Just Stuff

Earth Shattering

2011-02-23T12:44:00.000-08:00

First off, I am "all in" on the Facebook thing. I resisted until I needed to get some information from someone and the only way was to "friend them up". Up until now, it has been sort of fun with no trouble. I don't really want to add 10 friends a day but it's just one click and can't possibly be bad... Right? You probably already guessed I read a slightly unexpected "not that there is anything wrong with that" post. I figure my best bet is to friend so many people that I can't possibly read them all. I'll let you know.

Second... It is "National Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day" 8=8

Huh?

2011-02-17T17:33:00.000-08:00

Really just the average run of the mill few weeks.
Booked the vacation cruise to Cozumel and the surrounding areas. The ship stops at some port I am sure the cruise line just made up but I don't care. It will be warm. The real selling point of the cruise is that the ship has self leveling pool tables. I really think non self leveling pool tables would be more interesting from a playing standpoint, but I'll just bet people who play pool for a living would never book the cruise. None of this really matters as I plan to just drink heavily and eat like a king for 5 nights (with a balcony). I understand that mentioning the balcony is important because not all rooms have one and it makes me seem better than... well... the people who will be across the hall from me without a balcony.
Our brother in-law told us he has prostate cancer and as I speak (write) has had it removed. His doctors are optimistic and talk about the slowness of prostate cancer. Sounds good so hopefully all will turn out well. Good luck Don
My prodige at work decided my company does not appreciate him enough and found another job. He gave his 2 weeks notice and just drove everybody nuts.
2 Mondays later he announced he was not leaving. I guess the made him "feel more important" (gave him more cash).
Then it happened. We went to dinner (delicious I might add) then to Flying Saucer for Jessie's birthday. Susan went for a bathroom break and came back shortly.
Bla bla bla. Sometime later that same night
We got home and she told me she fell at Flying Saucer and broke her hand.
4 hours at the Doc-in-a-box Saturday morning later... Yep it was broke.
It is hard to describe all the doctor stuff over the last week. The upshot is, surgery is Tuesday and we leave for the cruise on the following Monday.
I really don't know how all this will work out but I'm just glad we did not have to put a new clutch in Susan's car.
Oh did I mention...

IRMO HAS A SMOKING BAN!!!!!!!!

2010-11-18T05:23:00.000-08:00

Cue the band and get the floats out of the drydock, we are going to need a parade. This means you will be able to go in any restaurant in the town of Irmo without having to breath smoke while eating. Right?
Well, not exactly. The town leaders voted in a law that says you cannot have smoking in any public facility, unless you are a bar or restaurant that had smoking before. So essentially they are banning smoking in places that do not allow smoking. Now that is some hard hitting legal action right there. I feel proud to be part of the community.
Of course I realize no one cares what I think, but I just have to say my money will stay in areas that do not allow smoking on principle. The smoking ban laws are on sketchy ground to begin with and I certainly would not want to stop people from getting lung cancer. My disposable income will be used in places that do not smell so bad you can't even taste the food.
Thats my stance.
Yay Irmo! WOOOOO! Go Irmo!

Work Sucks.

2010-11-05T07:52:00.000-07:00

I know I am the only one with this issue. I would just like to say, I really don't care whether anyone else is having a bad week this week or not. I do promise however to care twice as much next week.
So far this week, I have missed lunch 3 times (no jokes about that being good or bad), worked late twice, and lost probably 15 hours of sleep worrying about work. I know I am not supposed to think about work at home but sometimes it just works that way.
I did manage to drink a few beers on every day except Thursday. Since I normally don't drink during the week, or at home, I was a little concerned, but again, I will fix that next week.
Tomorrow is all foot ball all the time. Well....except I need to get ready for cold weather tailgating, go to the dump, buy lumber for the deck "project" and make chilli.

Go Cocks!

Gamecocks v2.0

2010-10-31T08:51:00.001-07:00

I was amazed that after beating tennessee the crowd was very non plussed by the victory. I am thinking that even 2 years ago that win would have people rushing the field. Have expectations risen that much that we think beating a traditional power is common?
I would hate to think we would under appreciate what was still a big win in the sec.

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OK... there is an app for this

2010-10-26T16:51:00.001-07:00

It should be obvious by now that it did not work too well the way I was trying to post. I have found the app "blogger -droid" and it is working so we will see. I don't have the swype keyboard anymore but the one in froyo is pretty nice.
The g1 is still working well so we will probably wait until contract time to upgrade. I think even the battery trouble Susan was having has disappeared.
I swear I will try to update more even if the subject matter is a little thin.

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There is no app for this

2010-08-07T06:43:00.000-07:00

Please excuse any messy grammer or spelling. I am doing this post from the browser on the G1. I would have thought Google would have created a phone app for this but I can't find it.

I am using swype for this paragraph. It's the keyboard where you just slide your finger around the screen. It will auto predict some wrong words from time to time but all in all it is easy. If this works fairly well I will be able to post more often.

Busy Summer

2010-08-06T05:40:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack posts but it has been a full summer so far. Since I last checked in, the Gamecocks won the baseball national championship, the oil in the gulf started flowing and was capped, and Morrie Yohai, the inventor of cheese doodles, passed away. The washer and dryer are in the garage ( have I mentioned how much I hate going under the house) and Mark gave us a garage refrigerator. I learned a lot about the driving economy in the coastal Virginia area and the onset of dementia in the elderly.

The android world continues to amaze me with the community effort and my old G1 is actually running the latest Froyo software better than the original version. I can't help myself but to continue to want to improve it but it really could not be much better.

I was going to start a project to build a Mythtv box to DVR stuff off the TV but it looks less expensive and time consuming to just get the box from Directv. I am a little sorry I won't be working on that. I asked a question in the forum , mythtvtalk.com, and got good quick answers to my hardware questions. I may do a scaled down version to try to save some stuff from the Directv box to our network. SHHHHH... don't tell Directv they may not like the idea so much.
Coming up, we will be getting ready for the first football game and tailgating. I have no idea how this is going to turn out. Our group has splintered to say the least. I have improved the satellite situation by purchasing a new dish to get more HD channels. We are definitely going with 1 TV this year and that will simplify things a lot right there.

I think I will stop for a while. I will update with how some of this goes.

Woops!

2010-04-27T07:11:00.000-07:00

I forgot something. Oh yeah, I was supposed to report from all over Florida. Well... I got drunk. Sorry.
To make it worse, work was just horrible when I got home. I am all caught up now. Hilarity will ensue.
This small post should keep everyone up to date until I have some real time.
Also, congrats to Bill and Tara! Just wanted to throw that in.
Lots of random thoughts but I'll spare you.

Spring Training

2010-03-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

I am going to Florida with some guys to see baseball spring training. We have tickets for 4 games and will be back on Wednesday. My plan is to blog from each ballpark with a picture from each park. Whether this happens or not depends on several factors. The first problem is the beer conditions each day. I will have to blog early from each location but this could be tough based on the previous nights activities. The first blog will come Saturday (3 27) AM. I will list the Cities, ballparks, and teams.
I will probably not be including any info on difficulties of the actual trip to avoid any conflicts. I am sure there will be some. If there are any general problems that could be avoided if someone knew ahead, I will give a heads up about that.
See you in Florida. Go Braves!

Adult childhood fears

2010-03-18T16:23:00.000-07:00

Just think it through... or not.

G1 camera stuck in the 70s

2010-03-18T15:09:00.000-07:00

The camera on my T mobile G1 went south last week. In fact I think it went so far south it actually moved 35 years back in time. The colors went sort of "Mod Squad" on me. Any way the result is that I needed to send it in under warranty.
The problem here is that I had changed the rom software on the phone and doubt they would have been real happy with that. The process was fairly straight forward and I found a couple of different guides on upgrading / down grading. First I wanted to get the phone back to the original Spl (secondary program loader). This is the one tricky part that I wanted to make sure was taken care of before starting the process. I grabbed the Spl from XDA forums post:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=455860
Then I used a guide from XDA forums to get the phone to cupcake:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=606147
I stopped after the cupcake part because I was trying to "unroot" not root.
Downloaded cupcake CRC1 from:
http://code.google.com/p/android-roms/downloads/detail?name=signed-kila-CRC1-from-CRB43-FIX.7ca4a1d7.zip&can=2&q=
Installed it over the current rom. Followed the guide here (or just got the file from here):
http://androidoverdrive.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=85
After I finished all this, I was at the most recent donut and can receive any OTA updates.
Now, I had rooted the phone in the first place so I knew what to do mostly. I could see some of this being tricky if you had never done it before.
I have my new G1 from T mobile now and have not done any mods to it yet. The camera is perfect and the whole process was easy to deal with.
I can't wait for the Openeclair team (Wes Garner) to get 2.0 out there to try. I will probably not change the phone until that happens.
If anyone wants step by step on the whole thing just leave a comment or email me and I can throw it together. Same thing if you want to root instead of unroot.

Winter Vacation

2010-03-10T09:36:00.000-08:00

As I am sure everyone already is aware of the global colding going on nationwide this winter, I decided we needed to take matters into our own hands and head south. Very south.
I know absolutely nothing about booking a vacation so this took some research but I think I got it now. I compared the idea of a flight to somewhere and taking a cruise. Lots to consider here but the idea of the cruise won out in the long run.
After searching all the sites online, I settled on a site called "CheapCaribbean.com". It took a ton of looking and comparing to figure what would be best for us. I wanted a short cruise, 3 nights max, and eastern Caribbean if possible. This really narrowed the choices as well as our time frame. I booked it all and worked out all the details just 10 days prior to the trip. I won't do it that close again. The price was not that much better and the anxiety this caused was high.
The only real pre cruise trouble was Susan's passport was expired. The info on the cruise site said, get a passport, but time was to short. It also said, birth certificate and ID was sufficient if leaving from and returning to the same port. This turned out to be fine but I would not do it again. If you get stuck in the Bahamas, you would not be able to fly home. A bit risky I think. Five to seven weeks for a passport renewal these days but we are working on it.
The cruise was almost perfect with just minor stuff along the way. The weather the last day was less than perfect but that about covers it.
If there is a moral, it would be, take a vacation when you need one, not when you can take one.

Last to know

2010-01-04T09:24:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning not happy to be going back to work after a couple of weeks off. I warmed up the car, (no the weather has not improved) then took off down the road. Took me about 40 feet to recognize Steven A. Smith's dulcid scream on Fox sports radio. I checked that I was on XM142 then my heart sank.
When I arrived at work, I checked Steve Czabans blog were there it was, all laid out. They canned him.
That's pretty much it for me with Fox sports radio. I don't like the afternoon drive and I just can't stand Steven A.
I found Czabes original statement on line and will reprint it here for posterity sake.

From Czabe.com:

File this one under “Horrible and Ironic Ways (For Your Radio Show) To Die.”

My contract with Fox Sports Radio has not been renewed. The last day of the “Steve Czaban Show” is scheduled for December 23rd.

Steven A. Smith will be my permanent replacement.

Now, you can chew on that one for a bit.

Okay, you still with me? Good. Here’s all I’m going to say.

This was not my choice, or desire. My agent wanted me to spin it in one of those “we decided to mutually part ways” for anybody who wanted to know. But I’m not good at lying. And besides, you deserve the truth.

The letter from the network read (in part) as follows. “As you know, our decision not to renew Steve’s contract was not made in haste. He has performed for us on air brilliantly, and has been a tremendous asset to our network for many years. It was only after much contemplation that we made the tough decision to move in a different direction.”

I’ll take that as an “Honorable Discharge.”

I held down the morning shift for FSR since 2004, and did a night time show for 2 more years prior to that. In sum, 7 years is a pretty good run. I’m thankful for every minute of it.

The “un-official” reason why the show was cancelled – or at least what was relayed to us - was that “affiliates” were saying that we sounded “too much like Mike and Mike.”

Yep. That’s what FSR told us.

Ohhhhhkaaayyyy then.

I might argue that our show was actually the ANTI-Mike and Mike, but what good is arguing with that logic anyway?

Steven A. Smith will not sound like Mike and Mike.

To further understand what happened, you need to know that a whole new programming regime came into power at Fox Sports Radio about a year ago. The new guy (and his name is not important) didn’t hire me, so perhaps I never was his cup of tea.

This happens in radio. What can you do?

Furthermore, they believe that Steven A. can get the network cleared in New York City and Philly. I hope they do. Good luck.

All I know is this.

When we began in morning drive, there were 106 affiliates that carried the show full time. Currently, there are 186. We obviously were doing something, somebody out there, liked.

But enough of me. Let’s talk about you, my faithful listeners. My army of trained robot killers.

Thank you.

Thank you from the deepest, no-bullshit, part of my heart.

Thank you a million times over for being a part of my life for these five years. Thank you for allowing me into your cars every morning. Thank you for emailing me with notes of support, long winded arguments, cheap shots, funny jokes about Mark Mangino’s coat size, serious suggestions on show ideas, and on and on and on.

Thank you for so many hilarious, creative text messages. Thank you for all the great “Lock It Ups”, dumb questions, mancrushes and the like.

Thanks for understanding that my intermittent blowhardery was – in reality - balanced by a truly “regular guy” who actually didn’t take himself that seriously. Our show took SPORTS seriously. Ourselves, not so much.

Thanks even more to my two remaining running mates, Scott Linn and producer Steve Solomon. These guys are warriors. I will have them on any show of mine from now until the end of time. They are both smart, workaholic, funny-as-shit, dedicated radio professionals.

They are also two of the best people I know. I am honored and humbled to be able to call them friends.

What is next for us? Well, for starters, sleep! Haha! No more waking up at 4:30 a.m. to start “making the donuts” for us! My dream of once again staying up late enough to see the finish of a Monday Night Football game is about to be a reality.

As you know, we also work for ESPN980 locally in Washington D.C. Those gigs are safe, and quite rewarding in their own right. We’re gonna be fine, and we’re not going anywhere.

In fact, you can listen to the Sports Reporters on ESPN980 every day at 4 p.m. Eastern at ESPN980.com. Granted, you’ll have to listen to a whole boatload of bitching about the Redskins, but at least it’s something.

Also, here at Czabe.com we’ll still be cranking out 5 “Czabecasts” a week with all the fellas and bonus Al Galdi! So do make sure to swing in to the shop once a day for your dose.

I certainly hope there’s another chance for me (and us) at the network level. But I assume nothing, and the industry doesn’t owe me a thing. That said, I believe I can play at this level. And with my P90x program winding down, I’m feelin’ friskier than ever.

As soon as anything happens, you’ll hear about it right here. Or even better yet, you can now join my “Official” Facebook page. Yeah, I know. I swore I’d never stoop to this level, but my web guru Kirk Strong is the guy who basically “handles” it, and I will just have to drop by and chime in from time to time.
We’ve got two weeks left together, people. Let’s make ‘em good, and lets laugh like hell.

I will look for Czabe to turn up elsewhere and will find some other diversion for my daily drive.
Thanks to http://thebaldtruthblog.blogspot.com for grabbing the original post.

Bill

Christmas Cheer

2010-01-03T18:14:00.000-08:00

I am not going to do an actual cheer here. I don't have any pom poms and quite frankly the holidays have left me a little drained. I think it is time for a flood / drought report........Well there is no drought, thats for damn sure. Been a little wet. This would bother me, seeing as how I had the last 2 weeks off, but its to cold to even think about the rain. I mean, how can I really enjoy a nice beer in an ice cold glass when its 22 degrees outside. 22 degrees in Columbia South Carolina. I guess I shouldn't complain, I think it was 21 in Des moines Iowa yesterday.
Christmas came and went with out a hitch. My sister and her family stayed with us for a couple of nights. Normally this would freak me out but we are set up pretty well for it. Did have the entire family over for dinner 2 days in a row. Again no problem just sort of lightly (permanently) scarred the dogs. I think they are still looking under the furniture for small children.
Tried a new recipe for the turkey (day 1) by sliding bacon under the skin before roasting. I think it was the best turkey I have ever had and certainly the best I have ever cooked. I kept from smoking up the whole house this year by replacing the gasket on the oven door. Getting a replacement gasket for a 40 year old oven was not exactly strait forward. The parts place I always use had closed without calling to inform me first (how dare they) so I found another through the magic of Google. I knew I was in the right place when they pulled out he box of micro film to look up the part. (for those of you under 40 micro film is an ancient form of data storage that was used in the days of yore) Got almost and exact match.
I have no idea where this post was going so I am going to leave it right there. If I fix it up and give it some direction I think it will lose its "charm"

Google has a Voice!

2009-12-21T12:07:00.001-08:00

Just a short note today. Think of it like a leaflet instead of a magazine. I got a Google voice invite today. I lucked out and a guy at work had an extra. I have no idea how they decide when you can hand them out to people but I will keep my eye out. I am a little confused as to how some of it works, so if I find any interesting tidbits I will report here.
Since we were talking about my cell phone.... just go along... I tried out the Android Eclair build by Manup over at XDA. I thought it was a very good rom except for the part where they have not figured out the eclair camera drivers for the G1 just yet. I would think that will happen pretty quick. I will stick to WesGarners CM based rom until further notice.
I have no morals today.

Oh Christmas tree...Oh Christmas.........

2009-12-20T11:25:00.000-08:00

Well, I actually pulled it off. With the help of the major chain stores being sold out of real (dead) Christmas trees, I have convinced my wife that we needed a pre-lit artificial tree. The hunt for the perfect artificial tree was actually worse than I would have said. Two nights and driving half the city produced the perfect 7.5 foot, 500 light, easy to assemble, non real, neither live not dead, tree.
No strapping to the top of the car.
No cutting off extra limbs and cutting off bottom to fit stand.
No spilling water all over the floor filling the stand.
No millions of needles from the porch to the living room.
No stringing lights for hours.
Just a few of the pre-Christmas day tree pleasures we have avoided. The list of post Christmas glea bringers is just as long or longer.
The model tree we bought came from Sam's Club (Via china) and came in 3 pieces. The bottom 2 sections are hinged and just fold out. The top piece is more bendy and takes a little work to make it look good. It also came with a duffel bag type thing to store it after the holidays. The real benefit came when we had to go back to Sam's the second time to pick it up and it had been reduced 30 bucks. Next years benefit will be even bigger when we don't have to go find one and it is already paid for.
Moral:
Merry Plastic, homogenized, "no trees were killed in the making of this tree" Christmas!

Windows Update!

2009-12-15T09:27:00.000-08:00

Time to go over the results for getting word 2007 to not lock up on windows 7. In my search of the web yesterday, I found people who said this was a printer problem(there were also about 20 pages of possible registry hacks). What would trying to change the font in a word document have to do with the network printer? I am still a little baffled by this one. I changed my default printer to " Microsoft One Note" and rebooted. Poof! No more "Not Responding". Made absolutely no sense, but I went a little further down the road. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the printer, looking for updated drivers and switching to drivers for XP. Bupkis. The printer is setup through a print server built into my router. Works with every computer we have ever put on our network. In the last year I added a NAS drive to our setup and it also has a print server built in. Turned off the printer, moved the USB from the router to the NAS and no more trouble. I still have no real clue except to say that Win 7 must not like the routers' print server.
I like to have a moral for each story so here goes.
If you have a US Robotics router with print server, No windows 7.
If I have any other Windows 7 fun, I will post results here....eventually.

Windows 7

2009-12-14T11:43:00.000-08:00

Ok, the fun has begun. My first Windows 7 experience. What is the one set of programs that you would expect no trouble right out of the box? Well you'd be wrong. Yes they tested it for 2 whole years. No it does not work right.
All we wanted was to be able to open Word and change the font type add a couple of names to a list, and save the document.
NO! "NOT RESPONDING!"
I have found about 10 possible fixes that I will try tonight. None of them involve squirrels or hammers.
Updates to come....Hilarity to ensue.

OH MY GOD, THERE'S A DROUGHT!

2009-12-11T04:57:00.000-08:00

The last ten years or so, I have seen articles in the paper about the local drought conditions. It is almost as regular as the daily weather report. Statistics such as how many inches of rain behind or how many years it will take for a river to recover are the key points that they repeat endlessly.
I live in the midlands of South Carolina and I would like to declare the drought (real or perceived) over. In fact, I would like to announce the flood warnings here on this blog. I will not be re-announcing this every day, but you can bet we will either still be flooded or in a drought.
Don't worry for me personally. My only concern is that I can't finish getting up the leaves. This has the added benefit of not having to get up the leaves.
Back in 1990 or so I moved to San Antonio. It was middle of January in Texas. The weather was really nice. Warm most days with just a little more wind than I would choose. I started reading the reports of the 10 year drought in the paper and the huge reservoir project they were building to help.
When it quit raining 3 weeks later, the aquifer was at a 20 year high and they were talking about arresting the contractor and (contractors brother-in-law) politician that started the project.
Moral of this story is, If you are not in a third world country, droughts are temporary and you should probably buy stock in the ACME GALOSHES COMPANY OF WALAWALA WASHINGTON.
One more thought. If you're worried about a drought, have a draft.

No news = Good news?

2009-12-09T11:26:00.001-08:00

I guess not winning the election last year left me empty of useless content. However, I am ready to update.
We bought new G1 phones and have hacked them to death. More on this later.
The kitchen remodel is finished to the point of needing a new gas range, stainless of course. If anyone wants to donate......
Gamecock football was as always a roller coaster (is that spelled right?) ride from hell as always.
And last but not least Tiger Woods is a scum bag. I am absolutely convinced Tim (there's no crying in football) Tebow will have the same fate. this sort of stuff makes us all feel slightly better about our humble position in the world.
Back soon.

Vacuum update

2008-10-08T09:31:00.000-07:00

The shocking update is......... i hate going under my house. The other shocking news is..... the system is in and working very well. There is no comparing of the suction power of a regular vacuum to a central vacuum. The only trouble i had was the kit was supposed to come with wire but they did not put it in the box and I needed extra couplings plus 1 extra stick of pipe.
All in all it was amazingly easy and inexpensive. I still came in around 400.
Now, if I could just get the "roomba" to drag the new vacuum hose around!

Do you hear that huge "sucking" sound?

2008-09-18T09:24:00.000-07:00

All the parts have been puchased.......... the planning is done......... the floors are dirty........ and soon the central vacuum will be installed.
I spent about 2 weeks online (not wasting time at work) learning about the task of installing a "whole hose vacuum system". The parts were all purchased from www.ventingdirect.com except for the pipe. Shipping for 12 8 foot long pipes was stupid expensive. There is a place in town, "The vacuum center", that sells the stuff. It is not average PVC pipe. It is some thinwall 2" PVC made for vacuum systems and maybe irrigation. Anyway I have it all and I will start cutting holes in walls today.......I hope. So far I have about 400.00 American in it and I figure it will take another 50.00 in odd parts to finish it up.
Keep you posted.

Puppies!

2008-09-09T13:15:00.000-07:00

Say that in your head while thinking of the line from "The Wizard of Oz" where the Witch says "Poppies".
We adopted a new puppy last week from one of the local shelters. Her name is Maggie and she is very sweet and cute. She and Lucy (the big dog) are getting along well but driving us a little crazy with the "puppy fighting". I've checked all the sources and they all say as long as it is just play, it's OK.
I will start some sort of home training routine (she is pretty well house trained already) this weekend. Sit ....... stay........ stop....... You get the idea. I'll update with the results.

Laptop Lucky

2008-07-10T09:18:00.000-07:00

"logging in.....logging out"........"logging in.....logging out".............."logging in.....logging out"
I knew I could fix it but on the road with no disks and no internet? Not likely.
Choice 1. Find an XP CD and try to figure out "system Restore " from recovery console.
Choice 2 Find a cheap new laptop with a trial version of Office or down load Open Office.
Full install XP CD at Wallmart, 199.99. Upgrade to Vista CD at Staples 179.00. Brand new Toshiba laptop with trial version of Office 2007 at Office Depot 449.00. SOLD!!
Later.... back at the ranch......2 minutes on the internet tells me how to recovery the computer once I am at the recovery console. ( I have the full install disk for XP right there at the "ranch") My DOS skills were a little rusty and the guy had a part where I was trying to rename a file across directories. Once I got all the files copied just right, whammo blammo! Restart and back to normal.
WARNING!!!! If you do this you might never use that XP installation again. If its already dead....what the hell. Go for it.
This link is to the post with the directions.
http://searchwincomputing.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid68_gci1167895,00.html

Holiday or Wedding?

2008-07-10T06:41:00.000-07:00

Well, it really wasn't both. I'd like to say that the 4th of July was a good long 4 days off to recharge the batteries. What I can say is the 4th of July was 4 days of work like conditions. I did manage to drink beer often.
Less than an hour into the trip, Susan realized her laptop would not boot. It said "logging in.......logging out" "logging in.........logging out". Even in safe mode, the desktop was unreachable. Of course the only way to system restore is from the desktop or to have an XP cd. More on this later.

All the wedding events (Susans niece Sancia{sp?}) went off with out a hitch. Only minor stretches of family related pressure. Two days of driving and viola, perfect holiday weekend.

Out Of Range

2008-06-23T04:56:00.000-07:00

Saturday seemed like a good day to ugrade my computer to the new version of Ubuntu linux. Its been out for almost 2 months so I felt like there would be no major issues. The installation went fine. Looked good everything seemed to work. I did the updates to get it all freshened up. After reboot, nothing............ No screen, no options, nothing. Just three words to stare at. "OUT OF RANGE" I had noticed the ATI driver update and the kernel update but I felt sure they were together so one would not kill the other. Wrong.
The ATI driver issue is something that every Linux user is aware of. We have all been told about how ATI/AMD is improving things by opening the driver source. I've had it. Iwent out to go find the cheapest Nvidia card I could buy locally. I was home in less than an hour with nothing. Expensive or to new to work. I went on New Egg and have one coming on Tuesday for 30 bucks.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I installed Fedora 9. No trouble installing but after updates I had the same "OUT OF RANGE" experience. This time I looked into the problem some. I logged in to just a command line and edited the Xorg file to use the plain VESA driver. After reboot everything was perfect again. I spent some time on the Fedora forum and it looks like the Nvidia driver trouble is also bad. I will have to make a decision whether to change the video card or not.
I hope that eventually the video driver issue will be worked out. I believe in the open source idea and enjoy using Linux and gnome. It will never be possible to ask people to use a product where doing the updates leaves them with no graphical screen at all.
I may have more on this at another time. I am a little worn out with it now and I will be asking around about the changing the video card thing before I start.

DRIP.....DRIP The sequel

2008-06-19T09:51:00.000-07:00

Back flow preventer........ This is aparently a little known alternative phrase for not going to let any water in the tubing no matter how hard you try. The kits from Harbour Freight cost about 7.99. Now, once you add the 19.50 for some parts to replace the back flow preventer, the price is actually a little higher. All in all it worked fairly well. I struggled to push the tubing on to the "tees" but the other parts worked smoothly. I would say they were good deal but not a great deal.
Overall,
I'm happy
The palms are happy
The monkey grass is happy
and Susan is happy.

Your can was skinny but now its FAT again.

2008-06-19T09:48:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't own the "skinny" koozies, there may be a ripple in "the hard to explain" Budweiser can marketing scheme.

HISTORY
Two or three years ago (this is a blog not a text book) Budweiser switched to these little cans for Bud select and Michelob Ultra. They are still 12 oz but skinny and tall. It seems they were trying to copy the Red Bull can.

PRESENT DAY
We picked up a 18 pack of Select at W*mart Tuesday and low and behold, Poof, big can.

Is this in reaction to Hillary being defeated?
Is this the answer to global warming?
Is this the response to unhappy beer drinkers who want to use koozies?
Time will tell.

Denial of Service

2008-06-19T09:46:00.001-07:00

Not what you think. Have you ever thought about what it would be like if your government made rules preventing you from doing your normal every day activities? I (my wife) wanted to buy curtain rods. Seems like the kind of activity the local authorities would be pretty pleased about. Shopping local, supporting the economy by spending and not saving, paying local sales tax, driving less to save fuel and save the environment. Sounds down right American right?
Welcome to Lexington county in South Carolina. You see it was before 1:30 PM on a Sunday. Oh........ you say. Now you completely understand. The mistake was all mine and I should be more careful in the future.
This story does end with out me going to jail. The Wal*mart in Richland County is a mere 10 miles away and low and behold there is no curtain rod law on the books in Richland County.
The only down side is that it took 2 hours to get the evil contraband rods, a couple of curtains that we had not planned on, some steaks for dinner (completely legal in both counties) and a few accessories at the home center. The high temp in our area was 101 yesterday so by the time I was home .....you guessed it.....to hot to install the drip (Dripp....Dripp) irrigation system.
As you may have already figured out, besides the temperature outside, I was already running a little hot.

Drip...drip

2008-06-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I will try out a cheap drip irrigation system from Harbor freight tools. I'm sure everything will go perfectly and once I recover enough to use whole "happy" words again, I'll give you the rundown.

New Blog Site

2008-06-19T09:42:00.000-07:00

I am moving the posts over from the "Blinking Blog" site to here. This site is a little easier to get to.