Flaminghotsauce's blog

[flaminghotsauce]

FIRST BLOG! ;D

I don't check the "News" section very often, so it took me a while to find out this place was here.

[flaminghotsauce]

Well, I am a City Alderman now. My first official meeting involved our budget crisis. My second meeting we voted in a golf cart operation age limit for our city streets, which, sadly, does not coordinate with the golf course age. Politics is sometimes very stupid. Kids can operate a golf cart on the course but cannot drive it TO the course.

Our community festival starts this weekend. I'm an Alderman so I'm in the dunk tank slot for monday. I sure hope it's warm!

I bought a computer for my neighbors 11 year old daughter off Ebay. It arrived today, with faults. It's my first Ebay transaction where I'm going to have an argument with the seller. Not as described, and I paid for a pristine machine. It ain't.

My family spent the entire day Sunday at the park in Kirksville for a church function. It wore us OUT. So this morning, I went to work to tell them I'm taking the day off, and I also need to visit with our City Administrator for some more informal orientation. NOPE. I ended up working untill after lunch. Too much going on to even get the words in. (Me)"Hey boss, I need to...."(Boss)"We need to get this order loaded NOW, and take another truck to Store X and Store Y to pick up supplies we need NOW, and also we need an inventory on items A,B,C,D, and E, and oh, don't forget to...." Sigh.

When I did get home, we let the chickens out in the yard, Collected eggs, picked peaches, apples, tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, and later we need to run to town to buy some stuff.

So much for a day off, huh?

[Tom Goodrick]

Personally, I think it is correct and very sensible that kids not be allowed to operate carts on streets. Indeed I have never seen carts operated on streets by anyone. You drive your car to the course and rent a cart. Or, you pull your own cart behind the car in a little trailer. I have seen many kids do stupid things with carts on golf courses but at least they are not mixing it up with cars that are much heavier, larger and faster.

[flaminghotsauce]

I personally have heard zero complaints about kids on golf carts.
I voted against the ordinance. The ordinance was watered down from requiring licensed drivers to 'photo ID' because there are those that cannot obtain a driver's license. So what good does the ordinance do liability-wise?
I'm for maximum personal freedom and personal responsibility for that freedom. Outlaw kids from driving golf carts, and only outlaw kids will drive golf carts.

[Bill Von Sennet]

Hi Flaming,

I concur with your personal freedom ethic. We need less of the government telling us what we can and cannot do.

In this case, we have kids driving golf carts in our neighborhood, and not causing any problems. We also have kids on quads roaring up and down the street wreaking havoc on our peace and quiet and just waiting for an accident to happen. I thinks its a matter for parents to supervise their own kids, we certainly don't need any new laws.

[flaminghotsauce]

It rained all day here. I'm having to wear my insulated winter boots all summer because they're super-dooper waterproof. Hot, too.

I got my next meeting info packet for the city. Sewer bond issue, water rate increase, etc. Dry dry reading. I'm all about limited government especially on the town level where we're at. This is a town of 1400, very relaxed place where people don't take the keys out of their cars, and often leave the houses unlocked as well. We have a nice golf course, and we're trying to increase usage of it. Passing this ordinance is an obstacle to that.

Speaking of the golf course, it's an 18 hole course with lots of water, and some seriously challenging shot-making. There's a couple of photos at www.cityoflaplata.com/golf.html VERY nice course for a town our size.

I got my Flying magazine today. I'm off to read that next. I'm hoping to do a few Baron IFR flights to and from KSTL and KMCI as that is what our new commuter company is flying and where. I haven't flown the Baron in FSX much, I'm enjoying the 172 so much. But the Baron is great also. I might have to do these flights in FS9 as I"m going in to the big city airports. KMCI should be interesting tonight as they've been in the rain band all day and are under tornado watches currently.

[flaminghotsauce]

More city alderman stuff: We are having to cut where we can, and it unfortunately meant we had to cut staff. Our public works departments are all skeletal except for the electric department. They had one more position than any other and our electric has been upgraded town-wide. One person's position was eliminated. I now have an enemy, and his father is in the Water department, so I probably have two. But judging by his reaction, I'd say the right position was eliminated. He's taken it as badly as a person could possibly take it. Mad as hell. Won't talk to me.

Dang.

It leads me to think about how different people take their jobs and responsibilities seriously or not. Some people bust it to make the best of whatever jobs they have, some don't. When bad things happen to people, the non-busters are the ones that tend to blame others for their own misfortunes. The busters are the ones that blame themselves for not doing more. Maybe I'm over-generalizing, but I see it time and time again. The complainers versus the doers. This City employee has the experience, skills and the time put in that would immediately get him hired elsewhere if he'd apply himself to make a bad situation into a better situation. He could go to a bigger city and start for a huge raise over what he's been paid here. His big plans for the near future? Fix his deer stand and hunt all the time on his unemployment pay.
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Meanwhile, happier subjects: Here at home, we've been Netflix enabled for some time. We've mostly been wading through the various Star Trek series, the movies, etc. It all started when the last Star Trek Enterprise series started without us TV enabled. So we waded through all that. Great stuff! I believe it was absolutely the very best Star Trek series hands down. It took place in the timeline before the original series with Kirk and Spock and the happy gang.

We've been through Enterprise, The Next Generation, and we're now going through Deep Space Nine. Next will be Voyager, then, if we have the stomach, we're going to go back, back to where it all started, in 1969, the original Star Trek. I can still hear the beeps of the instruments, the cheesy transporter noises, those gawdawfull sets and the colors....

The kids are wary. But, hey, they're Trekkians.

[flaminghotsauce]

Wii news! My son the eldest is the first in our house to bowl a 300! He then rolled into his next game with another 11 strikes in a row. I was so proud of myself for finally getting a double eagle on the Wii golf proceded by an eagle/birdie then followed by eagle, thus carding four consecutive twos to start the round. Then after shooting 9 under/8 under for 18 holes of 17 under, I proceded to the homerun derby where I finally hit all ten home runs.

Lots of fun!

[flaminghotsauce]

I've been working hard this week in the ICE! Two days of driving in this stuff. 10+ hours a day. I woke up early this morning, almost two hours before I had to, and oh joy, two to five inches of snow to put upon the aforementioned icepack. Woohoo!

I love it. It's hard to work in, but it's beautiful to look at as I'm driving, and a White Christmas to boot. There's a house south of here that has the entire structure outlined with white Christmas lights. I drove by there after dark, and the lights reflecting off the ice....wow. It appears the house is in the middle of a lake.

I get Christmas day off, but I'm otherwise working every day. I just got a Christmas tree last evening. It was beginning to freeze/mist as we were out in the tree farm ( a nearly abandoned place- I never see anyone there anymore, haven't for several years now. Honor system= cut a tree, leave money in the mail box) On the way back, I saw headlights of someone turning off the highway, just over the hill. As we topped the hill, I realized it was a guy I know, he's lost control on the freshly frozen misty blacktop and put it in the ditch. I stopped to help but my tow strap was missing, and another local fellow I know stopped with a chain and a truck, and all was sorted out.

When we got home, the children descended all upon the tree like a swarm of decorating locusts. In about 7 minutes the tree was up, lit, and fully covered.

[flaminghotsauce]

I've wiped Vista! I got mad in my FS9 forum post at how badly Vista is hogging up the resources and memory, and I determined I was going to go XP.

I realized I have a legal copy that I already wiped off a laptop! Woohoo!. Only problem is all the missing drivers, it's SP1, I need to update to SP2 before the flight sims will be happy. But to update to SP2 I need to upgrade the IE version to a later version. I tried to download and install IE7 but it needs SP3!

So I just downloaded SP2, and as I'm typing I see it just finished. Windows is tiring in it's details.

I've already found an NVidia software suite and installed it. I need a few other drivers too, but I'm not there yet. By this evening I should have the flight simulators installed and I'll be able to see just how much better they run out from under the 800lb gorilla that Vista is.....

[flaminghotsauce]

I have FS9 and FSX running and wow! I saw the same frame rates as before but it's way WAY smoother. Zero stuttering, and I have to have everything well up to hurt the frame rates.

FS9 is tremendous like this. FSX while half the frame rates, is very very good.

But, guess what? My computer is an HP with an Asus motherboard I believe. The drivers are all for Vista. I don't have a sound driver yet, so no audio. THIS is the devil in the details. This machine is currently hooked up to our TV and surround sound audio system doing dual purpose as my gaming machine/entertainment center. I didn't notice the sounds werent' working because the kids were playing Wii which takes precedence over the sound from the computer, so I'm used to not hearing sound. It wasn't until I loaded FS9 in that I got a notification of no sound device enabled.

[flaminghotsauce]

Oh joy. In the middle of all my playing around, my wifey's Averatec Laptop started committing suicide. I bought her a nice desktop replacement not quite two years ago, and it's been a good machine.

The hard drive died over the summer. I replaced it, but we still ahve not retrieved the data from it. It's in a drawer, because it costs the same money to buy a data retrieval program as it does for someone to do it for me.

I installed 2 gigs of memory for her to make it run better.

The dual-core processor became a single-core last week. I ordered a new processor, even a little faster too. It came today, as my wife notified me the last core remaining in the old one let go....

Installed the new processor and it won't wake up. Even if it did, Windows wouldn't recognize exactly where it is and I'd have to call India to reactivate it.

She needs a pretty good processor as she's the DVD burning person in the house, and uses Skype to keep in touch with her family. Now she's knitting a sweater.

Makes my problems seem a little less problematic....

[flaminghotsauce]

Today, the Antec laptop cooler arrived that we ordered to help Wifey's Averatec run a little cooler. Not a moment too soon.... It's plenty cool now.

[flaminghotsauce]

Uh, so I'm back to Vista. No sound was beginning to drive me nuts. No sound for watching youtube videos, no more watching streaming Netflix movies.....

I bit the bullet and reinstalled Vista. This time, however, I have turned off much of the stuff that I found eating CPU time. The sidebar, for example is pretty weighty. I also turned OFF the User Account Contol thingy, changed the system to Classic view so it looks and behives more like XP, including the start menu.

I've reloaded the simulators, but I haven't done comparison flights yet. One of the reasons for having this computer was for the entertainment center business. The netflix video system is back online.
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I've also found myself nearly appointed to an Assistant Editor position for an online magazine about Linux. In the announcement I wrote a big post describing my "Like I Have Time Syndrome" and basically made up a bunch of goofy stuff describing how I'd be interested of only I had more time. The rest of the posts on the forum were "Congratulations!" posts..... ;D



This requires Open Office, so I've downloaded and installed that, instead of the 'trial version' business of all the new MS Office and Works. I'm not even going to mess with them. Now I have to write some articles for submission so that they can see that I can indeed write. What to write about is another matter!

[flaminghotsauce]

COLD! We're going to hit -8 tonight, high tomorrow of 4. Anchorage AK is in the 30's! Gack.