Christmas Comes and Goes

Had great few days with our sons. It was really nice to hang out together. We watched movies, went geocaching, ate a lot of food, experimented with homemade eggnog, and visited relatives in VA. All went great right up until the speeding ticket on the return trip from Virgina. Dang! Rolling into town, down a hill, who slows down to 25? I pulled over to let the "emergency" vehicle and it pulled in behind me!! 43 in a 25 - great!

Oh well, life goes on... I was too stingy to spend $15 for a genealogy database program for my Ipod Touch, now its seems insignificant.

Upgrade my browser to Internet Explorer 8 beta2 figuring I had waited long enough. After the trouble started I found myself switching to Firefox and, so far, I couldn't be happier. It seems to respond quicker and now that I've cleaned up my bookmarks I'm liking the experience.

Was 65 degrees out yesterday, a lot of motorcycles on the road! Beats the heck out the winters we had in Maine! A little brisk today but I'm laying low, being REALLY lazy today.

Christmas Eve Day

Yeah! Boys are on there way from Maine, via Albany. Not a good day to be flying so it's as well they are driving. Mom is sick and am becoming concerned about how that may affect our holiday. Oh well, we will make the best of it and be happy we are all together.

Got a few fake logs to throw in the fireplace. They burn good and throw a little heat.

I hope Blago has a miserable holiday and future. He has certainly earned it; ya I can judge without investing a whole lot of time and money. He's got to be the tip of the iceberg. Chicago is probably completely infested but I think DC may be infected as well. Time will tell.

Vacation

Tomorrow is it for me! They owe me a few hours so I'm thinking I'll leave early tomorrow and start my year-end vacation. Of course I'm on-call tomorrow night but hopefully that will not matter. In any case, it feels almost like vacation already. I noticed "Earl" has not lost all his marbles after all! http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?guid=8fa5e3f4-8b7f-4f1d-9eee-8cfbe2c246fc ... or has he?

Exercise

Rode my exercise bike today! Whoa! Thought I would exercise in front of the tv rather than hiking this weekend. After 5 minutes I was done. Not sure if it was all I needed, but it was all I wanted. Guess I'll go for a walk tomorrow instead. need to get back to geocaching... maybe next weekend. Hard to get too far from the phone being I'm on call this weekend. Well got to grab a shower and get ready for dinner.

Oh man the weekend is almost behind us...

Had thought about geocaching today but wimped out when I saw the dusting of snow here. Kinda figured the mountains would be more so. So I finally went for a big walk today instead, had to get my knees loosened up and the strengthened a bit so I can keep them working for another week. :)

Tonight seems like a perfect night for Mexican food and a beer or two. I think Ill make a date with my wife. Now the big decision is what to order...

Dual monitors is cool

Well, I received the card and in it went. At first things didn't work but with, not too much, twiddling about, I started making headway. Got it working now and even have my mouse cursor exiting the correct side of the screen.

Now with my genealogy database on the one monitor, I am free to work on research on the other. When I need to compare notes or transcribe details the genealogy is staring me in the face. What a huge difference from 'n back and forth! I'm going to really enjoy this!

New graphics card

My dual graphics adapter is coming today. I will hopefully have it up and running smoothly this afternoon. Since I'll now have 3 adapters and 2 displays... I wonder if a third display would be too much? Guess I'll see if I can get used to two for now.

After much scanning/organizing photos in Picasa 3.0 I finally am "getting" folders and albums. It all works fine once it is set up properly but changes after the fact are annoying. I like that Picasa uses jpg's and converts all photos when exported to respective folders. Now when I export to a folder it automatically sync with my online folder and adds to my website. Google is so cool. I've put a couple hundred online and have used less than 20% of my allotted free space.

England to US... when??

Okay my Avery relatives arrived in New York in 1841. A similar family arrived in 1855. Did the same family return to England and come back or is it coincidental? Which is correct? Why are there no signs of them in the 1850 US Census? What if I'm wrong? I guess I won't be the first to report history incorrectly - maybe we'll accept it over time. I'm still thinking of erecting a monument of myself. In a few hundred years, people will believe I did something heroic, and maybe even generate a good story to support my feat.

Pictures

Sorting pictures all day... I collected old family photos for 25 years and decided today was a good day to sort them out. Actually I've been picking away at them for a while. Made some progress but much more to do. Actual have a hundred or so that I don't know who is in them. Going to post them online and see if someone knows them before I leave them nameless forever. Many belong to my genealogy and I'd really like everyone to go by their own names. The good news is that old people are like babies, they all look alike. So it won't be *that* bad if they are a bit scrambled.

Aunt Faye and Al

I wouldn't have guessed this morning that we'd be having dinner in Virginia with Great Aunt Faye and Al. But guess what?! We traveled about 75 miles and met up with them. Checked out the travel trailer and stuffed our faces at the truckers buffet.

DDR Memory

I saw a pretty good deal for a 22" LCD monitor. After convincing myself that I couldn't live without it, it was on its way. Between the time I placed and received the order, I thought I might as well use two monitors rather than just do away with my old one. I dug up a few old graphic cards and experimented setting them up in my pc. None seemed to work and no XP drivers are available. After much time, I pulled my AGP card and booted on the old pci one. Seemed to work okay so I decided I could figure it out once the new monitor came. Nope, I couldn't figure it out! After playing around I decided it was much easier to order a new video adapter with dual outputs. While I had my computer open I noticed two empty memory slots. I thought I'd ought to order a couple of 1gb memory sticks to make me think my computer was running faster. While trying to figure out what was the cheapest, likely reliable, deal on ebay I learned that not all memory is the same. Some are high density (cheaper) and will not work with all motherboards. Ugh... I looked through what little information I have on my pc and could find nothing regarding density. I tried to read the SIMM's in my pc but my magifying glass was simply not powerful enough. I was thinking of pulling one out but then remembered the last time I tinkered with a working computer. So now I've decided that my computer runs fine the way it is and I am going to find something else to amuse me for tonight. How'd I get looking for memory from seeing an ad for an LCD monitor?

Thanksgiving 2008

First year without the kids with us for dinner. So... we took a ride to the local buffet and got our bellies filled just fine. Nothing to clean up when we returned so all is fine.

Web site additions

Added a nice clip of the kids on the new 4-wheeler.  Well it was new then, 1987.

http://sites.google.com/site/frothingham/frothingham/kids

Geocaching with an iTouch

I keep waiting for a slick solution for paperless/Palm-Pilot-Less geocaching with my ipod touch. After many weeks of waiting, and after reading a comment that Geocaching.com's program supported Pocket Queries, I sprung the ten bucks and got it. Nope it doesn't work. Actually it *does* work with the iTouch but you have to visit each potential caches site and "Save" it individually. What a pain. It makes me a little mad because there were many other things I was going to do with my ten dollars.