Broken!

If for some reason you hadn’t notice. My website isn’t quite all it used to be anymore. Unfortunately it is broken. You may ask, “but I’m on the site now how can it be down?”. Well that is true. But I can not upload new photo galleries and for a while the blog was down too. Then recently my whole site was down for the weekend. I know there are maybe 40 people who even know about the site, and maybe 4 that actually visit it even on a semi regular basis, but still I would like to keep it up and current. So I have cobbled it back together – barely – so at least the blog works again, the site is accessible again, and the old galleries are available.

The problem is I don’t know what the problem is. I think that it is one of two things. Either a Microsoft update made the freeware I am using out of date or the software can’t handle the size of the database of photos. There are more than 4000 decent sized photo’s already available. I thought about just installing a second gallery but I keep run into conflicts with the software. So that is probably out until I want to rebuild the whole server. This is going to happen but probably not until mid spring. I have one more Idea to try and get around the software problem but it will be weeks before I have time to try. So for now I guess I will just keep adding to the blog and looking for other solutions for the gallery.

I think about the time I rebuild the server I should also redesign the site a little. I am going to drop everything I think except the Galleries and Blog. At one time I thought it would be fun to add a message board. But let’s face it who would use it! So I will have to keep on the look out for clean and simple designs that I like. I haven’t updated the look for 3 years so there we go! Maybe by summer I can start adding more content too. We shall see.

New Furniture

When you grow up I guess you have to buy real furniture. I think that people have different ideas of what is nice or what is needed but I think at some point everyone has to suck it up and by some new decent furniture. Or in my case let someone else do it! Haha. But that is ok. Just recently I was shoved, pulled, dragged, however you want to say it a little further into the adult world. I mean I already have a pretty grown up job or career even and I’ve owned a house for more then ½ a decade, but that doesn’t mean I have to grow up. Though I guess I do have to concede that it is very nice to have new furniture, as opposed to hand me downs, garage sale, or goodwill gear.

I did try to argue with RB that it would be a lot cheaper to go to good will and spend a 100 bucks at goodwill and 30 bucks at target for sheets to furnish the whole house! It wouldn’t even be hard to match all the colors as we would be throwing sheets over everything. But then idea – for reasons, I think, beyond me – never gained much traction. Most of my buddies agreed with me but I never did find anyone else that did. So I relented; though it helped, that I wasn’t actually going to be paying for the furniture myself. I did get to help pick it out, which is nice. And now that it is in the house, well I’m glad that we went the way we did.

We ended up with a new sectional, a chair, and a complete dining set. I would not have thought that I would get a sectional but we found one that had a very unique look, fit the house perfectly, and actually had a very good price tag. We found it at Wicke’s furniture while looking at some other couches we saw in the ads. RB was actually tired and just wanted to flop down for a minute and headed in that direction. We both saw it we though hey! That’s pretty different and I like it. It has dark brown vinyl paneling on the sides, back, and below the cushions and everything else is a tan micro fiber that is textured to look like leather but feels like suede. It’s also so comfortable you end up falling asleep on it without even trying. It has a matching chair that is really nice as well that is both a rocker and swivels. It is round in shape and made from the same materials as the couch. We did skip out on the ataman though.

The Dining room is even more impressive. We had originally looked at Thomasville Furniture’s Bogard collection; after looking at the price tag several times could not even begin to justify it. In fact the entire dining room we ended up with was the cost of the Thomasville table sans chair or other amenities. The collection we did get was also at Wicke’s, which was nice as we saved on delivery charges, called the Scarsdale collection. It has a very similar look at the Bogart collection with a few changes. The table is not as glossy as the Bogart but it has really nice metal accents on the feet, edges, and lower section that are not in the other table. The chairs are also simple and I think look nicer than the Thomasville. The buffet/hutch is the most similar piece with even hardware that is a close match. Everyone who has been over loves it.

The only crazy part of the whole deal is that we bought so much furniture. The hutch is nice but takes up a lot of the room and since we also purchased the service and leave the leaf in the table it is a lot. Still I think it works. We just need to finish decorating the room and it won’t be so lop sided. Man though, I worry about everything now though. I don’t wan the table to get scratched or the couch to get spilled on. It’s crazy it was almost nicer to just have the old stuff! If something happened to it you just went ahead and threw a new sheet over it!