Category: House

The next time I enter into a relationship, I know what my first living together question is going to be. It’s not “do you mind if I sleep in my own bed”? Nope. Nor is it “do you mind if I eat dinner in my office”? Nope. The first thing I need to know is whether or not she’s going to pre-rinse the silverware before dropping them in the sink.

I do the dishes around here and I do them manually, no dish-washing machine in this house! There is nothing worse than to find a knife with sticky peanut butter on it stuck down in a water glass in the hopes it will soak off. It just doesn’t happen. Or a fork with mysterious stuff embedded between the little prongs.

Ok, the reality is, I’m not going to be asking those questions of anyone. Tomorrow is Steph’s and my fifteenth anniversary (can you believe it), and if that’s my biggest beef I guess I might as well just deal with it and rinse them off myself…

And she’s a pretty cool grandmother:

It’s been a weekend of projects around here. I’ve just wrapped up my new program StateFly, which is the most dynamic map program I’ve ever created, if I might say:

Meanwhile, Steph has been creating this amazing giraffe, from scratch:

Steph noticed yesterday that a main support beam in our living room vaulted ceiling has a big crack running down it’s length. As I laid in bed last night hoping for visions of dancing sugar plum fairies all I could think about was the ramifications of our roof collapsing under the weight of wet heavy snow.

So I took the big long snow scraping tool out today and brought a bunch of snow down. While I was out there I noticed that some animal, either a moose or a deer, had walked through the yard to munch on a tree. Yea, I guess winter is finally here…

Update: It’s deer, had a whole bunch later on:

Now I’ve gone and done it. By putting up a post about my massive Christmas light display, folks driving by will now exclaim loudly There’s busdriver Jim’s place!

So, I just picked up the new home defense weapon: a Mossberg 88 Maverick. Nothing says ho ho ho like a bad-ass shotgun with a pistol grip.

I beat the neighborhood today and got my holiday decoration up, before Thanksgiving even! The folks driving by tonight will gaze over at our house and know that the true spirit of Christmas is on display here.

Steph’s been busting ass on the yard. She really wanted to get all of the leaves gathered before the snow hit and the string of great weather we’ve had, has made that possible.

I volunteered to help but she said I was too old and too out of shape for this kind of work, so I’m just sticking to coding, making beef stew, getting a high-speed walk on my treadmill and then some weight-lifting later…

I’ve been on the lookout for a treadmill to keep in shape with this winter, and I found one today at a garage sale. It turns out we knew the lady running the sale, she works on our phones at Silverstar, and she thought the motor was shot so she sold it to me for ten dollars just to get rid of it.

Ahhh, it just needed a switch reset at the base of the unit. Everything works great. It’s motorized and programmable, it has elevation and speed settings, it can monitor your heart rate and it only cost me ten dollars!

It’s also got a spot for my Nexus 10 tablet so I can watch Amazon Prime while I walk…

Best $10 I’ve ever spent!

This is the breakfast routine I’ve been doing for years now:

Also, I failed to note in the video that the base juice was Low Sodium V8…

I’ve taken to walking our road several times a day lately. It’s spacious, hardly any traffic and the views are great. I walk down to the turn-around and back, and the four houses I pass are my neighbors, whom I know, so the likelihood of getting harassed for being a stranger is null. Sometimes Steph walks with me.

All I wear is a pair of black swimming trunks as I’m working on my tan in small doses to keep from burning. I’m trying to get healthy and the vitamin D is part of the strategy.

I was at my computer today when a large fly came walking across my desk from the window, towards the back of my keyboard and stopped. I sensed he was in distress, probably been trying to escape outside through two panes of thick glass for days.

I grabbed a tissue and gently picked him up with it. He probably figured I was just going to squish him and put him out of his misery but instead I got up and carried him outside through the garage where I released the light pressure and he zipped right off.

Another life saved, and the big Seven-O looks sunny! Family members have been asking me what I want for my birthday and I answer to wake up…

We picked up this birdhouse a couple of years ago at a downtown Farmers Market in Driggs. It was free and they were promoting the preservation of a particular bird for which this structure was created. Well, we now have babies and mom and dad can quit buzzing my head, please…

I inadvertently discovered 6,230 more U.S. Cities to add to my database today which means I’ve had to write utilities to scour the web and update essentials like FIPS codes, County name and Zip code, for each City. Just about done. I also took a break and drove down to our local Green Canyon Hot Springs to soak my poor back but the bastards lied to me on their website. Open at 1000, Memorial Day through Labor Day. They must have meant the day after because I arrived at 1020 and the weren’t open until 1200.

I drove back to Driggs to see if anybody was cooking up a hot dog or something, couldn’t find any action, so I drove home and had a tuna & egg sandwich with beans, scrubbed out Pipers litter box out in the sun, and dove back into code.

My thanks to the veterans that died, so I can do what I do, as a free man, on this 2016 Memorial Day…

Well, here I am again, holding down the house and the cat while Steph is in the Bahamas with her girlfriends partying with dark skinned strangers on the beach. I thought about chasing down a new Hot Springs today but I’ve learned over the years that Memorial Day weekend is like New Years Eve, only the amateur drivers hit the road, and I’m a pro. So today for me is all about Stew, Indie Cars, and Random Cities (code that is).

The Indie race was terrific, the stew was great, and the magic number is 20,261. That’s how many cities I created in my new Cities by State database today. Once you’ve clicked on a point (inside a U.S. State) in my Bmap8 app, you can select the [Cities] link at the bottom and the map will be populated with clickable City names. Click on any of those and you can get the City Website (if they have one, otherwise the wiki) along with the County Website (which all U.S. Counties have).

Here’s an example: Click here to get a map of San Francisco. Once it’s loaded look at the bottom of the Info box, locate the Cities link and click it. All of the cities for California are placed on the map but you just see the ones near San Francisco (drag the map and adjust the zoom for more). Click on any City name to get the City info.

btw: Still working on the Random City code…

Today I replaced the best mailbox in Teton Valley with a brand new spanky black one. I had to drill new holes in the bottom of the mailbox, cut out a new slot for the back edge to slide into, and drill new holes for the mounting screws.

The problem was, I didn’t have a drill, (we always borrow one), so I ran down to Ace and picked one up. Anyway, the project is done, but I’m not happy with the mounting screws as they stick up in the bottom too high, so I’ll replace those next week.

Steph put the numbers on and I like them. As someone who makes his living trying to find addresses in the early dawn, big numbers are great. There are more photos, click the picture below…

This is the last snow on Earth. Well, for our little patch of earth anyway…

Steph commented on yesterday’s video of the brief downpour, speculating that the snow below my office window, which never sees the sun in Spring, should finally be gone. Well, almost…

Speaking of Steph commenting, she used to comment on this blog frequently until I suggested that if she had something to say about a post she could walk around the corner to my office and tell me in person.

She stopped. Gee I hope I didn’t hurt her feelings because the only comments she makes now are when she’s on the road. Am I bad? :-)