My son and his co-worker, John, decided to take their motorcycles for a buns-of-steel-type ride and head out for the California coast from northeast Kansas. They left Thursday morning, today is Saturday, and apparently his car misses him so much that it just up and gave itself a wash and wax to be ready for his return.... sometime Tuesday?

Beatrice Speedway

Hard bleachers, loud noises, occasional dirt in the face, and a cool breeze on a hot summer night. What more could you ask for?

Ok, a few sprinkles of rain toward the end of the evening to top it off. This is what memories are made of.

How many does it take to....

I just thought it was nice to see three generations of Oehm guys tackling the glass for the church building sign. Two are bracing the heavy glass, the other is putting rivets in to secure it. I heard one of them say, "You think we should see if it closes before we go any farther?" haha, they didn't. Such precision work.

Flashing Green Light

After arriving home from work this evening, I found both computers had shut down due to a storm. Surprisingly, only one started back up. There was no response on the "down" one when we pushed the button to power it up. We unplugged everything from the back of it (monitor, keyboard, speakers, power, all the usb connections) and then plugged just the power source in. Still nothing. There was, however, a cute little flashing green light near the fan. This flashed even when there was no power cord plugged in. I thought this was strange. As it turned out, the computer's power supply box was fried. Luckily, I keep a spare computer around for salvage parts. The down computer is up and running now. We've taken the photos and burned them to cd just because of this warning. Storm season always reminds me to power down computers and other electronic devices.

Host Process for Windows Services Stopped

Have you ever wanted to throw the computer out the window? It starts running slower, then your searches get redirected, you can't download windows updates. This is what happened to my son. He asked me how much desktop computers are these days. Knowing he had a perfectly good laptop, I inquired why he was entertaining the idea of purchasing something else.

When he told me the symptoms, I suggested he run a program called Malwarebytes from the website www.malwarebytes.org and gave him caution to make certain it is the program he is downloading and not an ad. Realizing he didn't already have this on his laptop, I had a flash drive that had it on, so I connected the flash drive to his computer and opened Malwarebytes to run the "quick scan" on his laptop. It found 33 threats. After removing those 33, I opened Malwarebytes again and clicked on the tab to "update" the version so that he could scan for the more recent threats. This gave us 17 more to remove. The quick scan takes about 10 minutes, the full scan can take a little over an hour. Since we were headed for church services, I ran the full scan just to see if any further threats appear. When we got back home, the computer showed 0 threats.

I checked to see if I was able to download updates for Windows 8 from the microsoft website, but I kept getting the error "host process for windows services stopped.....blah, blah, blah"....... so I knew that either there were more problems to remove or some files were corrupted. It turned out there were more problems to remove.

I found another tool called Hitman 3.5 on this website http://www.surfright.nl/en/hitmanpro that also scans for threats. This website allows me to run this program for 30 days without an activation code (free). There is a 32 bit or 64 bit version to download; I right clicked on "My Computer" and found under "Properties" which one to use for the laptop. I must caution the reader that there are at least THREE "download" buttons but only ONE GREEN ONE that says DOWNLOAD HERE. The red ones are ads for something else you don't want. Hitman found a type of an alureon virus to remove.

After that, the laptop ran much faster, the error codes were all gone, and windows was able to update normally. My son is buying my dinner for this fix. Win Win. ☺

the sound of water

Last night I heard water running - it was the toilet! I couldn't get the shut-off valve to turn, so I turned off ALL the water in the house by turning a handle in the basement. It had cobwebs all around it, so I put my hand in a bag before attempting that one.

This morning, prior to leaving for work, Ray's strength got the shut-off valve to do its job, and was looking forward (NOT) to plumbing when he got home from his 12-hour shift.

Not knowing whether Wal-Mart carried the valve for this particular toilet (all in one, 1/6 gpf), I made a trip up to Ace Hardware and talked to the helpful hardware man. I explained it wasn't the flapper, and it didn't have a ball float. (I took my camera and showed him the pictures of the inside of the tank I had taken for just such occasion.) He said I need a valve and proceeded to take one off the shelf and out of the box and told me how to install it.

Well, since he had confidence I could do this, and I knew that whatever I botched up, Ray could fix, I decided to challenge my DIY knowledge and change out the valve in the tank. Ray always makes it look so easy......

With a wrench, a flashlight, and a small mirror, I finally managed to unscrew the nut that holds the valve on.... (the directions indicate to put it on "Hand Tight")... Someone should define "hand tight" ....... have you seen my husband's hands?

Project done; now to check for leaks. ☺

Amazing!

These pictures have been "stuck" in my camera.
I didn't have the memory card in the camera when they were taken, and I lost the usb cable that came with the camera, so I thought I had no way of transferring them to the computer..... until today. I was playing around with some settings with the memory card out and found "copy to card." After a few attempts (and putting the card back in the camera), I managed to truly copy these from the camera memory to the removable memory card. Wow! I love this camera even more now. :)

I've forgotten what they were doing, but I was thinking it was funny enough at the time to snap a shot or two. I'm sure it was a lesson in "safety first."

Living room done

Levi woke up just in time to help move the furniture back in.

The Living Room

Decided to finish the living room floor today. Just waiting for it to dry now.

Out with the old

The mauve carpet had to GO. I kept thinking I'd wait until I could get new carpet, and seriously couldn't decide on a color. I would go back and forth between Royal Blue and Apartment Standard Beige, then consider a floating floor, etc. It was never ending; so one night on our way home from KC, Ray and I discussed pulling up the carpet and just living with whatever is under it. I remember the wide pine flooring and the holes and discolorations and large areas of bad spots that drove me to say "carpet the whole thing" many years ago.

I really didn't care what the wood looked like, I just wanted the carpet out of there. We pulled in the driveway and Ray asked when I wanted to start this project. I don't think I answered, he just knew I wasn't going to bed until it was out of there. We started around 6 p.m. and had all the tack strip and foam and staples and carpet out on the front lawn by 1 a.m.

We traded rooms and made the living room the dining room and vice versa. I had Levi's stamp of approval on that decision.

Although the floor needs attention, it looks a lot better than I remember it.

We moved the flat screen down from the entertainment center to a library table top and it is working out nicely.

The end table Ray and I found at a used furniture store allowed me to display a family picture, a lamp and vase from my sister, as well as a teddy bear, clock and candle.

The green rug covers a square where a floor furnace probably was located and removed. Someone had put pine wood in as filler, but did not polyurethane it, just left it bare. It is also a darker pine than the rest of the floor.

The dining room floor was the worst. It had a 4' square of whitish stuff in one corner. A wood stove used to be in that corner, so I don't know if the white stuff was asbestos or just burned off varnish or the backing from an older rug, who knows. I suppose if we get mesothelioma in 50 years, we'll have solved the enigma.

After switching rooms, I decided to tackle the dining room floor and see if I could get the 4' square area to match the rest of the room. Nope. We only made that little area look
absolutely wonderful compared to the rest of the room. So, we emptied the furniture out of
the dining room (again) - taking the china out of the china cabinet, etc. - and polyurethaned the entire dining room floor. We also brought home a bookcase from work to hold our tapes and dvds and books/bibles.

Although there are big holes in the floor still (box staples removed?) the overall look is welcoming. Dining room done.

We will still need to remove the living room furniture (and that big t.v.) in order to polyurethane that floor, but the end result always outweighs the dreaded labor.

Us today