Life in DaHo

Garage Sailing in Sun Valley again...

2010-11-17T09:23:00.000-08:00

We went up to see Roberta, Pam's sister, again. We love to check out the garage sales and thrift stores up there in the rich folks country. There are a lot of the super rich up there and sometimes you can find a real nice item just by being in the right place at the right time. And, so far, each time that we have been up there checking out the sales, we have came away with some item that made it worth while.

We weren't going to go up there last weekend, but at the last minute, we did end up going to check out the sales. We didn’t find much in the garage sales but did get a real find in a thrift store. I was checking out these two chairs there. It looked totally out of place where they were. They had just arrived that morning from a local designer gallery. I guess the gallery wanted to write them off as one had been damaged and repaired but was loose again. They were wood with very nice arms and were reasonably stable.

The designer gallery that they came from was very high ticket. We drove by the gallery later on and we were impressed. I would never go in there to buy anything as it looked quite expensive. I would assume the chairs were worth at least $ 250 each in the gallery, considering they cater to the rich folks there. The chairs have a very large seating area, being larger than I am, which is pretty unusual. They have curved arm ends and were finished to look old. I have never seen a wooden chair that was too large for me before. There is a picture of them below...

Anyway, I asked how much they were and was told if I buy them then, they were $25 each. I about fell over. Come to find out, the reason that they wanted them out of there was that they were afraid that the owner, who would be there on Monday would get on their case for selling them so cheap. I wasn’t looking for any chairs but these were too good to pass up. It was a hassle to get them to Pam’s sister's house, but then to get them home, Pam was able to get both of them into the back seat of the Lincoln. Then, I loosened the repair on one of them by trying to put the seat back so I could fit into the seat. I couldn't get the drivers seat back far enough to get in and barely got into the passenger seat. But, they did get home and now I have to reglue the one that came loose.

We are going to put them in the pool room. I tried a cushion from our other dining chairs, which is large for them, and they will work after we attach some straps to keep them in place. They look great in there as the pool chairs are always large like these.

Speaking of pool, the new Men's league is coming along well. We played our second set of matches over the past two weeks. The played the Blair team and did OK. The first week, I got 2 games and last week I got 3 games. I have to keep in mind not to let good players have opportunities by me not playing as safe as I should.

So, tonight is our first match playing our third team. It is at the Rainbow Lounge and we should be able to do well against them based on the past. But, we haven't seen their team yet so there is always the possibility of new and better players than in the past.

Business is going along. We just picked up a new dealer from Singapore. So far they have been a pain to work with, but we have resolved all the details now and are waiting for them to send our payment to the bank so we can ship their order.

All is going along pretty well. Pam is having trouble with her hands. They are swelling up when she does any sort of work with them. She just cleaned the carpets with a carpet cleaner we got at Costco, I think, and it/they really did a great job on the carpets. After over two years of new dog training, it was in pretty rough shape and it looks great again now. A great job was done by Pam and the machine!

Getting Ready for Winter...

2010-11-03T09:25:00.000-07:00

It's getting colder and will soon be winter here in DaHo. There are still a few warm days between the colder ones, which are just nature's way of screwing with you before the really cold weather hits.

The folks that manage the landscaping sprinkler systems came and blew them out and shut them down. This is so there isn't any water in the plastic lines that will break them when it freezes. It also tells all the plants that the fun is over and its time to sleep for the winter.

Last weekend we finally had the big garage sale. Due to the weather, we had it on the patio. It went pretty well. We sold most of the stuff and took the rest of it down to a local salvation army sort of place. It was a real hassle to do, but it is finally done and all is good.

I got a new machine to let me do headstands. I have been doing headstands for years as part of my yoga, but it still put pressure on my body, and more importantly my back, as my weight was on my shoulders and therefor still put pressure on my back. In this new system, I hang by my feet so it opens up my spine. I have only used it a couple of times so far, but I think it will be great for my back problem where my discs are compressed. I sincerely hope it will resolve having to have any more of the spinal injections in the future.

Yesterday was the election and all went well. I am sorry that PROP 19 in Kalifornia didn't pass. I would have loved to see how that would have changed the growing disaster there. It will be interesting to see how the growing demand for resources is resolved there. It will be a preview of what will happen all over down the road.

I started my Men's Pool League a couple of weeks ago. I did 2 for 4 games the first week an 3 for 4 last week. We shall have to see how tonight goes...

Well, I must go as I still have a lot to do getting the upstairs orfices finished. That is about all there is here in DaHo...

Cold Weather is on the Way...

2010-10-15T08:22:00.000-07:00

The weather is definitely getting colder here in DaHo... Soon, the sprinkler management folks will be around to blow out the sprinkler lines and turn them off for winter.

Another sign of winter around here is the ads for a local large automobile dealer to offer "Free Guns for Cars/Trucks". When you buy a new car or truck, they will give you a free gun of your choice. Actually, it is just some of your part of the deal that they hold back to buy you your toy that you may not be able to justify by itself, but it seems to work well and they always 'Give Away' a lot of free guns.

We have to do something to weatherproof the animal door as each morning the house is getting cold. Soon, it will be very cold...

Pam is cleaning out her closet. And, as I have before, I cannot believe how much stuff comes out of it. This time she has a lot of stuff that she is going to give away or sell at our garage sale. The one that we have been going to have since we moved here 7 years ago...

My health is doing well. I started doing my yoga again about a month ago and all of the good feelings from doing it are starting to happen again. My body is feeling much more flexible and all my muscles groups are feeling like they should be as they do their tasks. I am again amazed by how it makes you feel.

I do have a new thing happening that is interesting. I have had the front part of my upper left leg opened up 4 or 5 times with all the operations I have had in that region. And, I am now having a lot of the nerves that got hacked up, growing back together again. In the interim, they are generating all sorts of very weird feeling and sensations. The other day, while walking around WallMart, my left leg was getting very tired and I was getting feelings of searing heat and cold feeling like they were dripping down my leg - Very weird stuff.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a high end electronic scale, used in meat or deli counters, at a garage sale for $5. So, last weekend, we went to this sheep fair in Sun Valley and we were at this cheese booth and the guy had a much smaller version of the sale. So, was telling him about how I bought the one I have and he asked if I wanted to sell it. I told him $150, off of the top of my head, and he went for it - Way too fast. I should have asked for more...

I have been working on getting the upstairs office put together. I have been building a new computer with more power. I bought a new CPU to upgrade the office computer and even though it is from one of the widely used families of Intel processors, this one doesn't work with any of the 5 desktop computers that we have here. And, being a processor that had been opened, it was not returnable. So, I had to search for and buy a new motherboard that could use this new processor. And, because I have been building up a stock of computer parts, I ended up building a completely new system. Its a very nice one and is working very well. The old one is going to become the new test system as it has been for a year of more.

Well, that is all that I can think of right now...

Oops... I was captured by aliens and couldn't post...

2010-10-03T12:37:00.000-07:00

OK, I wasn't captured by aliens, and don't have any good excuse for not posting to this blog, but I really was very busy and have a real good excuse. Well, maybe its not that good of an excuse, but I have been busy most of the time. It really wasn't that having a lot of stuff to do sort of busy, but more of having a lot of stuff to think about so it was like being busy. Ok, I don't have any real good excuse for not posting and I am very sorry for not keeping up on this blog. I think the real reason is that I was thinking mostly about not having posted mostly.

OK, now that I have gotten through that, I should have a lot of stuff to talk about...

Summer is gone and I really don't remember much of it. I didn't go fishing all summer. The good news is that I am finally feeling better and don't have to use the electric carts at the stores to shop anymore. I hated having to use them, but after getting use to them, they were pretty cool. I can walk now almost like a 'normal' person - most of the time. I still have some 'issues' with being physically normal, but they are getting fewer and fewer as time goes on. Hopefully, I won't have any more such events that lasted most of this year.

So, I guess I will write all this in sections. On the medical front, I had a back shot, the same type that started all of this to happen in the first place, and it was very painful but worked well - so far. My most recent medical event was having a upper and lower scope job. That was about 3 weeks ago. I went through it with flying colors, no bad stuff was discovered at all on either end. But, they had to expand my throat, where the radiation and cancer surgery was at, and I am still having acid come up from my stomach. I have not had any stomach acid problems for many years so that is not much fun. The doctor sent me home with a report with lots of pictures of my insides that are pretty weird to look at but show all good stuff. I think that is about all of the medical stuff that has happened lately.

On the business front, business is slower that it has been in the past, but every time I start to freak out about it, orders or new dealers happen. So, I guess all I need to do is stay in the freaked out mode and all will be ok, except for my stomach lining - see medical section above...

We have a new product coming out. Its a tool kit that has all sorts of tools along with our needles in it. It has been 'challenging' to get together, but all is pretty much done now and all should go well. We had to get some new tools and are now doing things that we never though we would be doing - like making up spools of line to go in the tool kits.

We did get the business area upstairs all set up for business work and that is all good. We still have more stuff to do, but all the big stuff is done and the rest can be done without outside help.

We really haven't been doing much fun stuff. We have been up to Sun Valley a lot lately and that is usually good fun. We did some garage sailing up there and found a great item. It is a scale that you see on top of meat counters that show the customer the weight and prices. They cost over $700 new and should be worth a couple of hundred bucks on EBay. They wanted $6 for it and I got it for $5 so its a good deal. I also got a CPAP machine for sleep breathing disorders. It sold for $ 1,500 and should be worth something as it works great. I use to use one, but now with this big hole in my neck, I have no use for them.

We I have stuff to do, or at least think about so I must be off for now but will be back soon to carry on with this blog.

Vacation at Warp Speed...

2010-08-14T12:02:00.000-07:00

Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. We just got back from a little 4 day/3 night vacation. On the ‘vacation’, we went through Yellowstone Park and Mt. Rushmore. Since funds were short and hotels were very expensive, we wanted to keep it short, but still see both of the attractions.

Close to Mt. Rushmore, we stopped at Sturgis, since they are having the annual motorcycle rally. I was completely stunned by the size of it. It took up all of the hotels, gas stations and restaurants for about a 100 mile radius. Bikes were everywhere and took up all available space. At ground zero, people were selling spots on their lawns for tents and lawns were full, stake to stake with tents. It was probably 10 times the size I thought it would be and I thought it was large.

We saw a documentary on TV about it some weeks ago, but it didn’t give you the idea of how large it really was. And, I understand there are some permanent campgrounds out of town that also hold many thousands more of people and bikes. One campground has a permanent stage and was having big name bands/attractions such as ZZ Top, Bob Dylan, etc., etc. Thousands and thousands of Harley's everywhere. We also saw many bikes with Chevrolet small block V8s in them. Crazy stuff…

While we were in Yellowstone Park we saw Old Faithful blow her cork and checked out some of Yellowstone's geothermal displays. And while waiting for some road work close to dark, we saw this very large herd of buffalo migrating from a feeding area and across a river. We were able to watch them for quite a while as we followed the pilot car.

Besides Harley's, the other thing that was everywhere was pilot cars. We must have seen 100 of them throughout the trip as they were working on the mostly mountainous roads that we went on. So, we just about saw all of the things that Yellowstone is famous for - geothermal displays, beautiful forests and Arctic plateaus, and wild animals. We didn't see much of each category, but we did see a little of each one...

We were pretty worn out by the end of the vacation, but it was great fun. Storm and Jenny and their 4 kids were great during the whole trip and there was a lot of stressful events that happened because of the time an all the bikers. We had 2 kids in our rooms most of the time.

Pam was also great during the whole trip. She was having trouble with her hands, but didn't let that stop our plans. I drove most of the time and she was very helpful in tracking down trip details and variations because of the road work, bikers, and minimal planning. At the end of the trip, when I ran out of gas, she took over and got us home while also picking up the doggies that were staying with Aunt Robertta.

I didn't realize that Yellowstone Park was so close to DaHo, being only about 4 hours away. We plan on going there again often to see its beauty when we have more time to enjoy it. This trip was fast, but we saw it all and more - real fast. It was a lot faster than stuff usually happens here in DaHo...

Summertime Blues...

2010-08-01T20:24:00.000-07:00

It is full on summer time here. The temps are usually in the 90ies and we are having mostly clear days. We have had a couple of storms that can get pretty nasty, but they have been short lived.

In the last blog entry, I mentioned the Lincoln having air conditioning problems and then it was the house. It kept freezing up and was a real PITA for a couple of weeks. We tried to fix it by cleaning out the coils outside and changing the filters and all the usual stuff, but nothing seemed to fix it. So, we called in the experts and after a 2.5 hr visit and a charge, it seems to all be fixed and working properly again.

I have been very busy working on a new product for the business. It is going to be a complete kit of tools for working on the hollow spectra lines that our other products work on. There are a few other such products out there, but they are all created and offered by dealers, and none of them are available through a distribution channel as ours will be. We shall have to see how it goes with our dealer network. It should be available next month.

This will be the first product that we have to deal with a lot of suppliers to get all the bits in place. Its been pretty crazy for the past 2-3 weeks, but is pretty much in the bag at this point. We plan on offering it in a number for forms as we will be offering to create custom ones for our dealers. We will be co-branding them and adding new or replacing parts of our basic kits as desired by our dealers to support their customer base and/or fishery.

We are also planning on taking a short trip with Storm and his family at the end of next week. We are taking a 3-4 day trip to visit Yellowstone Park and probably Mount Rushmore. I have seen Yellowstone Park many times as a kid and with my kids, but its been many years since my last time. I didn't realize that it is only about 4 hours from here. I have never been to Mt. Rushmore that I am aware of, but probably have when I was very young. The Sturgis motorcycle rally is also going on so we will probably stop past there since we are going right past it. \

The trip should be big fun. The summer just seems to be going past so fast. The business keeps me busy all the time and the weeks fly by.

Last week I got another back shot. This one was higher up than the others. The doctor showed me an X-ray of the joint and it was really squeezed on one side. I have had a lot of shots, and none of them ever hurt much. But, this one is horribly painful. I cannot remember ever having that much pain before and hope that I don't again. It seems to be much better, but I have not tested it with any long walks so I guess the trip to Yellowstone will do that for us. I just hope that it works well enough that I am not too much of a bother to everybody else...

Well, that is all I can think of to say at this point. I will be writing back after the vacation to let you know how that all went...

Back from Kalifornia...

2010-07-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not keeping up with this blog for the last month. I thought I had posted this post but just found it. I guess I must have had to reboot the system before I finished. As usual, there has been so much happening here in DaHo that I haven't had time to do it. We were very busy getting ready for our first trip for over a year to Kalifornia to visit all the family and some business contacts. And then catching up with everything after coming back.

The reason for the trip was to attend Grandson Oliver's high school graduation. He is also now an official ENT and as of last Friday, he is visiting Europe with his cousin and grandmother. They flew into Switserland and will spend the next month without any preliminary plans to limit their travel.

We drove the Lincoln on the trip and shortly after it got hot in the middle of Nevada, the air condictioner went out and we traveled much of the way at temps up to 104 - big fun...

It took us about 12 hours to get to Kalifornia and we pretty worn out by the time we got there. We stayed in a Best Western hotel that was right by the Newport Freeway in the middle of everything. We are very grateful to our little Tom Tom GPS to help us get around while we were there as we had forgotten a lot of the little details needed to find everything.

We spend much of our trip time visiting Aaron and Tara and our two awesome granddaugthers, Alana and Asha. This was our first time that we had met Asha and she is really a cutie. We were there for a week and had time to visit most all of the family while there.

The main event of the trip was Oliver's graduation celebration. It was at a local community college. He had about 800 kids in his class and the event over filled the colleges football stadium. We happened to park in the wrong handicaped parking area and ended up having to walk about a quarter mile to get in. That is more than I have walked in the past year and really did me in. I am still trying to recover from it...

We visited some of our local dealers, our contact at Shimano and our product beta tester that has been instrumental in testing our products for us. We have a lot of business contacts that are local to Orange County, CA.

During the week there, our air conditioning worked well on our short trips and mostly cool weather. But, when we started our return trip, it went out again around Barstow. We stayed at the Circus Circus in Las Vegas on the way back. It is very large. I had to go from bench to bench to make it up to the room at times. We didn't do much there except for taking a taxi to the Gold and Sliver Pawn Shop that is freatured in one of our favorite TV shows on the History Channel called "Pawn Stars". There was a line outside and our taxi driver was saying that it is very popular these days. We missed all of the stars of the show by a few minutes, but it was very interesting to visit the place and see it all first hand.

Our trip back from Las Vegas was very hot and long. We were pretty much worn out by the time we got back home. But, it was very good to get back home again. Roberta, Pam's sister, had been taking care of the dogs and she had them here when we got home. It was very nice to see them and they were very happy to see us.

It took me most of a week after our return to catch up on the open orders and to finish making some changes that I have been working on...

For the 9th time, I am changing the product packaging labels on the plastic tubes. Of all the challenges that I have had to work out developing our products, the one that has caused more problems since day one has been the tube labels. I think I have fimally found some that will work good, but I have said that 8 times now and was wrong...

I have finaly found a use for the gaming steering wheel and pedal hardware that I have had for years and never had a use for. He has given me a one month subscription to IRacing, an online auto racing 'environment'. It is amazingly real and it works much better than I could have imagined. I haven't played with it too much yet, but the little part that I have use it has been big fun.

Johnny also told Pam about this device that he got for his racing environment. Its called the Butt Kicker. It is a device that you attach to your seating you use to watch movies and it turns the lower end of the sound sytem into vibrations that you can feel along with the sounds. It is pretty amazing and stuns everybody that has been over and checked out the new "TV" . I got it for Pam's birthday. But the last few days it has been acting broken so I don't know if it is a user problem or not.

Well, that is about all there is to write about here in DaHo...

Amazing Technology...

2010-06-11T09:16:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I was eating lunch at Burger King and a good friend and his son showed up. The son ordered the BK Kids Meal and along with the food, it came with a toy. It was a digital watch with a countdown timer - and it came free with a $3 kid's meal. I remember the first time I saw a digital watch. It was close to $ 1,000 and probably wasn't any more accurate - pretty amazing stuff.

While we are going down that road, I also remember the first time I saw a TV set. It was in the front window of the furniture store down town. It was a large wooden console model and there was a crowd there looking at it. I remember there was this group of guys, about 20 or so, that were trying to figure it out. A couple of them were looking at the screen in the front and a couple more of them were around the back of the TV trying to see if they could see what was happening when the screen changed up front. The general thought was that there was some sort of projector or movie 'machine' in there that was making the TV pictures. I was about 4 years old and we had one of them in our house not too long after that night that we saw the TV in town.

It is amazing to have lived in an age that has had so many changes in it. If it would have been almost any past period of time, the biggest lifetime change might have been buttons, gas lanterns, or metal knives - if I was lucky...

My recovery from the last two operations is going well. I am having much less pain since the operation recovery. I have new pains or lack of old pains every day or three now as my body keeps recovering from the injury caused by having my body hacked up again. I suspect this will continue for some time based upon the past operations.

The business is going well. Not much growth lately, but I guess that is the way most everything is these days.

I have been working on making the business functions work better as I have time. Currently I am back, yet again, on the labels for the tubes. Our latest batch of them are not sticking to the plastic tubes very well. We have not had a customer or dealer comment of them, but we have had some test labels come un-stuck. The labels are probably the most problematic part of the business since the beginning. We have had 10 or so changes and searches in updating the labels. These new ones are a lot more expensive, but seem to be the only ones that have no problems with staying on the tubes.

Last week we were woken up by the dogs and there was a big blaze outside the windows. One of our neighbors houses burned to the ground. It was about 1/2 mile away but with the lack of night lighting around here, it was quite bright. We went over there early the next morning and I guess the car had caught on fire and the first thing that made them aware of the fire was hearing a little thump in the garage and when they opened up the door, the whole garage was in flames. The fire trucks got there in 6 minutes, but it was pretty much history by then. Scary stuff...

Well, I must get to work again. Sorry for not posting for a couple of weeks, I will try to this blog updated.

The Big New Operation(s)?

2010-05-23T07:48:00.000-07:00

I did have my aortic aneurysm stent correction operation a week ago Friday using the new technique of going through the veins and arteries. And, it all went along as planned. The new surgeon was able to fix the stent by replacing the left leg of it, but ended up having to use a larger size stent 'left leg' and attach it to the stent that was already installed.

The only problem was that the arterial hole they had to use to install the larger left leg stent part wasn't closing up. And, due to its location and the amount of blood pressure inherent there, they couldn't get the bleeding to stop. So, to fix that they had to do a second operation later on that same day, using the old abdominal incision technique to close up the arterial hole created by the first operation.

While they were in there they also removed a large part of the bypass tube, that was in there and not needed anymore, and other general cleanup from the other 5 operations that have happened there since 12/2/09. I am very glad that it worked out this way. It is actually the best solution, as the other doctors had all sorts of crap in there that could only just cause problems in the future.

So, I did end up with a wound, that is about 2 inches long and closed with a whole row of staples, but besides that I am very pleased with the results of my latest operations.

I woke up on Saturday morning and was feeling better than I had been for 'many moons' (a little American Indian lingo since there are so many of them in that area). Speaking of the area, we took a new route up there from Roberta's house, which we went to so she could take care of our 'kids' while we were gone. Anyway, we ended up going through 'Craters of the Moon' National Park and a whole bunch of beautiful country. And, the town of Idaho Falls itself is very nice. If I would have seen it during our first visit to Idaho, I would have probably wanted to live up there as it is very nice up there.

Skreetch - back to the hospital... The only problem was that I was feeling a little hot so they started taking my temperature and it started out about 99 deg and was going up. It got up to about 101 and both Pam and I were feeling very concerned as we have been in this position before. They were suppose to release me and around early afternoon, they did to both of our surprise. So, we packed up and headed home. And, the temperature went away shortly after leaving the hospital.

I was walking and feeling better than I have been shortly after getting home and have continued to get better ever since. I am having a difficult time doing what I am afraid of doing for so long now, with all of the problems I have had for so long, but I think my biggest problem now is lack of shape and muscle tone. I still need to get these staples out and recover from the 'details' of the last operation, but have been working a lot during the past week upstairs and have been going up and down the stairs a lot without much problem at all - which I couldn't do before these last operations at all.

Anyway, I am feeling almost 'normal' again and am hoping that I will be completely normal in the weeks to come. And, that I will again be spending my time planning fishing trips, rather than trips to Walmart...

Big Medical Happenings...

2010-05-11T14:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we went up to the new vascular surgeon in Idaho Falls, which is about 3 hours away from here. Anyway, after visiting him, he had us go over to the local hospital and we had a CT scan. After that, we came back home.

Then, this morning we got a call from the doctor. He said that he had looked at the CT pictures and that the left leg part of the aortic aneurysm stent has become unconnected from the stent and that is what is causing the blood flow problem.

I guess the stent is like a pair of pants. The left leg cut off as they put the
'pants' minus the left leg, in through the right artery and then once that is done, they put in the left 'pant' let in through the left leg artery and then attach the left leg part to the main stent.

So, the left let part of the stent has somehow come loose and must be fixed. The whole point of putting in the stent, is to protect the aortic wall material from blowing up by keeping all of the blood pressure inside of the stent. So, without the left leg part there, and having a big hole there where the left leg part is suppose to attach, the whole stent purpose is compromised and I am liable to have it blow as I was before any of this started two years ago.

Anyway, the new surgeon is going to fix it all this Friday. He is going to go in through my arm and leg and fix the stent problem and whatever else is not right - or at least that is the plan as I understand it.

I find it amazing that there are tools available that can be taken through the arteries and once they are where they need to be, have the capability to do the complex tasks required to complete the job at hand. I will have no open wounds except for a small hole in my arm and leg. And, I am schedules to be discharged on Saturday morning.

In the past, each operation resulted in at least one 'wound' that would have to go through a 2 week or more healing treatment requiring drainage of the liquids from it, clean it multiple times a day, keep it dressed properly and all sorts of hassles and pain dealing with it.

The next post will probably be after I return from having the operation. I sincerely hope that all will go as planned and I do not get any staph infection as in the past.

Lots of Happenings...

2010-05-01T09:41:00.000-07:00

Well, lots of stuff happening around here lately. Felix the cat is all healed and is out of the cage again. He has been staying close to home at right and I think all will be OK with him as long as he keeps that up. Things seem to happen at night around here.

My leg is feeling a little better. I am completely off of the crutches these days. I still am VERY limited as to how far I can go on my feet, but it is getting better and better. I don't think it will get too much better until I have real blood flow to my left leg.

And, speaking of resolving my left leg blood flow, a good friend of mine that I use to Sturgeon fish with, has been telling me about this miracle doctor by him that saved his life last year. Early last year, he was bitten by a spider in his leg and over the next few months, it just got worse and worse. Before he saw the new doctor, they were wanting to amputate his leg as the only 'solution' to his recovery. He met this doctor in the hospital while they were doing preparatory testing for amputating his leg and after one out-patient visit to this doctor, he was totally cured. I guess this doctor uses some sort of laser in the blood veins to clean out any blockages, as most leg problems are blood oriented. Anyway, I have an appointment with this doc in 10 days now. We are having my records sent to him now to verify that he can solve my blood flow problems, but if he can, I think this just might be the solution to my leg problem. As Pam points out, I still have a back problem, but if I can get this leg problem fixed, I will be a much happier camper.

On the medical insurance front, we did see the folks from SHEBA, the state of Idaho Insurance Commission folks, and from there we went to visit a Medicare approved insurance agent. And, they were all very helpful in getting us off of the expensive Dell insurance and into plans that are far cheaper and better for our current needs. Because of the SS office allowing the start of my Medicare Part B to be retroactive to December 1st 2009, all of the medical bills that we were facing are now going to be covered as we thought, so many, many thanks to all of them for making that happen the way that it all did.

The dogs went in for their periodical grooming session. It was the first one for Hannah, our little white polar bear looking puppy. When then came back, I was completely shocked. She went from being a little polar bear to a skinny looking short haired lap dog. Before, I would have bet that she was very overweight to looking on the thin side of normal. Pam loves it and I don't. I liked her the other way. But, one thing now, you can see how she sits down, without using her back knees, which is very bear like. She still growls like a bear though when she is not happy about her circumstances.

They opened up a new Harbor Freight Tools store right here in Twin Falls, ID. Now, if we get an Olive Garden, we will have it all here. The grand opening was quite a scene. They had lots of good grand opening deals and a great time was had by all - except the Home Depot next door...

I am sure there have been a number of other things that I should be adding here, and will if I think of them, but for now, that is all I can think of for this entry going on there in DaHo...

Weather in DaHo...

2010-04-21T08:23:00.000-07:00

Lately, its been warming up like summer. For the most part, its been starting to warm up a little, with a number of bouts of snow and cold weather. Then, last week, it was HOT. All the animals were looking for cool spots to lay inside and out. Then, a day later, its rainy and cold again. Its quite a change, but in all directions.

We did take Felix to the Vet and he got an X-Ray. His left rear knee had been attacked and was non-functional to him. So, we kept him in his cage for a few days and it cleared up and he is all better again. But, we must keep him in the house at nights as it has cost us over $500 of vet bills in the past few months.

We also have to somehow train the dogs to keep away from him. They like to gang up on him and Calicat and chase them through the house. And, both of the cats hate it when they do that as the dogs will nip at them when the cats just run.

Tomorrow is our appointment with the Idaho Dept of Insurance folks to figure out the best way for me to do my medical insurance from now on - whether to keep with the Dell plan and Medicare or to drop the Dell Plan and just continue with Medicare into the future. Our current Dell plan is very expensive, but might be good to keep as an option as most Medicare folks don't have another plan as an option. We have to get a handle on what the different Dell plan options are. Right now, we are on the highest level of service, and cost. Hopefully, we can work it all out tomorrow...

This weekend we had Roman, Pam's nephew, over to visit. We went to the movies, the races out at the local NASCAR track and they played WII in the meantime between events. Roman also loves to play with the animals when he is here.

We are picking up a few more dealers for our needles. Pam needs a little better understanding of the 'shop talk' and 'details' of the business before she gets too much further out there so we don't loose a lot of good prospects. I am sure she will pick it up fast as she is a quick learner.

Well, that is about all for this week. More to follow here in DaHo...

O' Happy Day...

2010-04-13T09:33:00.000-07:00

Well, this is a good day - actually change that to a Great Day!!

We just got informed this morning that the Social Security Administration has accepted our request to retroactively accepted my request to get the Medicare Part B to December 1, 2009. Medicare Part B is the part that covers day to day medical care. So, all of the medical bills that our high priced Blue Cross medical insurance wasn't going to pay, will now be paid by Medicare. We never were able to figure out what the total was going to be, but it was going to be way over the $50K we expected. That is because our Dell Blue Cross insurance was going back to all the medical providers that they had paid before and taking back their payments.

How this happened was that we had went into our local SSA office last Nov. 13th, right after Pam's Dell Job quit, and asked for the Medicare rules and procedures for me getting Part B. The SSA office had a record of me coming in about it.

And, a LOT of effort on Pam's part to get the Dell Computer folks, the Blue Cross/Blue Shield folks, local Idaho State Insurance folks and the local SSA folks to 'understand' all of this, is the only thing that made this all happen. SO, Many Thousand Thanks to Pam and God for for making this happen.

We now have to have all of our medical providers to resubmit their bills to Medicare and it will all be paid...

We must now take Felix back into the Vet. His back hip is messed up again from something.

Taxes and More Medical Fun...

2010-04-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

We got our taxes prepared by our accountant this week. It wasn't too bad I guess. We owe the Feds $1,300 and get about $800 back from the state. Our accountant is great. He does our taxes for $ 130. In California, it would have cost a LOT more.

We just added a new dealer in Spain. They also covers Italy, Portugal, Greece and all of the top Mediterranean Sea area. We also have an existing dealer that covers Germany and all points north from there. So, if there is sea water around it, we have it pretty much covered in the European area now. We also have representatives in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and India. So, if I EVER get to feeling better again, we can visit any of those places and write part of it off as a business expense.

We have got to keep growing the business. So far, its doing well, but so far cannot support our lifestyle quite yet. And, our lifestyle is not very extravagant, but having things like $1,600+ medical insurance bills is not real easy to gag down.

I think we should be able to do it with some focused effort in attracting new dealers. They are all over the place, anywhere there is an ocean.

My pain specialist changed my meds again and my leg is not doing as well as it was. At lease I think its is the new meds. I will have to wait and see I guess. It seems to take a while to feel the changes in any of this medical stuff.

We should have the paperwork back from Dell this next week, so we can get me signed up with Medicare Part B - the medical insurance part. So, then I will at least be covered with insurance again - grumble, grumble...

It snowed a few days ago - very late in the year to be doing that, especially with all this global warming happening. I just hope it doesn't keep cold enough to freeze the ground and our sprinkler lines as they came and turned them on a couple of weeks ago.

Well, that is about all that has been going on there in DaHo this week that I can remember. I am sure there has been more, but...

Welcome Us Back from Hell, er Hopefully...

2010-04-01T09:24:00.000-07:00

There have been many friends ask about "Why are you stopping this blog after all the years that you have kept it going?" Well, read on and you will hear all about it...
Reading my last blog entry really blows me away. I haven't read it since I wrote it. Boy, I wish I knew what I know now, then. It could have saved us from owing a AOT to medical providers. After over a third of a year between this and the last entry, almost nothing has changed - except for 4 months of medical Hell.

Shortly after my last entry in the end of November, I came down with a horrible fever, 104.9 deg and Pam raced me to the emergency room. After being in the hospital here long enough to be evaluated, scanned and operated on, I was whisked off to Boise, the next level of medical folks in the area. I was Air Ambulanced up there as I guess the local folks didn't think they could save me. I am still a little fuzzy on this one. Anyway, it was freezing cold and snowing here. I was put into a SUV at the hospital and taken to the airport. From the SUV, I was wrapped into some sort of blanket and planes dropped its back section and drug me into it. Then we were in the air. It was like a corporate jet without with jets and without any seats - weird. Anyway, the next thing I know is that I woke up after being operated on in Boise. Since then we got a bill for over $ 10,000 for the ride to Boise.

Before I go on here, I guess I should tell you what was wrong with me to cause all this. Well, what they tell us is that along with one of the back shots that I got in the latter part of last year, I picked up a staff infection that has going around various parts of my body installing itself and I was about a goner from it.

I was in the hospital in Boise recovering for almost two weeks. Pam stayed there the whole time except for one night she went home to see the animals, sleeping on horrible things most of the time. They were trying to get the bacterial levels down to some point that they feel were going to continue to be resolved with home healing. So, I was sent off home finally and spent the next two months having daily IVs of antibiotics.

Along with the daily IVs, I was also on crutches as my bypass feeding blood to my left leg had been blocked up with a blood clot again, and I again am limited to a few feet of movement with the crutches. This has still going on, and I can barely get up stairs to work on the business orders. So, we still have to get that fixed with yet another operation soon…

So, ever since my last blog entry, in November of last year, every day consists of staying at home most of the time, having to use crutches to get around or go out, and only being able to go to stores that have the motorized handicapped electric carts that I can get around with.

It is very depressing to say the least for both of us. I thank Pam with every ounce of my being for being such a great wife and not going crazy with having to deal with this, every day for so long. I thank her every day for being my wife.

During this mess, Pam wanted to add a new member to the family. She is a new girl dog and her name is Hana. She is all white with black eyes and nose and is the cutest little dog there is. She is a Havanese that looks more like a little polar bear than a dog. She has very short legs and the front legs are shorter than the back ones. When she sits down, she keeps her back knees straight and just falls back on her butt. She also grunts and growls like a bear. The breed comes from Cuba and are bread to be so cute that the locals won’t want to hop on a raft and come here, I guess. Her and Tommy love to play with each other, and chase the cats.

This week has been worse than usual. We found out that because Pam is now not currently working, the Dell Health retiree insurance that we have been paying around $ 1,600 a month for, is not going to pay for hardly any of my bills. They say that they are secondary to Medicare and only pay what Medicare doesn’t pay. This wouldn’t be that bad, except we never got Medicare, figuring that we would just continue on as it was and pay the high costs for it. Well we have been paying the high prices, but won’t get the value. So, we will owe somewhere between $40K and $60K for all of the medical fun that we have been going through since the blog entry below. I am just sick about this, but I made the decision to not get Medicare and will have to pay for it – I guess…

Well, I cannot write anymore now, but will add more as my stomach clears up. Again, I am sorry that I couldn’t keep up the blog. The meds that I have been on keep me numb and its hard to keep up with anything…

The Dell Hole is History...

2009-11-22T12:18:00.000-08:00

Pam is finally out of Dell after just over 5 years of working there. They really have been quite good in this final event I think. They are leaving all of their hardware so that the Twin Falls city folks can use it to try and attract a new company needing a fully equipped telephone support center.

Since Pam had her 5 years in - by just over a week - she is eligible for going onto the Dell retiree health plan. That would allow her to stay on the plan as long as she wants to and pays the monthly premiums. The only other option would have been COBRA which lasts a maximum of 18 months and very high rates. Actually, her rates in the Dell retiree health plan are crazy high, but at least she can stay on it until she is ready for medicare.

I have been doing research into all of the Medicare options I have available. They go my county and here in Jerome county, there are not near as many good Medicare add-on health plans as there are across the canyon in Twin Falls county. I have been trying to figure it all our, but so far its been a real challenge - to say the least. And, we have not been able to find any help in tracking down good information about this dilemma. But, I continue to work on it and am sure it will all work out - one way or the other.

I was trying to get my back problem resolved by the end of the year and what I thought was the end of the Dell health insurance. But, at this point, I am not sure what is going on with it, so since the back shot I got last month is working so well, we have postponed any such resolution of the back options. It is difficult to even think of another operation after all the fun last year. But I was, because the back pain is sooo bad that anything would have been better - scary thought now...

Pam has been doing a lot of resting and recuperating since leaving Dell. Soon she will be starting to get involved with the new job here at DaHo Products. She did do some product testing and evaluation. I have her take our standard instruction booklet, some needles and line, and do all of the tasks that are shown in the instruction booklet. And, she did them all without much assistance at all. So, I am very happy that a novice, that even didn't have the need for the actions in mind, to complete them with the documentation.

The next training will be to learn how the products are tested and processed when orders come in. And, after than, she will be contacting all of the current dealers and distributors to introduce herself and see what feedback she can get from them about our products and general way we have done business and how we can make it better.

Last week, our Windows Home Server, that has been running for over two years, and keeping all of our data very safe, had its system disk drive crash. It has been running so well for so long, I had forgot most of the 'details' of how to deal with it. So, I had to research a lot of the data I needed clarification on. Thanks to Tom in England and nephew for sending me some Microsoft support tickets, I was able to get it back up and running without losing a bit of data. It did loose all of the past backups of the client PCs, because the backup database in also in the system disk, but we didn't have any client PC crashes during the server recovery, so all was good - maybe even great for a major problem resolution. So, after two days of work, and a significant loss of hair and stomach lining during the problem analysis period of the event, it is all back up and well.

We are planning on installing a new Windows Home Server at one of our clients businesses next week, so I am all ready for it now. The business is a funeral home - one customer that I really don't want to trade services to pay for the server install work...

Yesterday, Pam, Tommy and I went up to see Roberta's new house in Sun Valley. She just moved into a house from a duplex. Its a nice place with a necessary doggie door. Tommy loved playing with her two big dogs. He gets so excited and was worn out when we left there. While we were there, we went to take a free ride in the brand new gondola ride that goes up to the top of Mt. Baldy. There is a restaurant on top. It was sunny and cold, and there was snow on the ground so it all was about perfect weather for what and where it is. After yesterday's free rides, I understand that the actual price for the ride is $20. It's a fun ride, but that seems a little steep to me.

Orders have been pretty slow the past couple of weeks. But, I have been busy trying to figure out how the territory is going to change to deal with Pam working here full time and how to set up the ever growing business space needs. We are getting close on the new serving jig product and are hoping to have it ready to sell around Jan 1st.

We are getting a new order of needles next week to replenish our inventory stocks, and another one due in January to bring them up to normal volumes. SO, we will be ready for all the business that comes our way from the big 'secret' event that take place on Jan 1st and from Pam's marketing activities.

Pam is getting the house all ready for the holidays and for our big Thanksgiving dinner we are having here. We are going to have a lot of people here so it should be 'exciting'.

Well, that is it for now. You now know all that is going on here in DaHo...

D minus 3...

2009-11-09T08:18:00.000-08:00

Pam's last day at Dell is this Wednesday - only three days... Well, actually its not 3 days, its 2 days and 1-2 hours. I understand that the last day is reduced to being there about 11am and having a last team meeting for an hour. In which, they get their severance packets and turn over their security badges. Then, I guess they all get marched out, as a team, for the last time. It almost makes a tear come to my eye...

Last week Pam got her 5 year award and another award for being the top salesperson in Twin Falls.

With all this hoopla at Dell, I am trying to figure out some sort of big celebration for her first day here at DaHo Products. I did get the entire staff new shirts and vests and velour bennie caps with our company logo in them, but I am trying to think of something even beyond that...

So, I went to see my back surgeon last week. He was asking about how it all felt after the back shot I had the week before. I told him it was a lot better after the shot. He also looked at the results of my bone scan and said that its too bad the shot worked so well. He said that the problem was with the back shot working so well, that it didn't give him much data into why it worked so well - I guess vs. some part still hurting or something. So, I have another apt in 2 weeks. Hopefully, the back shot will have failed by then so he can get whatever data he needs to figure out what to do with my back. There has got to be a couple of good 'good news - bad news' jokes in there somewhere...

Now that the Cash for Clunkers program is over, there are a number of local car dealers that are having "Buy a Car - get a Gun" again. It is pretty crazy here in DaHo. You can hardly find ammo anywhere around here any more. Its crazy... I was at Sportsman's warehouse the other day and the only ammo they had for pistols was .40 cal. So, this one guy there bought it all and a .40 gun to go with it as he didn't have any guy to use it. Everybody around here is thinking that current administration is going to ban most guns and/or ammo very soon, so they are stocking up before that happens.

Years ago, while in Kalifornia, I was frustrated with all of the liberal crazyness that is San Francisco. There was something almost every day that seemed to drive me crazy. But since moving to Idaho, I really haven't been too concerned about such things. I am not as crazy about what is happening as a lot of other folks, but it is getting very scary in Washington. My jaw has dropped a LOT further, from shock and dismay, than it ever has before.

I think Obama is going to take everything so radically crazy that it is going to freak enough people out, to finally change things. I guess you have to thank Obama for doing his 'thing'. I just hope there is enough left to fix after he is gone. Well, enough of that...

Last week was the first time I played pool without my back hurting badly and I ended up winning all 4 games for the first time this year. We are about 1/2 of the way through the league and I haven't gotten one table run yet. Last year, I had 8 of them. Well, we shall have to see how it goes. I did get the table cleared off and have been practicing some now and then.

The business is going slow. But, it will pick up again soon. We need to keep acquiring new dealers and that is what Pam is going to be doing once she gets a good understanding of it all.

Well, that is about all I can think of now that is happening here in DaHo...

News and Winter...

2009-11-02T09:31:00.000-08:00

First, I am yet again sorry for not keeping up with this blog as I have and should. I will try to address the reasons below.

As most folks probably know, Pam is being laid off from Dell on Nov. 11th. They are shutting down the call center here so there will be over 500 people out of work and there is very little other work available anywhere close. She has been going through a lot of anguish about all of her friends dealing with some very bleak times ahead, which has taken a toll on her.

Pam is starting in a week and a half, so I have also been working on getting that all setup. I think the current office will be the guest room and the upstairs will be all business, including the computer upgrade/repair sub-business. We are still planning all of that and it will happen after Pam is working here and the changes become more obvious as to how it will all work best.

The timing really couldn’t be much better from my side. This big partnership I have been working on with Shimano will all be released on Jan 1st and that will generate a lot of calls and new business – both from the dealers and also the customers that buy the combination product of their new line and our needles.

Between her leaving Dell and the end of the year, I have to train her on how this all works and all of the details that she will need to know to deal with all the projected new business. Then, in her spare time, she will be calling on new dealer prospects to bring in more new business. I can handle a lot of business now and this should all work out great.

And, during all of this ‘fun’ my lower back and left hip have been going crazy. I have only been able to go about 50 to 100 steps at a time until I have to sit down and rest. It just hurts too much to go on. So, I have been pretty much an 'invalid' and have to really limit my activities. And, to deal with all the pain, I have been on a lot of heavy pain meds which are not compatible with planning or keeping track of stuff very well.

Last week I went to see a new spine surgeon. He had me get another back shot, but in a different place, and also a bone scan. The shot took me back to my pain management doctor that has been giving me shots for a year and stopped as he said that I had had too many. Anyway, the shot went great and I have been feeling better than I have in months or even years. The bone scan thing was a day long ordeal and I don’t even want to think about it, Not any fun at all…

That is the main reason that I have not kept up this blog lately. I am sorry I haven’t written much. But, I am feeling much better now. I will find myself in a large store, like Home Depot and stop and think that I am there and hadn’t even thought about my back pain problem. I haven’t been able to do such things for a while now.

The winter continues to try and figure out if winter is here or not. It will go from daily highs in the 30s to highs in the high 60s. Halloween night was about 60 deg in the dark. Pretty amazing stuff.

I have been trying to keep up in my pool league. I have been playing really crappy, but with a little luck I have been about to keep a decent rating - so far. Last year, I had 8 or 10 table runs and so far haven't had one this year. Not good, but its hard to concentrate much when you cannot think too clearly.

I spend most of my time and thought on the business. Having Pam here, or more correctly not having 'free' health insurance and all of the other details that Dell helped to provide, is very taxing on my mind. It will all work out, but it is still very concerning during this time.

We are going to start up the Computer Consulting business also. We now are working with a local funeral home to install a network and work on a bunch of their PCs. It is sort of weird being around them as the only times I have been in the past is when some family member past away. I have yet to get a tour of the back room. I have worked for a lot of unusual businesses, but never for a funeral home before...

Well, I have got work to do and places to go. But, I will really try to keep this current for all of you readers. Things are getting better all around here in DaHo...

Love from DaHo,

Snow and Old Friends...

2009-10-15T08:21:00.000-07:00

We had our first snow of the season two weeks ago. It left about 3" at DaHouse and over 8" at Storms house. He had all sorts of trouble from it as a lot of tree branches broke and took out his power. Luckily, we don't have trees yet, and our power is all underground until it gets to the big poles.

Last week, Erik and Karen came here for a short visit. They were returning from a trip in Wyoming and stopped by to say hi and visit. We had a great and grand time as we have not seen each other for many years. Erik is my oldest friend and it was great to see him again.

We have been getting a lot of winter sort of weather. One day its 80deg and the next it will be 35deg. But, so far, we have not had any weather that has caused much damage or problems.

Pam's sister, Roberta, turned us onto an auction that was happening up her way. It was being given by the FDIC getting rid of all the assets of the Bank of Idaho. I could view all of the items online but had no way to see what they were really like. I ended up getting a great laserjet 4000 printer with a duplexer and Jet Direct card for $40. They were also selling Dell PCs but I didn't get any. Roberta got one for $25 and it is very nice. They take the hard drives out of them, but still it was a great deal. It even came with a nice flat screen monitor. If I would have known more about what was going on, we would have got a lot more stuff.

Roberta brought down the printer last Saturday and I got it all hooked up and running. Its a very nice printer. So, we now have a printer for each of the labels we use for the needle products. It will be a very welcomed addition to the business.

Speaking of business, all is going well. We have been putting together the large order, 300 sets, of needles that has to be out in a couple of weeks. Shortly after that is all done, Pam will be starting to work here after the Dell layoff, it will give us some time to train her on everything about the business before its gets crazy after the first of the year.

We are still working of the new Serving Jig product. I think we will be doing the wooden bases there locally. So, I am not sure yet if I will be doing them or if I can find a friend that needs work to make them up for us. I really don't have time to deal with them, so I am sure we can get someone to put them together. There are a lot of people out of work around here. And, with Dell and a number of local companies laying off people, it should be a while before a lot of them will find work.

All in all, all is all good. There have been a lot of birthdays in the families this last month. Then, very soon it will be winter again and we will have all the usual winter fun to deal with. I hope all you readers are doing well and prospering. Well, that is about all there is to say from here in DaHo...

What can I say...

2009-10-03T09:08:00.000-07:00

It's been almost a month since I have posted to this blog. I have never been so derelict before since I started this many years ago. I will try to start my usual regular posting so any readers can keep track of all of the happening here in DaHo.

I have been having all sorts of problems with my lower back and left hip. Most of this time since my last post I have basically been invalid. I can barely walk a few yards, when it is acting up, before I can barely stand or continue.

I was suppose to get another back shot, but my doctor said that I have had enough of them and that relief is not practical any more. So, now I am going to to find a back surgeon and see if that is a way to finally resolve this. I really cannot take it as it is.

Pam's last day at Dell is 11/11. The whole community is reeling from their call center closure here in Twin Falls. They have over 500 employees and there aren't hardly many jobs anywhere around here to be had.

And, besides my back problems, Pam has had this horrible cold, or flu or something, off and on, but mostly on for the past three weeks. Its hard to do telephone support when you cannot speak or are coughing all the time.

Well, back onto cheerer topics...

One by one, the animals have driven us crazy until we let them go outside with the other ones that can. So we got collars and tags for them all, and let them out during the day. Tommy, the dog is limited to the patio and a very small part of the yard as he doesn't stay around. But he is the one that started it all. He had to go out to go to the bathroom, and Felix would cry and try to get out, so we got her fitted with the collar and tags and let her start to go out. And, within two weeks, Cali was doing the same thing and - well you get the idea...

I am now back on a pool league. I can barely make it, but so far I can go to the matches as I can sit down a lot and there is not much walking at all. I am not doing very well, but holding my own.

The business is still going well. A lot of the ongoing orders have slowed down a lot as the whole country has, but we have a couple of dealers selling product like crazy and that is good. Also, our big deal that we have been working on for months is starting to happen. They have ordered 300 sets of needles and we will get access to all their dealers, so that will bring in a lot of business. Pam is going to start working for the business and is going to be in charge of the phones and new business development.

It seems there is much more to do that time to do it in lately. Much more than in the recent past. But, I will get this back thing resolved soon and will be back to posting here regularly. Again, I am sorry for not keeping everybody informed in our Life in DaHo...

Changing of Dell...

2009-09-12T07:28:00.000-07:00

Dell announced that it is quitting its Twin Falls Call Center that Pam has worked at for over 5 years. I guess they don't want any support service that speaks English anymore. That will mean about 500 people will be out of work between now and the end of the year.

Pam was off of work for the past two days with a horrible cold and missed all the trauma and drama that happened after the announcement. It said in the paper that any Dell employee that spoke to any news source about the closure would not get any severance pay. I wonder what the severance package will be?

Also, Aaron, my oldest son, called me a couple of days ago from Kalifornia and said he had been laid off from his job. So, I guess the newly fixed economy isn't as fixed as is reported by the unbiased media...

On the business front, sales have slowed down lately, but we continue to add new dealers. As soon as the economy gets better again, it should go crazy. We are working on the new product, our serving jig. The first prototype Aminder sent had some issues, but I was able to get some expert help from Charlie, a member of my pool team, to do the work on he stainless steel parts and I tracked down a new base for it from a 1" thick custom plastic cutting board.

It should be a great little tool. We are going to use it for the DVD taping for the Shimano Deal. After that, we will use the data we learn from it to build the final product that we will sell to all of our distribution network towards year end.

We have given up on trying to sell any products that we don't manufacturer. There just isn't enough margin in any products to distribute them and have any profit left in them. The Internet has cut the 'standard' margins as so many dealers can go directly to the mfgr to get their products instead of having to go through the second level distributor. And, even then, most of the mfgrs have cut the dealer discounts removing their products from even most dealers that require the 'old' margin. But, the same Internet as created a new class of dealers that can deal with the lower margins as they don't even stock the products in many cases. they just get an order from a customer and have the mfgr drop ship the product directly to the customer. So, to these new dealers, making 20 to 30% is fine with them. So, those price margins don't even offer enough discount to meet our channel discounts so we would loose money on them as well as having to keep them stocked and have all the new boxes and various other things that go along with them.

If the new jig goes well, we willl actively look at other market opportunities that need someone to provide a solution.

Well, that is about all that is happening in DaHo today...

Changing to Fall...

2009-09-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

Again, sorry for not writing much. Too much going on to have much time or energy left for keeping up blog.

I have been working almost full time on this big needle deal with an international company. It has been going on for over 5 months now and is finally coming down to reality. During this process I have learned a lot of things, such as:

I have always used a person's word as truth and that was a pretty stupid thing to do in this case. The company is based in Japan and I guess they have different rules there. I have been run around and basically lied to a number of time during this process and have extended the friendships of a number of my business associates when trying to meet the requirements of this deal. I am very sorry that has happened and will have to make it up to them over time.

I have also learned that a couple of my previous business 'friends' don't deserve that title as I have found out they also work by a different set of values and rules than I do. I am a relative nuibe to the 'old boys network' in the fishing products business and when one of them get pissed off about something, it can spread to others that have no stake in the issue.

I now realize that it is almost impossible to distribute a product that you don't make. There is never enough margin available to pay for the distribution channel discounts and make any money off if them. Most of the time, the margins won't even come close to paying for the distribution channel discount costs.

And, my most important realization, which I have learned a few times before in my life, but seem to not remember the past as they come up in the future, is that a deal that sounds too good to be true - usually is...

We are a small company and are growing quickly. This deal, if it would have happened as it was first proposed, would have taken us to that next level in one giant step instead of spending the next year or so getting there. The requirements were going to be very taxing on our capabilities and would greatly expand our volume in a number of areas - more volume, getting into new products, mandating that there be more than just me working on it, and a lot of growth issues that usually come slower and better planned that this opportunity would have mandated.

Not being entirely stupid, I didn't jump into this without keeping track of reality and did not start up things that would have cost us too much to be able to deal with if it all didn't go right. But, I personally have been through way too much in planning and mentally dealing with all of the new challenges that would happen.

Anyway, the bottom line is that the deal has been reduced to 1/4 of what is started out to be. So, it is still our biggest deal to date and we will get a lot of the exposure that I was hoping for, but it just won't be near as much as was originally proposed. But, the really irritating part of it all is that this 'customer' basically ramped up the size of the opportunity to basically get a better price from me. All of the stuff that they and I put me through were not real.

So, I have learned that there are different value structures in different parts of the world. From their side, I guess they won as I was sucked along with it and I was played like a hooked fish. I was awed by their size and the opportunity and they used it to get special treatment out of me. I have once again learned to draw that line in the sand and never go over it, no matter how appealing the situation might appear.

I also learned that in a small business, you must watch about growing too fast. We could have done the original deal, but we might have had some problems in a number of places that could have screwed it up and we wouldn't have been able to fulfill our responsibilities. The opportunity to fail was too high and has taken its toll on me being worried about each of those potential problems.

Well, enough of that. It is because of this morass that I have not been writing much lately and I am sorry for that. I will try and do better in the future.

Tommy, the newest member of the household is growing up and has a wonderful personality we all love him except for Cali, our oldest cat, but even she is getting to the point of tolerating him most of the time. He and our other cat, Felix are BFFs and are always playing and getting into trouble one way or the other. Now they both are going outside for controlled periods of time and having fun exploring the estate. Tommy loves to run on the grass. It is amazing how quick he is and how fast he can turn. He is like a 4 legged slot car, for those that remember slot cars. With his long hair, you really cannot see his legs move and it really looks like amazing. He turns so quickly, sometimes his legs wills slip out from under him and he will slide until he regains his footing.

When he is on any type of hard floor, especially a highly polished floor, he can run for quite a long time and hardly move but his legs are moving amazingly fast.

I have been playing in the weekly pool tournaments pretty regularly but not doing very well. I haven't had time to practice and just go as its my only time I get out much. I have won a few of them but lost many more than I should have, or would have before. The pool table here has been covered for weeks, but that will change soon.

I haven't been fishing all year. I haven't had anybody to go with and I am still concerned about going alone as my stamina is very low from all of the medical fun at the start of the year.

Pam is till working at Dell and all is better there I think. She is doing very well and is starting to get into helping with the business. Hopefully, it will grow enough soon, that she will have to work here or we will have to hire an employee, which is not something I look forward to at all.

We went to the county fair last weekend. It was almost the same as usual but it was very hot. After an afternoon of doing all the normal fair stuff, we went to the big rodeo and that was exciting. I think we both ended up with colds or sore throats from being there until late and wearing very light clothing.

Well, I have orders to fill and packages to mail. I will write again soon but right now that is all that is happening here in DaHo...

Close to the End of Summer...

2009-08-24T16:59:00.000-07:00

It's been very hot here lately. Too hot to do much outside.

The business has been challenging lately. We are working with a very large client that is demanding a lot of stuff from us and I just don't know how it is going to work out. It should be very good, but I am having concern about it all at this point.

Besides that, all is going well and growing all the time. We are working on new products, besides needles, that should bring us into a new level of growth. I am not too sure about it all yet.

I have played in the weekly pool tournaments off and on as I can. I place in them about 1/2 of the time, which is very poor, but I am not practicing or really into it much lately.

I will write more when there is stuff to write about here in DaHo...

Water Sports and Assult Rifles for cars...

2009-08-09T12:52:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, we took Pam's brother's 4 girls up to Lava Hot Springs in Eastern Idaho. It is quite a place for water sports of all kinds. They have this great 20' river that runs through the 8 block or so long town. There are probably 10 places to rent tubes of all types to ride the rapids through town. Then, as you are coming into town, there is this giant indoor/outdoor swimming pool and water slide complex The indoor pool is an Olympic size with all the standard Olympic diving apparatus. Then, they have this gigantic outdoor pool with 7 water slides that go from totters to roller coaster size. They also have 7 different diving platforms and boards from 1 foot to 30 feet. They don't seem to have much control over the diving opportunities. I guess that kids under 12 have to have their parents approval to go off of the 20 and 30 foot platforms, but that is about it. They do have 3 full time lifeguards on duty and a 20 foot giant water snake that there are always about 20 people on trying to knock all the other folks off. It just goes on and on.

We met Storm, Jenny and their clan there in Lava. They were staying there for the weekend. It would be a nice place to stay for kids, but the whole place is water oriented, which I would have loved before I got this hole in my neck. Now, I cannot get into water much, or better put, I cannot allow water to get into my neck hole or I am done. The few times that I got a small amount of water into my stoma in the shower, it is amazing how quickly it puts you on your knees and coughing. Getting a full shot of it from being in it would be a VERY short swim...

So, Pam and I and Tommy stayed on the outside of the pool area and watched from a grassed hill. When we were gathering everybody up to leave, I noticed that all of the people were slowly and quietly getting out of the pool all over. They have this very loud PA system that they had been using all day, but it didn't give any instructions about getting out of the pool. I thought that there must be a big brown floater in the pool that got everyone out at first. But, it was a little girl about 8-10 years old that had jumped off of the 30 foot platform and got very shaken up or broke something. I wasn't close to her, but I heard that she was shaking a lot and was not conscious for a while.

So, as we were leaving, there was an ambulance there and the pool was back in business and all was great again.

Then, the other day, I was watching this local car dealer commercial on TV. The government 'cash for clunkers' tax dollars giveaway was back in business and this car dealer on TV was offering a new AK-47 assault rifle in addition to the $ 4,500 government bailout for buying a new car. It hard hard to pass up a new AK-47, but we just don't need a car right now...

This weekend, we have Roman, Pam's nephew. Friday night we took him to the Jerome county fair and went to the Rodeo, which was great fun, but it was cold for the first time in months. Then, yesterday we took him to see the new GI JOE movie. It is pretty good. They could have used a little more action and a few more guns and weapons, but besides that it was pretty good.

I got a 200 needle order on Friday and I have been working on it in my spare time. The business still goes well and all is good. The business has pretty much taken over the upstairs "Guest Suite". We are working on designing and getting built some new products besides needles. They are involving a lot of new stuff for me and I am learning a lot about new things.

Well, that is about it here in DaHo...

All is Returning to Normal - again...

2009-07-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

We have the house straightened up again and again. Tommy has the ability to mess it us pretty well in a very short amount of time. We have all his toys in this basket that is about 25"X20"X3" and his toys are piled on it. He will stick his head in and dig around and always comes out with something that he wants to play with. He loves anything that he can squeak, or it makes noise someway. After he gets it out and plays with it for a few minutes, he is back in the toy bin again for another one. And, anything he can tear up, are his favorites...

Now that Felix the cat is going out side with Tommy in the afternoons, they have become even better friends. They have a great time out on the lawn and around the berm with all the stuff there is out there to play on.

As I eluded to last post, the business has been going very well. We are attracting some of the large 'fish' now and they are coming to us to partner with them in their sales efforts. Before they only wanted to buy our needles and put their name on them. But, after turning them down a few times, and hearing all of the good things about our products, they are a lot more interested in working together. I have been preaching that to them in letters for some months now and I think they are finally getting the point...

I guess a couple of the booths at I-CAST, the Comdex for fishing industry, were showing our products as the tools they used to do projects on their lines or other products. A day or so ago, we received a phone call from New Zealand, from a distributor that saw our needles at I-CAST and wanted to sell them down there.

And, our Australian distributor is having a big show down there in a couple of weeks to announce our, well our needles under their name, to all the anglers there. They, have our only exclusive and it is only for that country. Since they mostly use Dacron instead of Spectra lines, we didn't want to have their customers calling us to deal with Dacron problems.

We are now branching out in our product offerings. We have been the "Hollow Spectra Needle Tools Company" up to now, but we are expanding our scope to become the "Hollow Spectra Tools Company" and will be offering other products to use hollow spectra lines beyond just needles. It is needed to complete some of the larger deals that we are getting into these days.

I have yet to go fishing one time this year. I heard that there is another avid sturgeon fisherman in the neighborhood now and I have to meet him soon. Now that I am feeling better most of the time, I need to get out and 'test' our products more...

We have been debating about putting in a dog/cat door in the house to either go outdoors or into the garage. We have been around all the options 2-3 times now. None of the plans resolve all problem that they cause and need to fix. Luckily, yet again, the pictures I took during the various phases of this house being built are coming in handy so we can tell here all the electrical is installed and what type of things are behind almost every wall.

So, hopefully, we can get something done soon. Tommy is getting much better with his potty habits, but is still not to the carpet cleaning phase to get rid of all the spots they have these days.

My pool playing is about like my fishing. I hardly ever practice any more and go to the tournaments every week or three. I have been working on the business most of the time lately...

Well, that is about all there is going on there in DaHo...

Crazy Time here in DaHo...

2009-07-18T11:11:00.001-07:00

First, I am very sorry that I have not posted to this blog for two weeks. It has been a very crazy time here and I am finally getting back up to the surface again.

When we last spoke, we were in the process of grieving through Matt's funeral preparations, and all of the details that went along with that tragedy. Then, during the next week, we were preparing for Pam's 50th Birthday party. It was a crazy time from all sides.

We did have the birthday party on July 4th as planned and it was a great one, as far as parties here have gone before. We had lots of friends and neighbors over with their families and a good time was had by all. This time I held off on cooking too much food and we ran short of the best stuff - mainly my ribs. I did them a new way and they were the best ever, but I most always say that...

Then, after finishing the party and recovering from it, we had to clean up the house for the events to come.

Then, on Monday evening was Matt's viewing. There were a lot of folks that attended the viewing from California, where he as lived lately, and from all over Idaho, from all the places that he had lived or had friends.

The grave side service was given by Roberta's Pastor Mike and he did a great job as always. It was attended by a lot of folks and was a great affair for as much as such an event can go.

After the service, everybody came over to our house for a last opportunity to be together and remember Matt. We had some food left over from the party, and Pam was up most of the night preparing food. And, when the other guests arrived, there was a ton of food brought from Roberta's church folks that was added to the mix. We covered the pool table and it was completely filled with food from all sides. It was another great event for Matt.

After everybody left, we spent the next couple of days cleaning up the house and getting everything back into order again.

Then last weekend, Pam had her 4 nieces over from her youngest brother Bobby. They range in age from 8 to 14. And, since that wasn't enough, Pam had her nephew, Roman, come over. He is about 9 I think. Anyway, we had a crowd of folks and had to use two cars to get anywhere we went for the weekend. We went down to this place that Pam had been before where you pick out raw ceramic figurines and decorate them however you want and then leave them there to be fired in their ovens to be picked up the next week. It was great fun - except for the bill...

All of Saturday, Pam and the girls, and Roman had a great time with a slipnSlide and Wii Games and clothes and all sorts of stuff. Pam and all the kids stayed in the living room over night on air mattresses and sleeping bags. We ended up going to restaurants a couple of times and it was none stop excitement until they all left on Sunday. Then, we had another house to be straightened up again.

Then a few hours later, I got a call from Pam Bissell that we knew from Moss Beach California for many, many years. She was frantic an told me that her and her husband, Lyle, had been here visiting his family in Pocatello, ID for the last week and on Sunday morning he was dead. He died in his sleep from a heart attack. He was discovered by his wife Pam when she was trying to get him up so they could get ready to leave for home. He was only 55 and very healthy. His only bad vice was smoking. It was a shock to all and he will be sorely missed by everybody.

His funeral was on this last Wednesday, so Pam took off of work and we went up to Pocatello for his funeral. It was very different as everybody was totally shocked by his passing and they have family all over Idaho and Utah. We were there for about 3 hours until it was over and we had a chance to spend some time with Pam Bissell. Pam took Tommy with us to the funeral and he was one of the only bright spots of the day. Everybody loved him and he was able to take a little of the shocked and stunned feelings away with his cute and loving ways.

Then, after the funeral, we continued to drive north about 35 miles to Lava Hot Springs. This is where Pam has a lot of family and use to go up there for summers when she was a kid. It is probably the most impressive water oriented place I have ever seen. There is a white water river, only about 25 feet wide, going through the town of about 8 blocks in length. Then there is this VERY LARGE swimming pool with Olympic sized diving platforms, over 30 feet high, and giant water slides. All over the town, there are places to rent the river rafting tubes and the whole little town is a tourist place for families to bring their kids for tons of water oriented fun.

And, now we are back home. We still need to finish cleaning up the house from the last weekend of 'fun' and I have been trying to catch up on all the business work that has been limited to only necessary things while all of this has been going on.

There is still a lot of great things to mention about the business, but that will have to come at a later date. That is about all I can type here in DaHo...

Very Sad in DaHo...

2009-07-03T08:39:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday night, June 26th, Pam's 27 year old nephew, Matthew Hays was killed while riding in a car with a friend. They were out partying and his friend ended up sideswiping a large pine tree in Chico, CA. He was killed instantly. The driver is in jail for manslaughter.

We received the call about the death about 1:30am on Sunday morning. They couldn't get a hold of Roberta, his mother and Pam's sister, so we got it. So, needless to say, Saturday night was not a good sleep.

Then, early Sunday morning, Roberta called and had heard of the disaster. We gathered up our stuff and went up to Roberta's house shortly after the call. Pam ended up staying up there with her until Tuesday and I was driving back and forth as needed. On Monday, they came down to Twin Falls to meet with the Funeral home folks to get all the details of the funeral resolved. The owner of the funeral home is a friend after their work with him for their parents funerals in the past, and is a great and knowledgeable guy.

We also went to get Matt's final clothes and other various errands that needed to be done. after that, they went back up to Roberta's house and I stayed here at home.

For a while, Pam wanted to call off the birthday party for her 50th birthday, but it is back on as there was no way to tell everybody that had been told about it and after thinking about it, she thought that Matt would have wanted her to have it since he was always into parties. So, it is on, but will be 'different' than the usual 50 year old birthday party...

So, now Pam is back and we are working on getting the house ready and gathering all of the party supplies. We are going to hold down all the food that I usually prepare for a party, since the last few parties we had didn't have that many folks show up and we had tons of great food that we ended up giving away as door prizes toward the end. This time we will have good food, but not as much and it will probably be more low key than the delicacies we had before.

Matt's viewing is set for 5pm to 8pm on Monday and the service will be at grave side in Filer at 11am on Tuesday. We will be having all of the funeral attendees over here after the service to feed them left over party food and drink.

Lots of great things happening with the business but I will speak about them at a later date as things are pretty sad right now - here in DaHo...

Party Time...

2009-06-21T10:33:00.000-07:00

On July 4th, we are having a party for Pam's 50th birthday. She is thrilled about finally getting to that milestone...

So, we have been doing all sorts of little tasks to get the house and new patio finished and put in order. Storm came over the other day and helped me fix the back yard fountain. Last year, I must have spent 40 hours on it trying to fix it a bunch of times. During the previous winter, there was some water in it and it froze and cracked off a corner of the bottom water holder section. I tried basement and pool paint, concrete patches, and all sorts of patches and paints to try to fix the problem. Then, this year, Pam mentioned, why don't you just put in a plastic liner in the bottom pool. Well, that was just too low tech for me but it works great. Storm brought over some plastic from his work that they put on top of the hay stacks and it is working perfectly. Another simple but elegant solution to a sticky problem.

Storm also helped with another problem we had. There was this section of our walkway going into the patio that had about 6" of air space under it. We t0re it all apart and there was this drip irrigation hose that had popped off a shut off valve and was washing all the ground away under the walkway. That is now fixed also.

We have had all kinds of moths lately everywhere. They get in the edges of all sorts of doors and opening devices. And, then when the door is opened, there are about 100 moths flying around and getting into whatever the door is attached to. It is quite a start when it happened the first few times.

So, now we have one of those bug zappers with the light and the electrical grid that frys bugs with a zap sound. We shall have to see how it works.

We also got one of those Topsy-tervy tomato planters that you hang up and the plant is hanging out of the bottom. It is quite a device and built well, but we shall have to see how it really works.

Last night we went to Jackpot, NV to buy booze for the party. Its a lot cheaper there than at the local state owned liquor stores. We also had a great buffet and played slots a little, but enough to be gagged out about it yet again.

The business is picking up again. All the new needles are here and I have been redoing the shipping and warehouse room to add all the new products. Its looking and working good now and we are ready for lots of really big orders.

Well, that is about all that has been going on here. I have been to a number of doctors and having all sorts tests done. O, I did have to go back to the ER a week ago. I woke up about 4am and my left arm was totally numb. After about an hour, it was still numb, so Pam took me to the ER and we spent the morning there getting all sorts of tests but nothing was found and all is well. They thought I had a little hole in my heart, but if I do, the treatment would be to put me on the blood thinner med that I am already on for life now, so we gave up hunting for that dog...

Well, that is all that I can think of that has happened around here, except that we have had LOTS of rain lately. There, now I am done here in DaHo...

Kenny Loggins Concert in Sun Valley...

2009-06-05T10:07:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, we went up to Sun Valley again. This time we were going to see Kenny Loggins in concert at the new Sun Valley facility. This time we stayed with Pam's sister Roberta as the available condos were too expensive for us. And, staying there was big fun. Tommy played with her two very large dogs. He was so excited and would run all around the floor being very low. Sorta like a low rider run. I guess it was his way of being friendly and was really hoping they would think he was also...

Anyway, we watched the bird do its paper into feathers trick again. And, it is really amazing to see what he actually does. He grabs the paper and runs down the side he is cutting with his beak tip making holes in the paper. He uses his tongue to move the paper into position for the cuts. Then, when he is at the end of his new 'feather', he goes back and cuts out all the spots that he didn't get the first pass. It is amazing how well he can do the cutting without missing a spot.

After a good dinner, Pam and I went to the concert. The facilities were awesome and reeked of big money. The bathrooms were like the ones in a LV Casino - very impressive. The stage was the only hard roofed part of the facility. From there, was a soft roof suspended by cables. It sorta looked like a circus tent roof, only much nicer. It covered the 'expensive' seats. Then after the tent roofed section was a lawn where folks to sit on the grass and bring their own chairs and stuff. We were in the nice seats under the tent roof about 20 rows from the stage. There were two sections of the good seating that were almost empty. I would assume that they were being sold by some ticket seller, like Ticketron, and they didn't do very well with it.

Anyway, the concert started and it was sort of ok at first. Then, a couple of the women that were up front, started coming up and grabbing people to come down to the front and dance and soon there where a lot of people down there, including Pam. Then Kenny Loggins got in the middle if it all and Pam got a hug and short dance with Kenny. She was very impressed with it all as he was one of her idols from long ago. From there, the concert got a lot crazier and everybody had a great time. About 1/2 of the way through, all the folks from the cheap seats were allowed down and the place filled up. All in all, it was a great concert and we all had a good time.

As I wrote before, the weekly handicap 8-ball tournament is now going on on Wednesday nights. So, I went last week with Storm for his birthday. I didn't do well and was out midway through it but Storm ended up getting 2nd place. Then, last night, I went and played again. There ended up being 16 people in the tournament and the bar added in $25 to the pot - something that doesn't happen too often.

Anyway, I was playing sorta OK, but luckily, during the first few matches, I was playing better than they were and won all my matches. They went fast and I was at the only unbeaten left level at about 9:30. I didn't play again until two hours later for the finals. I was pretty tired by then and lost my first match with the player that was the only beaten one left. She and her husband are friends and she plays very well. I had to give her 6 points which makes it tough to do. On her way up, she had to play her husband, who is very good also, and beat him. So, during the first match, she tore me up as I was just not quite up to speed yet. I was thinking about splitting up the first and second pots and calling it an evening, but by them I was irritated in how I was planying. So, I had to play and hopefully win by then. Then, on the final match, we had a very tough match and in ended up winning by a couple of points. So, I won $45 for the nights work, which is not too bad around here. It was my first win of the year and I was very pleased with how I was playing after being sick for so long. Now, my handicap goes up and makes it harder to play against the other folks from now on.

We now have a gardener and he comes and does the lawn every week. This morning he work me up about 7:30... But, he does good work and I just cannot do all the lawn maintenance work this year.

The business is going along. We will be getting our first shipment of our new BIG needles in next week. They are for 300# to 500# lines - Very BIG stuff used for catching Marlin, large Tuna and such things.

Well, that is all that is print to fit here in DaHo...

Still Getting Better - Again - Part 3...

2009-05-27T10:05:00.000-07:00

For the third time, I am still getting better. I hope it continues and I am finally over this mess. Today, I go see a blood doctor to have them check some test result that came out bad. Depending upon how it goes, I either can stop taking the blood thinner meds after this is over, or I will have to keep taking them from now on. It isn't that big of a deal either way, except that I have to be more careful when taking it as I could bleed out if I had bad cuts.

I have been trying to extract the data off of Aaron and Tara computer hard drive. But, I cannot get any computer to identify the drive as being present and therefor none of my hard drive magic will work. It is very frustrating to spend so much effort on something and not produce any results. I can usually get the data off of the drives, but these newer models had different controller logic boards on them and I guess if it gets trashed, it is done. There are services that can rebuild the logic boards, but it cost a lot of money. Let this be a lesson to all of us to be sure our valuable data is backed up and safe...

Tommy is doing very well. He is the smartest dog I have seen. He learns a trick, like sit or down, in a couple of hours. We took him to a training class and the teacher was very impressed with him, and still being so young. He is also doing much better in his potty training. Either that or he is getting much smarter in where he is hiding it...

Pam is going to take him to the weekly classes on Wednesdays and I am going to play in the weekly pool tournaments that have just started up again for the summer. It will be great to play pool again. We have had stuff piled on top of our pool table for a few months as I just haven't been up to it for a long time.

This weekend, we are going back up to Sun Valley to see Kenny Loggins perform. I guess Roberta couldn't get us another condo this time so we are going to be staying with her and her dogs and bird.

Her bird does the weirdest thing I think I have ever seen. If you put a piece of regular paper down on the table, the bird will take his beak and cut pieces of paper out about 1/4" wide and about 3" or 4" long. They are very straight cuts and after he as cut one out, he picks it up in his beak and after turning it around the right way with his tongue, turns his neck around and inserts the piece of paper in his closed wings as a new feather. Given some time, he will have 5 to 10 new paper feathers installed. It is really amazing how precise his cuts and shapes are and from what Roberta says, he will do it any time there is a piece of paper available to use.

We finally found some great fans for the new backyard patio cover. We got two of them and had the electrician install them a couple of days ago. They work together and are remote controlled. Very nice. Hopefully, we will finally be able to start using the patio since we purchased it in November of last year when the prices were great.

Pam's son Johnny had his 25th birthday - we wish him a very happy birthday...

Well, I must be off to the blood doctor. Anyway, that is about all that has happened here in DaHo...

A Little Sun Helped My Recovery...

2009-05-14T09:39:00.000-07:00

I guess the blood thinner meds are doing their job. I have had a few symptoms that usually start the 4-5 day long sickness events, but they only last a day or so and never get really nasty. I am hoping that I am finally over this 5 months of medical hell...

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, Pam got a new puppy that she has been wanting for years. And, I have had a number of requests for some pictures of him, so here is Tommy Keithley.

When he is all brushed out, his body looks sorta like a minature sheep dog. Except for his incomplete potty training, he is a great little dog. He has a great personality and loves to play with Felix the cat. Which also makes Cali, our older cat, quite happy as she use to be Felix's forced playmate and now she can rest and watch the show.

SO, back to the Sun part of the post. Last weekend, Pam's sister Roberta, was able to get us a great Sun Valley condo to stay in for the weekend. She works for a property management company that rents out condos for the property owners during the times they aren't staying there. It was completely furnished, including a complete kitchen and pantry. It had a wonderful view of the ski slopes and lifts. During the winter, it must be quite a view to see all the skiers and activity going on. Below you can see the view from the living room.

It was all furnished with great leather and wood furniture. It had 3 bedrooms and 4 baths on 3 floors, with a great Jacuzzi hot tub outside on the bottom floor.

Here is a picture of the living room from the upper loft area.

Each of the bedrooms had furniture made out of rough tree parts. Each bedroom had different bed arrangements. Here is the bottom bedroom with 2 double beds.

The middle floor bedroom was a large King bedroom and bath. In addition to all the beds, each of the 3 couches made into a bed, giving a total bed sleeping space for 12 to 14 people, plus there was a lot of space for floor sleepers. During the 'season' this condo rents for $ 1,400 a night...

Then, upstairs there was a loft and desk area and the master suite. The master suite had a 4 post king bed, as you can see below. Then, going up into a wonderful master bath area with a walk in closet. There was a large Jacuzzi bathtub and glass enclosed over sized shower and all the amenities you would expect in a $ 1.5 million condo.

It was a great weekend, and needed getaway, up in Sun Valley. Roberta showed us around the area and we visited a lot of great stores and restaurants. Tommy also loved the get away. Pam likes to take him everywhere she can and he loves to be with her as much as he can.

Hopefully, my illness is a thing of the past and I will continue to get better. I have started doing my yoga again and have a long way to go to get back in the shape I use to be. That will give me something to do, in my spare time, here in DaHo...

All is Going Along - Well?...

2009-05-01T11:23:00.000-07:00

In the past couple of weeks, two or three times I have had some of the symptoms of the usual bout of whatever I have been having, have occurred. And in all cases, it didn't take its usual course of making me sicker and sicker, and it all went away. Either the blood thinner meds have started working or something else is changing. I am hoping its the results of the blood thinner meds dissolving the clot that is blocking my artery, which means that the end of this horrible mess is close at hand.

Everything else is going along. I have been working on getting the business affairs together, testing a lot of our in house inventory and getting it all ready to ship. We have also ordered a lot more needles for the future as we are using the current inventory quite quickly.

The only issue that is of concern is that our new puppy is not understanding the concept of being potty trained and we seem to be constantly cleaning up after him. Pam has been reading a number of books and doing research on how to deal with this problem. Sometimes is seems he has got it, only to be disappointed at the first possible opportunity. He has also started chewing on the master bed, which has also got to be stopped...

This weekend, Pam is participating in some charity walk by having a Dell refreshment booth for all of the dell 'walkers'. I think she is only doing it so she can show off Tommy...

Well, the good news is that that is all the current bad news here in DaHo...

New DaHo Quick Weight Loss Diet...

2009-04-18T06:06:00.000-07:00

I think I may have stumbled across a great new product - The New DaHo Quick Weight Loss Diet Plan. Its wouldn't be for everybody, but if you had an occasion coming up that you just had to loose some weight fast, this is the one for you.

In my last test last week, I lost 16 lbs. in just 4 days. So, I am thinking there would have to be a lot of up and coming brides and girls getting ready for their prom, or going to their 25th reunions, and all sorts of life changing events that would pay big money to loose that much that fast - right??

Yah, I can see the critics now, saying how it makes them real sick and they throw up and have the runs 30 times a day and all that, sometimes pass out on the floor, and have to take all those meds, but all those are just minor details when a few days later they are down a couple of very critical dress sizes for that very special event.

I still have a few 'details' to work out about how to produce the same medical situation, in my future clients, that I have, but with I can get that done, this is going to be BIG - Really BIG...

And, I would have to set it up so that we got paid for the plan before they got too involved in it as they may be too sick to pay for it after a while, but I am sure they would have no problem fronting the cash for such a unique and amazing opportunity.

The ones that couldn't afford it, could use are lower cost DaHo Quick Weight Loss Trip Plan. What they would do is go down to Mexico and stay in any inexpensive hotel, in any low class border town, and live like the locals. Drink as much tap water as you can and always order every drink with lots of ice cubes. It would take a little while longer to start, but the DaHo Trip Plan would also end up providing the desired results. It would be like combining an international vacation with your quick weight loss plan. What fun they would have enjoying a new country.

I still have a few details work out, and I would have to somehow write it up so the FDA would endorse it, but I just have to present it from the end goal prospective - Everybody wants to loose weight for that special event in their lives where they want to rub it in all their friends faces about how they haven't succumb to the fat monster like everybody else has and prove, yet again, that they are cooler than everybody else.

Speaking of Dogs, We now have a new dog. Pam has been bitching about, er wanting, a little lap yapper ever since I have known her. I was hoping that she would grow out of it, but all she has to do is think about it and she is all over it again. Telling me how we need one so the cats won't fight each other anymore and Felix, our new larger and younger cat, would have a new playmate and stop driving our older cat Cali totally crazy all the time. And, she wants an animal to sleep with like I have with Felix, and she would be willing to drop her current demand for her wedding ring upgrade for 10 years for a puppy, and it would never mess in the house because she would get a good one that had been trained, and she saw one on the Internet and loves it and just has to have it or else she will hold her breath until it shows up... ... ...

And, I had just come off of my 4 day DaHo Quick Weight Loss Diet plan and could barley talk or even think clearly. And, with all my 5 months of medical hell, she has been through a lot of medical hell and Dell Hell and has taken care of me above and way beyond what she needed to be crowned the worlds greatest wife and nurse for so long.

So, I was feeling guilty about all of that and thought having a dog would be a better deal than another piece of jewelry, and I wasn't thinking too clearly And, she had found one on line from a place that lived in Buhl, where her mom use to live, so I said OK. It was based on that he would work well in the family and not ruin the house or family members in the process.

So, we went over to see the dog, AKA Thomas, and ended up coming home with him. He is a special German type of Yorkshire Terrier called a Bisjon or something. He is very cute and has integrated into the family quite well - much better than I had imagined for sure. Cali cant stand him and he stays away from her. Felix wanted a playmate and he and Tomas play more and more. When Thomas gets too fired up, Felix will stand up on his back legs/butt and will hold Thomas with his front paws to control all of this excited actions. He also has wrestling matches and even a boxing match every so often. Both Felix and Thomas sleep on our bed and while it was tentative at first, now they seem much more compatible with it all. So, all the worst fears about getting a dog have been resolved and Pam is loving her little baby Thomas. I am sure that there will be pics - lots of pics here soon of him.

We have been to PetSmart, our local Pet Warehouse store many times to get him and us all ready for him. Last night Pam got him two coats to wear because he still wasn't embarrassed enough with just the colored ribbon bow on the top of his head. He is a very needy dog as he is only 6 weeks old now and is still a baby.

Pam takes him outside to his play pen about 30 times a day and he still pees and poops all over the house, but we are working on it and sooner or later, we will have him potty trained.

He is really a cuttie and is usually quiet. He only barks when he thinks something is coming. He also loves snow. We ended up having about 4" of snow on Sunday and he was racing around in it and was having the time of his life.

So, we shall have to see how he works out as a member of the family, who by definition don't pee and crap on the floor or chew up valuable things. As long as he can work that out, I would say he is probably a keeper...

Well, I am recovering from my last DaHo Quick Weight Loss Diet cycle and feeling much better again. I am taking these blood thinner drugs and when I am on the 'plan' all of the blood thinning specifications go crazy. I am suppose to be a 2.8 rating, where 'normal' blood thickness is a 1.0 I think. Anyway, after the diet plan, my rating was 11.9 and the hospital folks freaked out thinking that if I cut myself in any way, I would bleed out. So, I spend the next few days after the diet plan was over to be real careful about knifes and sharp stuff. We now have it back to where they want it, but it was crazy high there for a while. I guess the 30 times a day runs part of the diet plan, somehow looses all the stuff that tries to keep the blood thick so the thinner med has nobody to compete against and just goes crazy all by itself.

Now, I am again in remission from the 'diet plan' and getting better and better until it comes back again. I think I have it better figured out now. Doubling up on my pain meds really helps keep the fever down, which allows me to remain conscious and some semblance of clear thinking. I also now have meds for throwing up and the runs, where before we were just letting it run it course while doing are clinical trials testing for the New DaHo Quick Weight Loss Diet...

Sick Again - Round 6 ...

2009-04-13T07:40:00.000-07:00

Thursday, I started having the same symptoms again after only a week of recovery after the hospital. From then until Sunday evening, I kept getting worse and worse. My temperature rose from 99.4 to 100.7.

Saturday night was the worst ever - but I always say that... I again passed out on the john, but luckily, there are rugs and hanging bathrobes that made it a 'soft' spot and there was no damage.

By mid-day Sunday, I was really contemplating going back into the hospital because I just couldn't take another night like I just had. Pam called and the same crazy doctor was on call at the hospital. Anyway, I started doubling up on my pain meds and the symptoms started to go away and I actually had a reasonable nights sleep.

I am very glad that I didn't go back into the hospital now, but thought last night was going to be worse than Saturday night.

Pam fixed a wonderful Easter dinner with Ham, Scalloped potatoes, Asparagus, deviled eggs and her great homemade dinner rolls. I was only able to eat a couple of little mini-sandwiches of rolls and ham, but now that I again seem to be feeling better, I am sure we will have it again.

My main concern now is that since its not a bacteria and these symptoms will not go away until the blood thinning meds break down the clot in the artery that feeds a part of my colon, how do we deal with them. I cannot continue to keep going through these horrible events much longer...

We have got to find some way to at least fight these symptoms I am having so they don't get so bad. Maybe the doctor visit this morning will help resolve that - I sure hope so.

I have not eaten anything except for the two little 'sandwiches' for three days. I was gaining back the 25 lbs of weight I lost in the hospital two weeks ago and now its gone again.

All else is going well. Pam's new dog is very cute and the cats are starting to get use to him. He is so small that I think they view him as some sort of weird toy or something. Well, I must go so I can get to the Doctors...

Getting Better Again...

2009-04-01T07:42:00.000-07:00

I have been resting a lot and getting better again. I am taking Coumiden blood thinner and also getting two shots of Lovenox a day which is also a blood thinner med.

I have a home nurse that stops by every other weekday to check on me and draw blood or whatever needs to be medically done.

So far, I am getting better and all is good. I would feel a lot better if I hadn't been at this point 4 times before this time...

The business is going great. We had our largest month again this month and April should be about twice as large.

Well, I need to rest but I just wanted to keep everybody up to date from DaHo...

Back from the Hospital again...

2009-03-28T10:10:00.000-07:00

As I last wrote, I was in the middle of what I thought was another bout with the dreaded C.diff. From the time that I wrote the previous entry, I kept getting worse and the new antibiotics were not working at all. On Saturday night, I was very sick – probably as sick as I have ever been, but I always say that as I cannot remember the previous times. Anyway, I was going to the bathroom very frequently and throwing up. I was feeling both hot and cold and feverish. I ended up waking up on the bathroom floor with the cat licking my nose.

I then went back to bed and woke up Pam and shortly thereafter I was taking another ride in an ambulance to the ER. It was two female EMTs that had a difficult time getting me down the outside stairs to the ambulance. It was raining and blowing and quite a rush in my condition.

After all the usual ER stuff, it was decided that I would be admitted and we ended up spending from Sunday morning until yesterday in the hospital.

Some of the time I was not capable of dealing with, or comprehending, the events that were happening. We had this ‘crazy’ gastroenterologist assigned to us that wouldn’t even speak to me – only to Pam. He wore camouflage long underwear and hunting boots, and is known by the nursing staff for never keeping a schedule, or having any bedside manners. He is also suppose to be the best around or we would have probably selected another option, if any. It was all very weird…

There were days of 'feverish' activity, having all sorts of tests, and then he came in, said what I had and I was released.

All this time, we thought the problem was the common and pervasive hospital bacteria C.diff, but that is not the case. After extensive testing, it now appears to be an Ischemic Bowel that was basically caused by a blood clot from the first surgery, back in December. One of the arteries that feed the colon ended up getting clotted up and has been causing all these problems.

We are now trying to ‘de-clot’ the artery with blood thinning medications, to solve the problem, without having to do another surgery. It is going to take a couple of weeks for this new therapy to work. We are planning on having a service come in, as needed, to deal with my needs during this time.

I must go lay down now – more later…

$700 Anitbiotics...

2009-03-19T09:05:00.000-07:00

Well, I am now taking a liquid antibiotic that costs $ 700. Luckily, we only had to pay $ 35 with our insurance, but Pam said that is the actual cost for this 1/2 pint size bottle...

This is day three of the C.diff. The first day I was very sick, had a 102 deg fever and the runs about 30 times. Then, yesterday, I felt pretty good again. No runs, no fever and I just felt like I had been beat up or something similar. Then, today, I again feel horrible, have a 98.0 temperature and have the runs again.

This seems to be the pattern of C.diff. It hits for a day, then it slows down for a day and then it comes back for a day or two, etc., etc. I am thinking that it must flush part of its 'charm' out with the runs, and then has to rebuild back up to have another go at it...

Anyway, I have been gagging down this new antibiotic since mid-afternoon on Monday and I am not impressed with what it is doing yet. It is called Vancomycin - one of the few 'last resort' antibiotics that still exists. I think it is made from some tropical forest mud or something like that. They try to keep it for very controlled use so the bugs don't get immune to it like they have to most of the other antibiotics out there.

Business is going great. We seem to be getting calls from new dealers almost daily. Right now, we have three good sized orders that are waiting on our next needle shipment which will arrive on Monday.

We have been planning a trip to Europe for Pam's 50th birthday, but have now canceled it until later in the year or next year. We thought this C.diff was over with, but obviously not, and we don't know how much longer it will come and go.

Well, its back to bed for me for a while, here in DaHo...

Well, Crap - C.diff Again...

2009-03-17T12:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I started having an upset stomach, which I almost never have since my Lary operation 6 years ago. Then a couple of hours later, I started having the runs. In the next 6 hours I went to the bathroom about 30 times - Grumble, Grumble. I also had a fever of 102 last night which makes you feel really wonderful...

It has been 5 weeks since I finished the last course of C.diff antibiotics. I was back to doing yoga and was starting to feel great again. I am still taking the supplement that puts 2.5 billion live cultures of the good stuff in my digestive track every day. I have also been eating Activia, the yogurt that also has the ProBiotic things to build up my digestive track.

And, I guess it was all for not, as yet again I have it. Pam went to the doctors and picked my up some of the last antibiotic that is available to fight this C.diff stuff. It is only used when nothing else works and is not a good thing to have to do - IMHO...

But, whatever it takes finally get rid of this evil C.diff is worth it - I guess.

Anyway, I just wanted to let the readers of this blog to know what is going on. Before this, the business is picking up quickly and I have been very busy.

Well, back to bed, but I just wanted to document this mess as I have will all the other episodes of this fiasco here in DaHo...

More Good News...

2009-03-05T15:28:00.001-08:00

I am getting better and better. I started yoga again this week and it was the most painful I have ever experienced. I didn't push anything, but just little stretches hurt as the muscles haven't been stretched in about 3 months. After my second session, I was starting to feel all the 'parts' starting to get realigned again. I should be in good shape after next week.

So far, the C.diff bacteria has not come back. Its been quite a while now, so I am hoping that I am done with it at last. Now, I just have to deal with all the medical bills. The other day, we were at the hospital to see my surgeon and happened to stop by the hospital billing department. They said that my hospital bill for the three operations was over $ 105,000. Then, on top of that, is all the surgeons, radiologists, and other side players that go in on it all.

We played in our pool league playoffs and lost to a good team. So, we are out of it as a team. Now, the only remnant of it all is the top shooters tournament on the 14th.

A week or two ago, we couldn't buy an order for our needles and now business is going crazy. We have 3 new dealers and had our largest single order to date. It was over 300 products. Then, yesterday, we received an order from the Australian distributor that we have been courting for a few months. They said it was just a little starting order and the real orders would be much larger. They also want us to make 5 new needle sizes to help grow our product line. This little starter order was for 750 products...

So, all of the planning and work on making the business much larger is starting to pay off. This last month we will have had more business than all of last year. I just cannot wait for the big orders to start coming in.

Well, I better go rest up for all the orders. That is about all that is fit to print here in DaHo...

No News is Good News...

2009-03-01T10:03:00.000-08:00

I haven't written anything in this blog for over a week. And, in this case, No News is Good News...

I continue to feel better and I have not had any new C.diff attacks - so far. Based upon its prior history, I would have expected it to have happened before now, but I could be wrong. It is very un-predictable stuff.

I have been working on orders from a number of dealers. Our largest volume dealer is attending a show next week in Long Beach, and their order was almost 300 products. We shall have to see how many of those get sold as I have an arrangement with the dealer to take back any extra inventory that doesn't sell. I also made up a couple of booth signs for the dealer to allow potential customers to pick up on what was being sold - something I would rather do than have them do it.

We are still trying to drum up for dealers and will have to re-think our marketing letters to make them less of a task to read. I am thinking that having all the 'details' may be too much to read for a lot of the tackle shop owners. We shall have to see how a new, and much simpler marketing approach works.

Over the past few days, I have started drinking alcohol again in very small doses. I have now had about 10 drinks in the past 3 months. I really don't miss it much at this point and have never had much of an issue with stopping it. We shall have to see how it goes for the near future.

We had two pool matches this week. One of our players was leaving on our normal night to go to NASCAR in Las Wages, so we played our first game on Wednesday night and won easily. Then, we had to play Friday night for the next round of the 'end of league' tournament. We played a pretty good team and ended up loosing by 3 points. So we are out of the tournament, but are not too bothered by it. Storm and I will be playing in the top shooter tournament on 3/14 in a couple of weeks. That should be more fun all around.

We went and saw 'The Wrestler' last afternoon. I was not impressed with it. There was too much gore and general wrestling and life realities in it for me to be entertained. I felt sorta beat up by the end of it.

Now that all of the antibiotics and other recent meds are mostly out of me, I am starting to enjoy the taste of food again. It was awful when I was taking the antibiotics for the C.diff. It made everything taste metallic and overly sweet or something. Almost all sauces or spiced food that had more than one taste in it, tasted awful and I couldn't eat it. That really frazzled Pam as she was trying to cook good stuff for me and I couldn't eat most of it or at least didn't enjoy it much. But, that is finally starting to go away now.

Speaking of food, this afternoon we are having Boyd and Annette over for a Prime Rib dinner. And, I just noticed the clock and must go to get it started...

More later from DaHo...

Still Getting Better - Again...

2009-02-14T17:19:00.000-08:00

Well, since my last post, the symptoms of the dreaded C.diff have went away life is improving yet again. I posted a Mayo Clinic document that discussed the C.diff in detail on the email. One of the folks that I sent it to, sent it to her friends, and one of those friends wrote back to me. She had also had the dreaded C.diff and said that the most important thing to do to get rid of it was to get into Pro-Biotics. I tracked it down and it is basically various food and health products that help to rebuild the normal bacterial environment in your digestive system. I tracked down a product a Walgreens that is easy to swallow and is suppose to have 2.5 Billion Live Cultures in it. Anyway, I have been taking it and all the C.diff symptoms have went away - so far...

I still have the nerve based pains in my left thigh. I have been taking the nerve medicine that my surgeon prescribed. They seem to migrate from having periodic sharp pains to a lower grade but lasting sort of pain. It is supposedly caused by the fluid buildup somewhere in my left thigh that was a result of the incision during the operation. I understand it will dissipate with time but it sure hurts when it happens.

Late Thursday afternoon, it was feeling a lot better and I decided to try and play pool, on my league teem. I had told my teammate that I wasn't going to play the day before and had to stop the substitute from showing up, which all worked out. I played well. I couldn't stand very well, but I did play well. And, my nerve pains didn't freak out much while I was out. I only won 2 of my 4 games, but one of them I ran the table and scratched on the 8-ball. I also did get another valid table run.

The really bummer part of pool what that because I couldn't play last week, I went from 14th place in the individual standings to 30th place. Since the league is not over, the playoffs start and I almost missed the top-shooters tournament that only takes the top 32 players. If I would have not played that night, I would have probably been 60th and been out of the playoffs for sure.

Our team came in 10th I think so we have to start the playoffs on Thursday. If we loose, we play again Friday night. But, if we win, we don't play again until next Thursday. Unless I get real sick again, I am going to be there.

We have finally done all of the old inventory recall and replacement. It ended up being about $ 2,500 worth of product replacement - Ouch. But, in the long run, I am glad to have all that old product out of the distribution channel. The new product, with the new packaging and instruction booklet is much better all around and it will all be worth it in the long run.

This economy is really starting to cause nasty things to happen all around. A lot of our dealers have backed off on their needle orders and I am trying to gather a number of new dealers. We also sent a full set of samples to a distributor in Australia. I hope that comes through. Its a pain to send products overseas but they could sell a lot of product as its a big deal 'down under'.

I am again feeling good and just hope that all the bad stuff is finally going away. I would probably feel even better, but this same thing happened a couple of times before during, this whole sickness, and it all came back again.

Hopefully all 2.5 Billion of those little bacteria helpers, I am taking every day, will finally break the cycle of the dreaded C.diff once and for all. I sure hope so. In that Mayo Clinic document, one of the solutions for prolonged continuation of the C.diff was to have 'stool transplant from a family member'... After Pam read the paper, she offered to be the provider - Ha, Ha... I have never even heard of a stool transplant. It all sounds like a total bunch of crap to me...

There is more than one way to skin a Cat...

2009-02-12T08:54:00.000-08:00

In the continuing saga of my Medical Fiasco, there have been some real twists in the last couple of days. I did a bunch of research on this C.diff hospital bacteria and it all makes a little more sense now. I also got some feedback from an email I sent out about PRO-BIOTICS, which are supplements that help regrow all of the stuff that is usually in your colon and that help control the rampant C.diff bacteria. I tracked down some of the supplements a couple of days ago and it seems to be working quite well. I am free, again, of the constant fever and runs symptoms of C.diff.

I realized why the C.diff seems to happen after every hospital visit. The massive doses of antibiotics that are given through the IV each time you go to the hospital basically re-invigorate the C.diff each time.

I also learned that a C.diff spore can live on a 'clean' hospital surface for many months and if a person touches it, they have it. And, since most folks in the hospital are on the antibiotics, it can just go crazy with your insides. So, I think I will wear gloves when I go into the hospital from now on. The TV controller or bed buttons could give it to you from a patient that was there months before...

C.diff has a number of treatments that I was 'impressed' with. The most bazaar was doing a stool transplant with a family member. I am still having trouble with that one...

Anyway, to get back to my story. Tuesday night, I was starting to feel better and the dishwasher has been down for a few days. I know how to fix them and it requires taking the bottom one out and removing all the moisture from the electronics in the base of the unit. It requires that you get down and squat and on your knees to do all the stuff you have to do. In the middle of this work, I must have done something to my surgical area and got a very sharp hot burning pain in my left thigh. It was strong enough to drop me to the floor and almost passed out. it lasted for a few minutes. I was almost done with the job, so I was able to finish it with only a couple more lighter pains. Throughout the rest of the night, I kept having these sharp stabbing pains when I moved my leg the 'wrong' way.

The next day I called the doctor and he had me come down to get yet another Ultrasound test. It was basically a CYA to be sure that the surgery went ok. They found a pocket of liquid in there, which is suppose to be normal, and figured out that it was pushing on my nerves that were causing all the thigh pain. I then went to the surgeon's office, which is in the same building, and he tried to extract some fluid with a needle and did a lot of pushing on it all. He also gave me yet another drug to try an resolve my new nerve generated pains.

Now, instead of being a stabbing pain that occurred when I moved certain ways, the pain is now changed to when I am standing up. I can basically stand up for about 1 minute before it gets crazy bad.

So, to get back to the title of this story, which I had some difficulty using as I am a great cat lover, I am now for the third time, limited to about one room of movement. The other times it was from my left leg not having enough blood flow and starving for oxygen. This time it is from nerve generated pain.

So, now if you reread the title it will probably make more sense...

I had to again cancel my playing pool tonight, which is the last match of the league season, I think. I was doing quite well, but now it is all gone to hell. Maybe I will be well when they start the playoffs in a couple of weeks, or not.

The doctor says these nerve pills will work in a few days, so we will just have to see how it goes. I can press on one spot by my incision and cause the pain to happen. I just wish I could fine someplace to push to make it stop...

Well, I need to go back to bed as that is the only place that I don't feel the pain now. So, that is all that is fit to print here in DaHo...

Back to Abnormal...

2009-02-09T08:54:00.000-08:00

Well, I have recovered from the third operation, more or less. At least the physical pain parts of it. But, the bacterial infection that I have had since around 12/15/08 is still with me. I have had a low grade fever and the runs for 4-5 days now and the antibiotics don't seem to be phasing it.

I thought it was finally under control yesterday. From about 2pm or so yesterday, until 7:30am this morning, it cleared up. Pam was going to stay home again, if it wasn't gone and spend the day trying to get the doctors up to speed about what a bunch of crap this all is. She can be very good a such things, when needed. So, we agreed that if it was still good when she got up for work this morning, that it was probably finally over and she should go to work.

Well, about an hour after she left for work, it came back again - its pretty sneaky crap. You can only have soooo much fun with the runs... I have had it for over half of the time since it started months ago.

I am at a complete loss as to what is going on at this point. Nothing seems to work and I just keep getting sicker and sicker...

With Three you get Egg Roll...

2009-02-07T08:37:00.000-08:00

Well, I did end up having the third operation on Thursday night. So, that is three operations in three months...

What had happened was that the bypass stent has a mesh screen in it and it was getting clogged with some blood clots. This caused the blood flow to my left leg to be greatly reduced, which was causing the symptoms I was experiencing. We got to the hospital about 2pm and had a the tests and I went straight to pre-op from there. I was operated on about 5pm and was in my room by 7 or so.

We got a private room because I have the C-Diff bug. They put a roll-a-way bed in for Pam to use. And, as usual, they come in every 1/2 hour or so to check on the trash or check on me, which makes for a very long and tiring night. We left the hospital about 10 am the next morning.

I am sure glad it didn't turn into a long drawn out hospital stay as it did last time. I don't think I could have taken that again. Right now, I feel pretty good, if I can get these runs stopped. Anytime I walk, the front of my left thigh, from my hip to my knee, feels like it is on fire. I guess they sliced some nerve or something as that was the side they opened up again to do the mesh cleaning job.

So, now I am on Plavix, along with about 15 other meds. The Plavix is suppose to thin out the blood so the clots won't plug the mesh up anymore. Somehow, I don't remember them telling me that if we did the bypass that there would be this problem with the mesh getting plugged up...

But, we have met a lot of new friends that work at the hospital. The Cardio-Vascular technician that does the tests is coming over today to bring his computer for Pam to fix this weekend.

Anyway, I am going back to bed now, but all is good for the moment here in DaHo...

Extra...Extra...Extra...

2009-02-05T09:43:00.000-08:00

In a late development, Pam just called and said that she had talked to the surgeon and that we are suppose to be down to the hospital at 2pm today. They are going to do some more tests to see why my left leg is still so weak. And, if there is a problem, I will be operated on tonight...

I assume that for the femoral-femoral bypass to not be working right, means that something is definitely way wrong and needs to be fixed quickly...

I cannot begin to explain how much I don't want to go back into the hospital again, or have another surgery. The last experience was such a horror and all. But, at least I am taking the antibiotics and won't have all that awful stuff happening again for days on end.

So, I the plan is to let everybody know what is happening. Pam or I will be posting the latest info here, probably tomorrow...

Too Fast On The Gun...

2009-02-05T08:11:00.000-08:00

In my last episode of this blog, I was saying how happy I was about me finally being free of the nasty C-Diff (I first thought is was C-Stat) hospital bug. I have been off of the antibiotics for over two weeks and was feeling good.

Well, three days later, starting this Monday I started having the same symptoms again.Along with a lot of concern (read fear) about what was probably to come. It started out pretty slow at first, but the symptoms kept coming and yesterday, Pam took the day off and we went to the doctor who subscribed the antibiotic needed to kill it. The medicine is pretty nasty stuff in itself. It taste awful, like a very strong metallic taste and I cannot drink any alcohol for the next two weeks. Which is no big deal, as I have only had a few drinks the whole month of January and really didn't miss it too much.

But, anyway, I am hopefully on the mend again and wondering when this is going to stop. In the hospital, the surgeon said that his wife had it before, and she had to go through 3 or 4 regimes of antibiotics to finally get it resolved.

The other problem is that it seems that my left leg - the one without proper blood supply for over a month - seems to be getting the same type of problems again. Yesterday, I had to use one of those electric powered carts at Costco. It was disgusting to me conceptually, but was the only option I had. I don't know if this recent wreaking of my stamina in my left leg has something to do with the the C-Diff's return, or what is going on. Right now, I can walk about 1 block or less on level ground before I start getting the pains in my left thigh.

This whole thing from the first planned procedure on 12/2/08 has been a total disaster and I don't think we are at the end of this road yet. I have got get the treadmill setup again upstairs so I can do more stress tests on it and not go anywhere if I have serious problems.

I am suppose to go to Southern California in about 4 weeks to attend a big fishing show and unless this whole leg mess gets resolved before then, I won't be able to go. I probably couldn't make it to the front door of the show from the parking lot, let alone walk/work it for 5 days...

I am not a happy camper about all this at all. And, it where I am now, is the new me, I will really be upset, as I am close to being walker or wheelchair bound...

On a happier note, business is going well. We recalled all the old unsold inventory form all our dealers and are replacing it with the new products. This is going to cost us about $ 3K or so, but is a small bump in the overall scheme of changing the business from a little garage cottage business into one with international presence.We don't want our old products being sold and discussed when the new products and new packaging and instructional booklet is such a superior improvement all the way around.

Now that the new products are getting out to our dealers and we are getting feedback from them on it, everybody loves it as we knew they would. I have re-starting our marketing campaign again and are acquiring a lot of new dealers. We have to do this on a controlled basis so we don't get more new business than they can handle at this point. We were hoping to be further along in our new business partners acquisition, but my medical problems has had a serious impact on those activities so far.

I did play pool last week and did pretty well. I am now 13th in the individual standings. I should be a lot higher, but have not been playing this league to win all the time. Sometimes when I have a difficult shot, I will try and shoot it, instead of leaving my opponent a safety that he couldn't make. This has cost me many of the games that I have lost. I think there are only three more weeks of play until the league ends.

We finally found Pam's late Christmas present. Her Wii system with the exercise package and the guitar hero band set. She has been going crazy on it. She does about 45 minutes of exercises every day on it and now that she has the guitar hero thing, she plays it anytime she can. I don't know how its going to work out yet, as right now its setup in the living room and that is where we watch TV from. If she continues to use it as much, we will have to relocate it to somewhere that it doesn't interfere with life. I don't know how its all going to work out yet...

Well, I have things to do and pills to take, SO that is all for right now from DaHo...

I am Officially, Well...

2009-01-30T07:35:00.000-08:00

I have been off of the antibiotics for some time now and I have had no symptoms of recurrence of the dreaded bug, so I think I am officially cured. I am very, very happy about that realization. I am not sure I could go through another bout of that again...

The bad news is that my legs have lost so much muscle tone in this short while that I am amazed at daily. At this point, I am not sure if it is just muscle tone or that the blood supply from my right leg, that is now feeding both legs is sufficient to provide enough blood to them both. I am going to start doing treadmill work in the next couple of days. And, in a short while, I should be able to answer that question. I did start back to doing my yoga again this week and am feeling much better in the general body strength and well being areas.

On the business front, I sent out a letter to all our dealers that we are now out of the needle making business and now into the needle distribution business. Everything has changed with the new vendor made needles and all the new packaging and instruction information that I have been working on for the past 3 months. We are migrating from a little cottage business to one that will be selling our products worldwide in the very near future. I was hoping to be in this position on Jan. 1, 2009, but my health and the delivery of the new needles extended that by three weeks.

In the dealer letter, I told them all about the new products and asked them to provide a list of all their unsold inventory. We are replacing all of it with the new products, free of charge after they send the old products back to us. Our new products are so much superior to our old ones, or any other competition products, that I didn't want them in the distribution channel. So far, we have replaced about $2,000 worth of old product. It is painful to do, but is good business in the long run.

One of my largest dealers, Charkbait! in Huntington Beach, CA is going to have a booth in a very large consumer focused fishing and boating show that will be happening in Long Beach, CA the first part of March. They have asked me to attend and bring down lots of our needle products to show/sell in the booth. They are going to be focusing on our needle products and it should be a great way to gain a lot of exposure to our products image and general knowledge of them in the entire Southern California area. There will be a lot of potential new dealers there also that I plan to bring on board while I am there. Also, it will be great to see the family, which has been way too long in coming...

The weather has been hot and cold. Well, maybe more freezing and not quite freezing. The over night lows have been in the single digits to teens and the highs have been in the high teens to high thirties. When we have sun, which we have had a few days, coupled with above freezing temps, all the snow starts to melt and clears up the roads a little. But, then at night when the temps go below freezing, it all turns to slick ice and lots of accidents happen. The mountains of snow in each large parking lot, the results of snow plowing all the flat paved surface, continue to grow and will last for weeks or even months as the weather warms up.

We finally found Pam's belated Christmas present yesterday. She got a Wii system and the Wii fitness exercise platform system for it. It is a pretty amazing little device. We still need to get a few add-ons for it, but I am impressed with how well it works and at all the features and ability to configure the Avatars, or characters, that each person can make up to be their image while playing the games and exercise routines. The basic system has sport games like bowling, golf, boxing, baseball and tennis, I think. Pam, loves the bowling game and has already attained the title of Professional with it.

The Dell health insurance plan has changed again this year. Their new prescription plan is quite different than in the past. Before, all name brand prescriptions were a higher amount. Last year they were $ 35 each. With the new plan, all such prescriptions costs are split in half, and the patient gets to pay for half of the cost, not to exceed $150 each. Two of my prescriptions were $107 and $78 for the month, which is way too much. We called the new insurance company and they offered some generic equivalents that we are going with. We will have to see how 'equivalent' they actually are, I guess.

I cannot wait to get into all of the costs that were incurred with all my recent medical treatments. With all the CT scans, MRIs and other major tests I had during my two hospital visits and two operations, the costs are going to be way crazy, I am sure. The costs of drugs are totally crazy these days. A large part of the cost is all the TV commercials that the drug companies run hourly for their new drugs. Then the price the drugs in the USA market many times higher than most other places in the world, to recoup their R&D - read commercials - costs because we have more resources to pay for them. And, now, with the changes in the health care plans, many of the new expensive name brand drugs will be out of reach for many people. It should be an interesting showdown between the insurance and drug companies soon.

The Obama inauguration was impressive - over 2 million folks in one place in 18deg weather and no arrests, is a new one on me. I sincerely hope that he can live up the the image that so many folks are putting on him. The new $825 billion 'stimulus' bill that he is ramming through congress will give those that have wanted government to be the 'be all and do all' will finally get their wishes. We are sliding down the slick road to European Socialism at breakneck speed.

One of my mentors in life once said, "On the surface, the concept of communism or socialism really sounds good, but if you were to apply the same logic to the color spectrum, over time you would only end up with the single color of grey. As, any other color would not be fair, or right, in some way, to someone, and would have to be removed, until all other colors are gone. Only then would you really have true communism or socialism."

Any other president could have not been effective as the people are so hostile about everything now, that nothing could get done. For whatever reasons, Obama has the following and power of the people, and with that, will be able to make things happen if he uses it right. We shall just have to see how it all works out...

My pool game has not done well, since all the medical problems. I did win all 4 of my games last week, but no table runs and I wasn't playing well at all. Then, this week, I lost 2 of my 4 games, but got a 34 out of 40 points, which is good. I think we have three weeks of pool league left. I am in 13th place overall, which is good, and our team is in 9th place, which is not good, but we are not one of the long established teams that have all good players that always seem to win. There will be a top shooter tournament and team tournament shortly after the league ends. They are always fun to play in.

Well, I have stuff to do and places to go. That is about all of the news from here in DaHo...

Transformation Complete - Normal Again...

2009-01-20T08:59:00.000-08:00

I completed my antibiotics a couple of days ago and all is good. I continue to improve in health and attitude. I keep getting little shots of pain here and there. I guess the new plumbing needs to get all aligned in there. Its really weird that both of the insides of my upper thighs are numb. I guess the hacked some nerves when they were installing the new artery that goes from the top of my right thigh and proceeds across my mid-section just below the belt line, to the artery in my left upper thigh. This is the artery that is feeding blood to my left leg from my right leg these days.

It all seems to be working OK. I still get very tired and don't have much stamina yet, but I still haven't been able to do any exercise yet. The Great news is that today I can start doing my yoga again. I have missed it very much. I really hate this feeling of being 'normal' physically. Yoga keeps you feeling and being in very good physical and mental shape and coming off of it is very depressing at first.

I have to clear out my office first. A lot of boxes of 2 months of crap have accumulated in the space that I do yoga in and must be eradicated now. The good news is that a lot more stuff that was in my office has been moved upstairs to the new DaHoProducts order fulfillment department. I have got to track down, or build, some very specialized storage compartments to hold all the stuff I need to keep for all the various needles and combo sets we sell. So far I have not been able to find much of value.

I did play pool twice last week. I played on Tues and Thurs nights. The Tues night was a make up match from the week before when I was down hard. I didn't play well either time. I gave away a nice table run on both nights on the last ball or two, grumble, grumble. I also had the table ran on me for the first time this year. I really hate it when that happens because you get a zero score for the game.

Storm stopped by yesterday and we played some. His old in-law, Bruce, which I have played with on teams before, was called and came by and leveled our pool table. It was getting pretty bad from settling I guess. Anyway, its all better now.

Yesterday, I was asked by Microsoft to beta test the new version of the WHS (Windows Home Server) OS. Its got a lot of new features to integrate with Media Center, which we use on all our computers to watch and record TV programs. I will probably do it as I am very interested in these new features, but first, I am still buried pretty deep in stuff I need to do first.

Well, I must get to the yoga. I will never feel great again until it has worked its magic on my body...

All is Returning to Normal - again...

2009-01-11T09:37:00.000-08:00

I have been getting better and better since I have been home. But, things aren't quite like they use to be. It astounds me how much muscle tone I have lost in just six weeks of no exercises and having my left leg starving for blood and oxygen. I have always had muscular legs and now my thighs seem to just hang. I have got a LOT of rebuilding to do to the old body. The doctor says I cannot do yoga for a few more weeks, which I think is BS. He just doesn't know anything about yoga and thinks it is going to somehow destroy all his work. I am going to start soon, just keeping away from the asanas that might stretch those areas that he has messed with.

Thursday night, we were watching TV on the couch and I got up to do something. Pam said "Wow you are really walking much better than you have in a long while". I took a mental review of how I was walking and realized that I have been dragging around my left leg and now was walking like a normal person again. That was good news...

Then, Friday, we went into town to do some errands that sort of got dropped with the ambulance ride and week stay in the hospital. I had to check out some shipping supplies and pick up some printing that I was having done for the business. In both places, I got out of the car and as soon as I inside to the business I was about ready to pass out and had to find someplace to sit or lean against. The shipping business was a little oriental woman and she was real impressed with my action. Luckily Pam was there to explain it. So, the bad news is that I am having a real issues with fast movements and my body's ability to provide enough oxygen to all necessary parts. This is a sort of 'normal' event for me, due to only having one jugular vein. I don't know if it is part of all the meds I was loaded up with lately or not, but I can usually manage it so I don't have to resort to such immediate action. I have passed out a couple of times in the past and it is not much fun for me or whomever is around.

So, we have been staying at home since that trip. Pam has been taking great care of me and making lots of good food. Without her being here, I would probably not be able to make it for the next few days. So, she is going to have to stay home for a few more days until things get more 'normal' again.

We have been sitting on a number of orders that have been placed since all this medical 'fun' started and since everything is new with the needles, packaging and shipping, Pam and I will be doing these first shipments. The new needles are so great that everybody will just love them. And, now they are all coming with a 8 page instruction booklet. They will be a big hit. I haven't been able to start offering our products to any new dealers yet, but will start as soon as I recover.

Pam took the Christmas tree down yesterday. It was one of the cutest Christmas trees we have had. If you remember, we weren't going to have a tree and then decided to at the last minute. So, we went to Lowes and got a nice tree and all the trimmings, lights, decorations, etc. for about $ 60. All of the decorations were in one box. They were all plastic, read cat proof, and the lights were two nets of LED lights, which could just be wrapped around the tree in about a minute and it looked like all the lights on a professional lighted tree. We only used out tree stand and top angel, which were out from last year. Our biggest issue with having a tree was having to dig out all the decorations and stuff that we keep buried under the garage stairs.

My pool league was down during Christmas and News Year and the first match was last Thursday night. Storm rescheduled the match for next Tuesday. I sincerely hope that I can make it as I really do want to win some titles for the league. Plus, I have a side bet with Storm that will get expensive if I quit now. So, we shall see if I can do it or not. I will have to only drink bottled drinks though, as this antibiotic I am, on has the same characteristics as Anibuse. If any alcohol gets inside my body, I will get violently sick very fast. Its interesting in that what anibuse does is stop your liver from processing the alcohol and lets you 'enjoy' the full effects of the poison like qualities of alcohol. The rush you normally get are the little side effects of your liver processing the poision.

This new Wholesale and Manufacturing Premier version of Quickbooks is a great program. It is really going to help us manage our business. I am learning more about it all the time, but they have really added a lot of great features in it.

I am sleeping well again, which is a major improvement from the almost total lack of sleep in the hospital. And, my sleeping buddy, Felix the Cat, is already ready for a good nap. In fact, he pretty much 'naps' most of the time when he is not up and driving Cali crazy or eating...

Yesterday, I rebuilt our bedroom computer. I just built it a couple of months ago, but the motherboard had some problems and would always screw up and drive us crazy in the process. It wouldn't record shows we wanted or would need to be rebooted in the middle of recording shows. Anyway, it how has another motherboard and so far is working great.

Most of the snow is gone now, except for the giant mountains of it in every large parking lot in town. Right after the last big snow storm, the temperature rose and it rained heavy. The real problem when that happens, is when it then returned to sub-freezing temperatures and all the melted snow turns to ice - big driving fun...

So, that is about all there is happening here in DaHo...

Alive and...... Well?

2009-01-08T09:11:00.000-08:00

I am back from the hospital again, and very glad to be out of there, and even more glad to be home. I feel good, am recovering well and as long as the antibiotics continue to work, all is wonderful.

I could easily say that this was the scariest medical thing I have been through. It doesn't compare to the throat cancer operation, in that I knew up front that it was a life changing event and didn't know what life was going to be afterwards, but from a fear factor, this was way up there.

Last year, there was a long time pool player here, that went to his doctor because of an ingrown toenail. It got infected and he went in to have a procedure done to it, The toe got worse, they amputated it, he got a super bug infection in the hospital, developed heart trouble, and to make a long story short, within two weeks, he was dead from 'medical treatment'.

There were a couple of times this week in the hospital that I thought I was going down that same path - and fast...

As promised, this entry will describe all the medical 'fun' that I have been having over the past 6 weeks. And, in order to discuss it all, I thought I would use the chart that my doctor drew to explain it all to Pam and I. So, here is the chart showing the three options I had to choose from...

It all started on 12/2 when I went in for a scheduled Aortic Aneurysm stent procedure. The stent was the little pair of pants that fit into the parts to the left of the 2 and 3 in the chart. with the top part of the pants in the 2 area and the legs going down in the two areas with the arrows below. That procedure was scheduled for overnight and went well. Prior to the operation, I had a bunch of testing done and a couple of CT scans so that the doctor and the stent company could see the area being stented and get the correct size and type of stents for my specific needs.

I was recovering and about two weeks later, I was walking about 2 blocks and almost couldn't make it. I wasn't even breathing hard and my left thigh felt like I had ran a marathon. So, I called the surgeon and he had me come in. He checked me out and sent me over to the hospital for two afternoon's of tests. The problem was that my artery seemed to be too bent and the left leg of the little pants stent got kinked in the arrowed area by the '3' and was blocking off the flow of blood to my left leg. I am not sure why they didn't figure that all out when they were sizing and typing the stent, but...

The surgeon's nurse informed me that it needed to be taken care off and they would get right on it.... as soon as the doctor returned from his vacation on 1/5. I was also to take an aspirin just in case of any clots in the mean time. So, the doctor is gone and there is no one else in the area that can spell 'stent'. At that point, I could walk about 40 feet and then had to stop and rest.

It was getting progressively worse daily to the point that I could only walk like 10 feet before it starts hurting. So, I am basically confined to the down stairs of the house and my doctor won’t be back until another week to fix it.

I called my surgeon’s office and was referred to his backup while he is on Vacation. I ran this all down to his nurse and she talked to the doctor and I guess he read my surgeon’s files. And, the bottom line is that I was told to walk, even if it hurts so I won’t get clots until my surgeon gets back and can do something to fix it. I was told that they were going to go in and replace the stent leg with a heavier one that wouldn’t kink due to the artery bends.

I was really having a difficult time with walk even it if hurts, because the hurt is from the leg not getting enough oxygen and blood. And, I have no idea what walking is going to do about clots. At this point, I am very confused and frustrated.

Then, the 'big fun' started. I started getting what seemed like food poisoning. I had the runs and was throwing up, just like being in Mexico. It was over in 24 hrs. Then, I felt sorta OK, for a day or so, then another 24 hr bout with the dreaded runs and throwing up act. then another day or two of recovering. All the while my leg was getting worse and I was basically confined to a room or so.

Then on Saturday morning, I was at the computer after not being able to sleep for a couple of days. I dumped his pile of parts on the floor, and bent over to pick them up for about 30 sec. When I lifted back up, I realized that now all circulation had been cut off from my leg. Within, a couple of minutes, it was totally non-functional. I tried a number of things to try and get it functioning again, but it was totally numb - a Very weird feeling. So, after waiting a few minutes to see if it would recover, I woke up Pam and had her call 911. And, shortly thereafter, I was in an ambulance and Pam was following in the Jeep.

After the usual check in stuff, I was getting a CT Scan and the hospital had tracked down my surgeon who just got back from his vacation. I was checked in and the doctor came in and drew the diagram showing my options.

The first option was to do what they were going to do at first. That was replacing the kinked leg of the stent with a new and stronger one. That is the area that is all marked out with the little squiggly line going down it. The squiggly line is the stent and the marked out area is all a big blood clot that had formed and was what was causing the progressively worse blockage. The doctor said that they could still do the stent leg replacement option, but will all the blood clot that had now formed, it could have more problems. I am wondering why he hadn't thought of that before he left on his vacation...

The second option was going in, though the front of my abdomen, like in the old days and that would be a major surgery and a very long recovery. So, that was 'X'ed out as option #2.

Then, he came up with the third option. That was to basically leave the stent in there, with the blood clot and do a Femoral bypass, AKA Fem-Fem bypass down below the whole stent area. This allowed the left leg to be fed by the right leg. as shown by the lower quarter of the diagram, with the 'X's marking the spots. That seemed to be the way to go so that became the plan. A couple of hours later, I was being operated on...

The operation went well and I was back in my room. Pam was there and did a great job of managing it all and keeping all going smooth throughout the night.

Then all the big 'fun' started again, complicated by the surgery recovery. This time I was very sick and it ended up lasting almost 3 days, in which I got about 4 hrs sleep total. They kept doing other things and nothing was working. I was just getting worse by the hour.

We called in another doctor to try and deal with the problem and he thought it was some type of hospital super bug, called a C-Stat, I think, but all the lab tests said I didn't have it. He was going to do a complete scope job from both ends but my surgeon talked him out of it, and I was put on antibiotics for it. I was getting 3-4 shots every hour or two for days. I cannot guess how much medicine I had put in my IVs.

After the third day, I had coughed and gagged so hard, that when I woke up, I have these heavy pains in my shoulders, chest and back. I told the nurses and they sorta freaked out. My main nurse, Jared, was a very cool guy. He was the most logical and in charge person there. When I started seeing him freaking out, I knew this was not good. I really thought I was going down with all of this, remembering the story about the pool player. That was the first day that Pam hadn't stayed there over night as I now had a roommate. She was called about 6am and during the next few hours, it was really crazy. But, they finally figured out that it was not a heart attack.

From there, the antibiotics still seem to be working and my body is recovering from all the abuse. I didn't eat anything for 3 days or sleep about the same time and had a lot to recover from. They kept me another day and finally released me yesterday. And, as long as the dreaded super bug stays away, I will recover from all this. I guess all the antibiotics that they usually use for operations, kills off all the other bacterias but this super bug and then it just goes crazy and it has developed immunity to most all of the antibiotics.

I wanted to get this all written down while it was still 'fresh', as I really don't want to remember it again for a long while...

I must say that Pam was wonderful throughout all of this ordeal. I cannot begin to say enough about all that she as been through and has taken upon herself to manage all the time this was going on. She stayed there in a chair for nights and was constantly way beyond what I would have expected anyone to do.

I need to rest now...

Happy New Year 2009...

2009-01-03T09:04:00.000-08:00

I did wait up to see the ball drop and the New York 'pins'. That is a very interested way to do crowd control. They had these pins put together on both sides of the streets No two pins touched eachother as they had a 4 sided boarder around them. And, they had cops watching down each side - sorta like professional tennis matches. I hear that once you got there, you were searched as you couldn't bring any booze or back packs or glass or whatever. After being searched, you were put into one of the pins. and you could not leave until the event was over for anything - even going to the bathroom. And, most people were there for hours so they could get a 'Pin' with a good location. I even saw Bill and Hillery dancing on the stage. I guess he must be practicing up living back in DC again...

Then came the first day of the new year. The day was good enough. We watched TV most of the day as that is about the only thing I can do for longer and 10 minutes, or steps, whichever comes first. Then, that evening, I started having the symptoms of food poisioning again - just like in Mexico many years ago. This has been the second time I have had such an event this week and before that it was before I had my throat cancer in 2002. I didn't get a moments sleep all night and had an 'occurance' from one end or the other about every 5-10 minutes.

When Pam was getting ready for work, She looked at me and had to call to take the day off. I was in no condition to take care of anything. We went to our regular doctor for a mid-morning appt as besides everything else, my heel on my left foot is too painful to walk on. I took a shower to freshen up and noticed that both of 'pads' on the bottom of my left foot were a solid milk white in color and would not change color - very weird. Anyway, the doctor assured me that my foot wasn't going to fall off and gave me a shot to make my nausea go away and took a bunch of tests.

After I came home, I felt better and spent the afternoon and night sleeping and watching TV. This morning, when I got up, I feel about the worst ever, but I have said that many times before I am sure.

So, the current plan is that I go in early Monday morning to get all the tests and cat scans done and then return Tues for the surgery to fix the stent and return the blood flow to my left leg again.

I am going to have to miss our pool league game next week. That will only be the second time I have missed a league game in my life.

Pam has been so great at taking care of me - just like in the old cancer recovery days.Without her, I just couldn't have made it and would probably end up being in assisted living sort of thing.

The first shippment of the new needles should arrive on Monday or Tuesday. I will not be able to work with them until I have recovered from operation 2.0.

Every bone in my body is screaming and my pain meds aren't even touching it.

Update: Lanny had to be rushed to emergency by ambulance and ended up having to have emergency Femoral By-Pass Surgery. He is doing well now and is resting comfortably.

End of Year Rant...

2008-12-31T17:16:00.000-08:00

Well, we have survived another year. I have been sick most of the last two weeks - sometimes worse than others. But, its not been any fun at all.

Now, I am restricted to being able to move about 10 to 15 steps, without a rest. Today, when Pam got home from work, she had to take me to town to mail some stuff and pickup some printing and s couple of other minor things. When we were leaving the house, I forgot to bring a tube for the printers to see, and had to walk back from the kitchen to the office and back and almost couldn't make it. I reallllly hate this whole thing.

One of the tasks was to go to Costco and return a version of Quickbooks after I found one online for almost $ 100 less. She recommended that she could go get one of those handicapped carts for me to use. That really gagged me out. I have never had to use one of them before and the thought of doing so does not come easy for me. I can deal with the parking spaces, but the powered shopping carts are beyond my pail.

There has been no pool for the last two weeks so I haven't missed anything, but I couldn't have gone if there were.

My surgeon is suppose to return from his vacation next Monday and I am scheduled for a battery of tests at the vascular lab at 8am. Hopefully, I will have the repair of this problem done after all the lab work. My surgeon is the only one in Twin Falls that does vascular surgery, or I would have had this resolved long ago.

I have been working on the new Quickbooks software when I could and it is great stuff. I am impressed by all its features. And, I should know, since I sold and customized such software for many years in my other life.

Pam is being wonderful in the middle of all this big mess. I would probably not survived without her help.

Well, I now feel well enough to get back to the couch and TV, so that is all I can write about here in DaHo...

Christmas Tree 2.0...

2008-12-22T13:13:00.001-08:00

This weekend, we were sitting around and watching the snow fall and decided to get a Christmas Tree after all. We still didn't have the energy to drag all the packed up Christmas stuff out of the garage, so we went down to Lowe's and picked up a tree and new lights and new decorations. All we used from our usual stuff is the stand, which we knew how to find and the tip/top angle which Pam pulled from somewhere. All the decorations are plastic so Felix wouldn't destroy them, after all this is his first Christmas and we didn't know what he would do with it all. So, far, he is being a good kitty, but he is very impressed with it and his new catnip filled mouse play toy. He sucked on and licks it until it is wet, then he sleeps.

I am becoming 'normal' again and its a bummer. This is the first time I have not done yoga every day or two, depending upon my schedule, for years and this is ugly. I quit the day of my first surgery on 12/2, and cannot do it again until after I recover from the Aortic Aneurysm Kinky Stent surgery 2.0, which will be 'next year', grumble, grumble...

I did play pool last week and did well. I didn't get any table runs but did win all four games, so that is good. We don't play this week because of Christmas and all.

Pam and I are moving all the Business 'stuff' up to the upstairs guest suite.That is where all the order processing will be happening for the time being. I have to find all the right storage containers and packing stuff and get it all set up.

I am going to get a new Premier version of Quickbooks for manufacturers and wholesale distribution, as it seems to have a lot of the features that we will need to handle orders from all the different dealer and distributor types of partners we will have soon. That and having a bill of materials capability so we can keep track of all the 'parts' that goes into each set of needles. I have spent many years dealing with such things in my computer past-life.

We get our fireplace fixed next week. It hasn't worked right since summer and the last annual flying ant attack. So, we have been using the tabletop personal fireplace that Aaron and Tara got us. It uses special cans of 'fire' that are some custom version of Sterno. It works well and a can will last about 2 hours.

The weather has been crazy cold here for a couple of weeks now. Nightly lows in the teens and below and 'highs' in the 20s and 30s. There is about 6" of snow on the ground and more comes or gets blown away every day it seems. We have been driving the jeep up and down the driveway 5-10 times a day to pack all the snow so Pam can get in and out from the garage with the Lincoln.

Well, I have to go, but it seems much happier with the Christmas Tree, here in DaHo...

Kinky Stent...

2008-12-18T11:58:00.000-08:00

Well, since I last posted to this tome, I spent about 4 hours in the hospital labs getting my second CAT scan. We had to wait so long after our appointment that they gave us a $30 gift certificate to a nice local restaurant for our trouble. So, a little bitching and being frustrated, does pay off some times...

Then, this morning, I called the doctor's office and asked about the results and was told to wait until the Dr checked it out and he would get back to me. After a long while, the nurse called back and said that the doctor did have a chance to check the CAT results and that I had a "Kinky Stent", meaning that the stent that I have in my left leg is kinked over and therefore blocking most of the blood flow for my left leg. The fix, is that they are going to have to go back in, read another operation, and replace the 'normal' stent with a heavier one that won't Kink.

After explaining it all to me, the nurse said that we will have to get right on it in a couple of weeks...(Skreech!) I said that I thought this was all going so fast and everybody was so excited about it, that it would happen way before then. Right now, if I walk around a large store, I am getting heavy leg pains and that I really would like to get this done before 'next year'. And, is this causing any damage to any of my 'natural' parts?

After a little hemming and hawing, she said that the doctor was leaving in a couple of hours for a two week vacation and he couldn't do it until he got back, but to be sure to take an aspirin every day just in case...

So, I guess I am on quarter power until 'next year' when the doctor gets back to work... And, then I have to go through the whole operation FUN again.

At this point, Christmas is pretty much cancelled with all these medical problems and all the work I have been trying to do, when I could, on the new product launch for Jan 1st. This will be the first Christmas that we will not have a tree, I/or Pam can remember.

We can barely get up the driveway with all the snow now, and the forecast is that it will get really crazy in the next couple of days. The 7 day forecast had snow in 6 of them for next week. Luckily, our great friend Storm, called and now has a snow blade on his truck and offered to scrape the driveway after the big storm is over.

What is with all the Global Warming Crap. I saw on the news last night that the biggest snow storm in 30 years hit Las Vegas and they even had to close the air port because it was snowed in. Maybe we can get Al Gore to come scrape the driveway.

If I got stuck in the snow, I couldn't get out of it to save my life, in my quarter power mode, grumble, grumble...

So, to all you readers of this blog, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from here in DaHo...

How Far Can You Go...

2008-12-15T19:46:00.000-08:00

Well, today was the first day I was going to venture out again to do all the stuff I need to get done. I was feeling better and stuff needed to get done. It happened to snow and freeze last night and I was woken up Pam coming home for 'lunch, at 8:30AM to get her glasses. She said she couldn't get the Lincoln up the driveway because of the ice and snow and left. I hadn't gotten much sleep last night and was groggy from the event, but got up and it was ice and snow all around.

I got up and got dressed and got the Lincoln snow stud tires down from the real high shelf in the garage and loaded them up in the Jeep. I first went to the printers with the new, and improved, 7" X 7" version of the needle instructions and then went to Costco to see about getting the snow tires put on the Lincoln. They had a wait, so I parked the Jeep at Costco and walked over to Dell to get the Lincoln, so Costco could install the snow tires.

So, on the long walk to Dell, about 2 blocks on flat ground, I started having serious feeling of exhaustion in my left thigh. It was like I had run a couple of hard miles or something. The weird part about it was that I wasn't breathing hard, or was any other parts of my body even warmed up yet. I finally got to the car and got in and drove the two blocks back to Costco. Then I had to go get the 4 unmounted tires out of the Jeep, which I almost couldn't do - because of my left thigh.

I was a little freaked out because I knew what was probably going on. I seemed to be feeling ok, except for my leg. So, after a rest in the car, I went to a local restaurant to have some lunch - around people, to see how it was all going. I had lunch and all seemed quite normal again.

I left for the printers to pick up my stuff, and while there called the Dr. that just did my surgery and they said to come right in. I went to their office and was brought right in for an hour checkup and analysis. Then, I had to go straight to the Emergency Room, again, to be sent to the Cardo-vascular Lab for some tests. I spent the next two hours there doing all sorts of testing and was finally released.

The nurse called tonight and I have to go to a MRI or cat scan Wednesday at 1pm.

So, what is going on, unless I am way off here, is that the leg of the little designer pants stent that the put in during my operation less than two weeks ago, is somehow blocking the flow of blood to my left leg. If I go up a flight of stairs or something crazy like that, my left leg is starving for blood/oxygen because the blood is being blocked by this stent.

Again, unless I am way off here, the Dr. is doing the MRI to try and figure out what their options are - if they can fix the stent through my left artery, or worse yet, will have to go in, like before stents, and I will be in the hospital for a couple of weeks.

So, either way, I guess I am spending my birthday and Christmas in the hospital or close to it. I am not a happy camper here at all...

Honey, Will you Take a Look at This...

2008-12-14T10:40:00.000-08:00

That is all it took and with an hour I was back with another new bracelet...

During the recovery period, the right side incision was way more painful than the left side. I figured that there was probably a stitch that was pulling something in there that hurt. Then, Friday was the first day that I really felt almost Good since the operation. So, I was out doing errands that I haven't been doing since the operation and was out and about for 3-4 hours.

After about 2 hours, my left side incision started feeling weird and it kept feeling like there was some liquid leaking out of it. Each time it happened, I check and there was nothing leaking I could find, so I went on. By the time I got home I was very exhausted and glad to be here. Anyway, when Pam got home she was worn to a frazzle from working and taking care of me, so we watched some low key TV and was going to bed early. So, I was getting into my pajamas and she was already in bed. I felt the right side incision location and it was all swollen up again, so I asked 'The Question' which is the title of this entry.

Well, she mildly freaked and called the doctor and to make a long story shorter, check out the picture of my new Emergency Room jewelry...

They did a complete sonogram deal and the doctor checked it all out by hand. The sonogram guy, turned down the lights while he was rubbing lube all over my genitals, so I asked him if there was any romantic light music...

The lump was caused from internal bleeding from the incision that happened sometime before, but the bottom line was that there was no bleeding still happening so after an hour of screwing around as only ERs can do, we were out of there and back home.

Then, when I got home I realized that the 200 instruction booklets for the needle instructions that I picked up that day weren't going to work right in the tubes and had to switch the page size from 5.5" X 8" to 7" X 7", grumble, grumble.

It is now Sunday, and I have finally got the new document done and ready to get to the printers again Monday morning.

And, I am still getting better and better from the operation. I get the stitches out next Wed and will get to talk to the doctor that did the 'procedure' in person.

We had our first light snows of the year on Friday and Saturday nights. It feels so weird - I don't even remember summer happening yet and its Christmas...

Well, That was Easy...

2008-12-12T07:55:00.000-08:00

I thought that being home from the hospital was pretty much the end of the 'procedure'. I was very wrong. I got much worse for about three days. It felt like I had been beaten with a bat or pipe from just below my ribcage to just above my knees - Front and Back. I didn't even have anything done on my back that I am aware of, but my lower back was screaming.

I think it was mostly from doing the whole anesthesia thing that they do to put you out in the hospital - like the drugs that put you out, the IVs, the dreaded catheter, and whatever else they want to do when no one is looking...

My nose is also almost finally feeling OK. Now, how did my nose get sore? I told the anesthesiologist that I was a neckbreather and even a story about a previous operation, where the idiot anesthesiologist started putting tubes up my nose, and there is no way to get past my throat with any type of air stuff, but somehow something happened and it was sore.

He also said that the the catheter from hell was installed with ease and there was no reason for any pain from it - Yah, right. I think they all get together after you are put out and beat you and laugh about all the money they are getting for all the fun...

So, to get back to the story, after I wrote my last blog entry, I thought I was done and all was good, then the next 3 days just kept getting worse. I could barley move. Pam was great in taking care of me in my time of need. Without her great help, the cats and I would have starved.

I tried to get up every day an check email for a little while, but that was about it. After about 5 days, we went into town to have dinner and I barely made it home. A couple more days of getting better and I finally was able to limp around a couple of hours a day.

Then, it all got much better all of a sudden and I feel pretty good now. My groin area, just below the belt line, I have a 1 1/2" incision with stitches on each side and the whole area is swollen badly, but is good unless something messes with it - like being used for a cat launching pad.

So, looking back on it, either the doctor lied about the recovery time, or all the hospital operation fun hits a 'older' person much harder than it use to...

Anyway, I am glad it is over now and I can feel comfortable being out in strange remote places fishing without worrying about the whole thing blowing up.

During this whole process, and for a week or two before, I have been working on an instruction booklet for the new and larger needle tubes. It is 8 logical pages that fits onto 2 physical 8.5"X11" landscaped pages. It is finally be printed on really nice 60# paper and will be rolled up and put into every one of the large outer tubes for the new needles. I was just going to have it copied, but went to 4 different places and none of them could do it worth a darn. So, now its being printed and I pick it all up today. It is amazing how much time such a task can consume. Almost every sentence was rewritten many times so it would fit just right with all the instructional pictures that are embedded in the document. And I had to do all the pictures 4 different times to get something that could be seen and understood in the 2"X3" sizes on the booklet pages. Pam finally suggested that I use a black felt background and white lines for the pictures and that worked great. They really 'POP' now, as they say on HGTV.

So, while I was recovering from the operation, I decided to quit making needles. It was fun and we made some money from them, but I give up making them ever again. So we are closing down the 'factory' forever. That is the good news, the great news is that DaHo Products is reinventing itself as a world wide supplier of our new partner made needles.

Speaking of needles, I received the final 5 sets of samples from our new vendor and they are great. All of the feedback I received this last year from all the experts that I have been working with has paid off in Spades. These new needles are the best ever made and are vastly superior to the competitions ,or even my handmade ones. I couldn't replicate many of the features that they were able to do without problem. So, the first 100 sets show up just before Christmas and another 400 sets in the middle of January. Yesterday, went down to the bank to have the first payment transferred to the vendor. I have full trust in the vendor at this time. He is a good person and really create exactly what I want.

I think we can pretty much take over the worldwide hollow Spectra needle market in the next year or two. I will foresee us having employees, gulp, within the next 3 months or so. We are almost done with all the collateral materials for the new products and from now on, the job is acquiring new dealers and distributors, the bigger the better. I can have new supplies of needles made in a few weeks and I just don't see any roadblocks in the way of making this all happen and happen pretty quickly. But, as always, time will tell the real story...

I did go play pool last night - the first time in two weeks. I played well, but the results were mediocre at best. I had another break and run for one game, which keeps me up there on that stat. I was playing one fellow that was not very good, and gave him a chance. He ended up making 4 of the most amazing shots in a row and won the game. We were all stunned, including him. That is just how it goes sometimes.

Our local pool hall, The Pocket, is changing their tables to be all the little bar 7 foot size. They only have two 8 foot tables left and our team was suppose to play on one. Just before the game, the owner came over and told us that he was switching the table on us, so we had to play on one of the new small ones. I was really frustrated by the ensuing conversation, where he told us all about the migration to being all the small 7 foot tables. I said when it was all finished, he should also change the name of the business from 'The Pocket' to 'The Small Pocket' - grumble, grumble...

The new tables are pretty good. They are the new bar tables that are used in tournaments that use 7 foot tables. They have a large rail on top and are much better than the 7 footers from the past, but still very small.

Well, I have a lot of stuff to do now, that I am sorta back online again, so I must stop writing and get to work. Besides, that is about all that is going on here in DaHo...

Back Home from the Hospital...

2008-12-04T09:54:00.000-08:00

I got back from the hospital yesterday and able to sit and write a little today.

So, I am doing better, but today, I am really hurting in the spots they cut open and put in the stent through. Until now, they didn’t bother me at all. The major pain was from the catheter. When I woke up after the operation, I was screaming from it and after they couldn’t get it to stop hurting, they finally took it out. But, 'it' was still killing me. The worst part of the whole hospital stay was they said that if I couldn’t pea within 12 hours, they would have to put another one back in. So, for the next 10 hours or so, that is all I could think about. I told them I would have to be put out or tied down, or both, before that would happen again. Every time I tried, it felt like red hot liquid metal or something. Its getting better now, but that was the worst part of the whole ordeal - by far.

In second place was all of my 'attachments' - I had 4 IVs, all the heart monitoring patches and wires, blood pressure cuff, blood sugar clamp, and various other things that were on me from all sides Any time I moved or tried to do anything, something would get hung up and would cause the monitor to start screaming. Those nurses really need some cable management training. The problem was mostly caused by my attempts to stand up to fend off the dreaded catheter deadline...

They kept coming in every few minutes and checking my pulse in my ankles. I guess to be sure that the little pants stent hadn't come apart and was blocking the blood from getting circulated around as it should. That, and my blood pressure monitor on my arm going off every 10 minutes with extreme pressure. So, I didn't hardly get sleep at all while in the hospital.

I guess before the stents, they had to cut you open and do blood bypasses and it was a very bad, 2 week hospital ordeal that usually included a heart attack and/or stroke somewhere in the operation or recovery period.

The doctor said it all went great and he was quite happy about it all - a little too happy for my tastes... Sort of like "Wow, it really worked!" sort of happy...

So, Pam came and picked me up yesterday morning and I stayed in bed most of the day and night. The actual operation cut areas had not really been an issue until today. Now, the area is all swollen up and quite sore, but that is to be expected, I guess, since I don't have the joy of the great pain meds that they have in the hospital.

Pam is staying home to take care of me. I got up before she did or I would probably not be sitting here writing to you all. She is taking great care of me as she always has.

Anyway, all is well but I have this weird question to ask the doctor when I see him. I was looking around and saw these characters on my feet as you can see below.

I have no idea what they are or where they came from or what their purpose could be...

But, all is well, or at least getting better. I am not suppose to do yoga for a week or more, so I am missing it.

Anyway, I will have more to say in a day or two, but all is well with me and I am sure glad to be out of the hospital. Even with all their good drugs, its not fun to be in the hospital at all, even here in DaHo...

Gobble, Gobble, Grumble, Grumble...

2008-11-29T08:49:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving we off very well. The prime rib roast was a five rib'er, which is about twice the size of the ones that we usually cook and have the recipe for. The recipe is specific to the roast size because you leave it in the oven for 1 hour at 375 deg and then turn off the oven and leave it for 3 hours. During that time the internal temperature keeps rising. Usually, by the end of the 3 hours the roast has reached about 125 deg and had backed off to about 120 deg. But, with this larger one the internal temp only got to about 100 before it started to drop. So, I had to improvise and turned the oven on twice during the process to keep the oven temp up and it finally got to about 125 internal. Then, about 45 minutes before time to eat, I put it up to 400 deg. It turned out great. It is the only way I have found to cook a roast where once you get past the outer edge, the whole roast is the same color and done'ness all the way through - just like in the restaurants.

The down side to this way of cooking is that the oven is consumed for about 5 total hours. And the problem with that is that there are usually a number of other things that need the oven to cook/heat them during that time.

So, we used the gas BBQ as our secondary oven. We cooked the turkey in the BBQ, but as you would in a oven. Pam first had it in a regular roasting pan and after only about 30 min, we could tell that the turkey parts that were on the bottom of the pan were getting way to done, so we switched it to a secondary roast roasting pan with a raised rack to keep the turkey off of the direct heat with the BBQ grill and put water in the bottom of the pan. This worked great and the turkey ended up wonderful. In fact, we will probably do it again next year as it give you a lot of great options and works well.

We ate about 5:30pm after Tim, the butcher got here from his job up in Sun Valley. The roast was just wonderful and so was the turkey. Everything turned out great and a great time was had by all.

While all this cooking 'fun' was going on, I was taking another set of instructional pics for the needles new instruction booklet that we will be including inside each of the needles new outer tubes. I decided to go with an 8 page, that fits onto two physical pages of paper in black and white, instead of with a 4 page, on one physical page of paper in color. We really need the extra space to adequately describe all that is necessary and the cost of doing it in color would have been way too much.

So, I took all the B&W pictures and assembled the new 8 page booklet and all was well, until I looked at a printed version and the highly reduced B&W pictures are just not going to work. The 'white' background is way too gray which makes the line and needles in the pictures extremely hard to see.

I have come to the conclusion that we need a professional photographer, or artist, to figure this all out. I give up as I have spent a good week on this and have put together three different booklets and none of them are going to work for various reasons. I have got to get these photos, or diagrams, to be usable in the size I have for them...

I checked out all the famous Black Friday ads and really was underwhelmed. First, the ads were not that good and second, we didn't really need much of what was on sale. I didn't get up until about 6:30am and went to the few stores that had stuff that we were interested in and I got a few things, but it just wasn't the same as the past two years.

So, all in all, after Thanksgiving, its been a disturbing weekend so far. I have got to find someone to help resolve this needle booklet problem - one way or the other. So, I must be off to find the Wizard, here in DaHoland...

Gobble, Gobble...

2008-11-27T07:45:00.000-08:00

Happy Turkey Day to all!!

We are having Pam's sister Roberta and her new squeeze and family over for happy Turkey day. I hear he is a butcher and will be well received. He is bringing a "Magnificent" prime rib roast. I don't think I have ever cooked a "Magnificent" prime rib so it should be fun. Pam and Roberta are making a Turkey and all the fixings. Roberta is coming early and staying late for once. Usually, she is here for dinner and takes off shortly thereafter. Pam is looking forward to spending some quality 'cooking' time with her this time.

Tomorrow is Black Friday. It's my favorite shopping day of the year. There are always very good deals around spend money, and this one should be really good due to the economy.

Last night, we watched Barbara WaWa interviewed the Obamas. It was a very good interview that showed them as regular down home folks with the usual issues, trials and tribulations. We can hardly wait to see how he does as a president now that he is the anointed one.

Lots of stuff happening with the business. All the new packaging tubes and labels are here finally. The office is full of boxes. We got the sample needles from our new vendor and there were a few issues, but overall they are going to be great and will sell well. We will be getting another set of samples to be sure all is good, after all the changes in the first set of samples. We should have the first 100 sets of needles here before Christmas. At that point, we convert from a manufacturing company to a distribution company and start going after every dealer and distributor that exists.

We are going to end up with about 100 of each needle, or the parts to make them, left of the ones that we handmade. If I can figure out how to polish them like the new ones, we can also sell them, as they are pretty much the same as the new ones with the polish job.

Now, we have to convert all of the packaging labels, build new jigs to put the labels on the new tubes, develop the new in tube instruction booklet and all sorts of big fun. Never a dull moment around DaHo Products...

On the pool playing front, we have played two matches since the last email. This last one was played early due the my operation next week. I did OK on both of them and did get two more break and run, table runs. Which puts me in front in that department again, I think. I lost two games in the last match. I ended up having a tough shot that I should have played safe on and I would have probably won both of them. Some day I will learn that playing safe is the better thing to do most often in that situation.

Well, I must go - guests to greet and food to cook as it is Thanksgiving here in DaHo...

We are now in Pre-Winter Season...

2008-11-19T09:38:00.000-08:00

Time is flying by so fast. Since they came a couple of weeks ago and blew out the sprinkler system, all the plants have been going into winter mode. I think I only mowed the lawn about 5 times all summer. All I have done is work on the business and the usual stuff of existence - eating, sleeping, shopping, playing pool and stuff like that...

For the past couple of weeks, I have been spending most of my time on the website. I have developed a complete set of instructional materials on how to use our needle products. It took a long time getting a camera location setup that would produce consistent shots - well sorta consistent any way. I got to learn a lot more about the software used in developing the website. I even had to ask the GoDaddy folks for help a couple of times. Not bad support and they all speak English.

Which is more than I can say for the PayPal and many other company's support folks. Between my limitations in talking and their limitations in listening and thinking, it can be a real frustrating experience.

Now that the website is done for now, I am working on our new product packaging. In the past, all our needles came in a 3/8" X 7" plastic tube. Now, we are keeping the 3/8" tube, but we got some much heavier ones that are more durable and we are adding a new 1" outer tube. In this larger outer tube, we can put 2 of the smaller tubes and a couple of pages of instructions. All of the dealers have wanted instructions since day one and everybody loves the little tube for long term use, so we now have both. All I have to do now is to develop the instructions and labels and other collateral materials.

We are getting our first sample of the new machine made needles tomorrow. If they are all good, we will have our first large shipment of them before Christmas. As soon as we have them, we are going to be contacting a lot more dealer prospects out there.

This is amazing. In most situations, when you are cold calling, or emailing in this case, new dealers and have an established competition in your field, you might get a 20 or 30% response rate and you would probably close 10% of the ones that did respond. So far, we have closed every dealer we have contracted. Its almost weird to me after having so much frustration in all past such attempts. I have been trying to find 'the product' for years, and this all happened out of a real comedy of errors that just all came together.

So, for all you business "want-to-be's", there are niche product opportunities out there, you just have to find an area that is not being serviced well by the existing vendors, or have something that nobody else has and the customers want. We found this from my fishing hobby, but I am sure there are a lot of similar opportunities in most areas that have a following of potential customers. If I would have been searching for a potential business opportunity, I would have probably went right past it without even giving it a thought, as it didn't fit my 'parameters' at all.

Lately, when realizing that we have a good business growing here, I have thought about expanding it to other markets and products. And, I have the same issues and problems that I have always had in my search. I guess if another opportunity comes around, it will just happen like this one did...

The main thing is to find something that you can start with a minimum of money investment, and let is prove itself as it grows. So many folks will throw their savings into a concept before it has been proven to be viable and really something that they want to even do.

Well, that's all of the Business 101 class for today...

Also, besides all the business stuff I have been doing, we finally got the patio wind wall and gate finished. I had a guy on my pool league team that works on race cars and all sorts of welding. So, I had him make our new gate. The patio company built a 7' X 45" panel of the material they are using for the wind wall. So we built a steel frame gate that would attach to the panel and it turned out great. Gates can really be a problem to build and last long term, but this one is a real first class job.

My pool has been mediocre lately. I haven't had time to do any practicing and it has shown. I did get one more break and run out against one of the best players in the league, which really irritated him. I am now down to about 24th in the standings out of over one hundred players. It is time to get serious about it...

On December 2nd, I am having a little surgery. If all goes well, I will only have to stay in the hospital overnight, so its not too bad. I have an aortic aneurysm. The blood coming out of your heart, goes down, toward your feet, in this artery. Around the area of your belly button, it splits into the two main arteries that go to your legs. Aortic is the name of the artery and aneurysm is what a bulge in an artery is called.

Right at that juncture, the artery walls are bulging and would burst in another year or two's time. So, the doctor is going to put in this stent that looks like a little pair of 'designer' pants about 6" high. They must be designer because he said they cost $ 10,000... One of the legs comes off of the pants. So, they go in through the leg arteries around the groin and in one side put in the pants stent with only one leg. Then, on the other leg artery, they put in the attach the other leg of the stent. Then they somehow attach them so they don't move around. From then on, all of the blood is run through the stint so there is no pressure on the bulging artery walls. If all goes well, that will be it.

This has bothered me ever since I have known about it, about 2 years ago. If this aneurysm would happen to burst, you will bleed out in about 5 seconds - due to the pressure of the blood going through there.

Well, that is about all that I can think of worth writing about now. The weather keeps getting colder and colder, with a very few stints of warmth now and then here in DaHo...

Ho'lloween...

2008-11-03T12:27:00.000-08:00

Well, we survived another gruelling ho'lloween. After Pam put out a bunch of stuff for the big event, we had a total of 4 ho'lloweenies. This year we gave out those glow in the dark tubes that kids can use as bracelets or whatever. I was playing with one of them, with Felix and he bit into it. It leaked onto the carpet and it was glowing orange for hours. Pretty weird stuff...

Speaking of wienies, as we were driving to Storm and Jenny's party, we got passed by the Oscar Meyer Weinnermobile - right here in DaHo. Wow, I haven't seen it since I was a kid. I think it was way-lost or on vacation or something...

The computer in the bedroom fried, so I replaced the motherboard, memory and video card. Then, I couldn't get any video card to work on it - it would BSOD with a BIOS problem - so in order to use the onboard video, we had to buy a new TV set. We found a nice and cheap Westinghouse 32" LCD one at Costco for $ 399. The old 35" tube set works great but didn't have a PC input on it. Anyway, after a couple days of frustration and cursing, I finally got it all working and its a much better setup than it was - so that is good.

The business is going well. I think we have finally found a vendor to do the needles, but time will tell. We are suppose to be getting some samples from them soon, so we can tell a lot more about it then.

I have re-done the website. I was even able to figure out how to change the main picture on the banner to a picture of the local Perrine Bridge. We got rid of the store part and added a lot more stuff about our products and where to get them. If you are really bored, you can check it out at www.DaHoProducts.com.

My pool playing has been sucking lately. I have only gotten about 30 in the last couple of weeks. I almost lost all four games last week. That would have been a first. In all the years that I have been playing in leagues, I have never lost all my games in a night - or at least that I can remember...

They have turned off the sprinklers and blew them out for the winter. Its getting colder and our longest season is about to start - O'boy, O'boy...

The Kalifornia Marriage Trip...

2008-10-18T08:23:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, we went to Lake Tahoe for Pam's son Bobby's wedding to Jackie. We haven't driven to northern Kalifornia for years. We started off very early on Friday morning. Pam slept during the first part of the trip. As we entered into Nevada, the temps kept dropping. The lowest temperature I noticed on the car's thermometer was 10 deg. Then, during the next 8 hours or so that it took to get there, the weather went from nice, but cold, to blizzard conditions - about 10 times...

It was really weird. The sky would be clear and off in the distance you could see very dark clouds. When you hit them, it would start snowing and continue to get worse until you could barley drive, having to drop speeds down to 30 mph or so, then after a few minutes of that, it would clear up to an open sky again. This happened over and over.

The last, and worse, mini-blizzard was when we were going through Reno, at about 1pm in the afternoon, just before going up the very high mountain pass and into California. It was so bad, and the traffic was so messed up, that I seriously considered getting off of the freeway and finding a rental car place and swapping the Lincoln LS for a 4 wheel drive 'mountain car'. It was just crazy and I figured that it would only get worse as we went higher up the mountains.

We didn't have any chains in the car. I had carried them in both cars for all of the time we have lived here in DaHo, until last year. I had bought new chains for all drive wheels, one set for the Lincoln and two sets for the Jeep from Costco when we arrived in DaHo. I finally had to use them on Pam's Lincoln last year during a really nasty storm, so she could get down the driveway and to work at Dell, about 2 miles away. On the way home, while on the bridge, one of the chains broke and she had to stop and fix it. She wasn't real happy about that, and either was I as those were suppose to be good chains and having a major problem with them after 3 miles on snow at slow speeds is just not right. So, I ended up taking all the chains back to Costco, but, now back to the story...

We decided to go on from Reno, as there were no road closure reports on the radio, at least to Boomtown, which is the first big casino close to the Cal/Nev line, about 20 miles after Reno. When we got there the weather had cleared up a lot. Speaking about Boomtown, wow, it has boomed. They now have a new Cabelas store there, which is a BIG deal in such a little location. I asked some of the gas station attendants about the weather and they had no comment - a standard policy there I guess. So we continued up the mountain.

The weather cleared up as we went higher, which is usually not the case in such circumstances. We drove all the way to Lake Tahoe with little problem, except for one other little mini-blizzard along the way. After finding the hotel, which was a real challenge, I rested while Pam checked on the family that was there. After an hour or so, we went and had dinner with her daughter Jaz, husband Brad, and the Shadow, who had cut his thumb badly and had it all bandaged up. We ate at the Hard Rock Cafe in Harveys and gambled a little, but left early to recover from the long trip.

By the middle of the morning the wedding party were arriving for the 4pm wedding. We were getting ready and meeting and greeting the other wedding guests, many of which we didn't know before, while we all waited for Bobby and Jackie to arrive. Which finally happened about 3:45pm...

While they were getting dressed for the wedding, Pam and Jaz kept their little son Joshua busy. He sure is a little cutie...

After everybody finally got ready to go, we were late and had to meet the Pastor in a parking lot. The original idea was to have the wedding outside, but it was too cold and the pastor got us into a local wedding chapel for the blessed event.

We finally got our turn to go in and when it all started, and the I-Dos were being said, Bobby passed out cold. I guess it was the high altitude or something...

He finally got revived in the cold outside, and the ceremony was completed. While we were just wrapping it all up, the next group were all standing outside in the cold and quite upset about having to wait for us.

Anyway, it all went great. After that, we all went to the Harrah's Buffet for a wedding dinner. It was up on top of the casino/hotel and had quite a view. The food was some of the best buffet food I have ever had. It was a great dinner and after wedding festivities. I was not feeling too good as my lower back was killing me. I guess the shot I got before Oliver was here in August had finally worn off, along with the 10 hour white knuckle drive through all the mini-blizzards.

Here is a picture of the newlyweds opening up our wedding present...

Bobby still has his shirt off from the recovery of fainting at the ceremony.

Because of my back, we left a little early and went back to the hotel. After a good nights rest, we left early in the morning for the relatively uneventful, but long, trip home.

One thing that really impressed me about the stay there at Lake Tahoe was all the political ads on TV. About 90 percent of all the ads on TV were either Obama or McCaine - over and over and over. Here in DaHo, we hardly ever see any national political ads. Everybody already knows how DaHo votes and don't bother to spend any money to try and change us...

I guess the storm that we drove through going to the wedding on Friday, really did some 'damage' here in DaHo. Our friend, Storm, called and said he had gotten 16" of snow on Friday at his place which is about 30 miles from our house. At the house, I hear we got about 3", but it was all gone when we got back.

The business is still going crazy. While we were gone on our 3 day weekend to Tahoe, we had orders for 80 more needles from our dealers.We are ordering a lot more 'parts' to build up our inventory so we can support adding on more dealers. There is always a lot to do which consumes all available time and more.

On this Tuesday, I did get another back shot to stop the pain and so far its doing OK. I guess we will see how it all goes as time progresses. I have now had 5 shots and only the August one really found the right spot and resolved all symptoms.

I did play pool in my new league. Another sorta OK night. I ended up sinking the 8-ball on my second shot in one game and got a 1 for the game which brought my nightly total down to 29 after another loss that wasn't my fault. I almost ran another table, but didn't. So, I still have three table runs in 4 weeks of play, which is the highest in the league so far. We had to play in a little bar our of town and it was so hot and muggy that I really couldn't breath at all.

We wish Bobby and Jackie all the best in their new life together. Well, that is about all I can think of that has happened here in DaHo...

It's Just Before Winter here in DaHo...

2008-10-05T07:46:00.000-07:00

The season has changed here in DaHo. There have been quite a few storms passing through and the weatherman is talking about snow starting in the local mountains, so we are in a new weather season. We experience all four seasons here - Just Before Winter, Winter, Just After Winter and Road Repair...

The business is still going great. We just finished updating the web site will all sorts of new stuff, so if you are really board, check it out at http://www.dahoproducts.com/. We are now going after a lot of new dealers since our new products are out and getting rave reviews. Here is a picture of them:

They are sort of hard to see here, but they have a latch mechanism on them that can be opened. To folks that work with hollow spectra fishing lines, they are a big deal.

We are having a very difficult time finding some company to machine make our needles. They don't seem to be able to duplicate our hand done processes very well. We have even been talking to folks in China and India, but due to the communications gap and neither side trusting the other about delivery and payment, I don't know how far all that will go. I guess the usual way to do business over there is to either have a representative over there to inspect the goods before they are paid for and shipped, or you are big enough to hire and train a local 'inspection company' to provide that function for you. And, since we are not Walmart, I don't think this is going to work too well, but we are still looking...

My pool playing was sort of sucking this week. I ended up only winning two of my four games and only got 31 points out of 40. I started out in 32nd place, then went to 5th, and am probably back to 20th or so after that performance. O well, I will do better next week.

This weekend, we have Maudie here with us. She is Storm and Jenny's seven year old daughter. Pam and her made camel apples from scratch last afternoon and then last night we all went to see a movie. I was going to see one I wanted to see, but got talked into staying with them and we say Beverly Hills Chihuahua. It was real special...

We watched the Vice Presidential debate and that was quite good. Sarah did very well. It will be interesting how she does if they do win. I cannot believe how much ribbing she gets by the media. If they win, Tina Fay will have a new job as she is a dead ringer for her.

The new financial bailout shows exactly how congress works. As soon as it had enough extra crap in it to please enough people, then it passed. I wonder who is going to pay for all this crap when it comes due?

Well, I think that is about all that has happened worth note here in DaHo...

New Patio and all the Usual Happenings...

2008-09-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

First, sorry for not writing sooner. We have been very busy with all sorts of stuff. The first big and new thing is our new Patio. A few weeks ago, we went to the Twin Falls County Fair and ran across these folks selling Patio Covers and all sorts of other stuff. I am not usually one to get 'involved' in such sales 'opportunities' but we had been thinking about making the outside patio area a usable space for some time now. We had a local guy give us a bid to do it in wood, but with all the increases in the price of wood and the gas to transport it, the price was just too high and we didn't do it. Plus, we have both had way too much wood to take care of in previous places and are trying to have fewer things that require maintenance in our lives.

Anyway, we got a great deal on this new patio cover. Its made out of steel and aluminum, is guaranteed for life and winds up to 120mph - which is good enough for here. There is also going to be a 'privacy wall' on the far side in the pictures below, that has yet to be put up. We are trying to decide how high to make it so it will control some of the 'usual' wind without being completely blocking the whole side. Below is the first picture that was taken THE day it was installed. The reason that THE is all caps is to point out that it was all installed in one day. Two workers came about 9:30am and were done by 3:00pm. And, they did a great job. Its got a full roof with 6 skylights, a drainage system and will have electrical wiring for two ceiling fans. It looks like it was part of the house and we just love it.

Then, after it was installed, we got to thinking that we would wait to get furniture and stuff for it until next year, but got to thinking that right now was a great time to buy such things as most stores were clearing out all the outdoor stuff for snow blowers and other winter things. So, we checked out a few stores and ended up getting a great outdoor table set with 6 chairs and a very nice self contained outdoor gas fireplace. It really puts out a lot of heat and will make the whole outdoor area usable for a longer period of time. We were able to get over 1/2 off on the furniture and fireplace. There is a night picture of the patio, with the additions below...

Besides all the time spent dealing with the patio, the business continues to go crazy. We are picking up more and more dealers and business partners. We have also included three new products. A new threading needle for smaller 50# lines and two Reverse Latch Needles, that are a combination of one of our threading needles and a latch mechanism build for knitting machines. Latch needles have been used to work with lines for some time, but to incorporate our needle and the latch mechanism into one tool is unique and should go over very well in the marketplace. It was actually a design given to us by Jerry Brown, a manufacturer of the hollow spectra lines that all our tools work with. He has been wanting someone to build it for some time so his customers would have better tools to use with his line. So, thanks to Jerry for that gift - its a true win-win type of situation.

I started playing in a new pool league. My friend Storm is on my team again. Its an 8-ball league and lasts throughout the winter. Our first match was last Thursday. You can get a top score of 40 points if you win all 4 games. I lost the first game and ended up with only 35 points. Storm got 37 points, because he lost one also but put all 7 of his balls in to my 5 balls. But, the really good news was that out of my four games, I had two table runs - where I ran all my balls, and the 8 ball, to win the game in one inning. I think I only had 10 table runs all last year, which was one of the highest in the league. We shall have to see how it goes as time goes on.

My oldest son, Aaron's birthday is today. He is now 41 years old. They are expecting their second little girl in a month or so. Boy, he is really old. Happy Birthday Aaron and have many more...

Well, I have lots to do and little time to do it all in lately, so I will quit for now. It's a real hectic time lately here in DaHo...

Business and more Business...

2008-09-08T09:33:00.000-07:00

We had a major hollow spectra line manufacturer want us to handle all their needle business for them. If that does come together, that will be a very large deal. And, there are a lot more opportunities out there. So, I have been tracking down and working with some manufacturers that make mostly medical parts to start making our needles in mass. We will probably be buying 500 or 1,000 of each needle in the initial order.

That way, if I just happened to get ran over by a big Sturgeon, Pam will be able to deal with the business. It would be a standard distribution business at that point that anybody, with basic training could do. Any locals could be trained to do most of the work.

Also, I didn't know that our 'special hand-made needles' could be made by a machine. I was actually searching for another vendor for our needle parts and just sort of ran into what they could do.

Our current supplier for the hypodermic tubing we use for the needles, was bought by Amazon and they are converting over their website and computer systems and they cannot get anything out until its all done. They do a lot of make to order parts and the Amazon system can only deal with ready to ship items. Anyway, its a big mess and I really need those parts when I need them.

I got some new tools that really help making the current hand-make needles much easier. So, we will just have to see how this whole machine made stuff works out. The main issue is the costs at this point.

I did go play pool on Wednesday at the weekly 8-ball handicap tournament. I didn't play well and got beat early, so I was back home early. This really good new player, Ben, in town was showing me some stuff before it started and I couldn't get it all working right during the tournament at all. But, the really good news is that my back is doing very good. I haven't had any issue with it hurting while playing pool at all.

Ben is leaving for Florida this week. He says that there just isn't enough large pool halls for him to keep 'busy'. When I first met him, I asked him what he did and he said that all he did was play pool... He is real good, but I hate to see him go as you only learn from those better than you are, usually.

Last night we went to a going away party at the pool hall. One of the waitresses there, Sherry, is leaving for Wyoming. She was the first person I met in Idaho - after Pam's mom. We tracked down the local pool hall out of the phonebook and stopped by for lunch and started talking to her. She has always been a great person and she will be missed by all around here.

Pam and I went to see Tropic Thunder at the movies. That is really a great film. We would highly recommend it. Then, Pam went to see Mama Mia. I wouldn't go with her, so she took Roman, our 7 yr old nephew.

We went to the big county fair last week. It was just as good/bad as last year, depending on what you thought of it then. We really didn't do much but have some of the fair food delicacies and checked out the RVs and trailers, and cruse through the vendor booths. We did check out the booth that was selling these really nice aluminum patio covers. We had them come out to measure it all and show us all the options. So, we ended up getting one. We have been pondering on getting one for a few months. We had one of our local neighbors, who does such things, give up a quote on building one out of wood, but with the price of wood these days, it was just too expensive and I have had a lot of wood in my day and its always in need of something or it will get cracked and old. These metal units are guaranteed for life and will withstand 120mph winds, so that should be good for here. They are coming in a week or so to install it. I understand it will only take them a day to put it up, as they are mostly made off site and modularly put up. We are going to put up a 'privacy' wall, here we call it a 'wind' wall, that will hopefully block some of the wind and will allow us to have some nice outdoor furniture so we can really use that area for once.

Well, that is about all that is going on here in DaHo for now...

Business and Pleasure...

2008-08-26T08:41:00.000-07:00

On the pleasure side, Grandson Oliver came to visit last week. We picked him up at Boise Saturday afternoon and went straight to the Speedway to see the weekly races. After all the real races were over, they had their famous Trailer Race of Destruction - which has been chronicled here before in the past. It is quite a spectacle to see and Oliver was impressed. Then, on Sunday, we went to Canyon Crest for brunch and spend the day packing up the Jeep for a camping trip to Bliss - not a feeling - a location...

We spend three days in Bliss (see above) and didn't see any other humans while we were down there. We did see one truck for a second, but then it was gone. We went down to catch a few Big Ones, and in all three days of mostly full time fishing, we only caught one 6 foot fish. They were doing a 'flush' of the river to help the migrating Salmon far upstream and I guess it was bothering all the local fish, or making the water dirty or something. The one big fish we caught was a real fighter. I started with him because he was on my 'special' reel that no one else knows how to use right, but after I felt how much of a fighter he was, I handed it over to Oliver and put a safety line on the rod. Oliver said he almost had to let go of the rod because of the fish's hard pull, but he was able to keep hold if it and brought him in after a while. As I said, that was the only fish we caught there, but he was a good one and a good time was had by all.

The camping was great. We have been adding a lot of new equipment and it really makes it a lot nicer when you have the right hardware. The only problem we had was with our air mattress air pump. It wouldn't work, and after I couldn't get it to work, Oliver and I went to a local town to get another one and by the time we got back, Pam had the old one working - Grumble, Grumble... I guess she used some of her Dell Troubleshooting powers on it or something.

Speaking of Pam, she was just great all the time we were camping. She did a lot of reading while Oliver and I were fishing and fixed all the great meals. We did not want for anything in the food department and it was always done and done very well. Pam was hoping to catch another big fish also, but it just wasn't meant to be this time.

We took the little Honda Minibike with us on the camping trip and it was used by all. I rode it to search for new places to fish on roads that I couldn't get the Jeep over. Well, I didn't do too well with the minibike either. I ended up dumping it three times and broke the brake lever before I finally got it back to camp - Nasty roads...

We finally wrapped up the camping trip on Wednesday and got it all home and unpacked. We were all a little parched as it was 104 deg the first day of camping. We spent the next day recovering and watching all the stored up Olympics TV shows.

Then, on Friday, Oliver and I went fishing again in Hagerman. They have trout and even a few smaller sturgeon in their stream. Oliver did some fly fishing and I went for the Sturgeon. I use much lighter tackle for these smaller fish and we ended up catching a 3'er and a 4'er. We also caught some trout with a large golden trout being the trout prize. I had been trying to catch one of them all day, in my spare time. The water where we were dumps into a large stream and there is a hole there where a bunch of these golden trout wait for 'treats' to come down into the hole. I could see them chase and look at all the lures I was throwing all day. I finally got one to bite a big fly - after about 4 hours of trying.

Then, on Saturday, we again went back to the Speedway. This time they were having another special - The School Bus Race. It was different this year. Usually, they have a bus with a guy in the back shooting paint balls and throwing eggs at 2 or 3 cars trying to turn it over. This time, they just had three school buses racing and trying to turn each other over. But, before they turned them over, they let all the kids there watching the races, ride in them a few laps. Big School Bus Fun...

Sunday, we had a good meal and went home and watched a movie we had got a few days before. It was the National Treasure 2. Oliver had seen it on the plane coming back from Switzerland and recommended it. We were really into the movie and I looked up and it was 3:20. We would have to leave at 3:30 to get him to the airport. Luckily, the movie wrapped up and we were out the door in a matter of moments. Luckily, Oliver was already packed and ready to go. He now has his license and drove us to the airport in plenty of time.

It was a great trip, but just way too short. Oliver is a great young man, as he always has been. A lot of kids start having 'issues' when they get older, but Oliver has always been one of the best - Period.

O, ya, Business... Well, we picked up another great distributor and are working with a large hollow spectra line manufacturer and a large fishing party boat service down in San Diego, so all is going better than expected. It just seems that there is a constant need to expand our capabilities and perception of the business. More on it later as I have got to get back on it...

Well, that is about all that is going on here in DaHo...

Lots of Happenings and Blue Angles...

2008-08-10T16:26:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not writing for a while. There has been a lot happening around here. Last week, there was a big annual air show at the local Twin Falls airport. There were about 25,000 people a day watching the Blue Angels perform. They aren't quite like they use to be when I use to see them in San Francisco a few years ago, but they were still exciting. Here is a picture of one of them...

There has been lots happening in the DaHo Products business that has been keeping us real busy. We have acquired a new distributor from the old homeland, in Huntington Beach, California. We have also been getting a lot of new sales, from both distributors and the web site. We also have developed a new very small loop splicing needle that has required tracking down new tools to be able to work on them. There is nothing like them on the market and they are going over well. They are only .025" in overall size and the stainless steel wire used for the loop on the end is only .004". It will go right into your fingers if you let it...

Besides all the new business stuff, I have played in a couple of weekly tournaments and won one. My back as been bothering me a lot and I have had two more shots in it this last month. It seems when my back is good, I play well, and when its bad, so is my pool. Right now its good, but I don't have much time to play much.

I haven't been fishing yet. Between the weather and my 'work' schedule, I haven't had a chance, but grandson Oliver is coming next weekend for a week, so we will be fishing a lot then. Pam has taken some days off of work, so we will probably camp for a couple of days and fish.

We have been working on the Estate grounds in our spare time. Well, actually, we are having other folks work on it, but it takes time and energy to keep track of it all. We have to get it all sprayed now that its under control if we can ever get a good day with no wind.

I am becoming a mechanic on Pam's helicopter in my spare time. It seems to break often and I am replacing some of the stock parts with 'upgrades' as needed. I think we are both getting the hang of it as time goes on.

Pam had a big dinner party for a few of her work friends. She prepared Beef Wellington to son Aarons 'recipe' and it turned out just wonderful. It was the best dinner party we have had, I think.

Our time has been full of lots of little things. Now, with the Olympics on, we are watching them when we can. Those opening ceremonies were pretty amazing, huh?

Well, that is about all I can think of that is worth writing about here in DaHo...

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

2008-07-20T09:11:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-07-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-07-04T08:48:00.000-07:00

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...

Great Dell Family Day and New Visitors Coming...

2008-06-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

The Dell Family Day turned out great. The weather was fabulous and there were lots of Dell families there to enjoy all the fun. There were carnival type games, three different types of blow-up jumping things, great food, tattoos, Bingo, cotton candy, a Magician and many other things I cannot remember. And, if anyone got bored with all that, there was the lake to swim and dive in. Pam did a great job of pulling it all together, even after being sick with the flu and out of work for the two weeks before the big event.

She had a very hard time getting Dell employees to volunteer to help out for the event. But, Pam's daughter Jaz and her husband Brad flew in from the SF Bay area to help and they did a great job. Jaz did tattoos for a while and then took over the Bingo calling. Brad spent the whole day doing tattoos. The tattoo booth was busy the whole day long with many folks getting them everywhere they could. I also helped with all the work that needed to be done to make it a great event.

Before the big event, we took Brad and Jaz out to eat at the new Canyon Crest restaurant with their great canyon views and afterward the event took them to Johnny Carinos. Both were great places to eat and we had big fun during their very short weekend visit.

I ended up playing pool this Wednesday - the first time in three weeks. I was rusty and didn't do very well and was home by 8:30. I will have better luck next time...

We are expecting new visitors this Sunday. Nephew Michael and his wife Susan are flying in for a few days before they go to Montana to visit Susan's family. This will be their first time here and we are planning on catching a few big ones and showing them all the attractions here in Twin Falls. It will be great seeing them. They adopted two children in the past few years and have been pretty tied down enjoying their new family life.

I also wanted to say that the email I sent out of the news cast featuring me as a new darkhorse presidential candidate was a hoax. I know it looked real and all, but it was just an Internet funny. It was sent to me by Mike Miller in Kalifornia and I sent it out, getting a lot of feedback about whether or not it was real...

Well, I am still recovering from the ravages of the flu and upgrading computers and building my needle inventory. I also finally fixed the outdoor fountain after many unsuccessful attempts. I just couldn't find the right repair materials until this last time, I hope.

I must go now, as I have a lot of campaign stops to make before the weekend here in DaHo...

Recovery from the Flu and The Dell Family Day...

2008-06-19T08:17:00.000-07:00

Pam has fully recovered from the Flu and has been back at work all week. She comes home pretty tired, but all is well. She is in charge of the Dell Family Day Picnic this year. It is being held at Dierkes Lake this year. Its a beautiful little lake that has public swimming, lots of grass and trees, nice facilities and lots of parking. It should be a great place for the event. Pam has been going crazy trying to get enough of her fellow Dell'ites to volunteer to help with and staff all the activities that she has put together.

I, on the other hand, am still having flu fun. I didn't go to play pool again this week as I just couldn't make it. I am getting better now, but its been really nasty for way too long.

I finally did find some labels that will work on my needle tubes and they just came in last night. They are pretty expensive, compared to other labels, but they are also waterproof, which should be a feature since they are for fishing. And, I did get in my order for all the parts to build my base stock of 30 units of each product. I have been doing the prep work on them and letting them cure for the past few days while I am recovering.

We had all the carpets cleaned yesterday. They did a great job but the prices have really went up. The last time we had them done it was about $200 and this time it should have been over $330 but Pam talked them down to an even $300. The cats hid out while it was going on and were pretty irritated by the wet carpets all of last night.

Pam's daughter Jasmine and her husband Brad are flying in from the Bay Area this weekend to help out with the Dell Family Day event since Pam is having so much trouble finding local help. Plus I think Pam wants to show her off to the Dell folks.

Well, I have lots to do and not much strength to do it all with, so I must start working on the needles and removing all the little blue blocks from under everything in the house here in DaHo...

Flu and Crown Molding wrap up...

2008-06-11T08:17:00.000-07:00

We have both had the flu, or as the doctor calls it "The virus that is going around". Pam has had more symptoms than I have, with the almost constant coughing, congestion and head aches. I, on the other hand, don't have the intense symptoms she has had, I just feel bad. It has been going on for almost two weeks now.

The crown molding job is all done finally. All the painting, caulking and touch-up work is now completed. It really looks great. It is hard to visualize how it looked before. With the 10 foot ceilings we have, it really 'tops' it off...

I did go play pool last Wednesday in the 8-ball tournament. I wasn't feeling well and did horribly. I got beat twice and was home by 8pm.

I have been working on a couple of new distributors for my needles and that is going well. In my spare time I have been trying to find some new product packaging labels. The ones I was using from the little Brother label printer just are not sticking well. They keep coming loose from being wrapped around the 3/8" tubes we use for the needles. I have finally found some regular printer labels that seem to work. I had to get them longer though so they would overlap onto the other end of the label when on the tube. That overlap seems to be enough to keep them sticking and not coming loose. I have spent hours working on that little issue.

My next big challenge is making up a completed stock of our needles to have ready to fill orders. I plan on making up an inventory of about 30 units of each product so I could have someone else fill orders if we were on vacation or not able to do it ourselves.

Well, that is about all my flu riddled brain can handle right now here in DaHo...

Crown Molding, Credit Cards and a Brown Out...

2008-06-01T09:45:00.000-07:00

Well, the Crown Molding story consists of some of the worst and best news. The really bad news was that the camper folks that we had come down to do it didn't know anything about it, or working with numbers at all, and we spent a day figuring that out. So while I was at Home Depot getting more stuff, Pam worked out a costly deal with them and they went away. I was so glad to see them go as I was in very concerned that something really bad would happen before they left. This was another expensive lessen on how things that sound too good to be true, usually are...

The really good news is that our friend Storm came to our rescue and did the whole thing to two days, last Sunday and this Saturday. He works long hours in his real job and we are so grateful to him and his family for stepping up in our time of need and finding time in his schedule to get this done. And, he is a true expert at it. I am still amazed how he can figure out all the saw settings and measurements so accurately. It is quite a talent and he is one of the best. Our many thanks to him for his friendship and great work and too his family for putting up with this emergency.

Now, we have to finish it all up and do all the painting, but that is something we can handle. I really thought I could do the crown molding job after a few lessons and some observation, but its a lot more difficult that I expected - and with my lack of upper shoulder muscles on the right side, I have almost no stamina doing any type of overhead work.

On the business front, I have been learning about Internet marketing, meta tags, and setting up a merchant account so we can accept and process credit cards. All big fun and very time consuming stuff. We still have to get our first order online, so that should be 'exciting' when it happens...

I have started contacting other potential distributors of our products, and am working on gathering some new products to sell, from other sources, that complement our needles. The next step is to get this all going on EBay to help bring in more business and gain market exposure.

Pam has been sick for a few days. Some sort of nasty coughing chest congestion and generally feeling rotten. She went to the doctor and its not Strep, but it is real nasty whatever it is. I have also gotten a touch of it, but ever since becoming a Lary, I just don't get any of the head and lung issues that I always use to get. I just feel horrible and loose whatever strength I have left.

I did go down and play in the weekly 8-ball tournament that I won last week and got "Brown'ed Out". There is this couple that play often, the Browns. They are both very good. I started off playing Rodger Brown. He had to spot me six balls and ended up winning 30 to 9. I really only had one shot in the match, except for unfruitful break shots and he would run the table each time. So he took me out of the winners bracket. Then, I played a few other folks and beat them. But, then towards the end of the tournament, I had to play his wife, who's name escapes me right now, and I had to spot her six balls - Which would have been no problem usually. But, it just wasn't my time to beat her, I guess, and lost by a couple of points, taking me out of the losers bracket and the match. So, I was "Brown'ed Out" of both brackets and the tournament...

I figure we should be able to finish all the painting, caulking and touch-up work by next weekend and finally be able to put the house back together again with all the new crown molding, which will really look great when its all done. I must say that it has been one of the biggest hassles I have encountered in all of the remodeling stuff I have gotten involved with anywhere, but especially here in DaHo...

Weird How Stuff Happens...

2008-05-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, we met this nice young couple camping. They were part of the family that was camping all around us and all nice folks. Anyway, we got to know this one couple pretty well. He, Rob, is a painter by trade and she, Cristal, works in a Quest call center, so the 'girls' had lots of call center chatting to do...

Rob, also does crown moulding and guess what, we still need to get our crown moulding done. So, after a few phone calls, they are coming down here this weekend for the Memorial Day weekend and doing the crown moulding for us. We are supplying all the tools, materials, food and lodging, and they are going to install and paint it. I sincerely hope this works out well for all concerned...

We have been picking up more camping hardware. Costco is having this big camping act going on and we got a new camp kitchen from them. Actually, we also got one from Sportsmans, but after seeing the much smaller Costco Coleman unit, we are going with it instead.

Also, after not being able to get the Cabela's tent air conditioner, I went on-line to check on it and found out enough about it to be thankful that we didn't get one. The reviews I read about it were horrible. But, in the process of checking that one out, I tracked down another one that works sorta the same way but is cheaper and a much better design. In the Cablea's one you had to put ice cubes which would only last about 1 1/2 hours. It only held 2 lbs of ice. This other one is a plastic top that snaps into a 25 quart Igloo Marine ice chest and has a 12v fan in it. So, you fill the ice chest with ice, or the deal is you freeze a couple of 2ltr soft drink bottles and add more ice and gel packs as you have, and it is suppose to keep things cool for 8 hrs or so. It also works great for any confined space like a car, truck, trailer, boat, etc. - and it cost $39.95. I will let you know how it works, but I sure like the concept and design.

After my second back shot last week, I am feeling great. I played in the weekly 8 ball tournament Wednesday and ended up winning it. That was the first time I have played pool for months without my back killing me and it showed in my play.

O, speaking of back shots, I got the bill for these shots. The previous ones, where I have to go to the surgery center/hospital and have the IVs and all were about $2,500 each. These last ones done in the doctor's office were $600 and were a better deal all the way around. The doctor was taking more responsibility for his work as I have fewer folks to blame, if something went wrong I guess, but all the 'prep' and hassle of the 'operation' setup is just now needed and is pure CYA overkill, IMHO...

We had the guys that we met at the Mother's Day Brunch, he was our server, come out and start working on the 'estate grounds' this week before it got nasty out. They are starting a landscaping and maintenance business and I think we were one of their first customers. Anyway, they replaced the sprinkler lines for us so far and did a great job. When we had the whole place professionally landscaped 3 years ago, they put in about 500' of laser cut drip lines covering all of the front and back hill that the house is built on. Since there was only about 30 plants on the hills, most of the drip lines were watering the ever growing weeks that would cover the hills and look awful. So, I had them rip all that out and put in a system that would only water each of the plants that were out there. That way, we can also keep the weeks defined and terminated at will.

The garden is starting to do well and the seeds that were planted are starting to grow.

Well, Rob and Cristal are going to be here tonight and I have a tone of stuff to get done today to be ready for their arrival. So, I must get my yoga done and get to it here in DaHo...

Back from CJ Strike Camping/Fishing Trip...

2008-05-18T08:21:00.000-07:00

Well, the camping/fishing trip was good and bad... The park was very nice as I had written about before - except for not having any showers. There is this very large central bathroom building that I assumed had showers in it because it was so large, but nooooo. It had two regular sized bathrooms (3 stalls and 2 sinks) each. I found out that the central section, which was probably 10X20 feet in size was the physical plant room with all the water heaters, sprinkler controllers, etc.

When we got there all the good camping spaces were being watered by the automatic sprinklers. The place was sort of a lake when they finished so we couldn't setup camp until that all soaked in a lot. But, after a while, we got all the stuff out and setup the camp in a very nice spot with a tree and all. The bad news was that what I thought would be the best spot to fish from, and where we were able to camp at, was probably the worst fishing spot. After fishing for 2 full and one partial day, I ended up getting NO bites at all - Grumble, Grumble...

The place to fish is all the way at the other end of the park, by the output from the power plant turbines. There were a bunch of folks camped up there and were doing quite well. They use Crappy fish for bait as that is what is being output from the water turbines and what all the fish are waiting for to eat. So, you have to catch the crappy and then use them for the Sturgeon bait.

On the second day, after getting no fish action at all, I walked down to the other end of the campground and talked to a lot of folks down there. They were the serious fisherman that have gone there regularly for years and knew all about what to do and when.

I guess just before I had came by to 'visit' this one guy had just landed a 10 1/2 foot fish. Now, that is a serious fish. By the charts, its about 700 lbs in size... The group of 4 fisherman had caught 8 fish that day between 6 feet and the big one, but most in the 6-7 foot range - which is big fun. There were about 4 camps at the end of the campground there what were all into the 24 hr fishing thing with big spot lights all setup and all. It was quite a setup. If I had known what was going on, we could have camped quite close to the action and had a LOT more fishing fun than we did. But, it is definitely a lot nosier there by the turbines, so there are downsides to it - I guess - Grumble, Grumble...

We met a number of neighbor campers and had a general great time. We ended up about 50 yards from the bathroom and it gets real old getting there and back in the middle of the night, which I had to do 3-4 times each night - did I mention Grumble, Grumble? Well add a few more on for this one... I was having leg craps as well at night which made the getting dressed/bathroom trips sooo much more enjoyable...

The camp was really great. We are getting the new tent act down and it is really a nice one, as are the sleeping bags and other stuff we got last year for camping. I picked up a new ice chest that worked great for all the food. It has 3 slide in sections that you fill with water and freeze which partitions the size and really did a great job of keeping everything cold and well maintained. It took me over an hour to select the new ice chest. I went to Sportsman's Warehouse and they had sooo many to choose from. Each one of them had different features that were appealing, but none of them had enough to make it stand out. So, I went back and forth having three different ones in the cart at some time in the process - and the one I ultimately selected in it twice...

Another one, called an ATC for ALL Terrain Chest, had this wheel arrangement that snapped onto the unit and flipped around to the center or end of the chest, with blow up tires and all. It said it wasn't for highway use but it looked like it could be towed behind a little 4X4. I almost got it, as it was super to get around, but I am glad I got the one I did as the water filled dividers worked out great. We just stuck it on the little trailer hitch attached platform we have so it wasn't much of a hassle to deal with it.

Speaking of food, I must say we had great food. Pam did a wonderful job of cooking and preparation. I did most of the eating and cleanup. We had two great breakfasts, which would usually last me most of the day and a fabulous dinner consisting of Angus Rib Eye steak, great double baked Ho taters and garlic asparagus and garlic bread. I had mine in a skillet and it was one of best meals I can remember.

We packed up camp yesterday late morning/early afternoon and took a side trip home to Boise. I had seen that Cabelas was having this "Truck Load Parking Lot Giant Sale" at their Boise store so, since we were pretty close we decided to go there on the way home. They had this one item that I was really interested in. It was a tent air conditioner. The ad said that it would keep a tent 30 deg cooler for 30 hours on a set of 6 or 8 D cell batteries. That is my kind of 'roughing it'... So we drove there and they were sold out - Grumble, Grumble... And, there was no big truck in the parking lot or anything... I bitched about it to them and they said that some of the 'Bigger' stores were actually having a truck in the parking lot for show, but they didn't. Well, the ad sure had one... I was underwhelmed to say the least.

I also stopped by the Harbor Freight store while there. Its a tool store that has zillions of things and is a real trip to just walk around in. You find all sorts of stuff you have to have that you never knew existed before. Pam was not feeling well so I have to hurry up, which takes all the fun out of it, but I did get a couple of items I have needed for the needle making business.

Speaking of the needle making business, we have yet to get a real online order from it so all my work to keep it low key until after the trip worked perfectly. I hope my new task of now generating lots of online orders will work as well...

Well, my hands are really sore and this typing is getting painful. I have all sorts of minor nicks and pricks on them from camping and working with fishing stuff and those Crappy fish with their little needle sharp fins. So, I am done with this post. We had a great time camping and a horrible time fishing, but now we know what is going on and what we did wrong. So next time we will catch one of those 10 footers here in DaHo...

Mothers Day and Beyond...

2008-05-15T00:13:00.000-07:00

I took Pam to this new restaurant here in Twin Falls for a Mother's Day Brunch. It is right on the Snake River Canyon rim, overlooking the golf course and bridge in the background. It is one of the most amazing views I have seen. The place, Canyon Crest, is a brand new restaurant and convention center. It is head and shoulders above any other place I have seen in Idaho. We had a great brunch and a great waiter. He also has a landscaping and grounds maintenance business and is going to start doing some work for us here on the estate...

Early tomorrow, Pam and I are going camping for a few days, so if we don't answer, that is the reason. It is called Scout Park at the CJ Strike Reservoir. It's about 1/2 of the way to Boise from here. There is this big dam that has spillway on one side and then about 200 yards down, is the big power plant. In the middle is this park. The water comes out of both sides and all around the park. It is all grass with big trees and nice camp spots and a large, real, community bathroom with showers, flushing toilets and all that stuff. Not like the dirt holes we have camped at before. You can fish for sturgeon right off of the park. So, hopefully we can catch a big one or three. I stopped by there last year when I was coming back from visiting my doctors in Boise and its really nice.

The website is up and running. You can check it out at www.DaHoProducts.com. Now I have to figure out how to get it listed on all the search engines so other folks will know about it also. I need to add some educational materials to show how to use the needles and probably some related additional products to make it all work: glues and other little bits made by other folks.

I didn't want to get it too fired up yet as we were going on this trip and I am still waiting for delivery of my new packaging materials for the needles. I didn't want a bunch of orders before I had the new packaging, and so far I have been very successful in that endeavor...

I got another back shot Monday and it all seems good - so far. We shall see what all the camping fun does to it. Getting all the stuff down from the storage shelves and getting it all packed in the Jeep was quite an effort today.

We lost about half of the newly planted vegetable plants. Right after we planted them, it froze and did them in. So, we have to replace them with new ones and hope that the freezing is finally over.

Well, its late and I need to sleep, so that is about it from DaHo for now...

Finally - My First Fish for the Year...

2008-05-09T01:51:00.000-07:00

I went fishing today at Auger Falls. Its real close to home, but you need a boat to get there. My new local friend, Dennis, has a old, little flat bottomed boat with at 75HP Evenrude Jet outboard on it. Anyway, he hooked up with two fish and landed one.

I hooked and landed one, my first fish of the year, on my old Penn/Ugly Stik spinning rig. It was bigger than 6 feet and put up quite a fight. I had my gimble belt on and was standing in the boat most of the time during the fight, and most of the time the 12’ Ugly Stik rod tip was almost in the water. I really didn’t think they would bend that much – almost in half…

It took about 20 minutes, or so, to land it. We saw a number of large fish jump and roll during the day. It was real windy which usually slows fishing down, but I guess they are hungry from a long cold winter. I didn’t get any pics as I left my camera in my jacket pocket, in the Jeep, which I took off to put on my life vest. He picked me up at the local Scotts Access I have mentioned before. That minimizes my drive distance and boat ride time by a significant factor.

That was my first fish of the year and a real rush – yet again - Love It…

I did a lot of rock/steep bank climbing today and woke up with both feet/ankles/calves spasming. I was sleeping on my side, and I guess I had my calves crossed. Anyway, there is nothing like waking up to muscle spasms – especially mult-spasms in both legs…

I had another back shot last Monday and that is going fantastic. This one was done in my pain doctor’s office, instead of a hospital/surgery center. A much better and easier, and probably much cheaper, experience all the way around. I was in and out of there in 45 minutes. He used all the same electronic equipment to ensure proper placement and all. A great experience, for a back shot…

The spliced line worked great on the Penn spinning reel. On my last outing, I got it caught at DaHole an had to end up cutting off about 200-300’ of line. If it had been any other line, I would have had to replace the spool, but I just spliced a new top section of the spool, with my splicing needles and it was back to a full spool again. A splice is 100% strength and takes about 3-5 minutes to do and is real easy. You can also make 100% strength loops in the end of the line in a couple of minutes. I haven't hooked up a big fish on the new super-size Fin-Nor Offshore spinning reel yet, but sure do like the way it feels and works.

Well, my legs are calming down and I am tired… Tomorrow, I hope to finish the DaHo Products business web site and store. I also have to do my first mow job of the year. The grass is starting to grow like crazy again.It was a good Day in DaHo.

The Website is Almost Up...

2008-05-05T23:45:00.000-07:00

The past week or so has been very educational. I have been creating the web presence for DaHo Products. It should be published in a day or two. I have also almost got the web store up and running.

The technical part is the easy part. Its all the design, writing and entering all the information that goes on the web pages that is the hard part. But, rev 0.0.1 is about there...

I have all the orders done from my initial dealers. So, now it up to them, or the web presence to bring in more orders. Once I get the store up, I am planning on doing a large dealer acquisition program in my spare time. I just really don't know what the volume of customers is going to be at this point...

Pam and I also almost have the garden up and growing. Last weekend, we picked up a bunch of plants and got them planted, after I re-installed all the sprinkler lines and all the 'fun' stuff. Then, tonight, Pam did a bunch of seed planting. So, we should have good garden bounty in a while.

I would have been out there also, but got another back shot today. This was at my sorta new pain doctor's office and was a lot less formal that the other ones I had last year. Instead of having to go to a hospital or 'surgery center', this was done in his office. He has all the necessary equipment there and it was a lot simpler all the way around. We shall have to see how the results end up, but it sure seemed to be the same thing as before with a LOT less hassle.

It has turned warm, er very warm, here in DaHo. The grass is growing and its about time to get the old lawn tractor fired up and hacking at it.

I picked up another 500GB disk for the Home Server. I finally figured out how to 'merge' the recorded TV folders on the three local recording Media Center machines with the Home Server. The end result is going to be much better all the way around, but it requires a number of bits of software to get it all together the way I want it all.

My pool has really sucked as my back has been killing me when I play. Hopefully, the shot today will resolve most of that problem. The big local annual tournament was last weekend here in Twin Falls. It draws players from all over the country. I went down and watched a couple of times - Pretty amazing stuff. The interesting thing is that I didn't see one thing happen that I haven't done a hundred times in the past. I was on top of all the logic being used and all the details. The only difference between me and the best players there is just consistency. They don't make any mistakes. They always have the cue balls in the right place on the table and always make the shots - something that I have never been able to do consistently. I have almost been there a couple of times, but just never made the commitment to dedicate myself to making it happen. I always had some other aspect of my life that needed to happen first...

They just opened a grand new convention center and restaurant complex on the Canyon Rim. It is suppose to be quite a place. For their first big event, they are having a Mother's Day Brunch and we are going to check it out.

I haven't had time to do much fishing. I have only been once in three months for an afternoon. I got a bunch of bites, but the bait was old and I didn't get any hookups. I am going out with a friend in his boat this Thursday and should have some good news to report. I am going to hopefully break in my new spinning rig that I spend the winter building. But, the weather is right and fishing is starting. Its just pretty crazy to drive where I use to always go with the gas prices as they are these days. I am planning on going to the local place a lot more this year. It doesn't have quite as big of fish there, so far, but is a lot easier and cheaper to get to.

This guy, who was one of the electricians that built DaHouse. He said his father and friend went down by Hagerman a couple of weeks ago and caught a 9 1/2 footer. He said it took them all day to bring it in, taking turns when one of them got tired. That is a serious fish - about 500# or so...

Well, I am feeling sleepy again, so I am off to bed again. I just wanted to get an entry posted here as its been a while and I have been meaning to get it done. But, this web design and building stuff has consumed me. I will post a link to the web site here in a day or three. Until then, I hope everybody is well and happy with their lives...

DaHo Products.com...

2008-04-20T23:46:00.000-07:00

We how have our official new business name, bank account, accounting system, PayPal account, domain name and soon to be developed web presence - Welcome to DaHo Products...

That stuff is just the big stuff. We also have the product packaging, product labels, inventory in place, shipping materials and online postage generation systems, a couple of gyrations of tools and development technologies - the list just goes on and on...

Then, over the past few days I developed 3 new companion products, developed prototypes and sent them off to review and acceptance.

We also had our first big product order from one of our new distributors for 60 needles which have been made and delivered - right in the middle of getting all the stuff to make and package and invoice and shipping and mailing them.

The good news is that they were well received and are up on his website. So, we shall see how that goes in terms of volume of sales he generates.

So, now that I have the 'technique' down and have figured out most of the production issues, they can be made in higher volume than I first anticipated.

As part of getting my domain, I get this web site hosting service. So, I am checking out putting together a combination web site to present product info and usage documentation as well as probably setting up a web store for direct purchases. My ideal would be that all my sales would be wholesale to my dealers and distributors, but we shall just have to see how that goes. I really don't want to compete with my dealer/distributor network directly if possible, but if that doesn't produce enough volume, at least up front, the direct store or ebay sales will probably happen.

Friday, Pam stayed home from work and we were planning on going camping and try to get a big one or three. But, the weather was bad and we decided to stay home. They came and turned on our sprinkler systems last week, so it was time to get the garden started. We didn't get it started last year, and ended up not having one which we both weren't happy about. Anyway, we borrowed our neighbor's Mantis roto-tiller. It's a little gas powered one that is about a foot wide and goes about 8 inches deep. Our garden is about 15 feet by 25 feet, or less, and did it all, including mixing in 10 bags of fertilizer and compost and getting it all prepped for planting. It took us about 4 hours of heavy work and we have been recovering from it ever since. Even with all my Yoga, this thing kicked our butts. Ouch - and I am sure Pam would say the same about it...

In my spare time, I have been trying to recover upgrading a new CPU into the Guestsuite eMachine computer. With the Vista OS and Media Center, such a radical hardware change screws up all the new DRM (Digital Rights Management) crap, and I do mean real crap to read about sometime you really want to get mad, and none of the media recording or playing hardware/software would work. So, after hours of messing with it and researching the problem on the Internet, I was able to get it all running and its running well.

It snowed here again last night a little, so I am glad we didn't go camping for sure. We had other bad weather that would have sucked if camping, but snow and freezing cold wind would have been way over the edge, IMHO...

My pool game has sucked as my back starts hurting most times I play for more than an hour or so. That really is bad, as throughout all this medical crap, the one thing that I could usually do was play pool. But, right now that is the one thing that really is bothering my back... Grumble, Grumble... ... ...

Today was the John Adams marathon on HBO, so we watched the whole thing. What an event. I just finished it and wasn't mentally tired, just physically sore, and got back up and started writing here.

Pam made this totally awesome lamb rack dinner tonight. It was one of her usual great meals...

Grandson Oliver's 16th birthday is tomorrow. He called tonight and all is doing well. He is such a great young man. We cannot wait for him to come and visit for a while this summer again. He and Pam both caught a large 6'er while camping here at DaHole last year.

Well, its late and that is all that is happening here in DaHo...

Business 101...

2008-04-07T10:32:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not posting for a while. I have been working on starting up a little online business that I have discussed before. It is basically manufacturing and selling little needles used to threading monofilament fishing line into hollow spectra fishing line. I won't go into all the 'details' of why these are needed, but I think there is a little niche market for them and it gives me something to do besides fish, upgrade computers, and housework.

I have setup the books on Quickbooks for the enterprise. Speaking of Quickbooks, you can get a free version of the software, called Quickbooks Simple Start 2008, at their website for free. It doesn't import anything into it, it is designed for those just starting up, and has some other limitations, but is perfect for my needs. Anyway, I have setup the books in Quickbooks. I have also started printing shipping and postage labels, via PayPal, with our little Brother QL-500 label printer - which is very cool. I have tracked down the packaging materials I need for the products and developed the labels and product materials and gathered all the parts and materials I need to produce the products.

It took me a while to figure out how to make them easily and correctly, but after much trial and error, I have it pretty much figured out at this point and they are better, cheaper and more usable than the other commercially available products out there.

I am making 6 different sizes of the needles using medical grade stainless steel hypodermic tubing and have built and sent 3 sets of product samples for potential distributors. So, we shall see how they go over. Either they will be ordering more product from me or I will be starting up an Ebay store to sell them.

Anyway, that is what I have been up to and why I have not been writting blog entries as often...

We went to Pam's Top Performers banquet at Dell last week. It was pretty underwhelming IMHO. The theme was "March Madness" to go along with all the college basketball frenzy. They had these arcade type basketball throwing games and had contests that were all disasters, again IMHO. Also, they didn't have an open bar this time, I heard the hall staff called in sick or something, so that reduced the overall fun, as usually people get more 'active' with liquor at such events...

I haven't been fishing forever. On the days I have available to go, the weather has been crappy...

Pool hasn't been going to well either. Last week, I went to play in the tournaments and both of them were cancelled due to lack of players. I guess everybody is still recovering from the league playoffs. But, they should show up again in a week or so.

Well, that is about all I can think of to write about right now - More when it happens...

Merry, er Happy, Easter...

2008-03-24T21:30:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-03-17T09:31:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-03-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-03-06T10:11:00.000-08:00

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...

It's Warming Up in DaHo...

2008-02-25T09:47:00.000-08:00

After months of cold and snow, its finally warming up here in DaHo. Most of the snow is gone and the roads are clear - the first time since before Christmas.

I have been getting my fishing equipment all setup and ready to go searching for the Big Ones in a couple of weeks, or so. I got this new spinning reel, a Fin-Nor OFS95. It is the biggest spinning reel made and is very impressive. I have it all loaded with 130# hollow spectra line and am very ready to start fishing again.

The new Media Center Extender box is just getting better and better. I have been searching around the Internet and found this little software add-in that skips all the commercials when you play back a recorded TV show. It really works well and we both love it. Around Christmas, I got a pair of Sony wireless headphones for the bedroom, so I can listen to TV and not bother Pam at night. They have really worked out great, so I just ordered another identical pair for the living room. Once it is installed, we can listen to both sets of headphones in either location.

My pool has been getting better. I have been practicing more and it has really helped. We played our last game in the Thursday night league last week, so that is finally over. I have been wanting to resume playing in the Tuesday 9-ball tournaments and will start this week. My Wednesday night leagues is wrapping up this week also. I am happy the winter leagues are over now that it is starting to warm up. Neither of us wanted me to play three times a week - that is just too much 'fun'...

Pam has started to take a Tuesday night belly dancing class. She had her first one last week, and it took a few days for her legs to recover from all the exercise. She really likes it and the folks and teacher in the class.

Speaking of Pam, she has been doing really great at work. She is again the Number One tech in the whole world of Dell. And, this time, its at the end of quarter time frame, so we get to go to the big Top Performer Awards dinner in a couple of weeks. They are always big fun...

Also, she entered the annual Valentines Day Box contest and won. This year, her box was the top portion of the Tin Man, of movie fame. She won a $50 Jakers Gift Card, which is one of our most favorite restaurants in DaHo...

Snow Rollers and Ice Sculptures...

2008-02-16T15:12:00.000-08:00

There have been some pretty strange happenings here in DaHo - Snow Rollers and Ice Sculptures...

First, the Snow Rollers... This requires a specific, but high, speed of wind and a specific type of snow to happen. The last time DaHo has had Snow Rollers was over 20 years ago, from what they said on the news. Basically, the wind makes its own snow balls, by rolling the snow along the ground, building up size until they get too heavy to continue rolling. In the picture below, you can see a pretty large one and a few smaller ones in our front yard. I first saw them when looking out the office window and seeing these balls. I first thought some local kids had been playing in the snow. I noticed the little trails leading up to them in the snow, but there were no footprints. Then, later on in the evening, they explained all about it on the news.

While we were out there taking these pictures, I noticed something very unusual on the side on the house. It was an Ice Sculpture. If you will notice in the picture just above the ice, there is a outdoor faucet. It is one of the special freeze-proof ones, where the actual valve mechanism is about a foot inside the wall. Anyway, it must have started leaking and created this large chunk of ice. There is a nice bush in the middle of it, which is probably going to be the worse for the wear as this thing starts melting. It must weigh 50 lbs. I am at a total loss as to how to deal with this. I guess its time to call the contractor for 'professional' guidance...

Over the past couple of days, it has been much warmer than it has been for weeks. A lot of the accumulated ground snow is melting and we now have large 'lakes' of water and ice all over the place. There was so much snow that it will probably take a while for it to all dry up.

We got this new little device - a true 'black box'. Its a Linksys DMA-2100 Media Center Extender. It basically, brings the Windows Vista Media Center desktop to a remote TV, over a wired, or wireless, network. I have wired network access to every room in DaHouse, so it was easy to hook up. I have seen these type of devices in the past couple of years and they really didn't work very well, but this new generation of hardware is very impressive. The main "standard" rating factor on such things is the "Wife Rating Factor" and Pam loves it, as now she can watch all the recorded TV shows from the living room PC in the bedroom, in addition to all the usual TV. Now, we can also listen to all our music, show all the pictures, and all the other Media Center functions that we have been using for years. Also, we can now finally get rid of that cable company DVR, which is a total pain to use. I setup the old Harmony Remote to work with all the bedroom hardware and it is pretty slick - I am impressed. The only 'issue' with it is the brightness of the blue LED power light on the box at night, when all the other light sources are off. Since it is truly a little black box, I just put a piece of black electrical tape over it and all is solved.

My pool has been good and bad - really good and bad... Last week, I played horrible, for me, but this week, I am doing great. Wednesday night I got two table runs and won all of my games, and had to play both Thursday and Friday night in the end of league tournament. I did well in both of those matches.

There is a new player in town. He moved here from Washington state and is very good. He has been winning all the Tuesday night 9-ball tournaments that I use to play in before the leagues. I cannot wait for the leagues to end to start playing those tournaments again and see how it goes. He is a challenge and its always good to play better players, as that is the only way you learn to get better...

Snow Still On the Ground...

2008-02-09T22:43:00.000-08:00

(Did you notice the catchy switch in the title from last time?)

First, sorry for not posting for a while. I think I have a serious case of Cabin Fever... I have been keeping very busy, but you can only have so much fun with snow.

I have been repairing friends computers and learning about all sorts of new and old stuff. The old stuff being repairing and upgrading a Windows 98SE computer - which I haven't worked with for about 8 years or so.

The new Dell stats just came out and Pam is now the Number One tech in Dell in the USA or maybe world. Horay to her for working so hard!!

There have been a number of snow related events that I will write about in a day or so. I have to find the pictures and post them - pretty amazing stuff...

My pool has been sucking lately. I haven't been practicing much lately and it is showing in the results. My Thursday league is finishing up this week and my Wednesday league finished in a few weeks. Individually, I placed 14th in the Thursday league. I would have been around 5th, but I missed a week, when I picked up Tom and Jade at the airport, which cost me a lot of points - O, well... Last week in the playoffs, I only scored 29 points out of 40. If I would have gotten my usual 35-40 points, I could have saved the match for our team. For the short term future, I am planning on just doing the 9-ball tournament on Tuesdays and Pam is planning on going to a belly dancing class.

Well, more in a day or so, but I wanted to get something written before you all gave up on me...

Still Snow on the Ground...

2008-01-24T13:32:00.000-08:00

We have had snow on the ground here for weeks. The temperature hasn't been above freezing for about as long. We haven't had much new snow, just the same old stuff. Every parking lot in town has giant mountains of dirty snow piled up all around.

Last weekend, Pam decided to clean out her closet. It was quite an effort and really looks great now. During the process, we had to sleep upstairs in the Guest Suite Saturday night. There is a window at the top of the bed and it seemed real cold. The blinds were frozen to the window and there was a sheet of ice on the inside of the lower part of the window. I guess it wasn't closed properly or something, but it was cold.

I finally got my new Cabela's parka. This is the third, and final, one. This one is Black, which is not the color I wanted, but it was the only one they had left in their winter inventories. So far, it is working well and not leaking down as the last one did.

The remote control for the living room home theater system has a couple of bad keys. I guess they were just 'loved' too much during the past three years. The Logitech Harmony support folks are letting us buy a new one for a good price, but the model we have, for the Media Center PCs isn't made anymore. So, we have to get a different model, but they are so programmable that is shouldn't be much of a problem. They are such great devices compared to all the other ones available - of which I have a whole box full and don't use...

The Home Server is working out great. I am getting hooked up with a number of online forums about them and learning a lot of stuff I never knew I needed to know before this. Soon, we will have remote access via the Internet.

Pool is working out well. The current leagues are winding down. My team is doing well in the BCA league and sucking in the Mens league. But, that is the way it goes I guess. I am doing OK in both of them, but not as good as I expected - as usual...

Felix, the new cat, is driving Cali, the older cat, crazy at every possible opportunity. Pam wants to get another cat for Felix to play with so he will stop messing with Cali. I have concerns about the potentials of that logic, but something needs to be done soon...

Snow and more Snow...

2008-01-16T10:35:00.000-08:00

It has snowed a number of times here in DaHo. Below, you can see a picture of DaEstate with about 6 " of snow. This is the most we have had since we moved here almost 4 years ago...

Besides the cold, all goes well here. We are winding down from all the holiday fun and recovering with a lot of resting and relaxing. The other day we went to see The Bucket List at the local theater. We both highly recommend the movie. It is one of the best I have seen in a long time. We both laughed and cried until it hurt. Good stuff

Felix, the new kitty, er cat, is growing and becoming sweeter all the time. It is amazing how inquisitive and smart he is. The other day, I had a latter up and went into the other room to get a screwdriver for a second and came back to find him climbing up on the top of the rung of the latter. He just loves anything that is mysterious and unexplored. Put a box down on the floor and he will play with it for hours. He is driving Cali, the older cat, crazy more and more. He always wants to play with her and she doesn't want any part of it. Hopefully, they will both learn to co-exist better as time goes on.

My pool playing is going along. Last Wednesday, I played badly and only won two of my four games. I just wasn't playing well at all and couldn't seem to get focused on the shots. Then, on Thursday night, I was much more focused and won all four games. We shall see how it goes tonight...

I got the new case for the Home Server and installed it. It now has three large fans which keeps it all quite cool. In fact, the closet that it sits in is cooler than the areas around it, because of all the fan air flow

I also got the new emachine PC replaced at Best Buys. Because of the very cheap price I got it for, it stressed their options to replace it, but they finally found one in another store and had it shipped in. So far, it is working well. We might move it down to the bedroom and use it for watching TV as Netflix is now offering unlimited downloading of movies with any of their movie rental plans and it would save a lot of money from having to subscribe to HBO, SHOWTIME and all those cable TV movie channels.

I got my new down parka from Cabelas and it is all messed up. The liner is not down proof and leaks all over the shirts I am wearing it over. They are sending me a new one to replace it. I guess mine came in a new shipment they just got in and somehow they used the wrong materials to build them. Down requires a specific type of containment materials or it will 'leak' out all over the place. Besides that, it is a great parka...

The contractor came by the other day and got all my info on the 'humming' Radon fan under the house. Hopefully, they will replace it under warranty and I will put it in.

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

New DaHo Bedding

2008-01-10T17:46:00.000-08:00

I've discovered http://www.overstock.com/. If you really love to find a bargain, then I highly recommend this site. They ship your whole order -- no matter how many items for less than $3 bucks. They also run promotions for free shipping.

Needless to say -- I have been shopping =) But, we are so pleased with the quality and value, it's crazy. I outfitted both our master bed, and the guest suite bed with luxurious fabrics and details that you can't even find here in DaHo. So, here's what I purchased and prices. Come to DaHo and ENJOY!

Their advertised pics:

Our pic: Master Bedroom, $154 Shipped

Our pic: Guest Suite, $54.95 Shipped

It's Deep and Cold too...

2008-01-08T22:39:00.000-08:00

Well, we got about 6-8 inches of snow here today. That is the most in one day since we moved here. When Pam got home from work, I had shoveled a walk/tire track in the driveway snow for her to try and get the car in the garage. That almost worked... She got stuck about 1/2 of the way up and had to back down while I did some more shoveling to create the other tire track. Then, she tried it again but couldn't get the car going and got stuck on the road. So, I went down and pushed her and she was able to finally get it up the driveway and in the garage. She has driven snow for a long time and knows how to do it well. After that, She shoveled a path clean for her to get out in the morning, as the forecast was for much more snow. I installed chains on her car for the morning commute. They were new ones from Costco and were a total pain to get on. Once I figured out how to do it right, it went pretty well, but it still took about an hour and reminded me of another trip to Idaho from long ago...

Then, a neighbor stopped by later on with his 4X4 four wheeler with a snow shovel on it and cleaned the entire driveway off for free. What a nice guy. He wouldn't take any payment for all the work, but Pam fixed him a nice cup of hot chocolate for his efforts.

The new case got here for the Home Server machine and I installed it last night. It all went great and this new case is a good one. Lots of internal drive space and big fans to keep it all cool in the wiring cabinet closet.

The new Emachine is being replaced by Best Buys as the hard disk is fried. It was a hassle to get it done with the Geek Squad, but all is good at this point.

I finally found the source of the nasty hum in the bedroom. I did have to go under the house and finally found the problem. It is a Radon/Crawl space fan that basically sucks all the air out of the crawl space and blows it out keeping the crawl space warm and dry. I never even knew we had such a fan, but now I do. It has a 5 year warranty and we have only been in the house for less than 4 years, so I am going to try and get it replaced under warranty. The problem is that the contractor that installed it is long gone so it will probably be fun...

Well, tomorrow should be 'interesting'. I will report on how it goes here in DaHo...

2008 is Strangely like 2007...

2008-01-04T09:09:00.002-08:00

So far, this new year is just like the previous one. Weird... The weather is still cold, my pool playing hasn't changed and all the same stuff that needed to be fixed, still needs to be fixed, and the list goes on...

But, the Christmas tree is gone. I had to cut it all up to just a pole and bags of branches because it was so dried out. But, it got done and is gone to the big Christmas Tree farm in the sky.

The Home Server is working great. I am in the process of moving all of the important data over to it, which it automatically keeps redundantly on two separate disks and it has successfully backed up all the machines each night for most of the week. It also warns you of all problems on any of the computers it manages, so you can resolve them. Anybody that has important data and less than 10 computers, should check these little Home Servers out. In a short while they will be all over, but right now HP is the only company selling them and they cost from $500 to $750 - depending on the amount of disk they have. They are pretty amazing little units that provide a simple, yet elegant, solution to problems that have been around for years.

While Tom and Jade were here, the new E-machine computer had some sort of disk problem that Tom said woke him up one night. Then, all sorts of other issues started happening so I took the E-machine back to Best Buys yesterday after rebuilding it to stock – replacing all the upgraded case fans, memory, power supply, cables, etc. They agree the disk was trashed when they tried to use their ‘special Geek Squad’ utilities on it. So, they said they would swap it out. They didn’t have the same model so they were going to sway it out for some other computer at the same price point. When they saw that I had only paid $109.99 for it, at the Black Friday sale, they freaked saying that the cheapest, and less capable, computer they had would cost at least $399 and I would have to pay the difference. That wasn’t going to happen so I suggested that I buy one of the 320 gb disks that were on sale last week for $59.95 and they could just put it in, they said that they couldn’t give me the last week sale price on it - Grumble, Grumble… So, I started getting a little pissed off at that point and their manager called around and found another new one at some other store and they are sending it to swap out. So, I will have to rebuild it hardware and software wise when it arrives… Big cheap computer fun…

The last two nights I played in my pool leagues. On Wednesday night, I won all four of my games. The rest of the team also won four games between them all, so we ended up tying the other team at 8 to 8...

I was driving the Lincoln and somehow the front bumper under panel got hung up on a bolt coming out of the concrete parking stop in the parking lot and tore it loose. When I tried to drive home, it was banging around so I returned and got it taped up and took it down to a body shop to get fixed for free, since the body shop owner is the pool team captain.

Then, last night, I ended up getting 32 out of a possible 40 points, which was not up to my standard, but crap happens. There were a ton of people in there and it was really hard on the eyes. Then, last night something really weird happened. When I came home from playing pool and went into the bedroom, I noticed a petty loud 60 cycle hum coming from the corner of the room where the entertainment center lives. I thought it must be some component or electronic thingie was flipping out and started troubleshooting. We unplugged everything a couple of times, went outside to check if the air conditioner unit was somehow on and checked all over and can find nothing. There is nothing in under or over that living area, that is powered or has anything that could generate such a noise that I am aware of… It went on all last night and is still going. It is driving me crazy. There also is no hum in any room close to it – just in that one place… We have also had a circuit trip from the same general area, but not that plug, a couple of times lately. I really don’t see how that is connected, but…

I am going to have to put together some sort of a directional listening device and try to isolate the source. If that doesn’t work, its hammer time, I guess…

If you don’t hear from me again, there was probably some nasty animal or electrical nastiness that got me under the Dahouse…

Where Are All The Pics?

2008-01-03T17:34:00.000-08:00

2008, Day 3.

There has been plenty of text lately, but no pics.

Well this blog entry should rememdy that.

Ryan & Chris

Johnny and Joshua

Mr. and Mrs. Tom'eh Brook

Two Peas in a Pod!

Sisters Jasmine and Jade

Too Adorable!

It's Alive...

2007-12-29T13:28:00.000-08:00

After working most of yesterday and all of today on it, the new DaHo Home Server is alive and well. It is now living in the wiring cabinet closet and is quite happy in there. It has five computer friends that it keeps track of and keeps their data backed up and all.

I must thank nephew Micheal for the Microsoft Home Server OS that started all this upgrade effort. I think it will be helping keep track of our digital lives for years to come. It now has just over 1 TB of storage. After all the backups and getting all the media files loaded on it, we shall have to see if that is sufficent or not.

Of all the Microsoft products, I think this Home Server OS is the best product I have seen. I had absolutely no problems or issues building the hardware, which had a significant degree of complexity to it, or loading and setting up the Home Server software.

It will probably take me a good week to get it all setup with all the other computers and transfering all the files around to their new locations. But, once its done, it will a very good thing and will simplify life from then on.

We just got a new Domain name, LIFEINDAHO.com, that will work well with it and being able to access our files via the net.

Now, I just need to sleep and relax for a few days to recover from all the holiday fun of late...

Lots of great technical stuff happening here in DaHo...

Returning to our Regular Channels...

2007-12-29T13:18:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning, about 3am, we took Jade and Tom to the Boise airport for their return trip to the UK. The news said that the weather was going to be nasty and it was...

It was snowing and blowing so much that there were times I couldn't see the lines on the road to know if we were on it or not. And, every time a truck would pass, it was a whiteout condition for about 30 seconds. So, I had to hit the brakes and slow way down until it cleared enough to see again.

But, will all that going on, we did make it to the airport on time and they got all checked in and through security. We returned after getting them all checked in and it was worse coming home...

It was great to have them stay with us. We learned a lot about the UK and technical stuff in general. Tom is one of the sharpest Techies I have been around and I have been around a lot of them. Those of you who have known me for some time, know that statement is very true. I had to 'manage' many of them for years when working at Gentry in San Francisco.

He helped resolve many 'issues' I was having around here for some time and resolved each of them with skill and amazing ease. They also showed me a lot of new ideas and toys that I am still amazed at. The most impressive to me was Tom's internet phone. It looked like a standard business telephone with multiple lines. But, if you plug it into the internet, anywhere in the world, and someone calles his number in the UK, it answers and is like next door, and for free - Pretty amazing stuff...

Shortly after getting back home, the UPS guy showed up and brought my new parts for the new DaHo Home Server computer system...

Back From Las Vegas and Christmas...

2007-12-27T09:23:00.000-08:00

The trip to Las Vegas was pretty crazy, as they usually are. But, this one was especially crazy. The weather both ways was stormy and scary. We left a little after 3am on 12/21 and took the long way around, through Salt Lake City, to hopefully not get too hung up in the alternative little 2 lane roads - The SLC route is all freeway. The weather was very nasty in all the higher mountain parts, especially in the dark. It snowed and blew hard for about 1/2 of the trip. Luckily we took the 4 wheel drive Jeep, which handled it all pretty well, considering what was happening. We had a number of boxes of wedding materials and Christmas gifts that we ended up attaching to the back of the Jeep on the little trailer hitch attached platform we use for the dirt bike. Its about 2 feet by 5 feet and after triple wrapping all the boxes and cinching them all down well, all survived without problems after we got all the frozen ice and road sludge off of the outer tarps.

The quoted time for the trip was about 9 1/2 hours, but it ended up taking us almost 12 hours. My arms and legs hurt for days from all the stress of driving through it all in the ice and snow.

While there in Las Vegas, we stayed at the Hilton, where the wedding was held. The wedding went well as did the big dinner afterwards at Benihanas. All the family from Pam's side were there and I got to met a lot of them for the first time. Ryan and Chris from my side of the family also drove in from California and we had great visits. They also took back all the Keithley family Christmas gift boxes that we brought down on the Jeep.

We ended up staying an extra night so I didn't have to drive back on my birthday, which ended up being a good thing for the extra rest and extra trip to Frys Electronics. We got some great deals on some parts that are hard to come by around here.

Tom, the groom from the UK, bought a Apple IMAC from Frys. He had to get one so he could support his customers that bought them for their kids - Apple is hooked into their schools over there also I guess. I had really never played with one, but am really quite impressed with the hardware part of it. Enough said about that...

All in all, things went well in Las Vegas. Pam and I didn't do much of the entertainment that was available. We mostly visited with family and friends that we hadn't seen in a while, coordinated social events, and did a little light gambling which turned out as expected...

On the trip back, we took the shorter, more direct route and again encountered some real nasty areas of snow and ice, but made it back safe and sound.

When we finally did get home, the cats were REAL happy to see us and all was in pretty good shape. Our neighbor, Boyd, had been coming over to pick up all the gifts that had been shipped here during our trip. Thank goodness for that as the weather here was awful also and he said that in the hour or so that the gifts were sitting outside under the porch, by the front door, the wind and snow had started to get them wet, but he saved them all. Well, except for some 'Real Expensive Pears' that T&A&A sent. They either got frozen or something, because when we opened them up, they were black and mushy. All the other gifts were in great shape and we thank all the senders for the good thoughts...

I cannot start to discuss all the great gifts we received and are so grateful for right now, but will soon. I have been trying to recover from the trip, host our guests and deal with the weather. It snowed here enough last night that Jade and Tom were out sledding down the driveway and had big fun.

I will write more as I climb out of this pail of Morass that I have been working on here in DaHo...

And Now for Something Altogether Different...

2007-12-20T08:13:00.000-08:00

Tom and Jade got here last Thursday and we have been having all kinds of visiting fun and good eating ever since. Tom has been helping us, mostly me, in fixing all the little technical 'issues' that have been plaguing our computers here at DaHouse. He is one of the best computer techs I have ever seen. He seems to know how to fix just about everything that I can throw at him. He also resolved a problem I had of trying to figure out how to bring TV signals to Pam's kitchen computer. I was pondering running wires and nasty stuff like that. He loaded a program on the Dell Office server and now Pam can control the Media Center actions on the server and watch programs over the wireless link in the kitchen. It is awesome...

He was also able to repair a hard disk that Ryan had all sorts of data on that his tech folks couldn't get repaired. He downloaded a program, Spinright, that I use to use many years ago, and it fixed it all up and we were able to get all of Ryan and Chris's data and pics off of the damaged disk. Great stuff and thank you Tom!

As soon as they got here, we went down and picked out a great real Christmas Tree and decorated it all up wonderfully. it is quite a sight. I will post some pics of it when I get some time. Pam has been cooking all sorts of great gourmet meals most every night so we have been eating great.

We have been getting ready for the big wedding, er Re-Wedding, of Jade and Tom for the US family and friends in Las Vegas this Saturday. We have been running around getting all sorts of stuff and clothes and such to be ready and prepared for it and now we have to pack it all into and onto the Jeep for the big trip to Las Vegas tomorrow. The weather is suppose to be pretty nasty, so we are going to take the longer Freeway route through Salt Lake City to get there. We will be leaving very early Friday morning and will be driving until we get there, depending on how much fun it is - weather wise. Then, the wedding and celebration is Saturday and we will return back to DaHo on my Birthday on Sunday.

We are planning on stopping at Fry's Electronics while in Las Vegas. We haven't been to a 'real' computer store for some time and it will be fun. Tom is planning on buying a I-MAC computer, his first Apple, to bring back to the UK with him. He hates to do it, but must have access to one to support his customers and their crazy buying habits...

Well, lots of stuff to do and get done so I must be off. We should be back to DaHo very late on Sunday or early Monday, depending on the weather...

Its Almost Christmas...

2007-12-12T14:27:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, I am picking up Pam's daughter and her husband, Jade and Tom, that are coming to visit from London, England. They are going to be here until after Christmas. While here, they are going to be redoing their wedding in Las Vegas just before Christmas for the USA family, so I hope the weather isn't too crazy during that trip.

Speaking of weather, its snowed here three times in the past couple of weeks. Not a great amount, as usual around here, but just enough to make things messy and dangerous to drive in. Its been real cold, with daily lows in the low teens and highs in the low 30s most days.

We now have most of our Christmas shopping done and in the bag, er box, as it were. Not much new around here lately. Everything is still going well with the computers, cats, and pool and all the stuff that has been on top of the daily activity lists. We updated Pam's kitchen laptop with a wide screen monitor and really cute wireless keyboard/mouse and it really works and looks great.

We have been doing doctor appointments and getting stuff done for the winter so we can 'relax' and enjoy the holiday and our visitors.

I am really liking the Cabela's parka. Shortly after getting it, they sent me a sales catalogue and it was on sale for $60 less. So, I am getting one of the sale ones at the discounted price and returning the high priced one. That is what they said to do...

Well, that is about all there worth writing about from DaHo. I will write more when it happens...