Last month got short changed on the number of days, so we don't have to start March officially just yet. In other words, I'm too lazy to set up the March template. I know, the page will load ever so much faster once I do...

Here's a great photo by Tizzy, called - Headed Out - thanks girl! Good dog! Oops, that's Tizzy on the back of the chair. Thanks Lily! Good dog!

but, what you are looking at is not a spiral. Trace the lines with your finger, if you must...
yes, they are circles.

Amazingly, even the fuel tanks on the truck cab did not rupture.

February 27, 2010 Saturday

Happy Birthday to Dick Smock - celebrating this day on the isle of Maui, Tsunami and all...

14 largest recorded quakes~

building a new sea wall... the small park at the end of our street is being revamped - to be completed in one year.

February 26, 2010 Friday

Thanks to sister Mardi - a shot out the window of my brother in law Jim, doing the waving. Although they live on the same parallel as we do (45th) you might note that they are having a bit more winterish weather.

Thanks to youngest son, Jacob - sends a couple pictures - seems he might have sent one of these before, but we are glad to get them, none the less~~

counter and kitchen remodel - showing the Tat, as well...

with Sylvia

This might be educational - do you know what this is? It is not a crab... count the legs. It is one centimeter in size.

February 25, 2010 Thursday

Hey - thanks to Linda, a group shot of the gang in Hawaii~

Back row - Dick and Laura, Sandy (John's sister), and Paul (Barb's husband).
middle - John, Marty (John's nephew's girlfriend) and another Paul (John's nephew)
front - Linda and Barbara

February 23, 2010 Tuesday

Some photos Evie took while tinkering around with Linda's Canon~~

Working from Ann's Lenova Netbook, while the two desktop machines are in a long winded transfer file mode. Also in the news, the much vaunted but tricky to install voice recognition software is finally working on my desktop computer. Tempted to install it here, too...

February 22, 2010 Monday

A week from now it'll all be over. February, that is. And with it these bitter sixty plus degree winter days. We hear the midwest just got over six inches of new snow. My. My.

Under these circumstances we really had no choice but to get out the scooter, and see what's going on about town, boat wise.
We see them beginning to add sections of the back porch (rear decks) on the Cade Candies. First coat of primer, too.

Getting re stocked at the dock...

this was taken from across the house - ZOOM

ignored

This tree contains a few faces - maybe nine?

February 21, 2010 Sunday

Later edit:
Still no word on why the server was down for nearly twenty hours?!

February 20, 2010 Saturday

Thanks to Linda for the HI pictures. We are hoping for more...

Barb

Laura, behind those Mai Tai's

Maui beach

kitchen, as seen by Evelyn

February 19, 2010 Friday

Fae is in town!

February 18, 2010 Thursday

Jumping the gun, but only by moments -

Stepped out for a bite on this momentous occasion, that of our seventh anniversary. Over dinner we discussed, amongst other things, what has changed the most since we married? The consensus: Evelyn grew up, right under our watchful eyes. A most remarkable young woman, at that.

dining out

February 17, 2010 Wednesday

If this is winter, what will summer be like? 60's again, today.

Jerone, who got me interested in blogging some time back, still posts occasionally HERE.

This is part of the rear decks...?

sure seems big, up close~

Thanks to Keith...
What's in a name?

February 15, 2010 Monday

Gotta' love a long weekend. Especially when it stays mild and sunny - which is, admittedly, a tad unusual for this time of year. But anymore - what's normal?

Started the day early with a trip to the Dr.
Was glad to be told that good health abounds. And also as usual, additional exercise was recommended. Somehow, sitting here pounding away at these keys fails by any definition.

There is a new version of Google Earth. It is very sweet.

Nothing could budge Lily from her spot by the fire. She always gets comfortable in this position - legs up.

Down by the water~

This struck us funny... even though it doesn't really make much sense.

February 14, 2010 Sunday

Happy Valentine's day to one and all. Ann and I have been eating chocolate most of the day - ummmm.

She was also motivated to do some raised bed maintenance - and other yard work, amongst other things.

I occupied myself indoors. Finally made good on an old threat to install a remote on the gas fireplace. Been threatening to do so for years.

This allows Ann to turn the fire on from her chair, and saves wear and tear on the old remote - me.

Another thing to keep in perspective - sale pricing - gotta' watch closely~~

February 13, 2010 Saturday

Winter day in our neck of the woods...
I suppose it might be different if we were into winter sports and all...
For that, one must drive up to Mt. Baker - an hour or so away.

Picasa is an amazing utility, or, things we found while looking for something else...
This was in the paper when the City of Royal Oak, MI, was trying to save an Amtrak station stop. They did.
You might notice that we are studiously ignoring the guy with the heavy suitcase.

Speaking of work - here is Ann, yes, 'working' from home.

Continuing in the work saga mode - the 14th street Coachyard diesel pit, in Chicago. Part of the Sears Tower just visible on the left. When trains come into town we sometimes had the job of going down to the station to fetch the inbound engines and bring them here for maintenance. Another job was to take engines from the 'pit' and 'tack' them onto outbound trains, there in the yard - and then take the 'made up' train back downtown, a distance of maybe a mile or less. Do this a couple times and call it a day. Don't know who the guy in the photo might be... maybe Bryan Gambrel?

Almost forgot - finally found a good, or maybe even great
screen capture program, and it's free.

When does one use a screen capture? (That's one just above, a 'print screen' just now of my desktop, opened in paint and then screen captured.)
You can capture any part of any screen at any time on any website - and then decide what size to save it, in terms of resolution compression, from a lot to none at all.
See a picture you like but it won't right click and 'save image'? Screen capture it.
Have a great photo you want to email but it's huge both dimension and file size wise? Shrink it to what ever screen size you need ( Picasa photo viewer makes this as easy as using your scroll wheel, and it's free) then screen capture it and choose what final file size you might like.

We were performing these steps using two programs, before we ran across the IQuick screen capture utility, using the windows 'snipping' tool, (a screen capture, yes, but doesn't offer choice of compression) then open the snip in a photo program that allows saving as a jpg and offers a choice of compression. So glad to be back to doing it in one easy step.

February 12, 2010 Friday

Thanks to fellow Amtrak conductor Harry~~
A picture taken someplace a lot colder than these parts. The cafe car is where you would likely have found Conductor Dave, coffee in hand.

February 11, 2010 Thursday

We realize that there hasn't been much extraneous input, these last few weeks. Due mostly to learning the new operating system and rebuilding files and programs on this computer. Hopefully, we'll branch out to posts that include more than just pet pictures. However, until that time...
It is winter - and though it isn't all that cold and there's been no snow - the doggies love that spot by the fire.

That is - if their mommy won't hold them. (Leo is smiling)

Tizzy needs that laptime, too...

Never far from her special blue ball. It is actually one of three - God forbid we couldn't produce one.

February 10, 2010 Wednesday

Late edit to the family by the couch picture from yesterday, Tuesday the ninth, below...

This is a fine example: Leo can't get on the bed. Both Tizzy and Leo's sister, Lily, have no trouble. We even built stairs, you may recall, and that's how Lily gets on the bed. Tizzy is a jumper dog - she leaps right up there.

But Leo can't seem to get the hang of either. So he is left out of games on the bed, and it pains him. He jumps and jumps and cries, watching them play - and we've tried to show him the stairs - but Leo the Lame just doesn't get it.

February 09, 2010 Tuesday

Another frustrating day, tech support wise. Still no luck getting that speech recognition program to run in Win 7, and they thought they had it configured to do so. I'm here to tell you, they don't, quite, yet. The jury is still out. We really miss using that program - so used to talking to the computer and not this hunt and peck stuff.

The speech recognition program that comes with win 7 has been filling in, but it ain't quite the same. Way more mis reads than are acceptable, and it is not as quick to 'learn'. Still, better than nothing, maybe - though I find myself typing this by hand...

Rather a pleasant day, for all that. Only one guy tried to irritate us today - that would be THIS guy -
Not only driving the Jag I wish to own, but driving it with the top down...

Here ya' go, John - all fixed...

full karma

February 06, 2010 Saturday

This just in:

My brother, Adam, sent me this video - and he's in it. The video was made by a fellow (Matt Hennessey) who studied under my other brother, John, when he was teaching photo journalism at Columbia. It is good, in my somewhat biased opinion~~

Cheap Money

And here are a couple more...

Blair and Evie

However, I've never missed a Super Bowl. Even if I didn't watch a single game all year I always made a 50¢ bet with my dad on the Super Bowl. He would usually take the underdog and that became my habit, too, now that I'm betting with my children.

So, you see, I bet on a winner this year, as the New Orleans Saints soundly tromped the favored Indianapolis Colts. It's still hard for me not to say Baltimore...
In fact, sometimes it's just hard to keep up...

February 06, 2010 Saturday

Hard to believe it's winter, really.

In the sixties again, today. The girls headed downtown to see a ballet - Sleeping Beauty, I believe. Should have some pix tomorrow.

No word from the folks at Nuance, re: getting the voice recognition software up and running.

We think we have enough other programs installed to say - back in business. It becomes more clear why folks want their apps to run 'in the cloud', or in the browser. They are always available, and the whole upgrade reinstall issue becomes moot. Software isn't on one's computer, but 'out there', somewhere.

A few shots from the local area, which we toured, briefly, on two wheels.

February 05, 2010 Friday

Lovely day! Went over 60 and the sunshine shone. Ann took the three dogs for a walk while my nose remained buried in computer stuff. After some time with Nuance tech support - they gave up. Kicked the issue upstairs, so to speak, and told me I'd be hearing from another service tech, soon. Which I'm betting will be Monday.

We are becoming more familiar with Win 7, since it is now on two computers - this one, my main machine - and Ann's work laptop. She showed me how to work the 'snipping tool', a screen capture sort of gizmo. My old screen capture program was prior to even XP, and we can't get it to run on this machine. It only ran on the old one by being 'laplinked' over.

However, it was a tool I used ALL the time. Mostly to get pictures to the size needed for internet use.

The 'snip' tool captures ok, but then another step is required to reduce file size - whereas the old program did both at once. Sigh.

The company that made the software no longer exists, I found.

How big is?

Dick, Laura, Joe, Barbara

February 03, 2010 Wednesday

Did we mention that last month was the warmest January in the history of local record keeping at the weather bureau? Only by a degree or so, and the last warmest was in '95, anyway.

Still can't get voice recognition to run on this computer. Reduced to tech support, again, this time with the software manufacturer, Nuance. We'll know more tomorrow. Sure miss that program. I am so used to 'talking' to my computer - for everything from e-mail to 'chat' to Facebook, to this program.

On a more optimistic note, a housecall to troubleshoot a wireless network printer problem went fast and smooth.

Here's a sunrise taken by my darling wife, Ann Smock, the greatest~~
The view to the water at the end of our street, from the house.

Busy days, and still putting in too many hours trying to get this computer up to speed. So, that's all, folks - for this day.

February 02, 2010 Tuesday

'Nother update -
And it's better.

Working off my own computer, again, after quite the thrill ride - if you're the geeky sort~~
Upgrading from Win XP to Win 7 on this machine turned out to be a chore, and a bit disappointing, as well. But, it's a done deal at this point, and we're running Win 7 Ultimate.

The bad news is that the Laplink software that was supposed to 'migrate' all my files and programs from XP to Win 7 was unable to do its thing - through no fault of the good folks at Laplink.

We have used Laplink on several past occasions, when switching from an older computer to a newer one. It 'clones' the very heart and soul of your old computer, compresses it, and hides it away until it's needed. Once your new computer is set up, Laplink installs the clone on the new machine and there are no compatibility issues, because everything runs in its old (XP) environment. This means when you sit at your new computer it is like sitting at the old one - everything is right there, all your old program's work, etc. But it all runs faster and better, because you're on a new computer.

Laplink also makes a version to use when upgrading all on a single computer. This is especially valuable in a situation like the one we were in, where the upgrade from XP would mean overwriting all old files, essentially re formatting the hard drive - a 'clean' install. That's because the operating systems are so different. If we were upgrading from Vista, all the old settings and programs could have been kept.

To do this, Laplink makes a small partition on the hard drive and sticks the compressed 'clone' of all your old stuff there, while the upgrade takes place. The clean install doesn't touch that partition. After updating, Laplink opens the partition and resets your old programs and settings, in their working environment, into the new operating system. Since Laplink doesn't cost that much (less than thirty bucks), if it saves you having to upgrade or buy even one piece of software, it has paid for itself. We have hundreds of programs and applications, so, Laplink is the way to go.

My upgrade gave me a lot of grief. It froze the computer every time there was a reboot during the upgrade process, and there are a lot of reboots when upgrading. We finally had to call Microsoft Tech support.

Normally, they could access my desktop remotely, and see what might be the problem? However, because of the upgrade being incomplete, there was no desktop to work from. So, they had to work by proxy, through me.

Of course, they have a long list or protocol to follow to troubleshoot the installation/upgrade. And it presupposes that the problem is somewhere on this end - which I'm quite sure is usually the case.

One of the many, many things they had us try over two days on the phone (2 hours one day and three the next!) besides removing RAM from the motherboard and various other physical fixes or checks, was to reformat the hard drive. Drat. No way to protect my Laplink partition.

And nothing worked.

The very last thing was to face the possibility that maybe something was amiss with the upgrade software, which was on a DVD. And that was the problem as it turned out after much tinkering. A bad sector on the DVD. This was a brand new out of the box DVD, too.

Of course, Microsoft was very apologetic and all...

And they did get the upgrade to get past the reboot freeze and install correctly once having identified the problem.

So, basically what we have now is like a new computer, with a swell new operating system (which we are starting to really like) but no files or programs. I had of course backed up all my files, so that's not a problem.

But we have literally hundreds of programs on CD's to re install. As well as all applications, favorites, email addresses, etc. This will take several days.

But at least we are to the point of being able to do email, work on this website and upload (FTP) the changes. As well as surf the internet, of course. About twenty programs have been re installed. So far, I can't get the voice recognition program to run, which means I've typed all this by hand. I hate when that happens...

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