We have two large plastic buckets outside for the animals to drink from.  One of them has an electric deicer, the other does not.  Whenever I go outside, I check on the buckets and break up any ice that has formed in the cold bucket.

For some reason, all the animals prefer to drink out of the ice bucket than the heated bucket.  I guess the concept of warm water on a cold day must be alien to them.

The weather was nice today, with temps in the 60's.  The past week has been really cold, and it's supposed to be back into the 30's tomorrow.

So I went out to Grandpa's Woods Golf Course again.  It was rather windy, but not cold.  I was rather surprised that there was almost nobody there again.  All the better, given how wild some of my shots can be.

As I teed up on the first hole, someone waved to me and walked into the middle of the fairway.  It turned out he was playing the adjacent 2nd hole and had hooked the ball all the way into the fairway of the 1st.  He took a swing at the ball and totally flubbed it, knocking the ball about a foot.  He took a second swing and managed to get his ball back onto the proper fairway.  Nice to see I'm not the only lousy golfer out there.

I did slightly better than last time, with a 64 (34 over par, yikes!).  This was only my second ever round of golf.  I still have a real problem with driving; I just can't seem to hit worth beans off the tee.  I am pretty decent with a wedge, though.

My putting was better and I had my first one-putt today on the 4th hole.  But then I totally blew it on the 9th, taking five putts to hole out.  The ball just kept skirting around the damn cup.  Now I know why people break their clubs in frustration.

I also had my first "pinseeker" today; on the 7th hole, I hit a chip shot towards the green and the ball bounced off the pin.  Unfortunately, it kept going, right off the green again.

Last time I played, I managed to lose 8 balls, one completely off the property and across the road, the others into a creek.  This time I lost only one ball when I overshot the green with a provisional ball on the 5th hole (but I found my first ball and it was playable, so that shot didn't count).  I did hit one shot out of bounds, my second shot on the 1st hole, same as last time, but I managed to find the ball and take the drop.

1 bogey, 1 double bogey, 3 triple bogeys.

Hole	Yards	Handicap	Par	10/31/08	11/19/08
1	275	1	4	9	10
2	280	2	4	12	9
3	145	4	3	7	9
4	148	5	3	6	4
5	160	3	3	5	6
6	80	9	3	4	6
7	175	6	4	9	6
8	149	8	3	6	6
9	146	7	3	9	8
Totals	1558		30	67	64

Over a month ago, I preordered a 64GB Solid State Drive for my Dell Mini 9 netbook.  It finally arrived today!  Now I have tons of space on this thing!

The version of Ubuntu Linux that Dell provided was all kinds of broken, so with the new drive, I started out with a fresh install of Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex).  Just a plain vanilla install managed to get almost everything working, the Bluetooth, the WiFi, even the webcam (which is more than I could say for Dell's Crapuntu).  It also recognizes all 2 Gigs of RAM I have installed, Dell's version couldn't.  The only thing that didn't work was the sound, but that just required adding a single line to a configuration file.

I've still got tons of stuff to install on this machine.  I need to get it to automatically recognize my Bluetooth mouse, I need to tether my cellphone to it for mobile Internet access, I need to set up e-mail, IM, Skype and FurryMUCK, and then I have to do all the various program tweaks and stuff that I always do.

Sirius has dropped one of my favorite channels, the Strobe, which played non-stop disco music.  Bastards.

I was in town this afternoon to do the weekly grocery shopping.  I also wanted to go to Foot Locker in the mall to price out some golf shoes, since I have a 25% off coupon.  But when I got there, the parking lot was almost completely full!  I didn't feel like fighting the crowds, so I left.  Costco's parking lot was fuller than usual too.  And there was a lot more traffic than usual on the road on the way home.  I keep hearing all these dire predictions about the upcoming Christmas shopping season, but if the malls are full 2 weeks BEFORE Thanksgiving, this looks more like boom than bust.

They've started running Christmas commercials on TV, and there are decorations and stuff up around the malls.  Costco has had Christmas stuff since September and Wal*Mart was playing Christmas music before Halloween! 

I've heard of keeping the Christmas spirit all year long, but this is getting ridiculous.

I played my first round of golf today, at a course with the awe-inspiring name of "Grandpa's Woods Golf Course".  Yeah, that's one you'll see on the PGA Tour.  It's a really small 9 hole course, 1608 yards off the white tees and par 30.

I shot a 67.  Which would be great on an 18 hole course, but is terrible on a 9 hole.  That's 37 over par, or an average of 4 over par per hole.

I got off to a pretty bad start, I flubbed the first tee shot and it only went about 50 yards.  I sliced my second shot completely off the course.  That's a one stroke penalty.  I finally managed to finish the hole with a total of 9 strokes, 5 over par.

The second hole is the longest on the course, and I just could not hit the ball at all.  It actually took me 12 strokes to hole out, 8 over par.  Ouch.

I started having better luck, shooting 4 over par on the 3rd hole, a triple bogey on the 4th, and a double bogey on the fifth.

Then came the 6th hole, a par 3 that requires shooting over a creek.  I was really nervous, but I actually managed to land the ball on the green with my tee shot!  My first GIR!  I was near the edge of the green, still a good distance from the hole, however.  My first putt was perfectly straight, but too hard, it hopped over the hole.  My second putt came up short, so I had to take a third to hole out.  Still, it was a mere bogey!

Unfortunately things went rapidly downhill from there.  The 7th hole is a par 4 with a long tee shot over the water.  I managed to send all 7 of my remaining golf balls into the drink or onto the unreachable island.  I headed back to the clubhouse to buy some replacement balls.  I asked for some advice on that hole, and they recommended I try the ladies tee, which I hadn't seen before.  It didn't cross as much water.  I started over from the ladies tee and still managed to only get 5 over par.

I did a bit better on the 8th hole, with a triple bogey.  I was getting really tired by then, and managed to totally botch the 9th hole, mostly through bad chipping and putting; I ended up with 6 over par.

I stopped by the Plattsmouth Golf Course today.  I was surprised that nobody was there, except the caretaker,  He explained that the course is usually pretty empty and they don't even bother with tee times.  It's only a 9 hole course and the grass didn't look that great, but the course looks fairly easy, the greens fees are very cheap and I like the idea that I don't need a tee time.  I especially like the idea that the course was empty, so I don't have to worry about killing anyone with an errant shot except the caretaker.

But I was looking for a driving range, something that particular course doesn't have.  The caretaker directed me to the Bay Hills Golf Course a short distance away.  This is a full 18-hole course and the grass looked a lot better, but the greens fees are still pretty decent.  It was fairly deserted, but there were a few people playing.

I spent $6 for a huge bucket of balls and went to work swinging.  I really need to work on my woods and hybrid irons; I've got a wicked slice and more than once managed to drive a ball off the range onto an adjacent cart path.  Fortunately traffic was light, and I made sure to check the area before taking a swing.  My best drive was about 200 yards, but most were in the 100-150 yard range.  I did much better with the irons, including one fantastic shot with my $5 6 iron that went about 170-180 yards, better than most of my shots with the driver.

After I ran out of balls, I went over to the practice putting green and did some putting.  My aim is pretty good, but I need to work on power; I made one putt from about 50 feet away that was dead on target but was too hard and hopped over the hole.  I wanted to use their practice bunker, but it was full of water.

As I went back to my car, I saw a range ball in the middle of the parking lot and wondered if that was my fault.  I was the only person using the driving range the whole time I was there.  The ball was a good 50 yards behind where I was teeing up.

Overall I spent about an hour and a half practicing.  I'm all kinds of sore and stiff now.

It's been a while since I posted any new photos.




If you leave the outer porch door open, "Ma" walks up the stairs, stands outside the kitchen door and bleats loudly.  She knows we keep the sheep snacks inside the house.





We were driving into town when I saw these young deer standing just a few dozen yards away from the highway.  We pulled over and I snapped a bunch of photos and some short video.  It was the middle of the day; deer are normally only active during the morning and evening and rarely allow anyone to come this close.  I suspect they were orphaned, but at least they were eating grass which meant they'd been weaned and were old enough to take care of themselves.  I just wish I'd had my good camera with me.





My new Dell Mini 9 netbook sitting on my Dell XPS 1730 laptop.  It's soooo tiny!





"Deer" Hunter:  Revenge of the Herd

The town of Louisville is hosting a Halloween scarecrow contest.  There are dozens of entries scattered about town, but this one caught my eye and I just had to snap a picture.

I picked up Wii Music today.  A lot of critics are calling it a Fisher-Price Guitar Hero, and indeed it can be, but it does have potential to make some really interesting music.  Unlike Guitar Hero/Rock Band, where you have to play a song exactly as it was originally recorded, Wii Music lets you adlib, adding or skipping notes, changing the rhythm or use a totally different instrument, and you can even improvise your own music.  It's really a totally different class of game from GH or RB.

Among the dozens of instruments available is one called the Dog Suit, which puts a dog fursuit on your Mii and makes you bark like a dog.  I was playing around with this, improvising a little tune.  My roommate's dog kept tilting her head looking kind of puzzled.  Then she went over to one of the TV speakers and started sniffing at it.  I laughed.

Mokèlé-mbèmbé, a large water-dwelling herbivore about the size of an elephant, believed to exist in the Congo River basin.  Some descriptions of the Mokele-mbembe resemble that of a dinosaur, possibly Diplodocus or similar.

Chance of light snow Wednesday night and Thursday morning.  Gah!  It's still October!

So, anyone catch American Dad tonight?   OMFG!!!

5 weeks ago I ordered a Dell Mini 9 netbook.  It's a tiny little laptop, only 9 inches wide.  It uses an Intel Atom processor, has no optical drive and uses a Solid State Drive (SSD) instead of a regular hard drive, so it has no moving parts.  It's available with Windows XP or Ubuntu Linux; I ordered the latter.

It finally arrived today, and it's really sweet.  It's soooo small.  The MacBook Air has nothing on this thing.  You can set two of them on top of a standard laptop.  It's totally silent; there's no CPU fan, no power supply fan and no hard drive.  The keys are smaller than usual and are a bit tricky to type on, and the small touchpad will take some getting used to, but otherwise, it's a really neat device.  The screen is small but very clear.

I ordered a 16 GB SSD with mine, but the schmucks at Dell only partitioned 3.5 Gigs worth.  They left the remainer totally unpartitioned and unusable.  I fired up GParted to see if there was anything I could do, but it wouldn't let me unmount the system drive while Ubuntu was running.

The system came with an Ubuntu DVD, but it doesn't have a DVD drive, and I didn't order an external drive, so I couldn't use the bootable Ubuntu DVD to repartition the drive.

The MacGyver moment:  I dug up an 8 year old 6x CD-RW drive with a missing faceplate, hooked it up to a spare power supply for juice, and then used an IDE to USB adaptor I had lying around to connect it to the Dell.  That wouldn't let me boot to the DVD, but fortunately I had a previous version of Ubuntu on CD-ROM so I booted to it, then used GParted to resize the partition.  I shut down, unhooked the frankenCD, and restarted the Dell.

Bingo!  I now have the full 16 Gigs of space available, minus Dell's utility partition, of course.

Ceilings caving in seem to be all the rage this season.

I was doing the dishes when my roommate came in and asked about the puddle in the living room.  I thought it was one of the dogs being naughty, but then I saw water dripping from the ceiling.  I stuck a bucket underneath to catch the drips.  The paint was sagging badly, so I grabbed a utility knife and cut a small hole.  Nasty brown water started gushing out into the bucket.  And it kept gushing.  And kept gushing.  It managed to fill about 1/3 of the bucket before it finally slowed.

That was about half an hour ago and its still dripping.  I think the roof has been leaking for quite some time, so I bet the attic is a horrible mess.

Fortunately, I'm not going to have to pay for it and fortunately it's in the living room, which has a wooden floor, and not a carpeted bedroom.  Unfortunately, access to the attic is through my closet, so I'm going to have to move all my clothes and stuff so the repair guys can get up there.  I have no idea where I'm going to put my things in the mean time.

This one made me laugh.

"For all intensive purposes"

I think I got all the clubs I'll be needing for a while.  I went to Scheel's today and discovered they sell used clubs, most of which are in near-new condition, for as little as $5!  I picked up a 6 iron, a 9 iron, a chipper, a 5 wood and a lob wedge.  With the driver, 3 wood, 4 hybrid iron, sand wedge and putter that brings me to a total of 10 clubs.  You're allowed to have 14 maximum, so I might get a few more irons in the future.

The 'quiz' goes like this: Bold the establishments you've been to. Underline your favorites. Strikethrough the ones you don't like.

1. Arby's
2. Beefeater
3. Benihana
4. Black Angus
5. Buffalo Grill
6. Burger King
7. California Pizza Kitchen
8. Carl's Jr.
9. Chick-fil-A
10. Chipotle
11. Chuck E. Cheese's
12. Claim Jumper
13. Cluck-U-Chicken
14. Del Taco
15. Denny's
16. El Pollo Loco
17. Fatburger
18. Hard Rock Cafe
19. Hardee's
20. Harvey's
21. HomeTown Buffet
22. Hooters
23. In-n-Out
24. Jack in the Box
25. Johnny Rocket's
26. Kelsey's
27. KFC
28. Krispy Kreme
29. Long John Silver's
30. McDonald's
31. Oporto
32. Outback Steakhouse
33. Planet Hollywood
34. Quizno's
35. Rainforest Cafe
36. Red Lobster
37. Red Robin
38. Red Rooster
39. Señor Frog's
40. Skyline Chili
41. Sonic
42. Subway
43. Sweet Tomatoes
44. T.G.I.Friday's
45. Taco Bell
46. TCBY
47. The Old Spaghetti Factory
48. Tim Horton's
49. Wendy's
50. White Castle

Bonus!
Applebee's
Cici's Pizza
Dairy Queen
Pizza Hut
Little Caesar's
Culver's
Runza
Rally's
Popeyes
Rubios
IHOP
A&W