Indiana

We are back from the boat to attend Brandon Doty’s graduation tomorrow.  On arrival at the homestead this afternoon I started to mow the hay field that our yard has become.  Soon after it started to rain, lightly at first, and I kept mowing.  The grass was plugging up the mower deck and I was going very slow and watching the great plugs of grass come shooting out onto the lawn.  I finally finished in very heavy rain with the water spitting out the mower.  I came up from the barn and took a hot shower as I was thoroughly chilled and soaked.  By the time I was done with this the sky was brightening up.  Oh well, it was a different type of thing to do that I had never done before.  Now I am trying to catch up on internet related things because we have become internet challenged up at the boat.  Hopefully, this will be resolved in the near future.

We went sailing yesterday and it was great.  Winds were pretty steady at 10 knots out of the NW with periods of gusts of about 14 kts.  We did a lot of tacking for practice and tried a few new techniques to make life easier.  We are starting to raise and lower the sail while still in the river mouth as the winds are usually blanketed and this gives us fairly stable waters with which to be up front.  Also we are removing the sail covers and raising the boom out of the gallows before we depart the dock.  This was SAM can concentrate on piloting the boat while I am up on top getting ready to sail.  All this makes it much more enjoyable and relaxing.

Airport Duty

Many of the TSA Hangar LLP spent the morning cleaning up the grounds around the airport.  The current FBO is not doing a very good job of keeping this Steuben County asset in pristine shape.  We pulled out a fence and mowed along the road.  We had three full size tractors mowing and pulling the fence out.  All in all it was a fun time.  I mowed about three acres of grass that was over a foot high.

On arriving home I showered to get ready for my nephew’s graduation party.  My brother is supposed to arrive to attend also.  they should have been here by now.  Who knows..

Easter Sunday

Yea, Jesus Christ has risen.

We spent the weekend at my brothers house and I occupied a lot of my time installing V’s Dell that I bought for them. A’s computer had some problems too – I could not believe what I found – a computer with absolutely no virus software installed.

I could not believe it at first so I checked again – no virus software. I spent the next hour or so installing AVG 8.5 and updating it. This machine also had three versions of anti-spyware – Spybot, Ad-Aware and another related to a program from Brothers (I think). I disabled the auto boot up spyware. I also installed SP3 and the latest update. All in all it took most of the spare time Sunday.

We arrived back home at 1830. J headed back to Whiting for work tomorrow. S is upstairs typing away at he computer and you know what I am doing. What a good time we had this weekend.

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Polar Bear Plunge

We are just back from the Fort Wayne Polar Bear Plunge 2009.  We missed the Hamilton Lake outing yesterday and decided to go watch the Fort Wayne people.  I must say that quite a few did not fully immerse.  One older gentleman about my age just stayed in the water waist deep for about 5 or more minutes.  The ones who did fully immerse were younger in age and just ran in and dove under.  The water was quite full of silt.  Even the least of these did a better job than myself so I have no business judging the situation.  If you have not already wtch the Cold Water Immersion video in my previous blogline.

 On the way back home we drove through Cedar Canyons to see the old house.  It still looks quite modern even though it was built over 35 years ago.  It also has not changed much except the driveway that is now asphalt.  I take this opportunity to add a slide show (very slow) of some of the Christmas Festivities.

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Third Christmas

Chris, DJ and Garret arrived just before dinner last night.  We had a good time talking until 2330 and then it was lights out.  Lights out for me until 0515 and I awoke.  Now I am writing this little ditty.

DJ said he wanted the wireless working.  I said go ahead with little expectation he could accomplish what I could not.  About and hour later he had it up and going.  I am writing this over the wireless link.  He used his iPhone to confirm the link was up.  Garret also was using link with his iPhone.  They are pretty cool devices.  It makes me want one of those phones.  Anyway,  thanks DJ.

Garret and I worked on Facebook for a time and I applied for Friendship with Garret, DJ, Chris and Jess.  I’ll not bet on the Jess approval but the rest are approved.  Thanks Garett.

The boys will be leaving in a few hours for Carol’s house and a good Christmas there.  The said not to awake them until 0900.  They have to leave about 1200.  That gives us plenty of time for opening presents.  Yea for number three Christmas.

Twins Birthday

I tried to contact the twins today several times but no one answered and an answering machine is not enabled.  I read Jacob’s blog and subscribed to all the feeds in IE7.  It is nice that the blogging has started again.

Anyway, HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAKE & MITCH.

First Christmas

We went to church this AM, a good service with Christmas songs, and it was Communion Day.  SAM & I went alone as Jess and Martha were preoccupied with cooking things.Ann’s First Christmas was it’s usual chaotic self.  Lee’s ham was more than excellent and the other food tasted OK too.  The girls were the ones who exchanged presents this year.  The guys buy what they want during the year so another appropriate gift is hard to find.   I was honored to say the prayer this year but was derailed by a mishap with the Chrismas Tree and lost the train of thought completely.Afterwords Jess & I worked on the Saturn to get into shape for the trip back to Whiting.  Work beckons Jess tomorrow so it will be an early rise. �

Christmas Letter 2008 Sent

I finally got around to sending the Christmas Letter.  Unfortunately, I sent it from my newly acquired 2.7GHz Optiplex.  I have Outlook 2K and I had it set to RTF format.  As a result about half of my Family & Friends received the infamous Winmail.dat file.  Microsoft should be taken out behind the barn and …………………………   No, I will not say it!

I installed Opera today just to see what it is like.  It has a nice feel and has some good features.  That is good because my Firefox is locking up every time I select eBay and do a search on a given subject.  When that happens my CPU usage goes to 100% for about 15-30 seconds and FF locks.  I have to use the Task Manager to kill it.

I have fiddled all day trying to get my email all in one or two spots.  I will warn you not to try to use Windows Live to consolidate.  It simply does not work.  I also tried to link all my Hotmail accounts and that does not work either.  Evidently they were making a few mods today as the “Account” function is no longer there.  Now how do you link all the files?

I ordered SAM’s Christmas presents today.  I am glad that is done.  I hope the presents are appreciated but I am not hopeful because if you turn a geek loose in a store what does he buy?�