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Flu

October 4, 2009 / Paul posted in Home Improvement, Photos / No Comments

I managed to catch the flu, most probably from a co-worker, last week which put me out of commission for four days. On the second day of misery I went to the doctor’s office. I have very mild asthma and started wheezing a bit so I felt it was necessary. What I really should have done was go in the first day I was sick. To test if I had the flu the doctor took a long thin q-tip and stuck it way up my nose, which was not a pleasant experience to say the least. A few minutes later the results showed that it was indeed the flu. The doctor also explained that in order to find out if it was H1N1, the swine flu, they would have to send it to the CDC, which they don’t do because it would flood them with tests. Long story short, the medication he prescribed seemed to do the trick and I’m feeling much better today.

After returning to work I couldn’t help but feel like I should quarantine myself to avoid sharing the days of misery I experienced. The stories of kids and pregnant women dying from the flu were in the back of my mind. During my absence at work, instructions were posted in the bathrooms on what one should do to prevent catching the flu and how not to spread it.

Before I got sick, we had our retaining wall on the edge of our property replaced. Our house sits higher up than our neighbor’s and the railroad ties that held the soil on our property were rotten to the core.

This is what the old retaining wall looked like.

This is what the old retaining wall looked like.


This is what the new retaining wall looks like.

This is what the new retaining wall looks like.

We also installed the shower pan, put up the concrete backer board and coated it with the incredibly red water resistant stuff.

New shower pan, concrete backer board with Redgard

New shower pan, concrete backer board with Redgard

Tough Build

June 8, 2009 / Paul posted in Computer, Photos / 2 Comments

A while back, I decided to try my hand at building a HTPC. I’ve built two other computers before, one of which I posted about in January ’06. Last weekend I ordered all of the parts from newegg.com which is where I buy most, if not all, of my computer supplies. The case that I chose is a much smaller case then usual. It needed to fit in the entertainment center. Inside the case, there is very little room between the components. The DVD-ROM drive’s cables almost touch the CPU fan and the gap between the memory and the DVD-ROM drive can be measured in a few centimeters. Cables also run in front of the chassis fan, which probably restricts airflow a bit.

Limited space wasn’t the only problem I encountered during the build. Once everything was in place and I turned the power on, I could hear that the CPU fan was spinning awfully fast which meant things were not cooling as they should. I touched the case and noticed the power supply was hot. I had three options; try returning for a replacement, buy a second one, or risk fixing it myself. The fan came with the case and I didn’t want to ship something so large, so I decided to try fixing it myself. Before I opened it up, I noticed that the sheet metal was in contact with the fan enough that it prevented the fan from spinning. I corrected the problem by simply prying the metal away from making contact.

I started the computer back up and monitored the temperature of the motherboard and processor from the BIOS screen. The processor heated up to about 55C/133F, which is much too hot. After trying several configurations in an attempt to get more air flow, my solution was to replace the processor’s heat sink, which was leftover from a previous build.

I’m still worried about the temperature of the processor. It’s possible that it will need to be replaced.

Vacation Then Jury Duty

May 4, 2009 / Paul posted in Family and Friends, Photos, Rare Events, Travels / No Comments

Alexis and I drove all over Texas and half of New Mexico for our vacation. We drove to Ruidoso and stopped in Lubbock on the way there, then stopped in Odessa on the way back to visit with family and friends. Our stays in all three places were great. In Ruidoso we went to a stocked pond where we caught some rainbow trout. They provided the poles, bait, license, and cleaned the fish. It was fun, but being a stocked pond, the fish hit the bait less than a minute after dropping the bait into the water. Here’s a few pictures:

The fish were placed in a sink after we caught them. Shortly afterward they were cleaned, hence the knife on the left.


This is one of the first fish I caught. The biggest one was 11.5 inches.

One of the strangest moments during our trip was when we noticed a car pull over near some road kill about 20 miles outside of Lubbock. Alexis and I figured they picked up the road kill, but for what purpose is a mystery. In Odessa, we were invited to go to an art show, which was the last thing I thought we would do on our trip. It was surprisingly a lot of fun. One of the funniest moments during our trip was seeing Hunter, my nephew, taste a lemon. At first he didn’t think anything of it until he managed to get enough of it to make a sour face. It was priceless.

Near the first of the month, I received a jury summons. I was panicked a bit when I opened it, but relieved when I saw that the date was after our vacation. Alexis had a jury summons several months ago and when she arrived at the courthouse, she was notified that it was canceled. I was hoping for the same. No such luck for me as I went through the whole process. To top it off it was a child indecency trial. There was testimony from the victim, the victim’s mother, a couple of police officers, and a child advocacy worker. No solid evidence and no other witnesses. There was evidence that the guy was in the area, but it really came down to whether the jury believed the child’s story beyond a reasonable doubt. After much debate and nearly a hung jury, a painful process, the verdict was guilty. I don’t know what the sentence is, since the jury doesn’t decide the punishment. I would be happy never to go through that, or anything similar, ever again.

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