This banged up Kia is one of Rileys current projects at Exhibition Automotive. It’s also of particular interest to him as they own a new Kia.
I believe he said he has six different projects going on now…
SlideShow (Kia Down)
Kia Down
Month: November 2012
One Step
Life is simple, all you have to do is keep moving forward, one step at a time. Sometimes the wind of change knocks you over, so just get back up and keep going. As forks in the road appear, don’t worry. The road you wander down is the one you were meant to take.
When death is near, look back at your life and smile :-)
Update: This post is dedicated to my friend Ilya, who’s still alive after one interesting step…
Speed Test
Faster (unadvertised) internet has crept into our neighborhood and I uncovered it recently while setting up cell phone service with our local provider, SilverStar.
I know some of you live in large metropolitan areas where big bandwidth is common, but we live out here in the sticks! The max speed of our DSL for the seven years we’ve lived here has been around 1.2, upload less than .42 and pings between 60 and 90.
The new connection is now live and I’m pleased! Our NetFlix and Hulu+ accounts stream video to two Roku’s and when Steph watched a movie, bandwidth just dried up. We can now each watch different streams simultaneously and still have great Internet!
Frozen Fuji
I left an almost full bottle of water in the cup holder of my bus last night. When I got to work this morning I put my coffee cup in the cup holder and noticed that the water didn’t move when I sat it down.
Never realized it got that cold in the cab!
It was only down to 16°…
SlideShow (Frozen Fuji)
Grandson
Steph’s grandson is a star football player and excellent marksman (won the turkey-shoot recently against the men) and he’s in the witness protection program.
The boy got himself in a bit of trouble with the girls in kindergarten and steps were taken to protect his identity, including modifying this publicity shot that was used to humiliate his elders in the Turkey Shoot Gazette!
Here’s the original, and his winning shot :-)
Bomb Shell
I spotted this truck unloading some beer at the old Driggs Chevron. It was interesting that the driver hand carried the beer in as opposed to unloading cases on a dolly.
Bravo to the Cascade Lakes Brewing Company out of Redmond Oregon! To have their own distinctive truck working the Western States, is very impressive.
I saw a lot of cool delivery trucks this summer, and this artwork is right up there!
Winter Ready
The farmers are done harvesting and they’ve got the soil all ready for several months of snow. The livestock on the other hand, I feel sorry for…
Quite frankly, I don’t know what they do with the cows. The horses stay here in the valley and when I ask the locals if they get protected from the -35 degree weather the answer is always the same: More hay! (i.e. more food to generate calories, thus heat.)
Thick
Steph convinced a local woman to switch her large propane account over to Steph’s new employer, Suburban Propane.
Praises were coming in thick and heavy about the impressive propane setups over multiple properties, and the big switch.
The phrase “blood is thicker than propane” was floated around thickly.
Meanwhile, our unused second living room was thick with color as Piper graced her presence on the thick, warm, colorful couch.
Back To Basics
It’s time to leave my new tablet alone for a while and focus on what this blog does best, present the beauty of the valley as it appeared a few hours ago…
Ahh… It feels good.
SlideShow (Back To Basics)
First Nexus Photo
What an amazing convoluted process it took to get this photo onto my blog! Piper sitting at my feet here in the office demanding attention didn’t help…
I took this photo about an hour ago with the N10. I ran it through Instagram, thus the red textures, and posted it to Flickr using it’s social media features. I then went to Flickr, found the photo, and then spent a bunch of time copying code from a previous post and inserting the link data for this photo. Whew!
I’m coming to the conclusion that my Android tablet is not a viable tool for maintaining a WordPress blog of the complexity I have developed. This post is a technological experiment of which I’m proud of, but it will probably never happen again.
There are three tech worlds we live in: Windows, Apple and Android. I’m not an Apple guy, never have been, case closed there for me. Thus, my Acer netbook will be my mobile blog maintainer, as it was all summer, and the Nexus 10 will be my toy!
First Nexus Post
This is the first post from my new Samsung Nexus 10 tablet. I’m typing it on my Bluetooth keyboard and I’m really missing a mouse! Fortunately there’s one available from Logitech that syncs perfectly with this keyboard. (On it’s way… :-)
It’s an interesting process bringing an Android tablet up to speed such that it provides most of the basic functions that my Windows 7 desktop provides.
I’m far from doing any programming on this little sweety, or editing photos on it, heck I haven’t even figured out how to get any new camera photos on here other than to use my desktop, which defeats the purpose of portability.
So here it is, the first tablet post, typed out on my little keyboard. Hello World!
Nexus Toys
Drove down to Best Buy in Idaho Falls this morning with visions of Bluetooth dancing in my head. There aren’t many connection options on tablets, but Bluetooth solves a lot.
I bought a Logitech keyboard with a case that doubles as a tablet stand. It hooked up flawlessly and integrated seamlessly. I also bought a little Bluetooth speaker with amazing sound. The hardware was rounded out with a car-charger for the tablet and a nice carrying case. Down the road, got a great bag for it all at Walmart.
The next step was to sync my PC desktops music collection to my Android tablet. The solution was Winamp (remember them!). Their player downloaded as an app from Google Store. I then installed it on my desktop and it synced all my music wirelessly to the Nexus in Android format. Sweet :-) Mind blown!
Finally, I need a Bluetooth device that I can plug my camera into for image transmission to the tablet, at which point I could handle my blog entirely from the Nexus 10.
Here’s a video I shot tonight in the comfort of my mancave with the Nexus hanging with the big box, showing off it’s new audio chops:
Head In Cloud
01001110 01100101 01111000 01110101 01110011 00100000 00110001 00110000
Binary value = Nexus 10
The Tablet
There were two kinds of Google Nexus 10 purchasers as a result of the 11/13 launch. The ones who ordered early got theirs today, everybody else, next Monday :-)
I got my big tools out to open the package but it turned out I didn’t need them. I was going to read the instructions but I found the power button and the tablet woke up and presented my wireless network to me. I entered my WEP key, my Google account info, and I’m ready to rock and roll! First impressions? Stunning!
Hmmm, I turned it off and left it on the dining room table to write this post. I just heard a new sound from that room and I better go investigate…
SlideShow (The Tablet)
Google Images
TIL (today I learned) there’s a way to do a Google Image search on any particular website. I tried it on my blog here and it works great!
The site name can be whatever you want. It gathers up all the images Google has accumulated related to the site, and displays them. In the case of my blog, clicking the image takes you to the post where the image originated from!
Type this into a Google Image search box: site:busdriverjim.com. (← Click to try it!)
It’s not as organized as my Photos function, but it’s pretty cool…