o dark 30 - early morning 4-wheeler ride

My oldest son had to go to work today.  Early.  Really early.  He got up around 4:30AM.  He had to be to his bosses house at 4:45AM.  Normally I would have let him take my 4-wheeler, but I wanted it.  I wanted to go for a ride and take some photos of the sunrise.  And I had to be back home by 8AM so my daughter could go and mow a lawn.  So I had to hustle.

As soon as he left, I loaded the 4-wheeler on the ATV trailer and took off.  I got to my destination in about 15 minutes and I unloaded my rig and proceeded up the mountain.  And I was flying up the mountain.  I startled some animals (rabbits).  I even came across a doe and her fawn.  Twice.  The first time one of the animals was on my left and the other was on my right.  I went around a corner and they were both there - again.  Funny thing is that they started running down the road and I was riding behind them.  I was trying to catch up to them (I was doing about 15 or 20+ MPH) but each time I started to gain ground, I had to slow down because the road started getting rough.  So they would always gain some more ground.  They finally exited the road and I continued on my trek up to the top of the mountain.

I got up top (actually, near the top - the place I wanted to be) with about 10 or so minutes to spare.  So I got off the 4-wheeler and setup the camera and started taking some photos.  None of them are award winners, but sometimes you've just got to try.  The photo below, I had to underexpose it by two or three stops, maybe more.  I don't remember.  I had to underexpose it so I could get some color out of the sun without it being totally washed out.

Here is another favorite I took this morning:

You might be thinking, "Tom, your shadow is in the photo.  That was stupid!"  Ah, my friends, that was on purpose.  I have other photos where it is just my machine.  But I wanted to capture the rider of the machine in the photo itself.  I thought it was kind of cool.

Here is another one that I liked from this morning's shoot.  I just noticed that I have a big dust bunny on my sensor.  Hmmmmm...   How did that get there?  See if you can spot it...

I really hate it when the sensor gets dirty.  The camera is supposed to shake that off, but I may have to carefully clean this one off some how.  (NOTE:  I just took some test photos and the dust bunny is gone.)  I was also wondering why the sun has all that crappy stuff around it.  All my lenses have filters on them, but I rarely clean the glass.  I looked at the glass and it was hideous, like someone spit on it and it had a bunch of little dots on it.  So I sprayed some cleaner on the filter and now it is crystal clear.  I may try another sunrise shot later this week.  If I get something a little better, I'll post the results.

I looked at my photos again and I found anouther one that I liked...

It is cool to see the shadows in the valley because of the mountains.

So, did I get home by 8?  You bet.  I got home with a few minutes to spare.  That ride totally made my day today.  Working from home really takes a toll on you.  I find that I often need to get out and away from the house.  So I end up going for a ride somewhere.

Family reunion

Last week we had a cousins reunion from my Mom's side of the family.  Here is a photo from the outing:

See if you can find Waldo (or in this case Tom).  And yes, I took this picture.  Thank goodness for tripods and remotes.

The death of a toilet

When you buy a cookie cutter home, you usually end up with low end everything in your house, unless you take the allowance and spend it on something decent.  About four or five years ago the garbage disposal died.  I ended up yanking out the sink, garbage disposal, and the faucet and putting in something nice.

Well, this year I had a few extra bucks.  And the toilets in my house have really been getting on my nerves.  When you're clogging the toilet practically every time you have a movement, it is time to replace.  So replace we did.  We only did two of the three toilets in the house, but that is sufficient for now.

So, what do you do with a poor flushing toilet?  You can throw it in the garbage can.  Or you can take it to the dump.  Or you can destroy it.  The 14 year old boy in me likes the last idea.  Toilet meets bullet.  Toilet shatters spectacularly.  Toilet pieces are collected and then disposed of in the garbage can.  Nice.

So here is a photo of the weapon (not the actual weapon, but a representation of what was used in the mercy killing destruction of the toilets).

So here is the line up:

Here is what happens when a .223 meets a toilet:

This isn't the final photo from the outing, but it is a good representation of what does happen when bullet meets lousy flushing toilet.  As you can see, the gun and the bullets win!  I collected the bigger pieces, the toilet seats and internal components and took them home and threw them in the garbage.  Maybe I ought to get Kels Goodman, the guy that does the viral videos for Blendtec, and see if he can blend a toilet in a Will It Blend segment.

Tom - The Good Samaritan

In my last post, I let the cat out of the bag.  What I find funny is that no one must read my blog because none of my neighbors knew I bought a new four wheeler.  I've enjoyed my four wheeler so much that I put about 100 miles on the thing in about 10 days.  Because of that I had to take it in for service.  (The first service is done at 20 engine hours or 100 miles, which ever comes first.)  That was Wednesday morning.  I got it back Friday.  Yeah, the dealer was busy and I wanted my four wheeler home for the weekend.  I wanted to go on a ride today, but I got side tracked.

You see, yesterday as I was driving home from the dealer with four wheeler in tow, the passenger side tire on the trailer blew out, and I got stranded on the side of the road with a blown out tire (and no spare) and my brand new, shiney four wheeler in the back of the rig.  Oh, and I have 8 minutes of time left on my Tracfone.  Sweet!  Long story short, we ended up retrieving the four wheeler and my Suburban, but we left the trailer, sans blown out tire, on the side of the road.  Today I went and got a replacement tire for the trailer and saved the trailer.  Took all of about 10 minutes to replace the tire and attach it on to the Suburban.

So, I take off.  I'm going home and I'm about half way home and out of the corner of my eye to the left of me I catch a light green station wagon with a bunch of people out of the car standing and sitting around.  "News alert!  Stranded/broken down car."  I look over at my oldest son and say to him, "Son, we won't be home in a while.  We've got to go check on those people."  We go up the road a couple more miles, turn around and head back.  We get up to the people, slow down, pull over and stop.

We get out.  This is the McLaren family and they live in Belgium (Americans living abroad, something I'm somewhat familiar with) and they are visting family for the summer.  The father is on a plane flying back to Belgium.  The wife with her five children in tow are on their way to California.  As I pull up, the daughter's cell phone dies.  I talk to the mother and I offer my cell phone.  She thinks she has a AAA membership, and about 15 minutes later, we realize that they don't have one.  So I call my wife and get the phone number of a towing company.  We call them.  They'll be there in 20 minutes.  The mother asks, "So, why did you stop?"  And I said, "Because when the tire blew on my trailer, no one stopped to help me.  So I didn't want that to happen to you."

We sat there and waited.  She called her local son (she has seven kids; five with her, one in Cali and one local) and he was on his way to rescue her and her family.  One of her daughters that is about a year younger than my son talked to him the whole time.  :-)  I waited for her son to show up and I waited for the tow truck to come.  Once they did and they were taken care of, I left the scene.

So what happened to their car?  Quite simply, the car blew a hose and all the coolant leaked out.  The car overheated and essentially died.  The tow truck operator tried to start the car, but it was dead.  The head probably got warped because of the heat, so the engine is toast.  New car or new motor or new something.  It wasn't going to be cheap.

Honestly, this experience was the highlight of my day.  Why?  Because I got to help someone out.  I know what it is like to be stranded on the side of the highway and have trucks and cars pass by going really fast.  That happened to me just yesterday.  And all I can say is that it sucked.  Hard.  And I didn't want that lady and her family to be up a creek without a paddle.

Funny thing is....  I doubt this lady will remember my name or anything.  Crap, I don't remember her first name.  But she'll always remember that time someone stopped to help her and her kids.  I'd like to know how the story ends, but that will probably never happen.  Unless they happen to stumble across my blog.  In which case, if the McLarens that live in Belgium ever read this, please kindly post what happened.  I'm curious to find out.

So the next time someone is sitting on the side of the road broken down, take a moment to go and help out.  Even if they don't accept your offer, at least you tried to help.  And in this case, I was an example to my son that we need to be our brother's keeper.

Letting the cat out of the bag

Meow!

My wife and I have been concerned about the kids.  We have some pretty cool stuff for the kids (one iPod Shuffle, one rather large TV, BluRay player, tons of movies, one serious gaming computer, game console, trampoline, motorcycle, bicycles, books, etc.), but we have limits on what our kids can do with said fun stuff.  We don't want the kids to turn into couch potatoes and play video games and watch TV all day.  So the missus and I were talking.  And we were grousing about how we feel our kids go to friends' houses and do things that we don't allow them to do whenever they want at our house.  The electronics are permitted on Friday afternoons after chores are completed and sometime Saturday, depending on what we've got going on.

So Saturday we decided to do something unusual.  I called around and found a pretty good deal on a new Honda 4-wheeler.  So we went.  We drove.  And we purchased.  Like the sales guy said, "I'm sorry to inform you, but you're the owner of a new 4 wheeler..."  Funny guy.

Saturday I put an hour of time on it and 8 miles.  Today I rode it before and put another hour of time on it and rode 9 miles.  I had to break in the motor.  Break-in time is the first 15 miles, so I had to make sure it was broken-in correctly.  Needless to say, I had one heck of a time on it.  I just hope I feel the same way over the next xx years as I pay it off.

Now we've just added to our debt, but I feel like this is something that we can do as a family (sort of).  I've got an old XR200R dirt bike and it runs pretty good.  With the 4-wheeler, we can now do doubles or even have two people ride on the 4-wheeler and one person on the bike.  So it is something I can do with my older kids and some of my younger kids too.

The era of wastefulness

It is early on a Saturday morning.  I went to bed around midnight and the earth alarm (the sun) woke me up around 5:30AM.  That's the story of my life.  If I can't sleep because of work, I can't sleep because the sun got up too early.

Anyway, in this half stupor, I was thinking about the BP oil spill.  I was alive and remember quite vividly of the Ixtoc 1 oil spill in the late 1970s, where oil drained into the Gulf for about nine months before being capped.  I lived in Texas and I remember walking on the beach with tar balls.  Nasty, but hey, such is life.  Anyway, I am digressing...

So I was thinking about the world's use of petroleum products.  How we are wasting oil like we have an eternal supply of the stuff.  Then that got me thinking about other things.  Computers.  Cameras.  Furniture.  Cars.  Toaster.  Dead portable DVD player.  What do we do with all this stuff when it wears out?  You got it.  It gets tossed into the garbage can.  If it doesn't work or is outdated, it goes out the door and into the land fill.

As I thought about the prospects of what that means, I realized that in 100 or 200 or 500 years, we will be labeled "The era of wastefulness".  And that will probably be a kind label.  We could also be labeled, "A generation too stupid to realize what they were doing".  I think the era of wastefulness will really be what it is all about.  We are wasting and squandering our natural resources.  We make stuff that is way freaking toxic.  We use resources that are dirty.  We are selfish and we don't think about the future.  In 500 years when all the oil is gone, what will humans use to power their (insert some cool sounding name for futuristic item here)?

I'm not a big fan of electric cars and such.  Why?  Because it doesn't solve the energy problem.  You have to get your electricity some how.  And in the US, a lot of that energy comes from burning coal, another depleting natural resource.  So you shift the pollution to where the electricity is being made.  What about nuclear?  Too dirty.  Still have to clean up after it when the fuel is spent.  To be buried by Energy Solutions out in the Utah west desert.  "Welcome to Utah.  The nation's nuclear dumping ground."  About the only "clean" alternative that I can think about that can realistically give us some needed power is geothermal.  It is clean.  It is efficient.  It is renewable, as long as the ground stays hot.  If the thing breaks, what happens?  You've got some water in the ground.  Wow.  Now that's toxic.  Geothermal is probably the cleanest way to generate power.  I wish we would get more geothermal plants up and running.

So the next time you're out doing something fun, just think for a minute what kind of a label those that come after us will give us...  I bet it won't be pretty.

Windows 7 experience

My home computer, up until a couple of weeks ago, ran Windows XP.  I have an ATI Radeon 5770 based graphics card in my computer.  I had downloaded an updated video driver for the card and decided to install it.  So I did.  BLAM!!!  The upgrade didn't go so well.  My system blue screened.  The driver refused to work.  I tried, and I tried, and I tried.  Uninstall.  Reinstall.  Install the old driver.  Nothing worked.  Still problems.  So I reinstalled Windows XP and got things back up and running, at least momentarily.

So I was doing this whole cost/benefit analysis in my head...  Let's see...  I've got Windows XP installed.  I'll need to copy all my files over to it.  Install all my apps.  Get everything back to where it was before.  And then, sometime in the future I'll have to do that all over again if and when I go to Windows 7.  And XP is like nine years old and is two versions off from the most current version.  And there is the potential for another botched upgrade.  And since this is XP and not Vista or Windows 7, ATI system test probably isn't spending a whole lot of time testing and vetting the drivers.

So I made the sales pitch to the appropriations committee (my wife) and laid out my reasoning.  To my shock and surprise, I got the green light.  I've learned that when you get the green light to spend money, you go NOW and do it before the appropriations committee (my wife) revokes my spending authority.  So I did.  I came home with Windows 7 64-bit and an extra 4 GB of RAM, bringing the whole system up to 8GB of RAM.  (I remember when 1GB hard drives were $500.)

I brought it home and installed.  The installation was incredibly quick and painless.  I think 20 minutes was the total amount of time it took to do the Windows 7 install.  And the system is FAST.

After getting all my drivers installed, Windows has this user experience index.  I ran the test and my machine came in with flying colors.  Check out the screen shot below:

The reason why my system scored a 5.9 is due to my hard drive.  Everything else is in the low to mid 7s.  I found out that the index max is 7.9, so I was pretty happy.  (You'll notice the machine name is Hercules.  I believe that is an appropriate name for the beast.)

Bottom line, I'm hooked.  And I'm wondering why it took me so long to jump on the bandwagon.  We'll see how it works in the months and years ahead.  At least I skipped the Windows Vista experience.  Vista was a pig.  Windows 7 seems to be a lot faster.

Windows 7 - The inevitable upgrade

Several months ago I updated the graphics card in my home PC, among other things.  On Sunday, I stayed home from Church because a couple of my kids were sick.  So I upgraded my ATI 5770 based graphics card with the latest version (Catalyst 10.5 drivers) of video card drivers......  Well, let's just say the upgrade didn't go very smoothly...

So I reinstalled Windows XP.  And I was looking at the task of reinstalling everything.  And I was not happy.  Because I knew sooner or later, I'd have to do the exact same thing when I upgraded to Windows 7.  I even installed Novell's OpenSuSE 11.2 64-bit and just wasn't impressed...

So Tuesday I asked for permission to do the Windows 7 upgrade.  The appropriations committee (my wife) green lighted the upgrade and I immediately purchased before the spending authority got revoked.  I also bought another 4GB of RAM for the system, which brings my quad core Q9550 CPU based motherboard to a total of 8GB of RAM, the absolute maximum amount of RAM the motherboard can handle.  32-bit systems really can only use 3GB of RAM, so even though I had 4GB installed, XP was only using 75% of the installed memory.

So I went to the local computer store and purchased an OEM version of Windows 7 64-bit (and accompanying 4GB of RAM) and installed.  One word explains the process:  WOW.  The install took place in about 20 minutes.  And within a few more minutes, I had installed many other programs, drivers and such.  The whole system seems faster.  It boots up faster.  It isn't a dog when after you logon to Windows and everything, including the kitchen sink gets loaded.  I've used Vista and been unimpressed with it.  Windows 7 is a different animal.

The system has been operational for only a few days so we'll see how it goes.  But so far, so good.  I'm sure over time performance will degrade, or I'll get used to the performance and I'll want something faster.  That always happens in tech.  But for the time being, I'm pleasantly surprised and impressed.

NOTE:  I don't work for Microsoft and this isn't any kind of paid endorsement.  And quite frankly, to make Windows 7 haul, you have to put in speedy hard drives, speedy graphics card, and fast CPU, and install LOTS and LOTS of memory.  Or at least that's my opinion.  If the whole system wasn't already fairly beefy, I think I could have had a totally different experience.  So when you upgrade, you need to seriously think about upgrade.  RAM is crucial for these kinds of upgrades and so is your hard drive and video card.  Any one of those three components can have a serious drag on system performance.

Credit card debt cut in half

Nearly two years ago my wife and daughter were involved in a slight fender bender which resulted in the totaling of our 2003 Toyota Corolla (something that I'm still lamenting to this day, even though I drive a newer Camry...).  Last week we finally settled with our insurance company and we got a pretty good chunk of change back.  We've got one card that has a pretty good interest rate, but the payment is a fairly substantial in size and it makes things hard to live on.  The card would be paid off in 21 months, but today, I wrote a check and mailed it off to a certain bank of bailout proportions that will remove that payment from my monthly budget.  Whew.  Nice.  We have some more credit card debt, but we can probably get that paid off in about the same amount of time as what we just paid off.  But we have some more flexibility because I don't have to 100% commit to making that huge payment every month.

I really wish I would have known what I know today back when I got married nearly 20 years ago.  And that is, credit cards can be harmful to your financial health and well-being.  If we would have been smart and saved and paid as we went, we would be in a lot better position than we are right now.  But then again, we wouldn't have as much crap in our house as we do right now.  Which, in all reality, probably wouldn't be a bad thing.

We've been incredibly blessed financially.  We are getting close to being out of the consumer debt arena.  After that, need to work on the cars and then finally the house.  I'd like to have the house paid off in 15 years.  That would be sweet.

21 merit badges done - 1 Eagle project to go...

My son is 16 and he has been a Life scout for who knows how long.  Last Friday my son had 20 merit badges.  On Saturday he earned his 21st merit badge, the required minimum for him to obtain his Eagle Scout award.  Yahoo!!!

Last week he also presented to the board his proposed Eagle project.  They verbally approved his project, but he has to rewrite the project, give more details as to what he wants to do, clean it up (type it up) and then resubmit it for official approval.  Hopefully we can get him to complete this assignment this week so he can get his project done this summer.

I sure hope that he makes it to Eagle.  I'd still love him even if he didn't make it.  And regardless of where he is at, he is really a good, solid kid.  But in today's world, when he has to compete against the best of the best, it looks really good to have Eagle scout as one of his list of accomplishments.  And for his sake, I really hope that he pulls through and gets the Eagle ranking.

I have a breather from boys and then I've got three boys in a row.  I'm glad my oldest is a boy so that we can figure out this whole scouting thing.  I personally never made it to even Tenderfoot.  Oh well.  We've figured out that we need to get the other boys to 1st or 2nd Class by the time they hit 12, or something like that.  And then make sure those boys are Eagle scouts by the time they are 14ish.  That way they can move on and not have this scouting thing hanging over their heads.