Christmas at Our House

Apology

After getting chastised severely about the head and shoulders, I decided it was time to write another blog entry. It is amazing how much discipline blogging takes. It's just not something that I am accustomed to do and it feels like I am just playing around instead of being productive. I know, all you younguns think that is ridiculous, but for an old fogey like me, if you are sitting down in front of a computer, you must be goofing off.

Old News

The HP Home Server that I talked about last time (May) is working out great. It automatically backs up the changes on both my computers every night. I don't even worry about it any more, it just works. It is also good at compacting a lot of data into a small file. So far I haven't needed to retrieve a file, so maybe it is time to just restore a file to make sure I know how. I may not be in any mood to learn how when I really need to recover a file that mysteriously went AWOL.

Snowy Christmas

We finally had a white Christmas in Vancouver, Washington. There was nine inches of snow on the ground and the temperature was cold enough for the snow to stay around for a week. Of course, being that this is Vancouver, everything ground to a screeching halt. Even the snow removal equipment couldn't keep up with the amount of snow, mainly because we don't have a whole lot of afore mention equipment.

One of the casualties of the snow storm was the trip to Kansas City that my son (Steve), his wife (Jodi), and their son (Ethan) were going to take. Jodi's family was gathering there for a big Christmas family reunion and it was going to be a time for showing off 15 month old Ethan to the family members who haven't seen him. But Seattle was snowed in, their flight cancelled, and no flight out of Portland, Oregon until December 26th, which wasn't helpful.

We were the benefactors of their plight, because they made their way south to Vancouver to share Christmas with us. We were very happy to have them, but we felt badly that they missed their much anticipated trip to Kansas City.

Our small gathering ended up growing as the weather worsened and we ended up having seven guests sleep over for a couple of nights. Our side street never saw a snowplow, so the going was treacherous for those brave enough to risk leaving the neighborhood. But that meant they were there for Christmas which was great! My dad and mom, who also live in Vancouver, were not able to join us until Saturday when the snow started to melt, but they got stuck in front of our house where the snow was a slushy mess and the icy ruts were deep.

Bullet Train

My grandson, Logan, likes trains and wanted a fast one, not a steam engine because they are too slow. Steve and I decided to build an engine for him (truth be told, my wife volunteered us), so we did some research on the Internet to find a train that we could build in a day with the wood existing in the shop. We convinced Logan that the bullet train was the fastest and since it was also the easiest to build, everyone was happy. Steve worked on the engine body using a pine 4x4 and I made the wheels. Logan never left the shop while the work was going on and we gave him a few simple tasks to help out. I couldn't find a good axle for the wheels, so it wasn't finished until the next day. Logan took the finished product and decorated it with his marking pens. Now he is pushing it all over the house. Sometimes the simple toys are the best.

My HP Home Server

The HP Home Server is my latest attempt to organize my digital life. I know backups are absolutely needed to preserve the thousands of photos that my grand-grandchildren will be perusing to learn a little about our life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Well at least they will be laughing at our funny hair styles and weird clothes.

I also want to add some photos to my screen saver at work so that my colleagues can the see the charm and beauty of my grandkid, and their uncanny likeness to myself. But, alas, I keep forgetting to save the photos to my flash drive so that I can take them to work.

Then there are those times when you are bragging about your grandkids and you find a person who would like to actually see their pictures. It would be so nice to go online right then and show him the pictures, before he comes to his right mind and remembers an important appointment that he must get to immediately.

The HP Home Server is suppose to make all this possible and, dare I say, easy. Well, I believe it is possible and the backup portion was very easy. But that part about getting at my photos on the server using the internet has not proven to be easy. I attribute a lot of the problem with my internet/LAN set up and a little to my ignorance. I suppose there are those who would say it the other way around, but it's my blog so I get to tell is like is should be.

I'm may have to ask for help. Yes, I am that desperate. However, I believe that asking for help on a technologically tricky problem is nothing close to asking for directions. So my manhood remains unscathed. In the meantime, I feel sorry for all my friends at work who are not getting to see the latest photos of some of the country's brightest prospects for high positions of leadership in the land.

Oh the Peace and Quiet, NOT

The last few months have been anything but tranquil for these empty nesters. No one moved back in with us, but we have moved my mother-in-laws, Wayne and Alyce, to Vancouver to be closer to us. She was living in Yakima with her other daughter and son-in-law, Jane and Frank. Frank got a new job that required a move, so we had a family pow-wow and decided that it would be best to move the folks to Vancouver because we expect to be here for the forseeable future and could provide a stable environment for them.

Alyce and Wayne are well into their eighties and a few parts are breaking down. Wayne has alzhiemers and has a difficult time communicating. He seldom gets the noun correct when he is telling you about something or asking a question. So you have to figure out what he means by fish, ice, big thing, or chin. Is it a cookie, his wife, or that toy on the floor. It can be rather humorous, but of course, we have to be sensitive to Wayne's feelings because he is just as frustrated in his inability to communicate as we are in trying to figure it all out.

Alyce recently had a total knee replacement which went very well, but the day after she got home from the hospital, she was back in for a few days to treat her congestive heart failure. This was a unexpected hiccup, but the family pulled together so that everyone was taken care of and no one was over burdened. By over burdened, I mean that no one else ended up in the hospital or psych ward. Jane, Lesley's sister, left Frank to fend for himself, Lesley set aside her garden and her domestic engineering career, and Jenni, our daughter, left the comfort of her own bed to take the night shift when 24 hour care was required.

Jane is back with Frank, and Lesley and Jenni are continuing to help Alyce and Wayne by fixing meals, doing their shopping, and running them to the doctors appointments. As long as everyone stays clear of the emergency room, we can see light at the end of the tunnel. Wayne will soon need more care than we will be able to give, but for a little while we will enjoy our new scheduleable hectic lives. (Scheduleable, I think I just invented a word.)

It does make one pause to consider the cost on others when we grow old. People don't want to be a burden on their families, but I don't think that is the way it is supposed to be. God created the family and we are to help one another, as well as enjoy one another. A strong family will prevent some disasters and cleanup after others, but together they will also celebrate the victories, laugh at the dumb jokes, and marvel at each new member as they arrive. Family relationships are the most difficult to sustain, because everyone knows the real you. But family relationships can be the most rewarding, when they love you anyway.

Smile Everyone

Well, it's a done deal. I purchased the Panasonic Lumix FZ18 camera, and she is a beauty. You know how my next step was to visit the store and try it out? Well, I visited three stores and none of them had that particular camera. There were a lot of cameras taking up shelf space, but not the latest and greatest from Panasonic. So I decided I would have to go to a specialty store in the big city of Portland, because it would be dumb to buy a camera that I had never even held. The day was too far spent for me to make it to Portland, so I would have to go another day and postpone the purchase. So I went home and bought the camera on the internet. Physically handling a camera before you buy is way overrated.

I've had it for a couple of weeks now, but the weather hasn't been conducive to getting out and taking lots of pictures. I've been busying myself with checking out some of its features and learning how to operate it.
One of the important features that I wanted was very little shutter lag, you know the time between when you push the shutter button and when the picture is taken. This camera is very fast and I love it! It's still not as fast as an DSLR, but it is so much faster than my old camera that it seems like it is.

It has the capability to download the RAW image, but I've only just started playing around with it and so I don't know if I will find the time spent adjusting the photo characteristics to be gratifying, frustrating, or just too time consuming. My son uses this mode all the time on his DSLR and he produces some very nice photos, but he does spend a fair amount of time at the computer getting just the right look. Take a look at his photo blog to see a few of his photos.

My younger grandson has been visiting for the last few weeks and is currently a favorite victim, er subject. Being that he is only four months old, he is not necessarily cooperative. However, I've managed to get a few good shots, many no so good shots, and some really bad shots. I would like to blame the camera, but I'm afraid it's the person behind the camera who doesn't know what he is doing.

Today was a beautiful day with reasonably warm temperatures and lots of sun. We decided to take my grandson's dog, Talula, an Australian shepherd, to the doggie park. My other daughter and her two sons were visiting at the time, so they joined us on our outing. We had a great time, with Talula making friends with every dogs she could catch. She did play a little rough with a pug and sent him rolling a couple of times, but he was none the worse for wear. What a great photo opportunity I had, but I forgot the camera. Can you believe it? I've been waiting for a day like this and I forgot the camera.

I'm not at the computer that has all my pictures so I can't download any of my fantastic photos right now, but as soon as I can, I'll post a couple.

Black Beauty

I've been shopping for the perfect digital camera. I want one that fixes some annoying problems that I have with my old one. I want the picture to be taken shortly after I press the shutter release. I'm tired of explaining that just because I press the button doesn't mean that everybody is free to move around. It only means that the count down has begun.
The time between shots is too long with my old camera. It can take many seconds to transfer the image to the memory card. Add that time to the shutter lag time and you are waiting a long time between shots. Have you ever noticed that some of the best photo opportunities are right after you take the picture?
The old camera has 3x optical zoom which I find way to short for a lot of pictures I want to take, so I want a super-zoom camera. I also like to use the macro mode, so a good macro mode is essential.
My son and my daughter have digital SLR cameras, which are very nice, but I'm not that much of a photo bug. I consider these cameras to be too heavy, too big, and too expensive. So I'm looking for a fixed lens camera with a lot of SLR type features and a lot of point-and-shoot features. It must be easy to use, light enough to carry all day, have a super telephoto lens, and at least 7 megapixel resolution. Of course, it really helps if it takes excellent pictures.
I considered three cameras that met these criteria, the Panasonic FX18, the Fujifilm S8000fd, and the Olympus 560UZ. They are all good cameras, but the FX18 seemed to have a slight edge over the others. All three cameras were reviewed by www.dpreview.com and they are very thorough. They even have comparison shots between the three cameras.
Since my wife, who is a point-and-shoot type, and I, who am more a SLR type, will be sharing the camera, I wanted a camera that was very easy to setup for a good auto exposed picture, and was easy to use manually. The FX18 received this praise from the reviewers, Simon Joinson and Lars Rehm:
"And this is where the FZ18 differs so much from the Olympus SP-550 UZ, reviewed earlier this year and sporting almost identical specification (and very similar image quality): the FZ18 is fun to use, and it's responsive and reliable enough to allow you to snap away to your heart's content, experimenting with the huge zoom range. Where the SP-550UZ seemed hell-bent on annoying you into giving up photography forever, the FZ18 is another of those cameras that actually makes you want to go out and take pictures, just for the sake of it."

I like the sound of that. So at the moment, I'm thinking that the Panasonic FZ18 is the best fit for us. I've never actually held one, let alone used it. So I think I'll head on down to the photo store and try one out.

It's been great fun researching the cameras and I'm hoping that the camera will be just as much fun to use as it was to hunt.

Garage Door's Screwy Opener

Opening our garage door was a source of noise induced torture. Hitting the opener button, dashing to the car, and closing the door was the only sure way of avoiding permanent deafness. A little lubricant helped a little, but not much.

We started talking about getting a new garage door opener. We ended up with our current opener because of those magic words on the side of the box, "Quiet Operation". All I have to say is that Genie's definition of "quiet" and my definition of "quiet" are very different. At the time it was a new technological wonder that used a screw drive to open the door. Sounded nice, but in fact, it wasn't so grand. It was never quiet, even when it was first installed. By a professional installer I might add, for all of you who think that I installed it incorrectly.

A couple of days ago the door would occasionally stop part way up, but it would usually open all the way on the next try. Yesterday I got a step ladder and examined the place along the rails and along the screw where it tended to stop. It was stopping close to a seam in the rail and a transition between screw sections. I adjusted the rail slightly to better align it and tried it a couple of times without a problem. I was feeling pretty good about getting it fixed.

My elation was short lived. The next time the garage door went up it stopped at about the same place as before. However, this time it made the most bone jarring racket and I expected parts of the opener to start flying around the garage. Lesley, on the other hand, thought the garage door was going to come completely off its rails and crash on our new Honda. The sound of her scream let me know she was serious. All this took place in about two seconds real time, but it took at least 2 years off my life.

After my blood pressure and pulse rate got below "you're dying" range, I decided that I would need to lift the door manually, so I pulled the cord to release the door from the opener. Crash! The door smashed to the floor and my heart was in bad shape again. How much can an old man take?

That's when I noticed that the right hand coil spring was broken. I don't know how long the spring has been broken, but it might explain why the little imperfections in the rail and screw drive caused it to stop.

We still had to get the car out of the garage, so using my weight lifting knowledge I squatted down, lifted with my legs, put the appropriate grimace on my face, and muscled the door open. I did want to get more exercise in 2008, but I wanted to spread it out over a few months. I backed the car out of the garage and closed the garage door with a thud. My neighbor heard the racket and came over to see if we were all right. He was probably praying, "Lord, don't let them be dead. Don't let them be dead." as he was walking across the street.

The repairman was called today and the door is now working normally. Loud and without stopping, like a politician.

I'm still going to get a new opener, and it won't be a "quiet" screw drive mechanism. I'm leaning toward an "ultra whisper quiet" belt drive mechanism. Yeah, right.