All The News That's Fit To Print

Today we are winding down with some R&R. Terri has been working hard to get Sam's dress ready for her pageant, with me helping out a little here and there. It really turned out gorgeous, and I'll make sure I get some pictures posted. Sam is also working on some of the things she has to do, the questionnaires, etc. so she has them ready. Overall it should be a great event for her.

Jason and I went to check out a bike race last weekend. It was a "criterium" type race, which is a closed course road race with either a set total distance or time to ride. This one was timed, and took place at Reston Town Center, which also happens to be where Sam's pageant is. We watched the junior classes and the Cat. 5 race, which is the slowest of the adult classes. Jason would like to race now, which is a good thing. I think he'd be really good at it with some hard training, and starting now could make him a world class cyclist in 10 years. He has the build for it and he has plenty of time. Unfortunately I'm waiting on a shifter for his bike from the local bike shop. His was damaged during a family ride. There's an opportunity for him to race July 23, in Ashland, so we're looking forward to that. The training will be good for me too, I count that as miles in addition to family miles, so it should be easy for him and I to get in say 150+ miles a week.

Other than that...not a lot going on. Terri has taken 30 days of leave to regroup, so we'll have a week with the kids before they go to camp, then a couple of days to ourselves, and we're hoping for a couple of days to go and help her mom out with some things around the house. Then after we pick the kids up, we're planning a trip to Williamsburg. Bush Gardens is generously offering a day's admission to military families again this year, so we want to spend a day there and another day just hanging out or maybe going to Va. Beach or crabbing at Buckroe or something. We'll see!

Now, to run my spell checker before I post...

And now for a word from our sponsors.

Nothing really special going on now. The kid's last day of school was Friday, so that's over and done with. No more elementary school. We went to Hooter's for wings and oysters to celebrate, did that kind of early, then took a bike ride. About 12 miles at a fast pace, with a stop at DQ for ice cream toward the end. Leaving the parking lot Jason and Sam had an incident which resulted in a couple of front rims needing a true job (my new truing stand has now paid for itself) and a destroyed shifter. Plus the opportunity to learn a lesson.

Terri is busily working on Sam's pageant dress, and I am on standby to help her when she needs it. Kids are putting some time into room cleaning, and I've got a couple of writing lessons to catch up on. Next week I finish up this class. Then it's time for me to get immersed in writing. The classes I've taken should provide me with a good base, they certainly have given me confidence that I can produce good writing, so we'll see where I can take it.

Got 'er did!

After much consternation with my computer, we got it straightened out. It was just a bombed installation of Norton Internet Security. The guy that did the diagnostics treated me right on it, considering the task an educational experience. He did note that it was the cleanest (virus, adware, spyware-free) computer he'd ever seen that had ever been connected to the Internet. He ran three checkers across it and couldn't find a thing. So when you all think I'm being silly or rude when I don't open some of the cute little jokes and stuff you send me, keep that in mind.

Getting my machine back gave me time to get pictures from Hawaii and the bike ride up, so those areas are worth taking a look at. Please look, I spent the better part of the weekend getting it done.

I've got a freebie shadow box I'm doing for a local school teacher. He has a student with her father in Afghanistan, and was sent a flag and some pictures and a certificate to go with it. I read about it in the paper and made some calls. Turned out to be a larger project than I anticipated when I volunteered to do it for them, but that's OK I guess. I should be able to finish it and get it to him on Tuesday.

This is the kid's last week of school, but not the end of the busy times. We've got to get physicals done for both kids to go to camp, plus whatever supplies they need. We need to get Sam's dress done for her pageant. It never seems to end.

Such is life with kids.

Are we having any fun yet?

I know I am. Not.

Yesterday my firewall started acting a little funky. Well, a lot funky. It kept dropping with an error, and asking if I wanted to restart it. I rebooted a couple of times, it was still funky. Since I hade a full copy of Norton Internet Security here, I uninstalled the ZoneAlarm (which I had never had a problem with before, and I've run it for about 3 years) and threw in the Norton Disk. Things got ugly from there, with the computer freezing for long periods of time, I'm talking like 20 minutes. I was starting to think I had a hardware issue. So this morning I dropped the hard drive in another machine as a slave drive, and everything seemed to be working OK. I didn't have another machine that uses the same kind of RAM, so I ran it to a local shop to get tested. It came back fine. So I took the machine in for a full diagnostic. We shall see. I think maybe the e-Trust antivirus may have caused a problem for the Norton installation.

So then, since Terri's machine was having some issues, I swapped it for my spare machine, planning to put the hard drive in as a slave drive so she didn't lose any data. Great idea, slightly faster processor, twice the RAM, should work great. But it wouldn't read the hard drive. Took me the better part of the afternoon to get it to read the original drive again, finally got into the CMOS, and then got it to read the slave drive too! It worked out but it took me a long time to make it happen.

Then I pulled the laptop and got caught up on my classwork. So now it's tomorrow, and I'm going to bed!

Trying to catch up!

OK, so this isn't going quite as planned. I still have a lot to tell about our trip to Hawaii, and our bike ride. I need to get pictures from both reduced in resolution so they won't take forever to view, and I'll be set!