Below are the 18 most recent journal entries recorded in hubs' LiveJournal:

Friday, March 28th, 2008
1:03 pm	testing 1,2,3 Just installed a LJ client on my Linux box, just testing.. Current Mood: accomplished (1 Comment |Comment on this)
11:12 am	shocking find I was just replacing a old dight fixture in our room we use as a office and when I got the fixture off the wall, I had a suprise.. The room was originaly lit with a gas jet, I found the stubbed off and cemented over end of a gas pipe with the house wiring coming up next to it. Never know what you will find in old houses. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
4:23 pm	Long time no journal I just looked into my account and saw it's been a 100 days from the last post.. So much as gone on, I'll try and fill in the blanks.. we just returned from a comfortable 3 day vacation with my wife, Ms_dandy_lynn. It was great, 3 days of relaxing, eating and piggy backing WIFI from the condos across the Golf course. I had a interview Wednesday, but some one else got the position so I'm still on the prowl for a real telcom job, something with a shorter commute that my current 64 mile round trip I do each day now..  I have come to the conclusion that I do not like working in a call center, no mater what the title they give you is, a phone support tech is still a phone support tech... It's not a cube farm, but hell with floersent lighting.... On another good note,  Lynn has let start collecting tools to work on the house and I now have a sazall and a air compressor and nail gun, I'm looking for a few other tools to add to the collection and I'm prowling the local pawn shops for goodies...  I make my next sweep on friday... Well, just a note to tell everyone I'm still alive and well, and I hope to post more often... Cheers... Chuck Current Mood: aggravated (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 23rd, 2006
8:49 pm	This weeks tip.. If someone asks you to help them install a new garage door, run far, far away.... A friend of mine, gave us a hand in getting rid of a bunch of bushes that I had cut down from the front and side of the house this week, The area we live in had a free dumpster day, and we were allowed to dispose of yard-waste , trash, old garage doors, etc... So we got rid of about 6 truckloads of goodies and then headed over to take on the garage door from hell. He’s done the one on the left side of the garage, so he’s feeling rather confident about the task at hand, so we started removing the old garage door track, broke out the jig saw to cut the track to the proper length (tip, don’t cut the curved part of the track, like they did on other door.) cut the first track, started to cut other tack broke the blade, No worry’s, we had a backup blade..someplace... By this point we had the first panel of the new door in place, looked good, and started on the second panel. This one has the lock and such on it, so we measured, drilled, fitted and had the panel ready to go in, we dropped it in place and something did not look/fit quite right..... We installed the $%^&* panel upside down. Off comes the lock, handle, etc door gets turned 180 degrees and we reinstall the locks and such, goes much faster the second time. Fast forward to the good stuff.. We get the last panel in place and my buddy looks up and goes pale, he/we forgot to take into account the plumbing pipes that drop below the rafters won’t let the door pass.. We have two choices, get rid of the pipes, or modify the door. Seeing how his wife has grown fond of the indoor plumping, we (rather wisely) choose to modify the door. They say the 5 Scariest Things in the Army That You Will Ever Hear Are.. 1. A Private saying, “I learned this in basic training...” 2. A Sergeant saying, “Trust me, sir...” 3. A Second Lieutenant saying, “Based on my experience...” 4. A Captain saying, “I was just thinking...” 5. And a Warrant Officer chuckling, “Watch this Shit...” The scariest words I have ever spoken are.. “Hand me that saw, I have a idea..” We ended up taking 70% of the old door hardware, and installed it on the new door. We gave the term “Monster Garage” a whole new meaning, Jesse James and McGyver would have been proud of our effort in getting that door to go up and down and still being able to count to ten with both hands. I think we violated every safety warning/guideline in the entire installation guide, a new personal record for myself. Current Mood: accomplished/tired Current Music: Ellery Queen 44-01-20 (0016) The Scarecrow and the Snowman 6 (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 26th, 2006
1:34 pm	3 weeks and still standing. Just a update, three weeks have passed and my fence is still standing... So far we have had, tornados, hail, snow, strong wind and cold. I think I have this fence building stuff figured out, Of course I say that now, in hopes that no more panels will fall, until I decide to rebuild the rest of the fence. I did enjoy ripping out one of our spare bathrooms, this was one of the two in the basement, the toilet had been cracked and had been leaking for quite some time, even though I had shut off the water to the tank, the valve was bad and water had been dripping out making a smelly mess, so much of a smelly mess that if we decide that it will be a bathroom/shower again, I will need to re-do some of the framing on one wall. Right now we are thinking of making a laundry area out of it, just getting rid of the old shower stall/sink and moving in the washer and dryer into the empty space. All in due time... Now I need to demolish a dead toilet, and fit all the broken parts in the trash.. Current Mood: accomplished/tired Current Music: Christmas In The Caribbean-Jimmy Buffett-Boats, Beaches, Bars & Ballads [Disc 2] (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 12th, 2006
2:37 pm	Arrrghhhhhh I just get the new fence section up this morning, and now we have tornado warnings.. Right now it sounds a lot like a cold war training film with the sirens going off every few min in parts of the county. So help me if any part of that fence blows down, I'm having a bon fire... I did manage to get part of a new drop tile ceiling grid done in the basement today, I need to get the tiles and the rest of the grid next week and some other parts and get the main room done, the n the smaller room to the back of it next. Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: Tornado sirens (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 11th, 2006
8:47 pm	Lot going on... I know, long time , no post.. And now there will mostly likly be a flurry of them.. With a little help from my friends, I have moved most everything over to my Mac G4. I have taken one of my many intel boxes and moved it downstairs to the basement. I still have one Dell box up here to handle print server duty and stuff I need to do in windows. I hope to get a copy of virtual PC soon and try and find a wireless printserver one of these days. Lynn will most likly be telling horror story's of fence repairs again soon, I rebuilt the lower section of the back fence that fell down a week after I had fixed the section next to it. Tommarow I will be cutting the boards and nailing it all in place, My sweetie let me get a circular saw and cordless drill so I have been making lots of sawdust and noise. One question I have for those of you that use macs, what are your essential apps that you swear by, I have found most of the ones I use most, firefox, eudora, thunderbird, etc... But I am always on the lookout for new favorites. Chuck Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: School Boy Heart-Jimmy Buffett-Banana Wind (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 4th, 2006
8:45 pm	OS X ..The final countdown. Well after much gnashing of teeth and coaster making, my quest to install OS X on my G3 server has finished, I beat it into submission and it rolled over and showed me it's desktop this morning.  Many thanks to Mason Stone in helping me complete this task.   I now have a fully functioning OS X in the basement and as soon as I can figure out how to (a) run a ethernet cable to the second floor (b) find a cheap airport card or a PCMCIA card that will work in it or (c) go find a 802.11g gaming adaptor that will work, I will move it upstairs and make it my primary workstation.   I've managed to somewhat get firefox, thunderbird, and open office working on it, a few widgets I've been seeing on the net for a while to run, but I still need to learn how to deal with the .dmg files that everything seems to come in now a days. Just when I managed to get stuffit and that other compression stuff straight in my head from OS 7.X- OS 9.X they go an add that one...   Off hand, I really like the OS X layout, it looks good, works good. I need to look around for some software that will start to replace the XP apps I use the most, most of all I need to find a news grabber to strip out binary from Usenet postings. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 3rd, 2005
10:26 pm	This has been a interesting week. This has been a strange week, Last week week I got the task of wiring new bank that was being built, Not too bad a task, we ran into the usual problem that happen when a salesman survey a job (IE, cement filled walls, vaults, things moved and not shown on the floor plans) We get the wire in the walls and in the proper places, no one got killed ( a good sign).. This week it comes time to move the system, so I gather my info, incomplete as it is, and install a few temp phones in the temp bank ( a trailer of all things) and pull everything over to the new building across the parking lot. hang the equipment, do my thing and find out that they are not going to move that day, no problem, I had figured that into my plan B, and tested everything and called it a day.. That night I get a SMS message from one of my working buddy's that the bank had been held up that evening..  Seems a hour after I left some high school kid tried to hold up the bank, took one of the employees cars, but it was a stick and the robber could not drive a manual tranny..  They caught the moron the next day. I'll post a bit more this weekend, mostly a rant about the company  I work for and the dyslexic management style we enjoy... (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 26th, 2005
8:39 pm	Still alive..... Yep, Despite what Lynn says I'm still alive and kicking, between working and house stuff I don't even read email each day like I used to. In general, things are going very well,  the house is slowly taking shape, I'm getting the squirrels evicted this month and the holes that they have been making fixed. I managed to repair the back fence with out losing any digits in the process, with the help of a friend of mine. We built 3 work tables from old doors that were going to be thrown away..   I know that I need to post more and will in the future, I have been working harder at getting things done and putting into place a system for doing, so I should be better.   Thanks for all of you that have stuck around, and greetings to those who start reading again..   Chuck (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 24th, 2004
6:53 pm	Now playing: Jimmy Buffett - Piece Of Work (with Toby Keith) Tap..TapThis thing still on?? I know, I know.. Been too quiet for a while, but things has been really average. Not much going on. Just work stuff.. The highlight of the work was putting in the phone system for baseball star George Brett. I'm not a baseball fan by a long shot, but I must say I was impressed by his collection of goodies. This guy has photo's with everybody.. And the house he lives in. They have his and her's bathrooms complete with telephones..Hell his maid even has a maid, thats rich.. But I gotta say that everytime height see's me, he greets me by name and shakes my hand, and tells me how much they like the system..This weekend, lynn and I took off for a few days getaway, we went to Hannibal, MO and then over the border to Ill to visit the place her grandmother lived at, it was really great.After we spent the night in Hannibal, we got up early and did the town that morning. we looked all over the downtown and we managed to find a couple of old painted address's on the sides of some old buildings and the remains of a old drugstore on a building that was once the local dairy queen. After that I strode up the steps to this lighthouse on the top of a hill that over looks the river, this is the spot that lynns mom and dad used to park at for a smooch or two.. id'm not sure if the lighthouse is still in operation.. Our next stop was several small town in eastern MO. We cruised around a bunch of places, stopping and looking here and there, we ended up in Paris for the night. Paris, MO that is.. Before we took our rooms for the night, I had the chance to run around the towns fairgrounds with my metal detector, I didn't do to bad, found 12 cents and had a good walk in the process. We made it home this afternoon, got unpacked and put stuff away.. A great weekend... (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, September 25th, 2004
7:58 pm	Really Cool day at RenFest Things have been quiet around here for the last few weeks. All that has really been going on is working, sleeping and eating. The only real excitement I had last week was a visit to George Brett's house in KCMO, I was out to there place to evaluate the old phone system. My final suggestion to them was replace it with a new system that is a lot more reliable, I found out later that we got the nod to replace it an I will be installing it.  Looks like we will also take care of there wireless network too.. The next cool day was today, we took off and went to the KC renaissance fest . A friend of my wife's won free tickets so away we went. This was the second time that I have been, my wife went may times in the past and always had a good time there. Before moving from Va, I had heard of the renfests, but there never was one in my area. This year was great, I had the obligatory Turkey leg, and a lot of the other good eats that are scattered about the fest. One of my highlight of the day was the ride on the camel I had. The first year we went I missed out on the rides, but this years I got the camel ride, next year I'll try the elephant. Great time was had by all..   A quick PSA.. MasonStone.. I've not forgotten you, I have some CD's just about ready to go, and they are full of goodies.. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, September 19th, 2004
11:32 am	Great weekend..... Lynn and I are having a great weekend this week, Yesterday Lynn, a friend of hers and I went to Hog roast down past Clinton, MO, a place that is pretty much in the middle of no-place, MO. A small rural church is raising money for a expansion to the building. I have never been to a hog/pig roast before, I've been to a bunch of Bar-B-Q's in time. When we got there all you could smell was the wood smoke an the roasting hog, .. Being there made me think of the times that I spent in the mountains of Va, visiting with my aunt and uncle as a kid. They lived in the small city of Covington, Va, It's a small mill town that grew up around the papermill that is there. Lynn can't stand the smell when the mill is going, but when I was a kid going up to visit, you could smell the mill about 30 mins before you arrived. The smell kind of defies explanation, kind of a sour/acid smell, but to me it was the one sign that we were close. Covington is about 50 miles east of the West Virginia/Virginia border, and deep in the mountains, there are a lot of small churches in the hills that serve the folks that live in the hills. Every summer when we would go up there, we would go to a picnic or a cook out at one of the churches or a gathering of friends or family. There would be the smell of good food cooking on grills, the sound of the kids playing in the pasture or at the stream, the southern accent of the men and woman talking about canning, hunting, fishing or the like. The one thing that always stayed with me is that there never were any strangers at these gatherings, everyone always made you feel like you were family or you lived in town. I was (and still am at times) rather shy, and within a few minuets of being there, I had new friends showing all that there was to see in the area. Yesterday was no exception, people were friendly, the food was great and though I'm not a really big fan of most music, they played great bluegrass and a nice selection of gospel music too. Made me feel a lot like being in the mountains again.... Current Mood: happy (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 16th, 2004
8:53 pm	Well, things are starting to look up... Not to bad of a week this week, I had a bit of a run in with a truck while on my way to work, he was backing out of a parking lot, and not paying attention.. No damage to his steel liftgate, and a nasty crease in my fender and a ding in the hood.. It was a company truck from a local rental company, so they have good insurance. But it's still a pain having to take it in for a estamate, getting the work done and all that. I'll have to get a spare car to get back and forth to work for a while, but I don't suspect that will be a problem. Other than that, I did manage to finnish one install this week, A new doctors office about 30 min north of us. with much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands, SBC found there way to getting me the dial tone that I was waiting for. This palce was not too bad as they go, it was all the data cabling that they decided was needed, A total of 12 voice cables and 14 data cables. This was not the number that I was expecting when I got the paper work. The hard part was the fact that place was not done yet, it was hot and damp and I was sweating like a cold glass in the summer time.. the other hard part was I was working alone, doing both ends of the cable, it just takes twice as long to get things done as you would think. But that is over with now, they are running and I will go back next week and tweak anything that needs fixing.. I need to go back and correct on small screwup in a job I stared last week, they forgot to tell me all the data cables that I pulled back to one location, really goes to a room about 25 feet in the other direction... Sigh... SNAFU.. Enough of my rants, and raves... I'll post interesting stuff this weekend, we gt fun things to planned.. Current Mood: accomplished (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, September 13th, 2004
8:13 pm	Monday the 13th... Today is (was) Monday the 13th.. For most of my workmates and myself, it was the Friday the 13th that didn't happen. Things got off to a smooth start this morning, Not much traffic on my way into work, got there early, paperwork all in order from Friday, things were looking good. With the luck of the draw, I got handed what looked to be a fairly simple service order.. Stick a sheet of plywood on a wall, mount some equipment, hook up a few wires, and put jacks on the other end.. Simple... Yea... Right..... I found the place in short order ( for those who do not know, I have the direction finding ability of a turnip, and having moved here a scant 2.5 years ago, I'm still learing my way around) But I am now armed with Micro$oft Trips and Streets and my trusty GPS, I can find pretty much anything.. Most of the time... When I finialy found room that the people who cabled this place (it was not us) pulled everything to and had a look, or tried to. The electric folk were working and had most of the lights turned off... Hmm Ok, I can deal with this... Mental note to myself, get a work light on truck.. I manhandle a sheet of plywood off the truck, get it down the stairs, over all the crap on the floor,and start to figgure out how the heck am I going to mount it to the wall. Reach for the drill and find that the battery had lost most of it charge over the weekend.. Crap... Get the charger out and do a quick charge while I jury rig a way to hold this monster on the wall. Battey now charged up, I drill my holes in the board, get the thing mounted and my temp stand out of the way. At this time I get lights back where I am working and now can see things.. and things don't look so good..... The maniac that cabled this place didn't just number each wire the way normal people do, he used the same number or a varation thereof on each damn cable.. and I have data cables as well to deal with. to add salt to to injury all of this is a huge knotted mess.. At this time, the painters in the other room start to paint and spray stuff.. within a few minutes I can reach the top of the board with out using a ladder. Mmmmm paint fumes, no ventalation.. drain bamage anyone??? To keep from passing out, I keep trotting upstairs to move my wirefinder from one jack to the next. and things go along with no problems.. Untill Mr Murphy shows up..(Mr Murphy of Murphys law fame). I do a quick check of the number of cables and a quick count and they don't add up. I have 1 more than I should. Turns out that a closet has been wired for some "printer thingy" (not my words). Remember the painters?? They are still there spaying stuff and making more fumes and they are wifting around this place, and I'm getting sick from it.. I have the headache to kill someone. Sigh..... Today was not a good day. Thanks for reading this far, I just had to get it off my chest.. Current Mood: cynical (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 9th, 2004
7:18 pm	This just in: I'm not dead :) Ok, This has been the week from hell.. For some reason I cannot seem to get myself back on a firm track, Three day weekends are really hard on my mind it seems... At first I misplaced a old laptop, I just found it tonight, out in my jeep.. The bad part is I have been riding around with it in the back seat for a better part of the week. Just now, I found a older ethernet card I have been looking for, that was cool. till I looked over at the table and found myself looking at the very same card. As far as I knew I only had one of em, where did card 2 come from!!!! At work, no one should trust me with power tools or electronic equipment of any type. How I installed a phone system yesterday is still a mystery.. I did manage to cause it to spit sparks and sputter, but no ill effects to the system.. Yet... time will tell. Today has me putting in cable in a building under going a makeover, and I'm glad it in a torn up state, I'd most likly kill the place.. Just shoot me now..... Current Mood: blah (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 7th, 2004
8:14 pm	It's a geeky kind of evening. Not a bad way to relax tonight, I have my VoIP softphone going and I have been chatting with a linux Guru that lives in Canada (Thanks Ken!) I'm doing some remote admin to a friend of my wife's computer, and playing with the hardware that I got when we were in TX. The day though was a pisser, We had a 20 phone install at a church and for some reason, churches almost fight you tooth and nail, only 1 church I've done in 20+ years of doing this has gone easy. And I really was not in the work frame of mind today, that may have had something to do with it too... Nahhhh... But life is good, I have new friends, a loving wife and cute cats.. don't get much better than this.... Current Mood: geeky (Comment on this)
Monday, September 6th, 2004
9:05 pm	*tap*tap*tap* This thing on??? With help from my wonderful wife, I now have a brand new LJ... I want to say hello to all the really great people that I had the chance to meet this weekend. I really enjoyed everyones company and look forward to seeing and talking to you all again. Thanks again for the great time... PS.. Stupid cat... (16 Comments |Comment on this)