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

24

Zucchini Bread

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I had a package of zucchini in my freezer from Grandma Erickson, so Monday I decided to make some bread. I found a recipe on the Internet that used the amount I had.

I should have quit when I was almost 1/4 cup short of oil (I melted some butter to make up for it), because also didn’t have enough zucchini or cinnamon. But, I made do without.

The result…two very yummy and moist loaves of bread.

Here’s the recipe:

Zucchini Bread

INGREDIENTS
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups white sugar
2 cups grated zucchini
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F ( 165 degrees C). Grease and flour two 8×4 inch loaf pans.
In a large bowl, beat eggs until light and frothy. Mix in oil and sugar. Stir in zucchini and vanilla. Combine flour, cinnamon, soda, baking powder, salt and nuts; stir into the egg mixture. Divide batter into prepared pans.
Bake for 60 to 70 minutes, or until done.

Oct

21

Highlander Festival

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My family came to visit during the second week of October. That weekend was also the annual Highlander Festival at Radford University. There are annual “highlander games,” which seem to center around throwing heavy,  unwieldy objects as far as possible. See the picture below for a guy trying to throw a 20′ pole.

There are dozens of vendors and exhibitors. The best two, in my opinion, were the falconer and the sheepherder. The sheep dogs were amazing. With slight commands they could manuver sheep through obstacles and control them, even with a crowd of people around.

Oct

8

Weekend Fun

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This past weekend Andrew and I took a day trip down to Hillsville and Poplar Camp, VA.  I really wanted some apples (for a decent price) and a cooking pumpkin. Hillsville has a large, great farmers market, so we stopped there first.  Then it was off to the park!

We planned to go to Shot Tower State Park, but it was closed, so we headed on to the New River Trail State Park (NRTSP). The NRTSP is Virginia’s longest park — 57 miles. The park follows an abandoned railroad right-of-way. The trail is for walking, biking, and horse-riding. Our entrance to the park was in Foster Falls, VA.

Foster Falls used to be a center of iron industry. Now all that is left are some deserted buildings near the river, a Methodist church, a post office, and several homes. A hotel, built in 1887 is still standing, though it fell into disrepair in the 50’s. After it was a hotel it became a girl’s industrial school and a children’s home.

While in the park we walked along the trail a few miles in each direction (North and South). The scenery was beautiful. Some sections had rocks on both sides of the trail. We had a picnic lunch and wandered past the deserted buildings by the river. Andrew enjoyed taking some pictures.

It was a beautiful day to spend outside enjoying God’s creation. We would enjoy going back and renting bikes for half a day in order to go further along the trail.

Sep

22

Making the Help Desk happy

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I had a funny experience today at work. I was trying to do some work in Excel but when I would copy or paste a cell, I would get an error saying “Unable to empty Clipboard” or something like that. Google revealed that others have had a similar problem, but none of the forums I read had any particularly good solutions. Everyone seemed to have different symptoms and different solutions/workarounds, but no one knew why it happened. In fact, one forum thread was open for over a year and without any solution (it was active for much of that time too).

One of the common symptoms, however, was the Remote Desktop Connection. Since my computer at work exists largely on the network, I figured that might have something to do with it. I finally emailed the Help Desk in Greensboro.

In my email, I included a verbatim description of the error message, a description of what I was trying to do when I got the error, a summary of my Google search results, and a 4-point list of the things I had tried to do (from clearing the clipboard in Excel to running the clipboard application from Start Menu > Run > clipbrd.exe).

About 30 minutes later (after I had gotten Excel to work again), I got a call from the Help Desk. This is the conversation:

“Hi, I’m from the Help Desk.”

“Hi, I’m glad to hear from you.”

“I’m having a hard time figuring out what the problem might be. Can I remote connect to your desktop?”

“Well, the problem seems to have fixed itself, so I’m not sure that would do any good.”

“Oh. Ok. Great…You know, dude, your email was awesome. Usually we get emails like ‘My Excel isn’t working.’ Yours was great.”

Moral: 90% of computer problems are between the keyboard and the chair. If you can quickly convince the Help Desk that your problem is in the 10%, and actually do about half their work for them, they’ll love you forever.

Jun

18

Saturday Fun

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Two Saturdays ago we went to a celebration at Claytor Lake State Park. When we first got there, there was an antique car show. I was quite impressed with the number of classic cars in the area. The festival also included an antique firetruck show. The oldest fire truck was a chief’s car from the 1930s.

We got to the show around 3, and we wanted to stay for the fireworks later in the evening. Unfortunately, we didn’t know when they would start. We ended up sitting around on the grass near a gazebo until quite late in the evening. As the day progressed, however, we realized that we might have some great seat for the fireworks. We did. At 6pm when we got there, only a dozen or so other people were there. By 9:15, there were hundreds of people scattered about on our little spit of land. And we were right on the end with an unobstructed view.

Last Saturday, we went to a celebration at Ingles Farm, a working farm built at the original location of a farm from the 1740s. Mary Draper Ingles, wife of the original owner, is famous for having been captured by the Shawnee Indians during the French and Indian War, then escaping from her captivity south of Cincinnati, and walking all the way back to the New River Valley. The celebration today included several people to explain the local history, including the current owner of the farm, a descendant of the Ingles of the 1700s. There were also quite a few people around in period dress, demonstrating various farm implements and military weapons of the 18th century.

The Ingles family also operated a ferry from the farm. The Wilderness Road (of Daniel Boone fame) went right past the farm and crossed the New River at one corner of the Ingles’ land. The original owner, William, got permission to operate a ferry. It was in continuous operation until 1948, except for a brief period before the Civil War when a bridge replaced it.

1920s Ford
1950s Corvette
Ford Galaxy

A 1930s Ford Fire Chief Car
A butterfly on Mel's toe
A pirate sailboat?

Fireworks
Fireworks
Fireworks

Fireworks
Fireworks
Fireworks

Fireworks
Mel and the goat
Spinning Yarn

18th century doctor's tools
Me and the sycamore tree
The Wilderness Road