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Friday, January 30, 2009

Catching Up On My Missed Childhood

When I was a kid, I had a neighbor who I was pretty good friends with. He was fortunate and had several incarnations of Nintendo gaming systems. I spent many hours watching him play and was occasionally allowed to play, only to quickly lose my turn because of my inexperience. Well, thanks to the smart people of Nintendo, I have downloaded some of those old games and tried my hand at them.

Apparently I still suck at playing them. I have been playing Super Mario Bros. 3 and I can not get past world 3. Even better is the level of aggravation due to continually failing to beat the final boss. Oh well, eventually I will get there, but here is the moral of the story. Share the game with someone else kids, it's the right thing to do!

Stupid Mario Bros...

Apparently I have a way to go. This guy can finish the game in 11 minutes.

Yay for Wireless Printing!

Well its only taken me 3 weeks, but I have finally got our HP C6180 all-in-one printer running on our home network. This cool little all in one prints normal and photos, faxes, scans, photocopies, makes coffee and projects HD images on our ceiling. Ok, I made the last two up. The problem I had was that the printer was recognized on the network, but none of the facilities work with Mac OSX 10.5.6. So, a quick driver update and voala! She works like a tiger. Of course I found this little triumph all the more satisfying than Jenee, who entertained my excitment with a small cheer for me.

Now I can archive my magazines to pdf files at home and save shelf space!

I know, I'm a big nerd, but at least I am efficient and minimalistic... lol

I'm in the Wrong Business

I think I have mentioned this topic here before, but here is my latest count on selling Nikon Camera's and Apple Computers:

Nikon Cameras: Total 9
D40 - Greg
D40 - Paul
D40 - Brandon
D40x - Karen
D60 - Georgios
D80 - Paul
D200 - Eugene
D50 - Donna
D60 - Random guy in camera shop

Apple Computers: Total 4
MacBook Pro - Jenee
MacBook Pro - Jenny
MacBook - Linda
MacBook - Corinna [Tentative]

Where's my commission Nikon and Apple?

Our First Visit to the Retired Horse Farm

Jenee and I took Rob and his daughter Meridith to visit the local retired horse farm. Its a really nice facility with probably more than 50 horses. Admission was 2 carrots per person. We bought a huge bag, and that was still not enough, so next time we go, I think we'll bring more. The horses themselves are rescued from all over the place, and they can be old race horses, draft, farm horses etc. Most are fairly sweet in temperament, but that didn't stop some jostling for position to get another carrot. Meredith had a great time too, she just walked and walked and walked and occasionally hazarded feeding a carrot from the safety of her dad's arms. Check out the slide show below.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Yay for MLK Day!

Well, its Sunday evening and for some reason, it doesn't feel like it. We're back in the swing of BSF and 5 o'clock mornings and 6:30 starts. It was a tad cold this week, and I was accompanied by my old friend, Supprise Bowel. Yup, good old Supprise let me know 5 minutes into the meeting that what ever I ate the night before probably shouldn't be included in my daily diet. Actually, I was reminded another 30 minutes later. Lucky me.

We just really enjoy BSF so much, the Lord has really taught me so much about His nature and I am continually finding the old saying; the more you know, the more you realize you don't know.

For some reason, when we get home after Saturday meetings we are always so tired and had a much needed nap. Which then extended into the late afternoon. Anyway, I decided to make the most of the moment, and continued on my quest to conquer Super Mario Brothers 3 on the Wii. I am actually very bad and have not made it past the second world. Stupid game.

Sundays is Financial Peace University (FPU), a Christian based financial training course. We have learnt much in the last two weeks and we are happy in the knowledge that with some discipline and time, we are going to be financial independant and are already on the way.

And why the Iron Man picture? Well, I had a gift certificate and Best Buy was having a sale so $16 later I have my second blu-ray disc, and no blu-ray player. I figure that when I get a blu-ray player we'll just have a really big movie fest. And, already FPU is rubbing off on me, I didn't buy a second disc because I was $3 short and wasn't willing to use my card. So anyway, thats been our weekend so far. It's a long weekend so tomorrow we're off to the gym, I'm going to get started on selling some of our unused stuff on ebay. Hope you are all doing well.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

His Space - Her Space

We may not have put our Christmas tree away, we may have procrastinated tidying up or entering data, but I can tell you one thing we have done! This weekend gone, Jenee had a vision. A vision for the future, and that vision was to create room in our humble apartment.

With the careful application of some furniture moving, shelf relocating and some elbow grease, we now have what could best be described as a space each. No more leaving stuff in each others way, sharing a table or fighting for room to put a sewing machine or scrapbooking, ladies and gentlemen, we have room

.

I can't tell you how pleased I was to wake up Sunday morning and walk past my area and see it just how I wanted it, and to see a shelf with Jenee's stuff, just how she likes it. Imagine what it will be like when we have a home to ourselves?...

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Crazy Thing Are Afoot in Texas

Motivation is a funny thing. Sometimes you have it, sometimes you don't. Tonight I think I have run out. I came home early today because my IB (irritable bowl) was acting up. Jenee came with me with the ambition of finishing off her work project. I offered to help and 5 hours later we finished. I am glad I offered cause otherwise the poor thing would probably been working for 15 hours. Anyway, I am tired so I am not going write this big elaborate post about all the cool stuff we did in Texas over the Christmas break. Instead, I will mention it and let the slide show do the talking. Uncle John (my Dad's brother) came over to visit Tony and Caryl so it was great to see him. I did take the opportunity to pull a prank on him and hid his socks in the Christmas tree. We also had the Tooley's over to ride the horses at Linda and Joe's, so there are some photos in there. We learned how to play a card game called Golf, actually, two versions 4 and 9 card versions, we went to the King Tutankhamun exhibit and saw where his liver was stored (joy), I saw 2 Great Horned Owls, and we had an ice storm. Too much fun. Well, I hope you enjoy the slide show.

Camera-Less

For those of you who know "Evil Roy Slade"...

'I've got no weapons...'

If you have no idea what that quote means, you need to see the clip below (fast forward to 2:28)





Anyway, I am cameraless. Old faithful is off to the man with the screwdriver for some servicing... I don't know how I will cope with out my "mistress" as Jenee puts it.

A Very Merry Christmas

Well I hope that everyone had a great Christmas break, I know we did. It's always hard getting back into gear, especially after spending several weeks doing what ever you like.

Jenee and I arrived in Texas to discover that out of Linda, Joe, Jenee and myself, I was the only one not sick. Poor Jenee had a nasty upper respiratory deal, and Linda and Joe had some stomach bug that was going around, both with different symptoms. By the end of the trip, they cared and shared what they had so I had a little bout of everyone specialness. Thanks to large doses of vitamin C I managed to shake it all off quickly.

I think one of the things I enjoy the most is a different lifestyle. While in town, Jenee and I like to help look after the horses which includes feeding, sifting poop, riding, and changing blankets. Dad, you should watch out, I am getting pretty good cleaning out the stalls. You might need to get back here soon to stake your claim as Linda's stable boy.

Of course one of the biggest differences in Texas for those of us who live in Florida is the cold weather. It's actually cold, not just cooler than scorching. All I can say is whoever invented thermal underwear deserves a round of applause cause I don't know how I would survive with out it, and really it wasn't that cold compared to some places.

Christmas was really fun this year, as always. Jenee and I had made a deal with each other that we would only spend $30 on each other. That represents a considerable challenge. You have to really put some thought into it. I have mentioned elsewhere what I got Jenee, it was a Cricut if you have forgotten, and yes I know it was more than $30, but we agreed to both use our spending money to pay the difference. Jenee on the other hand was very creative and bought me a poster-print of my favorite photographer. She wrapped the poster inside a rifle case so when I opened it I thought she had finally let me get a gun, I was wrong. You can see a picture of the poster below.
I have to tell you that the picture you see here is no comparison with the real thing. Of course Jenee and I look forward to seeing what the family sends from Australia and low-and-behold, apparently my Dad had the same idea and sends me another Ken Duncan poster, as you can see below.Well, as you might guess, I didn't quite know what to do with myself. Two Ken Duncan's in one holiday is alot to take! Now all I need is a house to hang them in. We spent most of Christmas day with family and it was a delight to have nothing to do on boxing day because this year we stayed in Texas instead of waking up a 4 o'clock and driving to New Mexico.

To replace all that snow and ice, our good Lord offered to bring some of it to us to remind us what its like. An arctic front moved over Texas with freezing rain and all was a winter wonderland for a day. Trees, shrubs, fences, and cars were all coated in a thin layer of ice. I will have more pictures in a later post. Before all that happened though, we had a New Years bash out the back. Its fast becoming a New Year's tradition to burn the now dried out and highly flammable Christmas tree and oh how pretty it was.

Well, that's about it for this post. There are more on the way with a slideshow to boot!




Ice on a pine tree in Texas

First Day at Work - 2009

Well, its 4:41 and I am ready for the day to be done. Even though it's Wednesday, I have mondayitis. We'd have been back earlier but we got iced in while we were in Texas. Anyway, it seems that 2009 is going to be a very busy year already. In the next 4 months, I will hopefully be on no less than 4 proposals, 2 papers and maybe a patent...

But to start '09 off with a bang, guess what was on my desk to welcome me back to work!

This is the front cover of the book. Early last year I was asked to write a chapter to a book. I was told I had two weeks to get a completed draft together and I need to write on the topic of powder flow which I know something about. Thanks to Stephen and Milorad we put together a pretty decent chapter in the allotted time slot. After submission of the first draft there was a few more revisions, some imaging and some reprint permissions to be obtained but in the end it was all worth it.

Have a closer look at the table of contents, chapter 8 looks interesting! I think everyone should have a read of it. It's highly relavent to today's society and bears heavy application on everyday life. If you think I am joking, you'd be right, but the truth is it's actually a very important topic and with out thourough understanding in this area, many parts of the industrial revolution would have never happened...


If you would like a signed copy, you can buy it on amazon (click here) and I will sign it for you... :-p