Darby Canyon

Hi everyone, or anyone anyway.
I haven't posted for a while cause Carol's been doing a fine jobe, but yesterday she stayed back nursing a cold while the rest of us drove / hiked up Darby Canyon.
We drove north toward driggs, idaho, and mark spotted this turnoff. 4 miles later the pavement ended. 5 more miles on a good gravel road to the turn around at the end of the road. From there we hilked up the canyon along the stream. After awhile everything got narrower and steeper and we were climbing rather than walking. Eventually we ran out of room and couldn't get any higher.

Here's some pictures of Darby Canyon.

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Riverview RV

This morning it was time to pack it up and move on up the road. After 3 nights and 2 days, it was time to head north. For those of you who haven't "camped" in a class A mortorhome, the drill goes like this:
Clean everything, put everything away, lock everything down so iy won't fly about the bus if I should happen to hit a bump.
Dump. Pull the drain valves for the "black" and "Gray" tanks.
Stow the "patio." Put away the lawn chairs and side table, sweep off and fold up the 9x12 mats, and stow them in "the basement"
Stow the awning. (loosen the side rails, hold the tube while flipping the release lever, gently feed in the lanyard while the tune and awning roll up. Secure the anti-blowout clips and put away the stick.)
Disconnect. Shut the vlaves. Disconnect the sewage hoase, wind it up, and stow it. Disconnect the fresh water hose and filter, wind it up, stop it somewhere else (we don't stow our water hose and our sewer hose in the same basement compartment!) disconnect roll up and stow the cable TV cable and electrical cord.
Finally, start the engine, bring in the slide, and dump the jacks.
Pull her out, and bring the jeep around for "mating"
Hook up the towbar,  safety cables, electrical cord, and breakaway cable.
Put the transfer case in neutral, turn on the braking system, turn off the brake light switch.

and finally do a full walk around, make sure nothing is hanging or falling off, everything is stowed, check the jeeps lights, pull the breakaway and make sure the compressor runs. check the air pressure in all 6 motorhome tires, 115 psi, end of discussion. Check em EVERY time. Blowouts are cuased by low pressure and blowouts suck. Oh yea, blowouts are someimes caused by curbs, but I'm getting better at that.

So, we motor on north on I25, an easy 120 mile run today. Did have to stop for gas, only needed a hundred and seventy dollars worth.

And here we are at Riverview RV. Site 40, end of the riverside row. This place is fantastic. Many RV parks pack em in so tight you can't breath. Many have next to no green, just gravel. This place has big sites. Grass, trees, nice. Very very nice. Here's some pics:

Riverview rv even had a dog excercise area, where we could let him loose and play some. Here's Riley platyingwith his new friend

And finally, business must be taken care of. This speaks for itself.

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Last morning in Colorado springs

After a restless night with a sick puppy, we'll be breaking camp and rolling north in a few hours for the next phase of ""Our Great Adventure 2010"

Read about sick puppy's here: http://firstgens.com/forum/22/1035.html?start=30

After five days of Carol having blog nightmares, I'm gonna put some pics up here and on firstgens, what's a vacation saga without pics?

The Turd, hooked up and ready to roll on out of here.

Night one's campsite, Lake Anita State Park in western Iowa.

Garden of the Gods Campground in Colorado Springs. Commercial campground, packed us in kinda tight, but a nice facity, good water, even cable TV.

We saw this lil fella yesterday, while cruising out toward the gold rush town of cripple creek. We stopped at a pullout along the road and he came right up to the car, begging for handouts. he showed no fear, and hung around for quite a while. I'd call this a learned behavior for sure.

Main Street Cripple Creek Colorado. This was a huge part of the gold rush days, old abandoned mines all around the town. Kinda sad today, mostly seedy lil casinos and old folks killing what time they have left feeding one armed bandits.

spotted this herd of deer on a ridge, siloetted by the setting sun, on the way back from cripple creek.

Same spot, facing the other direction.

Just a cool lil shot while hiking in the woods.

A small waterfall along the same trail.

Garden of the Gods State Park

It was hotter than hades the day we went into Garden of the Gods. Here's Riley, he found some shade and decided he was gonna take it easy for a while.

So now you're all caught up to date. It's Tuesday morning, we're gonna get some pancakes and sausage going for breakfast, get showered and dressed, clean up the campsite and the bus, and break camp and roll north. I'll check in with you'all later!

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Colorado Springs!

Here it is the third day of our great adventure 2010, and we're settling down inside the bus at 9:30 pm local after a very busy day.

Let's see... last night we w ere on the shore os Lake Ogallala, somewhere west of north butt nebraska. Now nebraska is interesting... not. flat as a board and road straight as an arrow, endlessly. 460 miles from one end to the other. The east side, omaha / lincoln, where the highway follows the river, is a lil interesting. West of where we stayed the night the land dries out, farms give way to grass and sage, and it looks more western.
In between, it is an endless flat wasteland of corn on the left beans on the right.

So we got up this morning, made blueberry muffins for breakfast, showered in a nice facility provided by the state of nebraska, and broke camp early and hit t he road. A lil delay when I decided to bring the air pressure up in the bus. I'd been running a hundred pounds looking for a better ride, but the steering had not been nice to me, wandering all over and very slow to respond to corrections. So we stopped at a truckstop and brought all six up to max, 120 psi, actually i went to 125 since the tires were warm.

By 10 am we were in colorado on I76, and on the outskirts of denver by 1. We tried to find something called red rock ampatheature to stop for lunch, but between Carol's map reading skills and "bitchin betty's" not showing me every interstate (doncha think at "the right" zoom, if it showed some it swhould show them all?) well, we failed... ended up stopping for lunch in some big office complex parking lot (empty on a saturday) and picknicking in a shady spot on the shore of the retention pond.

Was great to finally see the rocky mountains again. As I said at the beginning of this blog, that's why we're here, cause I'm sick to death of the flatlands. Heading south on I25, we had a couple steep climbs, and drove through a bitchin thunderstorm that we watched come down out of the mountains.

Finally around 4 we hit colorado springs, and found "Garden of the Gods" campground. This is a commercial facility on colorado ave at maybe 36th or so? very close to the state park of the same name. So we're packed in here like sardines, but the facilities are nice, the place seems quiet enough, and of course you can't beat the location.

After a great dinner of steak fajitas cooked outside, we went and found red rock canyon open space, a fairly new huge park / hiking place that turned out to be right across the street. We hiked the canyons for a mile and a half or so, and riley got some much needed excersize. And now it's time to give the pup one last walk before bed, and find someplace to get rid of our garbage bag. g'night all.
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nebraska

see my post on firstgens.com, as my connection sucks to badly to go thru another post/.
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Today is the day, The Great Rolling turd will roll!

Riley let us sleep in today, to a little after six am can ya believe it? I went back to bed after taking him out, and me and the missus pretended to sleep for another hour. It's still a max humidity steambath outside, rained during the night but that did not kill the humidity.

Shower, breakfast, load a few other items, hook up the jeep and we're ready to roll.

I'm gonna go get some blueberry muffins in the oven and head up to the shower.
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24 hours!

It's wednesday mornig, and in 24 hours we'll be saddling up and hitting the road.
Got lots of packing done yesterday, mine and carol's clothes, and most of the rest of the food.

If I go to work early, do I get to leave early?
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3 more daze...

spent this morning washing and waxing the bus, gawd that thing is big. Used the spray and wipe quik wax for most of it, but the front clip got mcguires paste wax, dayum that was a job.
Then we went to CostCo for some meat. Scored some good steaks, some lunchmeat, and 3 rack of fabulous baby back ribs for just a schosh over 10 bucks a peice! Love Costco meat.
also cleaned and checked out our bicycles, so they are ready to go.

Left to do:
Load clothes
fishing stuff.
rest of the food.
toolkit.
one more shopiing trip.

I'm ready, let's just do it all ready.
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five days from now

I'll be relaxing under my awning, in my camping world recliner, sipping a cold margarita on the shore of Lake Anita in Western Iowa, our first day of traveling will be at an end.

finished getting the jeep ready. tow lighting is all set. Tow bar, emergency cables. Aux braking system with breakaway finished today. Washed her and waxed her.

tomorrow the bus comes home. The bus stays in the driveway now until we leave.

Almost time.
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Wow, less than a week?

guess I skipped a few days? SIX days now until we leave. Today, a Friday workday, a long weekend, and 2 workdays next week, then we's rolling west.
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9 more days

Today I loaded up the truck and drove to Indy.
Tomorrow I install a system at Adidas, they print every sports T shirt in the country here!
This is my last big scheduled "work" before our holiday.
Once it is done, it is going to be very hard to stay focused on work.

while I'm on the road, I need to find new wiper blades for "the bus"
Not much luck so far.
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Colorado anyone?

It's finally time to go see Colorado!! Hopefully that link will hook us up with my wife's official colorado blog, and I'll ass my 2 cents here in my own special(ed) way.

Anyway, I think she said we leave in 10 days. Come on along with us!
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Saturday again??

Sorry for my , uh... 3 or 4 fans... been a whole week. Maybe you should just read me on facebook or firstgens.com?

So Thursday I had a road trip to indianapolis, and somehow I brought home a PUPPY!!
Riley is a Norwegian Elkhound, and he is 8 weeks old. Here's some pictures:

So far so good, puppy is housetraining quickly. Elkhounds are very very smart, friendly, and mostly well behaved dogs. Maybe someday they will get the recognition and popularity they deserve.

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is it gonna rain?

Happy weekend everyone and welcome to Saturday! Wonder what I'm gonna do today? It's looking kinda cloudy and soggy outside, but it's 47 degrees so it not all bad.

Guess what? We brought the bus home last night. Hopefully I'll get started on some spring maintenance as camping season is approaching. For some odd reason, the backup camera display won't powerup, so that will be on my list. Service the gennerator. I wanna get some liquid roof to recoat the rubber roof, it looks like crap. oil changes and stuff, and I want to sound deaden around the engine better, maybe the genny compartment too. Carol's gonna be working all day, so I can get into all the trouble I want to!

I think Mark and Sandra are home from Disney, I'll have to bug them for some pictures.
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Spring has SPRUNG!!!

Got to 65 degrees on the ole thermometer today! Bright and sunny, too. Spring is in the air no doubt.

So, I dodged out of work early again, did a lil more yardwork, and fired up the Camaro and went to get Brian after school. she was a lil rough after her long winters sleep, but smoothed right out after a bit of a warmup and a brief 2 gear blast.

We had burgers on the grille, and tonight I'm typing this from my back porch. Life is good.
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Another week half over, almost.

Good morning and happy wednesday to all!!!

I've officially declared it springtime in Chicagoland!!
It's been warming up gradually, near 60 yesterday, 47 right now.
It's been raining, almost every day, washing that icky salt down the drain, cleaning winters crud off my world.
Pretty soon, I'll be able to take my Camaro out to play!

But until then, I've been d riving my Corvette, just cause I can.

Carol's been busy at work this week, so I've been getting Brian from school and being home at 3pm. Used the opportunity to get started on the spring yardwork, getting the flower beds raked out, and spreading some weed preventer and fertilizer. with the warmer weather and rain, things are just popping up all over.

Working on the "nuts and bolts" of making my new website a business too. Going to incorporate as an LLC in Montana, they have no taxes and no residnecy requirement. Just shopping for a Montana Resident to be our "registered Agent" and I'll file the paperwork. Then I need to talk to a bank, need a checking account and a credit card.

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Filets r us!!!

Gotta give Shannon credit for the idea at least. Yesterday at Lynn's Big FIFTY party, Shannon invited her familty over so I could grille filet mignon for them!
Well, they didn't show, but the filet's did. Bought 4 steaks at Jewel, a pound and a half of meat, two inches thick, tender and juicy even before we cooked em!

We tried something different today, and I gotta say we did good. First, I lovingly rubbed our beef with olive oil. Once the beef was thoroughly coated, I sprinkled it liberally with Montreol Steak seasoning, and rubbed that in too.

Meanwhile, Carol was heating some oil in a fry pan. When ready, she seared all sides of those steaks to lock in the flavor and juices. Lots of sides, at 2 inches thick, they were almost mini-roasts. Brian calls out from upstairs "what smells so good in here?"

Then I put em out on a hot BBQ, and cooked em fast, just a few minutes per side.

We had baked pototoes, and baked asparagus. We do the asparagus by putting it in a ziplock bag and tossing it with some olive to coat, then spread it in a cookie sheet and sprinkle with sea salt. 10 minutes in a 400 oven for the best asparagus you've ever had.

So, Shannon, Sarah, and Kayla, along with those fmaily members who don't facebook, you missed quite a meal, but thanks for the idea!
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recovering, or sumptin.

I'm still trying to get over 2100 miles in the silverado, not to mention several days worth of "bitchin Betty pot luck mexican food"

That's when you ask the gps (bitchin betty) for the nearest mexican resurant, and eat there.
End result, so far... vast quantities of noxious fumes. Still.
And I woke up with a tummy ache last night, paced the floor for half an hour around 4 am...

And then this morning my back gave out! Hasn't done that in years. So tonight I'm heavily medicated and on my second margarita, and not feeling too bad.

I think it's time for a new truck.

I did talk to the head of IT at the New Orleans newspaper today, we hit it off pretty well, and I'm hoping to swing by the big easy after concluding my vacation... cough cough... business in p-cola!

Adidas in cedar rapids sent in a 5k po today, and I talked to the guy in charge in their Indy plant, both a direct result of my road trip.
Also talking to papers in columbia SC, and longview, WA. Seems the answer is to expand my horizons!
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long road trip!

And I'm back. 4 days 3 nights. 2090 miles.
visited 6 customers. Cemented 3 regular accounts.
one good cop story.

Enjoyed "bitchin Betty's mexican food roulette"
That's when you ask your gps to find ya some mexican, and go where it tells ya.
Tonights was pretty good. Last nights was not.
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Road Trip!!!

Gearing up for a working road trip. Wish I could bring the camaro, but need to haul stuff. Wish I could use the motorhome, but my first 2 clients are picking up the hotel rooms. Oh well, it's not quite camaro or motorhome season in north freeking dakota anyway.


So I leave tomorrow morning for a 12 hours drive to jamestown north dakota.

Monday morning working at the daily newspaper there recalibrating systems to use my film, then on to Dickinson, where I'll do the same routine Tuesday morning.

"Business" in Fargo Tuesday evening if time permits, and then heading back east. "On the way home" I have a stop in Onalaska, WI and Plateville, WI both to buy some surpluss equipment I need, and then a real stop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to set up my film at the Adidas Tee Shirt factory.

And then finally home. I'm thinking I'll run out of time, and will end up spending the night somewhere near cedar rapids, and not get home till late thursday.

The changes in my business due to this economy are weird. Where I used to do a lot of service, including highly profitable service contracts, along with a lot of reconditioned equipment sales, nobody is buying anything, and a lot of maintenance is being "deferred" and of course practically nobody is buying service contracts!

So, I'm selling service contracts to newspapers, who pretty much have to have them, and going further and wider to do this. Heck, I'm currently quoting service to newspapers in south carolina, new orleans, and washingtom state!!!

And the other growth area is consumables. Lots of growth there, but the margins are only 10-15%. you gotta sell a LOT of consumables to make any money...

Oh well, lucky to still have a decent gig these days.
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Hacked by Dr Bl@ckdeath!!!!

What a day from hell!


I loggged into firstgens.com this morning to be greeted by a black screen, a skull and crossbones, and the message "you've been hacked by Dr. bl@ckdeath!!"

Damn... So I spent an hour this morning fixing rogue index.html files and figured, ok, that wasn't so bad...

Then my BIL Ron called from the office. "Jim, all our websites are down, hacked by Dr Bl@ckjack"
Oh shit, this isn't good.
About the time I got to work, our service providers site was down too.

So Ron get's to work sorting out all our business sites the same way I fixed firstgens, and I go on about my workday. Get back in the office about 2, and find all the sites are going to hell again, and I got an email response from the service provider saying "the server is toast, we gotta reformat and reload it." All of the sites on that server were down, not just us.

So, about the time it's taken me to type this ago, our site finally came back from the death.
Thanks to Marty and anyone else at TLC Web Enterpises for your hard work recovering from this catastrophe.
BOOO to the same guys for lackluster security and not having redundant servers.

I'll be looking for a new hosting situation, 16 hours of downtime in not acceptable.
But we're back up.
All we've lost is anything posted between maybe 2 am and 7 am, central us time.
And of course all of February 26, 2010.

Welcome back, i'm goin to bed.
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last few days?

Saturday night pizza night with the firstgens.com south side gang was big fun. Good pizza, good margaritas, good company. Carol had a good time too.

Sunday I was in computer hell with forum stuff. I installed the jsubsilver template that we must use with joomla, and then got to putting our current mods into it. That all worked, then I started working on a mod to resize image attachments. This one was a biggie, but I finally got it working on our standard theme. Jsubsiler though, was and still is "blown up."

And then I find my new mod resizes pics when they are viewed, not when they are uploaded! What on earth is the point of that?

So sometime this week, I need to fix jsubsiler, and try a different picture resize mod that I found.

Yesterday was just your basic Monday. Went into the city trying to close  a deal with these guys I been talking to since November, and the best I could get was "we'll have a decision for you in 2 weeks. Shit. Third time I've driven down there, almost no longer worth doing. I did visit a couple regulars, so that's always good.

So now it's Tuesday, and about time to go up and exercise.

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so I forgot to take any breaks...

Twas a good day in the ole garage tho.
nuttin like the smell of gearlube on a saturday afternoon.


Looks like it's junk 2, Jim 1.

The trailblazer has a trashed front diff, due to all the oil leaking out cause the drain plug wasn't tight. This is not Jiffy Lube's fault, I asked them.

I was gonna fire up the Camaro just because, but no. Battery is kinda flat. Damned computer draws enough to take it down in 6 weeks or so, and she's been sleeping longer than that.

I did however get the lawn tractor fired up, and managed to get the lil trailer over to the woodpile in the backyard and bring a half load up to the rack on the deck, so we got fires for the rest of this season.

Mid forties in Chicagoland today. First day I've spent in the garage getting dirty in a long time, enjoyed it muchly.

Don't  forget the firstgens south siders family pizza night in woodridge tonight, 7pm, be there or be square!!
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Rockin Hard today!!!

G'mornin everyone, and how the heck are ya?
I'm GreaaaaT! to quote Tony the Tiger.

As I said yesterday on facebook, I had a really good (read profitable)  week at work, kinda nice for a change
Got up at six to bring Brian to a scout ski trip at 7, so it was an early start to get the ole blood moving.
Did my excercise bike thing, 1.81 miles in 30 minutes today, without hardly breaking a sweat or feeling tired. Situps of course. Scale was not nice, but it's temporary I'm sure, was that red robin burger and onion rings last night, it will pass.

So today it's into the garage. I'll bring the webcam with, check in on me if you like, it's http://www.jimragtop.com:12000/ the user id is team, password is camaro On tap for today is Carol's Trailblazer. The front brakes are down to metal, so I got new rotors and ceramic pads to put on. While in there, I need to check out the front diff. About a month ago, she kicked into automatic four wheel drive, made an awful noise, and since has preferred to remain stationary if the 4wd was engaged. This is accompanied by odd noises and some "jumping up and down." Abnormal stuff. So I'm gonna take a look and see what I see and hear.

On breaks, I'm gonna be putting in a new content management system for firstgens.com. I'm real excited about this, as well as the challenge of doing something I never done before.

So I got 2 "something I never done before's" lined up today. One with wrenches, one with a keyboard. Samo samo to me, that's the shit that gives me a real rush. No wonder I feel good.

For those of my friends and family that haven't figured this out yet, my comfort zone is OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE! That's where I thrive. That's where cool stuff happens.
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gonna be another short blog post

cause it's 10:20 and I'm tired. Today was "smiley day" on http://www.firstgens.com/
I added a bunch of new smileys and the guys are having fun with em.
Work was good today, the mailman was nice, and we were able to get some bills paid.
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happy monday!

I guess. Still having some add moments. busy busy at work. Found Carol the new dishes she wanted. Did some reading on how to fix the 4 wheel drive on the trailblazer. going to bed now.
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having an ADD kinda day.

I think it's the exercise. I did my now usual 30 minutes on the eliptical, a full 3/4 mile today, continuing to get faster, followed by 25 situps. Scale rewarded me with a 197 this morning.

It's only 6 pounds, but I'm seeing and feeling the difference. Maybe it's moving around? The tummy don't stick out as far. My jeans are looser. Not so much at the waist, but the thighs are like I'm wearing a gunny sack, just all flopping around.

When I look down, I can see my zipper!

Anyway, I've been just going like the energizer bunny all day long. Working on this, cleaning that, boing boing boing, bouncing from one lil project to another. Fixed the blown breaker in the top oven, while I was in there I scrubbed down the inside of the door. Cleaned out an old dresser. Carol is cleaning all of Jake's clothes, he expects to "move" this week, and will need clothes that are not orange. She'd layed all the stuff folded neetly on my sitting room floor, I put em in that dresser.

I got out the 409 and windex refills and refilled all the windex and 409 sprayers!
Now that's ADD if I ever saw it. Now nobody does that.

I need to make a list, gotta go shopping, need to buy stuff. New dishes that all match, old ones are 2 styles, and keep getting lost, probably under Dann's bed. Need new ones. Needem now. Need a kitchen sized garbage can for the laundry room, with the new canned cat food, it's just getting too damned messy up there for the little waitcan to handle it. Need to get Carol's car cleaned, it's a pigsty. Off to the carwash, cleaner up inside and out, gotta do it now, gotta run run run run, see ya all later!
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phpbb mods?

What a bunch of crap. 5 hours total, and it still doesn't show any text when you hover your mouse over a thread name...

but Carol and I got our house all nice and clean today.
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It's especially hard this Saturday

Not that, get your mind out of the gutter!

Excercising is especially hard to do on Saturday. I've been good all week, 30 minutes on the elyptical (1.7 miles today, getting faster) followed by situps (now up to 25 yesterday and today) every day.
The scale is being good to me. 198 yeserday AM, 199 last night, 198 again this morning. So that's down from 203, in a week on the bike.

I tried and failed at putting a mod on http://www.firstgens.com/. It was supposed to show the first couple lines of a post when you put your cursor over it. Showed an error message instead...lol. Back to the drawing board. Later. It's Saturday, and I have things to do that don't involve sitting on my ass with a laptop on my lap.
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feels like half the day is gone

all read and it's only 9:15am!

Day start when an earthquake  woke me up at 4:30 AM. Kinda an unusual occurance here in the Chicago Area.... Whole house went bump bada bump. I looked out the window to make sure the house hadn't been clipped by an errant snowplow, then went back to sleep.

6 am, up and into the coffee. Checked my forums, then headed to the exercise machine. Did 1.64 miles in 30 minutes today, and then my 20 situps. Watched another episode os Northern Exposure. Weighed in at 199 again. That's good, 2 days in a row is very unusual.

And then it was outside to move six inches of yesterdays snow from 2  driveways and 550 feet of sidewalk. And finally off to work. So you see what I mean about it feeling like half the day is gone.

Tonight is open house at Route 66 Motorsports, details at http://www.firstgens.com/
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and more exercise, and lotsa stuff

This morning I did good. 20 minutes on the machine followed by a solid 20 situps. I worked up a pretty good lather...lol. Morning scale said 199. I generally vary a lot from day to day, as well as morning to night, but 199  is good,  lowest I've seen if not by much.

I figured out a breakthrough with the new site software tonight. If it survives "Jan the volunteer programmer's" scrutiny, maybe we can get the new joomla CMS online, and get some SEO happening and generate some hits. (CMS=content management system, and SEO is search engine optimization) The cms will let us add some cool content, a better look, and generate some keywords and meta descriptions that will get us the attention of google and yahoo.

It snowed today. It might still be snowing. I needed to fix the chute on the snowblower, more snow was coming out the back than the front. Got that done too. Also hung up a new electric can opener in the kitchen. Rrock on, another busy day.

I don't remember if I  blogged about gatting dates set for our vacation this summer, I think I did. I found 3 campgrounds around Jackson, WY. All full hookups, similar amenties, varied pricing and location.
#1 is cheapest at $37 per night. Looks like a very nice place, but it's over the mountain in Idaho.
#2 is in central Jackson. Basically an rv resort in the back of a hotel parking lot. $70 bucks a night, but location location location.
#3 is culter bay, up north in Grand Teton national park. $55 a night, right up next to the mountains. no pool, but a lake with really  cold water. a nice place but I wouldn't stay there all week., maybe split with Idaho?

And finally, a lil bad news. Last week, I got dumped. Ya, really. The last few times I called, she was kinda brief with me, passing the phone off to someone else like it was a hot potato. One day last week, I asked her why she never wants to talk to me anymore...  and she tells me "well, I'm a middle schooler now." Yup, dumped.
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exercise?

So, I'm sitting here watching a dvd of the fifth season of  Northern Exposure, while looking at the exercise machine.

Northern Exposure is a very quirky hourlong comedy that was pretty popular 15 or so years ago. It's set in an imaginary small town somewhere in the backwoods of Alaska. I love Alaska, someday I'll go there!
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I want my body back!

And this eating like a rabbit isn't doing it by itself.

Today I did 30 hard minutes on the elyptical, followed by 10 minutes in the hot tub, followed by  lousy 18 situps. I'm gonna do thisz twice a day until I look like this again

and I really need to use a different editor, cause this basic blogger one is less than worthless. I also need to work up some keywords and metadescriptions and stuff. Heck, the blog I started and abandoned on wordpress gets more hits than this one does!

I talked to Mark last night, and we have dates for our summer vacation!! Yeah!!!! We'll be meeting up in Jackson, Wyoming for 6 days of fun beginning July 17. and before we meet with them, I'll actually be taking my family to see Denver!

Well, time to go finish painting the kitchen in the lower level apartment.
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Traveling

Travel week for me. Went to partay with the south siders at Hooters, then rolling down the highway.
Found a nest for the night at the motel 6 in Lafayette (we'll leave the light on for ya!)
Tomorrow I see a customer in Maysville Kentucky, Friday it's Erlanger Kentucky then Cincinatti Ohio, then back home.

G'night all. It's late and I'm tired.
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a hole week?

ya, I guess... Who's gonna read this if I don't write it?

Need to find time. I got 3 minutes, then brush my teeth and get in bed and watch two and a half men.

A day... 
up at 6.
no time to read the paper. coffee and computer. check the forums, type a few posts, answer some pm's. Today I downloaded some software Jan needs for the new site and ftp'd it onto the server.
6:30 15 minutes on theexcercise thingy.
6:45 SSS and dreww for success...lol.
7:30 off to work.
work work work. 3 hours answering emails, doing quotes, wading thru my todo list.
11:00 filing. Been trying to stow away all the old personal stuff, and move the live personal files into my office rather than out in the public main office.
"counted my beans" part of this is putting data into my spreadsheet on our investments, so I can stow all the old statements away.
1:30 lunch... finally, also stopped by Carol's studio to pick up her rent check.
Rest of the afternoon, more emails, more quotes, more phone calls. I swore I was gonna get out from behind this desk and work in the shop, never happened.
3:00 paid some personel bills, then off to the bank
4:00 started on a new pc for our office manager, didn't get far, need a dvd drive...
5:30 went home
5:45 did the dishes
6:00 ate
6:30 did the dishes again
6:45 went out and voted in the primary, went by the old folks home and visited with my mom for a hlaf hour.
7:45 watched the last 15 minutes of american idol
8:00 on the computer. Check and post on firstgens. post a couple times on TC just to keep my name out there. Search out some cool addons for the new site. Go thru all the forums on firstgens and make sure quick reply is enabled.
10:15 typed this blog.
10:35 off to bed, g'night.
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happy tuesday?

I'd like a decent title, but heck, I'm gonna take the time to write something anyway, might even be something good for the 5 people including my wife who read this.

The "NewJim" program is doing pretty well. After a week of salads and lo carbs, my scale's gone from 206 to 199, the first week is always easy. We'll see, if I can get to 190, maybe it will keep coming off. Last time, I stuck at at 197, just wouldn't go any lower.

And Sunday I dyed my hair! Ya really, no more gray for me. Thank my kids for that excessive graying at the temples, but it's all gone now!

Last week was "new carpet week" upstairs.  We been cleaning and straightening and trying hard to dial in our master suite. Yesterday we finished "waterfall wall."

If you were running the coast with us last summer, you'll recognize these, most are on the south wide of the Columbia River Gorge.

Another thing I got done not too long ago was switching my camaro back to the z/28 finned valve covers

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Saturday night!!!

WooHoo, it's Saturday night and I ain't doin nuttin!

The carpet's done, and most of the stuff is moved back.

I went to North Dakota on business, and came back again.

I put in a new wireless n access point today, and hope to never ever have to go down in the basement and power cycle the linksys. o far so  good.

I can't remember the admin password for my webcam so I can't switch it to the new wireless.
It's still connected on the old wireless and it still works.

And I dyed the gray out of my hair this morning!!!
I like it, Carol doesn't, she's wondering who I'm trying to impress....
The scale was under 200 this morning for the first time since last spring, hopefully I can maintain a downward trend. I'd so like to have abs.

More later, maybe with some pictures.
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carpet and salad?

Friday the carpet man called! We had some extra cash at year end, so ordered and paid for new carpet for the master suite. And Tuesday they are coming to install it. I hate carpet, and would do hardwood if I could handle the $7 per square foot plus moving out for a week, but that ain't in the cards right now so new carpet it is. Stuff in there now is nasty. 10 years old, lots of spills. Some stains I think are cat pee but Carol says they ain't. Still nasty.

So we got started in the closet. Our last house had his and hers walkins, this one has a single clost that 8 feet wide and sixteen feet long! When you have closets this big, you hang everything, even t shirts, and you never have to throw anything away, there's always room for more. So we went in and started tossing everything that was stained. Everything that was ugly. Everything that hadn't been worn in a couple years. Everything. We were ruthless. Even tossed the T shirts from when we did the avon 3 day years ago.

It was depressing. I found pants with 32 inch waist. Today I wear a 36... relaxed fit. Was 168 when I was 30, and 203 now. Depressing. Carol threw out a bunch of size 6 stuff. 'Nough said about that.

Six giant hefty bags went to Goodwill, and we were left with this

We got all the junk cleaned out of the closet, and off the floor so the carpet guys can do their thing. We moved everything out of the sitting room and master bedroom except the bed. That goes tomorrow night. Stuff it all in the loft and the library. Without my sitting room, I'm stuck in the library on my laptop, so far away from the router that the wireless rarely works.

So this is what everything looks like almost empty.

Now ya remember what I said about the expanding waistline? Depressing. And that's not the worst of it. A pretty big portion of myself is riding both above and in front of that waistline. It's time to take some action. Exercise. And better eating. Less food. And as close to zero carbs as can be managed. So we had salad for lunch. For dinner we had hamburgers. Without buns. Without french fries. With another salad.

Odd thing is, I'm still full.

Oh well.

Tomorrow we start exercising.

Maybe the next day, after our rooms are put back together.

It's 28 degrees in Chicagoland right now.

It's 39 in Denver, was over 50 today, and will be over 50 tomorrow.

Next week I gotta go to Fargo and Grand Forks on business. I'll be halfway there. Night just keep going.

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hurt feelings and helpers?

How does one deal with "volunteer helpers"?

The new website http://www.firstgens.com/ is fantastic. Lots of fun to do, and lots of fun having all my friends from other websites, mostly Team Camaro, all coming over to say "Hello"! We're up to 158 members now!

And as far as the software stuff, I'm so far over my head it isn't even funny. I can handle some simple stuff, but nothing complicated.

A  number of guys have stepped up, asking to do some things, artwork mostly, to help out. The thing with volunteers is you can't push them, cause they owe you nothing. They are after all, taking their time to help out. All you can do is appreciate them.

but what do you do when 2 guys take up the same project? How do you decide which to use? How do you deal with the one that didn't get chosen? How do you handle hurt feelings and bruised egos?

And that's just small stuff. As we speak, a really good professional web designer is putting together a first class software package for the site. I've seen his work, and it's fabulous. While it is absolutely my intention to compensate those who help out with the site, when and if the site starts generating cash flow, there is no cash flow now, other than a slow trickle out. But even in my wildest dreams for this site,  2 or 3 years down the road even, I really doubt my ability to fairly compensate Jan for the work he's doing.

And I just can't wait for it to be done. And I can do nothing but wait quietly. So I cheated. He'd setup a dummy site so I could see what kind of stuff he was talking about. Taking a chance, I dug out the pm and clicked on the link. Sure enough, it was there. Very raw, not close to finished, but at least there. Two problems. It's gonna be weeks or more before it's done. I can't push a freebie, so I need to move forward with other things on the current site. I need to put the new banner in place. And I need to figure out something to generate keywords within the forum. Right now, the database is a black hole to the search engines, the only metatags are on the frontpage, and they never change. I "know" that the phpbb builds an html page out of the style and the database fields on the fly with every click. There are applications that can run with the database and "collect" keywords out of the fields, also on the fly. If I "view source" on other forums, I see code from a "generator" which is putting metatags into the html. We need this for the search engines to find us, and we need it right now.

The novelty of JimM, moderator at Team Camaro starting his own forum will wear off, heck, all ready is wearing off. We need newbies. Guys with questions. Guys who'll give us something to talk about. Now.

And Jan, I know you know this, but the site you have out there now is way to wide. 1024 pixels (the width of most laptop screens) has to fit the full page. Also, the forum that's in there now is not "variable width" As you shrink it (shrink it hell, I can display it on my laptop, I'm about 300 pixels short!) it grows scroll bars, the middle column doesn't change width, the right columns vanish. I know, it's not done. and you know this. And you'll fix it. And you have a job, a family, a life, many things that are more important than this website. So I'm patient.... really. Ask anyone who knows me, I do patient very well... (not)
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how many days?

This new website http://www.firstgens.com/ is taking some kinda time. And I'm not even doing anything to it, other than posting, and answering emails and pm's (twenty or thirty per day!!!) and fixing avatars for people.

The average avatar takes 4 - 6 pm's and 2-3 emails. Many can't manage to send me the picture first try, and nearly all don't tell me in the email what their user id is! So it takes me 32 seconds to crop and resize the picture, and 5 minutes or so to figure out who they are, and attach the avatar to their profile.

We're looking at some new software that will automatically rezise pictures, both for display and for avatars. And I'm not complaining, I like avatars, and  don't mind helping out. All the extras take time tho.

I understand now why Al never turned on avatars on TC.

We're up to 141 members,  and well over 1700 posts now. Growing very quickly.
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Rolling Rolling Rolling

My new website is really taking off. It's a gas watching it grow. http://www.firstgens.com/

We're up to 84 members and 1138 posts now, that's more than 30 new members this week alone!

And today... wow, what a day. Today we opened a new section with a new moderator.

For the first time ever, Jerry McNeish has agreed to lead a section on an internet board!

So come on over to "Jerry's Place to talk about what's correct and what's not, rare cars, copo's, and dealer modified supercars.

We'll also have a special section called "On the Road with Jerry"

Here we'll post Jerry's schedule, and you can come out to watch him race, or post to schedule inspections and certifications when Jerry's going to be in your area.
Since we all stop at many different boards, and the people who run Team Camaro have always known and understood that, make Jerry's Place one of your regular internet stops.
http://www.firstgens.com/
 
does anyone know if there's a limit to pictures on blogger, I seem to be unable to upload a pic.. :(
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Yes, I know...

it's time for a blog post.

I'll try later this morning, got to hit the shower and get off to work now.
http://www.firstgens.com/
Jim
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The holidays are over....

... and tomorrow winter just might set in. But we had a fun day. Sister in law Shannon came over, brought the kids to look at Sarah's senior pics.

Brian and Andrew took off doing boy things with plastic weapons and strange noises. I went downstairs, figured I'd work on getting the basement apartment ready to paint. Next thing I know, Kayla follows me down and tells me she's helping.

I had no idea she did such things, like standing on the itsy bitsy skinny ledge and taping the woodwork.

I had no idea she did such things, like standing on the itsy bitsy skinny ledge and taping the woodwork.


Then she says "boost me up on your shoulder so I can tape above the door! and I says "I never tape above the door, no one can see it!" and she says "Just DO it!" So... right, I'm a pushover.

Course  it seemed fun to duck into the bathroom and snap a few pics in the mirror!

Eeeeek! who are those crazy people, and why do they have red and green stickers on their cheeks?

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
We did eventually actually get some  painting done, too, after we finished being silly.
 
Later on, we got to experience what I like to call "suburban wildlife" 4 deer came out of the woods and into our neighbors yard, looking for something to eat. They came all the way into our yard, checked out some former greenery at the end of my driveway, and then crossed the street in search of greener pastures.

That's all for today. I'm getting a stuffy nose, and my back is sore. Caught a cold from my office manager last week. she called in sick 2 days after Christmas, then showed up on death's door. So now it's gonna be my turn. Carol, pass me the kleenex please?

And of course my back hurts from carrying 90 pounds of 13 year old around on my shoulders...lol.

Carol, will you pass me the ibu's too?

"May I never grow up"

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