Been Pretty Nice Out!

And I’m glad. Even today, cooler than the last few, was still fairly nice. Last:

Friday: SWMBO and I got up early (well, SHE got up earlier) and we went to the 1030 showing of the latest Indiana Jones movie at the Galaxy Theater in Gig Harbor. What a nice theater! Screen(s) are nice and big, sound is great, but the best part is the seating. It’s that ’ampitheater’ type seating: where the people in front of you are lower. Their heads would be about knee height. That was cool! Another great thing about going so early to a movie that’s been out awhile is we had the theater completely to ourselves. Too cool! After the movie SWMBO took me to KFC and then we went and spent way too much shopping at Albertson’s. But, groceries ain’t going to get any cheaper so we might as well get what we may need now. She bought 4 big chuck roasts (I think that’s what they are) for me to grind into hamburger. Hell, I may even add some real HAM so it’ll really be hamburger!

After doing all that I went out to the property cause it was just too damned nice out to stay home. Mostly just layed out and read.

Saturday: SWMBO did her usual shift at the Genealogy Library in Bremerton. I went on out to the property and cut up half a dozen trees for firewood. A friend of our is going to let me use his toyota dump truck Monday to pick up as much as we can. There’s probably 20 of my truckbed fulls. It’ll be cheaper to use his truck. After cutting up all that wood I just layed out and read some before going home.

SWMBO and I completely re-did our house plan. Something we both agreed on! Wow! (Well, except for the MIL apartment but I’m kinda sorta getting used to that one.) She figures we can afford 3k sq ft or less. So this one comes in around 2680. Here are the rough plans:

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That program, 3dHouseDeluxe5 by Broderbund works pretty good for making rough plans. It’s kind of quirky sometimes when you try to place things (cabinets) in specific places but mostly it works good.

Today, Sunday, after my usual first session of church (I keep having these talks go through my head) I straightened up the kitchen for SWMBO & Son to grind some hamburger, got everything set up for them, and went on out to the property. Took down a couple more trees and moved some dirt. Too cool to get naked though. Bummer. :grin: But I got a lot done.

Got home in time to smooch SWMBO before she took off for Choir practice and I’m been straightening up my "New Scans" directory’s on my backup drive. Trying to see where I am in my scanning (which I don’t do near about enough of!).

That’s it. All caught up. Aren’t you glad you tuned in?!…


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Urge You NOT To Do Business With MediaMax/The LinkUp

I joined MediaMax about a year or so ago. Used their server for file storage/transfer once. Noticed this past April I was coming up for renewal. Canceled my account 30 Apr 08. They re-billed me early June for $59. Notified them via e-mail (Customer Service) of the situation. Boiler plate "sorry about that" return e-mail. It’s now 19 June and I STILL haven’t gotten a refund. I think over 3 weeks is way long enough to fix an error like that. So much for their "customer service." Yep, just rechecked and still no refund. I can’t afford a lawyer but I can go down and file a "lean" against their company for $59 Plus however much it costs to file the ’lean." So I urge y’all most strenuously NOT to do business with MediaMax/The Linkup.

Yesterday was a pretty normal Wednesday for me. Spent a LOT of time back in our back bedroom/storage room pulling out all the damned empty boxes and tearing them down. Damn but there were a lot of empty boxes! Why do I keep boxes from computer stuff I bought 3-4 years ago? Straightened up that room some and was surprised at the room I had. Cool.

Spent part of the day (6 hours or so) building another WindowsXP drive. Last Monday evening I shut my computer down and swapped for the Vista drive to play with it for awhile. (Still not impressed with Vista.) When I was done with that I shut my ’puter down and swapped my XP drive back in. Damned if it wouldn’t work! It would boot into safe mode okay; but would get about 3/4 way through the boot process in normal mode then reboot. Everytime. Finally got tired of trying to fix it around 0100 and just turned it off. Did get it to running mid-Tuesday but couldn’t check my mail, etc until then.

So I decided to make a ’backup’ drive on a ’spare’ 80G drive I have just laying around with XP and at least my e-mail crap for those times things like this happens. Ah, but there is something beautiful about a brand spankin’ new XP install! It boots up so quickly! But I wound up installing damn near everything I usually use and a couple of programs I’ve wanted to try out and it all works great. Cool! If I can transfer all my passwords and stuff over I’ll probably switch to this drive/install. Yeah, used 20G of the 80G but I rarely keep anything but System stuff on my boot drive anyway. I’ve lost too many things over the years to a boot drive going TU…:grin:

Not much going on today. Playing with a program called "vue4"; another landscape generator. I set up a 10.7 second animation of an island and it took 4 HOURS TO RENDER! Damn! Been re-drawing our house plans in that Broderbund program. Think I need to sign up for an AutoDesk class.

And that’s about it from the land of (Gads, is it summer yet?) Warshington…


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Finally Some Damn Fine Weather!

I have NO idea what I was doing last Wednesday & Thursday. Wednesday was probably a normal "SWMBO to the Office" day. No, she had to go in Tuesday so she was around Wednesday. And Thursday’s, since Smallville is off season, is pretty much just another regular day to me now. That’ll change when the next season comes on…

Last Friday SWMBO and I went out for Brunch. Then not much of anything until Battlestar Galactica. Damn Good Show!

Saturday, Sunday and Monday were DAMN FINE DAYS around here. Finally! I mean get naked and lay out nice! So I did. AFTER I cut up a lot of wood to start it drying out for winter burning. I cut up (by the end of the 3rd day) about 15 of my truckbed fulls of wood. It’s going to cost more in gas to transport it back to where we’re living than I’m saving in fuel costs. Meaning I could probably buy it from someone down the road cheaper. But I’m going to see if one of my friends will let me use his little dump truck to haul it back to the house.

OTT, not much going on. Since we’ve had to give up our dream of building a Monolithic Dome we’ve been working on the plans for a ’stick’ looking house. I figure we’ll use ICF construction but it will look like a normal stick house for the banks/loaning institutions. SWMBO still wants a mother-in-law apartment downstairs though. Bummer. But, hey, she’ll still be living there 20 years after I die so why not! I’d much prefer to go one-story without the MILA.

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This is my latest guesstimate for layout of upstairs… Still have to find a place for the circular stair & dumb waiter. And now SWMBO is talking about another door from the kitchen to outside…


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Power On. Power Off. Power On. Flicker. Flicker. Flicker. Power Off

Last Monday a wind came through and knocked the power out for awhile. Power flickered every so often all day just enough to reboot the modem and turn the tv stuff off (glad I have a ups on my computer!). But about 1800 or so the power went off completely. So we sat around reading by lamp light until around 2200 or so. I did start up the generator and hooked SWMBO’s computer, the cable modem and the router to it so she could keep working, but the cable modem couldn’t find the Internet. Guess the substation was without power also.

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Tuesday was a fairly normal Tuesday. Except that SWMBO had to go to a meeting in Seattle @ 1000 so she went on to her office to work instead of making essentially the same trip on Wednesday. Gas is just too expensive to do a lot of unnecessary driving now a days. I spent the day pretty much doped to the gills on Sudafed and cough syrup and didn’t get much accomplished at all. Tried lifting the end of that splitter I borrowed so I could take it back and couldn’t even work up enough energy to do that. Needless to say I went to bed fairly early even though I layed there and read until late.

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Today has been a too normal Wednesday; except for SWMBO being home and I didn’t get out of bed until late. No, that’s not true. I got up at 0730, stayed up for a couple of hours then went back and layed down for a couple of hours. I don’t usually do that. Once I’m up, I’m Up.

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Been doing laundry and straightening up the living room and trying to put stuff away. Problem is we don’t have anyplace to put things out of the way! It’s a combination of having too much "stuff" and living in a too-small house.

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Speaking of house: we still haven’t figured out if we’re still building a dome or not. I installed 3d Home Designer last night and spent a couple of hours playing with it. Cool. Now if you could only design domes or alternative construction homes with it…

Made Swedish Meatballs for dinner and they was good!


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