Wow! I have been BUSY!
Monday: My friend Jerry and I used his Toyota dump truck and went up to the property and filled it with about half of the wood I cut up last weekend. Actually, I should say I filled the back of his truck with about half the wood I’ve cut. Jerry can’t do much physically. But dropping it off at the house was a lot easier than loading it. Just back the truck up and hit the ’dump’ lever. So I have a pile of wood where I usually park my truck. Jerry drives fairly slow but it’s not really is fault. Top speed on his dump truck is about 50. Unless you have something in the back when it’s about 20. Unless you’re going uphill. Then it’s about 3mph. We dropped the wood off at my house then I went back out in my truck and brought another load back.
Tuesday: I called Steve, the guy that’s going to be putting in our septic system (when we start building our house) to come out to the property and give me an estimate on moving some dirt. So we met out at the property at about 0900. There’s about 1000 cubic yards of dirt to move so his guesstimate came in at $3500. Then he started looking over my digger and talking about having to do some work and having to rent a digger for $250. So he asked me if I wanted to dig a trench for him for $100. I said “Sure!” Stayed out at the property moving dirt and downing trees and stuff until late afternoon. I have no recollection of what I did Tuesday night but it must have seemed important at the time.
Wednesday: Got up early and was out at the property by 0845 to wait for Steve to pick me up. He showed up and we loaded my digger on his trailer then drove WAY out someplace. I dug the 20 feet of 2 ft deep trench in about an hour but was stuck out there until Steve finished his part so I grabbed a shovel and helped him lay pipe and stuff. I spend WAY too much time behind this computer! Finally got back to the property and hung around moving dirt and stuff. SWMBO was away at the office so I didn’t have any reason to hurry home. Did finally get home around 1930 and spent the rest of the evening recuperating and working on the house plans.
Thursday: Mostly hung around the house doing all the things I haven’t been doing; if you know what I mean. Dishes, laundry and stuff like that. AND cutting up meat and sucker bagging it for the freezer. SWMBO also had me go to Lowe’s and pick up a 24″ Hickory Base Cabinet that she wants me to put pull out shelves in so she can stow her printer and usb turntable out of the way. Was going to go to the monthly Ham Club meeting in Belfair but got busy putting together the router table and router she got me for my birthday. Then I got busy putting together the Miter Saw she got me last year. By the time I finished that it was bedtime.
Today, Friday: We both got up early (well, I got up at my usual time but SWMBO had to get up early) to go to a 0900 meeting with the architect that’s going to be designing our house. He was impressed with the ’rough’ plans we already did in that Broderbund 3d house program. After the meeting SWMBO and I went to the Family Pancake House for breakfast and then came on home so she could get some work done. I went out to the property (as it was a beautiful day out) and felled some more trees and piled them in the dome hole then moved some more dirt. Figure I’ll do as much as I can…

Got home around 1700 and SWMBO took me to Subway for dinner. I didn’t have my usual seafood feast sandwich this time. Then we stopped by COSTCO and bought a couple of books (a new Odd Thomas book for me!) and came on home where I’ve either been talking to (my sister) friends from Utah that call me on my birthday every year or trying to watch Alien -VS- Predator Requiem. Cool movie but way too dark. The sounds in my earphones are something else! I like the music so much I’m listening to the movie again just to hear the sounds. (That doesn’t make any sense, does it?)
And that’s about it for the King Household. Things are moving along for the new house and life with SWMBO is pretty damned good. Even the weather is finally seeming like summer around here. Of course, that has all the true Warshingtonians bitching about the heat…

And I’m glad. Even today, cooler than the last few, was still fairly nice. Last:

Friday: SWMBO and I got up early (well, SHE got up earlier) and we went to the 1030 showing of the latest Indiana Jones movie at the Galaxy Theater in Gig Harbor. What a nice theater! Screen(s) are nice and big, sound is great, but the best part is the seating. It’s that ’ampitheater’ type seating: where the people in front of you are lower. Their heads would be about knee height. That was cool! Another great thing about going so early to a movie that’s been out awhile is we had the theater completely to ourselves. Too cool! After the movie SWMBO took me to KFC and then we went and spent way too much shopping at Albertson’s. But, groceries ain’t going to get any cheaper so we might as well get what we may need now. She bought 4 big chuck roasts (I think that’s what they are) for me to grind into hamburger. Hell, I may even add some real HAM so it’ll really be hamburger!

After doing all that I went out to the property cause it was just too damned nice out to stay home. Mostly just layed out and read.

Saturday: SWMBO did her usual shift at the Genealogy Library in Bremerton. I went on out to the property and cut up half a dozen trees for firewood. A friend of our is going to let me use his toyota dump truck Monday to pick up as much as we can. There’s probably 20 of my truckbed fulls. It’ll be cheaper to use his truck. After cutting up all that wood I just layed out and read some before going home.

SWMBO and I completely re-did our house plan. Something we both agreed on! Wow! (Well, except for the MIL apartment but I’m kinda sorta getting used to that one.) She figures we can afford 3k sq ft or less. So this one comes in around 2680. Here are the rough plans:

That program, 3dHouseDeluxe5 by Broderbund works pretty good for making rough plans. It’s kind of quirky sometimes when you try to place things (cabinets) in specific places but mostly it works good.

Today, Sunday, after my usual first session of church (I keep having these talks go through my head) I straightened up the kitchen for SWMBO & Son to grind some hamburger, got everything set up for them, and went on out to the property. Took down a couple more trees and moved some dirt. Too cool to get naked though. Bummer. But I got a lot done.

Got home in time to smooch SWMBO before she took off for Choir practice and I’m been straightening up my "New Scans" directory’s on my backup drive. Trying to see where I am in my scanning (which I don’t do near about enough of!).

That’s it. All caught up. Aren’t you glad you tuned in?!…

I joined MediaMax about a year or so ago. Used their server for file storage/transfer once. Noticed this past April I was coming up for renewal. Canceled my account 30 Apr 08. They re-billed me early June for $59. Notified them via e-mail (Customer Service) of the situation. Boiler plate "sorry about that" return e-mail. It’s now 19 June and I STILL haven’t gotten a refund. I think over 3 weeks is way long enough to fix an error like that. So much for their "customer service." Yep, just rechecked and still no refund. I can’t afford a lawyer but I can go down and file a "lean" against their company for $59 Plus however much it costs to file the ’lean." So I urge y’all most strenuously NOT to do business with MediaMax/The Linkup.

Yesterday was a pretty normal Wednesday for me. Spent a LOT of time back in our back bedroom/storage room pulling out all the damned empty boxes and tearing them down. Damn but there were a lot of empty boxes! Why do I keep boxes from computer stuff I bought 3-4 years ago? Straightened up that room some and was surprised at the room I had. Cool.

Spent part of the day (6 hours or so) building another WindowsXP drive. Last Monday evening I shut my computer down and swapped for the Vista drive to play with it for awhile. (Still not impressed with Vista.) When I was done with that I shut my ’puter down and swapped my XP drive back in. Damned if it wouldn’t work! It would boot into safe mode okay; but would get about 3/4 way through the boot process in normal mode then reboot. Everytime. Finally got tired of trying to fix it around 0100 and just turned it off. Did get it to running mid-Tuesday but couldn’t check my mail, etc until then.

So I decided to make a ’backup’ drive on a ’spare’ 80G drive I have just laying around with XP and at least my e-mail crap for those times things like this happens. Ah, but there is something beautiful about a brand spankin’ new XP install! It boots up so quickly! But I wound up installing damn near everything I usually use and a couple of programs I’ve wanted to try out and it all works great. Cool! If I can transfer all my passwords and stuff over I’ll probably switch to this drive/install. Yeah, used 20G of the 80G but I rarely keep anything but System stuff on my boot drive anyway. I’ve lost too many things over the years to a boot drive going TU…

Not much going on today. Playing with a program called "vue4"; another landscape generator. I set up a 10.7 second animation of an island and it took 4 HOURS TO RENDER! Damn! Been re-drawing our house plans in that Broderbund program. Think I need to sign up for an AutoDesk class.

And that’s about it from the land of (Gads, is it summer yet?) Warshington…