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...