Saturday, January 26, 2008

Home, as the crow flies




This is an arial view of the Rock Quary taken 4/5/2000. You can see it here
www.http://terraserver-usa.com/image.aspx?T=1&S=11&Z=15&X=1170&Y=10058&W=3


The dark spot just above the S in the word south at the bottom of the picture is Dan's pond. The dark spot above that is Clayton's pond, with Clayton's house just to the left by the road, my house to the right north of the road and our other trailor on to the right. See the cluster of buildings 'straight' across the hill from Clayton's house. That is the old Hampton place, house, barn and shed. See the line across the center of the hill. That is the line fence and old road that runs across the top of the hill, west to east. The dark spot just to the north of this line, almost directly across the hill from my house is the pond I kept wondering upon today.

I was really lost. Maybe I better take this map when I go back.

My Adventure

Today, I had an adventure. At about 12:15 I started off on my walk. When I got the other side of Dan's I decided to take the road through his field across the Rock Quary. I did this in Nov. 2005 and got lost. Today, I did the same only different. After wondering around across the hill somewhere unknown to me, I saw Hampton's old house and barn, so then I knew where I was. I went on to the old house and started to cross the hill like I did the last time. I was thinking if I walked straight accross the hill from Hampton's, I should come out somewhere between Clayton's house and mine, and I was right, except, walking straight depends on knowing which way straight is. My straight turned out to be very crooked.


I took the old road leading across the hill straight, or what I think is straight, south of Hampton's.

At the top of the hill, the old road is very clear and in the winter easy to follow. A short way after getting to the top, I come across a large pond that I had passed on my way over the hill the first time.
Then I came across a fence that I am thinking runs down the south side of the hill. I cannot figure out what fence this could be, so I follow the road along the fence untill it starts breaking off the hill.


By this time I am completely lost. Then I break out of the timber into the open, with intersecting fences and open places where I can see in the distance. I recognize nothing.
Looking off to my left, I see a white water tower. Now, the only water tower I can remember at the moment is the one by the Head school house, but this water tower is only a mile or so from me. I turn and start back the way I came.

I wonder around and around, coming back within sight of Hampton's house twice more, partly because when I start to get more confused I backtrack to the trail I came in on. After coming back to Hampton's the third time, I decide I better go on down to the road and follow it home.

All this time, I am thinking I should have brought my cell phone cause I could call George and find out where I am, but I did not have my phone. When I finally got home at 4 o'clock, and discussed all this with George, I realize that when I came to the fence at the top of the hill, that is the fence between us and David Combs (the Hampton place) and I should have climbed across the fence and went on down the hill instead of following the fence.

When I came to the part of the hill that was breaking off down hill, I had just passed the line at the top of the hill between David, Frank Marr's and our place. And when I broke out in the open field past there I was looking east across dry creek. The white water tower that I saw was the one at Peden's place, right by the turn to Jack Robinson's old house (where David Combs lives now). I had forgotten it was even there.

George said he was getting ready to go hunt for me when I finally got home. I guess he would have found me on the road, but no way would he have found me on top the hill.

Where I was up there, I lost my hat. I am going back tomorrow to find it.

MY COMPUTER

Patsy has had trouble with her computer getting on the net. She fixed her problem by downloading IE7 from Google and now all works to her satisfaction.



I always want MY COMPUTER to look, funciton and in all ways behave the way I want it to look and behave. With todays computers, getting everything to look and act the way you want it to in a computer is becoming increasingly difficult on one hand, but increasingly easy on another. On the one hand, new computers now come to us all set up to do certain things in a certain way and to look and behave in a certain. It is possible to change many of the things about the way the computer looks and behaves if you are persistent.



Patsy and I are persistent.



One of the first things I do when I have a computer problem is go to Google.com and type in a short sentence describing the problem I am having. For Patsy's problem which was that IE7 was 'hanging' on the connecting message, that is when she started IE it was say 'connecting...' and just hang there without going on and connecting to the webpage, I typed in Google search 'IE7 problem connecting'. I got these pages where others had experienced the same problem with some helpful answers offered.



http://forums.techguy.org/web-email/506440-internet-explorer-7-hangs.htmlb-email/506440-internet-explorer-7-hangs.html



http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/28660928/-ie7-hangs-on-connecti.aspx



http://www.msfn.org/board/internet-explorer-hangs-connecting-t77808.html



When you do this, some links are always more useful than others. All three of the above links say the problem with IE7 hanging on the connecting.. message is a problem with an add on installed in IE7. Do you think Patsy's daughter broke her computer again by installing something or other that she did not even know she installed?



Also, there was a problem with the default start page and search engine in IE that Patsy fixed by downloading IE from Google. She wants to use Google to search and naturally, the Google IE is set up to automatically useGoogles page as a home page and the Google search engine as a search engine. Maybe we could give a small break to Microsoft here and say that naturally they set the home page and search engine to their own company default just as Google and Yahoo and all the others do. If you download Foxfire, so I heard, the default search engine is Google. But, if you want to change the default start page in IE7 this page will tell you step by step how to do that.



http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071215012608AA2PmsL



and this page tells you how to change the default search engine in IE 7 to whatever you want it to be, not to what the company that gave you the program wanted it to be



http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/061019-101630



And, here is a HUGH list of search engines that I had never heard of, in case you have something obscure you are searching for



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines



This is how my start page looks, very plain, very simple for use with slow dialup. I thing if you have a fast connection there are all sort of gagets you can add to the page that will be of interest to you but with dialup I like this cause it loads right in without delay and it serves my purpose. When I set anyones computer up for them, like brother, sister, son, nephew or niece this is what they get for an start page.


Gloom



Our weather has looked like this for 2 weeks, overcast all day long and very cold. Today, we are suppposed to have sunshine in the afternoon and up to 50 degrees. I hope that pans out, cause right now at 9:30 am we still have doom and gloom overcast skys and 31 degrees but the sun is beginning to pop through. Overcast skys, cold weather and lots of rainy days depress my outlook. We have not had the rain lately but plenty of the other two. I am ready for warm sunshine.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Mamma



Today is Mama's birthday. This is the Mama I remember. I knew I had this picture on my computer but could not find it. Knowing it would be named Mom, Mama or Hazel something I did a search. The pictures named Mom and Hazel-- were mostly of Mama before I knew her. The pictures of Mama from 1950 on were all named Mama something, not Mom and not Hazel. The picture is not in color but I remember the dress was blue with white. Mama never had many clothes. In all the black and white pictures I have of her, if the picture was taken after 1950, I can remember the color of her dress.

She was a very good Mama...

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Frost on the pumpkin...



if you have a pumpkin, and everything else to boot. It was 10 degrees at 8 am. Nowhere to go but up.