Trying Something new with the Laptop

I decided to try something besides eBay for selling the laptop. For whatever reason, Craigslist.org popped in my head. I was able to list the Laptop and set everything up surprisingly quickly. I didn't even have to create an account. All I had to do was verify my email address. That's pretty cool. We'll see if there are any takers.

Fathers and Sons

This last weekend I went camping with the boys on our Ward's annual Fathers and Sons campout. Here is us getting ready to leave:

As you can see, we have 3 little boys and a motorcycle in the back. For some reason, Scott wasn't very happy at the moment I took this picture. I think it was taking too long to actually leave or something.

Scott and Dallin and Tim all had a great time camping. They played in the dirt, rode on the motorcycle, and even slept through the night fairly well. We didn't have tables, so it was sort of a problem feeding Tim. I did have his portable chair that is supposed to hang on the edge of a table. I just sat him in that in the back of the truck and it worked ok.

During the night, Tim wasn't very used to having to sleep in a sleeping bag. He kept trying to kick it off of him. Finally, I just gave up and pulled him over by me. He wasn't too bad but I didn't sleep that well. In the morning, Tim woke up first and just sat up and looked around. Probably 5 minutes or so later, he finally starting making these little grunting noises and laughing at himself. Then he went over and trampled over Scott and Dallin until they all got out of bed too.

We had a good time and plan to have many more camping adventures.

I'm beginning to hate eBay

Well, I decided that I should relist that laptop. Here is the newly listed (and newly ended) item.

Guess what, the outcome was the exact same as last time. Some Nigerian Scammer used the buy-it-now option again. The funny thing is, they used a pretty much canned response exactly the same as the last scammer:

Hello,

Compliment of the season to you. I am Mark Tunnell from Mesquite,USA.But Presently i am leading a conventional church program in London. I saw your item advert on ebay and i'm interested in buying it for my daughter who is studying a Computer Science Course in the University of Lagos (Nigeria) and i will handle the shipment expenses.I will send you my personal fedex account number after the payment so that you can ship the item to her without paying any shipment fee. I will be sending you payment via PayPal,So kindly send me your (PAYPAL EMAIL ADDRESS) so as to immediately make out my payment to you. Make sure you get the package ready for immediate or next day shipment okay?.You can ship the item as soon as you receive the paypal confirmation mail. Expecting your reply so as to immediately make out my payment for this item purchase.Mail me back it's urgent.

Regards
Mark.

So now, I have to get my money back AGAIN. I find it funny that people trying to do this Scam can't come up with something on their own. Heck, if they were going to really try to pay with PayPal, why don't they just not mention their Daughter in Nigeria? I suspect if I were stupid enough to send this guy my paypal address, he'd just send a forged paypal email that appears as if I had received payment. Who knows? Who Cares?

I just want somebody legitimate to bid on the item so I can get rid of it.

The Big Purple Spot

Sometimes, something happens that is so stupid that you can't help laughing. This time, Gayla couldn't help laughing. I'm sure you'll enjoy too.

At one point or another, every child has one of those stick on basketball hoops. They have great big suction cups on the bottom so that you can slam dunk the foam basketballs and they won't pop off whatever wall or bed they happen to be stuck to at the moment. Well, Scott and Dallin have one of those, but they had pulled it off the bed it was stuck too. Only one of the suction cups came off with the hoop though, the other stayed stuck on the bed.

I thought to myself, those things really do stick pretty good. So I pulled it off myself. The boys and I started to have fun with it. We tried sticking it on the walls, mirrors, whatever. Then I stuck it to my forehead. Wow, that thing could even stay stuck on my forehead pretty well.

Scott and Dallin thought it was really funny to give it a good tug pop it off of my forehead. Well, laugh away, here is the result of our play:



So Today, being Sunday, we had a few things scheduled. First of all, the Ward Secretary called and asked if we could say the opening and closing prayer in church. Next, I had to teach Sunday School. Finally, We were supposed to take family pictures with all Gayla's inlaws after Church. Not a bad day to have a big purple spot on your forehead.

Things turned out ok I guess. I made Gayla run to the store and buy some cover-up stuff. (She didn't have any). Also, not everyone could be there for pictures so we didn't have to worry about that. It'll be interesting to see how many days it takes to get my normal color back.

We rode with Nathan Woods and Ty Davis

Monday I had the chance to go out on the "Industry Trail Ride". Dad, being heavily involved with all the trails on Blue Mountain, was selected to be the guide for all the riders after the weekends races at Bull Hollow (by Monticello if you don't already know where that is.) Since it was a holiday, we made sure that we could be down there too. Who could pass up an opportunity to go riding with Nathan Woods and Ty Davis. If you don't know those names you better click the links.

Well, things started off fast and slow. We all took off with Dad leading the way and not all the riders ready to go. It's a good thing someone in the rear knew which direction we were heading. Not too far up the first little road Jed hit a big rock and landed on his rear. I saw it. Ty Davis saw it too. Lots of people saw it. I'm sure Jed is excited I remembered to point this out.

A little later, we all waited at the top of the mountain (by the towers if you are familiar with the area.) Dad made me wait for all the people in the rear. I waited and waited and waited. Then I decided to coast back down the hill. I found a few riders 1/2 a mile or so down the hill also waiting. They said they knew where to go and were waiting for someone who had a breakdown. I'm glad they broke down there because we weren't in the middle of the boonies yet. I took off to catch the rest of the crowd.

At the head of the Spring Creek trail I got assigned to wait again. (Good grief I'm missing all the action.) After a bit, the slow crowd all showed up and we started to catch up again. When we found everyone, we started on a new trail. This time the people who were slow riders were separated from the people who were just slow because they were waiting for people. I still had to wait a bit for some of the guys in the rear. It took way too long to get up the hill and I saw some big ruts from all the people spinning around the switch backs. Of course, my trusty CR500 didn't need anyone's help but my throttle hand to get up the hill. I had to help a few people push though and ended up walking up and down the hill a few times.

Finally, over the mountain, past Shooters Rock, and into Robertson pasture, we caught up to Dad (Only because he was waiting though.) I convinced him I had ridden at the back long enough and needed to head on down the trail. So I had the 6 guys with me that didn't need waited for and he stayed and waited for the slow riders. We headed down the Red-Ledges trail and caught up with the slow pack from the first crowd. Avalanches this year created a few places in the trail that most riders aren't used to riding across. One guy got stuck on the wrong side of a tree and had to have a couple guys help lift his bike over to the trail again. Nothing me and the 500 couldn't handle here though.

Here is a picture of most everyone waiting at Indian Creek. The #1 rider is Nathan Woods and the #2 rider is Ty Davis. After catching up to the crowd at Indian Creek, I was finished riding with the slow crowd. They decided A-Riders go down the Indian Creek trail and all the rest go up to Aspen flat directly. I took off with the A-Riders. I must admit I wasn't rubbing my front tire on the back of Ty Davis' but I did keep up and left most of the pack a ways back. We came out the bottom of the trail, rode to the head of the Aspen flat trail and then waited for the rest of the crowd to show up.

The picture here is of Jed and Ty Davis waiting too. After a bit, Dad came riding up and said that he got to ditch the slow riders too. We all took off through Aspen Flat as quick as we could go. At this point, we had spent too much time waiting for slow people and needed to get back so we could have lunch. Some of those guys had to drive a long way too and were supposed to leave. (Dad's adventures usually take at least an hour or two longer than planned though.)

There was a little more slow going when we caught up to the other group that had gone the short way. Also, one rider ran out of gas and I had to give him my extra. Good thing I brought extra. I never did need it anyway. He ended up running out again and had to borrow from someone else.

After Aspen flat we headed up the road and were fed a great lunch at the Halliday's cabin. We took this picture. You can see how many riders came on this ride. I'm the one on the far right.

I also took a picture of my face so you can tell how much dust there was. It really wasn't too bad on the trails but the roads were quite dirty after than many bikes went past.

After lunch on the way back to the truck, one of the riders hit his face on a stick. We thought he broke his nose. He landed in the ditch and had to recover for a bit, but in the end he made it back too. All in all, I had a great time.

More of my handywork on the internet again

My handywork has popped up on the internet again. If you follow the link back, you can check out a little video of me drawing an X-Wing in addition to the completed work:

No deer for me this weekend

We spent the weekend in Monticello. I had only two things on my agenda: Hunt deer and ride motorcycles. I'll post more about the motorcycle stuff later.

So here is the hunting story. On Friday night I hiked a ways up the mountain where Dad said he had a tree stand. I guess I didn't pay close enough attention to where the stand was, because after hiking up the hill a while, I still hadn't found it. I did spook out one doe that watched me for a bit. No luck seeing any other deer though. I found a place where deer would come into a small meadow and waited on the trees there for a while until it got too dark.

Saturday morning Dad and I drove around and looked for anything. It was really weird because we didn't see anything at all. (Other than a couple more does on the way there.)

Saturday night I rode my motorcycle to a place that I could hike to a different tree stand Dad had put up. I hiked a little past where it was but eventually figured out where I needed to go to find it. I spooked out 3 more does up the hill. When I was about to the tree stand there was one more doe.

After I found the tree stand and waited a bit, it started to lightning and thunder a whole bunch. Then it started to rain a lot. Finally, when it stopped raining, I saw one more doe walk by. Hmn. Not too much luck finding deer with horns this weekend. Anyhow, since I was cold and it was dark, I hiked back down the hill. Jed and Ben picked me up so I didn't have to ride my motorcycle home in the dark.

New Struts on the Elantra

Our Elantra needed it's tires rotated. Those tires had about 25K miles on them. We got them at Big-O tires and so the rotation is free. Of course, I could rotate tires myself any time, but why when I can just drop it off there and pick it up in a bit.

Not so simple though. We've been having this problem with a sort of grindy sound in the front wheels. I'd been thinking that maybe I needed some new wheel bearings in there. I did some digging around and found that it was practically impossible to find information about the front wheel bearings in the Hyundai Elantra. I guess it's black magic. I did find out that they usually last a rediculously long time though.

Well, whatever the noise was, I wanted Big-O to check it out when they rotated the tires. In this post, I mentioned how we weren't able to get back to Big-O in time to pick up the car. I called them Monday and they said they already threw away the work order and that we could just bring it back in and they'd check again. (Uugh).

Well, the sound was worse after the tires had been rotated so I thought I better go ahead and have them look at it. It turns out that the struts were really worn out. Because the struts were worn out, it was causing the tires to wear unusually fast and the alignment wasn't good. The only good thing about the whole deal is that I only needed three struts instead of four. One had already been replaced.

Cost of two front struts: $269
Cost of one rear strut: $130

Well, you can't just put new struts on without aligning it can you? Cost of Alignment: $59.

Now, you can't just align it and put new struts on without getting a couple new tires because the old ones are so worn. (I opted out of getting 4). Cost of two new tires for the front: $100.

Well, after the whole deal is put together, it cost about $620. The good news is that it wasn't quite as much as filling up on the way home.