Another Week Gone By Too Fast

Sunday morning, and trying to play catch-up. Just got some of the pictures I took at our last trip to Cox Arboretum ready on FLICKR if you want to click here and check them out. Click on the photo here to enlarge it, it's one of my favorites.

First, I would like to express my condolences to Jim Kloss at Whole Wheat Radio on the recent loss of his mother. We are here for you Jim, and hope you are doing well during this difficult time.

We met with my dad, Lori & Rick and Patty & Charles at Marion's Pizza in Englewood Friday night for dinner. If you have never had a Marion's Pizza, you don't know what you're missing. Makes me hungry for one right now just thinking of it.

Saturday was spent running errands and getting things done that can only be accomplished on the week-end. I'm going to spend part of the day today getting the yard mowed and helping Dana get some plants in the ground that we bought last week-end and haven't been able to plant due to all the rain we have had.

I'm sitting here looking at a stack of books that I have to read and just haven't had the time. I need a 30 hour day!

Pretty Much Says It All...

OpenOffice 3 Beta New

Got this today from the good people at OpenOffice.org. If you haven't switched to OpenOffice, you need to try this totally free Offfice Suite. Stop paying the Bill! I switched to OpenOffice several years ago and love it. Mac users, this version promises to work with Aqua, so I'm not sure if this is the NeoOffice version or not. Also, if you can afford to send a few bucks to support this organization, please do. It's a rock solid package.

The OpenOffice.org Community is pleased to announce that the public beta
release of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is now available. This beta release is
made available to allow a broad user base to test and evaluate the next
major version of OpenOffice.org, but is not recommended for production
use at this stage.

If you are a regular user of OpenOffice.org, here's a great opportunity
to help us make the next release the best ever.


What's new in OpenOffice.org 3.0?

The most immediately visible change to OpenOffice.org 3.0 is the new
"Start Centre", new fresh-looking icons, and a new zoom control in the
status bar. A closer look shows that 3.0 has a myriad of new features.
Notable Calc improvements include a new solver component; support for
spreadsheet collaboration through workbook sharing; and an increase to
1024 columns per sheet. Writer has an improved notes feature and
displays of multiple pages while editing. There are numerous Chart
enhancements, and an improved crop feature in Draw and Impress.

Behind the scenes, OpenOffice.org 3.0 will support the upcoming
OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 standard, and is capable of opening files
created with MS-Office 2007 or MS-Office 2008 for Mac OS X (.docx,
.xlsx, .pptx, etc.). This is in addition to read and write support for
the MS-Office binary file formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt, etc.).

OpenOffice.org 3.0 will be the first version to run on Mac OS X without
X11, with the look and feel of any other Aqua application. It introduces
partial VBA support to this platform. In addition, OpenOffice.org 3.0
integrates well with the Mac OS X accessibility APIs, and thus offers
better accessibility support than many other Mac OS X applications.

A more detailed guide to the features can be found at
http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/featurelistbeta.html

Beta Availability

OpenOffice.org 3 beta is immediately available in US English for
MS-Windows, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and OpenSolaris platforms from
http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta. This page also contains details
of where to find localized builds and language packs as they become
available. For more details, please consult the appropriate native
language project - see http://projects.openoffice.org/native-lang.html


Help us gathering bugs in May!

In order to help us release OpenOffice.org 3.0 on schedule in September,
users of the beta release are encouraged to report any bugs, issues or
errors at http://qa.openoffice.org.

If you would like to test just the new features, there is a list of test
cases by component at
http://qa.openoffice.org/ooQAReloaded/TestcaseSpecifications/OpenOffice.org_3.0

If you are nervous about reporting bugs through the formal bug reporting
system, you can simply email details to the user support mailing lists
http://www.openoffice.org/mail_list.html

The developers look forward to receiving your feedback on this beta
release of OpenOffice.org!

"2008 - the year of 3"

Judas Priest Shreds

Man, these guys ROCK! I think they were playing in Guitar Center the last time we were in there.

Eric Clapton - An Off Night

Just goes to show you that even Eric Clapton can have an off night. Oh well, maybe there's hope for my career as a guitarist after all.

I Thought It Was More Than This

68%How Addicted to Apple Are You?
I took this online quiz and thought I was seriously more addicted to Apple Computer products than I thought. I guess I would have tested higher if I owned the iPhone instead of the iPod touch.

Here's a photo with one of Kyles latest Lego creations. I used to build cars and trucks, he builds inter-stellar cruising ships (click to enlarge).

Spring Is Finally Here

Dana and I went to Cox Arboretum Saturday to see what was growing and to check on the tree they had planted in memory of her mother (it's getting ready to bloom, we will check next week and add some photos) and I couldn't believe how much fun I had just wandering around there. It was overcast and raining on and off, so not a lot of people there. I have added photos to my FLICKR site if you want to see the rest of them (click the photo to enlarge).

Not a lot going on. We did get our income tax refunds today, which is amazing since we just filed not even two weeks ago. Electronic filing is the way to go people, let me tell you.

In a very short time, I will turn 42 years old and I'm feeling it. I tell Dana every night that I'm going to get on the tread mill. Well, tonight is the night. Going to get this sorry excuse for a body back into shape while I still can.

Oh, and to Aunt Patty & Uncle Charles in PA who always check my BLOG, Hello, and I hope you are doing well!

THE 1959 BURST - A Les Paul documentary

Watch this video and maybe it will help you understand my unhealthy obsession with Les Paul guitars. Oh to be rich enough to buy one of these masterpieces.

Whole Wheat Support

Playing with Photoshop tonight and thought you might enjoy this (click to enlarge).

Adobe Photshop Elements 6

Got the new Photoshop Elements 6 for my Mac this week-end and can't believe all the changes they have added since the older version (3) that I was using on my PC. I only got to work with it for a little while today, but it's a really nice package. I can't figure out what took Adobe so long to make a new version for the newer Intel based Macs, but I'm glad it finally arrived.

A while back Dana renewed my subscription to Wired magazine, which I really enjoy reading. However, in the April edition there is a story titled Geek Brawl about two gear review BLOGS, Gizmodo & Engadget that after reading, I could hardly wait to get online and check them out. Well, the story was much more interesting than the sites. Sure, they both have all kinds of cool gear, but it's kind of all over the place on both sites. Good writing, but boring sites. My opinion, but it's the only one that counts here.

Enjoy the rest of your week-end!

Under The Weather

Hello to everyone wondering where the heck I have been the past few days. I've been sick, fighting a head cold, sore throat, congestion, etc. In other words, I feel like crap.

Dana, Kyle & the dogs have been taking good care of me. My dad drove me to a doctors appointment this morning which was a blessing. I don't think I could have made it there on my own.

More to come once I'm feeling better!

Easter Sunday

Happy Easter to everyone in cyberspace!

We had a typical Sunday actually. Dana let me sleep in and kept the dogs at bay so I could. I have the best wife in the world!

We went shopping yesterday trying to do our part to keep the local economy going. We went to Dana's favorite, a furniture store (Drexel Heritage) and one of my favorites, Office Depot. I brought a new Printer/Scanner/Fax machine that had been marked down $20.00 from two weeks ago. It's a Lexmark X5495. Hooked up to my Mac with no problems at all (doesn't everything just work better on a Mac?) and within a few minutes I was scanning a test photo.

The photo I scanned was Kyle with Dr. Creep, a local TV celebrity that hosted Shock Theater for many, many years. Some of my fondest memories of childhood were watching scary movies on local channel 22. Dr. Creep was great, and I'm glad Kyle met him.

Nothing else to report today so enjoy the rest of your Easter Sunday!

I'm Famous!

For the 40 or so people that actually listen to Whole Wheat Radio on a regular basis, I was mentioned in Jimbob's Audio Magazine today as well as having some of my photos posted on his BLOG. I'm Buckwheat by the way to those of you that have chatted with me.

My real estate sales should pick up now! The phone will start ringing any second now with new clients needing my services just by the mere mention of my name on WWR.

Hmmm, phone still not ringing. Still not. There, no, that was the dryer. Still not. Ah, no, that was Holly farting.

Oh well, what the hell. I'm still famous.

What a life

Holly
Originally uploaded by David A. Davison

Here's a quick snap I couldn't resist while I sit here working at my computer. A dogs love is unconditional!

Another Week-End Gone

Where the heck does the time go? Seems like I'm just going to bed on Friday night and the week-end is already gone. Just not enough hours in the day to get everything done that I want to and spend time with people I want to.

I did get a new headset/mic combo on Saturday though. Kinda dorky but I like it. Great sound and voice recording as well.

And now for something completely different - SNOW!

We survived a flooded basement and now the biggest snow storm of the year. Actually, it was kind of fun. Winston loves to play in the snow but Holly doesn't think too much of it. I had stocked up on groceries early Friday morning so we had plenty of food. Kind of a fun way to spend a week-end camped out in the living room. We watched the first 4 episodes of "Hero's" on DVD and porked out on all kinds of goodies.

Go to my FLICKR Photos to see more of our snow pictures.

Flood Update

Update on our version of Katrina, we are getting things back together and making some progress. The sump pump is working fine (all of our snow is melting and creating more water) and the battery back up has been fully charged. The electronics are drying out and I got my server to come back up this evening. All the water seems to be cleaned up and fans have dried out most everything.

Also, Holly is doing well after her surgery. She's playing with Winston a little, although she is still sleeping most of the time.

Gotta run!

FLOOD!

Yesterday was a day I NEVER want to re-live.

It started out with taking Holly to the vet for her scheduled spaying which we were not looking forward to. She is a spoiled little princess, and we knew it would be a difficult few days after her surgery. The good news is that she came through it fine, is eating a little, and mostly sleeping.

About 4:00 Dana came in the bedroom where I napping to tell me that the basement was flooded. I thought, this can't be, we have a battery back-up sump pump, must just be a trickle coming in. Well, the trickle was about 4-5 inches of water standing in the family room, my office, Danas office area, the storage room, and Kyle's train room.

The main sump pump float had gotten stuck and was not running, the battery back up alarm didn't go off like it should, and had worn itself down trying unsuccessfully to handle the large volume of water coming in. My dad came over with his shop vac to help and got the pump running again. So, it was dueling shop vacs to try and clean up the mess.

So far, we have 3 computer systems down, television, game cube, guitar amplifier, de-humidifier and various other electronic devices to see if they work once they dry out.

AARRGGHH!! At least no one was hurt and we got power turned off so we could work with the help of extension cords coming down the stairs.

If anyone else experienced problems with yesterdays flooding, I feel for you.

Dana's Violets

Dana wanted me to post these photos of her new miniature Violets that she ordered online, and I always do what she asks me to do. Click on any photo to enlarge.

No Blogging in January is over!

After my self imposed exile from blogging and most online activities for the month of January I'm glad to be back. I wanted to focus on some things that needed to be done around the house as well as in my career. All I can say is that it's good to be back!

One thing that I did do was finally sign up as a user on Whole Wheat Radio last week. WholeWheatRadio.org is an internet only station run out of Talkeenta, Alaska by former Buckey Jim Kloss and Esther Golton. I have been checking it out for the past few months, and I have to tell you, it's easy to get sucked in and spend entirely too much time on the site. It's not just an internet radio station, it's an entire community of people that I have come to make friends with while listening to some great music. The site is a WIKI and quite user friendly once you join. I especially enjoy the hundreds of photos they have posted. Go there and check it out. I'm Buckwheat in the Wheathead community if you see me in a chat room and want to say hello. (check out photos of Jim & the Wheat Palace in Talkeenta)

My social networking site for real estate professionals, RealtorTech, has turned out to be one giant goose egg. No one is using it, most of the invites to join went unanswered, so I'm shutting it down this week-end to focus on something different, although I have no idea what at this point. I can say that I am convinced there is no way to drag Realtors in this market into the 21st Century and away from their fax machines to explore some really cool technologies that will make their lives and businesses easier to manage. Too sad, but I'm not one to continually beat my head against a wall.

Enough for now. I'll post some photos soon here and my FLICKR site soon.