Short week this coming week

Four work days and the Frog Follies starts up. Can't wait. Have a vacation day Friday so I can beat the crowds. This years temperatures are much more enjoyable than the usual scorching August weather. Looking forward to a whole weekend of fun. Naturally, it conflicts with the Indy 1500 gun show. I shall try and get there if I manage to get through the majority of the Follies. There is just so much to see between the cars, the parts vendors, and the huge flea market. Has to be one of my favorite events of the year. Two weeks after that, the Elnora steam show is going on. A few weeks later, the fall machine gun shoot. Lots to do almost every weekend for most of the next two months.

Back to work

It was a nice weekend off. Hit the gun show in the morning. They have a good breakfast with biscuits and gravy, so started off the day good. Not necessarily healthy, but good. Picked up some odd and end tooling and cleaning supplies, then moved on to the flea market. weather was perfect and everyone was out. Good thing about a truck, open fields become parking lots. Had a ton of cool items and antiques. Didn't buy anything, but it was sure fun looking at all the stuff. A couple of the tool vendors that usually show up weren't there. Probably at another function. Only a few more weeks until the Elnora steam show. It is the one with the working machine shop, wood shop and old time town. Really cool show. Huge flea market. Definitely an all day deal.

Finished with the fun stuff and headed home. The neighbor lady was having trouble with her gate in the back yard. The subdivision had a subpar fencing outfit put the fences up on all the houses. They quite quickly started falling apart. When I redid my gate, the hinge post was a whopping five inches in the ground with a handful of cement. Her gate was laying on the fence sorta held on by half a hinge and falling apart. I had some scrap boards from when I did mine, so I was able to get hers somewhat functional again. It isn't real pretty, but it is solid and it works. She is trying to sell the place, so functional is good enough. Did get a nice steak dinner out of it. Any day I don't have to suffer my own cooking is a good day.

Sunday was a little rest in the morning, then, on to my own yard work. Cut up some more of the tree in the front yard. Played around in the garage for a bit. Working on making some brackets for my lathe. I want to hook up some motors so I can run it as a CNC, but I am working at doing it in such a way as to retain the ability to still be able to do simple turning manually as well. Got a couple of ball screws with nuts which should get the slop out. Have almost all the hardware I need, just trying to design the brackets for the motors. Have some good ideas for how I want it, just trying to keep motivated and get it done. I picked up a bare computer case and am using it to hold the power supply and motor drive along with any relays I need. Going to be pretty basic. Run it on Mach 3 software like my little mill. I will still mount the cheap scales on it so I can use them when in manual. Starting to get there. Nice part is, once the bugs get worked out, I won't have to mess with gears for threading and I will be able to cut any pitch I want, including left hand if need be. Won't do heavy stuff, but it will be way more than adequate for the hobby work I fiddle with.

Two whole days offffff

I actually get a whole weekend off. Get to go to the local gun show followed by a trip to the flea market at the local 4H center. Hopefully the rain is done for a while. Try and get the last of the dead tree cut up and disposed of, then, play around in the garage for a while. Have a lot of projects started. Like to start wrapping some of them up. Nice to get a whole weekend off for a change.

So far so good

Windows 10 seems to have fixed most of what I hated on windows 8. Had to work today, so I still haven't had a ton of time to really get to check it out. I do like having the regular screen start up back again instead of the tiles and having to redirect. Would still like it better yet if Outlook were still the default e-mail utility verses their Mail program. Have to dig around and see if I can find my Office disk and see if it works with Windows10 or not.
Work is still insanely busy, which is good. Got a whopping 2.5% raise rather than their regular 2% raise. Better than nothing, but just barely. They can't figure out why the kids are leaving to go down the road and work at a couple of new shops that moved into town. Every time one opens, we lose help. I have enough years in, I only stick around because of the vacation time I have earned through years of service. I won't live long enough to get to four and five weeks of vacation again. Not to mention, if I can manage not getting fired or killing a boss for the next three and a half years, I will get a one time bonus of four weeks additional vacation time I can take anytime between then and the time I retire.
Actually have a whole day off tomorrow. May get to sleep in until 8 if the dog permits it. Have a cool little local gun show to hit up in the morning. Told the neighbor lady I would put up her garage door opener as well. She is trying to sell her house and she is trying to fix broken things. It is weird. We all do it. Live with something that doesn't work and then fix it so we can sell the house rather than fixing it when it breaks so we can enjoy it. Have done it myself as well. She also has trees overgrowing in back of her backyard gate, making it unusable. Figure her kid with my saw should be able to make that problem go away. Get that out of the way, I have a tree out front of my own house that is going to start going away. Figure I will start cutting and tying up branches a bit each week until the tree is gone. Should be a fun weekend, not.

Hopefully, It will be better

Gritted my teeth, prayed, and hit the upgrade button. Running Windows 10 now. I sincerely hope it is better than 8. It does start up with the old windows look instead of the simulation of an apple product with the silly tiles. I am amazed however. It kept all my files, bookmarks, favorites, even my desktop looked the same, wallpaper and all. Everything except my Norton antivirus. The version I had was incompatible with windows 10. I went straight to my Norton account and downloaded the right version and all is well. I usually wait to let them get rid of the start up bugs, but, windows 8 was about as buggy as a system can get. Have to see how it is tomorrow. I checked a few things out, but it is getting late, so, be able to really look at it tomorrow. One item I did stumble on, and like, is that even though they replaced Internet explorer, it is still there. When you hit the blue e for explorer, it opens the new app, but, if you pull down the setting tabs, one drop down option is Internet Explorer. I will check their other browser out later. I went with the Internet Explorer option because, for reasons only known to Microsoft, the new browser does not have your homepages loaded, I have four tabs for a homepage so I can check out my usual stops easily, and your favorites folder is empty. The favorites can easily be imported. The homepage you have to manually set back up. However, if you pick the Internet Explorer setting, it will pull up the Internet Explorer as it was before you upgraded windows. This means all your favorites are still there and your homepages are unmolested. Upgrade in all went extremely well.

Hmmm

I am thoroughly lost. Roof's uncle buys gun. Uncle fraudulently fills in YES on ATF form saying he bought gun for himself, not someone else, such as a deranged nephew. Uncle gives whacked out nephew gun. Nutjob proceeds to kill people while they worship in church. Nutjob gets arrested. Now, FBI says they screwed up. The nephew should not have passed a background check. The nephew who never filled out a background check because uncle lied. The background system is flawed???????? Uncle filled out form thus passing the test and basically straw purchased gun for nephew. HOW is the background check to blame? Sounds like the media trying to get their new and improved universal background check back in the headlines. The story makes no sense at all.

Yeah, rain, rain and more freakin rain.....

Gloomy and rainy all day today. Headed over to the cinema to take in a show. Checked out the new Mad Max. Came out, it was a sheer downpour, still. Definitely not typical July weather. Usually my grass is burned and brown by now and the lawn mower put up as the yard is ash. Should be some sort of middle ground in here somewhere. Glad I cut the grass yesterday as lawn is a mud pit now. I am packed up for some range time, should the monsoon subside,hopefully before vacation ends. Auction was going to be held outdoors, so, we skipped that. Hoping on a little drier weather.