Where the hell did the summer go?

Oh no, it is the end of August. I hate this time of year because I know that soon it will be too cool out to have our windows open at night and we will have to start putting the blankets back on the bed. Also, the leaves will start falling again and I will have to clean the yard.

One of the things I found at the Bridgewater Fair that should help with the leaf cleanup this year is the LG-BAGZ-IT leaf hauler. I am hoping it will be easier than using a blanket and wheelbarrow.

Today I spent a couple hours cleaning the gutters. Of course, they will be full of leaves again soon but at least I got the plants that were growing in them out. Actually, they probably contained a lot of good top soil. I was looking at gutter guard solutions this morning and came upon the truth about gutter systems. Seems gutter guards work better at keeping you from clean out clogs than at keeping out the stuff that clogs them.

I also spent most of the day listening to my favorite podcasts. TWIT (This Week In Tech) and The Signal (Firefly info) are among them.

Speaking of Firefly and Serenity, I am getting really excited about the movie coming on 9/30. I also need to get my DVDs back so I can watch the series and get Ellyn to watch it too, so she will be up to speed on it when the movie comes out.

Kayak Instructions

You can find my instructions for putting the kayaks on top of the van here.

Comics Reader for Windows

So I finally found Comics Reader, a Windows based comics collector which collects and displays daily comics in one page. His website says Windows 3.1 but it has been more recently updated. After installing, I ran the updater and it sucked in the latest fixes. I had to configure a few of my favorites and I sent the author links to the daily pages for some of the King Features comics, which only have archives for a few comics. However, most of them are available at the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer websites. You still have to follow links to see them, as KF won't let you display the image directly without a "referer" (whatever that is) but I still have the links on the page. An improvement over the bookmark list I was using before.

I put in links to the comics I usually read in the paper so I don't have to bother with finding the comics page in the News-Times each day any more.

Update

So Brian and I had a great time at the concert. The Johns put on great shows and Fogerty came out during Mellencamp's set to do a couple of songs with him. We left about 2/3 of the way through Mellencamp's show because Brian had to get to work the next morning and he had more than an hour drive. My ears are still ringing.

Ellyn and I just got back from spending the weekend in Boston with Brian. We went up Friday and came back last night. We went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in Imax. The Imax theater was in the back of a furniture store. Very bizzare. We slept in the second bedroom of Brian's apartment. Very bizarre.

On the way home, we got stuck in bad traffic in CT approaching Danbury. Apparently there had been a bus fire on the higway and they had closed it for a while and then opened just one lane. Traffic was backed up about 12 miles. We took about an extra hour to get home.

Where was I?

Looks like I have not posted here for a few weeks. Let's see what has happened.

Brian got a new car after he totaled ours. Now he is on his own insurance and car payments. We are saving a bunch. Here is his new car.


Ellyn and I recently had a couple trips; one to Las Vegas for the second annual Tivo Community Forum Convention (TC-Con'05). A lot of fun and we did not lose too much money at the craps table. The second was a driving trip to Huntsville, Alabama for the wedding of Ellyn's cousin Marge's step-son Isaac. It was a lot of fun with stops to see Ellyn's brother Howard and his wife, Liz and our neice, Sarah, and stopped to see old friends Barbara and Joe Davidson and Art and Barbara Geen.

In the next couple weeks, Brian and I are going to see John Fogerty and John Mellincamp in concert and then Brian, Logan, and I are going to Stafford Springs to see the races.

Oh crap

We got a call from Brian while on vacation in San Diego that he got into an accident with his car. Although we had signed the paperwork over to him, it was still on our insurance and still registered to us. So he contacted the insurance co. and got an adjuster to look at it (with some confusion, since they could not figure out if the car was in CT or MA). Finally, the news...it was totaled.

So now it is gone and Brian has a new car (photos to follow). We spent a couple of days frantically looking and buying (he bought with our help and the insurance money from the other car) a "new" 1999 Nissan Maxima. They were frantic because he was heading out to LA with his brother and friends to attend the E3 gaming conference. Now the car is in our garage waiting for me to finish the paperwork and get it registered for him before he gets back. Then he can drive it back to Boston.

Next one is all his own responsibility.

Catch up

Ok, so we got Brian moved in ok and there are some photos of the move and his new apartment here. He has now been working for 3 weeks and got his first paycheck. I'll bet that felt good.

Ellyn and I have been on vacation in San Diego visiting my brother Wes and his family. Then we went to Houston, TX to visit with some of Ellyn's cousins.

Moving day

We have been packing Brian for a few days now and today we got the moving van. Some friends had some old furniture to get rid of so we went and picked that up this afternoon. Now we are loading up the rest of Brian's stuff and tomorrow we will tow the van and Brian will drive his car. Then I will have the van to drive back on Friday. A lot of work left to do.

Apartment hunting in MA

Yesterday Ellyn, Brian, and I went to Boston for the day to do some apartment hunting for Brian. It was a lot of work, and Ellyn and Brian did most of it, between searching the internet and the classified ads. I did all the driving. It paid off. He found a nice two bedroom apartment near the Charles River in Waltham. It was a little more than he wanted to pay but he gets the extra room for visitors and there is lots of visitor parking as well, something with some apartment complexs are sadly lacking. He did see a few one bedroom places for less but he liked this place the best.

Finally!

Brian got the call he has been waiting two months for today. TV Guide wants him to come do firmware programming for him up in Boston $50K/year to start. Not too shabby!

Maybe at a crossroads

Brian may be getting a job offer from TV Guide afterall. He got a call the other day from Eric saying he should be hearing more from TV Guide any day now. He got a rejection letter last week but Ellyn also initially got a rejection letter from IBM before finally being hired by them...29 years ago.

Back to some visible construction changes.

So I have been doing electrical work for a while and the daily changes were small. Today, I got the electrical in the bathroom inspected so now I can close up some of the walls in there. However, before I can close up the vanity wall, I needed to work on the wall behind it in the hallway, which will contain a new bookcase. So today I opened up that wall, cut out the studs, and put in a new header over the opening to support a beam which holds up some of the ceiling joists. New pictures have been added to the remodeling photos on the WebShots website.

Tomorrow I will put in the rest of the framing members but I will not trim it until I tape the sheetrock on the back of the bookcase area.

Another milestone?

Well, I almost have the electrical in the bathroom ready for inspection. I should finish it up tomorrow and see if I can get it inspected on Wednesday, when the vanities are being delivered. I also got the timers for the fans today so I can order the switches and outlets for the bathroom. Perhaps I will see if i can save some money ordering them on line instead of going to F&M Electric.

What's up now?

So, what happened this week? Well, I have been doing some of the electrical work in the bathroom. I should finihs it up so I can get it inspected. Then I can convince Ellyn it is time to remove the shower. I put the lights in the ceiling of the bedroom the other day.

A great check-up

My doctor says my EKG, blood pressure, and blood work all is looking good. In the year since my last check-up, I have taken off and kept off about 35 pounds. My cholestol is down from 217 to 177 and my chol/HDL ratio has gone from 4.7 down to 3.1. My HDL has gone up and LDL has gone down. All the numbers are in the normal range and my blood pressure is well within the normal range. That is the kind of good doctor news I like to get.

Where have I been?

So no posts from me for a while. I knew it would be like this. We took an impromptu vacation to the Florida Keys. Had a great time. Very relaxing and fun too. The photos are here.

Ellyn has run off to Texas to go to her cousin's Bat Mitzvah and Brian and I spent most of yesterday afternoon buying and installing a new garage door opener after the remaining 18 year old one decided to stop working. It was fun and the new one works great. It also has a much smaller transmitter for on the visor than the old one.

We are still waiting to hear back from TV Guide about the job for Brian. They keep telling us it is going forward positively and I am praying they do not keep him holding on for this long and then dash his hopes by saying no. Also, he has been holding off looking for anything else because he wants that job so badly. Ellyn has been trying to get him to starting looking elsewhere or getting a temp job until they decide but he has not been heeding her. When it comes through, there will be a big celebration. If not, there will probably be a big depression.

My Uncle Dick has apparently upgraded the Lynch Family Gathering Place website on MyFamily.com to allow more photos and posts to be made. I have put a few out there and sent out invitations to people to come back and use it. It is going slowly so far but I am hoping intrest will be rekindled. I think the internet is a great place to communicate with others. I have had more contact with my brothers over the internet lately than in most of the last several years. I shold make sure they have access to the gathering place too. I am not sure they do.

Huh?

How could it be that within a few hours of installing a new toilet, both of the other working toilets in the house would fail? Both developed a problem with the fill valve where it would not stop filling the tank, even when the float was pulled up.

I repaired one with the valve out of the toilet we are discarding and the other with a new valve I had in the garage, which I purchased a while back but did not use, for some reason.

But the new toilet is working fine and there are no leaks I can find so the old toilet is coming out today and then we can get started with the shower work. Ellyn wants me to delay as long as possible tearing out the old shower. I guess the idea of having to share a shower with two other people is not what she wants to have happen. Perhaps she is thinking Brian will move to Boston with his new (hopefully) job and then it will be just the two of us in one shower. That she can handle.

Another plumbing success

Our new bathroom toilet is now in place. I took me about 3 days to do all of the plumbing and about 3 hours to install the toilet itself. Now it is in place and ready to use. Next I will remove the old toilet and start removing the shower.

All of the pictures from the remodeling project can be seen here.

A Quiet Week

I spent this week checking out the toilet plumbing situation. Looks like it will be somewhat complicated by the fact I have to go through several floor joists to get to the drain. Although the joists are somewhat short and are not supporting anything other than the bathroom floor, I should probably make sure every thing is properly supported when done. I have to cut through them quite a bit to get the drain pipe in without having several splices. I think I can get away with only cutting two and drilling holes in the rest. I will probably start doing that in ernest next week.

Today I plumbed in the water supply for the toilet. That is the last of the pressurized pipes until I do the shower. No leaks first time I pressurized. I am starting to get pretty confident about my ability to solder copper pipe.

Here I am

Been away for a while. Let's see. I have got much of the bathroom gutted now and have rerouted the sink plumbing to the new wall. That went very well. I only had a single leak when I pressurized the water lines and that was where two elbows butted up against each other. I did not leave enough room between them. Resoldering it worked fine. I think I will reroute some of the electircal next and I have to figure out where I am going to put the new lighting. I have to also put a header in where the bookcase will go in the hallway because I discovered there is a beam in the middle of the ceiling which runs across the hallway. The wall where the bookcase will be is supporting one end of that beam.

Today I took a misstep in the attic and stuck my foot through the hallway ceiling. Damn it! Well, I should be able to patch it pretty easily but I would rather not have to.

I also got to use the snowthrower again. We got a 7 1/2 inch snowfall last night. They were predicting more but that was al we got. The wind has been blowing hard today and drifting it a bit. I may have to shovel a bit later if it blows too much into the driveway.