WELCOME
Things that have happened this year
Week of December 27
New Year's Eve Bruce picked up a co-worker returning from Santa Fe then went over to join friends watching football and celebrating in the New Year.
Week of December 20
Gary and David came up to shop and pick up Sarah at the airport. It was a frustrating effort. Sarah did not inform anyone what the itinerary was; no flight number, departure city or time. Furthermore Gary and Sarah did not have their cell phones with them. Gary thought Sarah was coming in from Reno, but she was coming in from Sacramento. Bruce acted as a command center. Gary would leave messages with Carol; Bruce talked to Carol, then Gary would get the information relayed to him by Bruce. The breakthrough came when Sarah luckily called Carol just before boarding with the relevant information.
Week of December 6
Bruce went out for dinner with friends. Then everybody went to downtown Glendale to see the (Glendale Glitters) Christmas lights. Saturday evening went to a friend's Christmas party. Bruce made a personalized calendar for a friend with each month having a different picture and gave it to her as her Christmas gift. She really likes it.
Week of November 29
Bruce spent Saturday watching football games. Then in the evening Bruce went to his company's Christmas party. He got dressed up too. Bruce had a good time eating seven 4" square steaks, gambling with "funny money" that was handed out for the people to gamble with and having numerous drinks that were 75% Scotch and just some 7-Up. Bruce said the drinks were so strong he had to thin them out as he drank them. Bruce thinks there may have been as many as a thousand people there.
Week of November 22
Thanksgiving day Bruce stayed home to watch football all day. Friday Bruce went to an electronics store because he was interested in it's a one-day sale after watching the UA/ASU football game. The parking lot was at least 98% full and the store was packed. He ended up parking in the back of a neighboring building next door. He wanted to get a flash drive. When he got there the peg for the drive was empty. He went to the help desk and asked if they had any more in the back or storage. The salesman reached under his desk/podium and pulled one out. There were no rain checks being offered so he lucked out. The checkout line was so long that when he when to check out he had to find the end of the line. There was an employee with a sign on a pole that read "Line ends here." The line snaked from the checkout area through the aisles all the way across the floor. Even though the line was long, it moved very fast; he estimates he waited in line maybe 6-10 minutes. Travel time, looking and checkout ended up taking almost 2 hours.
Saturday Bruce went over to a friend's house to help him set up and use a computer program. Then he went to check out a computer store, then went back to the same store he went to yesterday again) to get another item because Friday morning Bruce used a battery powered device. In the afternoon after having fought the crowd at the store, he used the device again. Dead battery. That is why he had to go back to the store Saturday on his way home to get another battery. Why couldn't the battery have crapped out in the morning so he could have got the battery at the same time he bought his new jump drive?
Sunday morning Bruce went to see the Phoenix Auto Show held at the Civic Center downtown Phoenix. About noon Bruce met Gary, Carol, David and David's friend and they all went for lunch. After lunch they went back to the auto show and finished looking at all the cars.
Week of November 8
Friday afternoon Bruce left for the weekend and drove to Tucson for big weekend festivities. Friday evening there was a family dinner. Saturday morning was the Bar Mitzvah service for David. Bruce was asked to hold and carry the Torah during part of the service. Saturday night there was the Bar Mitzvah party that was held at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. During the second dance Bruce reinjured his knee again. The weekend was capped off by Carol's Sunday morning brunch Birthday party. Bruce ended up gaining 7 pounds.
Week of November 1
Bruce had to wait about 5 minutes for a voting booth to become available.
Saturday afternoon Bruce went to a company picnic. He spent over twenty minutes trying to find the picnic because of bad directions. The picnic broke up about 4 PM so the people could go to the 4:30 ASU football game. Bruce had tickets to go to the football game. The traffic started getting heavy about 5 miles away from the stadium. At half time he left the game to go to a surprise birthday party. All day Bruce had been feeling stiff. He left the party a little before the party ended because he thought he might be getting the flu. Sunday Bruce felt fine, no flu. It turned out to be a full weekend.
Week of October 11
Sunday Gary, Carol, David and a friend of David came up to shop. The morning was spent looking at computers and computer parts. The afternoon was spent trying to find a suit for David. The shopping took all afternoon. After shopping, everybody went out for a bite to eat. The computer that Bruce clobbered got fixed and returned to Bruce Wednesday. Everyday Bruce has been spending hours reloading program software, tweaking the system and trying to fix some of the small problems that are popping up.
Week of October 4
Bruce finished up cleaning up the new hard drive he installed on a friend's computer. All was fine until he reinitialized the computer. Somehow the CD drives disappeared from the system and the computer will only boot in the safe mode. Deep trouble.
Week of September 20
Bruce went to Tucson for the weekend. Among his activities were making hotel reservations for David's Bar Mitzvah in November, watching David's Tae Kwan Do work out and practice and having Gary install an other hard drive and an other bank of memory in a friend's computer.
Weeks of August 30 and September 6
Bruce pretty much spent most of his time watching sports (football, tennis and baseball).
Week of August 23
Bruce's friend that has been recuperating by playing computer games killing time now that she is home has been playing this one game she likes over and over for a long time. Actually it is one of her favorite games. It is one of those games she would have to download it again and again, over and over and get only one hour play on it before the game would expire. Then Bruce would have to remove it so she could take 15 minutes to redownload it This routine was cluttering up her computer's registry and the computer's small hard drive. Bruce recommended that she switch to playing the same game directly from the Internet. That only ties up the telephone line for hours at a time. Bruce searched the Internet and found a patch to make the game free. Then Bruce found two games he had on his computer. One program he had download a long time ago and one he installed as part of a collection of games. He brought the games over to his friend for her computer. The downloaded game installed just fine, but the collection game didn't run. So he went to work on it, fixed it and got it to run also. Now his friend has four games she can play on her computer.
Week of August 9
Bruce was asked by the friend who had recent surgery to take her to her family doctor. He often helps her recover by getting out of the house to shop for about one hour in the afternoon and walking with her in the evening.
Week of August 2
Bruce's friend finally got to go in for her elective surgery that was scheduled for back in June. The surgery was a stomach reduction procedure. The clinic she chose specializes only in stomach surgeries. Due to oversights, tests and retesting the surgery was rescheduled back from August 5. Check in was set for 9:30 am, surgery at 11:30 am. Wednesday about 4:30 PM the doctor’s secretary calls and tells Bruce the times have been moved back to 11:30 AM and 1:30 PM because the patient before her may go long. Thursday Bruce is waiting sitting around killing time ready to go. Bruce gets a call from the hospital asking where his friend is; informing him that she was scheduled for a 9:30 check in. Bruce says “No she isn't!” Silence on the other end. Bruce in his own way explains the information, giving names, dates and times (the take names, kick ass technique). The person regathers herself and asks if they can make it down in a half hour. She informs Bruce the doctor rearranged the order of his surgeries. Everybody got told but his friend. His friend and Bruce are out the door as Bruce hangs up the phone. After Bruce dropped his friend off Bruce went over to a friend’s house (Bill Evens) and spent almost the whole day working on Bill's computer installing hardware and software and teaching him the finer points of Flight Simulator 2004. Bruce took a break in the mid afternoon to go back to the hospital. The receptionist said his friend was on the 6th floor. Bruce got there and she was lost. He tracked her down on the second floor. She was unable to receive visitors at the time. Bruce left to join Bill, Terri and two children staying with them for dinner. He went back to visit again about 8 pm and got to stay with her about 20 minutes. She WAS REALLY OUT OF IT! Full day. Friday Bruce went back to the hospital to visit about 6 in the evening. Saturday PM: His friend got lost again. Bruce delayed calling until he thought she might have been transferred out if ICU. He called ICU to see if she had been released to her room; he was told she went to room 610B; he called the switchboard and they had her at 607B; nobody answered the phone; he called the switchboard again and this time asked for 610B; again nobody answered the phone; he called the switchboard again and this time asked for the 6th floor nurse's station; they said she was in 607A. AND SHE WAS! The staff wanted her up moving around to help exercise her lungs so he helped her walk the hallway of her floor (rectangle) several times. Sunday Bruce got a phone call in the morning that Dr #2 in charge had come in to check on her and told her one, maybe two more days before going home. About 2 hours later Bruce gets called again. Dr #1 in charge walked in, examined her and asked her if she wanted to go home. When she said yes, he said ok and released her. Bruce got to the hospital to bring her back home about 1:45.
Week of July 19
Gary and Carol stopped in to visit as they passed through Phoenix going to Fry's electrons to shop on their way back home from picking David up from his camp stay in California. After some planning and replanning to get the details down, Bruce met them for dinner. Bruce also invited his friends Bill and Terri to join them at dinner. What a good time they all had. With so many people there was plenty of conversation topics to discuss. Bruce spent the weekend doing yard work and of course watching sports. Snoops stayed over again. Snoops owner called Sunday morning at 5:30 saying he was already on his way over to drop off his dog for the several days. Bruce ended up taking care of the three dogs.
Week of July 12
Wednesday because there were no sports on TV Bruce went shopping to compare prices, and then cashed in a coupon for a big pizza which he brought back to the house for dinner.
Week of July 6
Bruce spent most of the weekend watching baseball and Wimbledon tennis. Bruce was to go out for dinner but his date stayed out too late with her friends and got home too late to go out. Plans were made to go out for dinner Sunday. Sunday she was so lazy that she never got dressed to go out which would have caused Bruce to have to go out and pick up takeout. Bruce decided to just cancel the whole thing. Lucked out there. One of Bruce's friend got a gift certificate from Jiffy-Lube corporate headquarters because of the complaint Bruce sent in complaining about the problems his friend had a few weeks ago (see Week of June 21).
Week of June 28
Another week of Bruce ingesting tennis from Wimbledon. Because there were no sports on TV Friday evening, Bruce went out on a dinner date and spent the evening shopping around. His date spent seventy-four dollars spent on DVDs. Saturday and Sunday Bruce spent watching Wimbeldon tennis. Sunday after tennis everybody including me went to Tucson for the holiday weekend. Oh what a weekend!! Bruce was to meet Carol at Bruce's parent's gravesite. Carol never showed up. Then they rescheduled to meet at Bruce's Parent's home. Carol and Gary wanted to show Bruce what was being done remodeling the house. Bruce even took roundabout path sightseeing and still got to the house before anybody else and had to wait in the heat. There is some heavy duty serious remodeling going on. Everybody spent about an hour and a half at the house then everybody went to have lunch. Bruce, Gary and Carol went to go have dinner. After dinner everybody went to the top floor of a parking garage to get a 360 degree view of all the fireworks set of in the Tucson area. They also had arranged to meet Bruce's old friend Frank there (which they did find). It was estimated that there were over twenty different locations that fireworks were set off from. After the fireworks were over the entire group went back to Gary's. Monday was a full and exciting day. It started of about 5 AM when Bruce went for a walk. Bruce found a wash to walk down. Bruce spotted a coyote. Bruce tried to scare it away twice but the coyote actually came down into the wash and even got as close as thirty feet away. It was so close that Bruce could see the pupils in its eyes. At the same time everyone was eating breakfast Bruce got Gary to fix a bunch of nagging problems with a computer. On the way back from Tucson Bruce stopped in at a friend's house for a July 5th BBQ and swimming. Bruce did some cooking but mostly watched the baseball game. We got back safely about 9 PM. Bruce took care of a 2 year old Dachshund called Snoop, owned by one of his co-workers who went back to visit still in Oregon. The coworker didn't make it back before we all went to Tucson, so he was left alone. He wasn't there when we all got back so we figure the owner finally got back in town and came over to get his dog. That was the week/weekend that was!
Week of June 21
Bruce got a gift certificate sent to him from Blimpies as the prize he won from a contest he entered last month.
Gary and Carol left Monday to take David to a month long stay at a camp in California. Gary and Carol spent
the week in California returning Friday. The timing didn't work out for everybody to get together. Gary and Carol
will be going back to California to pick up David from camp about July 20. Sunday did not start off being a great day. Bruce went out to check a friend's car battery. To start with there was a flat tire caused by a sheet metal screw going through the tread. Bruce changed the tire. After finishing changing the tire he checked the battery. Bad news here. Bruce found proof that the battery was never opened and therefore the level could never have been checked. First of all, there was dust still on the battery caps. Secondly -- he randomly chose two cells to investigate. One cell was low; the other cell was very low on water. Later in the day before his friend left to drive all the way to Gilbert for an all day house warming and pool party Bruce gave the friend a briefing and lesson in car maintenance. On the way to have the tire be repaired the friend went back to Jiffy Lube to complain about the battery water level that was to be checked. Well the guy tried to snow her that the battery was check. They tried to explain that the battery was charged, but she unloaded on him about battery maintenance, really acting like a knowing auto mechanic.
Week of June 14
Thursday Bruce didn't have to hit with his friend so he had the afternoon available to take a friend to see a
cardiologist to get the results of the missing series of tests. Actually the reason for driving his friend was to be
able to use the carpool lanes to make the trip move along faster. Most of Saturday was spent shopping and
doing errands. The weekend was spent doing yardwork and watching sports. Bruce is looking forwarded for
Wimbledon next week. Bruce got a gift certificate sent to him from Blimpies as the prize he won from a contest he entered last month.
Week of June 7
Bruce's weight got down and broke into the high 180s for the first time since December 2001. Gary and Carol are going to California for a week's vacation. They are taking David to a weeklong camp again this year.
Week to the May 31
Monday (Memorial Day) in preparation for a friend's scheduled surgery Bruce and his friend went out for Mexican food complements of the new car dealer. Tuesday his friend went for her presurgery presentation in preparation for her surgery scheduled for Wednesday. In the process of going over the presurgery checklists the medical staff determined that one test had been overlooked and therefore surgery was canceled. Bruce tried for several days trying to get his new photo card reader to work. Wednesday after work Bruce decided to take his bike on the bus to go back to the store where he bought the photo card reader to determine if the unit really was defective or not before returning it if it was defective. Well one set of circumstances led to another and the next thing Bruce knew he was riding his bike to the shopping center. The technician there got the unit to work with absolutely no problems. It turned out that there were two conditions that led to Bruce not being able to get the card reader to work. The biggest reason was that the instructions for the device were incorrect. The user's manual showed and explained the card being inserted incorrectly. Bruce even showed the manual to the technician. The other problem was Bruce himself. He was expecting a different presentation from the reader when he accessed the device with Windows Explorer. Even knowing that the device worked Bruce still had troubles with the device and kept getting error messages. He kept experimenting until he hit on the magic combination. By luck and experimentations (really fooling around) the device opened up a folder and it was all downhill after that. An interesting thing happen to Bruce. He was out riding his bike and was taking down the license plate of a van that he has noticed had been parked for almost a week at the same spot. Bruce's thought it might possibly have been stolen and when then abandoned. He was in the process of writing down the license plate number to call into the police when somebody just happened to drive by and explained that the van had been investigated and already reported. Now that the French Open is over Bruce won't be spending as much time in front of the television set. He spent a lot of time the last two weeks watching the French Open on television.
Week of May 24
What a surprise! Gary Carol and David made a surprise decision to come up to Phoenix Sunday so Gary could return some parts that he had bought a couple of weeks ago that were no longer needed. Well after several changes of plans Sunday ended up something like this -- Bruce went shopping at several different stores. Bruce ended up buying a photo media card reader so he can process digital pictures from other people's cameras. Then Bruce drove on into Tempe to have dinner with Gary, Carol and David. Bruce went new car test driving. He test drove several different cars. One of the new car dealers was offering free dinners for test drive so Bruce picked up a free dinner coupon.
Week of May 17
The week was just one project after another. Bruce was busy all week. Bruce was all set to take the new bicycle to his friend's house when he discovered something was missing. He had overlooked the entire front gear shifting mechanism. He was able to get all the need parts from his collection and complete the bicycle. The plumbing repairs appear to be completed. There was a seepage from the one bathroom faucet that Bruce did not replace. Turns out that it was a bad internal seal inside the stem. No leaks from any of the faucets or drains. Now he can start putting the things back in place under the bathroom and kitchen sinks. Lots of shrub trimming. Some of his bushes were growing out interfering with the sprinkler system so Bruce is going around the yard cutting back the vegetation. Friday Bruce attended a Programming class. He really liked it. Bruce had Sunday evening all planned out to watch TV. He fell asleep at 5:30 and slept through the night.
Week of May 10
After several tries, Bruce rebuilt the new bathroom faucet, put in new seals and the dripping finally stopped. That finally completed the bathroom project. Bruce attended a financial seminar Tuesday and got a free lunch out of it. Wednesday was spent putting in a new kitchen sink faucet. Of course there were complications. He could not get the old faucet apart in order to replace the bad parts which is why he had to buy a new one. Then the supply lines were not as long on the new one as they were with the old one so another trip was required to by new supply lines. Then while he was under the sink he rebuilt one of the leaking shut off valves. Qwest lost Bruce/s payment. After several phone calls, a fax and some more phone calls things seem to be fixed. Saturday he spent most of the day building a bicycle for a friend from his collection of spare bicycle parts. During the process he split four tires he had in his inventory that had rotted due to heat. He ended up with a good sunburn on his neck. Saturday night Bruce got called to render first aid to a friend who sliced her finger (again) open with a knife. She was alone and she called Bruce to help stop the bleeding and take care of the wound. Bruce was out partying and found out about it because the neighbor left a message on his answering machine asking for his help. Sunday Bruce met Gary, Carol, David and a friend of David's who came up from Tucson at the Phoenix Zoo for an all day tour and picnic. Everybody went home full of food, tired and thirsty. Bruce had his car overheat. Fortunately he was able to refill the radiator with water. He tried to make it all the way home but the car stopped about a mile away from his house. Again he had to refill the radiator, was able to start the car and made it home ok.
Week of May 3
The entire weekend was taken up by Bruce having to replace a bathroom sink. Of course nothing seemed to go right. It was a good example of the rule "the exact replacement doesn't fit." The sink was the correct size but was of much better quality, far heaver and deeper. Therefore all the supply lines and the drain had to be modified. Then after instillation a brand new faucet leaked. Bruce will get a replacement faucet next week. He still needs to check for leaks and clean up. Another injury. Thursday while warming up a friend before his match Bruce sprained the interior collateral ligament in his right knee. Friday while walking his knee just gave out and Bruce ended up collapsing into a chair.
Week of April 19
Bruce has started a gravel moving project. Bruce went out for breakfast with a friend Saturday morning and afterward went looking at what is available for landscaping. Saturday night Bruce took a friend to the hospital to visit her best friend who was taken to the hospital and then moved into ICU. During a gap in the visiting hours Bruce, his friend and the friend's husband went to have dinner. After dinner they went back to the hospital for the evening visiting.
Week of April 12
Bruce went to eat at a new restaurant that opened in his neighborhood.
He went to cash in a coupon and found out it was not good for the weekend. He didn't read the small print. Boy that pissed him off and started his day off wrong.
Week of April 5
Bruce while moving something heavy and bulky slipped on some wet cement and sprained his knee. Bruce also shaved his mustache and beard.
Week of March 29
Bruce went with some friends to a shopping outlet mall.
Week of March 22Bruce received an invitation to a party celebrating Sarah's return to Tucson from Japan and Asia. Bruce waited three days for information so he could make plans for the weekend. At first he wanted to go down Saturday, stay over and return back Sunday. While waiting for information about the party, Bruce decided he would only go down and make a round trip out of Saturday. Finally Bruce called his sister Carol Friday night to get the necessary information about Saturday and to tell Carol what he had decided. Later that night another plan was made. Blow it off; just not go down at all. Saturday morning Bruce called and told Carol he would not be attending. Saturday Bruce worked on his yard all day. Sunday Bruce watched tennis, baseball, and basketball. Late in the day Bruce got and invitation to go out to dinner to join 5 other people to celebrate a friend's birthday. Well that took care of Sunday.
Week of February 29
Bruce was studying a new computer book. It was a quiet and normal week until Saturday. About 7 AM Bruce got a phone call asking him to take a friend to the emergency room. She had a lot of pain and both her eyelids were swollen. They waited an hour and a half to get in. The problem was a scratched cornea. The doctor thought it was caused by a piece of dust or sleep crust that got in and worked it way around as the eyeball moved during the night. Total time to get back home - 4 hours.
Week of February 23
Thursday Gary, Carol and David stopped in to visit. Everybody went out to eat. They were on their way to Las Vegas for the weekend. Bruce finally got to cash in a gift card he had had since sometime like the middle of last year. Carol ordered desert. It was so huge that it fed the whole table and still had a lot left over for Bruce to take home. Saturday was a little unusual. Bruce went with a friend to the east side of town to a hoagie place his friend really likes. When Bruce got back home he pretty much sleep the rest of the day away.
Week of February 16
Bruce was asked to install a new CD-RW for a friend in his friend’s computer. Bruce installed it. Well sort of. After installing it, reconnecting the accessories it would not reboot. Boy was Bruce worried. He took the computer apart again and discovered he left off the power connector. He put the computer back together, reconnected the peripherals again and again it would not boot. This time Bruce was really worried. He uncabled it again, took it apart and this time he found out he also forgot to attach the data cable. This time he carefully double-checked all the connections, put it back together, reconnected all the accessories and this time it rebooted. Bruce then finished up the job by installing the CD-RW support software. Saturday evening Bruce went to a friend’s wife’s birthday party.
Week of February 9
On Valentine's Day Bruce went out on a date to an Indian food restaurant. Bruce finished up repairing a floor lamp that broke earlier this week. It took him three days, mostly caused by having to make trip after trip going for parts that he could use for the repair.
Week of February 2
Bruce went to Tucson for the weekend. The purpose of the trip was the unveiling of Bruce's Parent's Gravesite. On the way out of town Bruce stopped at a friend's house for lunch. While Bruce was there he helped his friend organize and clean up his computer, then installed FS2004 for his friend. Saturday night everybody started out to eat Indian food but the waiting line was huge, so the group ended up at a buffet. Bruce took over four hundred dollars worth of computer parts and accessories to Tucson to give to Gary. Bruce also wanted to have Gary help him fix some hardware and system problems Bruce is having with me. Gary was so busy with preparing for the unveiling and meetings Bruce and Gary really never got to spend a lot of time together.
Week of January 26
About the new table saw: Bruce finally finished up reconditioning the table saw he was given three weeks ago. Bruce installed new blade on the table saw he is reconditioning. He thought that would complete the reconditioning. New problem. Bruce put the blade on the way he expected the blade to rotate. That turned out to be in the wrong direction. He reinstalled the blade. It turns out he discovered that the motor turns the wrong way. Now he has to figure out what is wrong with the wiring so he can get the motor to reverse direction. Bruce went to a Coyote hockey game with three other friends. Dull game. Coyotes lost 2-1. Bruce spent three days installing a new garbage disposal for a friend. Saturday Bruce and a friend took her dogs for a ride and went out looking at web cams. Nothing special, just looking. Then they went to a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner. All was well until Bruce stopped to help some people push a car out of the road. Two Boxer dogs attacked the dogs, even chasing the dogs through the car. It was a real panic. Bruce's friend went hysterical. Bruce called the police but his friend was screaming so bad he had to get out of the car to talk on the phone. It took Bruce all evening to calm her down. Bruce even thought it was a good idea to request for a paramedic to come over and talk to his friend in order to try to calm her down. After examining the dogs it appears they are both are ok. They actually seem to be better than their owner. It was not a good end to an enjoyable day.
Week of January 19
Bruce finally finished putting back together the table saw he was given three weeks ago. Bruce planned to go To Flagstaff for the weekend but the trip was cancelled because there was no new snow.
Week of January 12
Since there was no football Saturday Bruce and a friend took her dogs into the boonies way out northeast. Bruce surprised his friend by stopping off and having lunch at a steakhouse Bruce had gone to way back in 1976. On the way back into town they stopped at a casino. Bruce walked the dogs while his friend lost her money.
Bruce is almost done with reloading his friend's new(er) computer. Bruce and I wish you a most Happy New Year and hope you had a joyful holiday season!!!!!!!!
Week of December 29
Bruce was called for jury duty but was told his group did not have to report. New Years eve and News Year day were quiet with Bruce watching football bowl games. At midnight New Years Eve Bruce went for a walk around the neighborhood and watched fireworks.
[Return to Home Page][Visit Bruce's Computer][Visit Bruce]
4/8/05