This Should Be Interesting

The bug has bitten me and the poison has messed up my brain.
I must be totally sick. I've gone and registered to ride in a mountain bike race this coming Saturday. It just seems like it will be a fun adventure. I want to know if I can do it; If I can finish the race. I don't have any pretentious thoughts about winning. I'd be more than surprised if I did. But I'm going to go out and give it my best shot.

The whole biking thing started as a way to try to improve fitness and now I am pushing myself a step further. Curiosity has now gotten the better of me and it is time to test myself to see what and how I can do. For me it will be just between me, the bike, and the mountain course. Seven and a half miles doesn't sound like far, but try climbing a thousand feet up a mountain on a bicycle at an altitude of 10,000 feet. It can be a bit of a challenge.
Since it will be my first ever race, I have signed up for the beginner level at my age grouping (40-45). Ten guys entered this race for this age group last year and the time it took ranged from just under 55 minutes to an hour and 55 minutes, with the average being around an hour.
For those of you who might be curious about this endeavor you can click this link to take a look at the website. It will be Race 2.
Pending my survival of this Epic SingleTrack experience, I'll post about the adventure, what I've learned from it, and whether I'll try such a thing ever again. ;)
And for some amusing reading check out the biker slang page.
I'm going to try to bomb it and hopefully I'll avoid the balance blackout and not come home with bacon on the arms and legs.

AMExpression Moving Up

I just went to an online friend's blog-site and found she is moving up in the world. I've changed the link on my page to her new site. AMExpression has her own domain for posting her blogs to at http://www.amexpression.com. I am blessed for her.
Check out her new site and be prepared to be blessed. Whoo-Hoo! Go Ame!

Listening and Pondering

I'm sitting here tonight finally taking a breathe. I'm listening to some mp3s that my father-in-law gave me to listen to of a group called Il Divo and a song (among many good ones) "I Believe In You" with Celine Dion. Wow! It's hard not to sing along. ;) Be glad you don't have to hear me bringing down their fabulous voices.

It seems like there is always a thousand things to do and another thousand things that need doing. The last couple weeks have been as busy as any I can remember. My daughter's high school graduation was obviously a huge contributor to that as well as having lots of relatives.
Last Saturday I finally made a day to go trout fishing with my dad. What a wonderful day he and I had. My mom had been urging me to go out with him since April.

Work has been somewhat topsy-turvy the past two months. As I've written before I've been moved to a new project, along with about six or seven others that were part of my previous project along with three guys from another project. We've been learning how to work together as well as learning the new application we're working on. It is exciting and exhausting and has been a bit tumultuous trying to get us all on the same page. It has been a good thing, but change can be uncomfortable.

I've shared a time or two in the past that I've been mountain biking. I've embarked on this endeavor to get in better physical shape, but as my wife points out, I don't tend to do much part way. When I get into something, I get into it all the way. When I started I never thought about attempting to race, but I like to challenge myself and so I think the next challenge is to attempt a real mountain bike race on a real mountain. I'm thinking of entering one on next Saturday in the beginner division for the "getting closer to getting older guys" aka men's beginner for ages 40-44. It's a good way to get some experience and attempt to determine if I'm interested in doing more races. I'm realistic about it. I don't necessarily expect to win, but I want to go out and give it the best I've got and see how it goes.

My youngest daughter has been working at a bicycle shop since spring break. She is actually becoming interested in biking. I wasn't sure that would ever happen, but the ice has started to melt. She demo'd a mountain bike from the shop this afternoon and went for a short ride with her mother and me. She was a little shaky, but not too bad given the relatively few times she has ever ridden a bicycle past learning to ride when she was five or six. I'm hoping she will get into it somewhat seriously like her papa has because it would be good for her in many ways. We'll see where it goes. She has a fiery passion and a low key competitive spirit so it could be interesting. She got a little bit of a rough introduction to it today when she got a little cocky and had a close and unpleasant encounter with the gravel. She is mostly okay, but came away with a few scrapes and bruises.

And saving the best for last...

My wonderful wife and I will celebrate our 22nd anniversary on the 22 of this month. That is pretty amazing and I am very grateful to be with this awesome lady for all these years. There is no one on earth I would have rather shared the last 22 years with. She is beautiful inside and out and is absolutely my best friend. !!!What a blessing!!! We've had our tough times but our God is good and He is faithful and has brought us through them all. I'm looking forward to the next 22 and then the next 22 after that, God willing. And after all these years, we're reminded daily about how much we still have to learn about how much it takes to be good for each other. Thankfully we have a heavenly Father that does not get weary in sending His Holy Spirit to continue teaching us.

Coming and Going... and My Head is Spinning

Rambling thoughts about the past week and a half...

Our son moved in for about three weeks and has now moved out. He has moved into an apartment while attending summer classes at Focus on the Family Institute. It is kind of different for us to have him in town but not living with us. Quieter too.
Our oldest daughter has graduated from high school and has registered for college and has signed up for classes. She is also working three jobs to make and save money for this school year.
Our youngest daughter is working full time at a local bicycle shop so she can earn money for a car.

We had family in town for about a week. Saw a lot of some and very little of others.
Some of my wife's family was staying with us. Others spent quite a good deal of time with us. It was fine, but it was exhausting.
My youngest sister was in town for a week staying with my other sister (in between us in age) and I saw her all of a couple hours. I missed having time to visit with her. She lives in Arizona with her husband and two children and we don't get to visit with her very much.

My lovely wife encouraged me to get away on Saturday and have a day fishing with my dad. I took her up on it. Had to fight myself to go. Friday evening I was thinking to myself that I was tired and it would be too much work. Thank goodness we went anyway. We had a wonderful time. I know I treasure the time I get to spend with my father, and knowing how I feel about getting to spend time with my son, I'm sure dad was blessed by it too. There is just something special about that kind of time... time to talk as we drive, time to enjoy walking the river, being excited about catching a couple fish, being out-of-doors, enjoying the beauty of God's creation.

A friend of mine emailed me today asking if I would like to go up to a mountain bike race this coming Saturday. I'm not thinking I'm ready for a race, but it might be cool to go up and ride some of the other trails in the area for familiarization for a possible race later in the season.

I'm trying to figure out what my wife and I can do for our upcoming anniversary. Twenty-two years and I'm very grateful for such a gorgeous, caring, and wonderful helpmate. Unfortunately I think Hawaii is out of the question this year. May for our 25th anniversary, God willing. Guess it will have to be something closer this year.

It's late. I'm rambling even more than I intended. I'm going to bed.

Blessings to you all.

Whoosh! Two Down and One to Go

My second child graduated from high school today. The first graduated two years ago. The next one will be in three years. So we're two down with one to go.
I'm not quite sure how this day came so fast. Wasn't it just yesterday she was a little baby girl being handed to me in the hospital and me exclaiming, "What am I going to do with a girl?" I've since found out. God has very much blessed my life with all my children. My son and my two daughters.

We are very proud of our young lady, she graduated with honors in the top 5% of her class. Not to be considered a small achievement, especially since she took honors classes and advanced placement (A.P.) classes for college credit... and speaking of college credit, college is looming on the horizon not too far away.

The emotions have gone every way today. I've been misty eyed and joyous. We had a house full of friends and relatives to celebrate this wonderful life accomplishment achieved by my oldest daughter. What a day it has been!

Right now I am tired and short on words, but I just wanted to get out a quick post about the events of the day since it has been a busy and emotional week.

I'll try to post again soon when I have had a bit more rest and I have regained my ability to think a little more clearly.

Computer Problems Flushed

*** typed with a bit of a British accent ***
Well in li't of me last posting, me decided that flushing was mayhaps the option o' least resistance...
Unfortunately, me disposition dont take to such thin's lightly and me had to go on the 'ard way.
*** end of badly done accent ***

Yes, I managed to slog on through and purely by the grace of God, and one unnecessarily purchased hard drive later we have two computers back up and running. The operating system on Chris' machine was really messed up so after Chris spent two days copying files manually from a command prompt to a backup drive we reformatted the hard drive and completely reloaded WindowsXP from scratch and what seemed like piece parted it back together. It is up and running and probably running better than when we first got it from the manufacturer because it doesn't have all the extra fat and fluff on it (reference recent Mac vs PC commercial).

I spent a good portion of today working on my parents computer. I have had it for at least three weeks trying to find the time to get to it. They have Norton System works installed on it. I don't recommend it for people that are not computer savvy. The Anti-Virus stuff works pretty well, but the utilities can get you in trouble. Norton GoBack decided it wanted to keep going back, and go back, and go back... The error message would come up and say "NortonGoBack has detected that your system is unstable, rebooting." I figured out that the system was unstable alright, because GoBack was installed on it.
After buying a new hard drive to load the operating system on (so as to try not to lose important data), and loading the operating system, I was finally able to get to a command window on the original drive and delete the offending application. Wa-La! Magic happened and everything was mostly happy in computer land once again.

I think my son has given up on PC and is ready for Mac. Can't say I blame him. My wife's mac laptop has given me the least problems of any of the five computers we have (six if counting my parents PC).
I'm thinking I'm about ready to scrap Windows for Linux. Nobody writes viruses to exploit Linux, mostly because, well you just pretty well can't. Since Macs run on a variant of Linux with the Mac OS built on top, they are pretty secure and the need for Symantec (aka Norton), or McAfee, or any other such anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-malware stuff is mostly unneeded which is sounding REALLY appealing after this past week. And guess what: the Linux operating system is free! No upgrades that cost $100 - 200 every couple years.

Ok, I'm done with my Linux commercial for now, but I am expecting that after my daughter's high school graduation and all the relatives go home, I am going to be installing a new OS on my computer and testing it out. I'll post more about it after seeing how that goes.

So in honor of tigger... TTFN!

Overwhelmed by Computer Problems

Right now the computers in my house that are having difficulties is growing.

My youngest daughter has an old computer of mine. It is at the place where it just isn't all that happy with the new operating system and software that is installed on it. It is slow to boot and it throws tantrums and holds its breath until it passes out; usually when my daughter is working on a paper or trying to do something important for school. I've been putting off doing anything with it as long as I can.

A couple weeks ago my parents computer decided it was going to take a vacation. The Norton GoBack installed on it was in cahoots with Windows and now every time it boots up, the GoBack lights up and says it has detected something is unstable (I call it MS Windows) and it is going to reboot. It doesn't ask if it is okay, it just figures it knows best and helps you out. Flash-click-restarting --- screams coming from the user, "I didn't ask you to do that! Stop it!" I echoed those screams when I was trying to figure out how to fix it.

I shared the pain with an IT buddy of mine and had him just as perplexed as me. If you're wondering about tech support... it has been outsourced - to India. I'm still trying to get this one figured out.

My son Chris came home from college for the summer, set up his computer and turned it on... It was working fine whey he left Oklahoma, but somewhere along the way it developed altitude sickness on the trip home and starting coughing up its windows registry, one misplaced bit at a time going from bad to worse with each step suggested to try to fix and recover. Now it is in a really funky state. You can see and use the icons on the desktop, but there is no task bar to be found. It just went away. Attempts to recover have not met with any success. It foiled my attempt to load a linux operating system: just shook its sad little head and said, "No way, Jose!"

So I'm rethinking this whole technology thing.

The good news is I found this helpful picture that explains computer hardware in easy to understand terminology so even a programmer (like me) can understand. But if I fail to be able to figure it out, I'll just resort to the function key (See picture at right)!