[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday]
Sunday, June 20, 1999
I have just returned from taking Katie and Andrew to Laurel Ridge, the Moravian Church camp in North Carolina's Blue Ridge mountains, where they will be nestled away for the coming six days. Suzy is also there as a counselor, so I will be batching it for a week. Don't worry I will have plenty to do to keep me out of trouble. The threesome will be returning to Winston-Salem on Saturday.
Actually, taking them to Laurel Ridge was a good experience. The North Carolina mountains are beautiful and it also gave me a chance to check out there primitive living conditions for the next week. They have a roof over their heads, but that's about where it stops. I THEY enjoy it and I promise never to complain about hotels again. Well, never is a long time.
The camp is Northwest of North Wilkesboro and is about halfway between Sparta and North Wilkesboro, so I decided to come back through Sparta on the way home. We have a building lot just South of Sparta in Roaring Gap that we would like to put a vacation home on someday. I didn't have time to go up the mountain to make sure no one was homesteading on our lot today, but it did give me a chance to make mental note of some of the realtors in Sparta should we get the itch anytime in the near future. Our lot is triangle shaped, near the top of the mountain and only about five minutes from the Blue Ridge Parkway.
* * * * * *
Last night our friends Bob and Barbara Thompson stopped by to celebrate my birthday and then we went out for a quick bite to eat. Bob needed some rewriteable CD's so we all took in the field trip to Office Depot and of course I couldn't leave empty handed. On one of the attention grabber end aisle displays (you know, where they display the high profit items) they had a computer running a game based on the Pod Races from the movie Star Wars, so naturally Andrew and I thought we need to add this game to the Tucker collection. We then came home so the game could insult the computer I wanted to install it on, but of course I did have a machine that would run the game just fine. I had wanted to run it on a 166 Pentium machine and everything would have been fine with that machine except is doesn't have a 3D video card. It always amazes me that it takes more computing resources to run games than the most intensive business application you can dream up. Anyway, the pod races were some of the best scenes in the movie and the game is just as much fun. In fact Andrew had to get his fix today before we took off to Laurel Ridge. I bet I sneak in a race or two myself before he returns. And as you can imagine the 7 year old kick our butts with his command of the joystick.
Wednesday, June 23, 1999
I may have mentioned that we purchased a computer game, believe it or not. Well, actually, Andrew suggested I purchase the Star Wars Racer game. It's actually a pretty cool game and I might confess to giving it a whirl or two.
Like most games, this one barked at and insulted the machine I wanted to install it on. Everything was fine with the exception of not having a 3D graphics card. I do have one machine with a 3D card (unfortunately it's the machine I used to update my web site and I want this box to be sans kids), so we installed it on that machine and everyone was happy with the exception of me. I wanted to keep all of his and Katie's games on one machine, which was not the one with the 3D card, so naturally I went to in search of a card. I stopped in Best Buy and purchased an inexpensive ATI card for around $50 and brought 'er and installed it on the game machine. Everything went fine with the installation and I then loaded Star Wars Racer on that machine. I noticed there was no sound, so I went to check on the options and noticed the message there was no sound card present. I thought that was odd because I know there was a sound card in this machine.
My next stop was to the control panel and to device manager where I spot the yellow exclamation trouble flag by my sound card entry. Upon further investigation I see there is an IRQ interrupt conflict, but naturally the device manager will not allow me to change the IRQ. I am going to make a long story short here, but the net result was that I was out of IRQ's and Windows Plug and Play decided that having an IRQ for the video card was more important than one for the sound card. I must admit this machine is packed (there was only one PCI slot available too) with a network card, scsi card and all the normal crap that's needed for a mid-level multimedia computer.
I won't even hazard to guess how long I messed around with thing, disabling this or that and no telling how many reboots, etc when I decided the real test would be to pull the video card and see what happens. Bingo, the sound is back and I am happy with a couple of exceptions. No 3D video on this machine and suddenly this computer can not find a network domain to verify my existence.
More fooling around with settings and more rebooting and still no network. Can't tell you how many times I checked and re-checked the tabs in the network folder and everything looked right. I was about to convince myself that my network card had suddenly taken a dump when I decided to try one last thing. When I had the cover off the machine (which it still is) and when I took out the video card I had moved the network card to a different slot. I thought about moving it back to its original slot just for the hell of it and suddenly the network was back.
Everything was working fine, just no 3D video.
* * * * * *
While I was working on the computers last night Suzy snuck away and called from the camp at Laurel Ridge. She said it was still cold there and it had continued to rain. Katie had only taken one pair of jeans, so she had been living in these jeans for the last couple of days. Katie had gone canoeing that afternoon and had somehow gotten the seat of her only pair of jeans wet, so now I guess she was going to be living a miserable existence.
Suzy reported that Andrew had become the mascot of the camp. He is staying in the cabin with our friend Scott Rainey, who is a counselor at the camp and was dividing his time between Scott's group and Suzy's. I suppose he is seducing everyone there with his baby blues and sweet smile.
I asked about the food, mainly because I assumed the institutional food at one of these things would be pretty crappy and Suzy said I had not missed the mark. The kids are eating mostly breakfast and lunch foods while foregoing such delights as pork chops in the evening.
I mailed each of the three of them a letter yesterday. I thought Katie and Andrew would enjoy receiving some mail and couldn't leave mommy out. They should be receiving their letters by tomorrow. And today I received a letter from Katie which contained many of the obligatory I miss you so much lines. I think what she really misses is a warm dry house. She also said that she had been keeping her bunk straight and asked me if I could believe that. I have no problems believing that she's tidy at camp and also know this work ethic will not follow her down the mountain.
The camp is in Laurel Springs, NC which is not more than a post office and maybe a farmer's gas station, so while Suzy was on the phone I checked the weather forecast for her. She didn't ask, but I thought I would terrorize her with this information about what she could do nothing. Laurel Springs in on Highway 18 between North Wilkesboro and Sparta, so I brought up the long rang forecast for both.
* * * * * *
I have been dragging my feet on this one. Our video camera took a major dump almost a year ago and I have been planning to get a new one. But I have been dragging my feet. I think I will probably look at a Sony and am not yet ready to pay for digital. It's hard to believe how much these things have improved. I took the opportunity while at Best Buy to check out the video camera, knowing full well that I would not buy one there. I will probably buy it at Crutchfield. I have been looking at the Sony CCD-TRV43 which has an 18x zoom (they claim 330x with some chip trickery I'm sure) and features 0 lux night vision. Now I just have to shop the net to make sure I am getting the best deal going. Crutchfield was about $50 less than Best Buy and I haven't checked out Circuit City yet.
* * * * * *
I am adding the search service from Thunderstone to this site. Here is an opportunity to search this site using Thunderstone's engine:
Thursday, July 24, 1999
I may not have mentioned yesterday that I was able to return the ATI 3D video card to Best Buy for a full refund. Glad I had the whim to pay retail for once.
I spoke with Suzy again today and weather conditions have not improved at camp. It has remained damp and cold and today it started raining. We are supposed to get a full day of rain tomorrow, which I guess she and the campers are getting now. Scott Rainey had been dispatched to come off the mountain to North Wilkesboro to fetch some dry and warm clothes for Katie. As you can imagine they don't have enough heat up there to dry anything. I think the campers are looking forward to their return to Winston-Salem on Saturday morning.
Friday, June 25, 1999
Here's a chance for you to win a Gateway PC loaded with Microsoft's Office 2000 suite.
Saturday, June 26, 1999
The family has returned from Laurel Ridge. I think they are beat, but would never admit same. And they're dirty. Apparently the showers there produce little more than a trickle. Suzy says you take the simple things in life for granted, like a dry towel and shower that actually produces water and is even warm.
A excursion to Tanglewood Park had been planned for the girls and I have to believe that if they hadn't already planned this experience with nature for this afternoon the Tucker family would be snoozing the day away.
With all this said, she says she would volunteer for this torture again, but with certain ground rules. She's got to be crazy.
There was one catastrophe from the encampment. Katie is quite upset that she apparently left her headgear at Laurel Ridge. The appropriate phone calls are being place to see if it can be retrieved.
Most web mail services do not allow you to pop your mail. Instead you have to handle your mail through the browser. I suppose this is so you can be exposed to the advertising contained on the pages. Who knows.
However, if you are the proud holder of an American Express card, AmexMail has a site that offers complimentary email and they will allow you to pop your mail.
If you have a webmail account at Microsoft's Hotmail site or through Yahoo, cWebMail offers a piece of software that will allow you to pop mail from hotmail and yahoo using an email client such as yahoo or Eudora.
Email Steve Tucker