Watt's Up Musings of an original geek

Didn’t do anything today. Just bummin’ around the house killing time. No sidewalk repair today because it was drizzling out and I just didn’t feel like it. Lost my get up and go…

The project continues… The chipping of old bricks is almost done. I’m down to the concrete base in all places. I still have a bit of mortar to remove from the sides of a few bricks. Now I have to begin cutting bricks to fit into the space like a jigsaw puzzle. Wish me luck.

I continued working on the front walk by chipping out the old brick and mortar. Today I bought a grinder and masonry blade to help me. It runs at 11,000 RPMs and cuts the brick like butter. I use it to cut striations into the bricks and mortar so I can chip them out easier with the chisel and hammer that I had bought previously. I have to chip it down to the concrete pad. This means I not only have to get rid of the brick, but also the mortar beneath it. I am slowly getting it done and the grinder was a great help.

Each night this week I’ve been studying Java Server Faces (JSFs) for a potential work project.

Although I could only handle 1 hour of manual labor this weekend until my hands were blistered such that I had to stop, I continued to chip brick out of the front side walk. I’ve now realized that I have to not only get rid of the brick, but also the morter beneath the bricks. I also vacuumed up afterward so you should get a better picture this time.

For the remainder of the weekend I worked on learning Java Server Faces (JSF) by installing several examples and reading tutorials.

I did chores around the house this weekend including mowing the lawn, weeding the front garden, and working on the front sidewalk.

The bricks on the front walk have been breaking up due to the foundation shifting. So I’m in the process of chipping out the mortar and broken bricks. I’ve only just begun. I’ve bought a masonery circular saw, and mortar. I’m planning on creating an expanson gap between the house foundation and the sidewalk. When the house was built I saved a stack of bricks out back for situations like this. Now let’s hope that I can do this job since I believe that brick laying is a skill.

So vacation is over and I’m back at work…

My second cousin, Bert Hutchings, visited us this weekend. He is over on a business trip in Houston. A coworker dropped him off at our house on Saturday afternoon. He wanted to see Austin so we went on a tour provided by SegCity. I’ve wanted to try this and we had a fantastic time on these neat devices. We first had a 30 minute training, then we were off for 2 1/2 hours tour. We glided all over Austin from 6th Street to Town Lake to the Capital to the UT campus and back.

The tour was like a 3 hour amusement ride. What fun. And for once in my life I was 6 feet tall. Today we drove to Houston and toured the Johnson Space Center. We rented audio self-tours, had a tram ride through the center, saw two movies and in general had a good time. Then we dropped Bert at his Houston hotel and drove home to Austin. Although we’re now exhausted we had a great time being host and hostess to him.

A few days ago it struck me that on our recent road trip I saw everyone in Kathy and my immediate family. This included both our parents (Kathy’s mother and my father), all our siblings (Kathy’s sisters and my brother) and all their children (except for Chris in Philadelphia). I even saw one of my cousins (my father’s brother’s son, Andy). Somehow I feel that is quite remarkable since it was totally unplanned.

OK, I finally broke down and got a new desktop machine. I went to Fry’s and bought the cheapest thing they offered. It’s noisy, but who cares. It is a 3GHz P4 with 256MB memory, and a DVD RW drive. It was only $379. I also bought 1GB extra memory for $179. Now I’m in the process of setting it up. I’ve been spending several hours doing this because I’ve got to transfer over all my mail files, address books, installed software, etc. It’s a ugly job, but I’m not installing everything that was on the old machine. I’m being more selective.