Christmas Day Reflections

Today is Christmas and I have the time to finally post another entry in this blog. Although no one seems to ever read or comment on my blog posts I like to write my thoughts and post some of my camera photos here. This morning I used the Windows Live messenger app to start a video chat with my folks, who are on vacation down in Florida, near Disney World. The video quality was very sharp, but was blurry when moving my laptop camera around the room. It was good to see the game room there and say hi to my sister while Austin played a video game on his new Xbox 360. In my last post I mentioned shopping a computer store to build my next desktop computer. Well, I finally purchased the parts and then assembled a new Windows 7 desktop last month. I went with AMD this time, choosing the new "bulldozer" FX- 6100 processor, an ASUS M5A97 EVO board, 8 GB of DDR3 1600 RAM, and a 1 TB hard drive for storage. At first I wanted to get an SSD drive, but the cost and drive capacity were negative factors. The 1 TB is much more storage than my old 320 GB drive on the Vista desktop. Plus, the 1 TB is SATA 6, which is much faster than the old Vista drive interface. I even chose to get a water cooler, the H60 from corsair for the AMD cpu cooler. The board has great overclocking specs built in and I used a software app to overclock the cpu from 3.3 to 3.8 GHz speed. So far this new system is the fastest I have ever built, more geared for gaming then the old Vista desktop was. The video card is a Radeon HD 6850 with 1 GB and overclocked some. It is designed to handle the latest games, and I am currently playing both Skyrim for RPG type and Modern Warefare 3 as the FPS. The entire system build, including the cooler master case and the 600 watt power supply was not much over $1,000. Oh, another cool design of this build is that I added a side blue led fan to match the front blue led fan. Later I picked up a Gigaware 42 W 2.1 desktop speaker set that also has a blue led on the volume control knob. Sometimes I use a Gigaware headset for playing games without the speaker sound and it has a mic too for online chat. It is nice having a power user, performance desktop computer that I read about in magazines and on various review websites everyday. Besides the computer stuff, I've got a few other activities to mention in this blog post. The first would be going to see the annual Christmas play at church. Next, I got back into playing disc golf at some courses around and took a few pics. And, I found time to ride my bike on cold, late fall trails, but still captured some cool photos. I won't forget to mention spending good times with friends at some local restaurants, pool halls, and holiday meetups. On occasion, I had to drive down to the Fuquay-Varina area to repair a computer, and ended up stopping to eat and walk around a store. That's about it to post in this blog update. I've got some photos from December to post here with a brief description under each one:

Christmas tree at church after attending the Christmas play service. 

New Windows 7 desktop with blue led front fan. 

Side view of new desktop computer with blue led fan, Asus logo, and Win7  product key stickers(top right). 

Fiber optic Christmas tree setup with ornaments and red star (new).

I great disc golf drive to within feet of a birdie. 

Manger scene with baby Jesus in center, my plants behind. 

Difficult hole #1 at a local disc golf course. 

Sunset on the lake: taken from a trail while riding my bike. 

My Fiesta parked outside a shopping center in Holly Springs.

My weekend reflections

This Saturday evening I am reflecting on some activities in the last few days. I just got back from watching the movie, Green Lantern at the Blue Ridge theater in Raleigh. This movie had an interesting theme of good versus evil. Good was depicted as will power in the form of creative, green lantern energy, in contrast to evil which was fear. The green energy defeated the yellow fear of paralax. On Friday night, a friend and I saw another movie; Transformers 3 at the IMAX theater in Raleigh. Some of the scenes were really cool and I thought I was flying through the air at points. However, the 3D glasses were uncomfortable to wear for over 2 hours. This was a great movie to watch in IMAX 3D because of the battle scenes and incredible special effects.

Most of today this area has been dealing with hurricane Irene that made landfall near the outer banks and is now near Washington, DC. At times it was very windy, but not much heavy rain were I live in west Cary. The networks were covering this story most of the day, and I watched some of the reporters trying to stand up in the hurricane winds along the beach as the waves were crashing around the pier. I noticed a report from the Avalon pier at Kill Devil Hills, NC, one that I visited while on a job assignment there a few years ago. There probably is lots of tree and power line damage in downeast, NC, so keep them in your prayers. This morning I put in hour or so working on my HP Photosmart printer that had a bad capacitor, causing it to lose connection sometimes and wake from sleep at odd times. The repair involved de-soldering the bad capacitor, ordering a new one and soldering it to the circuit board. So far the printer is working like when I first got it. I think I am going to need a new soldering iron after this job the tip is almost melted away. I walked around a computer store this afternoon looking at their components and thinking of my next computer build. On the Intel side, their new boards use the Z68 chipset which supports sandybridge chips like the i7-2600K. With AMD, their was a micro-ATX FM1 chipset board selling for around $120, which is used with the new A6-3650 processors that use the Fusion integrated graphics. Later on I went to my local Target store and chatted with the cell phone rep. about some of the new smartphones on the market. This afternoon my friend and I played a few levels in my new steam game, Portal2 and then some races in my new racing game, Fuel. So far this aged core 2 duo vista desktop can still render graphics ok and at playable frame rates. The last computer that I purchased was a laptop with Windows 7, and I also have an Apple powermac, loaded with a game DVD. In tech news, HP decided to sell there PC manufacturing business and the Apple CEO retired. While riding my mt. bike this week I listened to the twich podcast on my sansa clip mp3 player. Also, I enjoyed the superb sound quality of my new skullcandy earbuds while walking and a micro mobi speaker while working at my desk. In other news, I won a little toy blue hot wheels car (Dodge Charger) playing a group poker at a church event. This car sits besides my printer and is a reminder of good times of fellowship with friends over a nice steak dinner. Here are a few pictures that I would like to share from last month:

Pool tables at the Brickhouse in Raleigh. They had free pool this night after a soccer game.

 

 

 

Garner Fireworks on July 3, 2011

 

 

 

 

 

Watching a Carolina Railhawks soccer game in July. 

Hiking up to the summit of Beech Mtn. on vacation in July.

Fred's store on Beech Mountain.

Orange walls inside a cool restaurant in Cary.

Watching a band play at a tavern in Banner Elk during my mtn. vacation in July.

My May Journey

Well, looking back at the month of May, it was a fun and enjoyable ride. I hit the road to travel shorter distances than I did in April, with that Hilton Head beach trip. However, several day trips did result in some great photos that I am going to share on this post. Under each photo is a brief description of the location, time, and other details.

My best May 2011 photos:

Wild birds eating off of this bell shaped seed feeder that I installed on my patio. It
took the birds several weeks to even start pecking at it, but more birds arrived after
each day. I saw two cardinals, lots of chickadees, and some thrushes eat seed. One
day the bell fell down off the hanger and then it was gone a few hours later when
I came home from church.

This is a PowerBook G4 Mac laptop that I repaired. It would not boot into OS X Tiger,
so I removed the hard drive, formatted it with a linux boot drive, then re-installed the OS.
After several software updates and a battery calibration it is like new. The only problem
is that there is not much software that I can purchase and install since this Mac doesn't have newer
Intel processor. I did find a game CD at Office Max that does still install. I have played
some games of checkers and a maze game, both on the Hoyle Puzzle CD.

This is a my awesome disk golf drive on hole #7 at Centinenial Campus DGC in Raleigh.
It is very challenging to reach the basket on this short 9 hole course, like an S pattern
through the trees, that I hit just right.

Another disc golf photo, this is number 11 at Kentwood DGC. I posted this one because it maybe a sign pointing to
this year, 2011. There is a bridge that cross over a creek, with a very overgrown, weeds and rough area
to the left of the fairway. Is this a sign of the rapture that will take Christians out of this world, leaving behind
the terrible tribulation(on the left). I have scored a 2 on this hole before, but it takes a very "straight" shot.

May was National Bike Month, and I took several photos while out riding my around on
my Mongoose mountain bike. This is Lochmere Lake in Cary at the end of a small pier at a boat ramp area.

This is part of the Hog Run trail system at Harris Lake. I think it is on the Advanced Loop
section, one of my favorite trails to ride, and always cool even when it is above 90 degrees.

A photo of my time going to play darts at Sharky's tavern in Raleigh. Others were playing
pool on those tables. Watched some of the playoff b-ball and hockey game on the wide screens. I think
I won all the dart games that I played.

Attending a singles event at Hope Community Church in Raleigh. The group is called Journey.
Sometimes they have other events that I try to attend if not working or busy.

Photos from April Beach Trip

A few weeks ago, in April I traveled down to Hilton Head Island for a few days of spring vacation. The trip down there was anything but normal. See, only a day or so before I left there was a massive tornado outbreak in the eastern NC area. My place was around 20 miles from the first twister that hit around the southern downtown Raleigh area. The Fayetteville, NC area near I-95 that I drove on was also hit with a tornado. Here are two photos that I took from the interstate of the damage:

After I got to S.C., I stopped at the South of the Border park and here are a few photos of that place:

After arriving at HHI, I walked on the beach, rode a rental bike around the shipyard area, and enjoyed playing some outdoor sports and watching some movies in the evening. Below are photos of some of the cool scenery and images from around HHI:

Lots of Jellyfish wash onshore

Bird dives for fish in the Atlantic

Lots of bike riders on the beach during low tides

Riding a beach cruzer bike

Playing the Legendary putt-putt 

I played this course near Hardeeville with lots of water hazards

These birds were common around the inland small lakes and ponds

Setup this new HP laptop

Van Der Meer Tennis center, played round robin

Around the Laptop

     I was watching some of the espn show this afternoon called, "Around the Horn" and thought of the title of this post from that one. However, instead of talking about current events in sports before the horn goes off I will cover tech stuff and share some of my views on the news before 11:15pm this evening. I installed Google's chrome browser on my laptop and have been using it to surf the web and write this blog. I was surprised to see how similar it looks to the new Internet Explorer 9, there is about the same space around the top of the web window and the title. Also the bookmarks in both browsers on the right hand side of the screen. Today I had breakfast and then fired up my laptop and connected to the Internet using free ATT wifi. I used Windows Live Mesh to connect remotely to my Vista desktop at home. It actually connected after a few minutes, I could browse my docs, run a virus scan, and open any application. Although it was very slow, this is a great tool to have access to my personal library of files while anywhere in the U.S. I am not a fan of the way the Live Mesh syncs up favorites, because I now have lots of duplicates links in the favorites bar, but the file sync works well. Wow, looking down at the new Windows updates, shows that 20 are available for this week, which is a lot more than usual from Microsoft. I helped my Dad to pick out a new notebook computer this week. He got an HP Pavilion g6 with an AMD dual-core processor, 4 GB of DDR3 RAM, and a nice Radeon HD 4250 integrated graphics card. Other specs are a 320 GB drive, HDMI output, webcam, HD LED display, surround sound speakers, and Windows 7. While online this week I read several tech articles from my Comp TIA newsletter, and from the PC Pro magazine reviews e-mail.  One that I remember is from the Q and A article about tips to remove spy ware more effectively and to setup a test bench in the home. Outside of the tech world, I read some fascinating news about space and watched a video from a south pole telescope showing the earth moving closer to a dark area and cluster of stars. Their is a large comet that is heading toward earth this fall and many other signs in the stars that have Biblical ties. Last month there was super moon and I took a picture of it. I watched a video from a financial advisor about the bad state of the U.S. economy and how it could get much worse soon. I already have seen the effects in sales at work this week, and the ever rising price of gas. Even with my small compact Ford Fiesta, it costs over $37 to fill up the tank this week. The weather has been warming up this month, so I have used my leisure time to get outside and take some pictures while riding my bike, playing sports, or walking around town. I got some digital photos to share in this post, and used my silver Canon Power shot camera and phone cam to take them.

Riding on a Green way trail in Cary, ECU symbols:

Hole 18 at Middle Creek and my new car in the background.

Spring flowers blooming.
 

View of the super Moon of March from my apartments.

Raising a cup from my office area, Dad took this photo.

2011 is Here, but looking back at photos from the last two months of 2010:

     Well, I am hopeful that this will be a great year, with lots of opportunities and fun times in store. I need to stay focused and determined to change my lazy lifestyle starting on Monday. I think it is important to live a balanced lifestyle, and not have all fun and no work. So far the weather has been mild these first few days of 2011. However, it has been a few rainy days and been only good for staying inside the apartment. However, with the weather getting brighter on Monday, I've got some plans to play sports outdoors the next two days. I need to stay active, which helps lose some weight and maintain a healthy lifestyle. I also resolve to increase my skills and training by taking a couple of certification exams this month or next. I may build and or upgrade a new desktop computer this winter if I have enough cash in the bank, and the parts are on sale. I was challenged today at church to start attending a small group at least once a week. The name of the church is New Horizons Fellowship, which is a great name for starting out the new year looking ahead at my new horizons. Don't know exactly what this year has in terms of economic and prophetic, but I can adjust to any horizon that is visible in the far off sky. Shades of red, blue, gold, yellow, and orange are the spectrum of light that I want to see and work with in 2011. I left 2010 behind while attending a party with other Christian singles at the Herbert Young Community Center. We had a nice dinner, then I played ping pong and foosball for an hour. Then I put on a hat and as the year changed I toasted others and made noise with a paper horn. I would rate my last two months of 2010 about an 8 out of 10, and would say that the year went out with a bang and like a Lion. Here are a few photos and descriptions taken with my phone camera in November and December 2010:

Mom and Dad Visit Early December

Setup Toy Display for Christmas Sales

 

Pharoah's Hotdogs near North Hills

Bright Lights of a Christmas Tree at Church

Photo taken while riding with Dad passing Charlotte Motor Speedway

Playing a round of disc golf with a meetup group

On a pier at a small lake at Umstead Park, my bike is on the bridge in distance

Snapped this photo while driving, and noticed my ODO is on 180,000 miles