WELCOME

Things that have happened this year

Who is Who/A guide to explain the names used.
Bill-Very good friend of Bruce. Husband of Teri
Carol Richelson-Bruce's sister, married to Gary.
David Richelson-Bruce's nephew, son of Carol and Gary
Gary Richelson-Bruce's brother-in-law, married to Carol.
Sarah-Gary and Carol's oldest daughter
Teri-Very good friend of Bruce. Wife of Bill.

Week of July 16

Bruce finished preparing the website for his friend, then spent most of the day uploading the files and checking out the site.

Week of July 9

Bruce again pretty much spent the week watching Wimbledon and continuing to work on his friend's tour pictures trying to get the website completed.
Sarah is spending some time in San Diego before she goes off to spend some time in Brazil.

Week of July 2

Bruce went to a July 4th barbeque. Bruce went with friends over to Scottsdale, spending five hours shopping and walking the mall. They finished the evening having a Mexican dinner. Gary and Carol came up to Phoenix to look at new cars. Gary decided he was having too much trouble with his van, so he ended up buying a new car. Bruce went from home and all converged to meet up to have dinner. Then everybody came back to Bruce's to look at all the pictures that were taken during their Israel trip.

Week of June 25

Gary and Carol came up to Phoenix to look at new cars. Gary decided he was having too much trouble with his van, so he ended up buying a new car. Bruce went from home and all converged to met up to have dinner, then everybody came back to Bruce's to look at all the pictures that were taken during their Israel trip.

Week of June 18

Week of June 11Bruce has been spending a lot of time editing his friend's Israel trip pictures and comprising a summary of the review of the trip's activities. Saturday Bruce attended an opinion survey interview. A friend's garage door opener broke so bad Bruce could not fix it. Bruce spent the weekend installing it.
Sarah finished her six week law internship in Flagstaff.

Week of June 4

Bruce was on his way to Tucson to drive a friend back to Phoenix when he got a phone call that his friend's flight was late. Everybody in the tour group missed the return flight. He had to turn around and drive back to Phoenix and wait until his friend caught another flight to Phoenix. Bruce got to pick his friend up 3 PM. This was good because it gave Bruce time to get ready to go meet Bill and Teri at a company presentation, have dinner and see Pirates of the Caribbean III.

Week of May 21

Monday the new hard drive for the friend's laptop arrived. Bruce spent the rest of the week trying to get the computer back up and ready. Thursday Bruce attended a Microsoft seminar. His name was the first name picked in a prize drawing. He was given the new Office 2007 Suite (worth about $349). Bruce spent the weekend in Tucson. Saturday the family had a birthday dinner for Sarah.

Week of May 14

Bruce attended another financial seminar/dinner. Bruce voted. A friend's new notebook computer stopped working. The hard drive failed. Bruce took out the bad hard drive and ordered a new one.

Week of April 30

How long does it take to get one's glasses adjusted? Bruce needed to get his glass frames adjusted because they would fall off his face. The technician broke one of the hinges. It took almost two hours to get the frames repaired.
Sarah started a six week law internship in Flagstaff.

Week of April 23

Wednesday Bruce got to attend another financial seminar/dinner. Sunday morning Bruce installed a lighting rheostat for a neighbor. Hewlett-Packard sent Bruce an email informing him that he would receive a gift certificate for one hundred dollars. Wednesday, to Bruce's surprise, Hewlett-Packard sent Bruce not only a coupon for one hundred dollars, but also sent another email giving him a coupon for an additional fifty dollars. The terms of the coupon Bruce thought were too restrictive. Among the MANY terms Bruce disagreed with were the coupons had to used by the end of June, and could be used to purchase items only from the HP Store (too expensive, and restrictive). He called HP up and informed them he would not agree to their terms or accept the coupons. What a shock to HP! Unheard of! After working his way up the supervisory chain, Bruce and HP decided on a check for one hundred dollars.

Week of April 16

The good news-the part Bruce ordered from Sears was tracked down. The first shipment was never made, the second arrived this week. Now Bruce can repair his drill. Bruce spent a lot of time continuing to get the new computer to work with wireless systems. He ordered a wireless router to set up a home system. Bruce has the router is installed but his computers will not talk with each other. Saturday Bruce spent the entire morning with a friend looking for material to use to recover some damaged furniture. Sunday Bruce went with a friend to help her buy new clothes to wear while on her trip next month. Bruce attended another financial/dinner seminar. Thursday morning Bruce signed on, and discovered in his email inbox that there were 141 emails from Hewlett-Packard that had been delivered during the night. During the week Bruce held several conversations with HP personnel trying to track down the source of the situation. For all that, HP offered a gift certificate.

Week of April 9

Bruce continued to work on getting new laptop set up. Thursday Bruce attended a financial seminar/dinner.

Week of April 2

Monday Bruce spent the afternoon mostly getting frustrated. He spent over an hour making numerous phone calls to CompUSA and Sears. With Sears Bruce was trying to track down a part that he ordered three weeks ago. With CompUSA Bruce was checking on a rebate problem. Tuesday Bruce helped a friend buy a spare storage card for the camera she is going to take on a trip, then they took in an early bird dinner special and spent the evening watching evening TV. Bruce spoke to AOL to make sure the new most recent AOL CD Bruce picked up would have security software on it as is advertised on the CD package. He was assured that the security program was on the CD. Bruce spent the evening initializing the new laptop computer, setting up the (Vista) system, and installed one program (AOL) with no problem but no security program was found. A call to AOL was made to find out what was going on. Bruce was told McAfee is not Vista ready yet. Thursday was a day of more frustration. A representative from the city parks and recreation called about Bruce's complaint about not allowing dogs at the city activity Saturday. Bruce laid into him. The more Bruce yelled at the man, the more worked up Bruce got. When Bruce tried to install the TV tuner card driver software on the computer, twice it stopped with the error message that the one and only user is not an administrator. By definition, one user is the administrator. Seven minutes Bruce waited for HP to answer. Well here we go--a test here-a test there, do this--do that. It ended up they did a complete restore to virgin condition (25 minutes), went through the initialization set up again (10 minutes of pressing next and filling in blank spaces), and tried to install the CD again. Same problem, rebooted again coming up as the default administrator. Then the CD software went it. Here is the unusual thing. Bruce switched back to the owner's account and reinstalled AOL so smoothly. This ended an hour and 17 minute conversation with HP support. Then Bruce spent the evening playing with the computer and watching TV on the computer screen. Now Bruce only has to register the system, update the security programs, gather up his notes and clean up the packaging and put away the parts.

Week of March 26

Gary sent Bruce an ad for a laptop computer at a store that is not in his area. Bruce kept checking the Internet for the store sale price. Finally at 1:30 in the morning the website came alive, so Bruce bought the laptop. The ability to buy it on the Internet was important because that meant that Bruce did not have to drive to Tucson to buy the computer at the closest store. Wednesday Bruce attended a class to use the new defibrillators now out in public buildings. Bruce took off Thursday and Friday to take a friend's car in for fix ups. Thursday Bruce took the car in and was told there would not be enough time to get it done in one day. Back again Friday, only this time Bruce left it at the dealership. Saturday morning Bruce went to a city carnival, then in the afternoon he went to a neighborhood picnic for fun, food and games.

Week of March 19

Thursday was another financial seminar and luncheon for Bruce. Saturday turned out to be exciting for Bruce. In the morning he trimmed a palm tree, repaired a trellis, and did several repair tasks for a friend. In the afternoon while he was taking a nap, a neighbor woke him up with a rented electric chain saw in pieces and asked Bruce to put it back together. After putting the parts back together, reattaching and adjusting the chain tension, he tested the chainsaw be cutting down two trees for the neighbor. Then he helped her and her son load a truck with the debris so they could take it to the city dump (which turned out to have been closed earlier in the day).

Week of March 12

Bruce was asked to go with a friend to attend a survey conference put on by KIA (the makers of the friend's new car). They met with two representatives from KIA of America and four engineers from the KIA plant in Korea. KIA was interested in comments made in a survey that was sent in plus any other concerns that have come up since the car was purchased. The interview went on for about an hour and a half. Then the engineers went out to the car, going over the car investigating all the comments, suggestions, and complaints that were brought up during the interview. Each of the engineers took lots (that's lots) of pictures to go along with the actual interview that was videotaped. For their effort they were given a one hundred dollar gift certificate and some trinket gifts. The excitement continued on the way home too. As they were driving home, they would point out to each other restaurants and food places to eat. As they were pulling out of a restaurant they went into and then decided not to eat, the friend ended up in the left turn lane THE WRONG WAY pointing INTO the oncoming traffic. They ended up deciding on and eating Greek food.

Week of March 5

Bruce got nothing personal done Monday. As soon as he got home he got called over by a neighbor, first to install an extension telephone line and jack. Then he was asked to fix an electrical outlet that had no power to it. After those projects were completed he went to work rebuilding a bicycle using a new crankshaft he acquired. It turned out the drive gear was incompatible with the bike chain. Tuesday Bruce attended a neighborhood meeting. Bruce was to attend a defibulator training class but the class was cancelled.

Week of February 26

Wednesday Bruce spent the evening at the city library. Bruce attended a class on digital photography. Carol invited Bruce to come down to Tucson to attend a Purim Carnival. Saturday was not a good day. First Bruce forgot something so he had to return back to his house to get it. Then there was construction that held up traffic on the freeway leaving Phoenix. North of Casa Grande southbound traffic was slowed because of two separate accidents within a half-mile of each other. At least he didn't get caught in the northbound traffic which got backed up for four miles so an air-evac helicopter could land. What a long trip. While in Tucson Bruce went shopping, had dinner with Gary, Carol and David and attended the Purim service and party.

Week of February 19

Bruce spent the week babysitting three dogs while their owner was out of town.

Week of February 12

Monday Bruce spent the day fixing two VCRs so he can watch tapes set aside to be viewed and tossing out one broken too bad to recover. Bruce called a major company to report to them that their website was not responding. They agreed and would work to fit it. Gary made an impromptu trip to Phoenix to shop for computer parts. When Gary completed his shopping Bruce met Gary for lunch. Saturday Bruce took a friend to the airport and ended up watching his three dogs while he was gone.

Week of February 5

Bruce stayed up all night until 3 AM Tuesday learning to program in Visual Basic (VBA), writing, checking out and installing a PowerPoint macro. Saturday started out with Bruce fixing one bicycle and rebuilding another bicycle. Then he went to a "Spring Fling". He picked up a bunch of goodies, had four hotdogs and several sodas. The entire afternoon was taken up with taking part in the making of an infomercial. Sunday both VCRs Bruce uses went bad with the same symptoms. Imagine-a day without watching video.

Week of January 29

Bruce helped a friend take her dogs to the veterinarian for routine examinations. The veterinarian taught his friend how to empty the dog's anal glands. OH! HOW SMELLY!! Another project for Bruce. A friend brought home from work a desktop calculator that she had spilled coffee into and caused it to stop working. Well it works again and is back in her office being used. Bruce finally found a large capacity memory card for a friend's digital camera on sale at a very good price, so Sunday he and the friend went shopping. The card is in preparation for his trip to Israel later this year. Bruce finished reading the many PowerPoint self-help books he checked out to learn PowerPoint. He is now an accredited PowerPoint user. Bruce spent the weekend going to the Glendale Chocolate Festival, working on repairing bicycles and of course watching the Super Bowl. Bruce has had a very painful heal bruise for about a week. It was so bad that there were times he cannot walk. He finally just taped a pad to his foot so he could walk.

Week of January 22

Fix it week. Bruce was asked to install a wall phone in a friend's kitchen. How long should it take to put up a wall phone with all the assembly already in place? Seven minutes (maybe). It took Bruce two days. The phone would not fit because the cabinets that had been installed extended down so far that there was not enough clearance for the phone antenna. Bruce asked a friend to pick up a bicycle inner tube for his bicycle. He carefully explained the size to buy and wrote two paragraphs warning that there were the two sizes not to buy. You guest it. Lo and behold his friend bought the wrong size tube. Bruce had to go back and exchange the inner tube before repairing his bike.

Week of January 15

It was a week of two seminars and free dinners. Bruce went down to Tucson for the weekend but this time he planned out a back road route that turned out to be rather interesting.

Week of January 8

Saturday morning Bruce got to watch a neighbor accidentally run her car into and through her garage door, through the garage, into a refrigerator and push the refrigerator into a wall. Bruce finally finished fixing and reassembling a “fixer up” dresser that a friend bought on discount and asked Bruce to look into repairing it three weeks ago.

Week of January 2

Still more football games to watch. Friday Bruce was to go to the last night of Glendale Glitters, but his date did not want to go. That was ok with Bruce, because that meant Bruce could watch football. The problem was there was no bowl game Friday evening. The weekend can be summarized in one word-football.

Bruce and I wish you a most Happy New Year and hope you had a joyful holiday season!!!!!!!!

Week of December 26

Thursday Bruce was going to go to a financial seminar/luncheon but cancelled to go shopping with Gary, Carol and David who had came up to Phoenix to do shopping. Everybody spent several hours shopping at a home furniture store and at an electronics store for a computer. After dinner all returned home. New Year's Eve was spent quietly. Bruce took his annual New Year's Eve walk. Bruce's activities can be pretty much summed up as "watching football", sometimes several games at once.

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7/27/07