Ordered the Camaro

I ordered it !!!!!!!!!! This is certainly a joyous occasion. The kids are excited, I'm excited...but I'm not sure Susan is.

It's a 1SS, V8, 6-sp manual, sunroof and RS pkg. It will be bright yellow.

I plan to add yellow 2-tone seats, cut off the mufflers, and get green and purple pinstripes. Probably get 22" rims when the tires are done......which probably won't take long in the back !!

I wanted a Camaro in high school, and have always loved them. This will fulfill a lifetime dream.

The license plates will be "VETT 4 5" which will mean it's a Corvette for 5 people. I'll have to add a seat belt too. ;^)

I can't wait till it gets here !! It should arrive within a week or two of Danielle's birthday.

CHRP Faith Share

I have finished my CHRP Faith Share. It is a whopping 27 pages long, so I fear it is too much. I tried editing it down right after I finished writing it, but couldn't find anything I could live without. I'll try again Sunday.

Spring Break is set !!

Today Joey and I both booked out vacation to Winter Park, CO for Spring Break. We fly out Monday and fly back Friday. We leave early and come back late, so we have 2 free days plus 3 days of skiing. I'm so happy to be flying instead of spending 1/2 the trip on the road.

Going with Rhonda, Joey and Chanse will be great fun also. We're all so excited staying in a resort right on the mountain. It's going to be great !!

No Camaro

After 5 years of dreaming about a new yellow Camaro.......I was swayed to Inferno Orange. I was tempted initially because it's the only color with an 2-tone matching interior. Then, I got the vision of green pinstripes.......and I was obsessed. I had to have Orange !!

At the same time, I realized local dealers now had Camaros in stock. I then found the exact Orange car I would've order in stock here in Austin !!!!!!

I thought Susan might warm up to the color if she could see how beautiful it was in person. Unfortunately, she hated the Orange even worse in the flesh than she did before.

Now I'm trying to cope with moving back to my original Yellow vision, and also the fate of achieving the dream and no longer having a dream.

I had given up when I realized I could not be the first kid on the block to get a new Camaro, and rationalized by saying I could wait for the convertible. Maybe that's a good idea after all......

Productivity Weekend !!

Last weekend I didn't have much to do, and I couldn't get any of my family to do anything but vegetate in front of the TV or computer. It was sickening. I ranted all weekend about how sick it was to waste such unbelievable opportunities like the great outdoors, the Lake, inner tubing, ANYTHING but wasting such precious leisure time

Then I was embarrassed when I realized how I ranted about doing nothing, yet had so many of my own things left undone. Well, I fixed it this weekend !! Virtually everything is complete.

• Installed new ceiling fan
• Installed flashing on breezeway
• Repaired paint on breezeway
• Cleared brush in yard
• Fixed carburetor on power washer
• Taught Charles how to mow the yard
• Got extra gas can
• Put 10 gals in boat since ramp is so-so
• Killed remnants of cleared trees
• Filed brake service rebate ($50)
• Updated status on coffee scam refund

I also cooked 3/4 of lupper (lunch/supper) today.

I'm so proud of Charles !! He helped me in everything. He even mowed the entire yard for the 1st time today !!

The girls were OK too. Both went for sleepovers Friday night, so both napped much of Saturday. Perfect time for Charles and I to knock all this out.

The only things left are:

• Painting newly installed flashing
• Refinishing the deck now that power washer works

I hope the rest of the power washer hasn't decayed like the hoses/seals on the carburetor. It leaked gas before fixing it. Bad float bowl seal + bad fuel hose. Hard to believe it's only 6 years old.

Susan will be able to drive the boat even if she can't get in the water. I look forward to the life O'Reiley again.......;^)

Passion of Christ

I thought it was a great movie. Very accurate and very touching. I made Susan and Charles watch it. Both thought it was disturbing. Danielle wouldn't watch it, and Angela started and then had to quit (she was disturbed by it too).

Snow Leopard

I was the first kid on the block to get my copy. I pre-ordered via the web and got free next-day shipping so it would reach me by the premier date of Friday, August 28 (today).

Charles broke open the package for me. I popped the DVD in and it started up. Next it asked me to Continue....then Agree to the EULA....then select a disk.

Unfortunately, my hard disk was not an option. Only the external USB drive was visible.

I rebooted, same thing. I unmounted the external USB disk, rebooted, no disks to select from. I booted straight to the DVD and I had both the USB and internal HDD to choose from.......but I was scared of a fresh install that would blow away my existing machine.

I called tech support and surprisingly, they answered quickly. The guy said I was the 5th Snow Leopard installer to call. I was also the fifth that had a RAID boot volume. He was starting to see a pattern......

L2 support told me it was expected, but would be OK. They said boot directly to the DVD and proceed. They said it would be smart enough to know it's an upgrade.

...and...

They were right. Seems all is OK.

Stay tuned for ongoing evaluations and Tips & Tricks.

GPS and Photos

After discovering the iPhone automatically adds GPS EXIF tags to it's photos, I decided to try it out. I documented Lake Travis' historically low levels last week. I took photos with my Canon, but also snapped one photo with the iPhone from each photo location to document it via GPS.

I learned 2 things. First, iPhone is accurate only part of the time. I did not find any rhyme or reason to it's accuracy or lack thereof.

Next, I was dismayed to discover that GPS tags are still apparently for the adventurous. I assumed I would be able to simply drag the photos onto Google Earth and viola - mapped photo route !!

Not so. In fact, not NEAR so. Google makes a helper app, that calls another helper app (Unix command-line !! Yes it really was !!), which makes a file, which reads the GPS receiver file, which generates the KML file, which Google Earth can *finally* use.

I didn't have the stamina for all that.

I then learned iPhoto '09 has mapping built in. How convenient !! However, the inaccuracy of iPhone's GPS tags, coupled with iPhoto's inability to see modified EXIF info (only read upon initial import) still makes the process far more complex than it should be.

I'll continue and hopefully end up with some great overlay shots of the lake as it reaches what will doubtlessly be a new historic low, as well as the journey to fill back up.

Dave Maguire said he had seen the lake rise 24 feet in as many hours. I have personally seen the lake's highest ever level (Dec 1991), but don't remember that.

CHRP Church Retreat

CHRP last weekend was fantastic. I knew nothing about it, so it was completely unexpected. The personal aspect was touching for me. Amazing timing as well. The faith shares are something I wanted to do anyway. It was that desire that led me to create this blog.........

Turns out St. Theresa's has had this program for over 7 years. I am part of Team 15, and I'll be helping sponsor Team 16's event next winter.

I'm looking forward to it !! This will be a nice fill for the hole left after I finished RCIA on Easter, 2008.

Good Day

This was a good day overall. Danielle and Charles stayed home with Susan. They were all happy and stayed that way after I arrived !! Charles and I played billiards and had fun. No yelling....very nice.

We talked to Angela on the phone. Yesterday they told me she thought we had already talked, but today Angela said she missed me !! I got to talk to her first. She got a little sad in the middle, but cheered up when telling me about the Matagorda shop.

Susan and I decided to cancel Hudson's On The Bend. $200 EACH for the prix fixe was ridiculous. We wanted to go to Aquaralle Sunday night, but they're not open Sunday. So we'll probably just wait another week till the kids are out of town.

First try.....

First Facebook, now a Blog. But the two will only have value if there is synergy. Testing Notes' automagic import of Blog posts via Atom/RSS feed. I hope it works like I expect it to.