in case you need it with a large fish...

Pam and I are both checking out the Oprah "A New Earth" book/class. Its quite interesting and so far is good stuff, incorporating a lot of the Eastern and most other thought concepts into it. I read it while fishing and all is good...

My pool game is still marginally OK. I need to practice more and think about it less - but that has always been the case. Its just like those folks that are afflicted with the disease of golf...

The weather is getting warmer and warmer. Its been in the high 40s and even mid 50ies the last few days. It will be time to take the studded snow tires off of the Lincoln real soon now here in DaHo...

Winter is Winding Down and Spring is Springing Up...

The daily highs have been around 50 degrees lately, so I guess the cold winter is finally ending. The ice sculpture that was created by the leaking faucet is down to about 1/3 of its original size and going quickly. All the ice on the shaded walkway to the front door is gone - for the first time since before Christmas and all the snow is gone except for the large piles, here and there, where it was piled up from the snow plows.

I went fishing for the first time Monday at my favorite place, DaHole, in Bliss. I didn't catch any fish, but it was a great time to be out and involved in it again. I did see fish jumping, so they are there. I tried out the new reel, and it works much better than expected - which is saying a lot as I expected a lot from it. We will have to see how it deals with a large Sturgeon or three before its officially approved. I plan on going out again tomorrow to try it again.

My pool is not going too well. I am playing better, but a lot of bad luck and general crap seems to be keeping me down overall. Last night was our first night of tournament play and we barely won, having to do a tie playoff. I only won one of my four games. A personal worst for me... Tonight, we have to play a much better team, so we shall see how that goes. I will be glad when these league tournaments are over. I am so done with it all at this point. That being said, I am very excited about starting to play the Tuesday night 9-ball tournaments again. I like them much better and you don't have to deal with all the drama of the team member issues, which have been pervasive all year.

Now that we have the new Media Center Extender installed and the Commercial-skipping software up and running, now it is causing 'issues' with our primary computer in the Living Room. First, the CPU was heating up, making the fan turn on and sound like an airplane taking off and now the sound is cutting out every few minutes for a second or three - which really drives me crazy. I finally resolved the CPU fan issue and am in the process of tracking down the sound 'glitch' problem. A 'glitch' is what sound dropouts are called, I have learned... ... ...

I have to upgrade our network to gigabit speed to handle all the moving of the large recorded TV files around, to and from the home server. Each one of the files is about 2GB in size and if we ever go to HD quality, they grow to 5-10GBs each. The good news about that is that the entire house is wired for it and all we have to do is replace a couple of NIC cards and a switch and we are done.

Pam's Dell Top Performer dinner is coming up in a couple of weeks, as are the two pool league awards dinners, so we will be very busy for a while here in DaHo...