WELCOME

Things that have happened this year

Week of December 27

Bruce spent some time up on a friend's roof repairing a broken tile. Friday night Bruce took a friend out for dinner as going away present. Saturday Bruce took a friend to the airport for his two week visit to New Zealand. He is going to dog sit and take care of his dogs while he is gone. He gave the dogs a trim while their owner was away. Bruce took the dogs on his annual New Year's walk. It was dead all over the neighborhood. Bruce watched lots of football games. His friend's cable went out for a while during one of the playoff games. Bruce was so upset he called the cable company and got a credit towards his friend's charges. Talk about multi-tasking. With three TVs going, Bruce watched several football games at once, watched VCR tapes during commercials and doing paper work that have been stacking up.

Week of December 19

Bruce installed a new power supply on a friend's computer, reconnected all the accessories and got the computer back up and going. Bruce went to a combination Chanukkah dinner and birthday party. Bruce ended up setting up the host's new high definition TV, setting up the cable converter box, programming them, watching football games and eating cheese cake. The food was worth five pounds. Bruce was asked by a neighbor to repair a shower faucet. Bruce pretty much admits he bluffed his way through the repair process really not knowing what he was doing. He left the house without water for two days.

Week of December 5

Bad week. Bruce woke up Monday with a bad back. The back continued to bother him all week. Bruce went to the Annual Olsen Christmas party. Great party. He finally got home at 2:30 am Sunday.

Week of November 21

Was it a good holiday weekend? You decide. Wednesday night Bruce got a frantic phone call from a neighbor waking him up telling him there was water all over the floor from the washing machine. He checked; yep, there was. They cleaned up the water. Thanksgiving day started off finding the cause of the leak. Bruce was invited to a co-worker's home for dinner. It was a good dinner with plenty of food, deserts and a good football game to watch. Friday night Bruce and a friend went to Glendale's downtown "Glendale Glitters" festival. Over the weekend Bruce got to fix the washing machine, bought and installed a new second hard drive in a friend's computer, started to put up a neighbor's Christmas lights but found a problem with the wiring that needs to be fixed and he disassembled, cleaned out and then reassembled a neighbor's bathroom sink drain that had been clogged by her hair.

Week of November 14

What a weekend! Between Saturday morning and Monday morning Bruce gained seven pounds. Bruce won a contest from a radio station for a gift certificate for a dinner boat cruise but gave it to Carol and Gary to use.

Week of November 7

Bruce voted. Gary, Carol and David came up for the weekend. Everybody was able to have dinner together Friday evening. Gary called late in the evening so quickie plans were made to meet for dinner. Bruce got a free tee shirt because of the meal he ordered. After dinner everybody out for ice cream and cake.

Week of October 31

Bruce went to a financial seminar so he could get the free meal. Tuesday Bruce went to vote. Problem was voting is not until next week. Saturday Bruce went with some friends to the Arizona State Fair. Bruce entered a pie eating contest. He was a finalist but was disqualified on a technicality.

Week of October 24

Think four hours is a little long to trim grass? Bruce had interruptions and problems during the process. He got interrupted once to help a neighbor with his car's electrical problem and once to help repair a propane leak on the neighbor's RV. While trimming the grass the extension chord went bad and had to be diagnosed and fixed. On top of that, Bruce snapped the shaft bolt from his power saw. After Bruce finally got the grass finished, He attended the funeral of an acquaintance. Friday Bruce went to a friend's house to do his home repairs. He spent the afternoon doing plumbing, general fix-it-ups and programmed his friend new TV and VCR. Afterwards the two of them went out for dinner. When Bruce got home he went to a Halloween party. Bruce spent the weekend fixing the hinges on his screen door.
I was finally returned to Bruce. Bruce spent all week reinstalling programs and customizing me.

Week of October 17

Bruce found out the hard drive he bought last week was the wrong type of hard drive so he had to go back to exchange the new hard drive for the correct type. Bruce returned for the third time to get his new driver's license. Motor vehicle didn't have any computer problems this time but the wait was still an hour even though Bruce had a cut in line slip. Later in the day he passed by a neighborhood house on fire. Within five minutes he saw three fire engines, an ambulance and an investigator's car coming from the south, two fire engines from the north and two fire engines coming from Peoria.

Week of October 10

My problem was finally diagnosed. My problem was I had an intermittent hard drive. Bruce went to a Birthday party. Bruce ate and drank plenty. Sunday Bruce met a friend and his fiancé who were visiting from out of town for breakfast. They all had a wonderful time mostly catching up on everyone's life. Bruce found an ad having a hard drive on sale so after breakfast so Bruce went to buy a new hard drive for me.

Week of October 3

Saturday morning Bruce got invited to the house of one of Bruce's tennis students to get an advanced look at the items she was going to sell in her garage sale because she was going to move out of state. Later that day Bruce went to the birthday party of a friend's father. Sunday Bruce was invited to a BBQ by the person Bruce did a lot of photographic editing for.

Week of September 26

Bruce spent the weekend working to solve his computer's problems. Saturday Bruce spent the evening waiting three and a half hours for AAA to come and pick up a car that Bruce had been keeping in his driveway. After seven phone calls (four by the car's owner and three by Bruce) they just left the vehicle and let AAA pick up the car whenever the tow truck might arrive. Good thing too, because it finally got there at 12:30 AM the next day. There were plenty of upset people.

Week of September 19

Bruce continued to update me to get me back to the status I was before the crash. Bruce went to motor vehicle to get a new driver's license. He waited about two hours and then the computers went down. He went back again the next day. Just as Bruce got to the window to be processed the computers went down again. He will have to go back again. Bruce started early in the morning to get his car ready before taking it for vehicle emission inspection. His car passed. A friend and his wife came over Sunday. She went to a candle party. Bruce and his friend watched sports and then went out to a buffet for dinner.

Week of September 12

Bruce dog sat for a friend who went to Las Vegas for four days to participate in a slot machine tournament. When Bruce picked up his friend from the airport they were so wound up they stayed up until 1:30 AM watching TV. Bruce had a miserable weekend. He was so up tight because I crashed so bad I would not even boot up, not once but twice. Bruce spent most of Saturday and Sunday reloading and bringing me backup to day. In fact it took him until Tuesday to finish getting me back to where I was. During downloads he rebuilt a bicycle from spare parts he had collected for a friend. He did not like the seat, so Bruce replaced it with another one. He still has to raise the seat on it. I even caused Bruce to waste two hours because of a stupid mistake he made moving a file.

Week of September 5

Bruce spent most of his free time watching TV, mostly the US Open. Bruce finally finished processing the portrait pictures that Gary took.

Week of August 29

Friday afternoon a friend called to have Bruce come over to help her empty three bedrooms of furniture stacking things all over where room could be found. Sunday was consumed with helping to clean her house, walls, floors, ceiling fans, etc. and moving the furniture back in slowly (of course rearranging the rooms in the process). Sunday afternoon Bruce attended a neighbor's neighborhood BBQ. In between all the activity Bruce was studying and watching football, baseball and the US Open tennis.

Week of August 22

Bruce went to Tucson for the weekend to visit. On the way to Tucson, he stopped in Casa Grande to visit a friend and see his new house. In the evening, Gary, Carol, David took Bruce to dinner to celebrate again his birthday. Sunday Bruce went shopping, went to a BBQ and went back to Gary's house so Gary could be talked into taking gobs of portraits.

Week of August 15

Bruce forgot about some vegetables he was warming up. He left the heat on, melted a pot, sprayed melted aluminum all over and left several burn marks on the kitchen counter. Bruce spent his birthday drinking a six-pack and watching sports. Bruce set up a friend's birthday party at a Hoagie restaurant. Bruce got 14 friends to join them for a get together at the restaurant. The friend was having such a good time she came up with an impromptu idea of inviting everyone back to her house for ice cream and cake. You can see the pictures at: https://rbisnwmrk.tripod.com/mbp/index.htm.

Week of August 8

Bruce finally convinced a friend to buy a scanner to add to her computer system. She bought a Canon CanoScan 4200F scanner, normally priced for $100, on sale for about $43 net and Bruce installed it.

Week of July 11

Bruce got stuck with finding a truck for a friend who wanted to rent it to pick up some carpet she bought from a co-worker. She thought she could get a truck for about twenty-five dollars. Ha, was she out of date! Bruce shopped around and quotes were in the 60-dollar range. Bruce saved the day by asking one of his neighbors to lend them his big trailer. Sunday morning Bruce picked up the trailer, drove out to the house, loaded the currently available (partial load) carpet, unloaded it into his friend's garage and finished up the morning returning the trailer. Bruce did a pretty good job backing the trailer into its close quarters parking spot. Bruce spent the afternoon at a birthday party. The birthday party was more of a sit down dinner with plenty of food and the normal gift opening.

Week of July 5

Bruce volunteered to fix the air-conditioning on a friend's car. On the way over to Bruce's house the car overheated and had to be towed. Bruce spent a lot of time investigating the reason that the car overheated and discovered that it was a serious problem in a very inaccessible location.

Week of June 27

Bruce installed a new dishwasher for a friend. There were no leaks detected. Bruce's major activity-one word-Wimbledon. Bruce set up a friend to have several successful video conferences with her family who are now living in New Zealand. It was interesting to see how impressed, happy, enthused, overwhelmed, ...(other positive adjectives) she was. Gary and Carol came up from Tucson for the Forth. The day was spent visiting. When it got dark, everybody went down close to where there was a fireworks display to watch the fireworks. David is away attending a camp in California.
Other news: A good friend of Bruce had her car stolen from a shopping mall parking lot.

Week of June 6

Bruce finished up getting his friend's new computer on line. All the programs are loaded (including games and Bruce's Flight Simulator) and seem to be running ok and watched sports. Bruce and a friend were to have supper with another couple who were coming over to bring over their dogs for babysitting then everyone was to go out for dinner. Bruce even called late in the afternoon to confirm the plans to at least make sure he would be there. They really screwed up the evening. Finally Bruce's friend called to ask were they were and found out they had not even left. All the plans for dinner were cancelled and the evening turned out to be wasted.
Circus time. Bruce got a phone call from someone Bruce knows who lost her wallet. Bruce acted as a go between relaying messages between his friend, his friend's mother and others. On top of that the person was to perform in a ballet and was to catch a flight to visit friends in New Mexico. There was an added problem calling the mother because the telephone number that was given to Bruce a long time ago was incorrect.

Week of May 30

Bruce was going off to work and found that a storage rack had collapsed during the night and was tilting over. Fortunately there were things that it ended up leaning against that prevented it from completely falling over. Several glass spaghetti sauce bottles got broke and several cheap, thin aluminum soda cans got punctured. It was a great way for Bruce to start the day off having to clean up the mess. Problems did not stop there. Bruce spent the weekend reinstalling the operating system on his friend's computer again. Bruce could not change the BIOS settings, the standby didn't work and the video card was not recognized. Bruce spent about two and a half hours with Dell to reload the system. Once it was up, he started to reinstall programs.

Weeks of May 23 and May 30 (Take the time to see the pictures of the trip.)

This section covers his trip to Death Valley, Bishop, Mono (pronounce mow-no) Lake, Genona (pronounced GENerator-OH-AH), Reno, Donner Pass, Lake Tahoe, Yosemite Park, and Tehachapi. Death Valley was very different from the last visit there. There was a completely new visiting area at Bad Water with new displays. There was immense vegetation, and the salt area/lake area was vast, immense and certainly spread out so much more than his last visit due spring run off. Bruce said it was like being there for the first time again. Starting with Death Valley, for the next four days he could see snow. In Bishop he went to a nice city park in the evening that was just one block from the motel. Bruce ended up having a great time playing catch/fetch with a dog in the park. In Reno after dinner Bruce took a long walk that included the area along the river. He went to Lake Tahoe so he could show his friend Lake Tahoe again. She is in love with that place. At Lake Tahoe, his friend took out a container of Haagen-Dazs ice cream from the ice chest. It had melted. It exploded and she got chocolate all over the front of her, her hair, face, t-shirt and shorts. Bruce could not get the camera out fast enough to get a picture. They stayed in a very nice cabin/apartment that was near the lake for two nights. They took several long walks at several different places around the lake. At sunset the group went to the beach to watch the sun set over the mountains. When the sun was just above the top of the mountains Bruce made the statement that it would be down in about five minutes. Boy was he wrong. His best guess was the sun went behind the mountains in about forty seconds. Bruce's plan was to enter Yosemite from the east through Tioga Pass, but the pass was closed due to snow, so plans were changed to enter from the north. It was important for Bruce to take his friend back to Yosemite because the last time they went there they got to the park late and there were just a few hours of daylight left. This time it was different. They spent the entire day there sightseeing and (with dogs) hiking.

Week of May 23

Thursday Bruce declared me finished. Things have been hectic since returning from the trip. It took 29 hours for Bruce to add a sound card so Bruce could use his joystick with the computer. First the clerk told him there as only one card in stock that was the right type and had a game port. The card he had bought would not install. Another trip back for help. He was told there was a better card available. He exchanged the first card for the upgraded one. That card also did not install. Bruce went back and was given some technical help. Another try and another failure. Bruce took both the card and me back for the techs to install. Even the techs could not install it. Because the tech had so much trouble Bruce was told to reinstall the operating system again and reinstall the card. Bruce started 2 AM to reload system. It did not install, another failure. Both the card and I were again taken back to the store. Again the tech could not install it. Bruce suggested that maybe the card was bad. Bruce exchanged it, went to the car in the parking lot and swapped out the part in the parking lot. This time the tech got it to go. When Bruce got home he finished reloading the rest of system.
Another Dell problem story. Bruce could not change my BIOS settings. When he called Dell for help, he was told that the computer he was working on was not at the house, but had been returned to Dell and was at Dell. Bruce had to prove it to the tech that I was actually on the desk.

Week of May 15

Bruce called and complained to KIA because a friend was having some more problems with her car. The car dome light would not come on when door was opened. Bruce found out it was a bad switch in the assembly. Bruce wrote down the part that needed to be replaced, His friend explained the problem to them, made an appointment to have it fixed, took the car in, and they agreed that it was the bad part. But there was no replacement part in stock. He was told they would order it, call him when it comes in and told him to go home. Bruce called and complained to KIA. The part came in but the dealer did not call. Bruce called the dealer and asked if the part came in. It had. It had been in several days. Some woman flunky called on a follow up asking how things went. Bad Idea. Bruce really told her off complaining and whining all the conversation.

Week of May 9

 The computer Bruce ordered for his friend finally arrived. Bruce spent five days setting it up and trying to get it on line. Bruce went to a retirement seminar (and got a free dinner).

Week of May 2

After a long and frustrating search Bruce found a computer for his friend. Bruce had the friend apply for a Dell preferred account to be eligible to get an additional discounts. When Bruce went to make the payment he did not have all the account information to use the account, so he used a credit card. Then he called Dell up to transfer the purchase from credit card to the account. He was told only the account holder could do that. Because of an usual circumstance, there was a time constraint, so Bruce woke up his friend at 6 in the morning, gave her all the important information and had her call Dell. She called Dell, was told they had no information about it, transferred her and left her on hold. When Bruce called his friend back to get the story and really got chewed out. That upset Bruce and he took it out on Dell. When he was done (yelling and cussing at several representatives) he was not able to get the preferred account discount (about 18 dollars) but he did get Dell to up a 35 dollar gift certificate up to 50 dollars. The computer is due to be delivered next week.

Week of April 25

Bruce got a free meal for attending another retirement seminar.

Week of April 18

Bruce finally ended his long time search for a new computer for his friend. Dell got Bruce so upset he asked his friend to cancel the order and was told to do it himself. By the time Bruce cancelled the order, the bull he had to go through got him really wrapped him up tight. Warning: Do not mention Dell to Bruce. He is not one of their supporters. Bruce called the car manufacturer for a friend, explained the situation and lodged a vigorous complaint against the dealership. Saturday Bruce went looking at computers on his way to a dinner/birthday party.

Week of April 11

Bruce got a free meal for attending a retirement seminar.

Week of April 4

Saturday Bruce had dinner with Bruce's family after Gary finished doing his shopping. After dinner Bruce and Gary worked on a computer Bruce obtained.

Week of March 28

Saturday Bruce had a good time going to the Renaissance Fair grounds way out east of Phoenix. On the way back home he stopped in to look at a new computer for a friend, but because the computer did not have one specific piece of equipment as part of the system Bruce nixed the purchase.

Week of March 21

Bruce won 4 tickets to the Arizona Renaissance Fair. Bruce and a friend were to go on a hike Thursday and go to the Fair Saturday but because of his friend preparing for her a medical test both were cancelled.

Week of March 14

Bruce got up to go to work Wednesday and could not straighten up. Something had happened to his back. He left work early Wednesday and Thursday, and did not go in to work Friday. Bruce spent a lot of time watching the NCAA basketball playoff and tennis. Sunday afternoon Bruce spent the afternoon looking at computer systems. Two looked very promising, but he chose to pass on them.

Week of March 7

Tuesday was a good and bad day. Bruce found a friend of his that was online. He was so happy that he got to check out his webcam being able to carry on a video conference. It was frustrating and time consuming though because he had to talk his friend through setting it up and all the adjustments that had to be made. During the conference Bruce's voice kept cutting in and out. Further investigation determined the cause was a partially broken wire in his microphone chord that would make intermittent contact as it was wiggled about. The wire must have broken sometime after his last use of it. He never found the location of the break and ended up just replacing a major section of the chord. It was a very frustrating exercise as he soldered the wires in the wrong order because he kept forgetting to route the wires correctly discovered during the process of putting the microphone back together. He thinks he took about four hours to fix a piece of equipment that he probably could have bought for ten dollars. He had plenty of practice soldering and unsoldering. It works now.

Week of February 28

Bruce spent Sunday afternoon looking for a replacement computer for a friend.

Week of February 21

What a week. Gary, Carol, David and a friend of David's came up on their way to the Grand Canyon. Because of bad weather they changed their plans to spend two days sightseeing in Phoenix. Thursday night everyone met for Dinner (after a long wait). Wonderful evening. Bruce had to exchange a USB hub that went bad and did some shopping. Bruce spent a lot of time installing a web camera on me, trying to get it to work and trying to communicate with others. Wednesday Bruce got a free lunch because he attended a retirement seminar.

Week of February 14

Bruce found a terrific ad for a new computer for a friend who wants to upgrade her computer. He had his friend talked into buying it. It turned out that it was an eight hour sale and time had run out.

Week of February 7

Carol spent three days attending a health seminar in Bettendorf (Davenport), Iowa. Carol had a five hour layover in Chicago on the way back.

Week of January 31

Bruce had some excitement Thursday. On his way to hit tennis balls, he and his friend spotted two kids stealing a street sign. Bruce and his friend recovered the dropped sign, called the event into the police, gave a report and returned the sign to a policeman when he met them at the tennis courts. Of course, Sunday Bruce spent the day watching the Super Bowl.

Week of January 24

Bruce got his free tool from Campbell-Hausfeld. Sunday Bruce spent most of the day repairing leaks in a friend's bathrooms.

Week of January 17

Bruce pretty full weekend. Bruce spent part of it continuing to prune trees around his house and the rest of the time pretty much watching the football playoffs and the Australian Open tennis. Sunday afternoon Bruce went over to a friend's house to have dinner, return the dogs he was dog sitting watch the football playoff games.

Week of January 10

Saturday Gary, Carol and David came up to visit the wife of a cousin of Bruce and Carol while she was staying in town. After Gary and Carol did their shopping, they came over to meet Bruce for dinner. Then they went to downtown Glendale to walk around the Glendale Glitters festivities. Bruce finished up a week and a half of tree trimming. He had a humungous pile.

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

Week of December 27

New Year's Eve Bruce picked up a co-worker from the airport returning home, then went over to join friends watching football and celebrating in the New Year. Sunday Gary and Carol made a surprise visit to Phoenix to shop and look around. When they were done, Bruce met them for dinner.

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1/6/06