Darkavich's Daily Ramblings

Ok, so yes I have not updated anyone with what I have been doing. So here ya go machine gun style….

stock at work sucks! Down $12 a share because of idiots who don’t understand patent law.

I am learning more php than I could ever want.
MS Bike Tour is about two months away.

Training, Training… I lead training rides for Team Qualcomm and other riders that want to join us.

Working on the yard… Cut the wood from the Torrey Pine tree we cut down two years ago. It yielded almost a cord of wood. Looks like we have wood for 5+ years.

Fixed 5 leaks in the pool. one big one in the skimmer, two in the tile group, one in the light ring and one in the check valve. Hopefully now we won’t loose anymore water.\

Fixed 6 leaks in the pond. The liner has slipped in many places causing the water to over flow the sides. I am going to fix this permanently by moving the liner in a few inches and pulling it up. I should be able to do this without draining the pond. This is how I will be spending this sunday.

Finally had the stump ground out of the hill. I now have a pile of sawdust I need to bag to save for mulch. Unfortunately they didn’t cover the pond, so I have to clean it out of sawdust on sunday.

Dug a new trench for a new water mainline as well as electrical conduit. I want to run this on the other side of the pond to feed all the new landscaping on the hill. (Again more work this sunday).

Started the design and bid process to install all the new hard scape for the front and back yard. I have decided rather than install grass pavers, to just install a driveway on the other side of the house. This will allow us to park the jet ski behind the fence. The paving company came up with some good suggestions on what to do in the front. Just need to see it drawn out on paper. Also trying to decide if we want to put real or fake grass back down. This is primarily angie’s decision in the front. I definitely want fake in the back. The area is so small it would be a pain to have to maintain it. Our neighbor has some in his backyard and it still looks good after 3 years.

I had a possible opportunity to do some teaching at the university. I will keep you all posted if I hear anything.

Ever since I started reading email, I have never been able to keep my inbox down to a manageable amount. I was averaging over 200 messages a day. All this week, I have been able to keep my inbox below 10 messages and I have finished the week out with only 4. I am not sure if this is because replies are easier these days or I am making a strong effort to respond right away and file the messages off.

Work email is hopeless. I average about 2500 messages a day and my current inbox is hovering right around 3900 messages.

So Angie and I finished the book on Sunday at midnight. We listened and read all the way through the weekend with stops to ride the MS Bike Tour training ride and to go see a musical of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

What a book. Some things we expected and others caught us by surprise. And yes, I had a tear in my eye during one part of the book. I have listened to the last few chapters a second time so I can make sure I understood a few things better. It’s always tough to listen/read straight through a book. You don’t always comprehend the entire story.

We also went to see Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix last weekend. We actually saw it twice. Once in the regular theater and once in IMAX-3D. The regular theater was pretty bad. there where ghost effects in the screen where light was reflecting or bleeding through the screen making it very distracting to watch. The IMAX was incredible! The sounds was worth the extra money. The final battle was done in 3-D and you had to wear silly 3-D glasses. I could have done without that.

The movie was really really good, but several scenes are out of order from the book, and some stuff was not even in the book. The things that I really liked or disliked about the movie:

So right now, I am re-reading and listening to Order of The Phoenix again. I am amazed at how much was left out in the movie, but I guess the movie was barely over two hours so that is to be expected. If your not a fan of reading I strongly recommend the audio-books as they are totally unabridged. They are the entire book word for word. I really appreciate that and will always pay for the unabridged version when I have the chance. You should do the same thing.

So I received my audio book last night (couldn’t tell people I had it) and this morning we picked up the book on the way home from the ride. We are about 1/2 way through chapter seven and it has been an exciting ride so far.

I can only imaging that the rest of the book will build up from here like a roller coaster. In the spirit of not spoiling it, I will not be posting any details on my blog. If you want to know, READ the book 😉