beach

It seems like an odd time of the year to go to the beach since it is almost October, but the water temperature was very pleasant yesterday. The two youngest children went with us to attend their mother's sister's birthday party at their grandmother's which is at the beach. That sounds much more complicated than it really is. The kids and I went to the beach yesterday afternoon as it was a perfect day for such activity. When we reached the crest of the sand dunes and looked at the Atlantic ocean, we saw some very large waves. Of course my youngest son was very excited to see such huge waves as he had never seen waves of this size in person. My daughter was a bit apprehensive at the size of the waves. I stood on the sandy shore watching them for around 15 minutes before they came out of the water and insisted I come in with them. I don't recall the last time I had been in the ocean with waves that were way over my head. I think most of the waves had to be over 8' tall. With the powerful rip currents and undertow we lasted 30 minutes before calling it a day. The fight with the waves was a loosing battle. I tried body surfing a couple of times and that was a huge mistake as the waves were so strong that they just tossed me around flipping me over and over several times. The deciding factor on us leaving, beside the fact that we were tired from the fights with the waves, was that my daughter had a huge wave hit her, flipping her several times and making her sea sick. She says she blacked out and felt pretty sick, so we called it a day. Although on leaving my son said he hoped the waves were still big today as he wanted to go back. When we got back to his grand mother's house, we heard that the huge waves were being caused by a tropical depression in the Atlantic ocean. I was kind of wandering why so much of the beach sand had been eroded as it was the very same place my wife and I had been a month ago and yet the beach looked very narrow with a small cliff going down into the water.

virus

Although my middle son had a virus the last couple of days and still does not feel well, a much worse kind of Trojan virus landed on our Windows Vista laptop. It just makes me want to throw it away and get an Apple MacBook. We just don't have the money to buy a new one since most of our money went with my next to oldest son to school in California. I just upgraded my Norton Anti-Virus two weekends ago and somehow it got on the laptop anyway. What made it even more painful was that Norton could not remove it. I clicked the "Get Help" button and put into an on-line chat program. From there, the Norton support person was able to take control of our laptop from who knows where. He deleted all of the temporary files and then rebooted my laptop. When the laptop came back up, it then reconnected him using chat to my computer. Then the virus attached itself to a movie I had made with Window Movie Maker, which I found and deleted it. Then after two more reboots, the virus was gone. I had several tracking cookies that also were deleted that had been plaguing me for a while also. In all I lost two hours of my day dealing with a virus I have no idea how it got on the laptop.

tennis and cricket

The title for this blog entry is a play on words.

Since my oldest son left for the Army all tennis activity has stopped. This weekend all of the sudden my daughter and youngest son and I started playing table tennis again. When we lived in San Antonio we bought a cheap set of paddles and a foam and plastic net. We lost most of the pieces so we temporarily put a piece of wood molding through the foam holders to make a net. We used the dining room table with the extra leaf and even though the corners are rounded we still have fun. It has been over two years since any of us have played but we picked it up quickly again. Of course I have the advantage of having wasted many hours while at VaTech playing table tennis with my best Indian friend. Then when my wife and I met and eventually got married we were either playing tennis or table tennis daily. All of those hours of practice have come back to help me beat my son constantly.

Every Sunday recently I have been practicing my bowling skills in cricket with my Indian friends. Last year I learned how to bat and this summer I am learning how to bowl. Maybe next year I will be able to do both in the same game. Not that I will be anywhere close to doing it the correct Indian way as I spent too many years playing baseball and softball to unlearn those skills. That is not actually the cricket I meant in the title. This morning when I woke up and went downstairs I heard a very loud chirping noise from behind the refrigerator. I hit the refrigerator a couple of time and it stopped but always resumed. I then rolled it out and the noise stopped immediately. I sprayed insect killer around the back wall and the noise stopped, so I went to work thinking the job was over. When I got home from work in the evening the noisy cricket was again rubbing his legs behind the refrigerator. After a rousing game of table tennis my youngest son helped me search underneath the refrigerator and still no noisy cricket was found. I caulked around the back wall where I sprayed in the morning and had finally given up. I took off the back and front of the refrigerator looking for Mr. cricket and was putting the back on, when right on the floor in front of me was a green cricket! The cricket did not survive, but now we have peace and quiet in the kitchen. No more cricket until Sunday when I play my next match.

volleyball

Yesterday I participated in my first volleyball game in the competitive league at work and had so much fun. Of course is helps when you are on a really good team. Two people are really great setters and make it easy for me to spike the ball. Two of the other people on the team are great at spiking and in general excellent players. Most points I just enjoy watching them make great shots. It is more fun for me than playing basketball or football as it is not a contact sport! It seems like I get injured when colliding with others is involved, so this is a safe sport for me that can enjoy and get exercise. Of course today I have to return to running as I cannot give that up and on Sundays I have to play cricket.

internet connection

So my next to oldest son calls last night and wants me to help him find a way to get internet in his apartment. The first task at hand was finding any place close to him where he could get free internet access. He tried Starbucks since they are every where in that part of the land, but they only provide it if you buy something. That is also a mini story as he tried to buy something and his debit card was rejected, but more on that later. Since we have wonderful internet access, I quickly used Google Chrome to search for "wireless hotspots emeryville ca" and 3rd link had exactly what I was looking for wi-fihotspotlist.com. It showed that a Borders bookstore was right around the corner from his apartment and they had free wifi. He mentioned that a couple of people used ComCast in their apartments, so I went to their web site which he went off to Borders. The ComCast web site looks nice and clean and I quickly found the selections available. All was well until I hit the last step, except it was odd that I was never asked for a credit card or any form of payment. I was put into an on-line chat program for the final step. It did not work as I needed a new version of Java to support the chat plug-in on Vista. The download itself took several minutes and then I had to refresh the browser twice and finally I saw I was next in line for a chat person to talk to me. Once she arrived at the chat window she asked me to re-confirm what I entered and the last 4 digits of social security number to verify something or the other. Then the selections I had made we for existing customers, so everything changed when she found out this was a brand new service. Pretty good prices as just for internet access was $25 initial fee and then $25 a month for the first 6 months, for service that is slightly faster than Time Warner, which is what we use here. At the last step she gives me the account number and order number. I try to copy-n-paste it from the chat window but it does not support any type of selections. I asked her to email it to me and she said she was not allowed. So I wrote down the information and then emailed it to my son. The whole process started off nicely, but was a bit rough at the end. At least no up-front payment and no payment at install time, so that was a nice bonus.

road trip photos

Photos from my son's road trip across the USA.

busy weekend

Friday when I got home from work, my wife started mowing the yard. This means that I have to finish since it takes too long for her to complete the whole yard. No problem as I think of mowing as walking exercise.

Most of the remaining weekend was spent cleaning the garage and fixing stuff around the house. My day started off removing the downstairs toilet as one of my next to oldest son's friend's dropped his cell phone into the toilet and flushed the toilet thinking the phone would remain in the bowl. All his friends had fun trying to get the phone out by using a clothes hanger and finally after a couple of hours gave up. I was neglecting it hoping it would fix itself, which never happened. I removed the toilet and went to Home Depot to get a new one. Once I got home and took it out of the box, I saw the toilet was cracked, so I returned to Home Depot. Not a good start to my Saturday morning I must say. I got the next better model for $99 and with a little effort had the new one working. While feeling handy, I started working on the downstairs bathroom as the ceiling looked pretty bad. This is a mini story in itself as last year one of the kids broke the upstairs toilet by accident and the water leaked downstairs through the ceiling. I did not complete the ceiling repairs as I should have, so I spackled the ceiling and then repainted it.

The next task was to help my youngest son as he is switching rooms. He decided to paint the walls VaTech orange and maroon colors with two walls maroon and the other two orange. The clothes dresser, which used to be in the room, covered up my handy work, where I ran a TV cable from the adjoining room and left a hole in the wall. I had to repair that hole with drywall and spackling and then repaint it. For once I left the painting to other members in the family. Just as I finished my handy man tasks, I had to quickly clean up and be preentable.

It was time to attend a very good friend's graduation ceremony at the Dean Smith Center at UNC (my affectionately known as the Dean Dome). I remember watching so many Tar Heel basketball games when I was a kid, but have only once been on the UNC campus. To actually be inside the Dean Dome was like holy ground for a UNC graduate. They had photos of every UNC basketball team since the late 1970's in the area where you walk inside the dome. Inside the dome itself there were tons of jersey's hanging from the rafters as well as conference titles and championships.

Today I took some rest and walked with my wife and then took off to play cricket with some Indian friends. Last season I practiced my batting skills, but this year I am practicing my bowling skills. I had fun today as I really bowled well. Once I got home I had to finish working on the downstairs bathroom and take some stuff to the local thrift store in order the finish the garage cleaning ceremony. After so much activity I had to take the Sunday afternoon ritual nap to round out an active weekend.