Up & Running

This is my first blog from my NEW computer! Woo hoo! It's up and running and it is super nice! I opened up my old computer to take out one of three hard drives plus my tv tuner card and found a lot of dirt and dust inside of it! That's bad news bears - you don't want dirt and dust inside of your computer because it builds up on the electronics and insulates them, which eventually causes them to overheat and malfunction! So, I will be taking that outside and blowing it out with some compressed air.

The new computer went together quite nicely. I only ran into one hitch along the way, my RAM wasn't installed in the right slot - but that was easy to fix. The picture shows some of the parts I put into the computer, they include the motherboard, video card, ram, card reader, processor, dvd+-rw, hard drive.

The case came empty, except of the power supply. This is what it looks like without anything inside of it. I had to install the motherboard to the case - that's a little tricky, but nothing too difficult to do. I will add some more photos of the computer being built in future blogs, I won't bore everyone with the exciting world of computers.

Friday night, Laura and I took our neighbor and met up with some of the chemistry students, then drove up to the Blue Mountain Observatory. We went to the last star show of the year and we looked at some star clusters through the large telescope. It was a lot of fun, although it was rather cold for everyone that didn't take along the proper clothing. We went up to 6,000 feet where it had snowed during the week and it was about 45 degrees. We we left Missoula it was still a warm 60 degrees, so everyone was ready to return to the cars and start the heater for the drive home.

Saturday Laura prepared herself for her trip to Morgantown, West Virginia. She even did some cleaning around the house so I could make a mess of it before she got back! What a wonderful wife huh! We did one geocache on Saturday, well actually we tried two, but I'll explain later. The cache we did find we drove into the Blue Mountains, just west of Missoula, and walked 1.23 miles to the cache. The cool weather made for a nice walk into the forest and along the way I nearly stepped on a 'sneaky snake' who was sunning himself on the pathway. I thought it was a stick and at the last moment I had to take a skip to miss stepping on him! He wasn't too concerned with us, probably too cold to do much anyway. If you know some Tom T. Hall you might know the song Skeaky Snake - it's a fun song and it can get stuck in your head really easy. Here's the lyrics, sing along if you know it!

Boys and girls take warning, if you go near the lake
Keep your eyes wide open, and look for sneaky snake
Now maybe you wont see him, maybe you wont hear
But he'll sneak up behind you, and drink all your root beer

And then sneaky snake goes dancin, wigglin and a-hissin
Sneaky snake goes dancin, gigglin and a-kissin
I dont like old sneaky snake; he laughs too much you see
When he goes wigglin through the grass, it tickles his underneath

Well, sneaky snake drinks root beer, and he just makes me sick
When he is not dancin, he looks just like a stick
Now, he doesnt have any arms or legs, you cannot see his ears
And while we are not lookin, hes stealin all of our beer

And then sneaky snake goes dancin, wigglin and a-hissin
Sneaky snake goes dancin, gigglin and a-kissin
I dont like old sneaky snake; he laughs too much you see
When he goes wigglin through the grass, it tickles his underneath

I particularlly like the part that goes "When he is not dancin, he looks just like a stick" - that's exactly what I said when I jumped over it. "Whoa, I thought that was a stick!"

Anyway, we found the geocache and headed home for the Husker football game. At half time we left for Wal-Mart to get some groceries for my bachelor time - groceries being frozen pizzas and such. We stopped by to find a new geocache on our way to the store, but it was getting too dark to find it and we ended up deciding to find it another time.

Saturday my shotgun rebate arrived and I now have $30 back in my pocket. I also recieved my official swan tag from the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks. That season doesn't open until October 14 and runs until Dec. 1 so we are going to be planning a trip to the Great Falls area for some hunting.

Sunday, I dropped Laura off at the school at 7:00 a.m. and then came home and worked on my computer some more. At noon I grabbed my camera and headed out the door to the new Missoula skate park. I realized as I was heading out the door that I had been so fixed on working on my computer that I forgot to eat breakfast and lunch so I went to the park a little hungry. I stood around for an hour and fought the massive crowd of people estimated around 8,000. The reason so many people were there was because Tony Hawk and Bam Margera were there to promote the new skate park. Tony Hawk is one of the big names in skateboarding and Bam Margera has become nationally famous for his MTV show Viva La Bam. Here's some pictures from the vert demo. I stood here for about an hour and a half to get a good spot for the show, then the show lasted about an hour and a half. After the street skating demo it was 5:00 when I got home and boy was I hungry!
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Tony Hawk interview

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The vert ramp

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Tony Hawk & Bam Margera

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Tony Hawk in the vert ramp - check out the crowd

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Tony Hawk doing a 540 (1 1/2 times around)

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Tony Hawk and Dennis McCoy - they crossed in the air!

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Dennis McCoy doing a flare! A flip with a half twist.

I had a great time at the skate park and it's fun to see these guys in person after watching them on tv for many years! Hopefully it isn't the last time I get to see something like this. Until again

-=Nolan=-