Move over "Ask This Old House"

I had to work on the garage today. Last year I replaced the soffit and fascia on one side of the garage and put off doing the other side. Earlier this year, I had a roofing and siding company come in and replace the gutters on the house and garage. Well before they could do their thing, I needed to tear down the soffit and fascia. I was able to put up the fascia but ran out of time to put the soffit. Ideally one puts up the fascia and then the soffit and then guttering. So here I was with new fascia and guttering and totally lacking the soffit. I had to get creative to avoiding taking everything down and starting over. So I put up F-channel all around, cut a piece of soffit in half lengthwise, and slid the soffit into the F-channel. So much easier than the normal way and just as effective! I wish I had done this sooner, today would have been a beautiful day for a ride.

Bad Rivs

Last night was a very disappointing outing for the Rivermen. They played sloppy and didn't attack on offense after the first few minutes. The penalty kill teams did a pretty good job overall, killing something like nine out of ten power plays. Otherwise it was a poor showing and they lost. Actually they got shut out 5-0 by the Chicago Wolves. It's still early in the season, so I'm not worried, but it's not fun to watch your team get a spanking.

Greg called asking when we could meet on motorcycles, but it's probably too late to try it this year. Next weekend is the only chance we would have and that's not looking promising. After next weekend we both have work interfering for a couple of weekends or more. Then it'll be well into November and the temperatures will most likely not be comfortable for a long ride. But I think we'll keep our options open or plan for next season.

I'm currently blogging from the couch using my new laptop (got it for my birthday) on my newly installed wireless network. The wireless network was easy to install. I followed the instructions step-by-step and everything came up perfect. I then fired up the new laptop which already has a wireless NIC built in and put in all the settings for security for my wireless LAN and bam! I'm wireless on my laptop.

I put a wireless card in my old HP desktop that I have in another room. I've been running SUSE Linux 9.3 on that thing for several months as an experiment in learning more about Linux. I like the fact that Linux can be free and often can breathe new life into older machines. The downside is that it can be a bit of a learning curve. Don't get me wrong, it was an easy install and is quite a bit like other operating systems that I've seen over the years. It even recognizes newly installed hardware. I haven't tried installing any new software yet, so I have yet to experience that. It recognized my PCI NIC and the wireless NIC, but the wireless NIC is a problem. It seems that many wireless NICs don't have drivers for Linux so users have to trick their computers by loading a piece of software that emulates a bit of a Windows environment and run the Windows drivers for the wireless NIC. Well instead of messing with that for now, I ran a piece of CAT5 from the wireless router to the HP and it was up on the net in no time. At some point in the near future, I will try to download the aforementioned software and be able to cut the umbilical cord to that computer. Wish me luck!

Well, I know that was boring to all but the geeks out there. What else can I talk about that might appeal to all? As I'm blogging, I've got the TV on to watch the NASCAR race at Talledaga, the dogs are napping all around me (if the computer weren't on my lap, one or more of the dogs would be), Lourdes is napping in bed, and Raquel just showered and is getting ready for us to go to Adam's house later for a fish fry/seafood fest. You can make fun of me for watching NASCAR but I don't care. These guys are running over 190 mph right now and are bound to wreck so I'm just waiting for the chaos!.

Last night I fired up Google Earth for the first time in a long time and checked out Paraguay. I had looked for Caazapa before and either I couldn't find it or there wasn't any detail yet. This time I found Villarica which is an hour or so north of Caazapa and I just followed the roa d south and found Caazapa. I marked the hotel that we stay at, the cemetary near my sister-in-law's house (I didn't want to mark her house), the sport's complex, and one of the hospitals. It was pretty neat to see. I tried to follow the road out of town to find where my inlaws live, but the details suddenly drop off. It was still really neat. Hopefully, the earth will get completely mapped in detail someday. Raquel actually got kick out of seeing Caazapa and her sisters house.

Well that's it for now. Besides the batteries are running low and two posts in two days is going to cause my friends and family to expect more consistent posts.

How did I get up here?

Okay another post. This makes what, the second one in three or four months? I should pace myself.

Raquel and I celebrated our fourth anniversary at the end of September.

Greg joined me in the ranks of the 40-year-olds last month.

The Rivermen kicked off the beginning of another season with a win last night. It was a good game that was 9.6 seconds away from a shootout. We were there and we'll go back to night for another game against another team. Good luck guys!

Lourdes keeps growing! I was gone for a week in September and she started putting more and more words together. It seems like she advanced so much in that one week. At this rate she'll be writing for the Times by age five. I'll be gone for another week soon, I wonder how far she'll be when I come back.

I'm suddenly very tired as I write this. I'm on the verge of being recovered from a cold but it feels like I'm coming down with it again. Let's hope that I'm just sleepy from a later than usual night. Plus I didn't get my weekend nap in. Actually, we've all had a touch of something over the last week and a half, but we all seem to be about over it.

Greg and Deb are closing in on their 10th anniversary. It seems like just yesterday that Greg and I were hanging out in his apartment, eating chili and ice cream after a workout at the gym!

I pretty much haven't been out on the motorcycle at all this year. I really don't like to ride it to work because so much of the time I stay after and run or walk and I don't want to have to change clothes again to get back on the bike for the trip home. Greg and I should try to coordinate a road trip where I head north, he heads south, we meet somewhere and ride for a short while then head back to our respective homes. What do you say Greg?