I often forget to look at and/or update at livejournal. I apologize.

Mystic Sands of Silicon Hills (my beautiful Golden Retriever of 10.5 years) AKA Sandy, passed very quickly to another world on Tuesday, July 28.

I know that there are some friends on here that do not subscribe to my updates via twitter and/or facebook. Those are the places that I've kept the most up-to-date information in the past several months. I'll be working on updates here more often.

Both Ghost (my other sweet Golden) and I are missing Sandy. She went very quickly and painlessly as far as we can tell. I do have a lengthy-synopsis that I'm writing about Sandy's last few months that will detail other potential-ideas. It will most-likely be posted here on LJ, but I'll be sure to 'cut' for everyone who is not-interested and/or a bit squeamish about details.

The pic used here is "cute young puppy dog' taken of Sandy when she first arrived to my home. Rest in peace, sweet puppy, best-friend, and love of my life!

-Brent

I'm a bit nervous at the moment. I've never been to "THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FREAKIN' PLANET"!!! And, while the plane trips will be much longer than I've ever experienced, I'm thankful I'm not taking the route suggested by Google Earth!

Let's see...I can either go via my flight plans with total duration: 27hr 0min, Total miles: 10864 miles

Or, what Google Earth suggests (which at least has me driving automobiles while on land) including kayaking from Seattle to Hawai'i, then Hawai'i to Japan, and finally Japan to Darwin, Northern Territory. Total duration is 55 days, 22 hours, with mileage of 15,782 (and, I don't think they included any sleep time in that, either!)

I get nervous about this trip from time to time. The nerves keep asking me if I'm going to be ready in time, have packed all the right things, and haven't forgotten anything. Then, a total 180 takes place as I check through my checklists and see how far I've prepared, and I get all soothed into my excitement of what I'll experience on the trip, again!

An email from Ireland to all of their brethren in the States...a point to ponder despite your political affiliation:

'We, in Ireland, can't figure out why you people are even bothering to hold an election in the United States.

On one side, you had a pants wearing female lawyer, married to another lawyer who can't seem to keep his pants on, who just lost a long and heated primary against a lawyer, who goes to the wrong church, who is married to yet another lawyer, who doesn't even like the country her husband wants to run!

Now...On the other side, you have a nice old war hero whose name starts with the appropriate 'Mc' terminology, married to a good looking younger woman who owns a beer distributorship!!

What in God's name are ya lads thinkin over in the colonies!'

My parents and brothers and I all sat through Alicia back in the 80's. Though our area wasn't hit hard then, we had ten days without electricity, and it's friggin' HOT and HUMID in Houston this time of year.

So, my parents left home on Thursday morning, mainly to not have to deal with sitting in the house in the dark during the storm, and they have a house at Canyon Lake that has good AC and the power wasn't expected to go out up there! They packed all the frozen and refrigerated goods from Houston (there's nothing like getting back to a house without power that has all of your venison and fish fully thawed and stinking to high-heaven!)

We heard from my brother Kelly who sat through the storm with his wife and son in SW Houston. He drove over to the North Shore/Woodforest area to check on the 'rents house. Had to drive across many downed power lines, but found the house in good shape. Looks like the eye might have visited the house (though Alicia's eye didn't come near as close.) He'll be clearing up the debris in the yard for them (if you leave the debris sitting around, you're obviously not home and subject to looting!) One pecan tree in the back yard will have to be felled (it is slightly uprooted, which is really amazing considering the main root and root ball that pecan trees grow!)

Also heard from my second-cousin Dan in Katy. He only had his power out for about 10-12 hours, total. Others in the area still have their power out, so we surmise he might be on the same lines going to the local hospital and/or gas pumping stations.

I feel really bad for the people of Galveston. The one landmark that I really hope is in good shape is the sailing ship Elissa; hopefully, the all volunteer group was able to move her to a safe harbor, or she was able to ride out the massive storm surge, somehow!

As I left Canyon Lake, there was a brush fire burning in the property adjacent to my parents' property. The new owner has been clearing brush and cedars and making large burn piles. The bulldozers piled dirt on top of the smoldering piles, but one of them was apparently not covered quite good enough. We called out the local fire dept and had them extinguish the newly lit flames and smoldering coals before it became too much to handle (it had lit under a grove of live-oaks, but with the lack of rain in the area, the smallest wind could have lit that into a bad situation!)

I'm taking it slow. But, I can't, now, count just how many times I've been asked by this person or that about this site, that site, and others. Who has time for them all? So, I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook (newest), Twitter, LiveJournal, and probably a couple of others. I've got IM accounts with AIM, Yahoo, and ICQ (and maybe more of those.) And, I can't and don't ever feel like giving up one screen window for EFNet IRC.

Yes, there's still more to join. I "might" signup with myspace... Every time I join one, I find more people that I know. Is it time to develop the all-encompassing program that will help you import/export between all of them? Or, has that one already been written and I'm just not aware of it, yet?

I've got at least six different email addresses that are publicly-known and get checked on a regular basis (many of them all forward into one account for convenience, but so far, I've kept separate: gmail, work, and "other".)

And, for everyone who has been around the 'Net long enough, do you remember how promising sixdegrees.com looked and was going to be, only to turn into a total flop? After that, I thought networking websites would just come and go....but NOOOoooooo!!!! There seem to be plenty of them that are here to stay!

I'll enjoy each and every comment that anyone has to offer...

This time, it was the blower fan on the outside unit. The compressor and fan would be running, then after a while, the fan finally shut down. Compressor would run until it hit a thermal cutoff. Had to kick-start the fan (you know, give it a little push-start) and finally it would go again, but only for a while. Played that dance between 2 and 4am, and called in the repair this morning. AC guy just left, new fan motor installed, and it's 83F and cooling inside right now.

It is a sad thing to hear MTV is remaking Rocky Horror Picture Show. Freakin' leave classics alone!!!!
http://stoptheremake.com/

For those who were curious, and docc who had commented, it was just the capacitor, as I had suspected.

About four years ago, the capacitor on the compressor unit had actually blown up (there was gel everywhere!)

This time, the power was on to the compressor unit, but it had an audible "buzz". So, switching to fan-on and AC-off, getting a couple of loaner fans, and calling up not only the property-manager's office, but also in the morning declaring an emergency and calling the "not-so-handy" handyman John, then calling the landlord's cell phone number (his message said he was out of the country and returning Aug 2) and finally calling to find out that the lady who actually owns the house has changed her number...

1- Message left late at night. Figured nothing could be done until morning anyway.
2- Lookup the last time I called the AC guys directly...can't find their number.
3- find some loaner fans, sleep on the couch with those fans active as well as the ceiling fan on full.
4- call John and leave a message...it's an emergency at this point considering 100+F degree high temps for the foreseeable future!
5- 1/2 hour later, called the landlord's cell, just to get instant voicemail that he's out of the country. No message left.
6- Call the lady who owns the house...only to get a voicemail confirming that it is not her!
7- Call John again...he answered! Ok, so, let me work with the AC guys since I am probably not going to be home (I have a test at work) and will need to coordinate access to the house with trusted neighbors who know how to handle my pets. "OK".
8- Call the AC guys...they call me back asking stupid questions of "outside unit or inside unit?" Hello? I told you it was the freakin' compressor in the back yard that has a 'buzz' when power is available to it!
9- I'm at lunch with my manager/team-lead, our Senior Systems Engineer, and the other John who was hired with me (and, with whom I've worked before!)
10- I get a call from AC dude....he's almost to my house. I call my neighbors to let them know. All is cool.
11- I leave lunch to drive home (less than 1/4 mile) and find the AC dude has broken my hose repair and tried to string a hose of 35 foot length to a needed 45 foot length! That shit just won't work...hello Math!?!?! He broke off the home-depot replacement male end of the hose.
12- I got back la casa and introduced him to the hose on a reel that is also about 35 feet in length, but it was also about 15 feet from the compressor!!!

In the end, he replaced the GE Capacitor model 97F9848 which I did a quick search upon and found that I could have one siting here as spare for about $35 at most!

$35 investment, remembering where in the heck you stored that shit, 5 minutes replacing the shit....oh, and it's friggin August in Texas....simply priceless!!!

I hope the AC dudes charged the landlord like about $800 for the shit. I've lived here about 9.5 years and still pay the same rent, met the landlord only once, met the property owner when she asked me about colors with which to paint the house, and my rent payment is on auto-pay, so it's always on time!!!! Could you ask for a better tenant?

It's August. You live in Texas. There's a serious drought and high temps hitting above 100 for the foreseeable future. You get home from work at 11:30pm, walk inside, and find that the temp is 82F and climbing. The compressor for the air conditioning is out. Oh, and I have a serious exam at work tomorrow for potential promotion/raise.

Being a truck owner, I haul all kinds of stuff around for friends (no, not free all the time...I do have a life, and I'm not going to support you by providing transport and gas all the time!)

Last weekend, though, was a really really fun haul! Paul wanted to enter the demolition derby. He bought a car from Randall. Stripped it down, poured 180lbs of concrete into the driver's side door, and asked me to haul it up to Killeen. They paid the gas, and for my pit pass.

The races beforehand were fun. 1/4 mile dirt track, one of the top 15 tracks, apparently. So, in the first round of derby, the car wouldn't start (blew the radiator hose right at the beginning!) During the 10-minute repair period, we got it going again, and here's the results...

(the black 1990 crown vic, and though you probably can't see it all that well, the hood is painted with a picture of Randall, and the number of the car is, of course, 1337.