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.