Got up early and got out of the house by 0930 this morning. Had to stop by the printing place to get some printouts of our dome plans for the finance folks. Even though the print shop uses mostly ink jet or laser printers there’s still enough of the smell of ink in the air to instantly bring back memories of me working with my dad in whatever print shop he worked in when I was young. Even memories of ’helping’ him at the Yuma Daily Sun when I was about 16. Took forever for me to get my prints today and cost $30!

Went on out to the property after the print shop and moved some dirt around for a couple of hours. Except for a couple of places you can’t hardly tell the road had any damage done during the Dec 07 storm. Now I gotta get the clearing and dome hole back in to shape. But at least you can drive all the way up to the dome hole now!

Got home about 1500 and SWMBO dragged me out for an early dinner at the Mongolian place over in Bremerton. Good food but I don’t know WHY I get the ’all you can eat’ Mongolian Grill. I only eat one plate full anyway. Usually by the time I’ve eaten that one plate of Mongolian, the 2 chicken wings they try to disguise as ’mini’ drumsticks, a bit of rice and drink several (small) cups of hot tea I’m stuffed. I think next time I’ll see about getting a regular meal that approximates the Mongolian Grill.

SWMBO and I went to Costco in Silverdale after dinner and spent WAY too much. The problem with buying in bulk like that is you HAVE to eat it before it goes bad. Things have a tendency to turn green if left out of the fridge (like bread & bagels) and we have a real bad habit of leaving fruits and veggies in the fridge until they make their own gravy. Celery is NOT supposed to make its own gravy! SWMBO doesn’t cook that often and if I don’t see it when I open the refrigerator then it doesn’t exist for me. (My memory is shot!) I’ll find things when I get around to clearing out all the leftovers we don’t eat during the week. We’ve learned not to put things in the lower 4 drawers cause they’ll eventually take on a life of their own. Now we just keep batteries in them. Our new fridge will have the see-through fronts on the drawers…

Home now and watching "Dog Fights". Not much else going on.

Oh, I’d left a message at the DVDVideoSoft folks website saying how much I liked their programs and thanking them for them. They sent me an email saying they’d mention my blog in their next newsletter. Cool! Along the same vein: I bought on2 technologies video to flash converter some time ago. I’ve had to rebuild my system for various reasons several times and each time I go to reinstall their converter I have to contact their company to get a new key; which means downloading a new version. Well, I finally got tired of having to do that for a program I paid for and feel I should be able to reinstall as many times as I want/need to without hassle (especially since DVDVideoSoft has a FREE one that works better!) and left them a message on their site saying so. Even mentioned they might want to check out the competition. And if I thought I could get it I’d ask for a refund.

Well, this morning I got a call from one of their salesmen/techs saying they’d refund my money as they’d rather have happy customers than not. And I’d have a free ’pro bono’ license for the program. That was really nice of them as I’ve had their program for over a year. However, later I got an email saying that I’d have to fill in a w4 (or something) and fax it back to them and it would be 4-6 weeks before I’d get my check. Sorry folks, it’s just not worth it. Y’all keep the bucks, I’ll delete the program and keep using the FREE one that does a better job anyway. Yes, I know they didn’t have to refund my money, and except for the hassle when reinstalling it’s been an okay program for what it was designed to do; it’s just not worth the hassle. For one thing I’d have to find someone with a fax machine! I really do appreciate the gesture though! I can say nothing bad about on2technologies.

And that’s it! Think I’ll reboot and go and let Russian Pilot #1 shoot my ass down AGAIN in Lock On. (Just can’t get him off my tail!)