Category: Uncategorized

This year was a good year. We made it out to Fort Pickens for the first time in several years, the shelling was good, and we even had a good day of water with calm water in the morning/early afternoon and somewhat less calm but very clear water in the afternoon. Granted, today was the only particularly good day of water and it stormed in the morning (before I got up), but it was still nice.

The fort seems to have fully survived hurricane Ivan (I think that was the one) that cut off access for a few years, which isn’t particularly surprising since it’s been there for most of 200 years (besides the portion of it that was destroyed in 1899 when a fire reached the gunpowder storage). The roads, fishing pier, and modern buildings didn’t do so well. Most of the road from Navarre Beach to the fort (on the other end of the island) was recently paved and there were vast quantities of black pebbles (asphalt) and road chunks in the sand on either side of the road, even where the speed limit was reduced due to shore bird nesting areas. There’s an entire new fishing pier, and though there’s a picture outside the museum building of what the building looks like with a significant portion washed off it’s foundation and no longer attached that was rebuilt.

I’ll have to take pictures of my shells at some point, but the rare shells I found include a Cabrits’ Murex and a small (not fully grown) Queen Helmet. I also found a Scotch Bonnet (listed as rare, but we usually find a few) and a tulip shell. The biggest I found is a lightning whelk, but it’s not nearly as big as the one my dad found.

Today I finally managed to get lightly sunburnt and find a jelly fish (or something that left an interesting pattern of itchy spots across my foot). Not too big a deal since we’re leaving tomorrow for home so I don’t have to deal with either while on the beach. On the other hand, someone found a nice mask and snorkel in the water and since my dad and I are the only ones that do much snorkeling they gave the new mask/snorkel to me. Very much appreciated since I’ve just been using an old (and too small) mask and didn’t find a snorkel for it this year (not too big a problem since there’s more air here than in Colorado and I can hold my breath for noticeably longer than I’m used to).

I stopped counting how many books I’ve read, but I’ve just about run out of books. Rather, I’ve got a book and a half left, but neither are books I particularly want to read. I’ve also got a couple technical books I was thinking I’d read, but those aren’t exactly great entertainment. Hopefully I’ll come up with something to get on my nook on the way home.

Posting from my phone, so this will be short.

We got to the beach house late Saturday afternoon.  Small group this year: I think just over 30 total with 10 kids 10 or younger.

I’ve only finished one book here so far, but I read a book on the plane and another in the car on the way from Texas to Louisiana Friday night.  I’ve solved my rubik’s cube a number of times; there’s no shortage of kids willing to scramble it, though a couple have spent some time trying to solve a side.  I’ve also solved the 7-cube once, but I didn’t hand it off to the kids to scramble.

One of the few shells worth keeping that I’ve found so far is even bigger and more perfect than the big one I found last year.  Hopefully there will be a calm day when the shelling is good since it hasn’t been so far.

I have no idea what’s up with my printer now. I haven’t used it since February, but it worked fine then. Now that I need to print financial documents out for applying for a mortgage it’s failing.

My first attempt to print over the network (using an ubuntu machine as a print server) had no response. The printer didn’t get a job and windows had nothing in the queue. I didn’t think to try digging into the samba printer sharing settings. I then reinstalled the printer on windows and printed a test page. The printer got the request, but failed at feeding in a sheet of paper. I messed with it a bit and it sucked in two sheets at once, but the only spot it printed was the windows logo in the corner of the windows printer test page.

Then I figured it was the black ink cartridge, so I pulled it out. When I shook it I could hear sloshing, so I cleaned off the printer head with a damp tissue and got ink all over it. Figuring it was fine I put it back in and tried printing again. It spit out a mostly blank sheet of paper with faint blue outlines where the boxes on the page I was trying to print were, but lower down on the page black lines started showing up. I figured it just needed to be used a bit, so I hit print again. The printer never got the job, and reinstalling didn’t fix it.

At that point I figured the network printer setup was probably a source of major complications if not actual issues, so I plugged it directly into my desktop. It installed and I printed the test page, and this time the black was as dark as it gets, but the windows logo was very faded. I’m not concerned with the color, so I printed the document I was trying to print again. Once again it came out with faint blue borders and some faint but almost legible black text near the bottom of the page. The next print attempt actually worked, though it’s all a bit faint. I can’t explain why the test page came out fine but the next print was still faded, but I can live with somewhat faint so long as it’s all clear.

If I actually used my printer much as a printer I’d be rather tempted to just go out and buy a decent printer with a network port built in for network printing. As it is, I think I’ve used the scanner more than I’ve used the printer part of it, and it’s not like I do much scanning.