August 2007 Archives

Patsy was in the garage checking on Priscilla, our outdoor cat, when she noticed there was no electricity. She went to the breaker panel and noticed half of the breakers had been tripped. She reset them and went about her business. As she was changing the water in the bird bath, the hose started spitting and sputtering. We had no water pressure and the water pump was not coming on. Turns out we had a major power surge or a lightning bolt landed somewhere very close by. It fried the neutral wire coming into the house from the utility pole. Some things were still working but other things were not. We had AC and lights but no phones, satellite, internet, or running water. I changed the capacitor on the water pump because that resolved the problem after a similar event a few months ago. Did nothing this time so I called the water well people. First, it was going to be $700 for a new pump. The bill is now at $7300 and climbing because they had to drill a new well. Whatever happened in the well cracked the pipe. They started the job yesterday and should be finished tomorrow. We are supposed to have telephone service by 6PM today and the satellite company should be out tomorrow between 1PM and 5PM (They couldn't find the house yesterday and couldn't reach me by telephone). The main issue is running water. We've been showering at Patsy's sister's house. We're grateful for that but it's more than a little inconvenient to have no running water. That's more important than AC. Got some cool photos, though.

Bit of a problem

Bit of a problem

CrabAppleLane Backyard Water Well - August 29, 2007

CrabAppleLane Backyard Water Well - August 30, 2007

CrabAppleLane Backyard Water Well - August 30, 2007

This is the new home of Our Family Blog. This url is temporary. The old one will be back in use in a few days/weeks. You can comment or place entries here just like you did before, though.

I decided to make the move to a new server because the old server WAS our problem. The reason we were getting all of those internal server errors was because the server was simply not allowing the resources necessary to run this program. It would shut it down before the process was complete. This new server hasn't done that.

I have to change everyone's password back to what it was or to a new one. To import the entries from the old software, I had to give everyone the same password.

On those lines:

Please send me an email with what you want your password to be. The only one I have on record is Carol's. I'm just not sure about the rest of them. Thankfully, it's not a big ordeal for me to change them because I know what the password is now.

There are still a lot of files, particularly image files, on the old server. They will not be lost but it will take me some time to put them back here. It's a massive, time-consuming chore that I can only do on nights and weekends as time and energy permit. I didn't want to continue adding on to the old server with all of its problems any longer. Thankfully, I should only have to do this huge amount of work once.

Right now, all images are displaying because our entries are pointing at the old server but they won't when I tell the internet to point CrabAppleLane at the new one. I'll have to transfer them to the Flickr server ... again, as time and energy permit. This does not apply to any pictures posted since February 23, 2007. Those will be fine.

Everything that you see here should work. This new software has a lot of cool features but some of the add-ons that I had installed in the older one don't have updated versions to work with this one. One of the cool new features is "auto save". Most word processing programs like WordPerfect or Microsoft Word save your work at certain intervals. The blog is now periodically saving your entries, too. That's excellent for those times when you lose your internet connection, lose power at home, or whatever other nuisance that can come up occurs. I haven't had to see how this works yet but maybe it's like having a spare tire. You maybe won't get a flat if you have one. I love having a three-column layout. The older version could have had three columns if I could have figured out how to make it work. I also love the author archives there in the second column.

You'll also notice a few more tools at your disposal for your entries. Making large, large, large print is easy. You can also strikethrough, which is kinda fun, too. When you preview your entry, you will see it EXACTLY as it will appear on the blog.

The Birthday plug-in and the "On This Day in The Family Blog" plug-in don't work. Hopefully, their makers are hard at work updating their software because I liked them. "Recent Comments", which I also liked, is causing big problems here and I won't put that back until its resolved.

The road sign that was on the old blog might come back. Just not sure where I want to place it. I kinda like that red title bar at the top.

I'm not finished. There are more features to come. Again, it will be done as time and energy permit.

What do you think?

Happy Birthday, Stephen

I thought about you several times yesterday but failed to shoot out the email or phone call I was wanting to get out. So sorry. Hope your day was good and the next year is filled with wonderful things. I can think of one wonderful thing already that's going to happen for you in February. 25 years old...Now you can legally rent a car (and get rid of the motorcycle)!

Katie wins a prize. Her comment was the 5000th one here. 5000! This has really been amazing. Everyone reading this should take a bow. You make this blog what it is. Thanks and enjoy. I want to be 10000, though.

Here is a picture of our exchange student, Kyoko,Ashley and Nicole. We went to the Como Zoo today for a Japanese Lantern Lighting Festival. It was good, but had to be moved indoors because of the rain. Kyoko enjoyed it and was able to have some sushi. I'm sure it's going to be a fun year.

Kyoko, Ashley, Nicole

Ashley and Nicole went to London and Scotland with their school theatre group to participate in The Fringe Festival in Edinburgh Scotland. They were gone 12 days and had a very good time. They performed 4 times and saw lots of other plays and went sightseeing as well. While they were gone, Dan and I went to the boat. We had our good friends Sandi and Greg join us for one weekend and then another couple came up midweek for a few days. We also were able to spend some time with Dan's (Bye) daughter Christina and her boyfriend Ryan. We enjoyed spending time with them and took them to one of our favorite lighthouses. All in all everyone had a great vacation. Now we are getting ready for Ashley to go to college (in northern MN) next week. And, we have a foreign exchange student from Japan that is going to live with us for the school year. Her name is Kyoko, she is 16 and is not shy. She just came to us on Wednesday. I think it will be an exciting year. Hope everyone can enjoy the last few days of summer. Here are a few pictures of the vacation(s).

Ashley on Arthur's seat, Scotland

Happy Birthday, Katie

Have a day...

Sue and I watched Dark Shadows when we were kids. Not sure if anyone else in the family did. I only remember a handful of the characters. Barnabus Collins and Quentin come to mind. Seeing an episode as an adult many years after it first aired dimmed my fascination somewhat. It was campy and more than a little dreadful. A movie might be fun, though. Johnny Depp's production company has bought the rights to it. I think he'd be pretty good as Barnabus but I wonder if they'd play it as a serious movie or a dark comedy. I'd go for the dark comedy.

Happy Birthday to Our Family Blog

It's four years old today. It started this way. 1130 entries and 4973 comments later, here we are. Imagine that. It has been a delightful experience for me. Hope it has been for you, too.

Some emails are harder to write than others. This is one of them. We moved Mom into assisted living on Monday, July 30th. It's a one bedroom apartment. Nothing "nursey" about it. Needless to say she's not happy about it. We did not and were not able to give her a choice in the matter. You'll have to trust us to understand that we did what was right. It was not an easy decision. She thinks she is in a nursing home. She also wanted me to help her put on her Keds so she could get ready to ride the streetcar to work in the morning.

Her phone number has not changed. Her mail has all been forwarded to my house if you want to write to her. I know Beth talked to Aunt Ginnie so she's aware of what is happening. I saw Sally yesterday when I went to the doctor and I think Joan talked to Carol who will pass the word onto her folks. I know they have their family up this weekend so I'll give them a buzz next week.

Keep her in your thoughts and prayers.

The bridge collapse looks horrible. Are all of the family accounted for? Amazing picture of it.