Need More Stuff

The new house is great – except for a few things. The key “issue” being a definite lack of storage space. Our previous landlords left about 6 pieces of furniture for us to use while they were out of the country, and most of those were storage-related. So now, we will head off to IKEA to see what we can find to fill the storage gap.

We have some nice, new “fancy” furniture coming next month, so we’ll have a real formal living area, but now we need some real storage. I have nowhere to put my motorcycle gear – it’s all over the floor right now. We also have no place to store our china or several other kitchen items. Those are the two things we’ll be looking for. I already know one piece we’re going to get – and that’s the MARKÖR Sideboard which was one of the pieces we were borrowing at our last house. And we’ll also be looking for a wardrobe to put the basement gear in.

I’ll let you know how it turns out…

The New Lens Has Arrived

I’ve gotten [finally] my new lens – the 24-105mm F4L IS USM lens from Canon. I have to say, it’s just what I expected. The focal range is excellent for a wide variety of purposes, and I’ll be able to carry the camera around without changing lenses and that will keep the dust down. I’m glad for that, since I don’t really relish touching the sensor.

I took a few pictures with it to verify that it was working, but nothing worth posting. The next time I have some to post, I’ll make sure I accelerate the processing of the pictures to showcase the new lens.

It’s still almost as heavy as my big lens, though…

Winter Has Arrived?

Or so it seems. It’s positively chilly outside – rainy, foggy, and cold. It hasn’t even gotten above 70 degrees today. I’m wondering whatever happened to Global WARMING…

I do enjoy this cool weather in the middle of August, whatever the reason for it. I hope that Summer doesn’t come back with a vengence and try to make up for the cold.

It’s Been A Busy Week…

But at least I’m feeling better now. I was somewhat sick all week long, but I still went to work since I felt I couldn’t leave the customer at such a critical time. So, I toughed it out and worked a full week – even some overtime. Now that I’m feeling better, there’s more work around the house that Laura and I will do today. We’re going to reorganize the pantry and maybe even organize the physical CD media in categories into some fancy storage boxes. I say physical media since most of our collection has been digitized and put on our server. I suppose that means that I should buy a media player for the stereo/TV system.

We also have ordered some new furniture to fill out a sitting room off the kitchen. It’s really the first whole room that Laura and I have done together, and once the stuff arrives at the end of the month, I think she’ll be very pleased.

New Lens!

2012-01-08 23:30:13

Today, I’m not really feeling very good. I’m a little under the weather. I have some kind of Summer cold or something, but that most likely means that I need more rest. So, since I worked the weekend, I had plenty of hours and was able to turn in at lunch time.

However, the day is turning out much better. As the afternoon passes, I’m starting to feel better. And of course, it’s always fun to buy new things… which I did! I had sold so much stuff on eBay and Craigslist, that I had saved up enough money to buy one of the lenses I’ve been waiting for: the Canon 24-105mm F4 L IS USM lens. It fills a void in my lens collection and will act as a great “carry around” lens so that I don’t have to swap lenses nearly as much. It will also do very well for wedding photography. I ordered it and it’s on the way. I can’t wait to try!

And, of course, you’ll see the pictures I take with it posted here…

Windows Mobile 6

Since I didn’t want to wait for AT&T to come out with a flash update for my phone [the 8500 – or “Hermes” model], I decided to grab an unsupported early release off the Internet. It is supposedly the version released by HTC [the manufacturer] to AT&T for testing. Knowing AT&T, it won’t be released until the end of the year and I didn’t want to wait. So I loaded it. It works just fine! I’m loving the nicely-formatted HTML email now.

Long Week

I’m sorry I haven’t posted for a while, but my job has recently been taking up a good amount of my time. In fact, I worked long hours this weekend for a customer who was upgrading their systems. Mainly, they wanted me there just in case something went wrong… which it didn’t. So, I worked late Friday night and into the wee morning hours, and then was back on site again at 8AM. I think I’m still tired from that day.

Working for Microsoft is sometimes very interesting. Take this weekend, for instance. I didn’t actually do anything, but the customer was very glad I was there. They simply wanted someone from the company there “just in case” and so that they’d feel better that Microsoft was responding to their needs. And so, there I sat. It wasn’t too bad – except for the lost sleep.

Office At Last

And I don’t mean for work!

I’ve finally gotten Laura’s desk set up and her computer assembled down in the dungeon/office space at the new house. There are some “fitting” issues we need to solve – like a longer ethernet cable for her and some more space to store our stuff [unless we get rid of some more stuff…]

All in all, though, we like the place pretty well. Very well, in fact. We just need different furniture in this place: not everything we had fits very well in it. Of course, it was like that in the old place, but not so bad. We’re looking at having to buy some furniture to replace some of the pieces that we were borrowing in our old place, like a second couch and the wardrobe that I kept my motorcycle gear in.

So, here I am – downstairs with all computers operational again [except the Toshiba laptop, which for some reason is very unstable] typing on my blog. I know I’ve been remiss on my postings, but hopefully things will settle down some and I’ll have some more time to let you all know what’s going on ’round here.

4th Of July Pictures

I’ve finally posted the pictures of the fireworks from the DC celebration of the 4th of July. It’s taken a while to get to them, and I probably shouldn’t have since I have so much unpacking to do, but… Well, call it creative procrastination.

Fireworks are hard to do and one thing we learned is that location is everything. Next year [or next time whenever that may be], we will have a much better idea of where we want to be. If it’s near this bridge, we have a spot picked out already – one that will give us a view of both the Lincoln and Washington memorials with fireworks over them. We’ll see how that works out whenever we get down there again.

All Moved In

We’re all moved into our new place now, and after a week’s worth of vacation around the moving weekend, I’m back at the office. It’s much more physically relaxing here, that’s for sure. No carrying heavy book boxes… oh -wait. I didn’t do that – the guys did that. See, I have friends… lots of them. And they all showed up of Saturday to help me move. They did a bang-up job. Really fast, too.

So – here’s to you all who helped: THANK YOU!!! (and I’ll try not to move again any time soon…)

We love the new house, and my ride into the office today was not bad at all. Only too about 15 minutes to get back to the Reston area where I’m working for a while. I even have some cool neighbors – I can walk to my friend John’s house… not that I would actually walk or anything…

We may be moved in, but we’re cetainly not settled. There are many hundreds of boxes to finish unpacking yet. My work away from work.