It’s now a lot quicker (if also a lot more expensive) for the parents to come visit us. This is their Comanche on the ground at home base, and then Mom and Dad getting ready to head back to home base from New Century Air Service… a mere four minutes from our front door.
Tag Archives: Family
New Homes are Heavy
The wife and I have been very busy lately. It’s not yet over, but this past weekend was perhaps the busiest, not to mention heaviest, part of the process. That process is moving.
The whole thing started last spring, when we put our two houses on the market. This past spring, a year later almost to the day, her house finally sold and we had the wherewithal to purchase a new house. We packed her house into two POD units and moved them into storage until we had a place to put them. At the same time, we took mine off the market because it hadn’t sold yet, and we didn’t want to take the chance of it selling and us having no place to go. Turns out it wasn’t a concern, because we found the house we wanted to buy within days.
We made an offer, they countered, we met in the middle, and two long months later, we took possession. When that day finally arrived, we couldn’t move in immediately because we had too many other family obligations (Jami’s sister graduated with her doctorate! We couldn’t miss that graduation day…). So, exactly one week after we took possession, I had the two full-to-the-roof POD units filled with more boxes and heavy furniture than any one person has any business owning, delivered for unloading at the new house. With the help of some very friendly neighbors, we started unloading them that night. We continued unloading the next night, and did so until we dropped. We spent our first night in our new home that night. Fortunately, the bed was easily accessible in the POD unit, so we didn’t have to sleep on the floor. By the time we were done, though, it wouldn’t have mattered where we slept… we were too tired to care. Finally, on Saturday, some friends came over to help unload the rest.
By Saturday night, we were absolutely beat. Unfortunately, our work was not yet done. We spent Sunday at the old house, packing up, mowing the yard, and cleaning. Then we devoted that evening at the new home unpacking, straightening up and getting all the computers back online.
Being Memorial Day weekend, we had an extra day which was spent back at the old house for more packing (about 500lbs worth of books – plus lots of this and that) and lots of cleaning. Monday night was given to more unpacking, more cleaning, and more organizing. We did give ourselves a bit of a break for a glass of wine on the front porch before getting back to it.
At the end of the weekend, between the two of us and some very helpful friends and neighbors, we have a pretty good start on a new home.
But our work is not yet done. The POD units were still in the driveway as of Wednesday, to be picked up on Thursday and Friday. Saturday we’ll get a truck to move the rest of the heavy stuff out of my house. Until then, we’ll spend a lot of time at the old house getting as much packed and moved as possible so that the friends who are helping on Saturday only have to help us with the heavy items we can’t move by ourselves. From there, it’s a matter of final cleaning and finishing up a few little details here and thereto get it in tip-top shape to put back on the market. We’re hoping to sell it within the next 2 and a half months. We’ll see…
Pool Table and Rec Room Furniture Moved
We’re not completely beat, but we’re certainly tired. Moving our rec room furniture out of one friend’s basement, and into two others will do that I suppose.
I hired out the pool table itself, preferring to have someone experienced in dismantling pool tables do that job. It was taken to one friend’s basement, along with two barstools and the light this morning.
This afternoon, I, my wife, and the couple from whom we bought the whole set, moved the rest of it into the garage in our Southern Home. That includes the captain’s chair, the player chair, four rolling chairs, a high top table, and a flip-top poker/game table, and a 60″ standing bar. Thankfully, we had a family truck to use, which meant we had to make a couple trips, and put stuff in cars as well, and make two trips to boot, but we didn’t have to pay anything for it.
One step closer to having a usable pool table!
Christmas 2010 Recap
Christmas break this year was a lot of fun. The week before Christmas was spent mostly in Wichita with my brother back in town from the Northwest. Both Mom and Dad were overjoyed to have the whole family together again for the holidays, even if it wasn’t on Christmas Day Proper. It’s not the date that matters, but the time spent, no matter the date. There was lots of eating, lots of relaxing down time, some pool, some shopping, and generally enjoying family time.
Christmas Day Proper was spent, just my wife and I. We carried on what is becoming a wonderful tradition of opening one present per hour. We did that first on Valentine’s Day, and she had the fantastic idea of applying it to Christmas too. So, with homemade IHOP style pancakes and mimosas, we opened our gifts to each other, watched Milo & Otis, and I introduced her to Firefly. She’s not totally hooked yet, but I can see the roots sprouting. ;)
The day after Christmas was spent at her parent’s house. Her younger sister and bro-in-law were there with her parents, and her older sister joined us via Skype for the opening of yet more presents. I wasn’t sure how that would go, having only been a Skype user since the night before, the the extent of my usage being with my wife in the other room, but it was really quite cool. We just turned the laptop (and thus the built in webcam) around to face whoever was opening presents at the time, and it was almost like she was right there in the room with us. I have some pictures of her on Skype, but they’re not terribly flattering.
At the end of it all, my wife and I got quite a few presents, some fantastic, some more funny than anything, and others merely… curious. But, instead of going through the Christmas swag we snuck away with, I think I’d rather talk about what my wife and I gave to others (and what I gave to my wife). This is pretty much a complete list (as far as I can remember), but there are a few things that I couldn’t find, so I’m keeping them in the queue for next year.
- $30 Gift certificate to Sears
- DVD’s of Milo & Otis, The Aristocats, Cinderella, Lady & the Tramp
- DVD’s of Firefly Season, Serentiy
- Bathtub waterproof foam pillow (non-inflatable)
- Bathtub adjustable shelf with bamboo book rest & wine glass stand
- Silver mini Christmas Tree
- Flannel Shirts
- Presso Hand-Pressed Espresso Maker
- $100 Gift certificate to Par Exsalonce
- Candy bars and lemon drops
- Schlemmertopf German clay glazed roaster
- Gingersnaps
- Jellies
- Postit Notes
- Bath salts
- Topsies Carmel Corn
- Dominoes Mexican Train Set
- Grizzly G1286 3 x 3 Large Sanding Drum
- Jacobs Chuck 30602 1/2-Inch Keyed Chuck
- Lodge Striped Hot Handle Holders/Mitts, Set of 2
- Peltor NEXT Skull Screws Foam Earplugs Corded – Single Pair
- Samsung SH-S222A/BEBE Internal Half Height Supermulti PATA 22X DVD-Writable Drive
- Tiny little cast iron scent skillet & scent cubes
Elliot the Cat doesn’t care about presents. He misses The Squanto, and wants his nap. We have to disagree about the presents, but we miss The Squanto, and like our naps too. At the end of it all, I have to say I like married Christmas. :)
How to Replace a Toilet Paper Roll
Wherein it is described how one would replace a toilet paper roll, being empty, with a toilet paper roll, being full (courtesy of a good friend of mine who felt his co-workers required assistance in the matter – he took these photos, and sent them to every employee in his office. It is unclear whether it had the desired effect, though it’s comedic value was immediately appreciated).
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New Laptop in the House
We’ve finally made the foray into the land of Windows 7. The old XP laptop that my wife was using started showing signs of age a couple weeks ago when the NIC decided it wasn’t going to work anymore. Right in the middle of a browsing session, it just quit. I honestly didn’t do much in the way of troubleshooting, other than disabling/enabling it, and uninstalling/reinstalling the drivers. I just declared it dead. We’ve been talking about getting her a new laptop for a few months now, so this was as good a reason as any.
We hit a couple stores, but settled on a Dell 17R from running Windows Home Pro, with the i5-460M, 8GB system memory, and a 5,400rpm 500GB drive from Best Buy. We had an interesting time obtaining it, which I’ll relate here for your edification.
- Sunday, Nov. 14th, 2010, the price was $749.99 in the store, and online.
- Sunday, Nov. 21st, 2010, the price was $799.99 in the store, and $749.99 online.
- We called, and they confirmed that they would honor the online price, thus saving the ~$50 that another, less observant or stand-upish individual would have spent.
- Arriving at the store, the sales associate (White Shirt) told us that the price was, in fact, $859.99 due to it being the last model available, and being preloaded with additional “optimization”, and the inclusion of restore media.
- I wasn’t aware that setting the native resolution was an “optimization” service, and that it dramatically increased the speed of the machine, real or apparent.
- I didn’t realize that laptops no longer came with restore media.
- We refused the “offer” and asked the White Shirt to call around.
- Few stores had the model (which Jami was pretty set on at this point, having encountered resistance), and the one that the White Shirt called was the same price, and also “optimized” and with media.
- We decided to wait until over Thanksgiving to check around again, and started to leave.
- The greeter at the doors held us, however, saying that a manager wanted to talk with us.
- A young man in a Blue Shirt came by and explained that they could, in fact, sell us the laptop for the advertised price. They wouldn’t charge us for work we did not request, and had no choice but to accept if we wanted this particular laptop. The original sales rep was unaware of how this particular sale could be finalized; she’s a new employee, as denoted by the White Shirt.
- We bought the laptop and left happy.
Jami postulated that it was a sales technique designed to get a few extra dollars out of unsuspecting or willing customers. By saying it was “optimized” and came with extras, customers would be more willing to part with some extra dollars. I’m inclined to agree, but we weren’t those customers. When faced with the loss of a sale, they opted to acquiesce to the formerly agreed upon lower price.
The lesson here is stick to your guns. If a price is advertised, that’s the price you pay. If they refuse, take your business elsewhere. You’ll either get the price you wanted there as they flail about trying to keep your business, or you’ll get a better deal somewhere else.
We got the laptop home, and I dove in to get it setup up for Jami, and attached to our home network. I played around with Windows 7 for the (admittedly) first time last night. I was impressed by the OS itself. I haven’t played with it enough to offer more than a “seems pretty slick”, but it… well… it seems pretty slick. I’ll play around more though, I’m sure. I had some trouble getting it to see the Samba shares on my FreeBSD server. That’s my task tonight. I’m sure it’ll be a stumper. As a side note, I was immediately impressed by the fact that the hard drive (500GB 5,400RPM) was split into system (c:\) and a data (d:\) partitions. I’d not seen that before on an OEM machine. Perhaps that was one of the “optimizations”.
I’m a little discouraged by my own Alienware Aurora m9700 laptop now. I was looking to install Win 7 on it, preferably the 64bit version, b/c 64 is always inarguably better than 32, right? Well… the hardware maxes out at 2GB RAM. What I’ve found online says that 2GB is fine for the 32bit version, but at least 3GB is recommended for the 64bit version. Still, I might go with the lowly 32bit version anyway, given that it looks compatible with the specs, and might be more compatible with the various hardware bits and pieces. I’ve not done the research, but it’s possible that 64bit drivers don’t exist for all the components.
As for the original laptop with a dead wireless NIC, I’ll recondition it as a print server until I can figure out why my CUPS/Samba setup is so flaky.
Next, a positive note about my experience at MicroCenter, and NAS…
At the end of the Fourth Decade
I had a great birthday yesterday. It was my second-to-last birthday of my fourth decade, and it was a perfect, quiet, laid back and relaxed birthday. My wife set me up with blacksmithing classes (something I’ve always wanted to do, but just never did for some reason), and a Halloween based Jenga set called “Stack the Bones“. Love them both, but not nearly as much as I love her.
I had more “Happy Birthday’s” messages, cards and calls than I expected, and it was both pleasantly surprising and humbling. Thank you all!
Today is Veteran’s Day, which means I have the day off. One nice thing about working in the financial sector is that I always have the day off after my birthday, no matter what. I’m honoring the sacrifices and efforts of our veterans by exercising my freedom to sit on the couch and catch up on DVR’d stories.
Also, I’m doing laundry.
Cycling Safety, Printing with Cups & HPLIP, and Vino
All in all, not a bad weekend. I’d fixed our printing issues with Samba/Cups/HPLIP before 11, and I’d slept in until 9:30 (yes, I clearly needed sleep). It was, I think, a permissions issue, but it was a confusing issue.
Brokey:
lrw-rw---- 1 root cups 9 Sep 24 17:04 ugen0.2 -> usb/0.2.0
crw-rw-rw- 1 root cups 0, 128 Sep 24 17:01 0.2.0
Workey:
lrw-rw---- 1 root cups 9 Sep 24 17:04 ugen0.2 -> usb/0.2.0
crw-rw-rw- 1 root cups 0, 128 Sep 24 17:01 0.2.0
Yeah. I don’t see a difference either. Still, I was getting the following errors:
prnt/backend/hp.c 745: ERROR: open device failed stat=12: hp:/usb/photosmart_7350?serial=XXXXXXXXXXXXX
and
printer-state=5(stopped)
printer-state-message="/usr/local/libexec/cups/backend/hp failed"
printer-state-reasons=paused
whenever I tried to print (not the real serial number).
Then I chown root:lp both ugen0.2 and usb/0.2.0, and printing was magically working again. And yet, they still show as being root:cups. Go figure. Please. Go figure, because aside from some weird corruption in some place I don’t yet know exists, I can’t figure it out myself.
So, that done, I moved myself downtown to the KC Public Library for the first of two League of American Cyclists Smart Cycling KC: Traffic Skills 101 classes. Though there wasn’t anything in there that I didn’t already know, it was still a good time, and worth the time spent. Some really good discussion ensued around traffic law and cyclists place in it, and how to best defend ourselves out there. I’d be interested in the more advanced classes, so I’m going to keep my eyes open for those.
Now, I’m about to settle in for the evening with my beautiful wife, who’s been shopping nearly all day, with a bottle of wine and a weeks worth of DVR’d television stories.
Wedding Photos are Online!
Our wedding photos are available online! Our photographer, Jessica of JDC Photography, has put them up for us at Collages.net. Just log in with your e’mail address (or an e’mail address) and your first name (or a first name) to view them.
The photos are available in 6 galleries, listed off to the left once you log in, and there are plenty of photos to choose from, so take your time, and enjoy!
Don’t take too much time if you want any, because the galleries all expire on October 10th, 2010. After that, they’ll be viewable in lower resolution on my own gallery. If you want print quality versions after October 10th, you’ll have to actually contact myself or Jami directly, and we know how much of a chore that is. It’s positively chorish, even. We get that. It’s ok. We understand.
So, have at!
Logo Rhythms! Or, Server Upgrade At Last
Jami saw my PuTTY screen a couple of weeks ago while I was preparing a major home server upgrade. Upon noticing the frantic scrolling green text of a compile in progress (I have my term colors set to mimic the old Apple //e I grew up with), she belted out “What’s that?! What are you doing?! Is that some sort of crazy ‘Logo Rhythm’ thing?!”
She’s prone to sudden and unexpected outbursts. It’s her way.
One such outburst involved the History Channel. While on the couch together I was watching the History Channel (and it wasn’t about Hitler!) while she and a friend of ours who was sitting on the other couch, were talking about flowers, or butterflies, or ribbons, or some such thing. Upon noticing what I was watching, Jami immediately belted out “Boring!! What is that?!”
I couldn’t help but start laughing. As did our friend. As did, or course, Jami. The passion with which she evoked the single word “Boring!” was admirable. Thus, it immediately joined ranks with the many inside jokes we’ve developed over the last two(ish) years. I did not, however, change the channel.
This time, having asked with equal passion (and a touch of fear) about those crazy “Logo Rhythm” things, I knew immediately what she was talking about. She was talking about “Logo“, that old teaching tool for up and coming programmers where you push the little turtle this way and that. I’m not sure what that says about me that I knew immediately what she was talking about, other than perhaps that I’m critically geek. It’s my way.
New inside joke: Check.
Her childlike enthusiasm and high intensity are just two of the many things I adore about my wife. Put the two together and you have a definite distinct incomparable third.
Lest you think I make fun too much, ask her sometime about “squeeze more bees.” I’m certainly not above my own butchered colloquialisms… Then there’s my penchant for self injury… In short, I’m a bit of a mess.
Now, if you’re reading this, then the server upgrade is complete and all is back in order. I’m finally current, having not upgraded my poor server in over six years.
The two major upgrades were FreeBSD 5.x to 8.x including all the userland components, and Apache 1.3.x to Apache 2.x (yes, I finally made the move). Additionally, I reconfigured the hardware to take advantage of the Gigabyte GA-7DXR onboard RAID1 capability. Yeah, it’s an old motherboard, and I’m just mirroring, but it still works and I don’t need blazing performance. I just need some assurance against drive failure.