Well, I can always say “What a week!” but that doesn’t prove anything.

Let’s see. What the heck happened this week. Might as well start with today and work my way backwards.

Got up at my usual time, SSS and got out the door to go to COSTCO for some things for us and the Mason County Amateur Radio Club Field Day (this coming weekend). Shopping was uneventful. Nice to be out of the house though.

Stopped at the Bremerton Airport to take some pictures of a particular plane that I just like the looks of. Now to see where I can post it and see if anyone knows what kind of plane it is.

Friday was our usual date day and we went to breakfast at Family Pancake House in Port Orchard then spent way too much money at Albertson’s before going home. The rest of the day was uneventful. Meaning boring. Sort of.

Thursday? I think it was just a normal, boring, day spent around the house. Don’t remember anything special about it.

Wednesday went pretty much as my days usually do except I had the 2-meter net @ 1930. That is always fun. Our nets on Sunday & Tuesday evenings are a lot of fun also. The Sunday net is on 2-meters also. The Tuesday net is on 28.450. I heard pretty much everyone on that one. This new antenna I built is working pretty good!

And that is about the extent of my daily activities. Walk the dog. Water the garden. Water the plants out front. Rip a DVD. Check mail. Check e-mail.

Did kill one of my accounts at Google. The main one I use has a lot of pictures on Picassa and gmail. The other had few pictures but did use YouTube and Blogger. Figured if I killed the second account I wouldn’t lose many pictures (all duplicated under the other account) then rebuild both YouTube and Blogger and maybe do a better job. So I did that. Managed to import most of my old blog entries into the new blogger blog and have started re-uploading videos to YouTube. Cool!

And why am I doing all this? Cause it’s fun and cause I think all this stuff I leave “online” will be around way way longer than I will be. I don’t know how long a YouTube, Blogger & WordPress account will last with no activity but I figure it’s worth a shot. Besides, wouldn’t it be totally cool for someone a hundred years from now to be able to see my pictures on whatever their version of the Web will be!?

But I really want to make my “online” life easier and way simpler. I can’t erase what is already out there but I can try to put it all in one place.

Weather SUCKS for it being more than half way through June! Cloudy and wet today. Not many totally sunny and Warm days so far this year. Probably only a bit warmer/dryer than last summer though. Ah well. Better enjoy it cause I could go to a much warmer place when I die!

Well, where to begin?

Went to the Doctor today to have him look at a rash I’ve had on my right shin since 2003. Really, 2003! Gets worse, gets better, gets worse, gets better. It seems to be the worst during cold (Winter) weather. Thought it was time to have the Doc look at it. He looked, shook his head in “what the heck is that” mode and gave me an Rx for some cream. Cool! He also told me to double my intake of my Blood Pressure meds and had me submit to a EKG cause he heard an extra beat when listening to my heart. EKG was considered “normal” but they only EKG’d me for about 10 seconds. Well, heck, what if I didn’t have that “extra” beat during that 10 seconds?

SWMBO and I “upgraded” our phones last Friday. It was time as we’d had out Blackberry’s for a couple of years. Went to the Verizon store in Silverdale and took care of a couple of things on their computer (our account) and spent some time looking for new phones. I was interested in the Droid Incredible 2 but it cost $249.95! Damn! But, I’ve been looking for a phone that does HD video (it does), Widescreen pictures (it does) and, of course, make phone calls. (Plus calendar and all that stuff.) If I could combine all this into one unit then I’d save money by NOT buying a new HD video camera (which may or may not include the ability to take a decent widescreen photo) and still have to buy a new phone.

Anywho, we looked at phones for about a half hour with our “sales lady” nowhere in site. Got tired of waiting, told them we were tired of waiting, and took off for our COSTCO run.

Glad we did. We stopped at the Verizon booth in COSTCO and the Droid Incredible 2 was $79! $79! What a difference. So SWMBO and I upgraded our phones. (She got a different phone that does what she wants it to do.)

Report: Mostly I like this phone. The OS is the same as on the Superpad I got a few weeks ago so no big surprises there. Luckily I backed up my contacts and stuff before the Blackberry got shut off so that wasn’t a problem (for me!). The only “problem” I’ve had is sometimes it gets clunky slow and the Mail app crashes when trying to send more than one attachment. I’ve crashed it several times. But other than that it’s not a bad phone.

Oh, yeah. I got a Superpad a few weeks ago. Was hoping it would replace my Zune; which was getting too small to watch with these old eyes. The Superpad is pretty nice for watching a video, surfing the net, checking into Facebook and listening to music (with earbuds). I like several of the “Apps” and have downloaded a couple of free apps for Ham radio and showing pictures. Put a 16 Gig mini-sd card in it for storage. I like it. I also have only a couple of complaints about it. 1) It will crash an app if you click a button too fast for it. 2) It shows online video from the News channels in weird colors. 3) it boots about as fast as my old Win98 computer did. I can live with all these though.

I’m going to the Hollie Family Reunion this year. That’s my Mom’s side of the family. I haven’t seen anyone from that side of the family for the last 50 years or so and thought it was about time I made it to the annual reunion. So, leaving Seattle Sept 29^th, the reunion is October 1^st, then back to Seattle October 3^rd. In the meanwhile I need to rent a car and drive up to my Uncle Loren’s up near Memphis and visit him. Haven’t seen him in 25 years or so either….

I don’t know what else to cover. Been busy doing a lot of Ham radio stuff (with more coming up: Field Day! My First!), building antenna’s and getting them up, gardening, ripping, scanning, housework, cooking most of the meals and a thousand other things (it seems). Oh, finally “worked” Australia and New Zealand last week! Cool!

I will catch up more later. It’s bedtime!

Ok, what the heck has been going on? Well, I’ll tell you! I’ve been busy. I seem to be really busy for a “retired” guy! SWMBO ordered 100 cinder blocks and I had to make a flat area to put in a couple of raised bed gardens. That took a few days. Then she ordered “special” compost/dirt for them and I had to get that in. She got out and planted what she wants to grow. I had some cinder blocks left over so I made a small raised bed garden and planted some tomatoes and Bell Peppers in it. I keep it covered with plastic to keep the deer off the plants. Seems they’ll eat anything left out!
My youngest daughter and her kids (our grandkids!) have come over a couple of times on Saturday’s for dinner and such. They all loved working the digger! Lexi (13?) really went to town digging holes and filling them back in and pushing dirt and such. She seemed to have a ball! And she seems to have a knack for it.
Radio stuff is going okay. Re-built my dipole and added coax instead of the 300 ohm tv line. I was getting way too much RF back into the shack. It worked pretty good with me getting all over the USA. Then I switched the transmitting side from the western side of the house to the eastern. Now I get different places but still cover a lot of area. Yesterday I raised the transmitting end to near horizontal and didn’t seem to be getting out very well; but made a contact in Georgia that led to a contact in Australia! Too Cool! Me & VK4JD talked a good 20 minutes or so. I’ve been having WAY too much fun on the radio. I do mostly PSK31 and sometimes use EasyPal to send/receive pictures. Lots of fun!!!
Today a friend and I used his slingshot thingie to shoot some rope up a tall tree and ran about 250 feet of wire up for a longwire antenna. Was fun but frustrating when it didn’t work right. I can get the antenna tuned but get a lot of SWR so I think I’ll need to add a balun to it. I’ll experiment and see where it leads us.
Let’s see. What else.
Oh, we got a pretty good tax refund so SWMBO let my buy a round-trip ticket for the Hollie Family Reunion this year. All set up and ready to go. I think it’ll be fun.
Bought something called a "SuperPad" on Amazon.com. It’s like a cheaper version of the i-pad or Xoom. I bought it mostly to play with but am now doing e-mail and reading the news at new.yahoo.com. I also got it to replace my Zune. I like the Zune but the screen is too small for these old eyes now; so the SuperPad has a 10.2" screen I can watch video on while I’m waiting to fall asleep. It has an e-reader also that takes .txt files and shows them in book form (turning pages and everything!) and that’s been fun to play with. But who has time to read anymore? Still, this SuperPad will be fun to take on the trip to Greenville, Mississippi for the reunion. I’ll still have to take my video camera along…
Not much else going on around here. Everyday I seem to have a lot to do. I’ve gotten way behind in my favorite tv shows but managed to download and watch the final Smallville. I thought they did an excellent job and I was sorry to see the series end just as it was getting so good. Ah well.
I know I haven’t been posting much lately. I promise to do better.

Promise. Been busy. Too busy for a retired guy! Hang in there. I *WILL* be back!

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