My Computer Is Back!

I've done everything I know to do with this computer. Well, I'm still uploading videos and probably will be into tomorrow. The point is that this machine today as going SO slow, it took several minutes just to bring up my email. Yet, I had done all the things that I have learned to do to get it running back to speed - and yes, I have spent CONSIDERABLE, COPIOUS amounts of time - hundreds of hours anyway - attempting to learn all this nonsense.

I figured to reboot the computer, if that didn't do, time to start fresh.

BAM. Click on a link and it's THERE. Not click on a link and 2 minutes later it's there. I'm quite serious, I WILL re-format this computer and reload ALL of that software back on here before I will tolerate a machine that is running at a snail's pace. It might take a couple of days before all the software is installed and the thing is back on par, but it's a FAR better deal than sitting here waiting eternally for something to happen.

Well, I was at it 4 hours this morning, I got sick of it and left. Went to the guy's house with the plants.

It is a recurring them to find people's homes that have ponds that not only have the ponds, but also immaculate, beautiful landscaping front, side and back yards. This man's house was no different and was QUITE amazing some of the stuff that he had done with plants.

He had 2 ponds. Well, he had 2 pond structures, I should say. The larger one had a beautiful waterfall and I was examining it closely. I was more interested in the construction of the waterfall than I was the plants - and trust me, I was VERY interested in the plants.

He had done, some 15 years ago, what my mind had been constructing for a waterfall the last week or more. I love the visual: let me see something that is already done and I can duplicate it. Well, not duplicate, really, just get an idea of how to construct it, I will come up with my own, original and final, finished product when I am done building it.

I couldn't figure how anyone could build a waterfall in one day if you were going to use cement, which I am thinking is the best thing to not only hold it together, but help make it leakproof. The answer? You CAN'T!! I was thinking that building it would be in many stages, my thinking was correct after asking the guy a lot of questions. I was eating up every word he was saying and it was apparent that he was happy to show off his expertise a little. Nothing arrogant, either, just a very intelligent person giving his views on things in a very humble and - cool - way, really.

Really, I closely inspected his entire setup. His ponds were also done in cement. He had water gushing out of the waterfall, into a large pond that was a cement liner with brick sides. I had seen another pond online like this, absolutely beautiful. The large pond poured out into a small, cement creek. This fed into another small pond, then another short creek and into yet another pond.

The other thing that I learned today was you CAN use a swimming pool pump and filtering system for a large pond. The caveat - at least according to this guy and you can pretty much bet a dude that has been engaged in it for 15 years is probably going to know what's going on - is that it has to be a sand filter, not a paper filtered system. He then went on to add that you have to use different sand for a pond in the filter than you do for a swimming pool - of which he has both.

I gleaned a lot of information from this guy today and I will be getting more in the future as I intend to go back and get 2 more lily plants. I can't wait for lillies to grow large, I will need 2 of them in each pond to help cover the water and help keep the water cool in the summer. I ended up with 2 lillies and - other plants that I don't remember the names of but will be writing them down when I go back. Or, I may be able to find them online through Google images.

LONG time lapse in writing this. A man called about the room. Was supposed to call me at 6:00 pm - it's now a quarter after. Not surprising or deflating. A Census taker came wanting info - I put that packet of papers into a pile of other stuff a while back and totally forgot about it. I was GOING to do it, I really was! He sat here for about half an hour telling me tales of the things that he has encountered while doing that job. I then decided dinner was in order, and my findings are that spaghetti is okay for a diet as long as done in moderation. Well, it didn't take much to full me up, anyway. I am in love with spaghetti sauce, which has no fat calories and few calories beyond that. I had small portions of the pasta - tasty yes, but didn't want to get carried away with the carbs.

Then I cleaned all that mess up - just in case this dude IS going to show up to see the room. The house? Very nice. Well, almost. I didn't get to cleaning the living room carpet. I DID spend a rather large amount of time cleaning the hallway carpet. I went over it 3 times - the final time I put laundry fabric softener in the water in the feed tank - it makes the carpet smell good, dry faster and feel good on the feet. Mary - the meth user that used to live here - has a lot of knowledge about cleaning things and I did manage to glean some of that knowledge from her and keep it, and yes, putting fabric softener in a carpet cleaning machine in a sort of "final rinse" was her idea.

The newest tenant cleaned the main bathroom - and did a very nice job of it I might add, I made the boys clean the kitchen floor and living room while I was standing on a chair, freeing the blades of one of the ceiling fans of dust via the use of my vacuum cleaner with an attachment. I got the new plants potted and in the water. I had no idea how that was supposed to work until the man with the plants explained it to me. Very simple, yes, but when you have nothing in your knowledge data banks to draw from, well, time to ask. The trick is to put sand on top of the soil so the dirt doesn't go flowing all over inside of your ponds. Good idea and done.

Also, the gal side of the trailer tenants finally called today. She was looking for money. Not from me. He - the guy side of that equation - had done a lot of work on some Mastercool coolers for the dude that lives behind me. The dude promised to give him a portion of the profit off of selling the units when sold. He lived up to his promise, came over here looking for them, handed me the cash and asked me to give it to them.

I, in turn, took the cash to the casino, played several rounds of Blackjack and lost all of it. I will let them know what happened to the money when they return. If you don't know me, then I must advise you that the last 2 sentences are total hook-pookey - I would NEVER take someone else's money and spend it. She is coming back here today - wherever she has been staying while her best bud/boyfriend is in the hospital apparently have not been very kind living accoutrements. She DID inform me that $25 of that $80 is mine for last week - they missed the payment. HE worked his @$$ off, in apparent bid to make them stay in good graces with me. He informed me before THAT that he would be late on that week's payment. The problem? I never said a word about it to them. The money that is. I have made it well known that they will NOT be living here for free, but at the same time, I try to be very gracious about it, and also, knowing human nature and the way things go, there will be times when they don't have the money and I am not going to sweat it.

I have not, however, told them THAT. You tell a person that you aren't going to sweat money that they should be paying you and you will find that many people will take HUGE advantage of you. No, I will give them grace when it's needed, but I will not let my "walls" down in such area. There is no good reason I can think of for letting them live here absolutely free, therefore, I won't. They are only paying me $25 per week - enough to cover their usage of electricity. He also does alot of work outside, it really does add up in the end excepting the amount of money I spent on that trailer. Well, I did it as an act of humanitarianism, not a profit-making deal, there is nothing about making money in this venture with these people in the equation, as intended from the beginning. There is also NOTHING beyond buying the trailer itself that is a money-LOSING proposition at this point. I am not spending any more money on it for now and that's it. There is still ample work to be done to the thing, but I am not doing it right now. If I find some carpet for free, I will get it and install it. No, there is no carpet on the floor but, I am not spending money on such right now.

Anyway, the day is drawing short and I need to go out and water my tomato plants and probably sit down, look at the pond, and think. You see, it is very peaceful out there and no-one bothers me. There are no TV's sounding in my ears and it is a restive spot that invokes reflection and thought.

You wanna know WHY I put those ponds in there and have done all the other work over there? I just told you.

G'day.

ben

Figured before I deleted these off of my computer, I would show off a bit of my front yard for the world to see. I am going to take a series of pics of the property - I haven't done that in a while and I have accomplished a lot since the last update.

Saturday

So, I decided to go ahead an upload all the pics I wanna save off of my computer to both Photobucket and Youtube repspectively. Saving it to a flash drive would also work, but, my intentions when I took the pics or videos was to put them on the internet. I have never heard of Photobucket crashing, and unlike JS, I would like to hope that they have everything backed up. Youtube videos probably wouldn't really bother me much if they all disappeared, it's mostly just driving junk and a few videos of the boys doing little skits. Nothing grand there.

But, if you wanna see a computer that is REALLY dragging now, just come takealookit this one, cause' all that uploading is draining this thing's resources. Shutting off video surveillance helped it a little. I'm also wondering if the excessive amount of videos I have stored on this computer isn't a portion of the problem in itself in attempting to find out what, exactly, is slowing this thing down. Once those videos/pics are uploaded, I am going to delete them off the computer and see if it speeds up any - I probably have 30 plus videos at least stored on here.

Unfortunately, it takes next to forever to upload a video and I have 11 in-queue after the current one is done. Lol.

Meanwhile, I am going to go out and takealookit my ponds and see if the water levels are still good. Actually, and thankfully, when one of these ponds has a leak, it becomes quite obvious as the ground next to the leak gets muddy. I had thought you wouldn't really be able to see the water on the surface, surely it would just leech down into the ground, but that isn't the case.

Yesterday was a bit difficult day in dieting as was the day before. I ate a Subway salad - all the veggies with Tuna Fish. I have no idea what the caloric content of the fish is, but I have been eating it all along so whatever the deal, it isn't hurting the diet any. I don't put cheese on it and the only thing added for dressing is some red vinegar looking stuff (NO oil). I had to stop using Ranch dressing - delicious, yes, full of fat calories, definitely and they LOAD that stuff on there when they make a salad or a sandwich. When I came home, I didn't feel like cooking so I ate a spoon of crunchy peanut butter. A few hours later I had another spoon and that was the extent of my eating yesterday. No, I don't believe that's a lot of food or calories. In fact, I am very hungry right now and I don't want to wait too long to eat or I will just get hungrier and hungrier which, in turn, threatens today's caloric intake reduction attempt.

The best thing is to simply stay busy and it keeps my mind off of food. However, my stomach can make some pretty serious noises down there when it starts demanding food be given it.

Anyway, I'm off to the great outdoors to see if the ponds appear to still be good. If they are, I am hoping to get some plants for them today.

C'yall later.
ben