Bigger, better, badder

So I got a new truck. Looks just like the old truck, this one is just bigger. With way more power and towing capacity. Hmmmm that gives me an idea.

Spring Smallmouth

We had a great spring smallmouth bite at Brownlee, with everyone getting their fair share of quality fish. The overall trophy goes to Dave for a 3lb 11oz fattie, but of course the real looker of the crew is Shanna Banana herself.

CLS - Cooper Loves Soccer

Cooper played in U5/6 soccer this spring, and just loved it. His team is called the Kamikazes and they are definitely a diverse group (read: disjointed, quirky, partly effective, etc..) . I don't think I'll be ready to help coach for at least 5 more years due to lack of patience, so I'm glad that Coach Cory has more than I do.

A picture buffet...

Cooper and Trevor looking like bobbleheads.

Heading out the door to Steve's breakfast birthday party with a coffee cake...cake. Mia is mad cause she didn't want me to take a picture of her in her jammies.
Steve, the kids, and I cooked an extravagant seafood dinner when Shanna went missing one evening. Sushi with Jello salad appetizer. Shrimp scampi, king crab, broccoli salad and rice pilaf with individual sparkling ciders for the main course. I don't remember dessert, but it may have the letters D and Q in it.
Mia photography at The Griddle for Saturday breakfast.

Family Pic

I got sick of waiting for someone to update this blog, so I thought I'd at least put a nice picture of the family up. Maybe that will encourage Spam Slacker to wake up and smell the coffee.

Appliances Ahoy

Over the last few months we've upgraded all of our appliances....wait, back up. A while back the refrigerator broke....hold on, correct that. Long long ago, we thought the fridge was broke, and it was exactly the opportunity that I was looking for to buy a bigger, shinier, stainless steel-er fridge. So we found a new fridge, but it didn't match the range, so we got a new one of those too. Of course at this point the microwave hood stood out like a sore thumb so it got the boot too. Then finally, GE was offering a rebate for Profile appliances that got bigger depending on the number that you buy (duh) so the dishwasher 'saved' us even more money and completed the mass exodus.

After a week of living out of coolers, I removed the old fridge to prepare for the newbie and - well look at that - there is dust caked all over the vents and compressor. Whoops, guess I should have checked that before jumping to stainless conclusions. Oh well, this minor oversight allowed me to sell the whole working set on craigslist to some goofy old dude from Fruitland that loaded everything into a poopy horse trailer and merrily headed back to the ranch. I didn't even know they had the Internet in Fruitland.

Cannonball!!!!!huuuFOOMP......repeat

What used to be the Football Bean Bag is now the Special Edition Herniated Bean Bag

Winter Fun

Around New Years we took some time to go up to McCall and play in the snow. It was very fluffy, very deep, and very hot.....we swam at Gold Fork hot springs as well! Mia, Cooper and classmate Savannha got wet and cold sledding down a logging road bank and then we walked over to the hot springs, changed in a little yurt and then jumped right in. Had a great time - wish we could do it every weekend!

- and my all-time-favorite-picture of the love of my life -

Baby Colton

Here are the aforementioned pictures of one half of our two new cousins!

The New Deal

Wow! - I just noticed that there was like 40 some-odd days between my last two posts. Time flies when you get old I'm tellin you what.
Ok whatever, so I built up a new computer. Took me forever since I attempted to only buy one or two parts per paycheck but it was worth it. Not really sure why I decided to build again instead of just buying one of them nice Dell XPS gamers. Contrary to popular belief, it's not cheaper and if you're an idiot it could be slower than an refurb'd Packard Bell. Luckily I'm not an idoit and I am totally stoked on this particular combo.

Details details:

Case - Antec P182 Graphite, qty3 120mm fans

Power - PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750 Quad
Motherboard - EVGA nForce 680i SLi, Passive cooling, Dual gigabit ethernet, HD Audio
CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 2.33Ghz , 4mb L2 cache, 1333Mhz FSB
CPU Cooler - Tuniq Tower 120
RAM - Crucial Ballistix 2GB DDR2 800Mhz
Video - Gigabyte Geforce 8600GTS Silent Cooler, 256MB PCIExpress x16
Display - Gateway HD2200 22" Wide LCD
HDD - Qty 2 SATA Western Digital Caviar 320GB, RAID1 Mirrored, 7200rpm, 16mb cache

DVD Burners - Qty 2 SATA Asus 20X DVD+/-RW with Lightscribe

And finally Windows Vista Home Premium. The goals for this build were:

-A quieter, cooler pc for downstairs. I tried to find a case, power supply, cpu cooler, and video card that had either passive cooling or big slow adjustable fans. In the case are qty3 three speed 120mm fans, qty1 externally adjustable 120mm inside the Tuniq, and qty1 80mm thermal sensing fan in the power supply. Even with all that, this is one of the quietest homebuilts I've heard. And none of those chintzy little minifans on the motherboard or video card that start making a racket after 6 months.

-Fast enough to run Vista and Madden NFL 08. Superb results with both. I didn't spend the extra $200 on a high end 8800GTX because 1) it's loud 2) I'm not a big gamer and 3) I'll add another GTS in SLi someday. Madden runs at 1680x1050 with all the options turned on and looks great. The speed with general computing and browsing is fantastic, mostly due to the minimum 2gig of fast ram that Vista so desperately needs but also assisted by the cool running (only 88 deg f right now!) Core 2 Duo.

-SLi capable. When the time comes that I can't run Madden 2010 or whatever, I'll just pony up another $140 and add a 2nd 8600GTS. No noise impact, plenty of spare wattage, and double the framerates. That's the plan anyway.

-Room and wattage for future megastorage. With 1TB drives becoming normal, there's no reason why a person given the proper time and budget couldn't amass 3 or 4 of those in a RAID5 config. There are a lot of digital photos and HD video in our future so I wanted plenty of space for a couple more drives. If it had not been for this and the SLi, it would have been fun to build a tiny miniATX solution instead.

Anybody wants any more info, send me a shout. For a large premium I'll build YOU an even better one.

Hasta La Vista, you old hag

The good news is that I finally built a new chumputer. The bad news is that I haven't transferred all the files over yet, so I have no pictures to share.....but at least we're making progress here. I moved the old horse upstairs for the kids to beat, so I could just post from up there - but now that it sits out in the open, I've discovered that it sounds like a mini-jet-engine, which probably wouldn't sit real well with The Sleeping Princess right now.

However, I guess I could link over to a few things here and there to give the SpamBanana faithful(s?) something to chew on.

We got a new little cousin/nephew thingy. His name is Paxton (named after a sweet supercharger), and though I've not seen him yet, I'm confident that he's cute and small and 'just soooo precious'. Gramma Linda will give me the full report on Wednesday.

We got another new cousin/nephew thingy. His name is Colton (named after the one-time residence of the Earps). Must be an epidemic, because sure enough - I saw it with my own eyes - he's cute and small and 'just soooo precious' too! Pics to follow at some point.

Well, I do feel bad for not posting for so long. I am hoping that since I've got the bathroom floor done (future post), all the appliances replaced (another future post), xmas over with (good riddance), a new computer built (another future post), and now that I'm outta detox (spare the details), I'll be a little more regular......I crack me up. For better or for worse, it's all true.

Moving on to The New PC, which is the only other thing I can post without pics.

Festival of Trees

Shanna got tickets to the Festival of Trees gala dinner from her employer this year, so we got all dressed up and made an appearance. Interesting little event to raise money for the local hospital, with tons of over-the-top trees and even more wealthy donors. Definitely not our crowd, but entertaining nonetheless. Shanna was giddy with the prospect of a Formal Sam.

11.19.2007 8:43a

The Annual Dress-Up Party

Here's the crew that woo'ed all the neighbors into giving up gallons of candy.....

(un)Salmon

Sometime in October, Dad and I went over to Bandon for a quick salmon weekend. It rained from the very start to the bitter end, which is to be expected that time of year. No fish, which is never expected, regardless of how often it happens. We had a great time with Jason and Kraig trolling around anyway. This is what happens when I get bored. I need to a long pole to hold the camera up on so I can get the entire scene.