Ups and Downs

Hello dear readers!

I got a wonderful care package from my grandmother yesterday -- she must be psychic, I think.  The box was crammed with white t-shirts (a commodity out here!) Neosporin and anti-itch cream (the mosquitoes are finally tapering off), along with lots of other goodies.  I am so lucky to have such sweet and caring relatives!

Also we are very happy to have our first official customers! We hope that this is just a sign of wonderful things to come. 

We also got another mono-crystalline solar panel, and our batteries are much happier. We will be testing out a set of composite carbon fiber blades on our wind turbine, and hope to see a power output improvement.  In just a couple of days we will be headed out to meet Dave and family, some fans of the blog, who have a very interesting fiberglass turbine prop some eight feet in diameter.  Expect our wind farm to grow very soon!

This past Saturday we had some neighbors over to pick up some chickens we sold them, though I'm sorry I forgot to bring out the camera.  Tanyah and Tom brought along their three kids to join in the fun of catching and caging the fluff-nuggets (as I call them; their original nickname was the "chicken nuggets," but they have outgrown that moniker). It was a hot day, but it was fun to see the kids so excited over their new hens.

This upcoming Sunday there will be an Independence Day parade in Study Butte, and we are looking forward to joining the procession.  We will need to give the truck a bath and spend the next couple of days working on our "float," but we are looking forward to a fun project.  For any readers who want to attend, the parade starts at 6pm at the Study Butte Mall, and terminates at Kathy's Kosmic Kowgirl Kafe, on FM170.  At the Kafe, the Terlingua Fire and Emergency Medical Services (TFEMS) volunteers will be selling food and drinks.

Now for the bad news.  Casey's Toshiba Satellite L305 is broken AGAIN.  The touch-pad isn't working, and there seems to be a hard drive failure also. As the main computer, it has all of our pictures on it and my web design software (and latest updates, though they can be recovered from the server).  Just like the first time, the Customer Service from Toshiba is a painfully frustrating waste of time.  This computer has turned out to be a total lemon, and we are stuck with it and it's problems.  I reiterate from a previous post: DON'T BUY A TOSHIBA!

Also, unfortunately, our printer kicked the proverbial bucket last week.  We have been giving hand-written estimates to our clients, which doesn't look very professional, but we don't have any other options at this point. We don't have the spare cash to fix or replace anything, so we'll keep trying to work out a solution.

There's always a silver lining, though, and we had to laugh when we saw the following label on the hard disk drive:

Rattle noise is normal? Really? They must have had to explain themselves a lot before they put that on the sticker. Now when people ask why it sounds like it's trying to achieve escape velocity, they can just point to the sticker.

What a company...