Tuesday 01- Welcome to the month of May!- did my stretches, ran 3 miles, and lifted weights- called my brother and yapped at him for about an hour- did my studies- went for my evening walk- Roger T. came by to pickup a 64 bit OS, Ubuntu, that I just happen to have laying around, for his new dual AMD 64 bit processor- my brother-in-law John called, him and my brother were out drinking beer, and wanted to say hi and talk about setting up wireless connections and VOIP- did my studies- watched "NCIS" on CBS, and I was watching "Law and Order Criminal Intent" when Andrew called. I'd rather talk to my friends when they call than watch TV which isn't real life, and communicating with a real person is. We yapped about the environment and how the air was cleaner in Los Angles because the folks over there filter out all the pollutants with their lungs- wrote my column and sent it to the newspaper.
Wednesday 02- did my stretches and ran a mile- had to wait around the house for FedEx to show with a package containing an iPod for me and it was windy outside so I just played with the MacBook trying to get used to it. I looked out the window and saw a FedEx package laying on the ground, it turned out not to be the package I was waiting for but the AppleCare I had ordered on Ebay last week and had told the seller to send it USPS to my PO Box out on Border Ave. So FedEx had the wrong address and actually took the effort to get the right address to my home on Winters Road and dropped it off around 10AM when I was out on my run. My iPod didn't arrive until 4PM. I loaded a few songs onto it and went for my evening walk- Andrew came by on his bicycle and we sat watching the sunset and talked about flying lessons. He laughed when I told him that after seeing the movie "Top Gun" back in 1986, I was so hyped up about it that I went down to the Torrance Airport and took a test flight. I am a little embarrassed to admit that after seeing "Indiana Jones" I wanted a Bullwhip! I guess I'm very impressionable sometimes- did my studies- watched "Bones" on CBS- messed around with the MacBook and iPod figuring out how to loading songs onto it; easy once you find and punch the right buttons.
Thursday 03- lots of wind and the temp in the morning was in the high 40s so I just did my stretches and lifted weights- didn't feel like doing much today so I just did lot of reading, updated the website, sent out the newsletter- went for my evening walk- watched "CSI" on CBS- did my studies and did some corrections on my blogs (started with the wrong day for the month: Monday instead of Tuesday... Dah)
Friday 04- dang windy again today, only did my stretches. I needed to give my poor old body a rest today and yesterday, but I am running tomorrow for sure!- late last night I ordered 2gigs of memory for the MacBook from Crucial.com at a damn good price too. Should be here on the 9th- played around with the MacBook must of the day still doing it by trial and error, but learning- Stoney called to tell me he made some peanut butter cookies and for me to come on over to get some; so I did, I like cookies! We jawed some about some of the troubles that our community center is having with the first Saturday breakfasts- did my studies- went for my evening walk- watched "Bones" a rerun that I haven't seen before on FOX, and then "Numbers" on CBS- my friend Mike from Hermosa contacted me on iChat and he showed me how to do a few things on the Mac OS, Mike is a Mac Fanboy and knows the OSX pretty well- finished the night working updating my blogs, answering emails, and tweaking MySpace.
Saturday 05- still windy, but I did my stretches and ran my mile- another lazy day, did some reading, web surfing. Bonnie, a MySpace buddy of mine and a talented artist, wants me to upload some pictures of my Home Solar System, so I did- received an email from Joe Preciado telling me that his Father Harry Preciado has passed away. When I saw the subject line I knew it before I opened the message. Harry live in our area for many years with his wife Zoila, she passed on in 2004 and Harry went away to live with his son Joe. I told Joe to send me any info and stories he would want to share and I'd put them in my column I write for the Hi Desert Star. Sorry to hear of his passing, Harry was a kind and quite soul until he had a few beers, then he would brighten up and tell us all about this fishing trip he went on and other stories, always asking Zoila for confirmation on key points and she would most always agree. We will all miss them both- went for my evening walk- called Mom and Dad to tell them that I love them much- did my studies- Roger T. called asking my advice on installing Ubuntu 64 bit Linux OS, that I gave him, on his new XP 64 bit machine for a dual boot. We couldn't get it to install cause it would keep hanging when partitioning of the 350Gig hard drive. We'll have to work on this one- messed around with the MacBook and MySpace the rest of the night.Sunday 06- the wind ain't blowing all that bad today. Did my stretches, ran a mile, lifted weights, and rode my bike- my Brother Kevin called and we talked about the bees that are dieing off and the culprit maybe cell phones emissions that interfere with their navigation back to their hive- for some reason I was thinking of the massacre of students at Kent State University and looked it up on the web and found that it happened on May 4, 1970 when a National Guard unit shot at students, killing 4 of them. Kind of reminds me of what happened recently in Los Angles at Macarthur Park- Stoney called telling me he cooked up some sopapillas for the first time, so I jumped in my truck and drove on over there, he made a salad too!- went for my evening walk- watched "60 Minutes" on CBS- did my studies- messed around online for the rest of the evening- Bonnie has a new painting of a "Sea Witch" posted on her MySpace site, looks mighty fine, good color and shading, and a real nice rendition of a fish that I really like. Maybe she'd let me post it here, I'll ask her.
Monday 07- did my stretches and ran a mile- did some housework and then I was off to the Post Office to mail my Mother's Day card. Its been only a few months since I met my Mom for the first time in Tucson last December. I've always just called her Mom and never thought to ask Mom her first name, and only realized this fact when I went to address the envelope to her. So I just used my Dad's name on it because I was in a rush to get it mailed today (I called my Brother later on and felt kind of dumb asking him what our Mother's first name was!)- when I got to town and mailed my card, then I stopped at Sam's to get some supplies; raisins, bread.... then went to the library where they were having a book sale. Bought me an Algebra textbook for 76 cents (got to brush up on my Algebra) and checked out a Sue Grafton novel "R is for Ricochet" (she is one of my favorite authors) and a Dummies book on Physics (I've been interested in Physics but never had the time to read a text on it)- went for my evening walk- did my studies- was such a nice and dark night that I took out the telescope. Checked out Venus which is the bright "Evening Star" in the western sky after sunset. It appears to be almost half lit right now; kind of like the phases of the Moon. Saturn is still in Leo and if the weather is kind to me tomorrow night I will use my higher powered scope for a better view of the planets- started writing my column for the newspaper- worked on the computer the rest of the night.
Tuesday 08- did my stretches, ran a mile, lifted weights, and rode my bike- had to wait around the house for Sam the UPS driver and friend to deliver 2Gigs memory for the MacBook I ordered from Crucial.com. So while I was waiting I downloaded OpenOffice for the Mac and tried to run it but it needed X11 which is a program that makes it possible to run open source X11 based programs and you have to install it from the Mac systems disk. After I had a few false starts (the instructions are wrong at the Open Office site. You actually have to open the Xcode folder to find the right installer instead of the Optional installer as per their instructions), and finally got Open Office to run successfully- Sam arrives with my memory and I show him my new MacBook. He laughs at me for getting a Mac because he knows I'm a PC guy. I fixed his sister-in-law's Dell computer last year and his wife baked me cookies for doing it, I like cookies!- Stoney swings by on his way to bingo and drops off some of his homemade chili that I will mix with some rice, lentils, and split peas I cooked up yesterday- went for my evening walk and ran into my neighbor Biker Ron, he is planting watermelons- installed the 2Gigs of memory in the MacBook and fired it up, what a difference more memory makes, it's running mighty fine- printed out Joel's airline itinerary that he requested and placed it in my mailbox along with a letter for him to mail for me- watched "NCIS" on CBS- did my studies- took out my higher powered telescope and got a better look at Venus and Saturn, and noticed that as Venus was setting in the west, Jupiter was rising in the east, and got a good look at that too!- wrote my column and sent it to the newspaper, and played around online the rest of the night.
Wednesday 09- did my stretches and ran a mile- my wifi is down so I'll have to use dialup to connect to the Internet- did my studies most of the day- Called and talked to Stoney, Ron D. and then Roger T.- went for my evening walk- watched "Bones" on FOX- too windy to use the telescope tonight, so I just did some file updates on the computer and surfed the web(very slowly).
Thursday 10- did my stretches and ran 3 miles- spent the better part of the day going through picture folders and sorting them into what year they were taken. I have so many duplicates pics on different computers so it will take some time- Ron D. called to ask if I wanted to go to with him to a guitar concert in JT on Friday; sounds good to me- went for my evening walk- last night on World News with Charles Gibson, they had the "Senior Singing Sensations,
The Zimmers, an English band reliving their youth through music." singing The Who's "My Generation" right after a commercial break: I turned off the TV! I want to watch the news "NOT" singing seniors- did my studies- watched "CSI" on CBS, Lady Heather is back, Grissom is helping her out, and Sara seems to be a little upset- did the weekly update for the website and sent out the newsletter.
Friday 11- did my stretches, lifted weights, and rode my bike- copied all my backup disks (7 years worth) to a 30Gig hard drive and started eliminating the duplicates- Ron D. picked me up at 4:30 and we drove down to JT for the Acoustic Guitar Festival. Weren't much going on when we got there so we journeyed on over to Santanna's for a bean and cheese burrito. The jalapeno peppers really clears out my sinuses stopped up by my allergy. 
Stopped by Joshua Tree Music to checkout some guitars, then we went back to the festival but the only place to sit was on the ground, no problem, and listened to some fantastic music put on by some very talented artists (they weren't just playing cords) playing their own original stuff. Ron can't drive well in the dark so we left after the cute gal who played "Home on the Range" which everyone sang to, I think, I know I did. On the way home Ron ran over 2 trash cans, so he wasn't kidding about his night driving- did my studies- watch "Numbers" on CBS- worked on the computer the rest of the night.Saturday 12 did my stretches (of course) and ran 2 miles- went over to Stoney's for a jaw. He is expecting his niece and her husband to arrive, so I made my visit short and left as his niece's van pulled into his driveway. I stuck around to take a few pic of Stoney and them, and then I was on my way over to Andrew's. Well he wasn't home so I went to pay Chuck a visit. Chuck and his son Joseph were there along with Barbara and Jerry. We sat and chatted while Joe launched high pressure homemade water bottle rockets into the air (and got soaked)- did my studies- Called Mom and Dad to wish Mom my first time ever "Happy Mother's Day"! That was really cool- went for my evening walk- talked to Mike from Hermosa on iChat and he walked me through a few Mac OSX commands-
Started doing some research on " Bee navigation and the Earth's magnetic reversal" just something I came up with when I heard that Bees were going through a Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and put two and two together. and found some interesting stuff that collaborates most, if not all, of my theory: that the earth is ready for a magnetic reversal (some experts suggest a reversal is overdue), Bees navigate using, but not limited to, the earth's magnetic field (a bee's abdomen contains many millions of tiny magnetic crystals and if you place a powerful magnet next to a hive while it is being built the comb will be malformed) It got my attention when a group from the University of Landau were partially miss quoted about cell phones causing CCD. Why was it even suggested, I thought, what would be the correlation between a bees navigation and the electromagnetic field? Hence, the Earth's magnetic field! So to sum it up: the Earth's magnetic field may be going through stages of reversal, causing Honeybees to lose to some degree their sense of direction. not returning to their hive, and possibly confusing them enough to believe that their own hive is of another. That's what I did with the rest of the night! I hope I am wrong....
Sunday 13- did my stretches, lifted weights, rode my bike and stopped by Ron the graphics guy's house. He showed me his new fruit trees he had planted and a novel way to water them- messed around some more on file cleanup of the backup drive- Stoney called to say he made macaroni with ground hamburger and other stuff thrown in to make it tasty, also wants me to stop over at Roger S. house and drag him from his computer and over for dinner at 3:00. I had 2 hrs. to waste till dinner so I went online and cleaned up MySpace. Seems that there are a lot of models (strippers)out there who are under 24 years old that want to be my friend! They are just spam from porn sites and I now have to go and check them out before I delete them because I had accidently deleted one that I later found was legit from JT on another friends page and I had to ask them for an invite- stopped and got Roger and talked some and then went to Stoney's for dinner. The macaroni was fantastic, I had two big plates full. When we were through I cleaned up the dishes and grabbed the lid laying on the stove burner to the macaroni pan to cover it, found out that Stoney, who is 87 years old, had forgotten to turn off the burner and it burnt my fingers and the lid ended on the floor. I picked it up with a wet rag and it hissed while I carried it to the sink. Boy that really hurt! I quickly applied ice to my poor fingers. Stoney made a lame remark about my fingers and I dropped an ice cube down his back. I downloaded the pics I took yesterday of Stoney and his niece to his computer. Roger and I then went to his house so I could take some pics of his garden for the Copper Mountain Mesa website- went for my evening walk- did my studies- my Brother Kevin called and we jawed a while about family- watched "Nature" on PBS about how animals know about disasters and head for safety before us humans do- messed around with the MacBook, hooked up a bluetooth modem to it, and then downloaded NVU which is a HTML editor.
Monday 14- did my stretches, lifted weights, ran a mile, and while riding my bike up the hill by my house, a guy in an old Oldsmobile stopped to question me about my solar. It seems he'd been driving by my house for a few years now and noticed that there wasn't any powerlines to my home, his dad lives in Landers and has no power and wondered if his dad, whose name is Ben, could come take a look. I told him it wouldn't be a problem and if he himself would like to take a look he was more then welcomed, he said he wouldn't understand it. I told him the best way to learn anything was to investigate, but he declined- Ron D. called when I got back from my bike ride and said he was going to town to run some errands and if I wanted to go. He came by at 11:30. We went to the post office, thrift store where I picked up a straw hat, the health food store in JT, the bank, WalMart, Star Pharmacy, and then finished off a burrito at Santana's- did my studies- went for my evening walk- took out the telescope and trained it on the seven stars (I am trying to remember their names) of the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) Dubhe, Merak, Phecda, Megrez, Alioth, Mizar, and Alkaid. Mizar was the first binary star that was discovered back in 1617. I noticed while I was searching the sky that Jupiter (rising in the east) Saturn (just west in Leo) and Venus (setting in the west) where all up. So if you want to see where the plane of the Ecliptic (the apparent path that the Sun, planets, and the Zodiac travel), you can draw an imaginary line with your finger across the sky from Jupiter to Regulus in Leo (the bright star at the bottom of the question mark) then through Saturn, and down to Venus then on to the horizon- Teri from the German Shepherd Rescue of Orange County sent me an email update on the blind puppy I found roaming the desert (now named Sullivan) and says he is doing fine with his new owners. Teri says: "In case you aren't familiar with our website(www.gsroc.org), if you look at the top of our page you'll see Happy Endings, then click on Stories from Adopters and I think his pictures are on page 3 of 5." They Are, and he looks good!!!
Tuesday 15- did my stretches and ran a mile- did my studies and then lots of reading "R is for Ricochet" by Sue Grafton- Dale from Landers called to comment on last Saturday's column and jaw about his neighbors who are a bunch of misfits (he says)- went on my evening walk- wrote my column and sent it to the newspaper. Thought I'd include my post from yesterday about finding the ecliptic and Friday's post about the Acoustic Guitar Festival in JT- kicked back and just surfed the web the rest of the night- yesterday I didn't include that Katherine and her mother stopped by around 4:00 to ask me if I'd do some work on their computer and setup a network for them. So it goes!
Wednesday 16- did my stretches and rode my bike- did a disk cleanup and defrag on the Toshiba laptop, if I remember I'll do one on the IBM laptop tomorrow- Fat cat is shedding his fur all over the place, poor cat! It gets into everything: food, clothes, floor, my bed, everywhere. Pulled some hair out of my oatmeal this morning! I try to brush him out but he don't like that- did my studies. Trying to finish my history book on Western Civilization so I can move on to learning a programming language, I still not sure which language to learn yet, Java, VB, C++?- practiced some commands on the MacBook I had learned over the weekend- went over to Stoney's to help him finish off the macaroni from last Sunday. I also showed him how to cut and paste in MS Paint and introduced him to Word- went on my evening walk and I really needed it from all the macaroni I ate- Joel came by and wanted me to print a airline boarding pass for him- watched "Bones" on FOX, last one for this season and that will free up an hour for me to do something other than watching TV- I've been practicing my guitar every night for over two years now and developed a corn on one of my fingertips which makes it very painful to play. I purchased a bottle of corn remover in the hopes that it will remove the corn and not my finger!- spent an hour with my telescope outside looking at the stars and a few planets. I can't wait till later this summer when the sky is filled with the 200 billion stars of the Milky Way Galaxy!
Thursday 17- did my stretches and ran a mile- Andrew called from his cell phone to say that someone was at my front door, it was him. He came by on his way to WalMart. We jawed for a bit about an IDE 2Gig Flash IDE hard drive I had found for $70, then he was on his way to town- did my studies, almost done with the history book- Ron D. called to tell me he’d turned down an offer to sing in a rock band, but he was really honored that they’d asked- Andrew came by after his trip to town and asked me if I had a USB extension with two male ends, I didn’t, we started to drive to the computer store in 29 but decided it was to late, it was 5:30, so we headed back to my house where we went on the evening walk- called Stoney and he said he baked some cookies but had burnt all of them except a few. I drove on over to have a taste of them, the cookies were totaled and they didn’t even taste good with peanut butter spread on them. I got myself a Butterfinger from his frig and saw the leftover macaroni which I proceeded to nuked and ate, Stoney had it for dinner four days in a row and didn’t want none of it- read some more Sue Grafton- watched “CSI” on CBS, I hope Sara is ok but I think I’ll have to wait till the fall season to find out- cleaned the primary lens on my telescope and now Jupiter is a little clearer- Joel called to tell me he had arrived safely at his destination- messed around online the rest of the night.
Friday 18- just got done cooking my oatmeal and opened the door to let the Fat Cat out after feeding him his breakfast when I noticed Stoney drive up and park. I walked outside to ask him what’s up, but he beat me to it and said to “get yer clothes on and come help me lift Sandy into my car and take her to the hospital, she is in a bad way and me and Hoss couldn’t do it ourselves, she’s just to dang heavy.” Five minutes later we were at Hoss’s house with Sandy unconscious laying on the bed in a bikini bottoms and t-shirt. Hoss and I tried lifting her but she was to sweaty and slippery to get a good grip, so I hunted around for something to help and found a red wagon that we pulled parallel to the bed and just slid her over onto it and wheeled her to the car and dragged her into the back seat, then off to the emergency room in JT where attendants put Sandy on a gurney and disappeared inside the building with Hoss following. When I finally got home after we made a brief stop at Star Pharmacy to pickup a prescription for Stoney, I did my stretches, ate my oatmeal that was now cold, and took a shower- did the weekly update to the website and sent out the newsletter- ran disk cleanup and defrag on the IBM laptop- did my studies- Stoney called to say he made another batch of cookies and didn’t burn them this time. I took my evening walk over to his house and picked me up a few of them to take home- was reading Sue Grafton when Andrew called and he being a friend of Hoss and Sandy, I told him about what happened, and that I haven’t heard any update on her condition. He was concerned and asked me to keep him updated if I heard anything- Stoney called to say that Seimi got a call from Hoss and that Seimi is going to pick Hoss up when they finally admit Sandy- watched “Numbers” on CBS and then did some online computer work.
Saturday 19- did my stretches, ran a mile, lifted weights, and rode my bike- Ron D. came by for a visit and brought me a whole bunch of lemons. We sat around jawing and playing guitar- Jimmy called to say hi- Stoney called to say he made chicken and dumplings and to come by at 3pm- did my studies- went over to Ron the graphics guy’s house, he invited me over for his birthday party, but I guess I was late (or early) cause nobody was there. So I left a card for him on his gate- I got to Stoney’s early and did some security updates on his computer while we ate. The chicken and dumplings were mighty fine! Afterwards he played the harmonica to some country and western music resonating from the TV, and told me that back in the day he use to play the harmonica and base at the same time on stage with a western band- got home and called Mom and Dad, spent a whole hour yakking at them (hope they don’t tire of me)- went for my evening walk- was reading some more Sue Grafton when Jimmy called and needed some help installing Windows XP on a friend’s Dell desktop. He had all the disks for the install that came with the system and we spent the next two hours on the phone trouble shooting little problems that would crop up. Sometimes installs go easy and sometimes they don’t and this time it was the don’t. We couldn’t get the system to recognize the LCD monitor that was stuck in 16 bit mode and the device manager didn’t show the monitor at all. Jimmy couldn’t find the driver for it on any of the cds. It should have just loaded up when we did the install and the Plug and Play should have taken care of it automatically. I even had Jimmy check the bios to see if the PNP was turned on. It was getting late so we decided to call it a night. If we need to we can download the drivers from Dell’s website tomorrow if Jimmy can’t find it on one of the cds that came with the system.Sunday 20- did my stretches and ran a mile- read a little Sue Grafton- Bob Ascherin called to say he needs me to bring over the old newspaper article from the “Desert Journal” of Aug. 3, 1972 that he let me barrow last January so I can use it on a story I’m writing about the Copper Mountain Lake earthquake. I told him I’d try to deliver it Tuesday. After I hung up with Bob, I franticly hunted around through the many papers I have stashed on shelves and in cardboard boxes. Finally found it and made copies- Seimi called to tell me that Sandy was doing ok and will probably be released from the hospital in the next few days, that’s good news!- Stoney called and asked me when I was going to come over to help him polish off the remainder of the chicken and dumplings. I jumped in my truck and headed on over. While I was there we called up Jimmy, his son, to try and fix that computer problem from late last night. I mostly had it figured out and had him read me off the contents on the cd, and I had him install the driver to the video which solved the problem! We were only on the phone for ten minutes or so and not two hours like last night. It always helps to walk a way from a problem and come back and tackle it after you let your brain sort it out- went for my evening walk- call Tom and Aki to say hi and let them know I still reside on this planet- did my studies- watched “60 Minutes” on CBS, the “One Laptop Per Child” section was very interesting to me- downloaded some MP3 lectures on Biology and another set on a beginning Physics class to carry around in my iPod to listen to while on my walks- found out that there’s a “Blue Moon” this coming Thursday 31 and will have to update my calendar on the website to reflect that. The site where I get the phases of the moon use Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) which puts the full moon at 1:04 am on June 1, but PDT is 7 hours behind, that puts the full moon at 6:04 on May 31 making it a “Blue Moon” for us here in the states (Europe will have their Blue Moon in June)- messed around online the rest of the night.
Monday 21 did my stretches, lifted weights, and rode my bike- I needed to wait around for UPS to deliver a package so I cleaned my kitchen and other odd jobs around the house- Roger S. came driving by and I flagged him down because I had some pictures that I took of him last week for the column he writes on gardening for the CopperMountainMesa.com website. He emailed me last night to ask if I would print him out a copy- Stoney came by with Sue after working the USDA food distribution and had a sack for me- did my studies- Sam from UPS arrives with my package that contains a 1.8 2Gig IDE Flash Drive that I’m going to experiment with. The Flash drive is a solid state hard drive (no moving parts), is very power efficient, and fast. I tried to install it in my newer Toshiba laptop first, but I couldn’t get it to load the XP OS, plus it is smaller then the hard drive that I was replacing and had to use tweezers to remove it. I decided to install it on my old Toshiba laptop that runs Win 98 and found that unlike the drive that I was replacing it needed to be jumpered as master, which might be the problem I was having on the other laptop. Once I did that I was able to install Win 98 and go online successfully. It really improved the speed of program loads and made that 10 year old laptop perform, I’d say by an increase of 60 percent or more- went for my evening walk- Jimmy called to tell me that the computer we worked on was running just fine but he still needed to find and install the Ethernet driver to be able to connect to cable and go online, he is working on that now- watched “American Experience” on PBS about the laying of the Atlantic cable in the 1850s- Andrew called and is interested in my progress with the IDE Flash, I told him that it breathed new life into an old laptop- worked some more on the laptop installing a few more programs I want to test. Eventually all laptops will have flash hard drives once the price goes down. The low power requirements of the flash will extend the time on batteries, solid state means that they can take more abuse, and they are just darn fast. The 2Gig that I bought should be able to hold XP and a few programs like a browser and a small word processor. And I intend to use a 1Gig USB thumb drive for storage and other programs when I move the drive over to my newer laptop that I had tried it on before. It is all a test and it will be interesting to me if it works like I planned!
Tuesday 22- did my stretches and ran a mile- got the copies that I made of the “Desert Journal” of 1972 and I also printed out the column I wrote about Bob Ascherin and drove on over to his house on Aberdeen. Got the grand tour of his home and found he is an avid collector of model trains that he has accumulated over the years. His Father’s engineer’s hat from long ago sits on a shelf by his collection. Mr. Ascherin is a very nice man- once back home I read three chapters of Sue Grafton catching up for not reading her yesterday- I loaded Windows XP on that 2Gig IDE Flash drive on my newer laptop. Found out that after I successfully loaded it I only had 200Meg leftover, not even enough to do a defrag on the drive, but it worked! And that’s what I needed to know. I will put the flash drive back in the old laptop where it was running Win 98SE really nice and when I get the money I will purchase a bigger Flash IDE hard drive to install in the newer laptop- Andrew called needing help hanging drywall to the ceiling in his house and he came and picked me up. It only took an hours time and I went for my evening walk from his house down on Poleline Road which is about 2 miles away- watched “NCIS” and then “Jesse Stone: Sea Change”, both on CBS. Three hours of TV is way to much for me but I like Tom Selleck, who plays a small town Police Chief in the movie- wrote my news column and sent it to the Hi Desert Star- went online to get some other work done.
Wednesday 23- did my stretches and decided to run three miles- wanted to see if Linux would install on the IDE Flash drive before I move it to the old laptop. I could have installed Puppy Linux 85Megs, or Damn Small Linux 50Megs. But I wanted a full blown Linux install so I went for Ubuntu 6.1 and ran out of disk space. Then I tried an older version 5.10, same thing happened. I figured that these distributions of Linux would have been less bloated than the XP I successfully installed on the drive, but I was wrong. So I removed the Flash drive and stuck it back in the old 133Mz Toshiba laptop and loaded Win 98Se with Service Pack 1 back on and then MS Word which took up less than 600Meg of the 2Gig drive and runs just fine!- Ron D. came by while I was in the midst of these install experiments and asked if I wanted to go for a walk. I needed to get a way from the computers for a while and we went on a two mile hike. We walked by the refurbished house on Borland Pass and it appears to be coming along just fine. There was a laborer shoveling garbage into one of two huge newly arrived trash roll offs. I used all the Spanish words I know greeting him and asking how’s the work going, he was polite and said in his language the it was hard work and little money. I got home and continued working on the computers until late into the evening- Stoney called to tell me he baked some new sort of cookies, now I like cookies with a passion and would have jumped in my truck and drove on over, but I was to dang tired from the running and the hiking and told him I’d come by tomorrow- did my studies and read a whole bunch of Sue Grafton, while I was doing all installs on the old Toshiba laptop. I got it all loaded up, did a defrag and called it quits for the night.
Thusday 24- did my stretches, lifted weights, and rode my bike- did some more updates to the old Toshiba laptop- called Stoney and he said he made meatloaf, now that sounds good! I decided to kill two birds with one stone and walked on over to his house and back for my evening walk. We had the meatloaf with mash potatoes and gravy, and some fried sweet potatoes. We sat around and jawed for a while, him telling me old stories (he’s 87 years old) about when he was a kid and raised rabbits to sell for food for 25 cents each. He would butcher them and tan their hides and get another 25 cents. A neighbors dog got to them and killed 35 and Stoney’s older brother went to the neighbor’s house with a shot gun and told the owner of the dog to bring him out. The neighbor pleaded with him not to shoot the dog and that he had the dog for many a year and was quite attached to the dog and that if he paid for all the dead rabbits and sent the dog away to his family on the other side of town, would that be ok. Stoney’s brother said it would and the dog was spared. I guess Stoney’s brother was a “no nonsense kind of guy” that you wouldn’t want to cross. I took some cookies home with me that Stoney had baked yesterday- got home and did my studies- I watched the first episode (that was a rerun) of “Ugly Betty” on ABC and I kind of liked it. Not the sort of program I usually watch, but I needed something to keep me occupied and away from my computers for a bit- updated the CopperMountain.com website and sent out the newsletter.
Friday 25- woke up and saw the message light blinking on the answering machine and it was this guy Dave who works for Global Recovery and is hunting down any relatives of Maria and Willard Girouard. I called the number he left and after questioning him to see if he was legit and got some more info out of him. He told me that any surviving kin will become heir to a sum of $41,000.00 from a trust fund! He found their names on my website when I wrote a column about her passing way back in September of 2000. I told him that I didn’t know her that well but I do have some names of folks that did. I gave him Marsha M’s number who used to be Maria’s caretaker. Marsha called a few hours later and asked me about what was going on and to get caught up on events in our lives. She told me that Maria had a brother in LA and was really excited for him and would call Dave after we hung up. Dave called me a later in the day to thank me for my help and that he had found a relative of Maria’s from the info I had provided- did my stretches and ran a mile- finished Sue Grafton’s book “R is for Ricochet”- did my studies- went for my evening walk- Stoney called and asked me if I wanted to go to WalMart, I did. While at WalMart I ran into Jason who used to help my neighbor Scott and me with the buffalo. I haven’t seen Jason since last year when he was running north on hiway 62 with Leon after we appeared in court when Scott got sued by this ex-employee and Scott’s girlfriend Anita started yelling at the ex-employee accusing him of taking drugs and made such a ruckus that one of the officers tried to round up everyone. I was in the john when this confrontation took place and I didn’t know what was going on, just that my friends had all disappeared from the courthouse. I found Scott and Anita in the parking lot and saw Jason and Leon hightailing it down the road! Enough drama and intrigue for me- watched “Numbers” on CBS- did some computer work.
Saturday 26- did my stretches, lifted weights, and rode my bike- did my studies. Only 10 more chapters on “The History of Western civilization” left to read!- decided to mosey on over to potluck at our community center and take some pictures for the website. Judith, Bob S, Stuart, Debbie and her Daughter, Mary H, Rose, Brenda, Stoney, and Beth were there. I guess the other folks who usually come went somewhere else for the three day weekend. Beth had lost her son a month ago. I didn’t know her son and I asked her to write a little something about him so I could include it in my column. Stoney brought his world famous chili beans, there was fried chicken, strawberry shortcake pie, sweet rolls, peas, and a fruit salad. I couldn’t stay long cause I had to get home and call my Mom and Dad at 5pm like I do every Saturday- My Brother called to tell me he is seeing a new gal and that he is in touch by way of email with our sister Donna who I’ve never seen yet. Donna lives in Florida when she isn’t in China converting the poor “heathen” folk there to Christianity. Seeing that the Chinese culture is very ancient and the oldest civilization on earth, following the teachings of Confucius and living in harmony until Western powers in the nineteenth century divided up and raped their country, I believe that converting them would be quite a chore! She has a purpose in life and that is a truly wonderful thing. I love my Sister!- went for my evening walk- Jimmy called and we talked about trouble shooting computer problems- Dale from Landers called to touch base- watched TV for about a hour. There was really nothing on I wanted to watch and ended up going from on channel to another until I got fed up and turned the dang thing off- messed around with the computer updating my blogs and catching up on emails.
Sunday 27- did my stretches and ran a mile- Stoney called and I went over to his home to help him move a washing machine from his house to his rental. When I arrived Stoney was in his boxer shorts watching a John Wayne marathon, a whole 100 hours on a satellite TV western channel that ends sometime on Monday. So I dragged him away from the TV and he helped me load the washer into the back of my truck, I dropped it off at the rental, and loaded the non-functioning washer and drove it back to Stoney’s. I then hooked up a better washer that he got from Beth and wrestled it into his laundry room. He went back to watching his westerns- did my studies. Spent five hours reading my history text book trying to hopefully finish it in the next couple of days (I‘m up to WWI)- called Tom and Aki and had a quick but nice chat (I caught them at dinner time)- went for my evening walk- got back just in time to watch “60 Minutes” on CBS, about the Iowa National Guard that 60 minutes followed since their deployment over to Iraq. They were about ready to come home after being there for two years when they got extended for 120 more day’s because of the recent troop buildup, and they weren’t too happy about that! Very emotional for me to watch- got out the Physics book and read the first two chapters. Don’t know a whole lot on the subject but I was able to follow along ok (just got to the math part, yikes!)- telephoned Stoney and he was still watching the John Wayne westerns, but he said he did drop over to Lee and Marcie’s for a visit to yap about their trip they had just gotten back from- called Mike from Hermosa and yakked at him for a while- worked on some computer stuff on the MacBook that needed a 30Meg security update downloaded.
Monday 28- did my stretches, ran a mile, lifted weights, and rode my bike- started creating an addition to the coppermountainmesa.com website. I am adding a classifieds section for folks around these parts to sell items. They can email me what their selling and I will post it on the site for free. We’ll see how it works and hope it doesn’t cause me much pain- Stoney invited me over for lunch. We had chicken cacciatore, corn, and cornbread- did my studies, read three more chapters and I am at the beginning of WWII- Marcie called with a story for my column of her and Lee’s vacation to Georgia. I told her that I missed them at potluck and she didn’t believe that I went. I named off all the folks there and she still didn’t believe me. I even told her I had pictures to prove it. I’m still not sure that she believes I was really there- went on my evening walk- while I was watering my plants my neighbor Ron M (the graphics design guy) stopped by in his truck on his way home and told me a story of when he was driving down Winters Road on the east side of Borland Pass the other day when he passed a man with two kids standing out in the desert playing with a rifle, and as he drove by them the man pointed the rifle at him. I told him that really sucks and that I’d inquire about it and let others know to beware of this person- watched “American Experience” on PBS about the Berlin airlift in 1948, my Dad flew into Berlin at that time and told me that a MIG fighter came up to check his unarmed transport plane out and everyone on board got a little bit nervous- I decided to try and learn the JAVA programming language after talking to Andrew who said that would be the one he’d try and downloaded JAVA SE development kit with NetBeans IDE from the Sun website.
Tuesday 29- woke up with a sore throat, so I guess I’m coming down with a cold. I only did my stretches today- wrote my news column and sent it to the Hi Desert Star- continued reading my history book and only have two chapters left to read- Jimmy called and told me the computer of his friend Robert, that we spent so much time on the phone working on, died when Robert tried to download something that he shouldn’t have. Oh well we’ll just have to redo the whole dang thing and setup a user account for him and not let him have access to the Administrator’s account- went for my evening walk- watched “Nova” on PBS about the melting glaciers of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The scientists wanted to know if the loss of the glaciers would cause any loss of water to the tree farms and surrounding forests; they think not- Mike from Hermosa called and we jawed for a while- still feeling sick tonight. I drank all kinds of water and took mucho vitamin C in the hopes that I could flash it out of my system. Tomorrow morning well tell.
Wednesday 30- feeling much better today and the sore throat is gone so I did my stretches and ran a mile and it felt great- did some more work on the classified section of my website and almost got it to where I need it to be, just a few more tweaks and it will be good to go- finally finished the history book on western civilization. Now that I have that out of the way I will start learning JAVA programming (I hope), and study some physics and see how all that goes. I’ve had a little programming a longtime ago when I went to El Camino College back in the early 70s. It was an intro class in data processing where we learned how to write very simple programs in COBAL, FORTRAN, and Assembler languages. We had to use an IBM 029 Keypunch Machine to key in our programs using 5081 punch cards, which was very tedious, and drop off the deck at the computer room down the hall and then wait till the next day for the operator to run our programs. If we had errors, which I usually did, we had to do it all over again. I never had taken any physics courses and it just seems dang interesting to me- went for my evening walk- worked on the computer the rest of the night.Thursday 31- did my stretches, lifted weights, and rode my bike- messed around with the MacBook some, loading my music into iTunes. My iPod Shuffle wasn’t working right since I bought it, wouldn’t charge was one thing, so I did a reload of it’s software and now charges- Stoney called to say he baked some cookies. I told him I’d drop by tomorrow because of my cold I’m getting over and don’t want to pass it along to anyone- my friend who lent me the ant book wants it back (I’ve been reading it now for three months or more), so I’ve read a few chapters of it and will try to finish it in a few days- went for my evening walk- did the weekend update of the website and calendar for June. Sent out the newsletter- tried this plugin on my MacBook for Firefox where you can make calls from your browser to other computers for free and even to landlines for free but you are limited to 3 minute calls with a max of 10 minutes a day. Well it’s enough to say howdy anyways. You can check it out at www.gizmocall.com if you want to give it a try. It is kind of like Skype but without the overhead. Called my friend Mike and he said I sounded like I was talking out of a tin can, but hey it’s free!
