analog_kidd

Sorry to hear about your pooch. We have a "Weiner Dog" too, and I know what a great dog they can be.   I never would have guessed that I would be the owner of a Dachshund, but our has turned out to be a really good dog. They are loving and loyal, and a dedicated snuggle hound. Ours will burrow under the blanket on your lap and stay there for hours. He lives for the tennis ball. If you throw it, he will chase it; all...day...long! Of course the "Weiner" jokes abound in our house: "Hey, you wanna pet my weiner". Never gets old  :)   I'm sure yours was just as loving and full of personality. I'm sure you'll miss him.

The one time I called in 911 in the middle of the night was when there was somebody loading stuff into a  strange van at the end of my cul-de-sac at 2:30 in the morning. I called 911 and told them it was the white cargo van at the end of the cul-de-sac. Keep in mind there are 4 houses on the entire street. They came after a while, and with guns drawn, they performed some impressive tactical maneuvering - around the wrong house. They walked all around the FIRST house, testing doors, peeking in windows, all the while the white van was in plain sight parked in the street in front of the house 50 yards away. After they holstered their guns and went back to their cruiser, I walked outside and pointed them to the correct house. Oak Ridge police... gotta love 'em.   Turns out it was all kosher - the resident was in a band, and they had finished a late night gig and were moving musical instruments around.    The one thing I did learn from this event, was my cell phone would emit a loud beep every minute or two for the next half hour or so after calling 911. Supposedly it's a safety feature so that if you call 911 from an accident, paramedics can find you from the beep. I thought that it would be a give-away to your location if you are hiding in a closet. My wife and I turned that feature off on our phones. I highly recommend everyone see if their phone has this "feature".

If you don't have the funds to upgrade to Win7, then I say stick with XP, but follow a few simple rules.   1. Make sure you have a good Antivirus, and keep it up to date. MS Security Essentials is a great, free A.V. but it won't be supported on XP anymore either.    2. Don't open email attachments you aren't 100% sure about. If an email even looks a little bit suspicious, don't open it. get a 2nd email account and use it just for signing up for stuff on the Internet. Give out your real email only to friends that you trust.   3. Don't go anywhere stupid on the Internet. Pirate sites, Porn, Anarchist, etc. These places are a cesspool of malware and you will get a virus from them. Just stick to TGO and you'll be OK.   4. Google "no spam host file" and install a custom hosts file. This will prevent your PC from even being able to connect to a ton of bad sites.I do this on every PC I'm ever asked to fix, and on my own PC's, and most people never have to bring them back.

My wife, who says that "All Zombie shows are stupid", got sucked into the series this season. She would never watch it, but then sat down in the living room to read a book while I was watching an episode, and is now hooked. She wants to go back to the beginning and watch all of them from the start. I guess that's what I'll do until season 5 starts.

  I'm waiting on some myself.There is a local beekeeper that raises queens and sells nucs. He was expecting them to be ready about now, but the weather and temperatures didn't cooperate with him somehow, and now it will be the end of the month before they are ready.   I've never raised bees before, so this is a new experience for me. I brought my hive over so that he could put the nuc right into my own equipment. While I was there he invited me into his bee yard for a beekeeping 101 lesson. Very cool. Took me a little while to resist the urge to swat the bees buzzing around the veil.

Living in Oak Ridge, it is also illegal to shoot any type of gun in the city limits. We had a nuisance coyote in the neighborhood greenway. I called the city to see if they would take care of it. They said they don't do wildlife. I asked if I could shoot it and they said definitely not! In fact they wanted to know my name and address at that point.   I called TWRA and got the same answer about them not doing anything with it. I asked what I could do with it if I trapped it, and they said I could club it to death.  :stunned:     My son called even more recently for a skunk problem, and TWRA told him to trap it and drown it in a barrel.  :stunned:  :stunned:

  For those of us that watch the show, missing a week is not an option.  :up:

Here are some beekeeping clubs in your area. A hobbyist beekeeper will gladly come take your bees for free. Found the info here: http://www.tnbeekeepers.org/bee-clubs/     Washington County Beekeepers Meets: 1st Tuesday of the month at 7:30 p.m. Location: Boones Creek Christian Church - Fellowship Hall Christian Church Road Gray, TN Contact: Wendy L. Brown 423-502-8475 postie@hotmail.com     club@wcbeekeepersassociation.com http://www.wcbeekeepersassociation.com         Tri-Cities Beekeepers Meets: 2nd Thursday of each month, 7pm Location: Civic Auditorium 1550 Fort Henry Drive Kingsport, TN Contact: Isaiah Hess 423-247-6626   David Hess   dthess@embarqmail.com

Personally, I thought season 4.5 was pretty good. It got back to surviving against the Walkers, something they started taking for granted in the prison. They were getting too non-chalant about the Walkers.   I also thought it was interesting last night flashing back to when Rick was farming and trying to provide food for the group. Flash forward to Terminus, where we are suspecting that this group is providing food for themselves.   I suspect that Rick taking charge during the gang fight, and gutting that last guy like he did, bought back some of his respect points with Carl. Although, now Carl seems like he may be afraid of Rick. There is no pleasing that kid. He must be a teenager.

I saw an interview of this guy on the news the other day. He said his lawyer at one point leaned over to him and said, "Clearly, you are the most knowledgeable person regarding guns in the courtroom." One of the jurors admitted she had no idea what a muzzle loader was. I think he said the judge wasn't sure either. How can clueless people be the deciders of your fate? What happened to a jury of your peers? Could you even find "peers" in DC?

I say we call them "The Fish Formerly Known as Asian Carp" and give them some sort of undescernable symbol as their real name...   ... or maybe a symbol of a fish with slanted eyes.

Well, the ruling was a bit too late for me. My wife just got her 4th ticket for one of those things!  :wall: I keep telling her she needs to slow down. And, it's not like she doesn't know where they are.   Anyway, I'm glad they are going away. BTW, Oak Ridge Mayor Tom Beehan, Mayor Pro Tem Jane Miller, and Council member Charlie Hensley voted in favor of the extension, if you are wondering who not to vote for next election.

Knox Rail Salvage has all kinds of reduced building materials. They have two locations in the same neighborhood. You need to go to the one not next to the bus station. I'd be very surprised if they didn't have what you are looking for at a very good price.

This story reminds me of Johnny Cash's " A Boy Named Sue." 

It's the cover of one of my all-time favorite albums: Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon

I've always said that churches and their members should support the 2nd amendment, because if the Gov't can take away the 2nd, the 1st is not far behind.

First, find out when the delinquent tax sale is, and keep checking to see if the property is still on the list. A lot of time the owner will pay it at the last minute.   If it is still on the list, show up at the courthouse with the money in hand. They won't take a promise to get a loan. You have to pay it in full that day.   They will start the auction price at the amount of tax that is owed, and bids will go up from there. Even if you win the bidding, and pay for the property, it is still not yours for one full year. You legally can't even visit the property. if it is a house, the owners can even continue to live in it. The owner / heirs will have that year to pay you back, with either a 10% or 15% (I can't remember) interest payment. If nobody pays you back in that year, the property is officially yours.   If it is a house, with occupants on the day you own it, have the local police / sheriff pay them a visit and inform them they need to leave immediately.

:woohoo:  :up:   My favorite time of the year!

A friend of mine showed me this method of shucking corn. I've been using it ever since, and it works great.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juE7jmEm0H4

This is a real Cock and Bull story!

Since you bought a new hard drive, and that didn't fix the problem, try this simple test: Take out the new drive and install the old one back in. Reinstall Windows onto the old drive, wiping it clean in the process. You'll still have all of your data in the new drive. All you want to do is see if a fresh install of Windows makes the problem go away. If it does, then you know it's an O/S issue. If not, then it's hardware.

I like this project just for its McGyver-istic cleverness. You may never need to use this, but the knowledge of how things work is fascinating to me.

If he is using BitTorrent to download files, you need to remove all the files he's downloaded, or at least tell the BitTorrent software to stop sharing them out. The way Bit Torrent works is its a network of people all over the internet sharing files. When you download a file, your PC will connect to dozens of those other computers in the network, downloading little parts of the file from each of the remote PC's you are connected to. As parts of the file are downloaded to your PC, your PC becomes one of the many PC's in that network, and those parts of the file in turn get shared to the world. In short, your PC starts hosting the file out for others to connect to and download.   Downloading a file may have only cost you a gig or two of data, but the constant downloading of that gig by other people may be what is eating up your bandwidth. Especially if it is a really popular movie or album. Most Bit Torrent apps have a way to stop sharing the files you have downloaded, but you have to go out of your way to stop sharing them. Or you can move the files into a folder the BitTorrent software is not looking in. IF you just download the file and leave them where it downloads, if your PC is on, and connected to the Internet, it makes those files available to the world.   The hosting of the files is where you can get into trouble. If he has downloaded music or a movie, and other people are downloading it, you have just become a software pirate, illegally giving out free copies of music and movies to anyone. There are organizations that look for people hosting copywrited material and will prosecute.   If you find out that Bit Torrent is the cause, you need to educate yourself and your son about the implications. Most people stumble into these programs innocently enough, and are just thrilled to have a free movie, but don't understand the underlying technology.   If he's not using BitTorrent, then you almost certainly have a virus or trojan. Download and Install MalwareBytes onto the PC and run a full scan. It's free and does a good job of finding malware that an antivirus may ignore. Get it cleaned up, and make sure you have a good antivirus installed and up to date, and make sure the firewall is on.   Google search "No Add Host File" and install a host file on all of your PC's. This is a free and effective way to keep your PC's off of malicious sites. It's the first thing I do when friends ask me to clean up their infected PC's.   Good luck

I lived in South Florida all my life, until we moved here 15 years ago. Up until that time, I had never experienced a real winter. Florida has no seasons. It stays green all the time, and on the coldest days gets into maybe the 40's.   We  moved here in the fall, and it was glorious to see the colors and experience the coolness. Winter rolled around and it was really neat to see all the plants disappear, and get the occasional snow. I was really sad to see winter leave, since I had never in my life experienced something like that.   the next winter came around, and I was really looking forward to it. It was OK, but didn't live up to what I was expecting. By the third winter, I was done. I've seen winter, I've got the T-Shirt, bring on Spring / Summer.   I guess I still have some of that Florida blood in my. I can take the hottest 100+ degree summer days and barely break a sweat, But I can't stand anything below 40.

Looks like my grandson and I have another project.