Sometimes (well, most times) I think these weather persons on tv haven’t a clue. But then I realize that what they say will probably happen DOES happen over Seattle way. We might as well be in a completely foreign weather area. Wind storm did come through yesterday and we did lose the power for about 2 hours. SWMBO and I started up a couple of our bottled gas lamps (bright little suckers!) and read for awhile. Was nice. Power finally came back on and mostly stayed on for the rest of the night. Flickered a couple of times enough to reset the MediaServer (which I really have to get a UPS for!).

Not much else going on. Still waiting on the Snow that’s supposed to fall around here tonight and tomorrow. Phil & I went out to the property today and cut another truckbed full of wood for him. Was nice out there.

Listening to the news lately one has to wonder What The Hell Is Wrong With Those UAW Assholes?! Guess them saying that they’d do anything to help the current financial crisis get better was a load of crap. This not being willing to take a pay cut to help their companies out really sucks. What they’ve done for me is make me decide that I will never (I really mean never) buy another car from any of the "Big 3" nor any vehicle where the UAW is involved. The Toyota Tundra is looking pretty good. I think everyone ought to let the UAW and the "Big 3" know how much this sucks. I really hope they do not get the bailout funds. But it looks like Prez Bush is going to approve the "loan" anyway. Dickhead.

This Seems SO True! Click For Larger View

Hey! Just looked out the window and it’s actually snowing our there. Cool. Now to see how much we get. SWMBO wants enough to fall that they’ll cancel church tomorrow but not enough to stop her from singing in the Christmas show in the same building tomorrow evening. ???

Playing With World Maker & Terragen

Why don’t they call it what it will be? "Big Three Give-Out" will be more like it. I’m not sure how I feel about this one. One the one hand I’m totally against it. I think if the "Big 3" didn’t pay their workers so much and gave us a product we wanted to buy at a price we could afford they’d do better financially. On the other hand: if we don’t "Give-Out" them then all the suppliers (and suppliers of suppliers) on down the chain could go bankrupt and out of business.

The other thing is: They (The Big 3) say they’ll pay us back. How? If they’re not making money where will the money come from to pay us back? They’ll either raise their prices; in which case we’re giving them the money to pay us back. Or they’ll lower their prices and give everyone that buys a vehicle from them a ’discount’; in which case they still won’t be making enough money to stay in business.

And the last thing about it is: the spokespersons for the Big 3, while talking to Congress, said they’d start making more hybrid type vehicles and vehicles that have much better gas mileage. What! If they can, then why haven’t they? Why did they wait for an "emergency" before doing all this?

Not much going on around here lately. Weather’s been crappy even though it’s been mostly sunny. Too cold for me.

SWMBO and I went to see "Quantum Of Solace" at the Galaxy Theater last Friday morning. We were the only two in the theater! Cool. Movie was pretty good except the action sequences seemed to move too fast. Maybe I’m just getting old. I really do like Daniel Craig as Bond though. I think he’s the best Bond there’s been (and I’ve seen them all). We made the mistake of buying 2 soda’s and a bucket of popcorn: $17.00! That’s more than it cost the two of us to get in! Damn! Time to switch to my winter coat!

Saturday I took Phil & Matt out to the property to cut a truckload of wood for Phil. Was fun and it really wasn’t too bad weatherwise. Phil, whose 76 years old, mentioned (in our talks) that he really liked the Star Trek Movie he saw a few years ago. I mentioned that I had all of them and he was welcome to come over sometime and we’d start watching them. He was flabbergasted that there was more than the one!

Finally sat down and made myself a schedule of ’classes’ for the things I want to learn. Looks good. Now if I can just get off my ass enough to actually follow the schedule I may learn something. My big problem, being semi-retired, is that I have no idea what I’m going to do until I do it. IF I do it. So I don’t get anything done. I’m hoping to change that.

Did spend most of last evening working on the MediaServer. Again. That new video card came in; ATI. Damn! I just could not get the installation program to recognize the video card no matter what I tried. Even got online with the MS site and tried all their suggestions. Couldn’t get back to a simple VGA video driver. Wound up completely reinstalling Windows XP (Again!) and still couldn’t get the installation program to recognize the new video card. So I wound up reinstalling the old video card and driver. And, wouldn’t you know it, it works great. Damn! All I can figure is that the previous two video drivers didn’t completely uninstall and it was conflicting with the driver for the card which would make the screen go blank or freeze up. All I know is that I’m damned sick and tired of playing with this thing!

Snow in the forecast for Saturday. Maybe I’ll go to the property…

Pricks!

SWMBO and I drove to the Building Dept for Mason County in Shelton yesterday and she spent a good couple of hours sitting with the lady there and filling out the paperwork for our new Building Permit. She was told that we’d get a refund of our last fee for the old building permit when we turned it in (thursday in Belfair). Well, she (the lady at the Building Dept) just called a few minutes ago and said that because we were beyond 180 days from the lapse of the old building permit that we would NOT get a refund. And, of course, they don’t say anything about any of this until well after the 180 day mark. (SOP?) Pricks. We’re paying for services (inspections) that we did not require. That just seems wrong to me. It also seems like a scam.

Needless to say, I’m pissed and am going to find out who up the chain of command I can complain to AND what newspapers are in Mason County that I can write a letter about the Building Dept to. I’m wondering who’s (personal) pockets it’s going in to? But I know if I say anything or make too big a fuss they’ll make it even harder to get a new building permit. Sometimes this one department has me ready to sell the land and look somewhere else to live. If I could afford it I’d hire a lawyer and take them to court.

OTT, just plain out not much going on. We did make the drive to Shelton yesterday and it was a lot of fun being out and about with SWMBO. The drive out and back is really pretty. We stopped at a roadside burger joint and had a great burger on the way back.

SWMBO went into the office today and I, thinking that I’d need gas to go to Belfair tomorrow, went to COSTCO and got gas for $1.64/gal. You read that right: $1.64 a gallon! Daymn! Put 15.someodd gallons in my truck for less than $25. Daymn! Had to renew our COSTCO membership though…

Still learning music and playing around with the Fruity Loops program. Still have a pile of pictures to scan. Still converting my movies, etc to video files. Still working on that damned MediaServer! Finally ordered a cheap video card that outputs composite video ($21 @ Tiger Direct) and am waiting for it to come in. Will be glad to get away from that ATI POS driver! Spent a couple of hours last night setting up SWMBO’s Zune so it will automatically sync when plugged into the MediaServer. Seems to work okay. Even got it to sync wirelessly. Cool!

This is the error I get in X-Plane. 2.5ghz, 1g ram. Guess I gotta get a better video card.

I Swear, The time just goes by faster than I can keep up lately! Course, I have absolutely NO idea what the hell I’ve been doing between Nov 19th and now except for the important stuff.

Thanksgiving was going pretty good (SWMBO makes a great meal!) until the septic backed up and flooded out the front bathroom. So I got to spend half of Thursday mopping up and digging up pipes. Early Friday morning I went to United Rentals in Gig Harbor and rented a 100 ft. power snake. Ran that snake in the pipe about 80 feet three times! Water still wouldn’t drain. Damn! Called the Roto-Rooter guy out and he took a look at it. Said he could get his power snake out (which was just like the one I rented) and run it up the pipe for $300 ($300!) but he didn’t see any reason to. Said I would probably have to dig up the end of the septic tank and check some valve there. Yeah, right.

Landlord came over Saturday to look at it. He was busy installing a pump somewhere out Gig Harbor way and couldn’t stay to fix the drainage so he asked me if I would dig up the pipe at the back corner of the house. So I did. Phew! Had to go down a ways. He came back Sunday and cut into the pipe and ran the hose up it and everything seemed to work fine. So we went to Home Depot and bought all the supplies to completely replace the pipes up near the front door (where I first dug). Spent most of the day working on that. Seems to be fixed but What A Pain In The Ass! Spent part of today putting all the dirt back in the holes and getting my kitchen cleaned up and laundry done.

Did y’all see this:

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 09:54 pm PST
AP – A Wal-Mart worker was killed Friday when "out-of-control" shoppers desperate for bargains broke down the doors at a 5 a.m. sale. Other workers were trampled as they tried to rescue the man, and customers shouted angrily and kept shopping when store officials said they were closing because of the death, police and witnesses said.

DAMN! I can’t think of anything I want bad enough to trample someone else over. The real kicker, for me, was that the people in the store got Mad when they tried to close the store because of the death. No one wanted to stop their shopping. Damn! Just another reason for me to stay the hell out of New York… What a bunch of Assholes!

My MediaServer went down yesterday also. I don’t know why. Kept rebooting. Tried to reinstall XP but it could not identify the partition and kept asking me if I wanted to format it. NO! All out music is on that drive! Wound up putting my games drive into it and rebuilding it for media. What a pain in the butt! I absolutely HATE that Radion 9000 video card. No, I like the card; it’s the damned driver I can’t stand. I have to choose either the monitor OR the tv; both crashes it. And it will appear to be working fine and suddenly go blank. Server is still serving; you just can’t see anything. So I ordered a cheapo video card with composite tv out from Tiger Direct today for $14. Damned shipping brought the total up to almost $22. And that’s not being in a hurry! I’m going to try this new video card in the MediaServer and I hope it does good. Really can’t do any worse than that Radion. I just gotta get a vcr with s-video in…

Had to run chkdsk on the old drive from the MediaServer and that took a couple of hours. Lots of lost cluster/files stuff. But when it was finished it appeared to copy everything fine to the new drive. Thinking about getting a couple of those NAS servers.

And that’s that. Sorry I haven’t been posting more often. I’ll add posting to my daily mile long list of things to do!

Oh yeah! SWMBO and I took Phil to the Madrigal Feast last Friday night. It was wonderful! Phil liked everything about it BUT having to eat with his fingers.