Computer Wrap-up, Helicopters and a Little Visitor...

After many days of hassle, I finally have the new Bedroom computer installed and working. So, now all the computer upgrades are up. I still have to do some software installing and configuring to get them all working as I want them, but that is pretty easy stuff compared to all the hassles I have been dealing with lately.

The helicopter I got for Pam's birthday is pretty neat. It's a lot larger than the little ones she has been flying for the past year. This one is a Blade CX. It has dual rotors that counterbalance each other. So, there is no need for a tail rotor at all. Basically, the top rotor provides the up and down power and the lower rotor tilts to provide the movement and counterbalances the upper rotor. They are suppose to be easier to fly, but that hasn't been the case so far around here. They still take a lot of training/learning to fly without crashes. I am becoming an expert at fixing it as various little parts get broken. She likes it and is getting the hang of it quickly.

This weekend, we have had a visitor. Its Pam's nephew, Roman, who is 7 years old. He is a great little kid and we have had a lot of fun with him. Yesterday, we went to the movies and then later on, we went to the local Nascar Race Track for the weekly car races. As usual, a big time was had by all. Today, Pam and Roman are going to a birthday party for a child of one of Pam's friends.

I did play pool this week again on Wednesday night. My back has been hurting again and I have now won enough that my handicap is pretty high. The combination of the two ended up putting me out of the event pretty early. I am going to have to get another lower back shot soon as this back thing is getting out of control again and you can only have SOOOOO much fun with back pain...

Our new landscaping guy came and was just great - too great. As the old saying goes, 'Those things that seem too good to be true, usually are' came to pass again. After he started working around the house, and charging very reasonable prices, he told us that he was moving away and couldn't continue working for us. Well, it was great while it lasted...

We did get another online order for some needles this week. I would sure like to get it going a lot more. I guess it is one of those things that just keep getting bigger and bigger - at least I hope so...

Now that I have the computers all done, my next task is getting the garage cleaned up so I can develop a new workspace to manufacturer the needles. Then, there is always my new permanent ongoing task of promoting the business by acquiring more distributors for the needles.

I really need to starting fishing again. I haven't been fishing for months now. I started this whole needle business from wanting to improve my fishing, and now its been keeping me from fishing - there is something wrong with the way its working out - so far...

Grandson Oliver is coming to fish/visit in a few weeks. So, I am going to have to get ready for it. He is driving now, so that will be a big change. He is going on a family trip to Switzerland before he comes here. That should be quite a difference in culture...

Well, that is about all I can come up with right now from here in DaHo...

More Computers, Landscaping and the Big Garage Cleanup...

The front room Media Center computer is working well, except for one little video glitch that I am still working on. If all else fails, which it pretty much has, I am going to give in and put in a video card to resolve the problem. This new motherboard was suppose to have an on board video system on it that wouldn't need a video card, but so far, that is not the case and I have about run out of 'magic' to solve it.

The old parts I extracted from the living room computer are being used to build a new computer for the bedroom. The fairly new Media Center extender that is fed by some Vista Media Center computer is just not working out well. It is almost great, but so far it has been annoying enough that I am going to replace it with another computer. It will only be used like the living room computer to watch TV and will be run with a harmony remote 99.9% of the time.

Anyway, I have been building the new bedroom computer from parts and it is running great. I am waiting for a new tv tuner to arrive tomorrow to get it completed. So, we will then have six PCs in the house, all doing their respective jobs and all are attached to and backed up with the Windows Home Server that is upstairs in the wiring closet.

Speaking of the Windows Home Server, I have been participating in an official Microsoft Beta Test of their new Power Pack 1 release of the Windows Home Server OS. The main issue being addressed by the PP1 release is the dreaded "Data Corruption Bug" that has caused alot of uses much pain. It has never bottered me, but I have been careful of how I have used it knowing the bug was lurking out there. I have to do various things and then report back to MS about how they work and how they might work better. So far, is has been great. The only bug I could find was on their release document web page.

Once I finally get all the computers working right and together, I am going to be integrating them all to use the server storage system for all the data files. The WHS will be the most logical ,and hopefully, safest place to keep the data where it will be accessible by all.

Around the "Estate" grounds, all the usual weeds are growing like crazy. Our guys that we have been having do such things seem to have vanished, so we called another person that has a new sign on the road coming into the house. He actually use to live here and worked at Costco. He seems to be a nice guy and is starting this morning.

Pam has been doing well, except for her braces. They just did the monthly braces 'adjustment' on them late last week and they have been killing her. I guess the inside of her mouth is pretty torn up from the wires. She has been using a lot of the dental wax to try to keep the pain to a minimum. She has been cooking a lot of great food for me/us. Sometimes she will cook a great meal and not eat, which usually bothers me as I could have had something much easier to prepare. I am usually pretty flexible when it comes to food.

I did go out and play pool in the weekly 8-ball handicap tournament. It is very challenging because there always seems to be good player or two playing at a low handicap because they haven't played much and raised their handicap to what it should be. Each time you place in the money, your handicap goes up an when you don't place in the money three times your handicap goes down. Men start at a 8 an women start at a 7 handicap. I ended up winning second this week - to a girl... This was her first time playing in the tournament and she was a 7. Her husband also played but got beat out early. She was much better than him. I am a 10 now as I haven't been playing very often. So, I had to spot her 3 balls a game or 9 points in the 30 point match. She was one of the best women I have seen play and would be challenging to play scratch, but having to play her and give her the points, didn't work out well. She was the only one that beat me, but did it twice - in the middle of the tournament and then again at the end for the final placement. It was big fun and requires total concentration to play at with those parameters. I have a feeling we will be seeing a lot more of her...

Grandson Oliver is coming to visit again this summer. He is coming on August 15th and staying until the 22nd. We should have great fun fishing and camping and what ever else is happening then. We always have a great time when her is here.

We also got a new camera. Its a Panasonic Lumis DMC-TZ5. It's a little larger than some of the compact digital cameras, but has the greatest lens of any camera in that group. It has a high quality Leica lens. Its a wide angle lens with a 10X optical zoom - in 35mm terms the lens goes from 28mm to 280mm. Then, there is a movement stabilized 6X digital zoom after that. It has all sorts of capabilities that I have never seen on a camera before, but I haven't been shopping for one for a few years. One thing I just love is you can add a 5 second audio clip to each photograph to record what the picture is. We shall see how it goes, but so far it is a great camera.

We now have a big 'back of store' sized dumpster in front of the little garage door. It is to dump all the junk that we are not going to try and sell in a garage sale. The garage is finally going to get cleared out. I have got to have more space to do my business work in. Right now, I have one fold up table about 3 feet square that I have four different devices on that I use in the process of making my needles an have to move around to the various sides to do different tasks... I am going to build an 8 foot long work area so I will have a proper space to do my work.

Well, that is about all the news that is 'print to fit' here in DaHo...

Happy Fourth of July, a Great Visit and Pam's Birthday...

First, Happy Birthday to Pam and a Happy Fourth of July to all. Its very warm here but suppose to cool down today. Its been over 100 for the past few days - quite a change from just a few weeks ago.

The day before Mike and Susan Keithley from Hollyweird came to visit, I decided to rebuild the main living room Media Center Computer. It ended up being a very long and frustrating ordeal. I am still not sure what went wrong, but nothing seemed to work right for many hours. I replaced the Motherboard, CPU, cooler, Video, Network and Sound systems. I am now thinking it was maybe a little too aggressive to do all at one time with a close timeline...

Luckily, the airlines slowed down their arrival a few hours which gave me enough time to finally get it all resolved. It now seems to be mostly working great and will make for a better long range solution. It just amazes me how these things can go so wrong, so quickly and usually for no definable reason...

Then, just when they were suppose to arrive, we noticed that the house was getting very hot inside. I checked the floor vents and sure enough, the air conditioner coils had frozen up again. This has happened once every year and usually at the worst possible time and usually when guests are either here or coming. Since its happened three times before, I knew how to diagnose it and what to do. I had to remove a bunch of the ducting in the furnace room and melt all the ice off of the air conditioning coils. I couldn't find the heat gun, so I used one of Pam's hair dryers. It took me about 1 1/2 hours of time to get all the ice melted and get it put all back together in an amazingly hot environment. So, after the 15 hour computer build, with about 3 hours sleep, and the repair job on the air conditioner, I was pretty done in - maybe even Well Done in...

They finally did arrive about 10:30 at night and we had a good rib dinner Sunday night. They could only stay until mid-morning on Tuesday, so we had to forget the fishing trip and just show them some of the local sights and restaurants. They really liked the bridge, Snake River Canyon, the two golf courses on the canyon bottom. We took them down and behind the waterfall going down into the canyon and all the local sights. We went to the Shoshone Falls, which was in great form, with lots of water being released while they are repairing the power plant there, Dirkies Lake where Pam had her Dell Family Day last weekend. And, many other local spots of tourist interest.

After all the site seeing in the very hot weather, we came back for a cooling off rest, in the very cool house, and Mike had to get some business work done. Then, we got cleaned up and went over to the new Canyon Crest restaurant for dinner. We ate outside and they could see the canyon, golf courses and bridge. It is one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen from a restaurant - at least in DaHo.

After a great dinner, we came home and after shooting off a few early fireworks for Pam's Birthday and played cards until very late. A great time was had by all. It was some game I hadn't played before, but I ended up coming in second with Mike winning.

When we left Kalifornia, one of the presents we received was a nice bottle of Jack Daniels Single Barrel Bourbon - very nice stuff. I had a little of it for the Ho house warming, my 60th birthday party and was saving the rest to have with Mike when he finally did get to DaHo. So, we had it to celebrate the occasion...

The next morning they had to leave pretty early, but the both said they are coming back and they defiantly want to play golf in the canyon. They had brought their golf clubs with them on the trip, which these days, with the airlines being as they are, shows they really like golf...

It was really great seeing them again. In the past, we have had great fun together and since us moving here and them having a family and all, we haven't been together much. This visit was great fun but way too short as usual...

After they left we rested and Pam played around with her birthday present, a bigger and better remote control helicopter. I got her a nice one that we saw at a local home improvement show last year from a local hobby store that is right next to Dell. So, she can just run over there to get parts or ask questions about it. It should be a lot of fun for her after all the time she has spent with the little indoor ones all this year.

I did go play in the Wednesday night 8-ball tournament and won. It was big fun with mostly good players playing this time. Usually, there are a lot of not-so-good players in it that you have to spot a bunch of points to, but this time they weren't there. That was the first one I have won this year. I have had a couple of seconds, but no previous wins. My back is hurting again when I play a long time so I guess I will have to go get another shot.

Well, that is about all that I can think of that is happening around here. O,O, except for one thing I just remembered. We got our first real needle sale from the website. So, I guess it is finally getting around on the search engines and getting some exposure. I have been making up a stock of them so we are ready for bunches or orders to come in. Well, now that is it from DaHo...