Columbia County Fair

Well, there are two happy kids. They begged me for a pony ride, so, since they were reasonably well-behaved through the rest of the fair we visited the ponies.

Adam

Is that an SS Totenkopf on your shirt or are you just happy to see me?

To paraphrase Mario Savio, sometimes the workings of the machine become so odious that someone accidentally starts printing out Nazi propaganda for sale in giant megastores across the continent.

Wal-Mart has been selling these in their stores. I thought I had seen someone in Beaverton wearing one of these but didn't believe my eyes. After all, Beaverton is not exactly a hot-bed of white supremacy.

A nutball week...

Last week started off with a bang, literally, when the church right across the street from our babysitter's house exploded and burned to the ground in the middle of the night. While this did not affect us directly, it did melt some of the siding on our friends' house, and it gave Noor something to be dramatic about for at least a few days.

I started developing an earache after having just gotten done with a cold. This later developed into an ear infection. I think I have had one other ear infection ever, so this is not a common occurence.

Someone who had been giving me some grief in a dispute we had been having over money ended up in federal prison for most of the next five years. I found this out on Wednesday.

Things started heating up at our San Francisco office late in the week, resulting in my getting sent much at the last minute to San Francisco early on Monday. I had to miss two midterms this week, both of which have been re-scheduled, and a community meeting having to do with the North Portland Greenway trail.

The capper was on Sunday. While driving along Lombard in North Portland back to our house, I managed to collide with the back of a car that had been stopped to take a left turn. No one got hurt, and the other driver and I exchanged insurance information and such, and then as I went to drive my now not exactly pristine looking van home the transmission started revving high when I would accelerate from a stop. It turned out that I had somehow knocked the transmission and created a leak. That, along with all the body damage on the front, resulting in the insurance company declaring the vehicle a total loss. So... once I get back from San Francisco I will be signing the title over and collecting the blood money for my vehicle. The pisser is that we had JUST finished paying that one off in December.

Like I said. No on got hurt.

Cousin Kim's video

My cousin has been working on building a fan base to launch a music career. She posted this video to YouTube. It's nice to see that someone isn't afraid to sing in public.

See it here.

Pirates of the Caribbean 2, rated Arrrrrrrr!

Well, I only caught snippets of it. We just got our DVD player hooked up again, and I was out of the house most of the time that the movie was on, but the bits I did see seemed like swashbuckling good fun.

This one is more intense than the last one. I think that the sound mixers bumped up the loudness on all the loud parts. There was quite a bit of action, and the "villains" weren't quite as cartoony. Anytime your ship is getting attacked by a giant octopus bent on destroying all involved it is going to get intense... especially for three-year-olds. Yes, Nena started it up while I was gone and Lucy and Noor wanted to see it to. Noor calls it "de oh-ther pi-rate mo-vie," in reference to the first one which was simply "pi-rate mo-vie." Lucy and Noor spent most of the time clinging. They kept wanting to watch more, and no one has had any nightmares, yet. This is definitely not one to use to "babysit" the little kids. If you need to load the dishwasher, start a load of laundry, and fine a clean and matched pair of socks, a "Bob the Builder" video is a better choice.

network up and running

Thanks to Ty's recommendation, I now have our local network up and running. Cousin Ty suggested that I get a Netgear wireless-G router. I plugged it into our cable modem, and while the documentation didn't really speak well to Mac users (it would have helped had the html manual actually worked), the quick start sheet included in the box basically made it a case of setting up your computers to obtain their addresses on the network automatically and then turning everything off and then starting the modem first, then a minute later restarting the router (which is now hooked with a crossover cable to the modem and a "regular" cable to a computer), and then a minute or so later turning on the computer. The thing went well, and Netgear's own web-browser based setup page was easy to follow, even without a proper manual.

The router works well with this PC notebook I am using right now, too.

Ty's consulting business and online store can be found at MacAtoZ.com (shameless commercial plug).

Snow day!

Tuesday, the snow hit Portland. I was advised to stay home by my office, so I worked on some things at home, but I did manage to get these photos taken.

The last three are of our house with snow on it.

I took a lunch break walk over to Pier Park nearby where we tried to go sledding. We got a little bit of sledding in before kids got cold, so we walked back.

Later, Nena took Lucy and Noor outside and showed them the finer art of throwing snowballs and building snowmen.

New house, new year

We have moved from our old place one mile to a house near Pier Park in St. Johns. I didn't realize how cramped the four of us were until we basically tripled our square footage.

I will try and get some pics up soon.

The move kicked my bottom. The house deal closed on December 20, and that very same day I got a call not even an hour and a half before my signing appointment saying the the seller needed an additional week to get out. Since I was looking forward to my 11 day overlap I wasn't very happy about this. I ended up zeroing in on December 26 at 5 pm, with a rentback for those additional days. The seller was still in the house until December 27 at noon, and still had stuff in my covered front porch until December 28, and didn't get the last of his stuff off my property until December 29. Meanwhile, I had already arranged to be out of the other place by the end of December 31. I ended up spending New Year's Day cleaning and hauling the last bit of stuff, and made a dump run in the wee hours of January 2. But it is done. Done done done.