Pete_C

It dried out a bunch, only scattered showers for several days, but we had some widespread brief rain yesterday. It sure was nice to have a high of 85 when they had predicted 97 and so far we haven't reached 100, while last year there were already fifteen 100 plus degree days by this time. Looks like we may have some more rain over the next week, but the sun is so hot that a couple days starts to dry everything out (well it took three days for the back yard to dry out enough that I did not have to wash the dogs before they came in after the big rains ended). Whereas normally by this time of y

Did you remember to take a camera and take some good Pics ?

Six more weeks (more or less, it takes effect on 01 Sept 2007) till the "Castle Doctrine" bill takes effect in Texas. It basically you can shoot to maim, kill , or wound at your own discretion to protect your home, vehicle, place of work , and self and will not be prosecuted and cannot be sued for damages should the offender survive (or by relatives should you be merciful enough to kill them and not maim and cripple them instead by accident). Currently there is a poor foreman for a gas pipeline laying company. He caught a heavy equipment operator drinking on the job, so he reprimanded him, t

That's the truth. They quit making good vehicles after the '70s. I could fix any of the pre-computerized cars on the spot with just using my brain and ears as diagnostic tools. I second that. Nothing like the days when you could fix your vehicle with just a few basic hand tools which fit into a neat little cloth tool pouch. Now I have to carry a code reader, and manual and all kinds of useless crap just to figure out what might be wrong.

http://www.applianceaid.com/news.html Lists a lot of recalls. Fire Hazard with Thermador® Built-In Ovens Leads to Recall by BSH Home Appliances Corp Thermador® Ceramic Cooktops Recalled Due to Fire Hazard I do not see BHA or Sears But you sure were lucky nothing flammable was on the cooktop. Hope they get it sorted out soon.

Remember the old star trek episode with the Yangs and the Cooms ? The E-Plegnista Epledgally genectumflag. Looks like we will have a wet fourth here. Rain is just a couple hours away. No big deal; we were not planning anything big. For some odd reason, the city had a pitiful fireworks display on Sunday night. I could see it through the trees, but it was short and small and on the wrong day. Looks like the rain will be over in time for the good show at the country club down the street though. They always have a great show and the neighbors all come out and mingle and watch it.

Definitely does not sound fun. I can't say which is worse, having to work in the heat, having to wait in the heat, or having to wait for no good reason when they should have let you know that there would be a delay. I long since took to carrying what I need for basic repairs all the time, duct tape, tools, spare wiring.... Thursday after taking the OL to the dentist we decided to go to the mall , when I noticed my oil guage bounce down to zero pressure and back. An inspection showed there was a hole in the oil filter . Must have been some debris in the roadway, that was what that thunk I heard

Doing just fine. I had to put off a trip to the big mall out by the airport the other day . I hit some road debris and it put a hole in my oil filter which I discovered just as we were setting out to go to the JC Penny Outlet store. So I changed the filter and then watched the news and found out that if I had gone the direct route I would have been stuck in traffic for hours. Seems that the Trinity river was over 30 feet deep (the levees are 2000 feet apart and 62 feet tall so that is a lot of water but well below danger level) but someone forgot to close the gates on the storm drain for a se

Don't you just love power tools? (Or did you do all that drilling and snipping with hand tools?) I actually have sets of both but like the sound and feel and ease of use of the power tools these days. When I was a young man I liked to tough it out using a punch out pliers thing, aircraft snips and the like. But today, the moto tool (pseudo dremmel) , cordless drill, reciprocating saw etc see a lot more use. I even bought one of those black and decker automatic jar openers ( I told the OL it was so she could open jars when I was not home to help) really neat thing, you release the locking le

I think you hit it on the head, it was a corrupt driver or driver conflict and you resolved it . I would make a new restore point , so that if it happens again you know you have one that works.

That reminds me ; while I was in Walmart the other day to get something for work ; I saw a universal fit electric rotissery (actually ten of them left) for your grill in the clearance bin for $10 each. I forgot I was going to go back after work and get one. Hopefully there will still be some on Monday when I am in the area again. Then I can start making rotisserie chicken and pork loins and......... I never could figure out what keeps gyro meat from falling out. Maybe I can figure that out and do it for things like meatloaf.

Sounds familiar. Mine has an aversion to cleaning (when I can get her to she uses cold water and no clorox) , and does not feel she did a good job of cooking unless there is stuff spilled and splattered all over the place. I generally make it a point of cleaning the kitchen and wiping things down with clorox before talking dinner and then again when she finishes putting things on to cook and finally when dinner is over. Not only that but she always finds a reason to get me to "help" her and I find it easier to just do it all myself. Personally I enjoy cooking myself and follow the clean as

Makes me glad I live in the real world and all we have to worry about is the occasional tornado and flash flood and they are gone pretty fast. If one store is out of something, just drive across the intersection to their competitor or down the street a mile or so to another chain. And hearabouts in Texas, we have more than one road in and out of town. Of course you do have some beautiful scenery and the summers are probably a bit cooler than here although so far we only topped 90 degrees four times, three of them in the last week.

After you use your SP2 update CD from microsoft to do that update, here is a link to the cumulative update rollup from earlier this year which will almost bring it up to date http://support.microsoft.com/kb/826939 You can download and burn this to cd Just scroll down to where it says to download http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en You will still need to do a custom windows update to get non critical updates such as the latest messenger and .net framework 3.0

E85 is 85% ethanol. What we have here is RFG, 15% ethanol to reduce emissions supposedly. As such if you add methanol or Isopropyl alchohol (liquid heat , gas line antifreeze) it just increases the alcohol content to much. Berrymans B12 ChemTool is actually an Acetone Toluene blend which helps , that is what I wind up using when it gets bad . But I still wish they would go back to no more than 10% alcohol. Never had problems with that. MTBE, or Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether is totally consumed in the combustion process and environmental contamination came primarily from leaking tanks, spillage

The really bad thing is that because it takes more energy to grow corn, get it to a refiner, ferment ,and distill the alchohol than the energy contained in the ethanol produced, it contributes to the gasoline shortage. If we were to ban ethanol from gas, we would within a year have 20-25% more gas available , no more shortage and no high prices. I wonder if this was the true intent of the Bush administration when they moved to eliminate other additives designed to lower engine emissions (which it does very poorly compared to other additives) and pressure distributors to switch to high ethano

Worked on my truck this morning (see my post about Reformulated Gas) , had to stop half way through to let a line of thunderstorms pass. Then was chomping at the bit for the darn rain to let up so I could finish working on it and get out of there.

Happy birthday yall and hope you have a great year ahead.

Here in Dallas, all the gas is Reformulated Gas (RFG) which used to mean it had MTBE in it, and sometimes up to 10% ethanol (the cheap gas). But with the bad press about MTBE getting into water (well what do you think happens when idiots dump gas?) and the Bush administration push to embrace Ethanol so that they will appear to be embracing environmental issues; now all we get here is 15% ethanol blends. The problem here is that Ethanol is hygroscopic (absorbs water) that combined with humid weather and the vapor recovery pumps they forced gas stations to switch to , you wind up sucking moistu

Rained yesterday, raining today. At least there do not seem to be any thunderstorms in this round. Looks like rain all week off and on. So , no lawn mowing for me this weekend. Still not sure if we are having anything tomorrow or if I just let the dogs sleep in. Sitting here with six dogs sprawled out around me all asleep. At least none of them snore , although every once in a while there is a brief bout of soft woof woof with feet going or tail wagging from one or the other of them. Begining to get cabin fever though, will probably have to figure out an excuse to get out of the house and go

We have been having rain almost every day this week. I think they said we are actually six inches above normal for the year. Whatever the figures are; we have only had one day above ninety this year, while last year, they started on March 03 and we were counting triple digit days by now. I'll take the rain over the heat any day. Still, it does put a damper on outdoor jobs. I bought a plumbers drum drain auger (50 ft. long x 1/2'' diameter auger with five different cutter blades, 1/2 HP motor, ...) The store had it on sale for $189, it normally retails for 250, so I just had to have it since a

The first pic reminded me of a roommate shortly after I got out of the army. He had two pit bulls and got a nice new leather sofa and left them all home alone. The dogs tried really hard to find the steak underneath all that cowhide. My Pit ridgeback Tore the side off of one arm chair and the dust skirt off a loveseat (my ol says she ate them) when she was a pup, but she is good now.

Looks like the price to beat around Dallas is $2.89. When will the government wise up and fast track the approval of some new refineries? Oh yes, thats right that would decrease the profit margin all their buddies are making.

Last weekend I got my vegetable and flower garden planted. I am happy to have accomplished something on my house. I got my sheetrock roughed in. It is all ready to mud and tape. Last weekend I got out my bench grinder, pulled the blades off both mowers (My good mulching mower, and the older side discharge one used for overgrown areas). I discovered that the blade on the side discharge one had a big crack in it (must have hit a root or rock) so I dug through the shed and found a spare blade salvaged from another older mower when it died. I preground them with the bench grinder to razor sharp

Does not seem likely to affect very many people. But still good to be alerted that it could be a problem.