Cool clouds

I don't know anything about clouds, but I thought these looked cool.  I took these Friday afternoon as the cold front rolled in.  I was amazed at their uniformity.  They were in rows that were the same width and length, and equally spaced.  They went on across the whole sky, but without a wide angle lens, you just get to see a little piece here.

Kelsey stars in my first YouTube post

Kelsey, our 50 lb shepherd mix, loves to play with balloons and try to keep them in the air.  I think it is hilarious.  You can also hear Lila laughing in the background, as she thinks it is great fun, too.  It inspired me to try my first YouTube post.

Windows Media Center

I'll start by saying that I love my windows media center and its DVR feature.

Sorry my friendly MSFT'ers (BTW, do you have a fun name for yourselves?) Nothing worked in windows media center after my Windows XP Media Center Edition updated to Service Pack 3. It gave errors like "Component Registration Failure" and "Some of the files needed to play radio or video are missing or corrupt. Media Center component registration may have failed" and "Critical Process Failure" and "A critical Media Center process has unexpectedly failed. If problems persist, please restart your machine and try again, or contact technical support. Code 3."

But I found a post by 1stknight (any relation to one of the knights who might read this post?) on this Microsoft website and it fixed my problem. It was in this forum: http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3358277&SiteID=17

My 802.11b wireless adapter also doesn't work since the update, but I haven't tried to debug that yet, and it is a generic one that I got for like $8 at Fry's 4 years ago. I guess I'll work on that one next.

Scrap Metal

We are remodeling our guest bathroom, and I decided to take all the brass fixtures we removed to a scrap metal recycler, OK Scrap and Recycling. I had two brass faucets, some copper pipe, the frame of our old shower doors, cabinet door hardware, light fixtures, etc. It totaled about 27 pounds. I figured recycling this stuff was better than sending it to the landfill.

I didn't really know what to expect about this scrap metal place. I thought they might laugh at my small quantities and pay me a pittance that wouldn't cover the gas to get there. Since I was going anyway, I threw in some aluminum cans that would normally go in our curbside recycling, and two old garage door opener motors. If you are wondering why I had two old garage door opener motors, then you don't know me very well.

They paid me 70 cents a pound for the 2 pounds of cans, 65 cents to 70 cents for the brass (they characterized it in two different ways. I'm not sure why.), and 7.5 cents a pound for the motors, which they categorized as "steel."

So I left with a little over $22--more than enough to cover the gas to get there and enough to make me feel like it was worthwhile. It's something to consider if you ever remodel...or replace a garage door opener :)

Online Chess

Here's a classic "What's Ben into now?" example. Online Chess.

Chess.com is a great website for playing chess against anyone anywhere in the world. You just make a move, and your opponent is alerted that it is their turn. Check back the next day and make another move.

My friend Alan Smith got me started on this. I hadn't played chess in at least 15 years. I'm sure this will only last a few months, but right now, I'm hooked.

Sign up and challenge me. You can find my profile at http://www.chess.com/members/view/bigpixy
My username is bigpixy, which is a story for another day. For some reason I didn't think to use SpoilingCitrus.

Getting Started

Colette's blog (ameybc.blogspot.com) will probably always be the official Amey blog. But Colette tells me that I go through hobbies like Lila goes through diapers. Hence, the title, What's Ben into Now? Family stuff, home maintenance, and video games are all probable topics for future posts.

My screen name of choice for years was Bigben. But it is just too popular to get when creating new accounts. Since I'm not a big fan of variations with numbers like bigben1978, I had t0 come up with something else. I've always been a big Dave Barry fan, and he liked to list possible funny band names by just combining random adjectives and nouns. Then one time I ate some questionable mandarin oranges and had an allergic reaction (or poisoning?) which caused my fingers to get bumpy and tingly for a few days. After that I started telling people I was allergic to spoiling citrus, which fit Dave Barry's criteria for band names perfectly.

Then I REALLY got into Guitar Hero. When I had to choose a band name, and bigben was taken already, SpoilingCitrus seemed to be the best choice. And now it is working its way to the top spot over bigben for all new logins and screen names.