Category Archives: Home Life

Well, its not broken…

  By Janelle Barnett | January 6, 2013 - 21:14 | , ,
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My thumb that is.

See, No Breaks!

See, No Breaks!

I can’t say  the same about my laptop though.

Last Friday ( 12.28.2012) my laptop decided to go tango-uniform.  The stupid CPU decided to overheat and die.  The crappy part is I hadn’t backed it up in a while.  Hopefully when the new stuff comes in to build a new computer my darling husband will be able to retrieve the lost information.  I don’t recommend AMD CPUs.  My husband says this is yet another data point for him in the negative.

Then, to top it all off, my left hand got smashed in the sliding door of a mini van while at work the following day.  Hence the reason I have the X-ray above.

F*ckin' Really?!

F*ckin’ Really?!

What makes this really bad is the fact that my left hand is my good, working hand.   My right hand is not fully functional due to radial nerve palsy from the car accident.   Having both hands down really sucks, between them I have 1 full hand.   Sadly I still need to wear a splint with a thumb spica for the next couple weeks.

Sometimes, when it rains, it pours and now I can’t play my flute or continue my new adventure into learning to play a violin… which I should probably blog.

And thank you to my husband for acting as my dictatorial machine and as my editor correcting grammar and the like.  Not to mention the pictures too, he made me look pretty.

Stuff is Stuff…

  By Barron | October 30, 2012 - 17:00 | ,
1 Comment

I got an email from my mom about a friend, our parents also happen to be friends, I went to high school with who is currently living in New York.  I was thinking most of my friends made it through this without much of a problem, evidently not so.

Would you please let everyone know that Heather is okay.   She lost everything last night to the 12 foot storm surge but is safe.  They stayed in their house and had to sit out the storm on the second floor. The fires in the Breezy Point neighborhood were just across the road and luckily didn’t get to her side of the street.  Things are still burning but they have it under control.   There isn’t any way to contact her as they are trying to conserve their phone power since there won’t be any electricity for several days.

I’m glad she’s OK and while she may have lost possessions, she at least came out alive and didn’t have to deal with fire compounding her issues.  I don’t know how prepared she was to deal with the aftermath, hopefully this overall is just a bump in the road.

Take stock of what you have and be thankful.

Insert Something Witty

  By Barron | July 13, 2012 - 20:34 | ,
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I had something thought up for tonight.  Got home and dove into two other projects.  One will be unveiled probably tomorrow or Sunday.  Another early next week.  Also spent some time applying some polish.

I’m headed down to the local gun shop tomorrow.  It looks like there may be some industry reps there I can talk to.  There’s a few things lately I’m interested in, but not enough to empty my wallet yet.  So I will listen to my friends Linoge, JayG, and Robb and just ask.

I’ve also got to finish up my USPSA stages so they can go in for review.  One is done and wrapped up, once they’re all completed though I’ll do a post on them all.  I’ve also started and am working on the finer points of the frame that goes with this.  I keep meaning to work on it more, but I keep getting distracted.  Hopefully I’ll have some time in the next couple weeks to really spend on it.

Five Years Ago

  By Janelle Barnett | July 7, 2012 - 08:12 | ,
2 Comments

I married my best friend.  He is the love of my life and I am happy and proud to be called his wife.  Even though the last few years have had ups and downs, I wouldn’t change a thing. The various trials and tribulations ha ve made us stronger individually and as a couple.  I love you Barron now and forever. Happy Anniversary!

image

July 7, 2007

Built Ford Tough

  By Barron | July 3, 2012 - 11:27 | , ,
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So as I said on Sunday I put my baby into a ditch.  It was a hard hit and had to be winched out of the hole.  I didn’t really think about taking pictures mainly because I’m not a big fan of documenting my stupidity.  At this point though I kind of wish I had.  It would make a great commercial.

The drive home on Sunday had a shimmy though the steering and the wheel was no longer aligned.  I spent last night with the pressure washer removing the concrete clay caking the tires and undercarriage.  I removed a large quantity of clay that was caked on to everything including all throughout the wheel.  By the end I was covered in mud from it flying off while cleaning.  I only blasted the mud off though, she will get a bath this weekend.  Tomorrow, if I get the green light, I shall go do something special for a post.

This morning I dropped her off for an alignment check and to have the front end looked at in detail on a lift.  Also if they could I wanted my steering wheel put back to center.  While driving in this morning there was no vibration through the steering, good it means that the wheel was out of balance from the clay, which I expected.  The truck tracked well and didn’t drift so the alignment seemed like it would still be good but I wanted numbers.

Well I got the numbers back and everything, remained within spec.  I didn’t bump it out of alignment, didn’t bend a tie rod, didn’t do a damn thing to that truck other than de-center the steering wheel.  That’s right, all that happened from a trip into the ditch was that my steering wheel was no longer pointed the correct direction for center.  They say “Built Ford Tough” for a reason.  I just don’t like finding out or pushing those limits first hand.

This weekend she’ll get a nice bath and right now I’m debating on a road trip with her in September.  I just need to talk with some friends to see if we can split a hotel room.

This is Never a Good Thing

  By Barron | June 5, 2012 - 17:39 | , ,
4 Comments

Yeah I’m going to probably be offline tonight.  I left work about an hour early because the wife called…  I won’t say what exactly happened but there was a large amount of water that was dumped into our laundry room.  It was not a failure of the washing machine either.

By the time I got home the wife had most of it cleaned up.  Some of the awaiting laundry soaked up a good majority and acted as a barrier to the far side of the room.  However it got into the carpet outside the laundry room and it appears it got behind the furnace though in very minor quantities.  What isn’t comforting though is I found two holes that head into the crawl space that were not thoroughly sealed.  The wood I could feel felt damp.

I have baked  the wood dry with a hair dryer, as well as dried out all the floor molding.  The wife is continuing to hit everything with more heat to help dry it out.  The faster the better. 

I have the thermostat set to 90 to try and help dry things out further.  The humidity in the house is slightly higher than the usual 20% and that’s thanks to the weather.  The humidifier is off and the temperature is rising quite rapidly in the house.

I suppose this is a good time to mention, I’m not a heat person.  I hate the heat and much prefer the cold.  As I say, I can always put on more clothes but there comes a time where I will either be arrested or have nothing else left to take off… both of those occur at the same time interestingly enough.

I will say this has confirmed my plan that if I ever build a house, the washing machine and by proxy utility sink will have sloped concrete floor with a central drain.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

  By Barron | January 6, 2011 - 18:42 | , ,
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Picked up the mail tonight and on the top was this…

ITT

I have a BSEE from a four year university, my focus areas were DSP and Power Systems.  Where did they get my info, and why do they think I need one of their certifications?  I just started laughing as I read it, and continue to laugh every time I see it.  I actually ended up with an awesome job before I even graduated, and I had offers outside the area too.  Not only was the job I took awesome, it became even more awesome recently, however due to the disclaimer I shall leave it at that.  The only thing I can think of is they want me to get an MBA which makes me want to laugh more.  I have a couple other professional goals on my plate, after which I will go an get my masters slowly (if I feel it still worth it).  My masters however is going to be in another engineering field.

Good news and Bad news

  By Barron | January 4, 2011 - 23:33 | , ,
2 Comments

First the good news, Guess who’s coming for Boomershoot this year and staying at my place?

Oleg

Now for the bad news.  My goal this year was to manage at least one blog post every day.  This was to hopefully improve my ability and to decrease the amount of time it takes me to make a post; practice that’s how it’s done.  However I may end up blogging a little more on home projects or quick links than thought out posts.  The reason being is I have a couple projects that I figured would be handy for Oleg that have now been confirmed as being something that would be helpful.  Thus for the next many weekends the project for above ground storage in the garage, as well as reorganizing and storage of stuff in the shop.  The goal is to have everything in the shop properly stored, and everything in the garage cleared out by end of March.  This also includes moving all my shop tools currently living in my garage.  Due to conflicting schedules though most of this work is going to be relegated to the weekends.  I don’t run power tools at home by myself, it’s a great way to end up dead.

In the mean time here’s a couple pictures that Oleg took last year at Boomershoot.  If you think my face looks pink, you should have seen it the next morning.  I had second degree burns all over my face.

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