Sunday.....

Hope you all had a pleasant day.

I finally finished the last of the laptops for the Marine Mammal Care Center. I got stalled for a bit after they picked up the first one because the took the power supply and it took several days for my friend to bring me another one.

Rather than fight with cleaning up the existing Win 7 install, I whacked the drive with DBAN and proceeded to do a clean installation of Win 7, and then snagged all the correct drivers for it from the Dell support website.

The third one was a bit more involved, as the "pointing stick", a little nub in the middle of the keyboard that you can use like a mouse, had failed, and sent the cursor sailing over to the left side of the screen as soon as it booted up.

Since I've never met anybody who uses that thing, I took the laptop apart and unplugged the cable for it where it plugged into the motherboard.

Then lather, rinse, and repeat as I did the #2 laptop.

These laptops originally came from Dell with Windows 7 Professional, but it was the 32-bit version. This limited memory to less than the 4GB that was installed from Dell, and made my collection of used memory useless. When I did the fresh install I used the 64-bit version, and was able to bump the installed memory up from 4GB to 8GB. It took a bit of searching on the Dell support site to find the 64-bit versions of all the drivers, but it was worth the effort to give these old laptops double the memory.

And I installed the GWX Control Panel to keep these machines from getting infested with the Windows 10 OS.

I'm glad these are finished, and now I can get back to doing my own projects again.....

Post Election Pursuit of Happines

Courtesy of Mr. Whittle and friends, who say it far better than I can.

CUBS WIN THE WORLD SERIES!!

Growing up in the Chicago area made me a life-long Cubs fan.

I've seen their ups and downs, wins and losses, and all the heartbreak that goes with being a cubs fan.

Tonight they finally did it!

Congrats to the Cubs.

This just makes me wonder if The End Times are near......

Record Number of Early Voter Democrats Seen in Chicago....

Hmmm...maybe I should have posted this as "LATE Voters".....

Uh Oh....Looks Like Blogger "Burped" Again....

Hmm....lost all the recent post updates that show under everybody's blog title, and when I got to one of your sites, it's just a strange looking "index" type of page.

Wonder what the NSA is "secretly" embedding in the code.....


AND...two minutes later everything is fine again.....

Ghosties and Ghoulies and Long-Leggedy Beasties....

and Things That Go BUMP in the Night!

Didn't have too many Trick or Treaters tonight, possibly because it was a Monday night.

So....my wife will be taking the rest of the candy we bought into work tomorrow so I won't have to eat it all, and blow my newly lowered A1C to smithereens......

Hope you all had a pleasant evening!

My Flu Shot Gave Me The Flu!

Well....not a full-bown case of "The Flu", but I definitely had a reaction to it.

Monday afternoon was my quarterly medical check-up (I'm Type II diabetic), and besides the confirmation that I've lost 15 pounds and the blood draws they always do, they asked if I'd had my flu shot this year. Since I hadn't had one yet, and I was there, I said to go ahead and do it.

By Tuesday afternoon my arm was really sore, I had a serious case of the sniffles, and my stomach was more than a bit upset.

Wednesday morning I was really out of it, and spent a good portion of the day either in bed, or in the bathroom.

I'm back to about 99% today, so I either had a definite reaction to the shot, or I was "coming down with something", and it just happened to hit me 24 hours after I had the shot....

I never used to get the flu shots, and there were only a few times I ever got really knocked down sick.

Right after I'd moved in with my wife-to-be, I got really sick.

Since we weren't married yet, and her medical insurance wouldn't cover me until we'd been married something like 30 days, I just toughed it out and was miserable for a couple of months. I told her to remind me to get the shot the next year, and if I squawked about it, to remind me just how sick I was when we got married.

ANYWAY....besides the weight loss, my A1C was DOWN 2 points, so all the frantic activity I did during the 7~8 weeks I worked on the Supra definitely helped. and my Doctor was quite pleased, and told me to keep doing "The Toyota Physical Fitness Plan" I was on.

Not going to get much done today, as we're expecting some heavy rain starting late this afternoon, and running through Friday. I've staked down/tied off the canopy I got to cover the Supra, and cleaned out the garage enough to get the OEM wheels and tires strapped down to a small furniture dolly, and tucked under one of the big shelves.

And threw away/consolidated several large boxes of "junque" parts that were beyond saving.

If I keep this up, I'll be able to get the car in the damn garage where it belongs before the winter rains hit.....

Bob Hoover Slips The Surly Bonds....

I watched him fly many, many times. For a while the yellow P-51 was hangared at the Torrance airport when it was in the Rockwell livery.

His performances was always the highlight of the airshows for me, right next to the Blue Angles and the Thunderbirds.






God bless you, Bob.

You were one of a kind.....

Reposted from Murphy's blog....

Bob Hoover dies at age 94

Rainy Days....

Didn't get any automotive work done this weekend because by the time I got ready to go out on Sunday, it was raining.

And it rained today, too.

Had a bunch of indies work to do. I rebuilt a laptop for a local non-profit group, and got most of the audio interface box I'm building for the Iowa finished.

Our CTO, who served on the Iowa from 83 to 89 (I think) and is a computer guy, built up a Raspberry Pi to act as an audio playback device. We'll use this box to interface to The Coke Machine and route audio up to one of the bridge speakers, where our visitors will hear such things as "Helmsman, 30 degrees to port", along with other bridge commands.

And I found out today from my quarterly Doctor's visit that I've lost 15 pounds from the last time I was there.

Now to keep it off.....

Dogs......

Found on Brigid's blog, and I just had to share it......


“Dogs have given us their absolute all. We are the center of their universe. We are the focus of their love and faith and trust. They serve us in return for scraps. It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made. ”

― Roger A. Caras

I'm Gonna Be A Grandpa!

OK, the DIL has told her family, so now I can tell you.

My wife's youngest son and his lovely wife are expecting. ETA is May 2017.

Any doubts, reservations and/or fears my wife has harbored about pulling up stakes here and moving to Colorado have just gone POOF!

I'm just praying that things hold together long enough that we can make a graceful, stress free exit from The People's Demokratik Republik of Kalifoniastan....