Another large update
June
At the beginning of the month I was looking at the community deals on Woot.com and found a 1 year gold membership for the Xbox live for $35. They normally go for $60 for a 1 year subscription so I bought 2 of them. I turned my Xbox back on after a long time of not using it and found that the display kept coming up in black and white so I traced the problem back to the Xbox video cable. I ordered a new VGA replacement cable, VGA splitter box, and a VGA adapter so I could have my Xbox & PC attached to my projector at the same time and just switch them back and forth when I needed them. I also attached my 22” FP to the switch box so I can use it for my Xbox and PC if I wanted as well. The video quality is much better through the new cable and on the FP than it is on the projector.
When I was testing the new cable on the Xbox I found out that MTG 2012 had just come out so I downloaded the demo to give it a try. The next day I saw CM & Jon playing so I bought the game so we could play multiplayer together. We played some 3 on 1 and some 2 headed giant which helped unlock parts of the game & the new decks and cards.
On the 16th I finally made an appointment to get my central air unit & coils replaced. I originally took the whole day off to be here when they replaced it but they were able to get it done by noon so I only had to take half the day off. The new unit cost was about $2600 and is a lot quieter than the old one and is working well.
On the 23rd Maer, Meg, Duncan came down to visit for the 4th of July holiday. We played some Rock Band 2 & watched Chuck.
On the 25th mom, grandma, & Colt came over to visit and we went out to eat at the new Mexican place in the plaza nearby. Grandma brought some Hosta and Irises for us so I planted the Hosta in the back with the others and the Irises’ in the front.
On the 28th Trillby Meg’s rat had to be taken to the Vet to be put to sleep. He was pretty sick and the time was right for him to go.
July
At some point I finally found an external device that would run 3 TB hard drives and was $50 (all the other I found were NAS devices over $300). This external device was Raid capable and could hold 2 drives so I bought two 3TB hard drives to put in it. I originally wanted to have them set up in Raid 2 so I could have some sort of data redundancy but I was having problems seeing the Raid 2. So I put it in Raid 1 which I could tell was working it. It gave me more space and faster read access time but I wouldn’t have the data protection. Sadly during the process of trying to get the hard drives to work I accidently formatted one of my other external hard drives which was the one that had all my pictures and other important data. Luckily I was able to find software that could retrieve the data. It took about a day to scan the hard drive then days after just to sort through all the data that it found. The file structure was not recovered so a lot of the files were in random places. What it did recover from the 1 TB hard drive was almost 2 TB after it went through and found everything that was stored and deleted on it in the past. I was able to recover most of the data I wanted and all the pictures as well.
On the 1st Mom brought Colt over to stay for a couple days. We went out to eat at Applebee’s that evening.
On the 2nd we went out to get some cloths for Duncan at the Burlington coat factory then went to a fireworks place to pick up some fireworks. After that we went over to the Flat Top Grill for dinner. Then we went over to Disc reply to look through the store then we went home and watched some movies. That night we used some sparklers that we bought and some that Colt brought with him.
On the 3rd Mom came by and picked colt up.
CM came to visit on the 4th we ate lunch at The Golden Corral then watched CM play some games on my projector and then watched some interesting videos he had found on the net. One in particular was of a sand artist who told a story from images she created in the sand with her hands it was really interesting.
On the 5th we went to the Debrands chocolate factory for a tour. My Great Aunt Mary met up with us there and we took the tour together. They started out with a video presentation then took us through packing and baking areas. It was interesting to see how everything was made and they gave out free samples during the tour. After the tour CM, me, and Duncan went out to find a geo cache that was nearby it was one of the easier ones in a parking light base. After finding that one CM saw there was another cache just down the street so we went to find it. That one was a lot harder to find since there was a guard rail and big rocks blocking the end of the street where the geo cache was suppose to be. We searched around the rocks and the guard rail and then through the tall weeds to see if we could find it. Eventually Duncan found it hidden in the guard rail it was pretty small and had a magnet that they used to attach it between part of the guard rail leg and the rail itself. After that we went to the Auburn Cord and Duisenberg car museum we kind of spread out and I went through and took a picture of every car there. Afterwards we went out and looked for another Geo cache that was behind the museum. It was located under some rocks at the base of a tree and it was one where you could take an item someone left in it and replace it with another one. Meg took one of those rubber band bracelets thingies out and put a Canadian penny in its place. Since we were close to the Michigan Border CM wanted to try and get a Geo Cache up there to have one in that state. Unfortunately there wasn’t many near the border and the one that was looked like it was on an island in the middle of a lake so it would not be an easy one to get. So we decided to head back home. While we stopped for Gas at the Kroger’s CM discovered another Geo Cache in the parking lot behind the liquor store so he took the kids out to find it. I didn’t get to see where it was located but they said it was one that hung from a tree. We went out for Dinner at Asakusa’s which was pretty nice I got one of the meals where they brought it out on a wooden boat. After we got back home CM pulled out some games he brought (zombie dice, cthulhu dice, pandemic, & Dominion) and we played them.
On the 6th we got up early to eat at Cosmo’s (a breakfast place only open in the morning) with CM and then went over to the game store to check on a certain board game CM had seen there on his last visit. After that CM left for home.
On the 8thMaer and kids left for home.
At one point we got an email from the lawyers saying that Maer’s Green Card application was being sent on to the next process stage and we had to pay more fees’ to move it along.
On the 14th the company I work for finally released the names of the 3 new companies that the main company was splitting up into. Two of the names were utterly ridicules one was the name of a genus of moth (I don’t think they vetted the name well and didn’t realize what it meant) and the other was a name of the system that plants use to move water around.
I saw an update on the Diablo 3 game and found that they will be selecting beta testers here soon, but you have to sign up on the battle.net site and then create a beta test profile for your account. For about 1 week I was working with their help desk to try and get there beta profile system capture software to work on my PC. Finally I decided to do something unrelated to what the help desk was asking for me to do and it finally worked. Now I just need to wait and hope they pick me to beta test the game. I also started playing Diablo 2 again so I could remember the play style and the story line of the series.
One day I’m not sure when I got a VM from my sister Andrea about a trip they wanted to take over Christmas but they needed an answer that day to rent the place they were staying at. Unfortunately I didn’t get the message until a few days after she left the VM. I normally don’t have my phone with me because of work restrictions so it stays out in my car most of the day. We would not have been able to go anyways since Maer would not be able to come down here until December 27th. It would have been nice if we got more advanced notice and notified by something other than a VM message like email or FB so we could have gotten the message sooner.
On the 30th while going through Steam I saw they had a game available for free trial play that weekend called Dino-Day. So I downloaded the free trial to give it a try. It is not the best put together multiplayer shooter game out there, but the whole idea of the Nazi’s being able to bring dinosaurs back to life to fight for them during WW2 was just to amusing to pass up. Where the game lacks in graphics and game play it makes up with pure amusement and absurdity of the situation you are put in. Since the game was also 50% that weekend I went and bought it for $5.
August
On the 7th I got a call from Grandma Dailey saying they were planning on eating out and going to Minitrista in Muncie on the 14th. We wouldn’t be able o make it since that is the Day of the Platt reunion and our 1 year anniversary.
On the 9th my Laptop finally died. It was slow in opening things up and a cluster of keys around the delete key stopped working. When I went to turn it on the power LED would flash and then nothing happened. I swapped out RAM, Hard Drive, and hooked up and external monitor to it just in case with no luck.
On the 10th Maer and kids come down to visit. I showed them the spaghetti squash we planted during the spring and it was doing well with 1 squash starting to grow nicely. I also dug up the red potatoes and got 2 normal size ones and 4 smaller ones. During their time here I went out and bought some games to play Munchkin, Zombie dice, & apples and apples. We also finished watching Chuck and started watching Castle.
On the 14th we went to the Platt reunion. It was also me and Maer’s 1 year anniversary so when I went to the grocery store to pick up some things we needed for the reunion I got some roses for her. After getting everything together we left and got there about 12 PM we brought Caesar Salad & these desert toppings for the homemade ice-cream one flavored Dr. Pepper & the other Orange Crush. There was about 70 people there and lots of food. We sat down to eat then after we were all finished the kids went outside while the rest of us did the standard meeting, introductions, recent news (births, deaths, anniversaries ect.), & elections for new officers. After that the homemade ice-cream was made then we watched people ride on the horsey thing Jed brought. Things started to wind down and we helped clean up the community center and then help Jed Load up his equipment. Then we headed back home.
On the 25th we went down to Portland for the tractor engine show. We got a late start so didn’t get there till around 3pm. We stopped over at my Uncles Richards place since he lived right next to where the big Frenchies market is setup. We talked a bit and the kids played with the kittens that he had outside. Then we went over to Frenchies and got some food and looked around. Meg bought an actual Pen knife it was a working pen that had a concealed knife in it. Then we walked over to the fairgrounds and got there just before 6PM so a lot of the vendors were closing shop for the day. We went in anyways and looked in the round barn and the front part of the fairgrounds. After that we headed back home stopping off at the grocery store in Berne to pick up some Amish cheese.
On the 26th we drove down to Dayton to go to the Air Force Museum there. We got there about 2 PM and had a picnic lunch out in the park then went through the museum. We only had enough time to go through part of the museum so Duncan went through the modern & space section while the rest of went through the WW 1 & 2 exhibits. After that we headed back home and went out to eat at TGIF’s it was pretty good and everyone enjoyed the food.
On the 27th we went over to Mom’s for the 175thDecatur festival. Maer brought Daisy with her since she wasn’t doing too well. We brought some Caesar Salad for lunch and then walked around the lake. After that we went down town and walked through some of the vendors. One place had baby animals out so you could pet them. Then we went over to the open field behind the community center where they had a Pioneer tent encampment set up. It was pretty neat they had all sort of handmade pieces and events that were done back in that time period. After that we went through the community center then headed over to the ice cream place where I had some Cinnamon ice-cream. We went back to moms and rested for a bit then headed back home. On the way back Daisy was starting to get pretty bad having multiple strokes so we went over to the Veterinary to put her to sleep.
September
At some point while checking out the deals on Steam I came across a game called The King’s Crusade that was on sell for $6. I picked it up and it turned out to be a pretty good game kind of like Shogun 1 & 2 but in the Middle East during the Crusades.
I took the 2nd off so I could have a 4 day weekend with the Labor Day holiday. We didn’t do too much mostly rested from the previous week and watched Castle and some movies Rango, Paul, and The Priest.
At some point Meg cut her foot pretty badly while she was walking outside barefoot it wasn’t bad enough to get stitches but was pretty close.
On the 11th we whet over to Grandma Caylor’s for lunch. We had originally planned on taking her out to eat but she had food ready for us when we got there. We ate then walked around outside and looked at the flowers and garden. After that we went over to my Dad’s place and had some brownies and home-made ice cream my dad made. We took a walk through the woods and looked at the car Dad was restoring/modifying then we went inside to talk for a bit. While we were leaving Maer fell down the steps off the front deck she is doing ok now but sore with some bruising. When it is dark out it’s hard to see the first step down since it is not in a place you would expect it. Also for some reason the deck lights had not come on yet so it was hard to see.
On the 16th we went out to eat at Applebee’s them went over to the local Pet Smart where Maer bought a new male rat.
On the 17th Maer and the kids left to go back home we went to eat dinner at TGIF & then looked through the Barnes and Nobles before they left.
Well another big 4 month update but it does seem to help keep my life documented to some extent. This has actually come in handy when I’ve had to find dates for Maer’s stay here and other information that is needed. Well I hope everyone is doing well and will probably post in another 4 months with the way things are going.
At the beginning of the month I was looking at the community deals on Woot.com and found a 1 year gold membership for the Xbox live for $35. They normally go for $60 for a 1 year subscription so I bought 2 of them. I turned my Xbox back on after a long time of not using it and found that the display kept coming up in black and white so I traced the problem back to the Xbox video cable. I ordered a new VGA replacement cable, VGA splitter box, and a VGA adapter so I could have my Xbox & PC attached to my projector at the same time and just switch them back and forth when I needed them. I also attached my 22” FP to the switch box so I can use it for my Xbox and PC if I wanted as well. The video quality is much better through the new cable and on the FP than it is on the projector.
When I was testing the new cable on the Xbox I found out that MTG 2012 had just come out so I downloaded the demo to give it a try. The next day I saw CM & Jon playing so I bought the game so we could play multiplayer together. We played some 3 on 1 and some 2 headed giant which helped unlock parts of the game & the new decks and cards.
On the 16th I finally made an appointment to get my central air unit & coils replaced. I originally took the whole day off to be here when they replaced it but they were able to get it done by noon so I only had to take half the day off. The new unit cost was about $2600 and is a lot quieter than the old one and is working well.
On the 23rd Maer, Meg, Duncan came down to visit for the 4th of July holiday. We played some Rock Band 2 & watched Chuck.
On the 25th mom, grandma, & Colt came over to visit and we went out to eat at the new Mexican place in the plaza nearby. Grandma brought some Hosta and Irises for us so I planted the Hosta in the back with the others and the Irises’ in the front.
On the 28th Trillby Meg’s rat had to be taken to the Vet to be put to sleep. He was pretty sick and the time was right for him to go.
July
At some point I finally found an external device that would run 3 TB hard drives and was $50 (all the other I found were NAS devices over $300). This external device was Raid capable and could hold 2 drives so I bought two 3TB hard drives to put in it. I originally wanted to have them set up in Raid 2 so I could have some sort of data redundancy but I was having problems seeing the Raid 2. So I put it in Raid 1 which I could tell was working it. It gave me more space and faster read access time but I wouldn’t have the data protection. Sadly during the process of trying to get the hard drives to work I accidently formatted one of my other external hard drives which was the one that had all my pictures and other important data. Luckily I was able to find software that could retrieve the data. It took about a day to scan the hard drive then days after just to sort through all the data that it found. The file structure was not recovered so a lot of the files were in random places. What it did recover from the 1 TB hard drive was almost 2 TB after it went through and found everything that was stored and deleted on it in the past. I was able to recover most of the data I wanted and all the pictures as well.
On the 1st Mom brought Colt over to stay for a couple days. We went out to eat at Applebee’s that evening.
On the 2nd we went out to get some cloths for Duncan at the Burlington coat factory then went to a fireworks place to pick up some fireworks. After that we went over to the Flat Top Grill for dinner. Then we went over to Disc reply to look through the store then we went home and watched some movies. That night we used some sparklers that we bought and some that Colt brought with him.
On the 3rd Mom came by and picked colt up.
CM came to visit on the 4th we ate lunch at The Golden Corral then watched CM play some games on my projector and then watched some interesting videos he had found on the net. One in particular was of a sand artist who told a story from images she created in the sand with her hands it was really interesting.
On the 5th we went to the Debrands chocolate factory for a tour. My Great Aunt Mary met up with us there and we took the tour together. They started out with a video presentation then took us through packing and baking areas. It was interesting to see how everything was made and they gave out free samples during the tour. After the tour CM, me, and Duncan went out to find a geo cache that was nearby it was one of the easier ones in a parking light base. After finding that one CM saw there was another cache just down the street so we went to find it. That one was a lot harder to find since there was a guard rail and big rocks blocking the end of the street where the geo cache was suppose to be. We searched around the rocks and the guard rail and then through the tall weeds to see if we could find it. Eventually Duncan found it hidden in the guard rail it was pretty small and had a magnet that they used to attach it between part of the guard rail leg and the rail itself. After that we went to the Auburn Cord and Duisenberg car museum we kind of spread out and I went through and took a picture of every car there. Afterwards we went out and looked for another Geo cache that was behind the museum. It was located under some rocks at the base of a tree and it was one where you could take an item someone left in it and replace it with another one. Meg took one of those rubber band bracelets thingies out and put a Canadian penny in its place. Since we were close to the Michigan Border CM wanted to try and get a Geo Cache up there to have one in that state. Unfortunately there wasn’t many near the border and the one that was looked like it was on an island in the middle of a lake so it would not be an easy one to get. So we decided to head back home. While we stopped for Gas at the Kroger’s CM discovered another Geo Cache in the parking lot behind the liquor store so he took the kids out to find it. I didn’t get to see where it was located but they said it was one that hung from a tree. We went out for Dinner at Asakusa’s which was pretty nice I got one of the meals where they brought it out on a wooden boat. After we got back home CM pulled out some games he brought (zombie dice, cthulhu dice, pandemic, & Dominion) and we played them.
On the 6th we got up early to eat at Cosmo’s (a breakfast place only open in the morning) with CM and then went over to the game store to check on a certain board game CM had seen there on his last visit. After that CM left for home.
On the 8thMaer and kids left for home.
At one point we got an email from the lawyers saying that Maer’s Green Card application was being sent on to the next process stage and we had to pay more fees’ to move it along.
On the 14th the company I work for finally released the names of the 3 new companies that the main company was splitting up into. Two of the names were utterly ridicules one was the name of a genus of moth (I don’t think they vetted the name well and didn’t realize what it meant) and the other was a name of the system that plants use to move water around.
I saw an update on the Diablo 3 game and found that they will be selecting beta testers here soon, but you have to sign up on the battle.net site and then create a beta test profile for your account. For about 1 week I was working with their help desk to try and get there beta profile system capture software to work on my PC. Finally I decided to do something unrelated to what the help desk was asking for me to do and it finally worked. Now I just need to wait and hope they pick me to beta test the game. I also started playing Diablo 2 again so I could remember the play style and the story line of the series.
One day I’m not sure when I got a VM from my sister Andrea about a trip they wanted to take over Christmas but they needed an answer that day to rent the place they were staying at. Unfortunately I didn’t get the message until a few days after she left the VM. I normally don’t have my phone with me because of work restrictions so it stays out in my car most of the day. We would not have been able to go anyways since Maer would not be able to come down here until December 27th. It would have been nice if we got more advanced notice and notified by something other than a VM message like email or FB so we could have gotten the message sooner.
On the 30th while going through Steam I saw they had a game available for free trial play that weekend called Dino-Day. So I downloaded the free trial to give it a try. It is not the best put together multiplayer shooter game out there, but the whole idea of the Nazi’s being able to bring dinosaurs back to life to fight for them during WW2 was just to amusing to pass up. Where the game lacks in graphics and game play it makes up with pure amusement and absurdity of the situation you are put in. Since the game was also 50% that weekend I went and bought it for $5.
August
On the 7th I got a call from Grandma Dailey saying they were planning on eating out and going to Minitrista in Muncie on the 14th. We wouldn’t be able o make it since that is the Day of the Platt reunion and our 1 year anniversary.
On the 9th my Laptop finally died. It was slow in opening things up and a cluster of keys around the delete key stopped working. When I went to turn it on the power LED would flash and then nothing happened. I swapped out RAM, Hard Drive, and hooked up and external monitor to it just in case with no luck.
On the 10th Maer and kids come down to visit. I showed them the spaghetti squash we planted during the spring and it was doing well with 1 squash starting to grow nicely. I also dug up the red potatoes and got 2 normal size ones and 4 smaller ones. During their time here I went out and bought some games to play Munchkin, Zombie dice, & apples and apples. We also finished watching Chuck and started watching Castle.
On the 14th we went to the Platt reunion. It was also me and Maer’s 1 year anniversary so when I went to the grocery store to pick up some things we needed for the reunion I got some roses for her. After getting everything together we left and got there about 12 PM we brought Caesar Salad & these desert toppings for the homemade ice-cream one flavored Dr. Pepper & the other Orange Crush. There was about 70 people there and lots of food. We sat down to eat then after we were all finished the kids went outside while the rest of us did the standard meeting, introductions, recent news (births, deaths, anniversaries ect.), & elections for new officers. After that the homemade ice-cream was made then we watched people ride on the horsey thing Jed brought. Things started to wind down and we helped clean up the community center and then help Jed Load up his equipment. Then we headed back home.
On the 25th we went down to Portland for the tractor engine show. We got a late start so didn’t get there till around 3pm. We stopped over at my Uncles Richards place since he lived right next to where the big Frenchies market is setup. We talked a bit and the kids played with the kittens that he had outside. Then we went over to Frenchies and got some food and looked around. Meg bought an actual Pen knife it was a working pen that had a concealed knife in it. Then we walked over to the fairgrounds and got there just before 6PM so a lot of the vendors were closing shop for the day. We went in anyways and looked in the round barn and the front part of the fairgrounds. After that we headed back home stopping off at the grocery store in Berne to pick up some Amish cheese.
On the 26th we drove down to Dayton to go to the Air Force Museum there. We got there about 2 PM and had a picnic lunch out in the park then went through the museum. We only had enough time to go through part of the museum so Duncan went through the modern & space section while the rest of went through the WW 1 & 2 exhibits. After that we headed back home and went out to eat at TGIF’s it was pretty good and everyone enjoyed the food.
On the 27th we went over to Mom’s for the 175thDecatur festival. Maer brought Daisy with her since she wasn’t doing too well. We brought some Caesar Salad for lunch and then walked around the lake. After that we went down town and walked through some of the vendors. One place had baby animals out so you could pet them. Then we went over to the open field behind the community center where they had a Pioneer tent encampment set up. It was pretty neat they had all sort of handmade pieces and events that were done back in that time period. After that we went through the community center then headed over to the ice cream place where I had some Cinnamon ice-cream. We went back to moms and rested for a bit then headed back home. On the way back Daisy was starting to get pretty bad having multiple strokes so we went over to the Veterinary to put her to sleep.
September
At some point while checking out the deals on Steam I came across a game called The King’s Crusade that was on sell for $6. I picked it up and it turned out to be a pretty good game kind of like Shogun 1 & 2 but in the Middle East during the Crusades.
I took the 2nd off so I could have a 4 day weekend with the Labor Day holiday. We didn’t do too much mostly rested from the previous week and watched Castle and some movies Rango, Paul, and The Priest.
At some point Meg cut her foot pretty badly while she was walking outside barefoot it wasn’t bad enough to get stitches but was pretty close.
On the 11th we whet over to Grandma Caylor’s for lunch. We had originally planned on taking her out to eat but she had food ready for us when we got there. We ate then walked around outside and looked at the flowers and garden. After that we went over to my Dad’s place and had some brownies and home-made ice cream my dad made. We took a walk through the woods and looked at the car Dad was restoring/modifying then we went inside to talk for a bit. While we were leaving Maer fell down the steps off the front deck she is doing ok now but sore with some bruising. When it is dark out it’s hard to see the first step down since it is not in a place you would expect it. Also for some reason the deck lights had not come on yet so it was hard to see.
On the 16th we went out to eat at Applebee’s them went over to the local Pet Smart where Maer bought a new male rat.
On the 17th Maer and the kids left to go back home we went to eat dinner at TGIF & then looked through the Barnes and Nobles before they left.
Well another big 4 month update but it does seem to help keep my life documented to some extent. This has actually come in handy when I’ve had to find dates for Maer’s stay here and other information that is needed. Well I hope everyone is doing well and will probably post in another 4 months with the way things are going.