Gone Texan? We're already there!

2008 02 29_Go Texan_0012, originally uploaded by ultimate_ed.

It's that time of year, so naturally, the kids are dressed up for "Go Texan" day at school.

A Fine Winter's Day in Texas

Here in Texas, winter means nothing. One week it's rainy with lows near freezing, the next, highs in the 70's and clear.
Today was something borrowed straight out of Spring. High around 70, dry, light breeze, clear to partly cloudy skies. About as perfect a weather forecast as you could ask for.
And so, it made for a fine time, hanging out on the in-laws acre yard, playing ball with the kids and a niece while the wife and her family traded the latest news about the family.
I think I even managed to get a mild sunburn.

Sunday again

I don't have a picture to upload yet, though I did take one today. I am down to 223.5 lbs, so the trend is definitely downward.
Now, why don't I have a picture? And what about that wife? Well, the good news is the wife was able to make her flight on Friday. She was fortunate to have an afternoon flight as many of the morning ones were canceled. Hers left about an hour late and she made it back home around 7p on Friday. She was able to see the princess score three baskets at her game on Saturday and enjoy the company of family watching NY win the Super Bowl this evening (and what a helluva game is was, too!)
Now, why don't I have a picture to post? Well, Wednesday brought my new power supply and video card upgrades. I proceeded to install the power supply first. When the computer came up, the hard drive behaved very badly and ultimately proved dead. Now, I think it's as much coincident as anything. The drive has always been somewhat flaky and noisy, so I wasn't terribly surprised by the failure. Besides, I had recently backed up my critical data to an external drive....so I thought. Turns out, my music and pictures are intact, but, for reasons I cannot figure out, some of the documents that I thought I had copied over were nowhere to be found. I can ultimately live without the stuff I lost, but it is still damn annoying.
But, I did have to get a new hard drive and rebuild it from the HP restore DVDs. Since then, I've been in the process of reinstalling my hardware, getting my pics and music back on and generally trying to get things back in order. At this time, I've not yet got my photo software back on yet, so my photo editing and uploading is hampered.
I did eventually get the new video card put in and it is truly sweet. I can now play Call of Duty 4 at the full 1680x1050 resolution of my 22" widescreen monitor and kill the bad guys good and dead.