Apr

5

Hiking after storms

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We’ve had a lot of rain in the last few weeks, so we thought it might be neat to see the Little Stony Creek and the Cascades. We figured there might be some more water than usual. Uh, yeah.

In all, we hiked about 6 miles. The trail was often pretty muddy, but the weather was beautiful. The gorge that the creek runs through helped keep the wind off us and the temperature was perfect for hiking.

It’s actually a little hard to compare pictures to get an idea of how much more water there was, because the extra volume changes how the river actually looks. I can’t even tell where I took some of the pictures anymore, and for some, I couldn’t get to the place that I shot from in the past.

Anyway, if you’re ever up our way and want to go, we’d be more than happy to take you. :-)

Mar

27

Awesome photo

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Mt. Redoubt, a volcano in Alaska, has been rumbling quite a bit recently.

I thought these two pictures were very cool.

Redoubt eruption from space

Redoubt eruption from space

 

Redoubt eruption from an airplane

Redoubt eruption from an airplane

Jan

18

New Computer

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This last week I bought a new computer. Actually, I bought all the parts for a new computer and built it myself. After several months of research, I concluded that I could buy all the parts for a new machine  and assemble it myself for $800 to $1000 less than it would cost for someone else to do so.

My old computer was, well, old. I bought it just before I started college — 7 1/2 years ago. Of course, three years is a long time in computer technology, and my system was twice that old.

I’ll probably try to post some reviews of the particular components I purchased sometime in the not-too-distant future, but for now, I’ll just list what I had and what I upgraded to. My old computer was a Dell Dimension 8100 series. It had a Pentium 4 1.3 Ghz processor, 384 Mb of RDRAM, a 20 Gb hard drive, a Creative SoundBlaster Live! audio card, and a 16 Mb nVidia graphics card. It also had a DVD player and a separate CD burner — two fairly up-to-date items 7 1/2 years ago. The monitor was a 17″ Trinitron CRT, and I have a set of speakers from Altec Lansing. It was getting slow. Even the Internet was rough, since there is a lot of RAM-intensive content out there now.

My new computer has the following components:

I’ve kept the same speakers, at least for now. The motherboard’s onboard audio is very nice, but it takes advantage of some newer technology than my speakers are designed for (optical digital output), so the configuration is a little funny at the moment. It’s working well enough though.

Assembling the components wasn’t as hard as I thought it might be. I’d never done a whole computer before, so things like the processor made me a bit nervous. It seems to have worked out all right though. I suspect that if I did it every day, I’d be much faster, since I’d be able to anticipate potential problems (e.g. the graphics card is so big that you can’t fit the hard drive in around it, and the SATA cables are hard to get to). The instruction manuals were of varying usefulness. The case’s instructions were pointless. The motherboard manual was OK, but the processor’s was terrible. The graphics card was pretty good, but it’s also really easy to install.

I also have dual booted Windows XP Professional (32-bit) and Windows 7 Beta (64-bit). I will certainly plan to review Win 7 sometime fairly soon. For now, I don’t think it is handling the motherboard very well, but that may be because the MB manufacturer has a fairly lightweight BIOS that Win 7 doesn’t know how to use.

So far I’ve really emjoyed being able to multitask on the new machine. I’ve had it only a few days, but it is amazing how much faster everything runs and how well it allows me to multitask. I suppose that’s to be expected, but it made me think about how incredible the rate of change in technology really is. 75 years ago, a calculating machine with this many switches (then they would have been vacuum tubes) would have required a small warehouse to enclose. Now, I have a chip that will fit in the palm of my hand that holds over 780 million transistors.

Pictures of before and after. Please ignore the mess and forgive the poor image quality. It was kind of dark.

Dec

22

Nature

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We periodically get pretty windy days with strong gusts. Friday was such a day. Sustained wind was around 70 mph with gusts recorded up to 150 mph. It appears the wind knocked down an oak tree at a nearby house. You can’t really tell from the picture, but the inside of the tree is rotten. The tree knocked some of the roof work off, but no windows were broken!

Friday night I was working on supper and glanced out the window. A beautiful bright rainbow caught my eye. The sky above us was blue, although I could feel some sprinkles being blown from somewhere (another usual occurrence in this area).

Saturday Andrew and I took a walk in the wooded park a few blocks from our apartment. We were looking for deer but saw a skunk instead. We enjoyed watching it for several minutes. It was very entertaining. Unfortunately we didn’t have a camera, so we weren’t able to get any pictures.

Here are some pictures. The first one is from Thanksgiving. The others should be pretty self-explanatory.

Dec

6

Thanksgiving

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Andrew and I were able to go to Greenville for Thanksgiving. We were busy most of the time. Here’s a recap of our trip.

Tuesday: We headed south when Andrew was finished with work at 4pm

Wednesday: Andrew went to his parents’ house most of the day while I stayed at my parents’ house and helped my mom make food for Thursday. The Keys and Jessica got in that evening.

Thursday: Thanksgiving dinner #1 was at Grandma and Grandpa Boone’s house around 12:30pm. My family was there as well as Grandma and Grandpa, the Ridleys, the Keys, and Jessica. Thanksgiving dinner #2 was at Grandma Q’s house at 5pm. Andrew’s family was there plus grandma and a family Mom Garland works with.

Friday: Andrew helped Dad Garland and Anthony do some work on their new property. I stayed with my family and we went downtown for awhile. It was a beautiful day. We ate supper and spent the evening with Andrew’s family.

Saturday: I helped my parents pick out a Christmas tree. We went out to lunch and spent some time with Abby and Lincoln. We spent the evening with my family.

Sunday: We went to Hampton Park for church and ate lunch with Andrew’s family and our friend Erica. The Keys and Jessica left. I helped decorate the Christmas tree. We headed back to Radford around 3:30pm and had heavy traffic the first half of the trip. It took us more than an hour longer to get back.

Nov

13

Weekend visit to Richmond

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We seem to be at least a week late in posting about our lives.

We went to Richmond to visit my aunt and uncle for the last weekend in October. My cousin Jessica is living with them, and we’ve been wanting to visit for awhile. Friday was her birthday, so we went down to surprise her. Tricia had her open the door thinking it was trick-or-treaters (it was Oct 31). We yelled “trick or treat” when she opened the door. It took a few seconds for her to realize just who was on the door step. It was a great surprise.

We relaxed Friday night. Saturday we went to Maymont park for half the day. It was a beautiful day in the upper 60s. The park is quite large with various paths. Throughout the park are various animals (goats, bears, elk, deer, birds), a Japanese Garden, and a mansion. Since it was so warm most of the animals were out. The mansion has several buildings around it. You can take a tour of the mansion. We visited the basement since it was free.

We celebrated Jessica’s birthday Saturday night. On Sunday we went to church and visited until it was time to head back to Radford late afternoon. We enjoyed the visit and are glad we were able to suprise Jessica for her birthday.

Oct

31

GOP Rally

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Last Monday, Oct. 27, Mel and I went to a GOP rally in Salem, VA where Governor Sarah Palin was scheduled to speak as part of her one-day barnstorming of Virginia. It was cold, the lines were long, and we ended up standing for over 4 hours. Nonetheless, it was fun. If nothing else, it was a privilege to see someone who may well be the next vice president.

I have some pictures from the event. Hopefully they turned out ok. We were just behind the media section (a good spot), but it was still pretty far away, and my camera isn’t nearly as nice as the ones the media use.

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