Daily Archives: December 27, 2022
Cracker Barrel Came Through . . .
Well, 3 weeks after I contacted them, Cracker Barrel finally came through.
NOT!
They sent me their sincere apologies and a digital gift card for an entrée. Not even a full meal.
An Entrée!
Not even enough to buy us a replacement pan of the dressing they left out of our Thanksgiving order.
Jan says they’re dead to her.
After staying home yesterday, Jan and I were on our way out this afternoon a little before 1pm with our first stop at our local Denny’s. We got our usual great Ultimate Omelets, and since our diets are in time-out for the holidays, we shared a two-stack order of their Salted Caramel and Banana Pancakes. YUMMM!
Talk about a Sweetness Overload. And we had half left over to bring home.
Then it was on across the street to the HEB for a few things, finishing up with a stop at the Santa Fe PO and our local park mailboxes for the last of the Christmas cards.
Master Landon’s going full bore with his new Ender 3D Printer. It’s amazing how fast he’s picking this stuff up on his own. He even figured out how to pause and resume a print. Which is how he ended up with this black and white dog when he ran out of white filament and had to switch over to black.
Next up was a dragon that took about 11 hours.
What’s really amazing about this one is that it’s segmented and flexible.
The only problem with this print is that the dragon came slightly loose from the bed and the print stopped at 97%. And that missing 3% was the dragon’s horns, as you can see below.
But Landon has already figured out how restart the print at the last 3% so it just prints out the horns. Then he’ll glue them on the head.
His printer will print out objects a little more than 8.6” x 8.6” square and 9.5” high. So I imagine we can expect some larger objects in the future.
Wrapping up, Jan’s sister Debbie sent over this photo of her Illinois bunch together for the holidays.
A great looking group.
Thought for the Day:
Doubt that the government is screwed up, no matter who’s in charge?
They already have proven they can’t even run a cat house. Remember the Mustang Ranch fiasco in Nevada after it was seized by the IRS? They couldn’t make a profit selling sex and liquor to a bunch of horny guys with cash in their pockets. But we trust them with running our lives.
December 27, 2010
Gulliver’s and Grandkids . . .
This morning started early (well, early for us) when we headed out about 10am to drop Jan off at Chris’ so she and Miss Piper could have a girl’s day out.
And they had a pretty full day planned. First up was a movie with the new Jack Black film Gulliver’s Travels in 3D on the schedule.
After that it was lunch at the Texas Tea Room, a place that our friend Barbara Cutsinger had recommended, but we had never tried.
After that it was shopping, shopping, shopping for the rest of the afternoon.
Jan was hardly home and in her jammies when our friend Maria called to see if we wanted to meet them in about 30 minutes right down the road at La Brisa.
Hey, it’s Mexican, we’re there.
Then later, our daughter Brandi called to catch us up on their trip to see Lowell’s family in Oklahoma. They had a great time and Mister Landon slept the whole trip back. We also made a date to meet them Wednesday night at Pappasito’s Cantina, another good local Mexican place.
And, of course, we’re meeting Maria tomorrow night at Monterey’s Little Mexico before she and Jan head down to La Marque for bingo. And Miss Piper might be going too. We’ll see.
Of course, that means we’ll be having Mexican 3 nights in a row. I don’t see a problem with that, do you?
In fact years ago, when the kids were little, we ate at the same Mexican restaurant every night for a week. What can I say, we liked the place.
Our friends George and Sandy Stoltz sent us this picture of their new grandson.
We have agreed that our grandsons are tied for The Best Looking Baby Boy of 2010.
And I have to take this opportunity to embarrass our granddaughter Piper, who I think won the title of The Best Looking Baby Girl of 1993. And she’s only gotten more lovely every since.
Of course she probably won’t be speaking to me for a while since I put these photos on the blog again.
Oh, and did I say she’s really smart, too.
And since I’m making family members mad at me, here’s a photo of our beautiful daughter Brandi, along with Miss Piper again. This was taken at Bubba Gump’s Seafood in Time Square last year when they both came up to visit us and see New York.
It’s easy to see why they’re often mistaken for sisters, even thought they’re aunt and niece.
Well, I’ve alienated enough family for one blog post, so that’s about it for today.
December 27, 2011
Tea Rooms and Toaster Ovens. . .
I was up about 9am this morning because Jan and I needed to head out about 10. She was meeting up with our granddaughter Piper to the spend the day together, and I had to drop a new laptop off at a clients.
I dropped Jan off at Piper’s about 10:30 and then headed over to my client’s. I had picked their new laptop before Christmas to get it configured with all the software they wanted on it. The problem started when I got there and they had a whole new list of software to install, and it had to be done today since they are flying to California tomorrow morning.
But the real problem was that almost all of this software needed to downloaded, and most of the files were really large. And their connection was really, really slow.
So 5 hours later I finally finished. But since I get paid by the hour, it was all good.
In the meantime Jan and Piper had headed out for their day together. Their first stop was the Texas Tea Room for lunch, our favorite tea room in this area for soup and sandwiches. Hopefully Jan and I will be able to eat there before we leave.
Their next stop was to do some shopping during the after-Christmas sales. Piper is a sharp shopper and they picked up some great bargains along the way.
Next up was a movie. They’d decided to see the new Matt Damon movie, “We Bought A Zoo”. Based on a true story, although in real life it happened in England, it tells of a family that bought and rehabilitated a small zoo. They both liked it and said it was ‘touching’.
By the time they were done with the movie I was finished also, so I met them back at Piper’s, and then Jan and I headed home with a stopover for dinner at Kelly’s Country Cookin’ in League City. Jan was hoping they would have Turkey and Dressing (cornbread, of course), but unfortunately they didn’t. They did, however, have the next best thing – Roasted Chicken Breast and Dressing.
She said it was really good, and being from Kelly’s, of course there were leftovers.
On another note, Jan is really enjoying the Christmas present I got her. A new Black & Decker Toaster/Convection Oven.
She had made a comment about how nice the one our daughter Brandi has, so I surprised her with this one.
It’s all digital and big enough to cook a 12” pizza or toast 6 slices of bread at one time.
As far as my Christmas present, my new Garmin nuvi 1490LMP GPS, goes, so far I really like it. I want to play with it for a while longer before I give a review.
It looks like tomorrow is when I’m going to try to reinstall the washer back in its cubbyhole. I’ll let you know how it goes.
December 27, 2012
It’s Dead, Jim . . .
Jan and our granddaughter Piper had scheduled a Girl’s Day Out with lunch, a movie, mani/pedi’s, and shopping, so they headed out a little before 11, with me about 15 minutes behind.
As for me, I was heading over to a client’s to earn some money to pay for lunch, a movie, mani . . . you get the picture.
I was going to finish the setup of the new computer that I started yesterday. But I should have known this machine was snake-bit right out of the box. In fact it crashed pretty much right out of the box.
The first odd thing was that it tried to turn on as soon as I plugged it into power. But powering down and back on brought it right up. Then, further into the initial setup, as I was entering the Account Name and the PC Name, the machine blue-screened, rebooted, scanned for HD errors, found none, and then settled down and worked fine.
I should have given up then, but it worked fine the rest of the afternoon as I installed more software. But then this morning right before I left the rig, one of the office people called and said they had been installing MS Office 2010 on it, and when they rebooted at the end of the installation, the machine would not come up. The power light was on but that was it.
And when I got to the office I found the same thing. I did unplugged it for about 5 minutes, but after I plugged it back in, the power light came back on and that was it. So I packed it back in the box and off to Fry’s Electronics I went.
Of course, when they booted it up at the store, it worked fine. Of course.
But after I explained all the problems I’d had, they quickly gave me a replacement machine and then it was back to the office. Back at the client’s office, I started the setup over, and this time everything went fine, with no problems.
Finally finishing up for the day, I stopped by another client’s to check in before heading over to the house to wait for Jan and Piper.
And as soon as they showed up, we said our goodbyes to Piper and then Jan and I headed toward home with a stopover at Monterey’s Little Mexico for dinner.
Chicken Tortilla Soup on a cold, wet evening. YUMMM!
December 27, 2013
Hot Coffee and Hot Peppers . . .
After last night’s checkout with a K-Cup, I did an 8 cup pot using our new Hamilton Beach Flex Brew 2-Way coffee maker.
Hamilton Beach 49980A 2-Way Single Serve Brewer and Coffee Maker
And it was just as good as last night. We’re really going to enjoy having the convenience of doing single cups or full pots.
We didn’t sit outside with our coffee and muffins this morning, because with no sun and 55°, it was cold so, we stayed inside.
A little later we checked out Jan’s Christmas gift that she’d been wanting – A FoodSaver Vacuum Sealer.
FoodSaver V2244 Vacuum Sealing System
She’d been wanting one for a while, and since she was on Santa’s very naughty list this year, he fulfilled her wish.
Although this is their smallest model, it does everything the bigger ones will, including sealing jars. We had a lot of fun fooling around with it, just sealing up different bags of chips and other stuff, and also watching some YouTube videos about it.
My present was something I’d also been wanting, a Chia Willie, And believe me, I need a plant that’s hard to kill.
Chia Willie Duck Dynasty Handmade Decorative Chia Pet Planter
Friend and Blog Reader George Stoltz sent over this article on the latest entry in the hot pepper wars.
This is the latest winner, the Carolina Reaper. They just look evil.
A batch of these clocked at 1,569,300 Scoville Heat Unit, with an individual pepper rated at over 2.2 million. SHU.
Sounds tasty to me.
Jan’s sister, Debbie, sent over this photo of her kids and grandkids.
From left to right, that’s daughter Tana, her boyfriend Curt. son Jason, his wife Laura, daughter Christina, and Tana’s daughter Gwen.
Down in front, it’s Ella, and Avery Jane, and Laura’s holding the newest addition, Annisten. A really cute group.
Wrapping up, for all of you complaining about your nasty weather this winter, check out Fairbanks. AK today. It was –49° this afternoon, and looked like this.
Now, stop your whining.
December 27, 2014
Chili and Fry’s . . .
A little before 10am Jan and I headed out to Clear Lake for the day. After an hour and 15 minute trip, our first stop was the Twin Peaks in Webster for lunch. Since we planned to have dinner with our son Chris and his family, we thought we’d just have soup. In my case it was a bowl of their delicious Venison Chili, and Jan is hooked on their Creamy Tomato Soup.
But since we hadn’t had coffee or muffins this morning, we also added a side salad, which for a simple $2.29 side salad, turned out to be really good, and really big. With croutons, grated cheese, and 5 or 6 kinds of lettuce and cabbage, it was a meal by itself. If we had known how big it was going to be, we would have gotten cups of soups, rather than bowls.
Leaving lunch, we drove over to the SuperCuts so Jan could get her haircut. While she was there, I went next door to the auto parts store from some fuses. Then when she was finished we headed over to our storeroom to meet our son Chris to try and finish up cleaning it out. But it quickly became evident that the on-and-off heavy rains were going complicate things, to the point that we weren’t going to be able to finish up today. With the rain we weren’t going to be able to take loads of stuff to Goodwill. So it looks like we’ll have the storeroom for another month.
Finishing up with what we could do today, we headed over to the Fry’s Electronics and then on to EPO, another local electronics place, before dropping off a letter at the PO.
Then it was on to Chris’ to spend some time before we went out to supper. Linda said she couldn’t print from her desktop computer to the Samsung Laser Printer, so I took a look at the problem.
Tried printing a test page from the printer driver itself with no luck, so deleted and reinstalled the printer driver, again with no luck. Even did it twice to be sure.
Finally deleted the driver once again, then went into the registry and deleted everything left that related to Samsung. Next I went to the Samsung website and let their Web-based installer install the latest drivers. And this fixed the problem.
This problem fixed, we headed over to Barcenas Mexican Restaurant about 5:30 for a great dinner with Chris and Linda. Unfortunately Piper was out with friends.
Finally got on the road home a little before 7pm, getting back to the rig a little after 8pm. Another really nice day, if not as productive as we’d hoped.
December 27, 2015
Really Lucky . . .
Well, after it rained (and poured) all day, the cold front showed up right on time, with the temperature dropping from 74 degrees to 49 degrees between 5pm and 7pm with a drop to 39 degrees scheduled before the night is over.
The weather was bad enough that we didn’t even think about walking this morning. In fact we never even left the rig at all, but just hunkered down and goofed off with reading, computing, and napping. So actually, a very nice day.
But our rain and cold front is nothing compared to the bad weather that hit areas around Dallas, especially the River Plantation RV Park.
According to reports, no one was killed at the RV park, although 11 were reportedly killed in other areas of Texas.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those who lost family or friends in these storms
One of Jan’s favorite gifts this Christmas was a two’fer. First Landon gave her a sample of his latest artwork from school.
I’m constantly amazed by his use of color and composition.
And his school is so hi-tech that even his artwork is bar-coded on the back
But Jan’s real gift was that Brandi took that artwork and turned it into a notebook for her.
She probably won’t even want to write in it, just to keep it longer.
For more on the family front, we got this photo of our great-nieces, great-nephews. and a . . . great-fawn?
We never know what’s going to show up with them. The last pictures of Darby and Stahlie came from the Great Wall of China.
Only Stahlie could get photo-bombed by a Chinese Communist soldier.
If you want to read more about their China trip, you can follow it up here:
Tomorrow about 9:30 Jan and I are driving down to our daughter Brandi’s in Katy to spend the day with Lendel and Sonja, our son-in-law Lowell’s parents, so we can take Landon out for some fun stuff.
Really looking forward to it.
December 27, 2016
I Spoke Too Soon . . .
Not about the Rattlesnakes, but about the Cell service here at this gate.
Last night and tonight, it’s been all over the map. Sometimes it works great, and then sometimes nothing. And pretty much everything in between.
Sometimes my AirCard shows that it has Internet Access but no data will flow. My laptop says it doesn’t have an Internet Connection. Then for a while it will work fine.
Later last night my S5 phone showed 3 bars of 4G and I got good data rates, but I couldn’t make phone calls. When I tried, all I got was dead silence, with no ringing.
Hopefully they’ll get it fixed soon.
I slept in until about 12:15 this afternoon, about an hour later than normal. I’ll keep pushing it back until I’m comfortable not taking a nap later in the afternoon before I go into work.
About 12:45 Jan and I headed off to Barth’s for their Fried Chicken and Roast Beef lunch.
Need I say more.
Hard to believe that food this good is only $6.50 for all you can eat. And this one plate was more than enough to fill me up.
Next up was a stop at the bank to pick up the checks ordered. While I was there I also ask them to check on a problem I’m having with my MasterCard Debit Card that I have for my account there.
Normally it works fine, but anytime I’m asked for my billing address zip code, like at a gas pump or sometimes online, it tells me the number is incorrect. My zip code on all my mail from them is correct, but maybe it’s screwed up on the debit card address somehow. But the cashier found nothing wrong with it.
On the way home I was mulling over the problem and remembered a similar occurrence at a client’s quite a few years ago. Their payroll system would not recognize an new employee’s SS number and kept saying it was invalid. But it looked fine on the screen.
So I went in and looked at the actual code of the file and instantly saw the problem. Somehow the secretary, when she entered the SS# originally, entered a non-printing character as the first entry in the SS# field. Probably she accidently hit the ALT key in combination with some other key which can cause the problem.
Non-Printing characters are ones that the computer sees but you don’t. An example some of you may be familiar with is the Show Non-Print Formatting Characters command in Microsoft Word. When you use this command you see Paragraph Markers, Manual Page Breaks, etc. Otherwise they’re invisible.
The secretary had deleted and reentered the number several times without fixing the problem because she just backspaced over the old number and just typed in the new one again. But in doing this she stopped backspacing at the first VISIBLE number in the field.
If she had just backspaced one more character, even though she couldn’t see it, or if she had clicked in the field and hit the Delete key, she would have fixed the problem herself.
So hopefully I’ll be able to talk to some of the computer people at the bank and have them look at the problem.
After a quick stop at the HEB it was back to the rig for the afternoon until I was on the gate at 5pm.
December 27, 2019
Loose Ends . . .
I got several blog comments about my problem getting my PC hooked up to our new Samsung TV.
First some basics.
The new TV has 3 HDMI inputs.
HDMI 1 is where our DirecTV DVR plugs in, and it works fine.
HDMI 2 is where I want to plug in the HDMI feed from my desktop computer.
HDMI 3 is presently not used.
Our old TV only had 2 HDMI inputs, and it worked fine hooked up like this for 4 years.
I’ve plugged in the DVR to each of the 3 inputs and they all work fine.
There is no need to switch video outputs like you have to on a laptop. The HDMI video output is always on, mirroring the DVI output that I use to connect to my computer monitor.
When it is working correctly, all I have to do to see my computer screen on the TV is just to select HDMI 2 on the TV remote, and it’s there. No fuss, no muss.
I know the computer HDMI is working since I can plug it into the HDMI input on my computer monitor and it works fine.
I have swapped the known-working HDMI cable from the DVR with the PC HDMI cable and the DVR works, so I know the PC works. And I’ve used the DVR cable on the PC side and it doesn’t work.
So everything points to a problem with the TV liking the video from the PC. It does identify the video signal as coming from a PC and labels it as coming from a PC.
It just won’t show it.
So tomorrow I’m going to hook up one of my laptops to the TV and see what happens.
Stay tuned.
December 27, 2020
Pizza, Pizza!
As I mentioned in earlier blogs, I was hoping to do a front brake pad replacement on the Jeep. and yesterday the weather and the time to do it coincided, so about 1pm I headed outside.
After loosening the lug nuts, I jacked up the Jeep using my floor jack and a platform to extend the height. And a jack stand for safety, of course. And getting the wheel off gave me this. Note the green smudge on the top lug bolt. That and a matching mark on the wheel lets me put the wheel back on exactly like it came off. This was more important back in the days when they often spin-balanced tires on the car, but they don’t seem to do that much anymore.
But old habits die hard, I guess.
I removed the two bolts holding the caliper on and hung it out of the way, leaving the pads exposed.
Removing them, I wire-brushed the pad guides and installed the new clips that came with the new set.
Putting some grease on the guide clips, I slid the pads into place, with no problems.
And after putting a little grease on the two caliper bolts, I mounted the caliper back in place. and I was done. Then, as usual, it took me longer to get the tire lifted into place and up on the lug bolts.
Then it was on to the passenger side, and it was a whole new deal. ]
First off, the bolts holding the caliper in place were 14mm instead of the 12mm on the drivers side. And they fairly shiny, much newer than than the other ones. And when I tried to install the new clips and the pads, nothing seemed fit quite right. Including the two caliper mounting bolts.
Although I wasn’t curious enough to take the other wheel back off to compare, I suspect that this caliper had been replaced somewhere along the line, and maybe by one that was close, but not an exact fit. And this is a no-no in itself.
You should never replace brake parts, any parts, on just one side of the vehicle. If you’re replacing pads, replace them on both sides. Same goes with calipers, rotors, etc.
So we’ll see how things hold up.
Now, on to today:
Jan had been wanting to make a Container Store visit for a couple of weeks, so I thought today would be a good time, especially if we combined it with lunch at the Grimaldi’s Pizzeria, right on the next street at Baybrook Mall.
And yes, Baybrook Mall has streets and parks and fountains, all outside. In fact the newer, outside part is bigger than the original mall.]
Our Grimaldi’s pizza was just as delicious as always, even with the 20 minutes wait while they finished restoking their coal-fired ovens. But we sat outside in the sun with a nice breeze and just people-watched.
This is a medium (16”) with Meatballs, Jalapenos, Italian Sausage, Mushrooms, Ham, and Bacon.
We normally get the Small House Salad, but I think we were still too full from Brandi’s Christmas dinner. And we still had pizza to take home with us for tomorrow night.
Jan wanted me to get a picture of her wearing her new peacock earrings,
but they didn’t show up very well, so you can see them better here.
They were a Christmas gift from Sherry, Lowell’s sister, and Jan just loves them.
December 27, 2021
Leftovers and Hot & Sour . . .
After finishing up with my yearly dermatologist checkup this afternoon, my next stop was King Food for some Hot & Sour Soup to have with our Chinese leftovers from our Christmas Eve dinner there.
Ever since I had to have a Squamous Cell Carcinoma removed from my head back in 2014, I get checked up every year to be on the safe side.
Yesterday I mentioned the Storyworth subscriptions that Brandi and Lowell gave Jan and I for Christmas. Every week they will send us a question about our lives and then at the end of a year all the stories will be complied into a book. So today we got our first questions.
Jan’s was “What was your Mom like when you were a child?”
Mine was “What was your first big trip?”
Jan has already written a lot on her question, and I’ll get started on mine tomorrow.
The missing Priority Mail envelope finally showed up in Athens, AL this morning, after circling around Florida for a few days. Better late than never, I guess.
When we spent the night at Brandi’s on Christmas Eve, they were nice enough to give Jan and I their downstairs bedroom so I didn’t have to hobble upstairs.
And I was amazed to see the size of her shoe rack.
And since it’s completely full, I’ve got to believe that there’s an shoe rack overflow annex somewhere.
I don’t know where she gets it from.
I own four pair of shoes, and one of those is a pair of Crocs .
