Vacation's Over

Play time is over; I had to come back to work this week. I really enjoyed taking the time off. I was able to catch up on my reading, and my movies. Sadie, our pug, enjoyed my vacation almost as much as I did. She has a lot more fun when someone is home with her most of the time. It gives her a lot more bed time.

I’ve been back to work for three days now, and the difference in my attitude is amazing. I just hope it lasts. I find I get grumpier and grumpier every year I get older. Maybe grumpier isn’t quite the right word, but it will have to do.

Seattle area weather is a bit more normal than it was in December. The rains are supposed to be coming back this week, and the temperatures have gotten back up into the more normal winter range for our area. We did have a 1/2 inch, or less, of snow on Sunday, but it didn’t affect the roads at all. Early this morning some areas got a dusting of snow, but I haven’t seen any yet.

I deleted my link to the White House blog. It’s there, but the link doesn’t seem to work correctly. If you are interested you can go to the updated White House website at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/.

Take care, more later I hope.

Proud to be an American!

God Bless the United States of America! A new time has come to the US Government; we have a President who will govern based on ideals not ideology.

We now have a government that, in my opinion, will not ostracize those of us who do not agree with the ideology of hating anyone who is different.

Being on vacation, I spent my day yesterday watching the inauguration of Barak Obama as the 44^th President of the United States. It was a very personally moving day for me. I was amazed at how emotional I was watching the ceremonies. I cannot think of words to properly express myself, so I will just leave my thoughts where they are now.

Vacation & Other Thoughts

I am in the middle of a few days vacation. I had forgotten how nice it could be to take time off for something other than my bird related hobby functions. I've caught up with some movies I wanted to watch. And I have been able to do some reading without having to watch the clock. I think that today I'm going to start on the Harry Potter series, and read those books one more time. My wife sometimes wonders about my sanity, but I have always felt that if a book is really a good read the first time, it only gets better when you read it again. Some of my books I have probably read as many as 9 or 10 times. As an example, I have read all my Heinlein books at least a half dozen times each, some even more. I have always loved reading, and hope to keep it up right until the end (grin). When I was a kid, I was one of the best customers our small library in LaConner had. I must have read a majority of the books they had in the library. Of course, it wasn't a big library so that probably doesn't say much.

One more week and then back to the grind. By then I should be refreshed and ready to go. I haven't done anything exciting yet, but I may try to go visit my uncles next week up in Skagit County. Haven't been up there for several months even though it is only about a 45-minute drive.

We've now been on Verizon FIOS for two weeks. I cannot believe how convenient it is to have a Digital Video Recorder, like the Verizon Multi-Room DVR. Before the switch, we had a VCR for every TV. There were times that we would have as many as three of our VCRs set for shows to make sure we got all the shows we wanted to watch taped. With the DVR, all I have to do is set it up once and the shows are recorded; in my case, every time the show is not a repeat. Just this one factor has made the switch worthwhile. It is kind of interesting to see just how many channels are available through the system. Of course, 90% are channels that we may never watch. But, hey, they are there just in case.

The only concern I have had so far is with our local NBC affiliate, KING-5, in Seattle. There seems to be a problem in the system with the volume for that channel and that channel only. If I have the volume adjusted for KING-5 and then switch to another channel, I have to immediately lower the volume because all the other channels are louder than 5. I originally thought that was related to one of the set top boxes, but it doesn't appear to be that way. One of these days I'll get around to checking with Verizon and see what they think. But for right now I'm having way too much fun exploring all the things that FIOS TV brings to the plate.

The snow is gone, the rains have mostly stopped; the area is finally getting some normal Winter weather. We have been getting a lot of fog, but they weathermen claim that should be gone by later this weekend.

The New Year has started, and we are about to inaugurate our new President next Tuesday. I am excited about the change coming to our country. I wish all the best to everyone for the New Year.

Vacation Time & Other Thoughts

In the 911 dispatch field we work some strange shifts. Today, a Saturday is my Friday for the week. Tomorrow I start a short vacation; the first one in years that isn’t related to my bird hobby. Don’t have a lot planned, but after the last few weeks at work and all the weather related business we had, I felt that I needed some time off.

I am going to try to catch up with some reading. Then I want to watch the Star Wars and Star Trek movies one more time. I just finished reading W.E.B. Griffin’s Black Ops, the fifth of his Presidential Agent series of books. I was a little disappointed with the start of the book. Most of Griffin’s books are a bit “tighter” all the way through. This one started out slowly and, to me, disjointed. The last few years Griffin’s son has been co-writing some of his books and with Black Ops it seemed that the son may have written the first few chapters and then the father took over and finished. W.E.B. Griffin is a pseudonym for William E. Butterworth. Under that name he has also written many books, including numerous juvenile fiction books.

The weather has really been a huge factor in our lives here in Washington State the past several weeks. Leading up to Christmas we got a lot of snow which lead to some real problems for people getting around the area. Eastern Washington, specially the area around Spokane is still having snow related problems. Then, just in the past several days those of us in Western Washington got hit by a lot of rain, which fell in a short amount of time. We really had some road problems, and made the national news. If you were in the Puget Sound area (near Seattle), the only way to get out of the area was to fly. A 20-mile stretch of I5 was closed south of Seattle, and all three of the roads across the Cascade Mountains were closed due to avalanche concerns. Each day the Interstate and passes were closed cost the economy about $16,000,000 according to news reports I saw.

That just about does it for today. I hadn’t written anything for awhile and thought I should catch up a bit. I’ll try to do better during my vacation.

All the Best.

Welcome Verizon FIOS, Goodbye Comcast

Yesterday was the big day; a couple of Verizon technicians were here and got our FIOS (Fiber Optic) service operational. We now have our "cable" TV, telephone and Internet service all through Verizon FIOS.

Obviously, with only 24-hours I can't give you a very comprehensive report on how the service works, but so far so good. I was impressed with the technicians and the work they did. One tech got here around 9 am and gave us a run-down on what he would be doing. Shortly after that, another tech arrived. Her installation for the day was cancelled at the last minute so they had her come to our house to help. The installation was very smooth, and everything was explained to us before they got started. It probably made a difference that there were two techs here, but the installation only took about three hours, maybe even a few minutes less than that. All the TVs are working great, the Internet is working and they even took the time to set up the wireless on the new router with our two laptops.

From what I've seen so far, if you have Fiber Optic available to your home jump through any hoops you have to to get the service.

Delores has already started using the unlimited long-distance calling within the US.

On a different topic; we had some friends over last night for cards and dinner. We had finished our first game of pinochle and were about to have desert when Delores started yelling about a flood downstairs. We had a good layer of water on the laundry room floor and it was slowly spreading into the office, which is just next to the laundry room. It seemed to be coming from the downstairs shower drain. We got it stopped and got the water sopped up. But boy did that sure ruin the mood for more cards. This morning a plumber, who Delores knows, came by and found the problem. The drain pipe from the kitchen sink area runs down the wall just behind the shower. That drainpipe had gotten plugged somewhere near where it feeds into the main house drain to the septic system. Kurt, the plumber, found a "clean-out" joint hidden behind a wall. We got access to that and snaked out the drain. Works great now; wish we would have know about it before. We might have been smart enough to pay attention to it and clean it out now and then.

By the way, the wives beat us in the one game we did play.