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August
2006

Sunday evening, middle of August

Sure is quiet around here. Our guests from Australia are gone, having wished us g'day and invited us to drop in just any old time, right mate? We had a most delightful time with them. More later. And the four members of the Grace girls' volleyball team left Saturday morning after three nights with us. Not that anyone was "loud", but six extra people kept it feeling really busy around here. But to begin at the beginning....

Well, we recovered from the Gulfport trip. Laid around the house for a couple of days and then got back into some kind of routine. Found I had gained 10 pounds, so started my routine of chopping wood for 30 to 45 minutes every day. We worked, but we apparently ate more calories than we burned. At home, we can control our portions better.

While we were gone, Masterworks came to town and settled in. We made it to a few concerts. I have raved about the talent in previous years; you can go back and see what I said back then.

On my "honey-do" list, I had the item "scrape porch posts". Well, you know how that looks when you get done, so I went ahead and painted them. Then the rest of the porch looked sort of yellowish and dingy, so I climbed up and painted the rest of the woodwork and the ceiling, which is 12 feet 10 inches from the floor. Meanwhile, Kathy got one of these hose-end things and washed the rest of the house. Along about 6:20 we decided that Bob Evans could do the cooking that evening. At least it's vinyl siding so I didn't end up repainting the whole house. Another good thing is that the porch is on the north side so it wasn't hot to work there.

We had missionaries for dinner. And for lunch and breakfast and they stayed with us about 3 weeks. The Ruizes from the Philippines were on furlough and the mission residence was full so they stayed with us. Same folks who stayed at our house in about 1998 or so when we were gone on vacation, and then again for 3 days while we were in Gulfport this year. Anyhow, we finally got to be at home when they were at our house. We had a delightful time. They have a couple of kids at Grace and spent quite a bit of time working on the financial aid and other parent-of-student stuff. Ted had a birthday while they were here, and then later on we had a cake for son David's birthday after Ted and Viv were back in the Philippines along with daughter Sarah. Our son Jon's visit overlapped the Ruiz's visit by about two days, for a total of four "extra" people at that time, but that wasn't the summer's record by any means.

We've been to several weddings this summer. (And special greetings to the new Mr. & Mrs. Bartlett, Mr. & Mrs. Erdman, and Mr. & Mrs. Spangle. Hope I didn't forget anyone. And surprise of surprises, these computer guys married really cool gals!) One day we got a call from a young couple, and they had guests coming from Australia. To make a long story short, the guests stayed at our house for about a week. They were most delightful, Barry and Lynette were. And Barry took it as a personal challenge to go out and split some of the more, um, "difficult" pieces of firewood. Between the two of us, we split about a cord in a week. I'm not proud, mind you; I will

In 2002

In 2006

do the difficult ones with the chain saw, as soon as I get around to fixing it. We sat around and talked a lot, too. And then there was the wedding, and Barry and Lynette left, and as I said at the start, it became really quiet. I can hear a fan, a clock ticking, and some katydids outside. For the past two months, whenever we weren't out of town, we had guests. I didn't even mention that Karen and Van Campbell dropped in, and I may have missed someone else. I'm going to have to turn the radio on before I have withdrawal symptoms.

House Work

Spent a good many days remodeling the living room. Didn't move any walls but may as well have. We took down the drapes, painted the walls and ceiling, and changed all the light fixtures, switches and outlets. In one way, that was a mistake; in another way it wasn't.

Kathy wanted a more "modern" look to the room. It was pretty much a 1970s "midwest colonial" with dark wainscoting, lattice in the windows, used-brick fireplace, chandelier with chimneys on the lamps and so on. The light fixtures were good-quality stuff no doubt about it. But after several years we wanted something different, more up-to-date. So we went down with our measurements and picked out light fixtures. Brought them home and put the first one up. It hit me smack in the middle of the forhead. Took them back and got other fixtures that didn't hang down so far; but meanwhile we looked at something like a thousand fixtures on line. (You know what I mean; 85 of them very similar -- brushed nickel, chrome, bronze, brass, shiny, dull, antiqued and on and on -- none of which you would allow in the house if they were giving them away....) Well, as if that weren't enough hassle:
Inside two of the outlet boxes, the ground wire (third prong) had been clipped off short. Down to Lowe's, find some connectors to repair the damage; and why in the world would they cut off the ground wires in just two of the six or so outlets on that circuit? Installed the new outlets, turned on the breaker and ping! it blew. Odd. Tried it again, same thing.
There was a dead short in the wall somewhere. Cut out and peeled back the paneling (glued to the sheetrock of course), cut out a nine-foot-long horizontal strip of sheetrock, extricated the wire. Kathy carefully

dissected the wire, and about four feet into it found where the black power wire ("hot") was lacking maybe 8 inches of insulation and touched the bare ground wire. Wire was burned almost in two, but the outer jacket showed no sign of damage. Odd. Yes, it came from the factory that way. Replacing it wasn't all that big of a deal, but now the wall was all torn up and it took the better part of a day to put stuff back together. All the guests this summer had to put up with some form of construction debris.

Boy was I tired. Worse than Gulfport because I just kept working at it after supper. Well, I'm glad it's done. The problem in the wiring could have burned the house down. At first I was fussing about who in the world would (a) reverse the black and white wires on the two outlets and (b) cut off the ground wires. Then I understood; fixing the problem required doing just exactly what I did, ripping off part of the wall, and it was a lot cheaper just to jigger the wiring so that it didn't blow the breaker. I'm sure the electrical inspector didn't discover the problem or he never would have passed it. (They have this dandy little tester they plug into each outlet and it tells if something is wired wrong.) All the outlets have grounds now so even if someone plugs in a defective appliance of some kind they won't get electricuted. But it was an awful mess to clean up, sheetrock dust, sawdust and insulation all over the new paint job. An application of some patches and paint and it looks OK but sure would have been better had I not had to hack it up so badly.

A couple of coats of paint worked wonders. We also painted the end of the living room where there used to be doors over shelves. Again, it was quite elegant and we liked it, but we wanted a new look. I carefully hung the doors out in the new shed just in case we want to change back.

Speaking of sheds, with a little help from my friends I managed to run underground conduit out there and install lights. It's only about 10 feet from the house, so that wasn't a big deal. Had to drill through the house wall, of course, in two stages; first, the sill plate (wood) and then the brick. And then I ran conduit here and there so that we can turn the lights in the three sheds (old, new and wood) on and off from inside any shed and inside the house. All the light bulbs are in plastic "cages" like trouble lights for some degree of protection. I also installed two outlets, both on ground-fault. All of that only took about a week. About that time, the neighbors' cat moved her kittens into the woodpile by the sheds. Eventually, she got tired of all the hubbub and moved them back home across the street.

Rick Koontz and I went to a one-week marathon (9AM to 9PM daily) workshop on Microsoft Visual Studio .NET® That should say it all; but to the uninitiated, it's all about programming Windows from the user interface clear down to the database, with stops along the way to create your own Web browser, your own search engine linked into Google, and more than I can ever remember. On the way back, I met Kathy over in Portage, IN, and then we went up into Michigan and found a little park with trees where you can see water and lots of expensive boats moseying in and out of the quay. Kathy napped and I read a book. (The hotel at the workshop was within easy walking distance of a bookstore that was open until 11:00 each evening; hence, a new book.) (We also found peaches for $44.00 a bushel. We're not canning peaches this year.)

At any rate, Barry and Lynette are flying back under Orange Alert and we hope all of that goes well. I recall that we went to England two years ago under an Orange Alert and they were rather fussy, but not as much as now. No toothpaste, lipstick, lattés, electronics of any kind, etc. etc. I figure if we do manage to go to Australia, by then they may make us travel in our birthday suits and not give us food or drink.

Geek Stuff

The old keyboard bit the dust. Didn't help that I spilled milk in it, of course, but the way the Microsoft keyboards are constructed it didn't look like any got into the electronics. They're well designed. But after an hour and a half of popping off keytops, scrubbing each one, and vacuuming the cat hair, the left Alt key didn't work. What's more, Windows threw in an extra character here and there, like press "k" and get "k," or "f" and get "fb". DOS doesn't do that, nor does Linux. Odd. Very odd indeed. Well to make a long story even longer, I recall that I paid $89.00 for the keyboard 10 years ago or more, so I was prepared to spend about that much at Staples. Turns out that nowadays if you spend that much, you get a wireless keyboard with a mouse thrown in. So I brought it home along with a new USB hub because the old keyboard had two USB 1.1 ports built in, which was great for the trackball. (Hooked up just like a Mac!) That's how it goes, right? You have a budget, stay within it, and then oops! you need something else in addition because (________ fill in the blank). And, given that the old keyboard doesn't work in Windows, and the install disk says, "Install this software before connecting your device," I chose not to follow directions and it all works fine. (Don't ask -- I have no idea why a keyboard has to be "installed". And if it did need to be installed, would it work with Linux? Or is Linux smarter than Windows? But I digress....)

New hub is really nice, actually mounts to the desktop (the wooden one) and has LEDs. Ooooo! Used the last outlet in the power strip for its transformer. So now I can literally sit back with my feet up and type my blogs. Nice. Now I need a 30 inch monitor so I can see the text from my rocking chair. Only thing is, the key layout is the tiniest smidgen different from the old one, and I keep hitting the end of the spacebar instead of the Alt key.

Had a problem with my ISP. Well, actually it was with The Phone Company as it turned out. Several customers had the same problem as I (namely, all systems apparently working but no connections established). They evidently changed out the DSL card our phone line was plugged into, which was in fact acting flakey for about three months now, and voila! I have a consistent DSL connection. (Well, more or less consistent, you know how that is.)

Nothing unusual about that, really, except that I dug out manuals for the router and the bridge ("DSL modem") and prowled around inside them for a while. Both have browser interfaces through which you can read status info and set certain parameters. No biggie there, but neither one actually has an operating system. It's all one big program burned onto ROM chips. That's one detail most people don't think about. Wonder if I could build something like that? Anyway, there is a bunch of mildly interesting stuff in there.

Spent a week programming in order to solidify what I learned at that workshop. It's a little program that does some stuff like fill a listbox from an Access database, put some pictures in picture boxes, and bring up a dialog box to add, change and delete records with appropriate verification. Along the way, I tried out stuff from the workshop, like automatically generating class diagrams and refactoring data fields (getters & setters). User Interface is in VB, class code and DB interface in C#, issuing SQL commands to Access. Pretty nice, actually. Gives the ol' brain a workout.

Y'all keep in touch now!

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