Earlier Today

Some of you know that I had my first, "over 50" colonoscopy today. Because I was a bit dehydrated, even after drinking water until no more could be consumed up until the 4 hours before the procedure, I became a human pin cushion when they were trying to put in the IV. They tried 5 different places on both arms until they could find a vein that would work. At one point, there were 4 different nurses around me, attempting to get the IV started. I told them I knew I was a babe magnet!

The worst part about the whole procedure was drinking their Kool-Aid. Those college beer chugging days certainly helped there. The stuff worked very quickly. My intestines sounded like there was a thunder storm just over the horizon, with all the gurgling and noises.

According to K, the doctor said everything was just fine, no polyps or other unusual things. I of course, was a bit loopy until about 6PM and remember very little other than flirting with the two nurses in revcovery. I only rememeber the good parts anyway.

Glad the next one will be 10 years from now.

My Picture Dump

The backgrounds may not be holiday and festive, here are some of the pictures that were taken during the recent holiday get togethers.

BL, C, AJF, HO RL, and SL:


Dad and D:


HO, AJ, SL, KR, TR and SF:


HO, SL and AJF


JO, DO and A


A and C:


LO:


SL, RL and AJF:


My M-I-L:


Thanks to all who did the best thing, just show up. At both get-togthers, it was loud, kids were playing and everyone was having a great time.

Merry Christmas

To all, travel safe, enjoy the family, Merry Christmas.

Christmas Cookies

Sunday evening, C, A and I made the dough for some of our Christmas Cookies. We made honey cut-out cookie and chocolate crinkle doughs. Of the Honey dough, there is apparently some local thief that likes the dough so much that we need to make a double batch just to get enough cookies. Same should happen with the chocolate crinkle dough as well but that did not happen.

On Monday, while A went to visit a friend in town for the holidays, C and I baked the chocolate crinkles. After finishing this portion of the baking, C posted this to help her sister:



Note there is no reference to me as I pose no threat. I am not a chocoholic.

Christmas Picture

Many of you will be receiving a picture in the mail of A and C, so I thought I would post a different one.



A made a 3.64GPA for this past semester, her best semester yet, even with harder classes. C's grades are not all in yet, but we will find out soon, but it will be better than a 3.0

Merry Christmas

Snow and Ice

Well, it did snow last evening. We got about 4 inches, but the ground was way too warm for it to stay around too long, so it is melting from the bottom up. Right now, there are about 2 inches of snow on the ground, covered in ice as it is drizzling then freezing.

Here is a picture of a figurine in the front yard.



It will be more of an inconvenience than anything for the rest of the day, but only a minor hindrance.

They are predicting Snow

and significant ammounts, 8-10 inches overnight tonight. If it happens, it will shut down the world here for 2-3 days. We shall see.

First Update: It has begun snowing her, but just flurries. A bit west of here in Winston Salem, it is snowing ans sleeting. It should be interesting. If it gets pretty outside, I will post pictures.

Update 2: The snow is about to end and we have about3-4 inches on the ground. It is about 10:15PM and the warm weather is pushing north, changing things to sleet, but all precip should stop in the next hour or so. I will take pictures in the AM when there is light.

Thanksgiving

The whole family traveled to T-town over the Thanksgiving weekend. By the whole family, this included A's boyfriend Au. Unfortunately, I was too busy to take many pictures, but I should have used the time more wisely to do so.

Everyone in attendance appeared well. The Ozlanders minus H seemed in great form, L was really funny.

The RF family from southern OH appeared healthy. KFR is showing nicely as she is due in early April. SF seems happy with her counseling role in Cincy. AJ is growing into a pretty young lady, counting down the days until she gets her learners permit (61 as of Friday)

Dad and D both looked very good.

I wish I had taken pictures, maybe the Oz's did and will post them.

It has been Quiet

here in my part of the south. The kids are off at University and I have been traveling a bunch.

K and I are also remodeling our bedroom end of the house. This entails moving all of our stuff, splitting it between the girls bedrooms, tearing down all the drywall, the closet, moving/changing a door to a pocket door, relocating a bathroom, relocating a closet.

We are about 3/4 of the way done with our bedroom, it being re-wired, new drywall installed. There is the drywall mudding, painting and trim to do before we get new carpet. Before and after pictures will be posted when we are done.

This is why we have not blogged much.

In my travels

I get to go many places where there are friends and family. This week found me fortunate enough to stop by Lebanon, OH to see Niece B, her husband S, young T and their newest addition R!

It was great to see their whole family, even for a short visit. It is really cute how their T just loves his new brother, to the point of smothering him at times. But he is a good looking young man that at 2 is now stringing some words together to get certain desires known. You know when he wants a video, or something to eat or drink.

For proof, here is a picture of R and moi.



So, for you JO, I am the most awesome 'cuz I got to see and hold him and you didn't, HA! Oh yeah, who is the best now!

Hope your day is great too.

Milky Way

I found this neat site to view the Milky Way galaxy.

http://www.gigagalaxyzoom.org/

Be sure to zoom in on some of the various features. There is also a tour to some of the popular destinations.

Things

are getting back to a more normal chaos. All the cars have been fixed, the lawn mowed, at least until this weekend again, and we are now working on the bathroom/bedroom again.

It is a good thing that C and A are away at school as we have taken over their bedrooms. We have moved everything out of ours and disbursed it as best we can to keep the house neat.

As it has been said, "It's hammer time!"

Been a few weird weeks

on the mechanical side.

My car threw a lifter needing a cylinder head replacement, the Van blew a heater hose that was nearly impossible to reach, A's car had problems staying running and with a catalytic converter, C's car had a window problem where the driver side window would not go down, then immediately followed by the passenger side front having the same problem, both lawn mowers had semi major problems, one requiring a new engine and the other a new cam, the weed eater decided not to like to run. After it was all fixed, then the grass needed mowed and the house needed trimming. It seemed to be every week there was something preventing us from getting work done on our bathroom. That does not include my travel for work.

In the middle of some of this, A moved into a new apartment and C moved into a Dorm.

Life is never boring.

For those of you who knew

A is now back in the country from Panama. She had a blast and talked non-stop for about 4 hours about her trip. She said she would do it again, but for a shorter time next time. Two weeks is too long.

One minor hitch occurred last night, when she was to return. Her flight into Miami was over an hour late, causing her to miss her flight to Raleigh. She got a night in Miami at the airport Hyatt, dinner and breakfast, all courtesy of American Airlines. Her and about 150 of her closest friends on that flight missed their connections. It was a systemic thing because there were many flights delayed for one reason or another and many got stranded by missing their connections. With those being the last flights of the day, you might think AA would have held the flights, saving a bunch in hotels and meals.

Glad she is home, safe and sound with another world experience under her belt.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Johnson

From my Junior High School and High School days, this man played a role in my life. He was the father of a friend of mine, husband to a wonderful lady and a quiet leader. But he was a soft spoken, gravely voiced man that said the simple truths in life.

Their house was always open to us kids and decorated for the various holidays, inside and out. Easter eggs hanging in the trees, Christmas decorations, pumpkins all over the place, flags on memorial day, 4th of July, and Veterans Day. Always appropriately over the top, but great to see.

But I never knew:

Wayne Howard Johnson

Wayne H. Johnson, Sr., of Sylvania Township, passed away Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at Ebeid Hospice Residence, just eight days before his 84th birthday. He was looking forward to being reunited with his beloved wife of 42 years, Louise who preceded him in death in 1996.

A WWII U.S. Marine Corp. Veteran, Wayne fought with the 5th Marines Division 28th Infantry Regiment and was awarded the Purple Heart for being shot through the head during The Battle of Iwo Jima. He was the sole survivor of his foxhole and his platoon was responsible for erecting the United States flag on Mount Suribachi . He was a member of the DAV and served as head Quartermaster for the former VFW Post No. 3013 in Holland . Until retiring in 1987, Wayne worked for the former Unicast Company as a molder. He was an avid fisherman and enjoyed small game hunting.

Wayne ’s true loyalty remained with his late wife, Louise. Each Monday he decorated her grave with flowers.

He is survived by his son: Wayne (Angie) Johnson, Jr.; grandchildren: Michael and Katelynn Johnson; ...

Wayne’s family wishes to express gratitude to the staff at both the Toledo Hospital (9th floor) and Ebeid Hospice residence for their excellent care and compassion. Also, thanks to all of the friends and family who showed support during Wayne ’s last days.

It will be a happy reunion between you and Mrs J. Mr J, you will be missed.

This week, Milwaukee

I am traveling this week to Milwaukee, WI for my job. Actually, in more correct terms, I am really going to Kenosha, but most people do not know where Kenosha is located.

Why am I going to Kenosha? My company sold some equipment to Ocean Spray, the cranberry people. The equipment is not working properly, my counterpart that covers the upper Midwest is going in other directions for about 30 more days and this cannot wait. So I will go see if I can help them get things going in the right direction.

Computers

I just got off the phone after 2 hours and 15 minutes of working with Dell about my laptop computer. That is after an hour of being on the phone with them yesterday. And after being on the phone with them on Monday for an hour. The LCD screen back light went out and the computer is under warranty.

I think it is actually the power supply to the back light, because I can get the screen to light for several seconds, but the light goes out. If the brightness of the LCD is kept to a minimum (think watching a very dark screen at the bottom of a cave), then you can watch the LCD screen on my laptop.

The Dell service person asked me to remove this plate, then remove some screws and then the keyboard. Then unplug/replug the main LCD feed cable, put the computer back together and see if that fixes it (no), I did this same procedure with three different people. Then go through diagnostics buried in the computer, then hook up an extra monitor to make sure it works (testing the video card). After that, go through Dell remote assistance so he can check my settings to make sure that no setting is causing the problem.

After all that, he then agrees that I have a bad LCD back light. My computer will be fixed tomorrow night. For now, I will use my computer with an external monitor.

I realize they do not want to give away parts, but we had the service call number and they could see what I was asked to do in the previous two calls. The other thing they do not know, is my aptitude at fixing things.

This is the second laptop computer where the LCD back light went bad. I will be trying to get my company to let me buy or provide an external monitor to maximize the LCD life.

I enjoy the

technical side of life sometimes, to the dismay of K occasionally. Recently, I stumbled onto a discussion about Moore's Law (think computer speed doubling in ~24-36 months).

Personally, I found it interesting that people would track certain things to extrapolate what they should be seeing in the future. Anyway, this discussion was interesing to me.

Stuff Happens

Seems my weekends have been filled with fixing autos lately. A's car had a problem, then another problem, now all fixed, then it was time for the timing belt for my VW. That took all day Saturday of last weekend.

On the way home this week, while out traveling on business, the Passat started to make a ticking noise. Not too loud, but loud enough. This was as I was coming through the mountains in TN/NC. The oil was fresh from a change, changed every 4-5000 miles by using synthetic.

I investigated the noise but could find nothing. By the time the trip was over, the engine was running roughly. The car had 60K on the spark plugs, so I thought that might cause the rough running. I pulled the spark plugs and changed them, did not fix the problem.

So a compression test was done, and the #5 cylinder showed 0 compression. Not good, especially when cylinders 4 and 6 had over 200PSI. I popped off the valve cover gasket to find the center intake valve lifter to not be touching the cam. The cam also looked like this:



The cam should look smooth, not rough around the edges. Seems a valve lifter failed. Tomorrow I will remove the cylinder head to see if there is more damage. It appears not, but you never know. After the head is off, the true picture will unfold.

The off to work on K's van.

Wow, just wow

I read this today and thought, this is amazing. Bravery on multiple fronts.

http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2007/09/army_rpg_moss_070922w/