Loose Ends and Friends

I can’t believe that September is almost over, where ever did the time go? I have been thinking recently that I had mentioned certain things in previous blogs and then left them dangling. Just lately I seem to have been so busy with online friends and ongoing business. Loose ends and friends, it’s time to tie a few knots and clear the decks for more stuff.



You will remember a little while back, that we ran into some transmission trouble with the truck and this, after we had, had a front end brake job done.

With the transmission if you remember where we left off, I was holding my breath that the problem wasn’t a serious expensive job. The o/d light was flashing and that could be indicative of anything from a hamburger to a steak. The good news turned out to be that it just needed the bands adjusting and they replaced a ‘Shift Kit’ for it appeared that it was skipping 3rd gear. The cost for that was sufficient, but certainly better than a new Tranny.

Some very good advice I received along the way with this saga was: Never take your tranny to a franchise dealer, for it is assumed that you could get set up etc. etc. The advice is to always pick a small non franchise dealer, you will fare a lot better, it certainly paid off for me at least.

For an encore to the transmission I was endowed with the plague of ‘Vista’ on my new computer.
There was of course the initial problem of no email service, which was resolved after much harassment of a number of people, ranging from Hewlett Packard, Internet explorer types and even the giant, Microsoft itself. So after much gnashing of teeth and resetting of half the hard drive, it seemed. “We Got Mail” since then the only problems we get with email is, sometimes they are just so slow to go anywhere, and other times they just go into orbit never to be seen again by man nor beast!

I have read and heard a number of times about that most elusive word, (usually found in divorce courts) Incompatibility, a week ago I ran into that monster full tilt.

We use a digital camera like most folks do and for us we run the Kodak easy-share program. Easy? Ha! Not when you hang out with Vista. It downright refused to accept the disc that came with the camera. I was almost ready to need a gasket job of my own! So off I went with my newly working email to get in touch with Kodak. After much detailed conflabation, we achieved success with another download. However I celebrated too soon at the newly installed Kodak program. As always when you get an upgrade, they always seem to mess something up that used to work oh so well with XP. With XP I used to be able to email out my pictures in varying sizes, which works great for the things I like to do with them. Not any more! What a botchup!

Between the differing ‘My Document’ files set up with Vista compared to XP, the Kodak too has to bring in its own set of file mis-management and manipulation as well. Trying to get the two to work efficiently together is so far, still out to lunch.

I am determined to get the better of these two adversary’s, by hook or by crook. To that end I got the Vista Dummy book from the library, I realize now though I will be better off to buy my own book, I cannot resolve all the challenges of Vista in just a 3 week span. At the present I have the 'Windows Vista book for seniors', which gives you more visual oriented explanations, until I get to the store. The battle continues.

October 21 is supposed to be closing day at the park we go to so much. We are going to miss that place tremendously over the winter months, but we will be ready with the ‘Bit firmly between the teeth’ come opening day in April 08. My thanks to all the volunteers that make Willow Park the haven that it is.

The final loose end my friends belongs to all of you, the friends and people who daily come along and visit my blog with such regularity, wondering no doubt or I hope, what did he do today!
Without the people to come and read/look/post, there would not be a lot of incentive at times to try and write anything. I don’t have a set piece that I do when I write here, but I do try to provide a little variety in an effort to keep things interesting and at times provide a chuckle or two. So to all of you out there a big, big thank you for all your support, interest and comments keep coming back ya hear!

C’ya