Open Source Alternatives

Nearly every commercial piece of software has an open source alternative...some better, some worse. Osalt is a great web site to find those alternatives...

http://www.osalt.com/

The gimp and open office are the obvious, but did you know about 7-zip instead of winzip or sumatra to write files in pdf format?

Father's Day

Every year Lara poses the kids with a sign for a special Father's Day picture. I am lucky. Happy Father's Day to all.

Rails Up

The house railing project is chugging along. I think they look pretty good, if I do say so myself.

The last thing to do is put up the short little stair railing in a few days.

Fruit Smoothies

1 Ripe Bannana
1 cup Vanilla Yogurt
1 cup Frozen hand picked strawberries
10 Blueberries
1 cup Apple drink
6 ice cubes
Blender

Put all ingrededients into the blender. Blend well. Drink and Enjoy.

-Reed, Amy, Daddy and Mommy6/10/2008

Replacing the porch railing

Our porch railing has a bunch of rotted wood and needs painting so I'm replacing it with vinyl railing. In these pictures I've torn down the old railing. Now I have a carpenter and painter coming in to do the hard work. They'll replace all the other rotting wood and then paint the exterior. A couple of the pillars need most of the wood replaced and I don't want to mess with that. Nor did I want to worry about the "load bearing" nature of those pillars. After they are done, putting up the new vinyl railing is a snap.



It's neat to see the house like this. A lot of old housed didn't have porch railings.



Notice the 1 set of new vinyl railings in the back. That was my test run. I started in the back so any screw ups are hidden.

Summer came in strong

Just last week it was in the 60s. Then BAM, today it's 104!