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Showing posts from March, 2008

A what?

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Living in the City can wear a girl out. All that shopping and making buying decisions can be just plain exhausting. Time for a little nap and think about tomorrows adventures. And what treasures we found today. In the "English Foods" department of a local safeway store we found this. Mushy Peas. One of my favorites. I am not sure why the English would make this stuff just for bachelors but I guess the old adage about bachelors eating out of cans could apply. We also found this. Spotted Dick. Not sure what it is. Or what it tastes like. So far I haven't got any takers. But every one around here, except me and Xena are on the healthy diet and excercise plan and eshew any desserts with sugar in them. Off to visit some customers today and then probably tomorrow or so hooking up the trailor, a half ton of rocks and taking highway 97 back to Endako. Seems like we've been gone forever and I am sure it's not just Xena who is missing here Buddy, Ewe.

Wok On

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One of the things I like to do when I am at the Coast is go to the T & T market . T & T is a huge oriental food store. Like a Hong Kong Safeway. My daughter Sara and I went there yesterday after her work to get some inspiration for supper. As we were checking out I noticed this gotta have impulse buy: We haven't found a volunteer tester yet. Don't know what the problem is. Maybe the mouth watering? Certainly not the kissing. Brown rice and stirfried Shitakes , red pepper, snow peas, onions and water chestnuts. Our secret ingredient was peanut butter powder. Its dehydrated peanuts with the fat taken out. Wonderful. Of course none of this stuff made the 100 Mile Diet list.

Coastal, not Postal

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But it's Close. I am now the proud parent of terrabytes. Is that something that eats the earth. Well no. It's a thousand gigabytes and I now have four of them in our new computer. Well two terrabytes inside and two in an external NAS storage. We were due for a new machine and we took advantage of a trip to the Coast to build one form parts. More power - less cost. Could never imagine that I would need or could use 4T of storage. When I started out mainframes didn't have that much storage. The first computer I bought I had a big dilema over getting a 50 gig or 100 gig hardrive. I opted for the 50 gig as it was feared that the 100 gig unit would lead to sloppy computing. BTW my pinky finger is sticking through the port for the glycol cooling hose. Can you imagine, a computer with a radiator! We haven't been at the Coast for over a year now. It sure takes some getting used to if your from the sticks like Endako. Construction is every where. I counted 14 cranes on

Slip Sliding Away

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O.K. it's official. If it's wet you will need a 4X4 to make it the last 100 feet up our driveway. My dreams of an all weather driveway have been squashed. It's the part that didn't get enough gravel on it last fall. The rest of the roadway is holding up really well. It's a sure sign that spring is on the way with the advent of the "Winter booted blue breasted short tail snow bird" A.K.A. My Sweetie Pie. Wondering what all the commotion is while I crawl under the trailor to splice some new LED tail lights in place. I long for a dry, heated garage. I will have one. I will not have to lay in the mud in order to crawl under vehicles for repairs that never seem to be required on a dry day - or one that is above -20. My friend Audrey has remarked that plumbling repairs around here are only carried out when the temperature falls to -30. She could be right.

Hard working software

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As part of our business we joined the Microsoft Empower for ISV's program. As part of that we got a subscription to the MSDN developers network. It provides the latest Microsoft software for Independent Software Vendors ( that's us). It's a huge help for us as purchasing the software otherwise would cost thousands more than we could afford. Microsoft also offers networking and advice on how to grow our business. I had been waiting for several weeks for some notification that we had been accepted. When I droppped by my brother Tiny's place on the way back from getting new tires at Vanderhoof he mentioned that some one had dropped off a package for us to his house. I guess they didn't want to try and make it up our driveway. One of the benefits of living in a small community - the delivery people know who is related to who.. Here's Uwe trying out the software..er box..Five seconds after I opened it. "Jeez, Dad, forget that stuff --have you tried the box ou

Bone Heads and Cheese Heads

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Can't you just hear Xena's dream: "... OK if I snap my eyes open suddenly the ginormous bone I am dreaming about will be right there.." We picked this bone up at a local feed store where we buy our chicken feed. We are going to get another beef cut up as the going rate for one on the hoof now is under $300 bucks. They are just not selling up here. A farmer the other day offered me a herd of 200 for walk away prices. It is almost like the large feed lots are trying to kill the local meat producers. We notice that even with beef being so cheap here it hasn't come down any at the local Super Value. The next time we get some beef butchered I will save some of the big bones and smoke them in our smoker for Xena. (And her yet to be introduced friend Tommy, my friend, RT's new dog.) Speaking of Cheese Heads: We bought about 10 lbs of cheese on our last trip to Burns Lake and after doing some research ( much of it contradictory ) on freezing cheese decided to give it