It was cold today... 46 degrees when I went outside this morning.

I don't really have any cold weather clothes, so I bought a sweater, bought a coffee, and sat down to write a few lines...

It's been a long time since I wrote anything, but it's good to get back into the swing of it and just dust off some mental tools.

MAN MY DAWGS ARE BARKING!

My kid brother and I helped the old man shingle the roof today. One of his friends came over and it was a lot of fun, but man am I sore. My back is sore, my legs are sore, my head is sore and man are my dawgs barking...

I guess Pop's roof is a bit steeper than normal, and it's a two story drop on one side, so we had a bit of a time of it laying those first few rows of shingles right at the edge of the big drop into a mostly well kept lawn. I'm so glad this is done and nobody got broken, or nailed, or maimed for life...

After a shower and some Excedrin, with a Pepsi to wash them down, things are definitely looking up. My headache is gone and I can now manage to make it from one room to the other without hobbling like a cowboy with jock itch. I am really glad I got to do this, not only because I'm sure it really helped Pops out, but because I've never roofed before and now I feel like I could probably do my own. Of course knowing what I know I'd just hire someone to do a job that size, but I'd totally be up for re-shingling a garage or entryway or something on a smaller scale.

My kid brother and I were going to help Pops tear the shingles off his roof today, but the rain came down and granted a reprieve.

Postponed until tomorrow? Great, I'm going back to sleep!!!

In other news the micro sd reader I have doesn't work for the micro sd card I have. :( It's looking more and more like I'll have to bite the bullet and drop some green on that stupid usb cable.

It's official... I broke down and bought a cell phone.


For all the normal cell phone stuff it's pretty nice, but for texting it's a dream. I have to confess that the main reason I bought this model over others is it's video capture and playback capability. So imagine my surprise when I tried to obtain a USB cable to transfer my video off of it. Of course you have to buy a 30 dollar cable for this from a qualified rep, so I went down to the vendor I bought the phone from and he gave me this tap dance about how you can only use the cable to transfer mp3's through it's proprietary software and that you can't use it to transfer anything else. I.E. pictures or video...

"You're such a tool..." the words rose without warning and nearly escaped my lips before I fought them back with the rationalization that I may yet need this man's pseudo-expertise.

Me: "So you're saying that in this day and age there's no way to get images off this phone?!"
Rep: "Of course there is, you have to email them..."
Me: "So I can't just buy your cable thingy and plug it in and have this show up as a USB drive?"
Rep: Narrowing his eyes "Why would you want to do something like that???"
Me: "Data transfer"
Rep: "I suppose you could buy a memory card and use it along with a Micro SD reader on your computer."
Me: "Do I have to buy the cable from you, or can I get it somewhere else?"
Rep: "You have to buy the LG music package, it's got the dongle and the drivers."
Me: "I can't just buy the dongle and download the drivers, you want me to spend 30 bucks for them!?"
Rep: "You might get it cheaper on ebay."
Me: "So this driver CD, does it include software to let me make ringtones?"
Rep: "Why would you want to do that?"
Me: "Cause I want to make my own ringtones."
Rep: "No the CD doesn't support that function."
Me: "So if this USB connection is crippled, how do I update the firmware?"
Rep: Eyes wide open. "Why would you want to do that?!!!?"
Me: "Come on. Newer, better functionality... Who doesn't update their firmware."
Rep: "Just bring it in to us if you want that done."
Me: "I travel a lot. Like other side of the world a lot, I'm pretty sure you don't have reps where I'm going. Can't I just hook it to the web and download updates from a site?"
Rep: looking around to make sure the boss is somewhere else, he leans in. "Look man, there are... programs out there, you can do that stuff yourself but we aren't supposed to tell you about them..."
Me: "Yeah kid, I know..."


In the end I didn't buy the dongle, but opted for the cheaper sd card data transfer option... (I already had the memory card and a reader was dirt cheap.) Once I get set up in Oklahoma I'll probably get the USB cable just to see what I can do to this phone... I've been looking into "... programs out there" and have decided which one to use and how to go about enabling my phone to function the way it's creators would have wanted it to.

On a road trip across the country, we stopped to visit two old friends in Tennessee.
Yesterday, while one of them was doing his best not to bite the fingers off the family dentist, the other took us hiking on the Tennessee and North-Carolina border at a place called Roan Mountain.

I felt bad that Mike had to visit a tooth-wrangler, but the mountain was pretty darn sweet.
This picture doesn't do it justice, but does serve even in it's limitation as an example of how absolutely beautiful it was up there.