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...