Peggy's new hardware

I gotta say....I love my wife! Peggy did some work in Payson at the begining of this week and came home with a huge case of ammo for my AK-47 and a special gift just for herself. It's a S&W nickel-plated J-Frame Revolver in .38-Special caliber! She also had laser grips installed. Then she signed us both up for concealed carry permit training. Awesome wife!

Nice!


If you see this, just stop whatever you're doing. Right NOW!

And before you ask...no, I wasn't standing in front of the gun to take the picture. That's what timers are for.

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Daxton Boxes

I was going through my old email and found the link Angie sent me for her friend's blog. After reading an entry she made about missing her boy I couldn't keep from welling up. I'm almost full-on crying now as I write this post. Partially 'cuz I'm thinking how I'd feel if I lost a kid, and partly 'cuz I didn't go to the blog long before now. I clicked through to her post about the 'Daxton Boxes' she's creating and I've just sent an email asking where to send a donation. If you haven't already...please check it out;

http://dbkunz.blogspot.com/2008/11/daxton-box.html

I'm going to keep a link to it in my sidebar. Help if you can - it's a wonderful idea and a wonderful service by an obviously wonderful person!

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My New Rig

Our old computer tower was starting to get a little flakey, so back in February I decided I should work on a replacement. Peggy kindly agreed to let me build a new system for my anniversary gift and here's the result:

Full height tower with five 120mm fans (very quiet)
nVidia 680iLT SLI motherboard
Intel Q6700 Core 2 Quad processor at 2.6Ghz
Ultra modular 800-watt power supply
8Gb OCZ DDR2 SLI-Ready memory running at 1600MHz
Two Seagate 1.5 Terabyte Hard Drives
~ One with Windows Vista 64 Premium
~ One with Ubuntu Linux (Yay!)
LG Super-Multi DVD Burner with LightScribe
15-way flash memory reader

~ AND THE BEST PART....
Two BFG GTX280-OC graphics cards in SLI mode!


This monster is giving me video frame rates (in games) of up to 300 frames per second at max settings and 1680x1050 resolution! Even in very texture intensive scenes, I'm still seeing right around 200 fps. Can you say smooooooth?

I guess it's a good thing I built a new PC when I did. Just as I got Windows installed on the first hard drive, the drive in the old computer (with all our pics and data on it) crashed and wouldn't boot anymore. Luckily I was able to connect the crashed hard drive to the new computer and rescue all our data. I connected the drive externally and was able to move it around to a position where it would spin up. Even though it wouldn't boot, I managed to copy our data and settings off and incorporate them into the new computer! It took all day though, and the drive was making scary grinding and squeaking noises all along the way. Even luckier is that none of the data seems to be corrupted. Whew!

Zoom in to inspect all the yummy goodness packed inside!

Pretty lights!
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No Rules Pinewood Derby

For achievement day the girls had a no-rules pinewood derby. Charlotte chose a '66 Nova and I had just got done designing a '76 Corvette for Klara when she decided she wanted a box of popcorn. Both cars came out great and are loaded with lead shot! Unfortunately it wasn't enough lead. The winner had a 2" trailer hitch ball mounted to it! Klara won the Most Original Design category and Charlotte did pretty well in the races, but finally got beat out by cars several pounds heavier.

That's okay, we had a lot of fun making and painting the cars and then racing them. Enjoy the pics...

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Somethin' for my Bro's

How to mount a tire using WD40!
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Two posts in one day? What's wrong with me?

I had to mention that I've added a couple of tunes to my playlist. They're from Material Issue, one of my favorite bands of the 90's. I started getting hooked on them back in the early 90's And then after a while I never heard from them again. I recently was reminded of them by some other music I heard and started looking into what happened to them.

After a bit of Googling I ran across some interviews of the band members and blogs of people that were their friends back then. Turns out that the lead singer, Jim Ellison, killed himself back in the mid-90's. Over an ex-girlfriend. What a waste.

Jim was the primary songwriter of the 3-piece band, and according to accounts I read he would just show up one day with a song he wrote and say "This is going to be our biggest hit ever." Then the next day he'd show up with another song and say the exact same thing about the new one. Turns out he was usually right and almost all the songs were worthy of a single. Without Jim the other band members didn't want to continue with Material Issue and moved on.

I miss them. Have a listen to tracks 66 and 67.

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More on Washington (No, not MORON Washington)

A strange feeling overtakes me when I arrive in Washington again. As I drive around and see place-names on signs I have the overwhelming sense that I'm home. More than any other place I've lived - Washington seems like home. I don't know why. It doesn't even have to be a place I've been or that I know well, but all of Washington just feels like home. Peggy has similar feelings, although I don't know if they're as strong as mine. Maybe we're supposed to go back there some day. We'll just have to see where life takes us...

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Kia Sedona

We rented a car while we were on vacation and it just turned out that the 'small minivan' class was one-third the cost of any other vehicle, including sub-compacts! Works for us! When we picked it up they gave us a Kia Sedona with just 21 miles on it. I was a little dubious at first, but I've changed my mind and figured I'd share my thoughts.



If you have 5 kids or less and are on a tight budget (aren't we all these days!) you should have a serious look at this car. Everything worked very nicely, although I don't personally care for the placement of some of the dashboard controls (wipers, etc.) I suppose I could get used to them eventually, though. The interior is very comfortable and easily reconfigured - seats can be stowed flat into the floor (copied from Dodge). Ours had a CD player with MP3 capability and Sirius Satellite radio. It sounds pretty good for a stock system, but not awesome. The sliding doors move almost effortlessly and the windows in them roll down!

The real surprise was how much power was under the hood! That little bugger just gets moving in a big hurry for a mini-minivan! The tranny changes gears smoothly and immediately kicks down when asked for a burst of acceleration. Even more fun, the console-mounted shift lever can be slid through a gate that allows the driver to manually control shifting by bumping up or down a gear at a time. It was most fun using it to force engine braking to assist in hard deceleration.



My only real complaint is that the road noise was almost unbearable, but it should be taken into consideration that the freeways in Washington are very rough concrete with no asphalt to quiet them down. We never really got up to freeway speeds on any roads paved with asphalt, but the road noise seemed less obnoxious while on tar.

I'm not ready to give up my Dodge Grand Caravan for one of these, but if you're thinking about a 'mini-minivan', have a look at the Kia Sedona. It might make you smile.

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More fun with no sun!

Here's a little more of a look around the Great Wolf Lodge...

Charlotte and Klara made some stuffed animals.

Here are some of the trees I mentioned in my last post that assign our quests and monitor our progress.

This is a room for tweens and teens. There are computers with internet access, giant screens to play X Box on and a big movie screen that plays movies when a video game tournament is not under way.

Playing in the Wave pool.

The red and yellow thing outside the window is a huge funnel. A tube drops riders in at the large end and they swish up and down the sides until they drop out the drain at the bottom. It's especially fun at night when it's pitch black inside!

A wide shot of the wave pool.

The kiddie pool.

A giant fort. The big splash is the result of the big bucket on top dumping, which occurs about every minute or so. Water is constantly pouring out of every part of the fort and there are two small water slides on the back.

Slowing down for a minute to color some pillow cases.

Speed racer Klara in the arcade.

Charlotte collects some skill tickets.

Back in the wave pool floating around.

The stairs to the big slides. I think I've climbed these about 1.7 million times in the last two days!
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I've made a horrible mistake!

Tuesday morning we went to our true destination; Great Wolf Lodge. We weren't here but 10 minutes before I found out I had made a horrible mistake. We were speaking to some other guests while waiting for our room to be readied and found out there's no way to do everything here in less than three days, let alone one-and-a-half like I'd planned! The website just wasn't clear enough about how much there is to do.

Front entrance

Main Lobby


The kids have their own cabin built right into the room. It even has it's own T.V. and desk!

One of the activities is to get a magic wand and go around the hotel activating magical things. It seems like there must be thousands! There are quests assigned by some of the trees inside the hotel and then players run around the hotel activating the items listed in the quest. They must then find a certain Nymph, Faerie, Princess, etc. and collect the reward for that quest before being assigned a new one. There are ten quests and ten adventures. We spent over three hours running up and down stairs and through hallways and just completed eight quests. Between that and spending hours in the waterpark, we're whipped. I have the feeling Peggy and I are going to need a 'grown-ups only' vacation to recover from the family vacation!

Charlotte activates some magic crystals.


Receiving an 'award' from the wood faerie.

At the end of the night there is an animatronic show in the lobby. Families are encouraged to show up in their jammies and stay for story time afterward.

Everyone gets a wrist band at check-in. This allows access to the waterpark and some of the other activities. Moms ans Dads get special wristbands with an RFID tag inside that acts as the room key and allows them to charge anything in the hotel to the room. That way we can lock all our valuables in the room safe and cruise the enire place with just a bathing suit and the wrist band. Very nice!

I can't be sure, but this just might be a family place...look at all the mini-vans and SUVs in the parking lot! Also notice; rainy and cold outside, 84 degrees and awesome inside!


I'll put up some pics of the waterpark and other activities in my next post. Stay tuned!

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