Gunsmoke and Dragnet . . .

Today ended up being a ‘errand’ day, but started with lunch at Monterey’s Little Mexico for some Chicken Tortilla Soup, and also to catch up with Julie, a waitress there that we’ve known for a long time. She only works the lunch shift Monday thru Friday, so we don’t get to see her when we go there for dinner.

After that, our next stop was Fry’s Electronics so I could pick up a new computer for a client. I was looking for one that still had Windows 7 on it, but they’re getting to be scarce. However I did find a Acer on sale that will fill the bill. Fry’s had it for $800, which is a good deal since Amazon has it for over $1100.

Next up was a stop at Catherine’s so Jan could get a Christmas theme blouse to wear for several upcoming events. We did have to drive through the Baybrook Mall area, but it turned out to be not too bad.

Then after a quick stop at Brandi and Lowell’s to check our mail, our next stop was a client’s to stomp out a couple of problems.

Later, on the way home, I dropped Jan off to get her hair done while I went across the street to the Kemah Post Office to buy Christmas stamps and get our cards in the mail.

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A while back I came across a really neat website for whiling away those late night hours. It’s located here.

http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/oldradio.html

It’s a link to pretty much every old time radio show there ever was. As a kid in the early 50’s, I remember listening to Gunsmoke and Dragnet sitting around the radio, and these bring back a lot of memories.

And now for some completely useless Gunsmoke trivia. On the radio version, Matt Dillon was played by William Conrad, later of Cannon, Nero Wolfe, and Jake and the Fatman fame. A fighter pilot during WWII, he was thought to be too portly (fat) for the TV role, which ended up going to James Arness, after a recommendation from John Wayne.

Also on the radio show, Doc Adams was played  by Howard McNear, who went on to fame as Floyd the Barber on The Andy Griffith Show.

See, I told you it was useless.

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Thought for the Day:

The reason that teachers should be armed is so that when the wolf shows up, there will always be at least a few sheepdogs mixed in with the flock of sheep.

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A Great View . . .

After our morning walk, Jan and I sat out by the rig and just enjoyed the view, and the wildlife.

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We had a Great White Egret,

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a feeder full of Monk Parakeets,

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and a hungry pelican looking for breakfast.

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While we were walking around the park, a lady stopped and introduced herself as Lillis Palmer. She said our mutual friend Chris Yust had told her we were here and described our rig well enough that she was able to track us down.

Although she had just finished her walk she ended up joining us for the rest of ours. Then we got to meet her husband Dick as he was leaving the park on some errands. We ended up having a good talk about our RV lives and mutual friends. A very nice lady.

About 1:30 I headed out on some errands myself. My first stop was the new CVS where last night I had uploaded the Christmas cards to be printed, since the first one had printer problems. When I mentioned it, they gave me a 25% discount on the cards. Nice!

Then it was on to Fry’s Electronics to check out some new computers for a client. The first thing I noticed is that it’s getting harder to find anything with Windows 7 on it. But I did find a couple of possibilities that I’ll run by my client.

Then after a quick stop at the bank, I headed over the house to check the mail, and then it was back to the rig.

Finally it was off to McDonald’s for dinner, since I was craving a McRib, before they go away again.

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Thought for the Day:

If pigs could fly I bet their wings would be really tasty. – Stolen from my son-in-law’s sister, who may have stolen it from someone else.

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It’s Landon Time . . .

We woke up this morning to pouring rain so it was time for hot coffee and no morning walk. In other words, a nice, quiet, overcast day.

But finally, a little before 2, Jan and I headed up to Friendswood to Landon-sit this afternoon. But we left early enough to make a couple of stops.

The first was at a CVS pharmacy to pick up the Christmas cards that I had uploaded last night. But as it turns out they were having printer problems and our cards weren’t ready yet. We’ll check back on our way home.

Our next stop was King Food for our Chicken in Hot Garlic Sauce and Jalapenos, XXXXX Spicy. Seems we can’t go for more than a week without our King Food fix. And lucky us, we’ll be eating there this Thursday night with friends, and then again next Monday night, Christmas Eve, for our traditional family dinner together.

About 3:30 we headed over to Brandi and Lowell’s to Landon-sit for the afternoon. It’s Landon’s Aunt Sherry’s birthday, and Lowell and Brandi are taking her to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory right down the road at Baybrook Mall.

On a side note, on last week’s Big Bang Theory, the one about Santa Claus, Sheldon mentions his mother taking him to the Baybrook Mall in Galveston when he was 5. Baybrook Mall is not in Galveston. It’s actually on the very southern edge of Houston. Galveston County starts down the road a couple of miles, but Galveston itself is about 25 miles south of here. Just keeping the facts straight.

Landon likes to play Peek A Boo when he sees the camera pointed at him, so it can be a real challenge to get a picture sometimes.

This went on for about 30 minutes until Kitty decided to curl up on the sofa and bring the game to a halt.

Brandi, Lowell, and Sherry got back about 6:30 so Jan and I headed back to the rig. We did make a quick stop at Kroger’s for a few things, and another try for our Christmas cards at CVS, again with no luck. I told them to cancel the order and I will submit them to another CVS location tonight.

On a final note, I saw this sign the other day and I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

What exactly is “Psychic Karate”?

Mind over Matter, The Power of Positive Thinking, or maybe “Use the Force, Luke” from Star Wars. Almost makes me want to call the number and find out.

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Thought for the Day:

Since 1951, when records started being kept, there has never been a mass murder at a place where guns were allowed.

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A New Toy . . .

Eat your heart out, Nick!

Jan and I headed out about 3pm to meet some friends for dinner up in Clear Lake. But that wasn’t until 5pm so we had some errands in mind to take up the slack.

Our first stop was the EZ-Pawn on SR 146. Jan was looking for a DVD copy of both Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc. for Landon this Christmas. They’re on sale locally and online, but only combined with the Blu-Ray version for about $30 each. That’s $60 that we could spend on toys for him.

So Jan had the idea to check out some pawn shops in the area since they usually have used DVD’s for sale. So while Jan was checking out the DVD’s (which weren’t in alphabetical order) I just happened to wander over to the firearms area. And as I was checking out all the nice toys, and making a list and checking it twice, I heard a salesman talking to a guy about lasers. I assumed he was talking about laser sights, but I was wrong.

He was talking about a laser target shooting system by LaserLyte, a company that also makes laser sights. It works with a pistol of pretty much any standard caliber, and allows you to target practice indoors or out, at a distance of up to 50 yards, using your own gun.

It consists of two parts, an electronic target, and

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a caliber specific laser cartridge. The batteries in the cartridge are good for about 6000 shots, and it comes with a extra set.

You simply insert the cartridge into the chamber and close the slide or cylinder. When you pull the trigger the firing pin hits the pressure sensitive bottom of the shell, firing the laser.

If you hit anywhere on the target, it remembers the location, but does not display it. You can make multiple hits on the target before checking your score.

You do that by firing at the small red dot on the lower left of the target box. The location of all your hits are then displayed on the target. You can then reset the system and start over by shooting the small red dot on the lower right.

By this time Jan had given up her search and come over to the counter. As she watch the salesman demonstrate it, she looked at me and said “Buy it. It’ll be your Christmas present.”

Just another reason I love her.

So I left the pawn shop with my new toy, the target system and a 9mm laser cartridge. He didn’t have any .380 cartridges, but should have some in on Tuesday. They don’t make them for my .25 cal., but I wouldn’t get one for it anyway.

I paid a little bit more, but you can get the target system on Amazon for about $130, and each different caliber laser cartridge for about $83.

We checked two other pawn shops for the DVD with no luck, and I didn’t find anymore new toys either. I’ll probably try eBay next for the DVD’s.

After stopping by the house to check the mail, we headed over to meet our friend’s Bob and Beth Young at Abe’s Cajun Market.

We’ve driven by this place for years, and although we love Cajun food, we just never stopped. Maybe because we always got our Cajun fix quenched at Floyd’s Cajun Seafood.

It was good to get together with Bob and Beth, We’ve known them for a long time and watched their 5 kids grow up. The last two, twin girls, are in high school now, and we remember when they were born. Time flies fast.

And it looks like we now have a second great Cajun place. Their gumbos was delicious. I had the sampler platter which had small portions of their seafood gumbo, chicken and sausage gumbo, red beans and rice, crawfish etoufee, and sweet corn chowder, along with a piece of pretty good cornbread.

It seems like most places use a mixture of cornmeal and wheat flour, along with too much sugar, so it tastes more like cake than real cornbread.

Real cornbread is made from coarse-ground cornmeal, baking powder, eggs, milk, and just enough sugar so that the crust browns, and then cooked in a cast-iron skillet or pan.

Once again, It Should Not Taste Like Cake!

As I said, Abe’s cornbread was pretty good. The texture was right, and it didn’t seem to have any flour in it, but it had a little too much sugar. But it was better than any store-bought cornbread I’ve had in a good while.

BTW, when you buy a bag of corn meal at the store, double check the ingredients. I’ve come across several brands that have wheat flour in them to start with.

After a great time with old friends, and a really good meal, we said our goodbyes and made plans to do this again soon. Then it was down the road for a Wal-Mart stop before we headed home for the night.

Now to play with my new toy!

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Thought for the Day:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye. – Miss Piggy

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$2.69 a Gallon!

Today was pretty quiet. After an easy morning, I left the rig a little after 1:30pm and headed up to the Clear Lake area for a couple of client visits and a stop at Sam’s Club for a prescription.

Along the way I stopped for gas and was amazed. Yesterday Unleaded was $2.92 at the Wal-Mart up in Kemah.

Today it was $2.69. YES $2.69!

And Diesel is $3.39. Don’t know what is happening, but I hope it keeps up.

Next up was a stop at a couple of clients. One of them had a new Sony Vaio laptop that they couldn’t get to connect to their office WiFi system. It turned out that the problem was that it was locked into WEP encryption mode, but the office system uses the better, safer, WPA2 encryption.

Normally the WiFi software has a drop-down menu so you can select the one you want use, or it will even set it automatically based on what your router is set for, but this one was different. I had to go into the adapter settings and enable the other encryptions.

And this was a brand-new laptop running Windows 7. Most people don’t use WEP anymore because it’s so easy to break. Why in the world it would default to WEP I can’t understand.

After checking in with the 2nd client I headed over to Sam’s to pick up a prescription and a case of bottled water. I was kind of dreading stopping by there because of Christmas shopping, and the fact that there’s a Wal-Mart right next door, compounding the problem, but it wasn’t bad at all.

As I tried to get on I-45S to go back to the rig, I ran into a lot of traffic around Baybrook Mall. And a lot of smoke. Turns out there was a car fire in the northbound lane, and a lot of rubberneckers on the southbound side.

I finally got back to the rig about 4:30 and then Jan and I headed right back up to the Kemah Chili’s for dinner. They have a great new soup, Southwest Chicken and Sausage, that I probably could eat every day.

Then heading home, we stopped off at a nearby Walgreen’s for a few things.

And that was about it. A pretty easy day.

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Thought for the Day:

"Environmentalists changed the word "jungle" to "rain forest," because no one would give them money to save a jungle."

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We Missed It . . .

and I’m sorry I didn’t alert you ahead of time. This past Saturday was Time Traveler Day.

This was the day you are suppose to run up to someone on the street and frantically ask them, “What year is it, what year is it?”. When they tell you, you say “Thank God there’s still time”, and then run off down the street.

If you have my twisted sense of humor, you’ll think this is as hilarious as I do. Jan doesn’t.

Out walking the other day, Jan and I saw this small camper who apparently travel with their own rock garden.

The rocks don’t look like they’re from anywhere local so they must carry them around with them. But they’ve gotta weigh almost as much as the camper, and with all the plants, take up most of the space. Must be tight in there.

After three days of house repairs, I took the day off today, and except for juggling some client problems on the phone, pretty much did nothing but play on the computer.

Then a little before 5 Jan and I headed up to Clear Lake to meet Chris, Linda, and Piper, and finally get to eat at Franca’s. And we got an extra surprise when Piper brought her boyfriend Casey along.

As we left we got to talk with Franca for a few minutes and reminded her that when we first started eating there, she was 7 and running around playing with our daughter Brandi, who was 5 at the time. In fact this coming Monday the 17th, it will be 34 years since we first ate there.

After a great dinner, we all checked out Piper’s new car in the parking lot. She’s really proud of it as you can tell.

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It’s a 2008 VW Eos, a sport coupe with a retractable hardtop that folds into the truck.

Leaving Franca’s Jan and I headed over to Brandi and Lowell’s to pick up our mail and get in our Landon hugs. It’s really rewarding the way his face lights up when he sees us.

Not sure yet what’s on tap for tomorrow. Just have to wait and see.

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Thought for the Day:

Remember, a job not worth doing is not worth doing well.

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All Done . . . Pretty Much . . .

Chris and I started back in on our trim replacement project about 10am this morning. And except for a somewhat balky nailgun, things went pretty quickly.

As far as what we’re doing, we making this,

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look like this.

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Chris ran a string along the trim level to give us a guide for the boards. After that it was merely a matter of holding them in place as Chris nailed them up.

This is the before:

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And this is the after:

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It took us about an hour and a half to do both ends of the house. For the second end, we didn’t use a string, but just got a good starting point and then used the 4ft long level to keep things on track.

Finishing up here, we knocked off for lunch at Hooters for hot wings. Hmmm, Good.

Back on the job, it took another 45 minutes to do the courtyard and finish up. I’ve still got some places to fill in some missing trim on a couple of other areas, and some touchup painting to fill in. But the hard work is done, and my son Chris did his usual great job helping me (or actually doing most of the work. I just held things in place.)

Leaving the house, I stopped off at a client’s to check out the new Cloud Print system I set up the other day, and so far it seems to be working fine.

BTW I started to install Cloud Print on my Kindle Fire and discovered that for some reason Google changed the name from Cloud Print to Easy Print for the Fire. But it works just fine.

On another subject, I had been looking to try a French Press system for making coffee since people say it’s the best way. And I was also interested in a Keurig or K-Cup coffee maker. That’s the system that uses the small 1 cup packages like this.

Sometimes in the evening I would like a cup of coffee, but it’s just too much work to set up the Mr. Coffee 12 cup machine for one or two cups. And we just don’t have the counter space to spare for another appliance like a Keurig.

Then last week I came across this on a TV infomercial. And it’s both a K-Cup brewer AND a French Press.

The basic model just does the K-Cups, and is $29.95. But for $10 more you get two extra adapters. One lets you use the round coffee pods that kind of look like large tea (coffee?) bags, and the other one lets you use your own loose ground coffee.

And it’s quick and simple to use. Your cold water goes in the blue container with the handle. This then goes in the microwave to heat up.

Your K-Cup/pod/loose coffee adapter fastens to the bottom, and then the clear plastic collection cup fastens over that.

When your water is heated, you pour it into the clear cylinder at the top. Then the blue container, which has an O-ring at the bottom, is inserted into the cylinder and pressed down. And your hot, fresh coffee comes out into the bottom cup. And you’re done.

It really takes longer to tell you about it than it does to just do it. Just what I was looking for.

I’ve used it a couple of times so far and it works just great. And it comes with three sample K-Cups to get you started, 1 tea and 2 different coffees.

You can get more info here – MyCoffeePress.

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Thought for the Day:

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." – George Bernard Shaw

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House Fix

Jan and I left the rig about 9:30 this morning to head up to the house for more work on our trim job. What we’ve got planned today is to get the planks painted with two coats and ready to install tomorrow. Jan came with me because later this afternoon we’re going to pick up Landon at his daycare and spend some time with him.

I was a little worried about the cold temps today and how it would affect the paint, but as it turns out, according to the can label, you can use the paint down to 35 degrees. It just takes longer to dry.

After we laid the boards out, it only took us about 30 minutes to get them all painted.

By this time it was after 11 so we all headed out for lunch. I mean it’s got to be better than watching paint dry, right?

We ended up at Berryhill Baja Grill, a chain known for their fish and shrimp tacos, and a place we haven’t eaten at for a couple of years. But it was still good as ever.

After killing some time and getting back to the house, we found the boards ready for a second coat of paint. By the time we were finished, it was still only about 1pm, but since we needed to let the paint dry completely before we did anything else, we called it a day.

Tomorrow we’ll run a level line along the siding bottom edge and nail the planks along it.

The new trim boards will be nailed right above the brick to cover up the deteriorating bottom edge of the wooden (actually T-111) siding.

We will also do the courtyard entrance area the same way, for the same reason.

Then after we get the trim installed, we’ll run a bead of caulk all along the top edge of the boards to keep water from getting down behind the boards.

Don’t know if we’ll get this all done tomorrow, but by Thursday for sure. Then I just have a a little touchup painting to do and that will wrap it up.

My son Chris headed out, and I had time for a nap before Jan and I headed over to Landon’s daycare to pick him up for the rest of the afternoon and early evening.

By the time your youngest child is a mother herself, you forget what a logistical nightmare it is to travel with a 2 year old. It’s like a cross between maneuvering with Patton’s 3rd Army and herding ducks. And the ducks are winning.

Between the car seat, stroller, diaper bag, backup diaper bag, toys, sippy cup, and the many other accoutrements necessary for the moving of a small boy from one location to another, it’s a major undertaking. But finally we were on the road and heading down to the Ryan’s in Texas City for supper.

Landon was his usual sweet self and a good eater. As Brandi told us, he’s not real big on meat, but he loves vegetables and fruit. He ate corn, carrots, green beans, mac and cheese, and even BROCCOLI! The kid loves broccoli.

After getting Landon’s food, Jan went back to get hers, and came back with a small fried chicken leg for him. She took it off her plate and put it on his. He looked down at it and calmly picked it up and put it back on her plate, and then went back to his veggies. The kid knows what he likes. Then for dessert, he had fresh pineapple and cantaloupe, along with a cookie. Like I said, a good eater.

By now it was dark so we headed up to the Dickinson Festival of Lights to take Landon through it.

And like the one in Galveston last weekend, Landon had a blast.

He talked constantly, pointing things out and naming them. It’s amazing how many words he knows.

After we got back to the car, and Jan was taking off his jacket before I put him in his car seat, he pointed back at the lights and said, “Had fun. Come back”. And we probably will.

Like I said, the kid knows what he likes.

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Thought for the Day:

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it." — Henry David Thoreau

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Printing in the Cloud . . .

Leaving Jan at the rig, I headed out about 8:30 to meet my son Chris up at Lowe’s to pick up the lumber for our trim project.

After getting our 1 x 6 x 10 Pressure-Treated boards we headed over to the house to decide how to proceed. What we want to do was install a horizontal trim board along the ends on the house, and also around the entrance way courtyard.

We decided to measure and cut the planks to fit, but leave the square end a couple of inches too long to allow us to cut it to fit as we install the boards. But before we nail them in place, I want to paint them first. Then we’ll just have to touch them up a bit later.

Our next step was to set up my 12” compound mitre saw so we could easily make the 45 degree angle bevels on the boards to make nice smooth joint between the individual boards. But our first cut showed a problem, The blade was shot and would hardly cut through one board.

My first thought was to head back over to Lowe’s and get a new blade. But on second thought, remembering that a new one is at least $50 and probably closer to $75, we decided to head over to our storeroom and pick up Chris’ saw.

While we were there we grabbed some other tools that would come in handy – a 4 foot fiberglass level and my heavy-duty air-driven nail gun. This will make it a lot easier to fasten the trim in place. But the flaw in this plan was we couldn’t find any extra nails to go with the gun, so we ended up heading back to Lowe’s anyway. But a $10 box of nails was a lot cheaper than a $75 blade.

By the time we left Lowe’s it was getting to be lunch time so we headed over to King Food which was nearby. Getting back to the house, it only took us about an hour to make all the cuts now that we had a good saw.

At this point we decided to call it a day because our next step was to paint the boards, and I hadn’t bought the paint yet. I didn’t figure we get that far today, and I planned to pick up the paint on the way back to the rig anyway.

But before picking up the paint and heading home, I stopped off at a client’s office to finish installing Google Cloud Print on one of their machines.

Cloud Print is another neat free program from Google, that once installed, allows you to print to an attached printer from any other machine, anywhere on the Internet. This will allow me to print online orders directly to their office printer instead of having to fax them over, thus saving me a lot of time.

Installation on the printer end is very simple. Just install the Google Chrome browser. It does not have to replace your normal browser, i.e. Internet Explorer, FireFox, etc., It doesn’t even have to be running. It just has to be on the machine. Then start Chrome, go to the Settings, and then the Advanced Settings, scroll down, and turn on Cloud Print. The only other thing you’ll need is a Google Gmail account. If you don’t have one, you can create one from here. And like Google Chrome, you never have to use the Gmail account again if you don’t want to.

Now if you want to be able to print from your Android phone, just download the Android Cloud Print app from the App Store (there’s also one for the iPhone too). The app will lead you thought the setup using the login name and password of your Gmail account, and then you’re ready to go.

You can print anything from your phone that has a Share command, or you can choose a file from within the Cloud Print app.

As far as the PC, I’m using a free program called Paperless Printer. Once you install it and give it your Gmail info, Paperless Printer will now appear as a printer selection with your normal Print command. Just select Paperless Printer, click the Print button, and your document or picture is sent to the remote printer, anywhere on the Internet.

It’s magic!

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Thought for the Day:

"There is nothing so powerful as truth, — and often nothing so strange." – Daniel Webster

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Sunflowers and Ferris Wheels . . .

Today was a “Get Up and Head Out Early” morning, but it was worth it. We got more Landon time.

We left the rig a little before 8am to meet Lowell, Brandi, and Landon at The Sunflower Café down in Galveston.

Landon really loves the fresh fruit they have here, and was scavenging off everyone’s plate.

Jan and I are really proud of the great job Brandi and Lowell are doing raising Landon. He’s always so good when we’re out with him, even with other screaming kids seated around him.

After a great breakfast at The Sunflower Café (we’ll definitely go back) we got our goodbye hugs from everyone and all headed out. But before we went home, Jan and I decided to drive along the Seawall to check out any new additions to the area.

One place we were interested in checking out was the new Galveston Island Pleasure Pier. Basically it’s a amusement park/restaurant complex built on an 1100 foot pier out in the Gulf of Mexico.

Originally built as a recreation area by the military during WWII, it was turned over to the city after the war and called the Pleasure Pier.

Up until 1961, it was a well-known family entertainment destination on the Gulf of Mexico. Top dance bands played the enormous ballroom, while an open air movie theater, concessions,  rides, and even an aquarium added to the fun. But Hurricane Carla damaged it beyond repair in 1961.

Then in 1965 the Flagship Hotel opened in its place.

Earning a place in history as the only hotel in North America built entirely over the water, it lasted until 2008 when it was severely damaged by Hurricane Ike.

Then in May 2012, a new Pleasure Pier opened. Developed by Tilman Fertitta, CEO and owner of Landry’s, a corporation that owns and operates over 35 restaurant chains, it’s now a prime tourist attraction in Galveston.

With a 100 foot high Ferris Wheel, and a 1250

foot long roller coaster that features a 100 foot high vertical climb, a 100 foot high over-vertical drop, and 4 full inversions, it’s a real thrill.

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But the one I’m looking forward to riding is the 230 foot high Texas Star Flyer, the tallest swing ride in Texas. Each spoke holds two open chairs that let you seei in all directions as you turn.

I can’t wait.

It finally looks like our winter weather is finally coming in. Today’s high was 80, and tonight’s low is supposed to be 50. And tomorrow’s high is supposed to be 50 too. And tomorrow night’s low is going to be 35. Nice.

For most of the last couple of weeks, the low at night has been in the high 60’s, so this will be a nice change.

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Thought of the Day:

Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

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