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Texas Bluebonnet Photos. After an aborted attempt yesterday (forgotten memory card for the camera) we went over to Mountain View College this evening and took some photos among the bluebonnets. Click here to see a few of the shots. |
| Female Boomerang Phenomenon. Check out Boomsmith.com for a new article telling of Holly’s latest boomerang exploits. She’s really getting good! OK, there’s a pretty good story about Andrew, too, but Holly really was the star of the day. |  |
Another Whack to the Head. Michelle called me up Saturday afternoon and said in a none-too-enthusiastic voice, “I’ll give you two guesses where I am.” I missed my first two guesses, but when she hinted that we had just spent some time there in December, my heart sank and I knew she was at the emergency room. She said it was Holly this time, but she quickly assured me that it wasn’t nearly as bad an injury this time. Her hope was that instead of stitches, the wound could be closed with glue.
It turns out Holly had been hit in the head with a putter. She was at a birthday party at a miniature golf course, and apparently one of the girls attempted a non-minigolf style tee-off, swinging her putter like a golf club. Holly got hit pretty much in the middle of her forehead, and luckily it really wasn’t as bad as Andrew’s horrific wound. After triage and a several-hour wait at the emergency room, it was determined that glue could indeed be used instead of stitches. Strangely, they said to leave the bandage on until it fell off. Now I thought that a wound should be allowed to “breath” some, so leaving the bandage on seemed odd. And I don’t know if that was really a contributing factor or not, but unfortunately, by the time she went back to see the doctor a few days later, the wound had become infected. That is likely to make the scarring worse than it might otherwise have been. We’ll just have to wait and see.
And for all you morbidly curious folks who want to see pictures: Sorry. There’s really nothing to see since there’s always been a bandage on it when she’s been around a camera. The original wound wasn’t spectacular enough that a plastic surgeon would want it for his “memories” book like Andrew’s was. You can see in the boomerang shot above exactly where and how large the injury is, but what you’re really seeing is the bandage.
<Insert Child Protective Services joke here.>
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Catoosa Class of ’83 Yearbook Photos. After looking through old yearbooks with a high school chum a few weeks back, and considering that my 20-year reunion is coming up this summer, I decided that it would be neat to have some yearbook photos available online. I started scanning in our senior photos, but decided that I could do better than just a basic scan of each page. What I wanted was to have all the pictures like they are in the yearbooks, but also give the viewer the opportunity to see how many of these people they can remember. It’s not a quiz actually, but you can look at someone’s photo and then hold your mouse over it to get a pop-up message with their name. Click here to see who you remember.. |
Computer-Rebuild Weekend. I finally bit the bullet and bought all the parts needed to rebuild my destroyed computer. The motherboard I got is an excellent Asus model with lots of good stuff built-in to replace various fried components. The CPU is just a bit faster than my previous one (XP 2200+ vs. XP1700+) and I ended up with another brand of video card, but with the same GeForce4 Ti 4200 chipset I had before. I bought two 256MB PC2700 DDR RAM modules. The old ones were PC2100, so there’s another slight speedup. I’ve only bought one 80GB HD so far, but those are getting real cheap and I’ll get more storage space soon. Craziest of all, is that I also bought a DVD burner! More on this as I get more experience with it. (I also need to update the hardware page with all these new parts.)
The weekend was spent not only putting my new system together, but also putting both Holly’s system and the HTPC into different cases. Previously, in the futile hope that a new power supply was all I would need to get my computer back up and running, I had purchased a new case and power supply from Fry’s. The case was a nice-looking bronze case (pictured here) and it had a quiet power supply, so it became the new home of the HTPC. It’s not nearly as conspicuous next to the rest of the home theater equipment as the old beige case was (new photos coming soon).
After transferring the guts of the HTPC into this new case, there were still a few jobs left to do. Andrew was at a sleepover with a friend, so it was time for some father-daughter geek-out bonding. Holly was very happy to help in moving the HTPC’s old, loud power supply to my PC’s case. She enjoyed that screwdriver work so much that we decided it would be a good time to get rid of her junky old PC case and move her PC guts into the old HTPC case. She did all the work of removing her power supply and installing it in the new-to-her case. I had to do the motherboard transfer, but she helped install the hard drives, floppy drive, and CD-ROM. Basically, every screw in her PC, she put in herself. She did an excellent job!
Computer Disaster. There was a power outage yesterday, and the electricity came back on, my computer was destroyed. Read way more than you want to know about it here.
Updated the Xbox page. Added a Playstation 2 page and a lengthy Grand Theft Auto: Vice City review.
| Happy New Year. Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve updated the page. (I blame Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for stealing all my free time.) Now I have finally put together a gallery of Christmas 2002 photos. Not as many photos as last year (we kinda forgot to get the camera out while opening presents in Oklahoma).
In other news, Andrew got a Playstation 2 for Christmas. So much for all my research and why I think an Xbox is superior. But it was from Santa, and you can’t argue with him. We also got several new Xbox and PS2 games both for Christmas, and at Blockbuster’s “buy-two-get-one-free” previously played games sale. Check back soon for an update to our Xbox page, a new PS2 page, and/or a new Xbox vs. PS2 page. |
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Merry Christmas, Everyone! |
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Fast Healer. Well, it’s two weeks later and Andrew’s wound is doing really well. The photo on the right is the “2 Weeks Later” shot. On the left is a composite of 3 images of the scar:1) The night of the injury, 2) One week later, and 3) Two weeks later. Click for a larger version if you’ve got the guts.
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