CenterLeft.net

It’s been a busy couple weeks around here.  Summer is in full fling with all the associated projects and outings and work is fun, but keeping me on my toes.

In no particular order here’s what’s been happening:

• Ollie is getting bigger.  He’s just over 4 months now and stands taller than Sophie and his head is about twice the size of hers.  I’ll have to post some more pictures and videos soon.  We still don’t have any idea what type of dog he is, but we have really been enjoying him.
• This weekend the fish club got together for a home show and competition.  I volunteered to travel around with the group as a judge and we spent Saturday traveling all around the Seattle area.  It was a lot of fun to meet everyone in their homes and get to see all the tanks they’ve been working on for so long.  There was lots of amazing stuff out there.
• Beth and I finally had a weekend day off together.  We went for a great little hike.  The dogs were really pooped by the end.
• I’ve got a new boss at work.  So far he seems to be getting along well.
• The media PC died last week so we haven’t had the easy access to all our TV shows that we’re used too.  We ordered a new one and it’s scheduled to be delivered tomorrow.  I still can’t believe that the entire PC costs less than I paid for just the processor of the previous one.  That, and it’s going to be 4 or 5 times faster.
• Beth and I have bought our plane tickets to Europe.  I’ve got some training in the Czech Republic in August, and this time Beth is going to come along.  We’re going to add a week of vacation on to the end of it and spend some time traveling around Austria as well.

Well, that’s it for now.  Get out there and enjoy the sun!

I think this tank should be big enough for now.  If you can’t tell the scale from the picture, the tank is 6′ long and 30″ high.

Also in the picture you can see the tank is sitting on top of the new cabinets I’ve been building.  The top is done, but there’s still some finishing work left to do before the doors can be put on.

I’m still fighting hackers here on the site.  It looks like I’ve gotten everything cleared up finally, but I guess I can only wait and see.  The last time I thought I was in the clear I was attacked again the very next day.

Fun weekend otherwise.  Beth’s Mum came up to visit and to check out the big fish auction put on by the Seattle Aquarium Society.  I took in a few things to sell, and mostly just hung out to watch what came up and bid on a few items now and then.  Barb took home a few great items and seemed to enjoy herself.

Exciting news for me too: I won one of the items from the raffle.  I’m playing around with setting up a new big tank eventually and now I get to spend a gift certificate on fish stuff at the Fish Tank People’s online store.  I don’t do any salt water tanks, but I’ve got my eye on a couple of the pumps that they sell.  So, that should work out just fine.

Apparently upgrading Wordpress to 2.7.1 has totally hosed my front page.   I don’t know why nothing is showing up there.  I’ve poked at it a little bit, but obviously not enough to fix it yet.  I’ll probably need to just build an entirely new front page that doesn’t use the wordpress backend at all. Sigh…

But, I should have plenty of time to look into that next week.  I’m going to be back in Eindhoven for another week of training.  As always, that means a couple long nights where I can’t sleep.  So, I should have lots of time to rebuild the front page.

In more interesting news, Sophie (our puppy) is trying to learn how to stand on the back of the couch so she can get closer to the fish in the living room tank.  Some things are funny enough to just let them happen.

Note how nice the tank looks with the new plants in it. Thanks a lot to Eric from the GSAS for donating those to me.

Yesterday was just one of those days. Monday definitely ended on a high note.  But Tuesday didn’t work out so well.

I started the day by running over my blue tooth headset with the car. Later, I got a tag etched for our dog, Sophie, but when I got home I realized that I had accidentally put down our old home number instead of Beth’s cell.  Finally, I found that my new hand grips are defective and won’t heat up anymore.

On a high note though, I have a beautiful new aquarium in my living room.  One of the members of the Seattle Aquarium Society was put into the heart breaking position of having to give up all of her tanks because of needing to move to a rental property.

I was fortunate to be able to adopt her 55 gallon Tanganyikan Lake cichlid show tank.   I spent Monday evening moving everything over to my place, and I am very happy to report that all of the fish survived the trip and appear quite happy in their new home.

Just for my own notes, the tank has: 5 Neolamprologus brichardi, 4 Tropheus duboisi (1 male, 3 female), and a breeding pare of Julidochromis transcriptus (with 2 or 3 small fry).

With time comes hobbies.  Besides, I always need a new project to spend money on right?

I’ve got my bike back from storage and I’m loving it.  I found an excelent bike shop down in Portland to get it running from me and had a real nice day driving it up to Seattle.  Now it’s sitting nice and snug out in the garage/new fenced area that I built for it.

With the new wrap on the pipes, the bike is looking hot.  The old leather bags don’t quite fit the look anymore, so I’m talking to a metal worker I know about whipping me up a lugage rack to hold my stuff.  The biggest item of note is the new seat.  I ordered the Vintage Sport Touring Seats w/Driver Backrest from Mustang seats. Boy was that a good decision.  It is an unbelievable difference from the stock seat that came with my bike, and I’ve been told that these seats really get a lot better after they’ve had time to break in.

The other little project that I’m starting to work on is setting up my fish tanks again.  While I was in college I had one tank setup that I got a lot of enjoyment out of.  This time I’ve built a cabinet that will hold two of them. Right now I have both of the tanks setup with the lights and air on.  I just picked up some of the plants today too.  I think I’m going to let them get established and start growing for a little bit before I start introducing some fish.

The plan is to setup a couple of schools of comunal fish and a few breeding pairs of cichlids.  I might even throw in an eel.  I think  it’s going to be a real neat setup when it’s all done. I’ve added a picture gallery for each of the tanks, here and here.  I’m going to try and post a new picture each week. I think it will be neat record of the progression of the tanks and their development as the plants and fish grow.