Category Archives: News

Family News

Thank you!

Thank you everyone who attended the visitations and the funeral.  It was great to see everyone again, but it’s so sad that it takes something so tragic to get everyone together.

Thanks to everyone who sent flowers, gave cards, donations, and helped plan things.

A special thanks to Bruch Funeral Home.  Kris did such an awesome job of just taking care of every little detail so well, and making us feel so comfortable, it just made the whole ordeal so much less stressful than I thought it was going to be.

Thanks to Casa Capri for an excellent luncheon after the funeral, and for everyone who attended the luncheon.  Again, it was great to see you all!

Lastly, I’d like to thank the U.S. Navy for providing such a formal, respectful, and memorable graveside service for my father.  I’m sure he got quite a kick out of it, and it’s something we will certainly never forget.

Family News

Dad’s Funeral Sermon

Funeral for Harold Trottier
6/12/08 ““ First United Methodist Church
Rev. Ned Hintzman

Note: The recording may have started just after the service did, so a small portion of the pastor’s words are probably missing. This was my best effort to transcribe the service.

God gives us the capacity to mix our losses with our celebrations, our sadness with our joy, and our grief and our comfort. You see, the loss we feel is the gain we have been given. Think about that. The loss you feel today is because of the gain you have been given. Harold was a good and simple man. Life was not complicated for him. Surround him with his family on Christmas at his house and he was happy. Maybe he had on his red sweats and his Santa’s hat, and if he did, he was in his glory. Family cookouts, where somebody else did the cooking, was a good thing. He was doing well then. Give him a good steak along with his dog Tiny Toy in his arms or Friday night fish fry, and he was satisfied.

He was a good father to all you children, and his children’s spouses. To you, Jimmy and your wife Sandy, to Clayton and Clifford, and daughters Karen and Penny and husband Robert, and Loretta and Elizabeth and husband Tom. There are lots of good memories, of watching scary movies on the Sci-Fi station. There was that sense of humor that, to my understanding, at times was boundless (laughs). You never knew where it was going. And there was the “Bozzo” image that sticks in your mind. The trips to the family reunions during the summer in the Chevy station wagon, a loving grandpa to twelve grandchildren and Grandpa T. to seventeen great grandchildren. The scooter rides. And his dog Tiny Toy. Watching gangster movies, and sleeping over, and rummaging, just having a good time.

And not to be forgotten this morning are those 42 years that he and Donna were married. Her seemingly untimely death in 1992 ended a lot of travel plans with that barely two-year-old van that had hopes and plans written all over it. The van that remains, even though it doesn’t run. But he couldn’t have it be sold, because he couldn’t part with it.

Harold was in the Naval Reserves for five years and will be honored for that service when we are at Sunset Ridge. He was employed for over forty years at American Motors, and in recent years again, just, I guess I need to say it again, he loved that Sci-Fi channel. All the mysterious and scary movies that were on there. The picture boards””I always like looking at picture boards. Picture boards full of those pictures that, for you, bring back all those memories, all those good times, all those hopeful times, all that time that you lived with him, and he knew and loved you.

The bulletin cover today reflects the hope of his fate. In my Father’s house there are many dwellings, many rooms that Jesus has gone ahead to prepare. One for Harold, and one that Donna’s already taken care of. He’s gone home to be with his gracious and loving God, to be with Donna and the rest of those who have gone before him.

These words seem appropriate today:

God looked around his garden and he found an empty place.
He then looked down upon this earth and saw your tired face.
He put his arm around you and lifted you to rest.
God’s garden must be beautiful, he always takes the best.
He knew that you were suffering; he knew that you were in pain,
He knew that you would never get well ever again.
He saw that the road was getting rough and the hills were hard to climb.
So he closed your weary eyelids and whispered “peace be thine”.
It broke our hearts to lose you, but you didn’t go alone,
For part of us went with you, the day God called you home.

The joy of our fate is that when this life in the world can no longer be, God has another place prepared for us. A place where peace passes all understanding and living is always full and we share that hope not only for those who have died, but for us, as we continue into our lives. And I pray today that each one of us may live each day in the gracious compassion of God’s love. I pray that we might live with the assurance that God gives us, knowing that our lives will be filled with faith, and fill with the trust in God that is necessary, no matter what comes our way, no matter what we need, believing and knowing that God will be with us. This great gift of life. May you go forth today as people ready to live and ready to die knowing that either way, you are the Lord’s. Amen.

{Hymn: How Great Thou Art}

Go in peace. And may the peace, and the love, and the blessing of God Almighty, go with you, and be with you, now and always. In the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Family News

Funeral Services for Dad

Here are the funeral arrangements for my dad, Harold L. Trottier.  If you would like to visit his online memorial book or read his obituary, please click here.

Visitation
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
5:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Bruch Funeral Home
3503 Roosevelt Rd
Kenosha, WI 53142
(262) 652-8298

Church Services
Thursday, June 12th, 2008
10:00 am – 11:00 am Visitation
11:00 am Funeral Service
First United Methodist Church
919 60th Street
Kenosha, WI 53140

Interment will follow the church services at:

Sunset Ridge Memorial Park
6211 38th St
Kenosha, WI 53144
(262) 652-7488

Family News

Dad’s Gone

My father, Harold (Bozzo) Trottier, passed away this morning at Kenosha Memorial Hospital. He was 77 years old. He was born in 1931, and lived a good life. He raised a family of 7 children–A fine legacy to carry on his name–and we will all miss him greatly. I will post more as we learn more and as time permits. Tomorrow the details of the funeral and visitation will be finalized, but at this point we have set Wednesday evening for the visitation, with the funeral to be held on Thursday.

In memory, I’d like to re-post a portion of the sermon that Reverend Charles King gave when my mother passed away:

“This album of memories will contain a section for her husband, and their children, and the children of those children. Donna and Harold went to school together here in Kenosha and when the family moved to Iowa, Harold managed to cross Wisconsin to continue to see Donna. He was considered by Donna’s sisters, “Almost a part of the family.” But they had to wait until Donna was eighteen and had graduated from high school before they could get married, and so they did.

Obviously Donna loved her family, and I know that you who are here can fill in the blanks with example after example of her love and forgiveness and patience and the cheer that she radiated and which was kind of contagious. You are the ones who can share with each other sentences that start out: “Do you remember the time we. . .” I grew up in a very small family and when I was a child that was fine–one sister was even too much at times. But when I witness the support that larger families provide one another and all the interaction that takes place, I know that I missed something–like traditions at Easter and the entire family around to decorate the Christmas tree, and waiting until midnight and the start of Christmas to open presents. So there will be a large number of pages in this family section.”

There is much more to that sermon, so if you’d like to read it in its entirety, just click here.

News

Passing gas and digital TV

I recently heard a radio commercial on my way to work that startled me.  I couldn’t tell if it was a joke or not at first. It was about passing gas, of all things.  It was a family at dinnertime and the dad says “After a meal like that, I have GOT to pass gas!” The kids scream “No! Daddy’s gas could kill us all!” Then the father goes on to explain that the kids are right, etc., etc.  At the end of the commercial they refer you to dontpassgas.com and it’s an ad from the American Legacy Foundation.  Check their website, there’s even a couple television commercials there.  They all are really vague about their exact meaning until the very end of the commercial, but they’re actually referring to the gas passed by second-hand smoke, not the bodily function of passing gas.  Geez, if I had to step outside every time I had to pass gas, I might as well LIVE out there!

Another new site worth visiting is DTVAnswers.com.  It provides all of the information you need about the upcoming switch to Digital TV in the US, which is taking place on 2/17/09.  Everyone will be required to either have a digital TV by that time, or have cable or satellite TV.  People who still have older TVs and use over-the-air signals to watch TV will have to purchase a Digital TV converter box in order to still watch TV.  Fortunately the site also provides the details on how you can apply for a coupon from the NTIA for $40 toward the purchase of a converter box (limit 2 per household).  Digital TV is defintely a reality, so it’s time to switch or you’ll be watching snow… And we’ve certainly seen enough SNOW lately!!

I added these two links to by links list, or you can click on them in the article to visit the sites.

News

Blizzard of 2008

The paper says that we officially got 8-14 inches of snow yesterday, depending on what part of town you were in.  Further North, in and around Milwaukee they got even more—as much as 20 inches.  It’s been an interesting couple days, to say the least.  Here’s my story:

I left work at 3:30pm.  Well, actually it was much later, because I couldn’t leave the parking lot—I was stuck in my parking space.  When I got to my car in the parking lot of Vista Medical Center East, it was covered in several inches of heavy, wet snow.  One thing that was a bit amusing to see was our car antenna.  We have a “Homer Simpson in a  Donut” antenna topper on our car (so Sandy can find the car in a parking lot) and that thing had accumulated several pounds of ice and snow, shaped itself into a huge ball, bending the antenna 180 degrees so it rested back onto the car!  I looked pretty funny, and I wished I had a camera with me to capture the image.  No such luck, so I proceeded to start up the car and clean the snow off of it.  After clearing all of the snow from the car (it was still snowing like crazy, making it hard to keep up) I got in and tried to pull out of my space.  I rocked it a few inches forward and back, and kept doing that for awhile, but it wasn’t budging much.  Someone eventually walked up to my car with a shovel and just started shoveling me out.  He told me when it was clear, I thanked him, and then he directed me out of the space.  I got stuck again trying to go forward through the parking lot, but I was able to move fine in reverse, so I backed all the way out of my parking space and out of the lot and onto Sheridan Road in reverse all the way.  Fortunately traffic was extremely slow-moving on Sheridan Road, so I was able to pull all the way onto the street without stopping.  Stopping anywhere within the parking lot probably would have resulted in me getting immediately stuck again.

Once I hit Sheridan Road it wasn’t so bad.  The roads were someone plowed for the most part, and the tire treads from other cars made the going easier in a few areas that didn’t seem to be plowed at all.  It took a lot of time to travel the 12 miles home traveling at 15 mph or less the entire way.  I spoke to Sandy on the phone during the trip and she told me that a few cars had already gotten stuck on our street.  I decided it wasn’t worth the risk.  I didn’t want to end up stranded in the middle of the road and have to leave my car in an unsafe place, so I decided to park in a nearby parking garage and walk the few blocks home.  The remaining ride to the parking garage was uneventful, luckily.  I made it safely, locked up the car, bundled up, and proceeded to walk home on foot.

I got about a block away, walking on the sidewalk, and realized it was just too difficult to trudge through this all the way home.  The snow was at least a foot high, and sometimes past my knees as I walked, and very hard to get through.  Looking at the street, however, I realized it was much clearer there.  So I switched to walking in the street for the rest of the walk home.  The street, however, had its own drawbacks—it was solid ice in some places, and there was also traffic to watch out for.  Sheridan Road turned out to be the worst part of it (aside from the first block I walked in the deep stuff).  Sheridan Road looked like solid ice, and it was very slippery.  I slipped a few times, but didn’t hurt myself.  I was pretty nervous about all the traffic zipping by me though.

Eventually I got home, but I had to pause a few times along the way to catch my breath and rest a bit.  By the time I got a few houses from home my back was really killing me.  Once inside the house I rested in a chair, and my legs and feet felt pretty numb, and my feet were soaked.  I warmed up after awhile and felt fine again, so no harm done I guess.  After Kevin went to bed, Sandy and I went out to start shoveling.  It was still snowing a little, but we knew it was stopping soon after I checked the radar map.  After shoveling for some time we ran out of places to put the snow.  The piles we had built up were so high that it was very difficult to throw the snow high enough to get it to stay there any more.

After managing to get everything cleared I was about to come back in the house when I saw a flash in the sky and heard a loud boom and a bzzzzz bzzzzzzp followed by everything in the neighborhood going dark for a couple seconds and then coming back on.  It looked and sounded like a transformer blew somewhere close by, but I couldn’t tell exactly where.  Sandy checked the flashlights and made sure  some candles were ready in case we needed them.  The power stayed on the rest of the night though, so we lucked out.

In the morning I got up early, and as expected, the plow had come through in the night and plowed 2 to 3 feet of snow back into our driveway.  There was also about another inch on snow on our sidewalk.  So I shoveled the walk and the driveway again and moved the plow’s aftermath.  We had an open section of shoveled lawn that our neighbor was nice enough to clear for us after the previous snow storm, which was for our garbage and recyclables, so I ended up having to use this spot to move the driveway snow to.  So right now we don’t have a good spot for our garbage to sit for pickup, but at least our sidewalk and driveway are clear.

We went and got our car back from the parking garage today too, so everything worked out ok.  I even took the camera with me and snapped some photos when I took Kevin to school this morning, so I’ve created a “Blizzard of 2008” folder and posted those pictures in it.  Click here to take a look at them.

News

Snow Sculpting 2008

The photos are now online from our visit to the 2008 National Snow Sculpting Competition in Lake Geneva.  We were there today and it seemed much more crowded than previous years… probably because the weather was decent instead of the below-zero blizzard conditions I remember from last year.  We had to park a few blocks away, but even that was ok–Kevin and I got a chance to walk and talk together and enjoy the brisk outdoors a bit.

My favorite one–and it’s gotta be in the top 3 if not the top prize winner–was “Sharks Lair.”  Great detail all around and very well done.  We even got photos of the team that did that one, posing with their finished sculpture.  On the downside, one I thought was in pretty bad taste was called “Till the fat lady swings.”  It was just that–a fat lady swinging on a swing.  I didn’t care for it much, although, I must admit, much of the detailed surroundings in the sculpture were nicely rendered.

Click on the thumbnail image to view the photos.  I’ll update the captions with the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners as soon as the results are released.

News

Motorstorm

Hello, my name is Jim, and I’m an addict.  Or so my wife says.  I just love to play MotoStorm.  Tonight I played for hours, and now my eyes are still twitching, making the computer display look out of focus a bit.  There’s something about playing a hi-def game that messes with your head a little.  Normal screens just don’t look right immediately afterward.  It takes awhile for your brain to readjust to regular refresh rates and lower resolution I think.

MotorStorm rocks though.  And in case you haven’t heard of it, it’s a new game for PS3 that really showcases a lot of what the PS3 can do.  It’s highly addicting, both pretty to look at and extremely “dirty” at the same time, amazingly detailed, and did I mention highly addictive?  And by “dirty” I mean dirt-dirty–there’s mud and dirt everywhere in the game, and it covers not only the vehicles and drivers, but also sprays and splashes all over the game camera, covering my 47″ flat-planel display with muck! This is an offroad racing game that takes place at a festival in Monument Valley, Arizona.  And from what I gather, Monument Valley is a real place, and I’ve viewed a lot of photos of it on the web since I purchased the game, comparing them to areas in the game.  From what I can tell, it looks to be a very accurate representation of many parts of the area, but I’m sure the maps, for the most part, were generated digitally to give the player the best gaming experience possible.  Here’s how one website describes the REAL Monument Valley:

Monument Valley is an area of free standing sandstone rock forms that rise majestically from the desert floor. Up to 1,000 feet tall, they create a truly magical desert landscape. The beauty of the area is a fact well documented by the numerous Western movies and television commercials for which Monument Valley has served as a backdrop. (So whether or not you were aware of it, you have very likely already seen Monument Valley.)

Monument Valley is located along the Utah/Arizona border towards the southeast corner of Utah. It is just east of Hwy. 163, about 22 miles southwest of Mexican Hat, Utah and 24 miles north of Kayenta, Arizona.

And playing in the “digital version” of this landscape just looks so real, I’d like to some day see this area in person just to experience it.  You can lag behind all the other racers and just take in the scenery, and it’s still a fun time.  But for the best experience, get into a real race and try to win.  Any way possible.  There’s no rules, no specific routes to follow.  Shortcuts are everywhere, and most scenery is even destructable, depending on the ruggedness of your vehicle.  For example a large billboard is no obstacle for a big rig to slam through, but slam into it head-on on a little motorcycle and you’ll find yourself and your bike are soon parted…in several pieces.

When you first start playing the regular game (offline) there’s not many options for tracks or levels.  You have to start with the first two or three tracks and come in 1st, 2nd or 3rd to qualify and earn points.  The better you place, the more points you get.  Gather enough points and you unlock new levels and vehicles.  I’ve unlocked a few new levels so far.  It takes a lot of practice and trial and error to learn what paths are best to take for whichever vehicle you choose, and you’ll find yourself liking certain types of vehicles more than others.  But some levels force you to use a specific vehicle, so you have to learn to use each vehicle type and learn how it handles and how to win with it.

The last feature I’ll mention (since this is starting to sound like a game review) is the online play.  Sony’s free online service is great.  There’s always hundreds of people playing MotorStorm in one of 4 or 5 servers listed.  You can choose a server and then either create a “room” of your own (allowing you to choose everything from game level to the types of vehicles you allow in your game) and others will usually join in fairly quickly, and you can start the game when you choose.  Interestingly, once a room is created and people are in it, you can leave after a race or play again, and other players can come and go as they choose, or you can leave the room altogether and the room remains, under someone else’s control.  I’ve seen rooms I created last for days, which is pretty neat.  Your other option is to join a game someone else created.  Then you have to choose from the list of vehicle types THEY allow, and play on the level THEY have chosen.
It sure makes for one totally addicting experience, and I can’t get enough of it.  Now enough of this blogging, I’m going back to my game…

Hey Jay, you live in Arizona…. Have you been to this place?

News

Snow Sculpting 2007

The judging for the 2007 Snow Sculpting Nationals were held at Riviera Park in Lake Geneva today.  Kevin and I went out there to take a look.  With the below-zero temperatures and much worse wind chill, we didn’t stay long!  We practically ran from exhibit to exhibit, snapping a few quick photos, then moving on to the next one.  After about 15 minutes my hands and face were numb and we had had enough.

So here are all of the photos, most of them I named appropriately, remembering to also snap a shot of the credit signs.  One of the sculptures remains unnamed because I missed the sign, so if anyone out there could help identify it, I’d appreciate it.

I’ll mark which ones were the winners after I get the results from tomorrow’s paper or off of their website.  Click on the thumbnail to view all of the photos.

News

Kevin’s 9th Birthday

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Kevin had his 9th Birthday party at Guttormsen’s (GRC) this Friday.  A small group attended, and they had a blast bowling a few games (with the gutter guards up), eating pizza, cake, and ice cream.  Kevin got some really nice gifts and had a great time, as you’ll see in the photos.  Click on the thumbnail to view them all.

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The world is open, come on in

Jim’s Photo World LogoProgress on the new photo section/site is going well.  I still have most photos from 2001-2006 to upload though, and I’m trying to do it pretty much chronologically, so I’m currently working on 2001’s photographs.  The part taking the longest by far is the naming of each photo.  I’ve learned a good lesson here–whenever I’m going to keep a photo from now on, I will name it appropriately after downloading it from the camera.  Hundreds of my photos were still named with the camera’s filename, and leaving them this way would make finding anything in a search almost impossible.

It’ll be great when it’s all finished though.  In fact, I think it’s pretty great right now, even with just 1,700 photos online.  So I’m officially announcing the location of the site so everyone can check it out.  Please feel free to comment on what you like and don’t like and what works or doesn’t work.  I’d appreciate the input.  This website is actually completely separate from jimtrottier.com–in fact, it’s hosted by a completely different company.  When it’s finished though, it will be very integrated into jimtrottier.com, almost seamlessly (if you don’t look at the address bar).  Here it is: jimsphotoworld.com.
Jim’s Photo World

There are also the familiar “Most recent album”, “Most recent photo”, etc., thumbnails located at the bottom right corner of jimtrottier.com’s main web page, in case you haven’t noticed them.  These were inserted while I was testing the integration of the two sites, and they’ll all be bumped up the page and will replace the current ones in the right sidebar once the new site is up-to-date.  So go take a look.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

News

Father’s Day 2006

This Father’s Day was a little messed up for me.  I worked Saturday night, and got probably less than an hour or two of sleep before our cookout.  So I was a little drained, to say the least.  It was a great get-together though, despite the bad weather.  We spent the day at Rosemary’s, swam, cooked out, and played some Left, Right, Center for nickels.  It rained a lot of the time, so we moved the picnic table into the garage and ate there.  Later on the weather cleared up and we were able to finish the party outside where everyone wanted to be.

I missed a good chunk of the party myself though. Bear and I swam for a while before we ate, and that, combined with my lack of sleep, really knocked me out.  I went in the house and rested on Rosemary’s couch for awhile and I passed out.  When I woke up, Sandy had already taken my dad back to the nursing home and they were having some great desserts–including a great ice cream cake from Dairy Queen.  Sandy said my dad had a great time though, so that’s good.

I expected Kevin to join us in the pool, but he chickened out this time.  I think he remembered how cold the water was the last time we went swimming at Rosemary’s, and it wasn’t much warmer today.  So he was happy just to stay out, retrieve our balls when we threw them too far, and yell at us when we got him wet.

Everyone had a great time, the food was great, and we all went home stuffed, so it was a huge success.  Click here for a few photo highlights.

News

Coming Home

Bozzo is being discharged from the nursing home next week.  They said they’ve reached a plateau in his therapy and haven’t seen any improvement in awhile, so they’ve gone as far as they can, and they said they have no reason to keep him there any longer.  They stressed that he needs 24/7 supervision though, and should not be left alone at all.  Penny and Clayton have told them that they feel they can provide the coverage he needs, so they’re sending him home.  He still isn’t able to walk on his own, which is the main problem.  His memory and cognition skills have also gotten a little worseas well, so we have to keep an eye on that as well.

But for the time being he’ll be back where he wants to be–at home.  He hasn’t liked the nursing home, and says the food is pretty bad, so he’s anxious to get back home again.  Hopefully he understands that he’s expected to get motivated every day, out of bed, dressed, and move around a bit.  Since the nursing home has required this all during his stay, maybe he’ll stick with it and not fall back to his old lazy ways.  He knows he’ll end up back in that nursing home if we can’t handle him, so maybe that’ll keep him motivated.  We’ve scheduled an aide to come in 3 days a week for a couple hours a day to help with him, and we might do more days if it works out and he can afford it.  It’ll give Penny and/or Clayton a few hours off on these days.  So we’ll see how it goes.

News

Shocking discovery

We discovered something “shocking” today!  Kevin likes to wear those “blinking” shoes–you know, the kind that flash different colors whenever you step or stomp your feet.  I had originally thought they used some sort of mercury switch that made contact whenever you took a step, but now I’m not so sure.  Kevin was playing with his energy ball and I noticed that whenever he touched it, his shoes would start blinking frantically!  I guess just enough energy is released through Kevin and into his feet and shoes to set off the light switches.  I find this fascinating, but now I’m wondering just what’s happening and how these shoes really work.  Anybody else know?  I’m going to have to start doing a little research on this before it drives me nuts now.

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Daddy’s new toy

I recently purchased a new “toy”.  It’s been a while since I’ve had a new toy, and certain circumstances arose that pointed me in the direction of this particular device, so I took the plunge and bought it.  It’s a PSP.  For those not familiar with the term, it’s a Sony PlayStation Portable.  Like the Playstation and Playstation 2, this is a game system that plays some awesome games.  It’s also portable (handheld) so you can play it anywhere.  But it also does much MORE than play games, which was a big factor in my decision to purchase it, rather than something like the Nintendo DS, which actually has two screens instead of one.

The DS plays some great games as well, but lacks the ability to do all of the other things I like to do, like play MP3’s, videos, and display photos.  The PSP does all of this, and also includes a web browser and several other features.  I’ve been using it only a few days now, but I’m very impressed so far.  I picked up a 2GB Memory Stick for it as well, so I have a lot of space on it to work with.  Right now I have 23 of my favorite albums on it, a bunch of my favorite digital photos from 2006 (about 130 of them), and a couple of silly videos I like to show off.  I still have over 600MB of space available on the memory card, even with all of this on it, as well as a few saved games from a couple Classic Arcade Game collections I bought with the system.

They even sell full movies for the PSP now, but from what I’ve read they’re not as popular as Sony would have hoped.  It’s easy to understand why though.  How much fun can it be to watch a whole movie on a screen that tiny?  Sure, it’s widescreen format, but it’s just plain small for movies.  It’s big for a handheld game system (the screen is bigger and much brighter than either of the two screens on the Nintendo DS), but it’s still just too small for watching movies on.  Video clips are fine, but for extended movie watching you need something bigger to focus on.

But for all other uses, the PSP does a great job.  And I recently heard that Sony is planning to soon open up their collection of original Playstation (PSOne) games and make them available as playable downloads from their website, so that sounds great too.  As for add-ons and accessories, I made sure there were plenty of options available before I bought it as well, and waiting a year since it’s initial release has made a huge difference.  The built-in system software itself has been updated many times since it’s release, so I immediately checked for updates and sure enough, I was already two releases behind.  But since I have a wireless network at home, I was able to quickly configure the built-in wifi settings and get it updated in a few minutes.

I also bought Sony’s Media Manager software to make managing my files on the PSP much easier, and that’s working out great.  It will automatically re-encode your music, photos, and videos (if you configure it to) on-the-fly to save you more space on the PSP memory stick.  This is very handy, and I use it for my music, but for digital photos I like being able to zoom in on details and scroll around, and if you have it resize your photos down to the PSP’s screen size, you’ll lose too much detail and zooming it looks horrible.  Fortunately, they give you four or five scale sizes though, so you can choose how much to scale your photos or not to even scale them at all and keep their original sizes intact.  This is a one-way process, fortunately, so files are only re-encoded and scaled down when transferring to the PSP.  Your original, full-detail files remain intact on your computer.

Lastly, battery life seems satisfactory, but it all depends on what feature you’re using the most.  For example, the worst battery killer is the wifi function.  If you use the wifi, or accidentally leave the wifi switch on, your battery will last a few hours less than it would with the wifi turned off.  The rest of the functions are much less stressful on the battery, but as you might expect, playing games from the proprietary UMD disc drive (the discs look like very tiny DVDs) are a bit more draining than just playing MP3s from the memory card.  But if you’re doing the latter, you can also extend your battery’s time a great deal by turning the screen itself off when listening to MP3s.  As a backup battery solution I found a nice battery pack that opens up and you can insert 3 AAA batteries into it and continue using the PSP after your rechargeable battery dies.

So for now, as you can see, I’m really enjoying this thing.  Hopefully it’ll bring me years of entertainment in all of its many forms.

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Blast from the past

Penny and Bob found this family photo at my dad’s house recently.  This photo was taken in November of 1962.  In it are, from left to right: Clifford, Clayton, Harold, Donna, Penny, Loretta, and Karen.  Beth and I hadn’t been born yet.  But what fascinates me is the fact that, based on the month and year written on the back of this photo, my mom was one or two months pregnant with ME at the time!  I just stare at her face in the photo and wonder if she even knew I was in there cookin’ yet.  Beth was still about 5 years from being born, but there’s gotta be just a teeny weeny trace of me showing somewhere in this photo.

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Bird be gone

Is there such a thing?  Is there a bird repellent?  I sure needed some recently.  I had to improvise, but I got the job done I think.  If your not familiar with the problem I’ve had in the recent past with these birds, please click here and catch up before reading the rest of this post.

Today these birds are not quite as smart as they were back then.  Or are they…?   They poop on the driveway now.  But maybe out of anger and not out of stupidity.  You see, I think I made them a little mad recently.  A couple months ago, as Spring approached, we started noticing this weird gooey stringy stuff lying in our driveway once in a while.  It was usually wet and gooey because of the wet weather we’ve had, so we really couldn’t identify it.  But once things dried up and more of it appeared, we figured out what it was.  It was insulation, pulled out from under our roof, on the side of the house that the driveway is on.  It’s conveniently right where the cable and/or electrical lines go from the telephone pole to our house–a handy little “walkway” that the birds tend to use to get into our gutter.

It seems that the birds are either pulling out our insulation and using it to build their nests, or they’re actually digging an opening in the side of our house under our roofing and making their home right there.  In either case, they’re constantly going in and out of that same spot next to our new gutters, pooping on our cars and in our driveway, and really being a nuisance.  Now, I love birds, but only to a point.  They’re nice to observe, and maybe even nice as pets in cages.  But right now I’m seeing them more as flying rats, bent on the destruction of our home.

Well, last week when I took the lawn mower out for the first time of the season, I found several bee and wasp nests in our shed.  They were active, with bees and wasps currently residing in them.  This made getting anything out of the shed pretty hazardous, so Sandy picked up a couple cans of long-distance wasp killer.  You can spray up to a 20-foot stream of this stuff and nail the nest, killing the wasps and bees quickly to avoid getting stung.  It worked well, and by the end of one can of it I had two small bee hives and two wasp nests (the bee hives that that neat honeycomb pattern and the wasp nests looked kind of like packed mud with 1/4″ circular holes in it) bagged and sealed.

So with the second can, I decided that the stuff just might work ok as a bird repellent as well.  The can didn’t mention it, but it was worth a shot.  We don’t have a ladder long enough to get me up there to the gutter to see what’s actually going on, but the nice straight stream of this stuff could surely nail and cover the area quite well.  So I moved the cars out of the driveway and went for it.  Birds flew in a hurry, and a couple even stayed near, one in particular even stayed as close as on the wires right above our driveway.  In fact, this particlar bird had a worm in his mouth and was squawking repeatedly as if actually yelling or screaming at me, as he watched me squirt the area with the bug spray.  Maybe he was about to feed babies somewhere.  I felt a little bad that maybe those babies were up there, maybe dying from the poison I was drenching them with.  But that was only a momentary thought and I quickly realized that I’M the one paying the mortgage, not them, and they have no right living here.

Over the last several days since that spraying we haven’t had a single bird poop on our cars in our driveway.  This is a relief, so I think it was a good thing to do.  Want pictures?  I didn’t take any myself, but you can click on the thumbnail for closer look of the way I pictured it.

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Mothers Day 2006

Sandy had a very nice Mother’s Day today.  Kevin picked out everything for her.  We went shopping on Saturday while she was at work.  Kevin knew ahead of time exactly what he wanted to get her, which was flowers and a bracelet.  So first we went to the florist.  Knowing her favorite color is purple, Kevin picked out several nice purple flowers (including purple roses) and a purple vase.  The florist added thier usual nice touch, and then he picked out a balloon to go with it.
Next we went on a quest to find a bracelet.  We knew mama liked gold, so Kevin found a few nice gold bracelets and we eventually narrowed it down to one and bought it for her.  Next we spent some time picking out a nice Mother’s Day card.  We went through a ton of them, and Kevin finally settled on a Spongebob Mother’s Day card that he really got a kick out of.

When we got home he signed the card and added dozens of X’s and O’s to the inside for mom, and we wrapped her card and gift and left them with the flowers on the dining room table.  When mom got home Saturday evening she could see the flowers, but he made her wait until Sunday morning to open her card and gift.  She enjoyed everything a great deal, and Kevin topped things off by taking us out for a Mother’s Day Brunch at The Parkway Chateau.  They had a great brunch buffet, complete with everything you can imagine for breakfast and lunch, including eggs, bacon, jumbalaya (with shrimp and brats), steak, twice baked potatoes, and much much more.  Click on the thumbnail images if you’d like to see Sandy’s flowers or gift up close.  I added the quarter to add scale to the bracelet to show it’s actual size.

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The Falcon, The Website and the PC Tech

I’ve been a bit busy lately. Finally. I recently got called back to my job after a five-month layoff. It was an indefinite layoff, so I really wasn’t sure if I would be called back at all. I have been applying for other jobs for the past five months, looking for something in my field that paid a decent wage, but there just isn’t much out there these days. So when the opportunity came up to resume my old position, I jumped at the chance and I’m now happily back to work again, doing what I love to do–working with computers.

Even though it appears as though the website hasn’t been updated recently, it really has. I’ve still been working hard to restore the old postings that couldn’t be automatically be imported when I movved the site from MovableType to Mambo/Joomla. There are many more postings to go, all in the date range of 4/11/2004 to 8/7/2004. I know this is all old news, but I love maintaining the site, and once this gap is filled it will provide a very nice resource for anyone interested on our family’s history or just my silly ramblings about things, even if it is just for a relateively brief time in “Internet Years”. I’m guessing this whole Internet thing will eventually evolve into something much more, something I’m sure this site will no longer be compatible with. But until then it’ll be around, sitting out here in cyberspace as complete as I can keep it, for all to see.  Oh yeah, the spammers also recently found my comments section and loaded it up with their crap, so I’ve also had to switch commenting to “members only”.  I previously had it open to allow anyone to comment just to try to increase user response, but that has proven to be a bad idea.  In today’s Internet nothing can be left too open and free, or it is destined to be attacked and exploited.

Sandy has been keeping an eye on the Peregrene Falcons at the hospital recently. They have cameras setup to watch these rare birds as they try to repolulate themselves off of the endangered species list. Today she watched on an in-hospital camera as two of the four eggs hatched and two baby falcons were born. There are two more unhatched eggs in the nest, so I’m sure she’ll know when those have hatched as well. I’ll keep you posted.

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Easter

Easter was a little different this year.  More depressing than previous ones though.  First of all, my dad is now in a nursing home.  He is very negative on nursing homes, so we had to assure him that if he can get better with the rehab, and get to walking on his own again without the risk of falling, then he can go home.  The doctor isn’t so sure, but who knows, miracles can happen.  He went into the home straight from the hospital on Saturday.  Sunday night I got a call from the nursing home–he tried to go to the bathroom on his own again already, bare feet, and fell again.  An aide was supposedly helping him walk back from the bathroom when he fell though, and he landed on his butt, so there was no injury.  Now he’s wired with an alarm.  Any attempt to get up o his own, and everyone instantly knows about it with a shriek.

Sandy had already bought everything for a big Easter dinner at my dad’s, so she still cooked over at his house and Kevin, Matt, Sandy and I had a wonderful Easter Feast there.  Afterward she brought a nice Easter dinner plate to my dad at the nursing home.

Sandy and Kevin decorated eggs Easter Eve, and I took a few pictures.  The kids got their Easter baskets Easter morning, and we took a few photos and a little video.  Kevin got the Narnia movie in his basket, and he’s already watched it at least 3 times, as expected.

Kevin’s off school for spring break and enjoying himself.  Matt’s out of town for a couple days doing some testing and getting a complete physical for his military recruitment.  He’s going in the Army.  He’s be doing his Basic Training this summer, and he gets work experience credit toward his high school diploma if all goes well.  We’re rooting for him, whether he believes it or not.  If this is what he wants to do, more power to him.  Defending your country is not to be taken lightly.