Gutters

Recently, we paid a significant amount of money to a local roofing company -- a good choice, since the alternative was a leaky roof. That sort of defeats the purpose of any other renovations.



As part of the work, we had them replace the old (leaky) copper gutters on the front of the house. As it turns out, that's the most visible part of the renovations. The old gutters were green (think Statue of Liberty); the new ones are shiny copper.




So it's funny -- after spending all of that money, the only visible benefit we get are the nice new gutters. Look at the roof -- can you tell where the slate was replaced?

GPS

I got a new GPS receiver as a gift from Christina for my recent birthday. I already had one, so at first this seemed like more of an upgrade than getting a shiny new toy.

Boy, was that an underestimate. It's amazing how much things have come along in the past 5 or so years. The color display on my new receiver alone makes a big difference.

But where it really shines (in my opinion) is the interactivity with my computer. I can get a map DVD (already on order) and load detailed maps onto the receiver. I can download the data from the receiver, edit and display it. I'm just starting to grasp all the various cool stuff that is possible with it.

Yesterday, we put the GPS to its first major road test with a drive out to West Virginia for Steve & Vanessa's Super Bowl party. You can see our route displayed here. (I really wish I had that feature during my 2005 cross-country drive.)



It was the first time we had been out to their new place, and we had a lot of fun. The Super Bowl stayed exciting at least through the beginning of the fourth quarter (they should always play it in bad weather), and it was fun to hang out with people. At the end of the evening, we just followed our GPS trail back out (minus a couple of wrong turns we made on the way in).

Flickr

EuroQuest IV, Saturday 19:27: Thurn & Taxis
Originally uploaded by Eric E Haas.

I have previously posted about my visit to Euroquest, a board gaming convention. I got into a discussion today about Flickr today, which prompted me to do a little searching, which turned up this photo. It's sort of scary to think of how many random pictures of me there might be on the web that I'm not aware of.

I'm attempting to post this from Flickr, so there's no telling how this will turn out.