At COSTCO. And not too far out of the way. Too Cool! Cost about $20 for 3/4 tank. Then did some running around and went out to the property for awhile. Being lazy and watching the remake of "The Andromeda Strain" now. It’s been fairly interesting so far.

Haven’t been doing too much as I’ve had a sore throat with the accompanying weakness feeling. Started last Saturday afternoon and has pretty much been constant since. Weakness/Nausea comes and goes but I do think it’s getting better.

OTT, just not much else going on. Got my computer working. Been playing with the other one I put together. Still trying to learn to read music (online and with Phillip). Still doing time-lapse movies of clouds and trying to make my own music for them. Still trying to learn MySQL and PHP and CSS and Flash and HTML and Photoshop and still have a BUTT-TON of pictures and stuff to scan and get on disc. Still ripping our DVD’s and converting them to .avi files. Still running out of room on the hard drives I store them on.

Still just SSDD around here.

Damn! Where does the time go? Seems only a couple of weeks ago it was Nov 1st.

Most of the day Thursday was spent cooking and canning my chili. Did 34 pints and still had a pot left over for the Chili Cook Off. Took most of the day though. Finished up just before Smallville was due to come on. For some reason this batch of chili tastes kind of bland but has a definite after bite. Wonder what I forgot?…

Got up yesterday and cooked SWMBO breakfast since I’ve spent way too much money this week. Bacon, eggs and Hash Browns. Yummy. Spent most of the day cleaning up the place and working on MY computer. The 1.5 ghz system was just too damned slow for me. I started converting 8 episodes of Addams Family to avi yesterday and it took 20 HOURS! Daymn! My regular system would have done them in 3 hours.

So I thought I’d plug my system in and see if I couldn’t fix it. Desperation, you know. So I made sure everything was tight and in place, plugged it in, turned it on and, low and behold, it worked. Cool! So, I thought "Why not rebuild Windows and move my data over and start out with a completely new install?" I was about half way through doing that when I tried burning a dvd on the 1.5 ghz system and it crashed out. Twice. That was enough for me so I moved my drives back into my system, uninstalled the ATI drivers, reinstalled the Nvidia drivers and it’s been working since. Cool! I know its working fine cause I set it to convert 5 movies to avi before going to bed last night and they were just finishing up when I got up this morning. Yeah, this system is only 2.5 ghz with the dual core but it is SO much better than that 1.5 single core system!

The Chili Cookoff itself was okay. Too many kids showed up. Tried a bit out of every pot of chili (about 10) but didn’t find any that was better than mine. My pot was almost empty when we left. Lots of folks said they liked it. We left before the end of it so I don’t know who "won" but I doubt it was me. Every year my pot of chili gets eaten up but I never ’win." ??? Not that I do it to win anything!

It’s early so there’s not much going on. Thinking about going to the property and starting a fire today.

Had a two hour meeting with the General Contractor around noon today to talk about "details." We went over the plans with a fine tooth comb. Not really, but we did go over the plans pretty good. I just know that when they left they shook their heads and muttered about another "owner wanting to be as involved as possible!"

Not much else going on. Except my computer went tits-up while we were having the meeting. The power supply quit working. Completely. So I took it out and went to Motherboard, Etc in Gorst and had them test it. Yep, dead. So I bought a new one ($50), drove on back home and put it in. Everything started up but (and this is a Big But) Nothing came up on screen. No POST or anything. No Beeps. No Nuttin. Guess when the power supply went out it took the cpu with it. (SWMBO calls it a murder/suicide.)

Damn! So, I had an older computer sitting in the back room but didn’t have a memory module that would fit. So I took it to Motherboard, Etc and we put in a memory module, started it up and it worked fine. Bought 2- 512mb modules ($90), drove on home and have spent the last 4 hours getting everything to work. This computer is only a 1.8 ghz system (slower than my last computer), but, it works. But y’all know XP; de-installing and installing motherboard drivers, sound drivers, lan drivers, video drivers, etc is a pain! And I had an ’extra’ 250 gig drive just laying around not doing anything (sort of like a teenager) so I thought I’d replace my 200 gig Data drive with it. That’s turned into a hassle. Slow! But it is getting done… I did get smart and put the new power supply in though…

Hey, we finally had a lot of rain around here since about 2100 last night. Not much wind here in Olalla but the news has been talking about some minor wind damage and some flooding in the Seattle area. Cascade Mountains were supposed to get a lot also so I guess I ought to go out to the property tomorrow and check out my drainage.

Except I’m supposed to do my annual supply of chili tomorrow. Hmmm. Will have to work that out.

Can you guess what movie this is from?

About a year ago I dug a trench from the future dome site down the hill through the woods to put in power, water, tv & phone cables. About 600 feet with 200 to go to finish. Didn’t dig across or down my ’driveway’ cause I still needed to get up and down the road. Ran short of water line (which was good at the time) but still had 400 feet of tv & phone cables so I just left the rolls in the trench.

What’s the point? Some Asshole Bastard thief took what was left of the rolls of tv & phone cables. Aaargh! I wish I had caught them stealing it. Aaargh! Bastards! I’m getting to the point that I just hate people. You can be damned sure that when we start to build I’ll be sleeping out there guarding all the ’stuff’ the construction crew leaves behind every day. And I’m going to have a shotgun by then…

OTT, not much going on. I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that the weather persons have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. We’re supposed to be in the middle of another bout of heavy rain (with wind this time) but out at the property it was barely a misty rain. Cold though. Drainage is doing fine. Oops, weather person is saying the storm will start tonight. Guess I ought to make sure the generator runs…

Had my first music lesson with Phillip yesterday and did learn some things I didn’t know. Which is why I’m taking music lessons in the first place. Been ’playing’ with the Fruity Loops program (like I said before). Frustrating. I get an idea for some music while trying to learn the program but can’t get very far on it cause I’m still learning the program. Yes, I want to know it but I want to know it now!

Veteran’s Day today. Whoopie. To me it just means that Netflix will be delayed. I’ve been ’retired’ from the Navy since May 1991 and being a Veteran hasn’t done anything FOR me. Sometimes I still wonder why the hell I gave 20 years for all the crap I’m putting up with now. Not counting the Asshole Thieves. America hasn’t gotten any better in the past 17 years or so…

Which brings to mind all the life-extending technologies/treatments that Scientists are working on. I’m all for extending my life; I wouldn’t mind living another 500+ years. But what kind of life would it be? I keep seeing a "Soylent Green" type of future coming about. Not that we’d wind up eating dead folks; but the crowding and poverty. As much as I’d like to see the "Star Trek" type of future come about I just can’t see it happening. Mostly because of the Assholes out there. We need Mean Aliens to discover Earth. But I doubt even that would bring us all together working towards a common goal; survival.

One good thing about my memory being so crappy nowadays: All the books I’ve had for 30-40 years are like reading new books. My Sci-Fi collection of hardbacks, which I have had some of for almost 40 years, are almost forgotten now. Used to be I knew if I read a book and generally what it was about. Now I look at my collection and know that I’ve read every one of them but cannot remember what most of them are about. My real favorites (The Stand, Swan Song, Stranger in a Strange Land and a bunch of others) I remember probably because I’ve re-read them many times. But those that I read only once or twice are coming up blank. Bummer!

Playing With Terragen