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Vacation is Hard Work
We got back from our little vacation last night. Why does it seem that no matter how relaxing vacation is, you are always whipped when you get home? We didn’t do a whole lot on vacation. We stayed in some pretty awesome cabins, Three bedrooms, full kitchen, and hot tub. Saturday we spent the day on the lake in a pontoon. I was the only one lucky enough to avoid the sunburn. Sunscreen is my best friend. I am glad I have today and tomorrow off to recover from vacation, and catch up with everything. Too bad it’s raining out today. I have a lot of yard work to get done. Oh well, guess I will check out some of the Olympics instead.
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Vacation TIme
In about two hours we are heading out of town. My Mom rented a cabin on a lake, and the wife and I, and my Brother and his wife will be there all weekend. There will be no Internet for me until Sunday night. It might actually be kinda nice, but I am dreading how much catchup I will have on Sunday night, but it shouldn’t be too bad.
So long until Sunday Night.
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Brother-in-law Update
So when my In-laws were up for the weekend the Wife talked to them about her Brother. We both want him out bad. Since the chance of him actually calling on apartments is pretty slim, the In-laws called on a few. They found one that he likes, but it was up to him to go back and sign all the paperwork and stuff. Well, it’s been almost a week and he hasn’t gone back. Who knows if that apartment is still open now. The Wife said if he doesn’t have a signed lease by the 15, she is kicking him out, otherwise he has to be out by September 1st.
I am not getting my hopes up this time, but I am keeping my fingers crossed.
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New Monitors
For the longest time I have been using two janky CRT monitors. My “huge” 19″ CRT monitor was totally awesome and a cheap $450 back when I bought it. I think small LCD monitors were still over $1000 back then. Last week I finally upgraded my monitors. I got two 22″ LCD monitors for less than my old 19″ CRT cost me.
Here is my old desktop.
And here is the new desktop.
That’s where I spend 90% of my free time. What does your desk look like?
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Weekend Deck Maintenance
I haven’t been online much since Thursday. I miss Twitter and I am way behind in my RSS reading. What have I been up to? Well, the In-law were over for the weekend and we worked on our deck. We got most of it done, but due to rain on Sunday, we didn’t finish. We just need to do a little more work on the stairs and then stain it. Here are some before and after pictures.
Before
After
Now time to get to work on the deck. I am hoping to have some Internet time tomorrow.
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Not Looking Good
It’s not looking good at the Brother-in-law moving out on Friday. That has been his deadline for two months. Do you thing he would even look for a place to live? Of course not. If he found a place he would no longer have free rent, free food, free TV, free cable, free water, free party house when we are gone. He has it made, full-time job with 90% of his income disposable.
I am hoping to be able to talk the wife into forcing him out. He could go stay with his aunt. She has two open bedrooms. I am sure she would let him live there for a month. I don’t know how else we are going to get rid of him.
I knew I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so nice. I put up with a lot of crap just trying to be nice to people.
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I will Never Buy From a Pushy Salesman
I hate door-to-door salesmen, but I am to nice to tell them to get lost. Yesterday a vacuum cleaner salesman came to our house. It wasn’t Kirby, it was some other company that I have never heard of. It was a really good vacuum cleaner though. I was sold on it within ten minutes. Then the salesman kept going on and on with his sales pitch. The longer he went on the less I wanted it. So I didn’t buy it out of principle. Plus I like to do research on high priced items. He was trying to tell me if I didn’t buy it now I wont get another chance. WTF? Redflag! If someone ever tells you this is your only chance at buying an item walk away. What company wont let you buy a product if you want it? It was a really nice and powerful upright vacuum cleaner, but I think it was grossly overpriced. If it would have been $1000 I probably might have bought it, but it was $3000 or so. The salesman wouldn’t give a specific price. I still want the thing, but I wound never buy anything from a pushy salesman.
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One Year
One year ago today we moved into our new house. It doesn’t feel like we have been here that long already. We still haven’t painted our bathroom yet. That was the first thing we were going to do. We ended up doing a bunch of other things first. I haven’t posted any pictures here yet, mostly out of laziness. I don’t know if anybody really wants to see house pictures anyway. Oh well, I am off to work tonight for another long weekend at work. Fun stuff.
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Cleaning up Cables
I have been working on cleaning up the mess of cables underneath my desk the last couple of weeks. I eliminated two computers, both of them were pretty old. One was my emulator box that I used to when I wanted to re-live my childhood. It had all of my old console games on it. Those will be moving to my main Windows machine. The other computer that I got rid of was my Ubuntu system. I inherited my wife old laptop, and that has become my new Ubuntu system. Since I am down to two desktops, I also eliminated my KVM switch. I got a super small Apple bluetooth keyboard and a wireless mouse for my Mac. They sit on top of my desk, but can be moved out of the way if I don’t need them. My other keyboard and mouse sit on my keyboard try. So I eliminated two computers and a bunch of cables, but I still have four computers sitting at my desk, but two are laptops now.
To further clean of the cabling, I moved the routers, NAS, and cable modem to the closet. I just had to drill a whole in the wall and run the cables through our crawl space. I stapled some of those foam pipe insulators to the studs and ran the cables though them. It worked awesome, and looks super clean.
I should have taken some before pictures. It still looks like a lot of cables, but it’s way cleaner that it use to be.
I am going to try and build a Windows Home Server with some of the leftover parts, and I will eventually take a bunch to recycling. I still have the very first computer I built sitting in my closet. I am kinda attached to it, but a 350 MHz Pentium II isn’t really worth a thing.
Soon I will be upgrading my two CRT monitors. I am eyeing some 22″ LCDs on Newegg. Once I get them, my old janky setup should be totally awesome.
Normally I am not a pack rat, but when it come to computer parts I kinda am. I have four computer cases fill with miscellaneous junk and three old monitors in my closet right now.
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Sick of Being Sick
I had all sorts of stuff to blog about going into the weekend. Then I got sick, and slept the whole weekend. Now I got nothing. I’m still a little sick and sleeping more than I am use to. Another couple days, and I should be back to normal, or as normal as I get that is.