New Phone

I got this interesting browser for my phone, it's a sort of 3-D kind of interface, check out this video.


It's a little jerky but this is a 2X version of the original video so it's running twice as fast as real time. I really like this phone I have to say, more of a mini computer than a phone since we have AT&T at our house or as I like to refer to them, "No Bars in More Places" phone service, so using a phone for talking isn't all that easy. Since this phone is wifi connected I can use it around the house running off of our wireless system. I just love technology!

Computer age

Yep, we are in the computer age.  When you can make a cryptic representation of your personal data that looks like this

you know you are playing with electrons.  This thing is called a QR code.  If you have a program that reads these things they will tell you what data they hold.  In this case this graphic has all my personal contact information and I made it so I could play around with a new app I got for my phone called a tag reader but unfortunately I have only been able to read one tag and not this one.  I do happen to know what kind of information is in this but not because I saw it on this new app.  Anyway, I just think this stuff is way cool.

Do you like snow?

Well, I do.  I really don’t mind snow as long as I don’t need to go anywhere and it melts off in a reasonable amount of time.  The last 2 days have been steady rain and I was afraid of the flooding potential that brings.  The lake out in the meadow has grown quite large and now most of the huge meadow is under water.  Since the colder air moved in it has all turned to snow and it is piling up quickly with the huge flakes coming down.  I measured 5½ inches when I shoveled it off the deck a little while ago and now there is another 2-3 inches and there are some huge flakes.

You can see one of them in that picture on the top left side.  Yesterday I was out in a pouring rain trying to unplug the culvert going under our driveway.  It had gotten clogged and the overflow had started running down the driveway into our garden area and then into our first pond.  You can see what it looks like today, a major change.  Heavy wet snow like this causes power outages and so far the power has only gone out for a couple of minutes once but we have the generator handy if we need it.  Ya just gotta love living in the mountains!

Back home from the desert

We got back from Saline Valley yesterday after a very nice trip.  We went down to Taft first and stayed a couple of days with Judy and had a great visit and got to see a whole other life.  Taft is in the oil fields and Judy’s sons work there.  We saw all 3 of them and all of their respective offspring.  After our quiet lives up in Greenville sometimes it seemed like a mad house when they were all together but it was a controlled mad house anyway.  The weather down there was very nice and I wore a T-shirt most of the time.  Ya gotta love that this time of year.

After leaving Taft on Monday we drove over the Tehachapi’s into Mohave for breakfast.  I had never been over Highway 58 which was the route we took so it was all new to me.  I was very impressed by all the windmills over on the desert side.  We didn’t get any pictures of them but there were so many you couldn’t count them all.  They must be able to generate quite a bit of electricity there due to the strong winds.

Next it was up to 395 and Olancha  for the last gas stop before getting

on the dirt road to Saline.  The Saline Valley road had it’s usual road closed sign up but we didn’t find any real bad spots.  I was surprised to find that my new Windows phone had good enough cell service at our campsite for me to download web pages and send email.  I could have made some phone calls but I didn’t.  I was able to check on the weather though and I decided to come home a day early on Thursday instead of staying till Friday like I had planned because of the bad weather coming in.  Turned out that it was the right decision since it started snowing this morning and hasn’t stopped since and we have about 3-4 inches already and more coming.  The roads were clear yesterday and they sure aren’t now.  Nice to be home warm and safe!

Walking

We actually got out and went for a walk today and it was pretty nice.  I took this picture from across the meadow of our house.  My new camera has a 12X zoom on it so it brings things up pretty close as you can see.  Notice that you don’t see any neighbors close by… just the way we like it.

On another note I have a Google Voice account that I haven’t used much since I didn’t have much use for it until today.  We have a home phone here but it’s for incoming calls only so I got to thinking that I might be able to make Google Voice work as a way to call out on this home phone.  I tried it out and it works like a champ.  Our cell phones don’t work very well from home since the cell tower is just over the hill from us and we can only make calls from a few spots in our house.  This new ability helps a lot since we have cordless phones so now we should be able to call out from anywhere in the house.

Speaking of phones, I finally broke down and bought a new phone.  I wanted a smart phone so I ended up getting a Windows  phone, a Samsung Focus.  The phone itself cost me 1 cent… yep, hard to believe, huh?  I can’t believe they would actually even charge me for the one penny but they did.  AT&T doesn’t have any unlimited data plans any more so I had to get the 2 gig plan and the total for phone and data with messaging  comes to $70/month.  I would just dump AT&T altogether but there are too many people I know in that network and I can call them for free.  Anyway, a step up in technology for me.  Ya gotta love that!

Winter wonderland?

Well, we got our first substantial snow of the season last night.  Since the elevation here is around 3500 feet I guess it’s safe to say the snow level must be around 3000’.  I also see by the traffic cams that there was some snow that spilled over into Honey Lake Valley which always gets rain shadowed out.  I used to hate that when I was wanting rain and snow and didn’t have anywhere I needed to go but we don’t have that problem here on the west side of the mountains.  There is more predicted for today and the outside temp right now is 33° so whether it’s snow or rain, we shall see.

It’s funny that as the seasons change we seem to grow tired of the scenery and when it changes so drastically overnight it looks so beautiful.  I’m sure that by March I will be very tired of seeing this beautiful scene when I wake up in the morning but for now it’s still very pretty.

Back from Idaho

We got back from Idaho yesterday, or maybe I should say we got back from Utah.  We only went up to Idaho Falls last Thursday for a funeral and the rest of the time we were in Logan Utah so technically we came back from Utah.

 

Anyway, the first night we stayed in Wells Nevada and woke up to several inches of snow on the ground.  Not what I wanted to see on a driving trip.  The interstate was pretty clear but there was a little slush on a couple of the mountain passes between Wendover and Wells.  It could have been much worse I guess so it was all good.

 

On the way home we stayed in Lovelock Nevada and just before we got there we saw the most beautiful sunset so Karen tried to take a few pictures of it with my new camera and here they are.

		Trip to Utah VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I’m trying a new way to post pictures on this blog so let’s see how it works.

 

So we are back in Greenville just in time for a major winter storm which is supposed to be here by Friday.  Our friend Eric is coming here on Saturday and that seems to be the worst day of the week for traveling.  Wouldn’t you know it!