I woke up on Saturday and got ready to walk the dogs. My wife rolled over and said, "Aren't you going to take off your back brace? Your month is up." Holy Cow, I had forgotten! I had been in the thing so long that I had *almost* gotten used to it.
I walked the dogs and had coffee with a light breakfast. While my wife was bouncing around the gym, I started vacuuming the house. Without the brace, it was pretty easy. I have a neat little pattern that I can follow that helps. I vacuumed like my wife wanted me to: I moved as many things as I was allowed and used the edging tool to get along all the baseboards. It takes a while, but I got finished. It was a lot of bending and stretching and like a hard workout at the gym, I was a bit sore at the end of the day and the following morning.
The weekend was mostly cold and rainy. We did not go out (except to church and lunch afterwards) and I was getting a bit stir crazy. I watched the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica, a few episodes of Babylon 5, (second season ... I am trying to catch up), and the movie "Constantine" which was a waste of my time.
I worked with my wife and got her to drop Outlook Express and start using Thunderbird. I had an agenda...I want all the programs she uses to be the same on the PC as on the Linus partition. Hopefully, she can start using Linux part time. The first thing to do is get her using open source programs, which she has almost 100% converted over to. She uses Firefox and Open Office and I have her now using Thunderbird. She likes it better because the spam filter is built in. When she used Outhouse Express, she needed an external one (I chose K9 for her...which is very good, btw). I started getting her set up on Linux (with a basic account) but I had problems with a feature she relies heavily on in Windows...Flash. The Comcast web site has all their news and program snippits in Flash format and I soon found out Linux, Firefox, and Flash do not always play well together. I got mine to work, but it was buggy. I tried the same thing on hers and it did not work, then I tweaked some more and hers worked but mine did not. I kept tweaking for a while, got frustrated, and decided to walk the dogs. When I got back, I was able to get both of ours to work, but the sound was out of synch with the video. It looks like Windows has another victory. I have been told this will work and that I need to install another sound daemon specifically for Firefox and Flash. Not sure I like that.
I think I could get my wife to use Linux 50% of the time with some hand holding , but I am not sure it is worth it. It will mean much more hand holding than I may have time for.
Our friends "Mickey and Mary"* closed on their house yesterday and will get the keys today. They dropped off some cookies for Care Group on Wednesday since they will not be able to show up until late. Her cookies are good, but she needs to bake them a minute or two less to make them chewy instead of crunchy.
My long weekend is now over. I did not do much other than clean up after my wife trimmed the dogs, fold some clothes and wash some dishes. I kind of wished I was at work yesterday, but it is not so bad yet, other than that after I got my report out, our ticketing system went tango-uniform (that is "toes up" (TU) in military speak). I cannot connect and I need to so I can update some ticket logs.
I have not heard from my son personally in weeks. I am not worried...he has called my wife and e-mailed her a few times. I just wished he would contact *me*. I miss him. He finished (graduated) high school early in an accelerated program so he could go to AIT as soon as possible. After that he works for a few months, house sits for us, and then goes to Houston to UTI to begin classes.
OKAY! The server is back so I can get some work done. More updates later.
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