To Whom It May Concern...

We took a vacation. It was the first week long vacation that didn't involve relatives (no offense) since our honeymoon. We went to Virginia. I'll like to the pics now: http://mark.phillk.net/gallery2/v/mkenyon2/Massanutten+Trip/ Sunday - Washington DC Zoo . Lot's of cool animals. Monday - Veg out... we drove around a bit and ate at Outback, but that was it. Tuesday - Tubing and more vegging out. Maybe a board game... definitely eating! Wednesday - Shopping The guys played Racquetball , not much else. (Isn't vacation great?!) Thursday - The guys went Snowboarding !!! My first time in 10 years. It was fun, but sadly, no pictures. Later to the meeting. Friday - Went to the pool, played more racquetball. Vegged out. Finished the second package of Oreos. Saturday - Steph and I went on the Skyline drive for a bit. More movies and vegging out. Sunday - Time to go home, but we didn't want to. So, let's swing by Baltimore and find Dave and Buster's . The girls did m...

I walked in to get some water, and there was a puddle of coffee on the counter, dripping down onto the floor. Somebody had filled the water and filter, but did not put the empty pot on, instead, they left the half full pot on... 'Cleanup in aisle twelve!'

I've got my Digital Picture frame working at last!!! So, I used DSL (Linux), a Dell 233 CP laptop, and feh. I used mostly the scripts and instructions from this guy: http://www.thewares.net/item/33 I did not use the built in sound card, but added a USB sound card. I added an external momentary button to trigger the on/off functionality. I added an external DPST switch to turn the 'built in' speakers on and off. They are the speakers that were in the laptop, and with a few small holes in the back, they come through loud and clear. I took the guts out of some unpowered PC speakers that allowed for an external 1/8" jack if I want. I put that on the side, but if I did it again, I'd make my own PCB board and mount the jack on the back. I mounted the dongle from the network card so that it is accessed from the back. I may revisit WiFi at some point. I put a DC power jack on the back, and cut the power supply cable, wiring it to have the nice jack on the back, and it'...

We love the movie The Princess Bride. Here's a little trivia: http://www.neatorama.com/2009/01/11/movie-trivia-the-princess-bride/ Also, in regards to the muppets: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/21354

This is pretty good advice for anytime you would wear a suit. I think I'll print out a copy and pin it on my closet door. http://artofmanliness.com/2008/12/18/interviewing-in-recession/

With a few tweaks, this should be standard rule-of-thumb for all of us. How to Be the Perfect Party Guest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mBDQXWflbM&eurl=http://io9.com/5103883/what-if-star-wars-had-happened-a-long-time-ago

To all my friends out there who still follow this and are fathers, here is a nice post that explains what fathers need to teach their sons. (Besides what the bible says, of course.) http://artofmanliness.com/2008/12/02/teaching-my-son-to-be-a-man/

What is twitter? Instead of a whole blog post, it fills in the blanks. It fits in between blogging and instant messaging. Check me out: http://twitter.com/mkenyon2

I read Art of Manliness quite regularly. Here's a nice article about being a house guest, though I don't think you need to send money for food all the time. http://artofmanliness.com/2008/11/16/manners-etiquette-house-guest/

This article is nice for anybody who is going to have house guests. http://artofmanliness.com/2008/11/17/how-to-be-a-gracious-host/

So, what has been going on with the Digital Picture frame? I gave up on sound, sort of. I got a cheap ($9!!!) USB sound adapter, and guess what, it works with DSL. So, let's look at my expenses so far? New laptop keyboard 64Mb RAM chip PC Card Network Adapter USB Sound Adapter Plus a media card reader I've been able to get a slideshow and music on DSL, so I decided I was ready to rip it apart and stick the guts in an actual frame. I'm not done yet. I have the guts sitting in the case, but the cables hang out the back. I'm in the process of finishing the back by putting power and sound buttons, as well as jacks for connections. This is the detail work. But you can see my progress and the laptop and media card reader sitting in the case running here: http://mark.phillk.net/gallery2/v/mkenyon2/DigFrame/ Enjoy and thanks.

Take a look at our album (link below) to see the progress from this: to this: LINK: http://mark.phillk.net/gallery2/v/mkenyon2/Breakfront/ Enjoy

We will be posting pics of our recent project, repainting the china hutch, or as some call it, the break-front. (Part of the reason I hadn't posted the pics of the fish.)

I'm finally getting them up. http://mark.phillk.net/gallery2/v/mkenyon2/Camping08/100_1611.JPG.html"> I finally got around to adjusting them (size wise) to get them posted.

I'm not sure I'd trust it as I used to, but I'm getting the data off. Here it is, in process:

What is a Dongle? A dongle is a small piece of hardware that connects to a computer. Dongles stick out in places where they can get broken. Like when you put your foot down near a computer on the floor. This was my main Thumb drive, where I kept all the little utilities I could carry from PC to PC. It had data files, and all sorts of other goodies I used frequently. Of course, we Montoya's , er, I mean Kenyon's, have never taken defeat easily. Let's see what we will have to work with: Hmm... I don't think anything got shorted, I think it just snapped cleanly off. Nothing was being read/written, so we should be good. Not a lot to solder back together, but I may be able to make do. I may also be able to pick up another connector with good terminals. Anybody ever attempt this before? This is a broken 2Gb Kingston DataTraveler if anybody's googling for it. I'll report my results.

Well, we got to promised land Thursday afternoon, and got right away setting up. All was well, we set up our tent, our food tent, and then my brother got there with his wife, and we helped them set up. 2AM, my wife’s brother and his wife got there, so I gave them the extension cord and fell back to sleep. Friday was a beautiful day. The sun was out, and Chloe was having a good time. We hadn't staked down our tents yet, so we took care of that. The ground there was especially hard, so our arms got tired. But we did it. After that we decided to go for a bike ride and swimming. Steph stayed at camp with Chloe. It was 4 miles each way, and uphill both ways as well. We made it home, got something to eat and did some fishing. Finally got back to camp, and toasted some marshmallows. Generally, a pretty good day. Saturday started with no rain, so we had a nice breakfast. And then the rains started. Chloe did not like it. We tried our best to keep dry. Another joyous event of the trip, ...

I'd say something, but that doesn't fit. Take this, a guy wants to rob a house while the people are sleeping. But that's not enough, he wants to make it more challenging, so he wakes them up. How to do that? Well, a trip to the kitchen and you've got... the kitchen bandit: http://www.fresnobee.com/384/story/849202.html

If you read my previous post , you saw that I wanted to get WiFi networking working on Damn Small Linux (DSL), which uses a 2.4 Kernel. My PCMCIA card (had it in my junk collection, and didn't want to spend $$ on a newer one) is a D-Link DWL-G630 (DWL G630) card. Version A1. Not A1 as in awesome, great, easy to install on linux. A1 as in the first version, of which they've gone up to version E. There are write-ups on how to set up network cards on linux in all manner of ways. Several for this card suggested MadWifi. I could never get MadWifi to install in a way that I saw it do anything. The best one I saw was on Leedberg.com . However, there were a few clarifications needed in his instructions. This card uses mrv8k51.inf as the driver. To get this card to work with ndiswrapper, use the Win98 drivers. DSL doesn't have DHClient. I don't know where to find DHClient, or something similar for DSL. Now, what do I mean 'it's working, I think'? Well, I'm at wor...