mshepherd.com

I’ve been hinting for a while now that Wendy & I have another home-improvement project in the works. It’s almost half done so I figured it’s blogworthy at this point.

This endeavor was a “tuff” decision as it cost mucho money and it’s a topic of controversy as to whether or not a swimming pool even adds equity to a home. After much debate, we decided the pros outweighed the cons and so off we went into my graphics program to form a “plan“. As you can see, we want to add a swimming pool, a sunroom, a retaining wall, and lots of patio around it all.

So after months of listening to sales pitches at our kitchen table, scrutinizing bids and estimates, and researching on the Internet, the project finally began in late fall. They started by excavating the hill in our backyard and of course digging a big hole.

The next step involved assembling the steel walls of the pool inside the hole.

Here’s a pix of the completed assembly. Afterwards, they poured concrete around 3 sides and backfilled. A hot topic of debate for all who visited our house was how they were going to get the track loader out of the pool.

The question was answered when they removed one side of the pool and dug out the bottom to our specified depth & shape.

Next, they used some kind of machine to compact the dirt on the floor of the pool.

In comes the cement mixer again and here is the floor half poured.

Here they are trenching out the filter connections. Check out that pool filter! It looks like some kind of space pod!

In this pix, you can see the beginnings of the retaining wall.

It’s getting bigger!

In this pix, the wall is finished and backfilled. We absolutely love the way the retaining wall turned out!

Another angle of the “mostly finished” wall.

Quite the mess!

At this point it rained so much we were considering building an Ark and the pool filled up with a foot of water. Then Mother Nature turned up the volume a bit and everything froze. So now our project is on hold until the weather breaks and things dry up a bit. This is the reason we decided to do this project in the “Off” season. Does it matter when it gets done as long as it’s ready by summer?

And finally, this is a pix atop the beginnings of our Sledding hill. An idea I give full credit to Stephanie for. During an email to & fro, she was telling me about a time when they actually had loads of dirt brought in, planted grass on it, and used it to sled off during the winter snow. While in negations for the pool installation, the salesman brought up the question of all the excess dirt. To haul it away would have cost $200 per load so a light bulb came on in my head and I told him the dirt would remain “On-Site”. When the project foreman started excavation I had the conversation with him and he assured me that they would build me “Da Bomb” of a sledding hill!

So there is where we are currently at folks. I’m sure I’ll have more to add to the status of this soon!

Can any of my fellow nerds identify what that is in the picture to the right? If you guessed a computer’s hard drive you’re absolutely right! What makes it so amazing is that it was one of the “Original” hard drives from the birth of computers. It’s storage capacity was 500kb and one had to wear something like a space suit to handle it.

To put things in their proper perspective, it would take four of these monster drives just to accomodate one of the digi-pix my camera produces. If you were to try to put a MP3 on it, you might get about the first 20 seconds of the song before you ran out of space. My Cellphone has 100x the storage capacity of this drive. To get the same storage my desktop computer currently has, multiply that drive 500,000 times and then condense it into a box not much bigger than a deck of cards! Here is a breakdown for ya…

1024 bits= 1 byte
1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte
1024 kilobytes= 1 megabyte
1024 megabytes= 1 gigabyte
1024 gigabytes= 1 terabyte

None of you probably give a rat’s-ass about this but I find it simply astounding how far we’ve come in just 20 years!

One of the rewards of raising children is what I call “Parents Privilege”. By this, I mean that over the years, occasionally I’ll get a pix such as the one here. When this happens, I tuck them away in a neat little file on my computer for future use. I can hardly wait for the opportunity to sit down with my future daughter-in-laws and present the “Goods”. (snicker)

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Ours was simply superb. I’d have to rate it as just about the best Thanksgiving we’ve had. Everything worked out perfect. Wendy cooked an awesome turkey and everyone brought all the trimmings. What a feast it was! My mother, in typical fashion, outdid herself and we had to form an assembly line to unload all the dishes of food she prepared. All together, there were fifteen people at my house and we ate obscene amounts of food with no shame!

Afterwards, all the guys went out into the front yard for a game of football while everyone else watched a movie. Then we drank coffee & tea and watched football with the wood stove radiating heat making everyone comfy, cozy & sleepy. There was good conversation & a content atmosphere, just the way Thanksgiving should be!

A couple of days ago, we got the first snow so far this year. It amounted to just a “Dusting” but it was impressive while it lasted and certainly got the boys excited! Since then, it has been bitter cold in the evenings with the temp dropping into the teens. My wood stove is “earning its keep”, still haven’t turned the heat on and don’t plan on it!

Check out the pix.

Ahhh… the new movie was out as of Friday and I have yet to see it. I’m hoping we will get the opportunity Monday or Tuesday. It’s funny, ever since I’ve made public my enjoyment of the Harry Potter series, occasionally I’ll get an email with dire warnings. Here’s one that just came today…

On 2005-11-19 at 09:49:46,
The following information was submitted:
From Host: xxx.xxx.xxx.xx
name = Xxxx Xxxx
submit_by = xxxxxxxxxx@aol.com
how_found = Through your wife’s site
message = Hi, I read your bio and found it to be interesting. Please don’t take offense to this, as it sounds like you have a lot of great values and character. However, upon reading you are a “Harry Potter Fan”, it is somewhat disturbing to me. Harry Potter novels blatantly teach children and others how to be a witch and perform witchcraft while pretending to be just another exciting adventure series. You can take this for what you will, but if you love your children and family like you say, I hope you will rethink allowing this type of media and what it represents to be in your home. You can call me crazy or a fanatic if you like, but I hope you will take this as a warning from someone who also home-schools her children and is not only concerned about the quality of their education, but the value of their souls as well.

Blessings to you and yours,
Xxxx Xxxx in Ohio

Now I actually respect this woman’s point of view and her letter was very polite and well written. I just don’t understand or agree with it.

For the record everyone… I don’t believe in Witches and Wizards. Nor do I believe in Warlocks, Goblins, Ghosts, Zombies, Ghouls, Vampires, Werewolves, Hags, Banshees, Trolls, Giants, Leprechauns, Fairies, Mermaids, Sasquash or the Loch ness Monster. I don’t believe in Hobbits, Elves, Nymphs, Gnomes, Spiderman, Batman, Superman or Santa Clause.

My life experience has taught me to classify the above as fictional fantasy characters. If someone were to attempt to profess themselves as any of the above, I’d have to certainly regard them as “Mental”. That being said… Mixing eye of toad and tail of newt in a cauldron will net about the same result as stirring oatmeal together with cream of corn. I think my children are aware of this! I can read the works of J.K. Rowling and correctly compartmentalize the “Witchcraft & Wizardry” content for what it is… Fantasy. I also give my older children enough credit unto their “Moral Foundation” to be able to do the same with some good old fashioned parental guidance. What about Tolken? Gene Rodenbury? George Lucas? William Shakespeare? Edgar Allen Poe? or Mark Twain for that matter? Am I as a parent obligated to forbid my boys from playing “Cowboys & Indians” because of the atrocities that were inflicted upon Native Americans?

Even Christianity has a brutal & dark history involving countless people being put to death in very horrendous ways in the name of God. This is not from a book or someone’s imagination, this is fact, it actually happened. Still my children read the bible almost every day, they say the Lord’s Prayer at every meal and they hold their belief in Jesus near and dear. Why? because I as a parent am able to understand that regardless of what has happened in the past, the Bible is the correct foundation for their moral upbringing. I’ve compartmentalized the Inquisition, the Crusades, Burning people at the stake, etc… etc… as a bunch of overzealous religious “Nutters” who really had not a clue as to what Jesus was trying to teach them.

So Harry Potter is just like any other fantasy read out there. The religious far right is so caught up in the premise of “Witchcraft”, nothing else matters. Underneath is quite a wonderful read about the bonds of Friendship, Family, Love & the struggle of good overcoming evil. I don’t think anyone who has actually read the series can honestly say the books are blatantly attempting to convert our children to be Witches and Wizards. That is absurd to my mind.